Abstract
Background: Within sexual violence prevention discourse, it is thought that the safest decisions about engaging in sex are made when sober. Drug intoxication is understood to impair an individual’s cognitive, physical, and communicative capacities, which in turn undermines the validity and/or expression of sexual consent. Because consent to sex tends to be the central concept used to delineate unacceptable from permissible sex, it typically forms the basis for interventions aimed at preventing sexual violence, for example through sexual consent workshops. In these contexts, ‘safe’ consent is characterised as a verbal, enthusiastic, and sober 'yes' to sex. Because drug intoxication is seen to compromise a person's capacity to consent, sexual violence prevention messaging tends to advise individuals to either minimise their drug use in sexual contexts or avoid it entirely. Prevention messaging thus forecloses the possibility that sex involving drugs might be valuable, pleasurable, and fulfilling for those involved.
This thesis develops an approach to thinking through the ethics of sex-on-drug experiences without the apriori assumption that the effects of drugs on cognitive, physical, and communicative capacities are inevitably impairing or compromising, and without recourse to the consent/non-consent dyad that dominates mainstream approaches. I draw on the Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian notion of the ‘event’ to explore how individuals’ capacities to act are reduced/enhanced through their connections to other human, material, imagined, and discursive elements of sex-on-drug events.
Aims/research questions: 1) How are individuals’ sex-on-drug experiences affected by the contexts in which they occur; and conversely how are sex-on-drug contexts affected by individual’s sex-on-drug experiences? And relatedly, how can this knowledge inform our approaches to sexual violence prevention/sex education? 2) What is a productive way to speculate about the ethics of sex-on-drug experiences without restrictively narrowing the spatial and temporal parameters of discussion via a focus on consent?
Methods: I recruited 25 participants via existing contacts and by calls on social media (Twitter and Facebook). Two participants were found using existing contacts, and the remaining 23 were obtained after inviting all 76 who replied to the Twitter/Facebook advertisements to submit both prospective and retrospective diary entries (handwritten or digital) about their sex-on-drugs experiences over a 3- 6-month period. These diary submissions together described over 50 sex-on-drug experiences. Diary entries ranged in length from 98 to 1911 words. All 25 participants were invited to be interviewed about their diary entries. 23 completed interviews, which ranged from 44 minutes to 158 minutes. All interviews were transcribed. Diary entries and interviews were analysed using a Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian, events-based approach. Key ethical considerations included researching the intoxicated and researching sensitive topics (including sex, drug use, and sexual violence). The research was approved by the Royal Holloway, University of London ethics committee.
Results and discussion: I present and discuss my findings over three chapters in relation to the concepts of ‘capacity’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘boundaries’ respectively given their common deployment in sexual violence prevention discourse. In the chapter on capacity, I find that legalistic notions of the concept are ill-equipped to deal with the complexity of sex-on-drug events. Moreover, drugs are afforded a great deal of power and responsibility in affecting an individual’s sexual decision- making/ability to keep themselves safe from sexual harm, which ultimately obscures other elements of the sex-on-drug event at play. I conclude that a less individualistic, more relational approach to capacity allows us to better speculate about the ethics of individuals’ sex-on-drug experiences. I apply this approach to sexual ethics throughout the remainder of the thesis. In the chapter on vulnerability, I build on a legacy of feminist scholarship that conceives of vulnerability as ambiguous/ambivalent in nature and use it as a basis to argue for our ethical responsiveness to one another. In the chapter on boundaries, I call into question presumed clear distinctions between sobriety and intoxication, ‘types’ of sex on drugs (e.g., ‘chemsex’ vs. sex on drugs more generally), and demonstrate the way that sexual boundaries emerge in and through sex-on-drug events and cannot necessarily be known in advance.
