How do we create the conditions that lead to women’s thriving? This is the question women’s movements, including but not limited to the feminist movement, have tried to answer for the last 200 years. In the United States, women’s access to public life, including civic participation, education, and professional endeavors, has expanded tremendously. Women have greater autonomy than ever before. And yet, the primary focus of the feminist movement continues to be maximum freedom, often at the expense of other important values.
The term “pro-choice,” the chosen moniker for what appears to be the most sacred cow of mainstream contemporary feminism, exemplifies that the ability to choose is more important than whether that choice is good. Unfortunately, much feminist discourse focuses on defending women’s right to choose, but is increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of helping women make good choices.
This seems to me to be at odds with what a movement for women ought to do, and what I think early first-wave feminists were trying to achieve—encouraging the conditions that make women’s thriving possible. In our current climate, women’s autonomy is celebrated, even at the expense of community; their professional success is lauded, even at the expense of family; their sexual freedom is praised, even at the expense of intimacy.
Reality television offers a revealing example of this contradiction. Cast members submit themselves to cosmetic procedures, expose their most intimate relationships to public scrutiny, sacrifice their children’s privacy, and allow their painful personal experiences to be sold as commercial entertainment. Media outlets and fans celebrate these decisions as feminist and empowering and continue to tune in, even when it is obvious to anyone that these shows are tearing the cast members’ lives apart. Meanwhile, the disturbing allegations surrounding the Cornell 7 case have renewed questions about consent, vulnerability, and the limits of sexual freedom.
Both cases reveal the limitations of a culture that treats individual choice as the ultimate measure of empowerment. Perhaps our cultural understanding of agency has become so impoverished that we have confused the freedom to choose with the wisdom to choose well.
The Limits of Consent
In October 2024, a young woman at Cornell University attended a party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, and what followed has become the subject of a distressing legal and cultural controversy. The woman, who has been identified publicly as Jane Doe, alleges that, while intoxicated, she consented to a sexual encounter with two men, but these men invited others to participate without her consent. She says they pressured her to take the dissociative anesthetic ketamine, which she consented to, but which left her “completely incapacitated,” and she later described the sexual encounter that followed, which she alleges involved seven men, as “traumatic” and “gang rape.” Cornell investigated and handed down expulsions, suspensions, and other sanctions to the men involved, but the local district attorney initially declined to pursue criminal charges due to the standard of consent under New York law, though a special prosecutor has since been appointed.
Voluntary participation is not sufficient to establish whether such participation is healthy, ethical, or empowering.
Establishing consent in this case has been tricky. Jane Doe admits that she arrived at the party having drunk vodka at her sorority house and other drinks at nearby bars. She says she consented to a sexual encounter with the first two men but not with the others later. According to messages described in the investigative record, in the days following the party, one of the men apologized to her about the encounter, to which she replied, that “non[e] of …[it] was illegal,” “honestly I really liked being with you [and another defendant],” “everyone needs to grow up because…sexuality is changing,” and “I’m really open-minded.” According to accounts of the investigation, she also visited the campus health center that week for treatment of a urinary tract infection, which she reportedly told healthcare providers she had developed in a “traumatic way.” One of the accused men alleges that Jane Doe initiated sexual contact with him without consent.
Consent is more than a technicality; it is an important baseline for the legality of sexual behavior. But as many have pointed out in recent years, consent does not establish whether an encounter was ethical or good for the people involved. Even when consent is freely given, people cannot always anticipate how a sexual experience will affect them. They may underestimate the emotional toll it will have on them. They may not understand the expectations of other participants, or they may discover afterward that something they believed they wanted was, in fact, deeply humiliating, degrading, or violating.
Women are not responsible for the misconduct of men, including predatory sexual behavior. But regret alone is not evidence of a lack of consent. And women may not always have a sense that they are going to regret a particular sexual experience in a culture where they are encouraged to “own their sexuality” and discouraged from judging any sexual interactions between consenting adults.
Consider how we teach children about physical danger. A child can learn to be careful with knives by cutting themselves or around the stove by burning themselves. But most of us would prefer a less injurious approach to teaching kitchen safety. There is little advantage in these kinds of painful lessons when a parent can instead help children anticipate the danger and avoid the injury altogether. And a parent teaching a child to hold a knife correctly would hardly be considered a restriction on the child’s freedom, but rather a necessary precursor to it.
And yet for very weighty matters such as sexuality that involve both our bodily safety and emotional well-being, we are generally reluctant to give young women explicit guidance on safety for fear that it will be received as “victim blaming.”
