Brendan O'Neill: In Defense of Drunk Sex

Is it acceptable to have drunk sex? Most people who aren't citizens of the Islamic State or followers of some frigid Christian group will answer with an emphatic: "Hell, yeah." Not only is it acceptable, they'll think; it's good, one of life's great pleasures, a rare moment when you can ditch the pesky rational thinking required in everyday life and instead abandon yourself—mind, soul, and genitals—to a moment of dumb, beautiful joy.

Well, enjoy it while you can, folks, warns Brendan O'Neill. Because like everything else pleasurable in the 21st century—smoking in a bar, complimenting a lady on her looks, drinking a bucket-sized Coke—drunk sex is under attack from that new caste of killjoys who wouldn't recognize fun if it offered to buy them a drink ("unwanted sexual advance"). Drunk sex is being demonized, even criminalized: turned from something that can be either wonderful or awkward into, effectively, rape. They warned us for years, "Don't drink and drive." Now it's "Don't drink and fuck."