Conclusions/implications: I conclude by advocating for sexual violence prevention efforts that are underpinned by the goal of enhancing bodily capacities for action. Drawing on my own experience of working as a welfare officer for a queer techno rave in London (that I began during the final writing up stages of this thesis), I provide an example of what this can look like in practice, illustrating the connections between the key conclusions of this thesis and the ways I attempt to keep clubgoers safe from drug-related/sexual harms. I then broaden my focus to speculate around the implementation of community-led approaches to sexual violence prevention beyond nightclub settings, arguing that these must emerge from the lived experience of a diverse range of bodies and be sensitive to the ways that drugs are used by particular communities.
This thesis develops an approach to thinking through the ethics of sex-on-drug experiences without the apriori assumption that the effects of drugs on cognitive, physical, and communicative capacities are inevitably impairing or compromising, and without recourse to the consent/non-consent dyad that dominates mainstream approaches. I draw on the Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian notion of the ‘event’ to explore how individuals’ capacities to act are reduced/enhanced through their connections to other human, material, imagined, and discursive elements of sex-on-drug events.
Aims/research questions: 1) How are individuals’ sex-on-drug experiences affected by the contexts in which they occur; and conversely how are sex-on-drug contexts affected by individual’s sex-on-drug experiences? And relatedly, how can this knowledge inform our approaches to sexual violence prevention/sex education? 2) What is a productive way to speculate about the ethics of sex-on-drug experiences without restrictively narrowing the spatial and temporal parameters of discussion via a focus on consent?
Methods: I recruited 25 participants via existing contacts and by calls on social media (Twitter and Facebook). Two participants were found using existing contacts, and the remaining 23 were obtained after inviting all 76 who replied to the Twitter/Facebook advertisements to submit both prospective and retrospective diary entries (handwritten or digital) about their sex-on-drugs experiences over a 3- 6-month period. These diary submissions together described over 50 sex-on-drug experiences. Diary entries ranged in length from 98 to 1911 words. All 25 participants were invited to be interviewed about their diary entries. 23 completed interviews, which ranged from 44 minutes to 158 minutes. All interviews were transcribed. Diary entries and interviews were analysed using a Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian, events-based approach. Key ethical considerations included researching the intoxicated and researching sensitive topics (including sex, drug use, and sexual violence). The research was approved by the Royal Holloway, University of London ethics committee.
Results and discussion: I present and discuss my findings over three chapters in relation to the concepts of ‘capacity’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘boundaries’ respectively given their common deployment in sexual violence prevention discourse. In the chapter on capacity, I find that legalistic notions of the concept are ill-equipped to deal with the complexity of sex-on-drug events. Moreover, drugs are afforded a great deal of power and responsibility in affecting an individual’s sexual decision- making/ability to keep themselves safe from sexual harm, which ultimately obscures other elements of the sex-on-drug event at play. I conclude that a less individualistic, more relational approach to capacity allows us to better speculate about the ethics of individuals’ sex-on-drug experiences. I apply this approach to sexual ethics throughout the remainder of the thesis. In the chapter on vulnerability, I build on a legacy of feminist scholarship that conceives of vulnerability as ambiguous/ambivalent in nature and use it as a basis to argue for our ethical responsiveness to one another. In the chapter on boundaries, I call into question presumed clear distinctions between sobriety and intoxication, ‘types’ of sex on drugs (e.g., ‘chemsex’ vs. sex on drugs more generally), and demonstrate the way that sexual boundaries emerge in and through sex-on-drug events and cannot necessarily be known in advance.
Conclusions/implications: I conclude by advocating for sexual violence prevention efforts that are underpinned by the goal of enhancing bodily capacities for action. Drawing on my own experience of working as a welfare officer for a queer techno rave in London (that I began during the final writing up stages of this thesis), I provide an example of what this can look like in practice, illustrating the connections between the key conclusions of this thesis and the ways I attempt to keep clubgoers safe from drug-related/sexual harms. I then broaden my focus to speculate around the implementation of community-led approaches to sexual violence prevention beyond nightclub settings, arguing that these must emerge from the lived experience of a diverse range of bodies and be sensitive to the ways that drugs are used by particular communities.
| Original language | English |
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| Qualification | Ph.D. |
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| Award date | 1 May 2023 |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 1 Apr 2023 |
