Note: This post contains a brief discussion of sexual assault and rape culture.
I recently read Part 1 and Part 2 of (A)Sex and the City’s piece comparing the pressure to drink to the pressure to engage with sex. I have written about this before, and luvtheheaven has too, and (A)Sex and the City’s posts are a reminder that there is more to be said on the subject.
First of all, based on my interactions with Australians in Asia … I am totally unsurprised that that Australia has a major drinking culture. In my experience, Australians and Europeans are more inclined to pressure people who have chosen to abstain from alcohol into drinking than North Americans. My experience in the San Francisco Bay Area has generally been that, when I say I don’t want alcohol at some event where alcohol is offered, I only need to say it once, and it’s not a big deal (to be specific, ‘no, not now’ is generally taken well – ‘no, never’ can elicit a different reaction). In my social circles, having designated drivers is taken seriously, and considering how dependent California society is on cars, that means all social gatherings are going to have some people who aren’t drinking alcohol.
Heck, I was at a bar last night, and nobody remarked on the fact that I wasn’t drinking a single drop of alcohol.
Second, the (A)Sex and the City posts bring up the idea that people ‘should’ drink alcohol to ‘relax’ and ‘loosen up’. I’ve never become fully drunk, but I have become tipsy, and I can tell you this:
Alcohol does not ‘loosen me up’.
Alcohol does not relax me.
Alcohol does not make me more outgoing, sociable, etc. than I am when I am sober.
If anything, I become more distrustful of people when I’ve been drinking, though I don’t know whether it’s the alcohol itself, or merely the thought that people are more likely to take advantage me when I’m under the influence, a thought I would have even if I had drunk a placebo. Drinking alcohol only helps me with social bonding to the extent that I am not ‘left out’, and on the whole, I think it makes me more antisocial, not social.
As any regular reader of this blog would expect, alcohol also doesn’t make be any more sexual (in terms of behavior or feelings) than when I am sober. If anything, I think I think even less about sex when I am under the influence.
I had wanted to bring it up in my posts about Husband Factor but ultimately didn’t because those posts were already really long, so I’ll say it here: there is a common notion that alcohol will make people more sexually available. In my case, this is totally not true, at least with regards to consensual sex. Alcohol was one of the many tools used to turn the protagonist from someone who was going her own path into someone who was conforming with what her society told her she should be doing. To be more specific, alcohol was a tool to ‘loosen her up’ so that she would behave in a more sexual way AND end up in sexual situations she did not intend to be in.
When someone (always male, for some reason) is refusing to accept my ‘no’ to alcohol, I wonder if they intend to sexually assault me. There is that aspect of rape culture which equates drinking alcohol to consenting to any sexual things people might do to you while you’re under the influence.
While reading the posts by (A)Sex and the City, I thought of one possible reason why peers put so much pressure on the ‘one’ person who isn’t drinking alcohol. Alcohol makes people more vulnerable in multiple ways (for example, making them more inclined to embarrass themselves), and people are comfortable doing this because everyone is doing this. But what if not everybody is doing this? What if somebody is not taking the plunge with everyone else? They can take advantage of all of the vulnerable people without becoming vulnerable themselves.
In my social circles, people don’t expect every single person present to drink alcohol, so if they take the plunge, it’s with the understanding that some people are not going to go down with them. But perhaps, in some circumstances, there is the expectation that everyone is taking the plunge together. Hence the hostility to the ‘coward’ who doesn’t have ‘team spirit’.
In Part 2, I am going to take this discussion in a very different direction.
The Notes Which Do Not Fit 
Thanks for writing this! I’m looking forward to part 2. There is certainly a lot that can be said on this subject.
By the way, when you wrote “and luvtheheaven has to” – lol clearly a typo, you meant “too”, as “has to” conveys a bit of a different meaning.
Thanks for catching the typo.
I’ll give you a hint what Part 2 is about: there is a reason why the title of this series is titled ‘Further Thoughts on Drinking and (A)Sexuality’ and not ‘Further Thoughts on Alcohol and (A)Sexuality’.
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I noticed early on that drinking made me anxious. I also realized I had an addictive personality so the combination of the two was enough to make me swear it off. It’s interesting to read about your experiences in California. Even though Texas is dependent on cars too, I feel like everybody here at least has one drink (and then they just hang around to sober up). You’ve got me wondering if that’s because people don’t want to seem vulnerable. Especially with parties with mixed drinks, you have no idea what’s in that red cup so people could easily pretend what they have is alcoholic.
Oh, some designated drivers around here also have a drink and then sober up … however, if they take being a designated driver seriously, they have to spend most of the time not drinking any alcohol (or nursing a single drink over a very long period of time).
Statistics say that some people do drive while drunk around here, so obviously some people are breaking the law, but I think generally people around here (at least the people I associate with) appreciate that driving while drunk is not okay.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people are only pretending to drink alcohol, especially if there is some social sanction which stops them from being open about not drinking alcohol.
I don’t know if you’re correct about the vulnerability. Given the sheer amount of alcohol one has to imbibe to get to that point, especially if you’re used to smaller quantities of the stuff … you do have to be somewhat determined to get to that stage.
I read somewhere else that given that alcohol is said to loosen inhibitions, it’s the perfect excuse to become less inhibited. Inappropriate behavior of all kinds may be then blamed on the drink, not on the person. As I know from personal experience, it’s perfectly possible to respect other’s boundaries even after a bottle of wine or five cocktails – if you want to be, that is.
Yeah, after my own experiences with drinking alcohol, I know that it is possible to respect other people even under the influence, and I’ve long suspected that a lot of people use alcohol as a pretext for the inappropriate things they want to do anyways.
But even if alcohol is just being used as a pretext to do something embarrassing, it’s still more of a social shield than if someone did the same thing while sober, if only because a lot of people accept that people do embarrassing things while under the influence.
Embarrassing stuff like dancing on tables and singing off key, okay. I get that. Booze is the perfect excuse.
But racist jokes? Destroying someone elses’s property? Groping strangers? Why are we willing to cut people slack over this kind of thing once they’ve had a couple beers too many if we know they might have been drinking to have an excuse?
Oh, I agree. If alcohol is /really/ what makes one disrespect other people (such as the examples you give), then one should stop drinking alcohol.
However, in this piece, when I refer to embarrassing actions, I mean stuff like dancing on tables and singing off-key.
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“When someone (always male, for some reason) is refusing to accept my ‘no’ to alcohol, I wonder if they intend to sexually assault me. There is that aspect of rape culture which equates drinking alcohol to consenting to any sexual things people might do to you while you’re under the influence.”
It’s not that drinking alcohol equates to consent. It’s that drunk people does not resist, and maybe even consent due to impaired judgement. Drunk people are not completely aware of who they are, where they are, and what they are doing. That’s perfect for abusing. The abused will not even remember what happened, and if remember, will not remember it correctly, for example, may be unable to remember if he/she consented. So, if someone says “you consented, don’t you remember”, the abused can’t contest.
Males do offer you alcohol because it’s a script for flirting and sex, yes. Why the surprise for being always male? Most people is heterosexual. So men are going to offer drinks to females.
I was specifically talking about people REFUSING TO TO ACCEPT MY ‘NO’, not people who offer me alcohol in general. Ignoring that is going to lead to missing the point I was trying to make. Plenty of people, male and female, have offered me alcohol and accepted it when I said ‘no’.