Brendan O'Neill: In Defense of Drunk Sex

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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."