Got into a lengthy and confusing series of discussions on Twitter today, which I would like to continue in long form here, starting with a quick thought experiment.
Scenario 5-5) Two acquaintances are at a hotel bar after a conference, socializing and drinking. They both start out moderately interested in each other sexually, and take turns buying each other drinks until they have each consumed five drinks. After getting a decent buzz going, they are more than moderately interested and retire to a hotel room and have sex. In the morning, there are no regrets.
Scenario 1-9) Two acquaintances are at a hotel bar after a conference, socializing and drinking. At the beginning of the evening, one of them is very interested in the other sexually, while the other party is not interested at all. The uninterested party (U) buys one drink for the interested party (I), toward the beginning of the evening, while the interested party buys a total of nine drinks for the uninterested party. After consuming nine drinks, U decides that perhaps they are interested enough after all, they retire to a hotel room and have sex. In the morning, U is very upset about what happened, and reports the events to conference staff.
I’m fairly confident that scenario 5-5 is more good than bad, because consensual drunk sex is fun and the parties have not used ethanol to significantly modify their original intent. I’m also relatively confident that scenario 1-9 is unethical at best. I would personally disassociate myself from anyone who uses alcohol deliberately to suppress or subvert someone else’s sober judgement in sexual matters, and moreover I’d advise against inviting them to speak at our local atheist conference.
Judging from the Twittersplaining I endured this afternoon, I’m not confident that my readers will agree with my condemnation of the interested party in scenario 1-9, and I’m happy to have that argument. It gets even worse, though, if you happen to agree with me. Astute readers will have noticed already that I’ve deliberately set up these scenarios to allow for a sliding scale from 5-5 to 1-9, where the number of drinks varies along with the initial sober assessments of whether the respective parties are initially interested in a sexual encounter. If you agree with me that 5-5 is good (or at least zero bad) while 1-9 is highly dubious, then you must also agree that we are sliding along a continuum of moral goodness-to-badness here. Moreover, this continuum does not come with obvious bright lines, because our subjective levels of cognitive impairment and sexual interest both admit of varying degrees.
I don’t have any bold conclusions here, only open questions. Did I miss something important that would make it obvious when drunk sex is good or bad? Was I wrong to omit gender along with any relevant legal framework? What else ought to be considered on such occasions? Rest assured that I’ve no personal experience in these matters, so I’m more than happen to accept your inputs on how the real world really works.
