This paper argues that the moral power commonly attributed to valid consent in sexual ethics is actually derivative of the value of sexual agency, which is both more fundamental than consent and more encompassing in its demands. By approaching sexual ethics from the agency-first perspective, we can address the full range of morally significant harms in our sexual lives, including interpersonal harms as well as those caused by sexist and otherwise unjust social structures, which consent-first approaches struggle to resolve. The paper develops an exhaustive conception of sexual agency that can ground future normative discussion of right and wrong in sex as well as justify political attempts to change sexual social norms and practices. By putting agency first as what really matters morally in our sexual practices, we gain a common yardstick to judge the adequacy both of consent-based accounts and of new moral concepts aiming to improve upon or replace the consent ideal.

Caleb Ward is a postdoc in social philosophy at Free University Berlin. From 2024 to 2026, he directed the DFG-funded project "Moral Opposition and Political Agency under Oppression," based at University of Hamburg. He's published work on sexual ethics, political agency, and the political thought of US Black feminist theorist Audre Lorde in Journal of the APA and Hypatia, as well as in edited volumes on sexual ethics, non-ideal theory, and the moral psychology of emotions. His book The Unflinching Philosophy of Audre Lorde is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.