Rethinking affirmative consent via intoxication: Towards an alternative sexual ethics

The rise of the #MeToo movement has prompted a public reckoning with sexual consent, definitions of which are contested even among legal experts. Recent years have seen a move to a model of affirmative consent, which emphasises continual, enthusiastic agreement to sex and an associated imperative to (re)negotiate consent throughout the sexual encounter. At stake in debates about affirmative consent are foundational assumptions about agency and sovereign subjecthood, with free will often treated as synonymous with consent; qualities that the consumption of alcohol and other drugs is typically understood to impair. Drawing on psychoanalytic scholar Avgi Saketopoulou’s work on sexuality and ‘limit consent’ we argue that intoxicated sex need not constitute an incontrovertible threat to consent, but may in fact offer valuable insights for sketching an alternative sexual ethics beyond verbal communication and individual control. To make this argument we begin by exploring some of the key logics of legal and affirmative models of consent, including their reliance on sobriety, before turning to scholarship on intoxicated sex to counter these normative logics. This research draws attention to the pleasurable and transformative dimensions of sex on drugs, and innovations in practices of harm reduction, world-building and care that can emerge from courting alterity and relationality. Drawing these ideas together, we conclude by considering how thinking with intoxication brings much-needed critical attention to the autonomous sexual subject at the heart of affirmative consent models.