As someone who never resonated with the model of "enthusiastic consent" as an ideal model, I had to read a book that promised to dismantle it.

The first big issue is that often the consent model assumes everyone is fully independent and autonomous, which is not how humans work. We're all inter-dependent, entrenched in a society and a web of all possible relationships, roles and beliefs were didn't independently choose, but were decided by our upbringing and place in the society. Any decision we make includes calculating how will other people react to it and what consequences of it put upon us. We can never be totally unbiased and free of outside influences.

The second issue is that we don't know the future, so how can we be sure what exactly will happen to fully consent to it? People often feel anxiety or uncertainty in front of the unknown, so the advice "if you aren't 100% sure and enthusiastic, don't do it" would exclude us from trying a lot of things at all and make us controlled by our fears and worries. It's how anxiety rules us, it tells us "if you aren't sure, don't do it" and then we don't do anything and feel passive and extremely limited.

The thing issue is that consent shouldn't be one & done, and the author focuses on discussing ideas of cooperation, continuous negotiation and ensuring the possibility of exit midway rather than black-and-white yes-or-no at start.

There's also the whole heteronormativity issue where it's expected that men ask for consent and women reply, which reinforces the idea of men as proactive and women as reactive. It tackles the societal stereotype of sex as a transaction where women give men sex in exchange for something (love, relationship, money, gifts, favours, etc.), which is an extremely pervasive stereotype.

Finally, it also debates the subjects of sex work - where sex is indeed transactional and yet there's a difference between ethical sex work and abuse of sex workers - and kink in the context of desiring to give up autonomy, situations like bdsm submission or consensual-non-consent (CNC), and that those situations require even more negotiation and agreement, which isn't always easy in a society that shames and often even criminalizes them.

In the end, this book is less about advising an individual and more a critique of the society. How shame, lack of education, discrimination (for example towards women or LGBTQ people), stereotypes, criminalization of sex work, social ostracism towards people who get into relationships or have sex "not approved" by the society, etc. contribute to sexual abuse or simply people being stuck repeating common social "scripts" rather than searching what actually gives them pleasure and fulfillment.

But anyway, one sentence really stuck in my mind:
"Some asexual people are never enthusiastic about sex but value sexual generosity within their relationships."
For that, you get 5 stars.
As an ace-spec person I carried lots of worry and shame around "not being enthusiastic enough = bad lover, denying your partner the best experience they could have". It feels validating to hear you don't always need to be "enthusiastic", sometimes it's not even possible to fully be so, but that doesn't mean you should swear celibacy or worry "you're doing sex wrongly".

Thank you Netgalley and W. W. Norton & Company for the ARC.

As a demisexual and autistic individual I struggle not to intellectualize my feelings especially in intimate relationships. I think the conversations opened in Sex Beyond “Yes” regarding expression of agency, consent framework, sex as a negotiation, and
Invitation vs request among other darker things are all interesting and important topics. I do notice the blurb mentions consent itself does not give us the tools to navigate pleasure and intimacy of which I only took a reminder to “communicate how you communicate” but not any useable tools or processes for myself which was my primary desire in reading. Perhaps this book is for those who don’t intellectualize their feelings but that is who it has appealed to. I appreciate the effort to shed light on many aspects of sex that keep us invisibly confined. Thank you again Quill R Kukla and W. W. Norton Company for the opportunity to read and review
Sex beyond “Yes” ahead of publication.