In Defense of the Lenient View

This paper deals with the wrongness of having sex with someone without her valid consent. There are good reasons to think that deception about deal-breakers invalidate consent to sex and that acting without valid consent wrongs the consenter. Tom Dougherty argues that it is always seriously wrong to deceive another person into sex by deceiving her. We should on his view therefore reject the view that doing so is in certain cases only a minor wrong (this is what he calls “the lenient view”). It will be argued here that we should accept this view. I will argue against Dougherty that the lenient view does not presuppose an unacceptably moralistic view of sexuality. In addition, the lenient view can be defended by what I call the harm view of the wrongness of having sex without valid consent. If no or only mild harm is caused deceiving someone into sex is only a minor wrong.