Paper short abstract:

The concept of sexual consent assumes a rational, autonomous human subject, an ideal complicated in encounters involving alcohol or other drugs. Drawing on posthumanist insights, we propose a more-than-human notion of consent that includes relations of care beyond the individual.

Paper long abstract:

The rise of the #MeToo movement has prompted a public reckoning with sexual consent, definitions of which are contested even among legal experts. At stake in these debates are foundational conceptions of agency and volition, with free will often treated as synonymous with consent. While such accounts largely ignore the role of more-than-human actors in shaping consent, alcohol and other drugs are actors that are routinely over-emphasised. For example, studies suggest consumption is a risk factor for sexual and gender-based violence by increasing men’s sexual aggression and reducing women’s inhibition, thereby increasing their susceptibility to violence. In these accounts, alcohol and other drugs are mobilised as straightforwardly impairing capacity to give and negotiate consent. Drawing on feminist and posthumanist scholarship on intoxication and care, this paper analyses the complexities of sexual consent in the context of alcohol and other drug consumption. We explore how contemporary consent discourses that reify the human subject as the single source of agency limit our understanding of sexual encounters involving alcohol or other drugs. We propose a posthumanist rethinking of consent as distributed and encompassing human and more-than-human actors including drugs, and the dynamics of pleasure, risk and intoxication. Such a rethinking shifts the focus of consent and harm reduction opportunities toward the gendered relations of care and control enfolded in contemporary sexual cultures, inviting attention to the agency of alcohol and other drugs, not simply as impediments to consent, but as transforming sexual relations and reshaping consent in diverse ways.