For the purposes of rape/sexual assault, the preferred approach for pursuing modernisation in Australia has been to legislate a positive definition of consent as ‘free and voluntary agreement’. The absence of consent in this form has become the primary touchstone for the crime. And yet, despite multiple waves of progressive legislative reform, too few victims of sexual violence find justice in the criminal courts. This article questions whether prevailing statutory models of consent definition may be more problem than solution. Drawing on the work of Pateman and Gatens in particular, I argue that while the repetition of the words ‘free and voluntary agreement’ make it a familiar and reassuring formula, its meaning is neither self-evident nor self-executing. It is possible that the definition opens a ‘gap’ between what is intended by the phrase and how it is filled in practice by the ‘common knowledges’ (Mariana Valverde, Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2003)) of rape myths. Myth as ‘misunderstanding’ may be capable of legislative correction, but legislative correction of myth, understood as an excess of signification (Roland Barthes, Mythologies trans A Lavers (Jonathan Cape, 1972)), is elusive. The article also suggests that the practice of legislative correction may be flawed to the extent that it relies on naming and marking the limit of what consent is not – via categories of (exceptional) circumstance and vulnerability.

出于强奸/性侵犯的目的，在澳大利亚追求现代化的首选方法是立法将同意的积极定义定义为“自由和自愿协议”。缺席_这种形式的同意已成为犯罪的主要试金石。然而，尽管进行了多次渐进式立法改革，性暴力受害者在刑事法庭上寻求正义的却寥寥无几。本文质疑现行的同意定义法定模式是否可能比解决方案更成问题。尤其借鉴佩特曼和盖滕斯的著作，我认为，虽然“自由和自愿协议”一词的重复使其成为一个熟悉且令人放心的公式，但其含义既不言自明，也不自动执行。该定义可能会在该短语的意图与“共同知识”如何在实践中填补它之间打开一个“差距”（Mariana Valverde，Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge（普林斯顿大学出版社，2003 年））强奸神话。作为“误解”的神话可能能够进行立法修正，但神话的立法修正，被理解为过度的意义（Roland Barthes，Mythologies trans A Lavers（Jonathan Cape，1972）），是难以捉摸的。该文章还表明，立法更正的做法可能存在缺陷，因为它依赖于命名和标记同意不是什么的限制——通过（例外）情况和脆弱性的类别。