Different Bodies, Different Personalities, Different Stakes
These conversations often assume that men and women are basically the same, making choices on an equal playing field. But women are not just smaller men. Our bodies and our personalities have important differences, and women do not respond in situations of danger in exactly the way men do.
As Louise Perry argues in “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,” the sexual revolution has treated biological differences between men and women as inconvenient obstacles rather than realities to which we should give moral consideration. But our differences do matter.
The question is not whether young women will be influenced, but by whom, to what end, and for whose benefit.
In the case of sexual relationships and sexual assault, differences in average size and strength between the sexes make women more vulnerable to physical harm. High-profile cases of sexual assault often lead to questions such as “Why didn’t she fight back?”
Dr. Jim Hopper, a course director in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has written extensively on the effect of sexual assault on the brain. Drawing on his research into the brain’s response to trauma, he explains that women who are sexual assault victims often experience involuntary immobility during the assault due to prefrontal cortex impairment:
For those who assume a functional prefrontal cortex—including many victims as they look back on what happened—passive habit responses can be baffling. They seem exactly the opposite of how they surely would—or should—have responded. And if the fear circuitry perceives escape as impossible and resistance as futile, then not fight or flight, but extreme survival reflexes (which scientists call “animal defense responses”) will take over. These can activate automatically when the body is in a predator’s grip—and when, as half of rape victims report, we fear death or serious injury.
But women’s vulnerabilities extend beyond physical size and strength. Among women, personalities vary greatly, but on average, women tend to be more agreeable and less physically aggressive. They value politeness more, and they are also less open to new experiences, which correlates with lower sociosexuality, or the desire to participate in novel or noncommitted sexual encounters.
Thus, a woman may agree to, or at least not reject, sexual contact she does not want for fear that she will disappoint a partner or appear impolite. Saying no to an unwanted sexual advance or act seems the obvious answer, but many young women Perry interviewed for her book reported going along with unwanted sex to avoid confrontation, perceived impoliteness, or disappointing their partners.
Unfortunately, it’s not unusual to hear stories about women who consented to sex that they found uncaring, degrading, or upsetting. Women are far more likely to regret casual sex than men, and their reasons include feeling pressured, experiencing disgust, and general worries about the encounter. When our culture says good sex is the kind that is consented to, and bad sex is the kind not consented to (i.e. rape), women lack the language to describe sexual experiences that are clearly lacking in moral quality, but not forced, which means it is harder for them to insist on sex that is responsive to their wants and respectful of their human dignity.
These differences between men and women do not negate women’s agency, but they complicate the circumstances under which it is exercised. And men can also experience social pressure, emotional dependence, and the consequences of poor judgment. But we do need to take seriously the distinctive circumstances of women’s lives that put them at increased risk for regrettable and demeaning sexual encounters.
The Illusion of Empowerment
In 2004, Fox premiered “The Swan,” a reality television series in which women underwent dramatic makeovers that included extensive cosmetic and dental procedures, intense weight-loss regimens, and drastic style changes in pursuit of becoming more beautiful versions of themselves.
Autonomy and moral guidance need not be at odds with one another.
More than two decades later, the documentary “The Swan: Behind the Mirror” revisits the experience through interviews with former contestants and their loved ones. Some describe genuine benefits from their transformations, while others report a significant emotional and psychological cost.
Contemporary reality programs operate according to similar incentives.
On shows like “The Bachelor,” “Love is Blind,” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” cast members expose their intimate family and romantic relationships, as well as their personal vulnerabilities, to millions of viewers. Being involved in these shows can bring financial success, fame, and professional opportunities. But that involvement also comes with heartbreak, humiliation, and family conflict packaged into televised entertainment.
The cast members have agency. They choose to be on these series, sometimes enthusiastically, and some benefit professionally from those choices. And yet the reality television industry can profit from women’s decisions without always serving their interests.
The women of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” for example, have become highly visible figures in a reality series that has brought them fame, opportunities, and relentless public scrutiny. These women are certainly responsible for their own conduct, but they are responding to incentives, egged on by the entertainment industry and calls of “You go girl!” from their fans. And their participation in these shows is voluntary—they can walk away from the show at any time (several have).
But voluntary participation is not sufficient to establish whether such participation is healthy, ethical, or empowering. A cultural framework is deeply broken when any voluntary act is celebrated as liberation, especially when that act violates traditional moral or ethical norms and even when the people making those choices will almost certainly suffer. Surely we can do better than this.
Choice Is Not The Same As Agency
Contemporary discussion about choice so often treats agency as the absence of restraint. We see this play out repeatedly in criticisms of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Is tithing really optional if you cannot attend the temple unless you pay it? How can the Church oppose liberal abortion laws when agency is such an important teaching in the gospel?
