Vol. 8 No. 2 (2022)

In this issue, readers will find three peer-reviewed articles that go remarkably well together. First, Ellie Anderson's article, "A Phenomenological Approach to Sexual Consent," rejects standard accounts of consent as permission-giving and develops an alternative theory of consent that engages with its etymological meaning, “feeling-with,” combining con- (with) and sentire (to feel). Anderson suggests this "approach shifts the distinction between consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences away from the legal ___domain and toward an interpersonal one."

Readers will find the anecdote that begins our second article is likewise interpersonal; in "Why You Ought to Defer: Moral Deference and Marginalized Experience," Savannah Pearlman and Elizabeth Williams argue for a prima facie "duty to defer—both epistemically and actionally—to marginalized people in their moral testimony about harms that relate to their identity when the receiver is not a member of that identity group." They distinguish "epistemic deference from actional deference" in order "to explain the appropriateness of a divergent response . . . to cases that traditional accounts of moral deference must take as all-or-nothing."

In our third article, "Gender as a Self-Conferred Identity,"Michael Rea argues for an account of gender as a self-conferred identity because it "transparently offers a basis for assigning first-person authority to people’s judgments about their own gender," continuing themes in this issue of deference and first-person lived experience.