Intoxication, Consent and Sexual Violence: An Analysis of Epistemic Uncertainty in Expert Perspectives

Over the past decade, sexual consent has become a site of increasing public attention due to the advocacy of victim-survivors of sexual violence, the rise of the #MeToo movement and the move to models of affirmative consent. Complicating this picture are the challenges of negotiating consent while intoxicated, given that alcohol and other drugs are commonly thought to impair the capacity to consent. In this article, we draw on interviews with 15 experts in Australia to explore how intoxication figures in understandings of consent and the issues at stake in current figurations of intoxicated sex. Combining John Law's concept of collateral realities with work on the politics of knowledge, we identify the collateral realities generated through models of consent deployed across three interrelated settings in which consent is central: sexual violence prevention, the law and sex education. First, we trace how experts are grappling with epistemic uncertainty about the role of intoxication in sexual consent and violence prevention, arguing that this uncertainty produces multiple accounts of alcohol's effects in sexual encounters, with implications for how the causality of sexual violence is presented. Second, we analyse how models of consent mobilised in sex education and legal contexts relate to lived experiences of sex. As our participants suggest, dominant consent frameworks rely on a range of ideal conditions and hypothetical scenarios that falter in the face of diverse sexual conditions. We argue that existing frameworks enact distinct, arguably incommensurate realities of consent, which sexual subjects are left to reconcile. We conclude with suggestions for alternative approaches, grounded in the concept of ‘safe uncertainty’ that better address the complexities of sex and expand the epistemic agency of sexual subjects, thus widening the range of sexual practices and realities made possible under the rubric of consent.