But within Latter-day Saint doctrine, there is a distinction between choosing and choosing well. Agency is foundational to our understanding of life and the plan of salvation. We believe that we are all God’s children, all moral agents capable of choosing good, and all accountable for those choices. But this agency does not mean all choices are equally good or that respecting someone’s freedom means moral neutrality about their choices.
Men can be honorable even when women have made imprudent decisions.
In 2 Nephi 2:27, Lehi explains that we are free to choose liberty and eternal life or captivity and death. These alternatives are obviously not equivalent. In his October 2025 general conference address, “They Are Their Own Judges,” Elder David A. Bednar suggested that the word moral in moral agency is “not merely an adjective but perhaps also a divine directive about how our agency should be used.”
The entire plan of salvation is predicated on God’s children learning how to use their freedom wisely. God’s commandments do not exist to get in the way of our independence. They are guidance for how to use our divinely given agency in a way that leads to happiness, fulfillment, and communion with Him.
In fact, obeying God’s law tends to lead us away from the kinds of decisions that diminish our freedom, including addiction, destructive relationships, financial irresponsibility, and other forms of self-defeating behavior. Avoiding these choices expands our future opportunities rather than diminishing them.
The same principle applies to intimate relationships. Sometimes exercising agency requires restraint. Sometimes it means refusing something attractive in the present because we know it threatens our future opportunities. Sometimes it means rejecting popular philosophies such as “sex positivity.” Sometimes it means sacrificing a potential romantic relationship with someone who wishes to push a sexual encounter beyond what is good or healthy. And sometimes it requires accepting moral guidance from those with more wisdom, even when that guidance is limiting to our social and romantic opportunities.
This does not diminish our moral agency; rather, it acknowledges that moral agency is a gift that we must learn to use well.
Freedom Requires Moral Foundation
In a recent essay responding to the Cornell controversy, Catholic legal scholar Erika Bachiochi argues for better moral formation among young men. She draws on the history of the Virginia Military Institute and its traditional gentleman’s code to make the case that moral principles must be cultivated deliberately, through education and example. Simply having a code of conduct or a list of rules or commandments is not enough.
If we are concerned about the sexual abuse and exploitation of women, we cannot simply teach them to avoid what is illegal. We should cultivate men who genuinely respect women, who value exercising self-restraint, and who recognize that they have an obligation to behave in a way that is good for others.
The freedom to choose is a gift.
I want my own daughters to be confident and independent, but I also want them to have courage and self-respect and to exercise prudence and sound judgment. I want them to know how to recognize unhealthy relationships, resist social pressure, and understand that there are consequences to their decisions. I want this for all young women.
This is not the same as expecting women to prevent men from mistreating them. The accountability for mistreatment lies completely on the one doing it. Men can be honorable even when women have made imprudent decisions.
But likewise, women’s particular vulnerabilities, as well as their value as human beings and daughters of God, should drive us to help make wise and protective decisions. And I am not just talking about within religious communities. Moral lines may differ between people of different faiths and secular people, but we can and should agree that having some lines is an objective good.
In so many other consequential areas of life, such as education and professional development, we encourage young people to think carefully and consider the risks and implications of their decisions. This counsel is not an affront to their autonomy. Surely romantic and sexual relationships deserve this same care.
It’s true that guidance is sometimes delivered poorly. But the potential to give guidance badly is not a sufficient reason not to give it at all. Abandoning moral instruction does not leave women free from influence. Rather, the guidance will come from other sources: peers, social media, pornography, entertainment, and commercial industries. Rarely do these sources have the best interests of young women at heart. The question is not whether young women will be influenced, but by whom, to what end, and for whose benefit.
Taking Women’s Agency Seriously
So do women have agency? Of course we do. And because we do, we should take very seriously our responsibility and capacity to use it well and our obligation to guide young women to do the same.
Women deserve protection from coercion and exploitation, and they should be able to make meaningful decisions about their lives. But they also deserve a culture that is willing to tell them the truth about the risks associated with some decisions, understands the vulnerabilities women experience, and helps them develop the wisdom to choose flourishing lives.
We don’t need to treat women as helpless victims or pretend every choice is equally liberating. Autonomy and moral guidance need not be at odds with one another.
A culture that values women’s agency should not just be interested in whether a woman can make a particular choice, but also in whether she has the knowledge and judgment to recognize what choices have the potential to actually be good for her. The freedom to choose is a gift, and helping women learn to choose well is one of the most important ways to honor that gift.
