rairii:
Chatting with a lovely woman I hooked up with two years ago. But we were both drunk. So we were both nonconsensual! Which is not what I would want to do!! Big I did but we were both so drunk so we fucked up and I should not have kissed here because it means both of us were just…. No :( I feel like shot she doesn’t deserve this from me but I literally was so drunk but its still bad and ?????
There is a certain amount of oversimplification in the “too drunk to consent” thing. Talk to, for instance, any married couple who ever drink about that. There’s a boundary here where the problem is: If you try to describe a reasonable rule that allows for people making choices about when to waive their consent, the bad guys will abuse it. If you try to make an absolutely strict rule that can’t be abuse, the good guys feel horrible about stuff that wasn’t actually bad.
Look at it this way: Apart from the formal rule of “drunk people cannot consent”, do you have any objections? Do you feel like you were taken advantage of? Because it sounds to me like you don’t actually mind the experience, it’s not giving you nightmares or anything, you just know that it violates a taboo. And it’s a goodish taboo to have, but… If you don’t feel bad except for worries about whether there was valid consent, and she doesn’t either, my advice would be to conclude that there was apparently sufficient consent that no one needs to feel super guilty about it.
The problem with really hard and fast rules is that they suck, because life is not like that. I know, people get outraged about this, but go look at some of the news coverage of the kid facing felony charges and sex offender registration for having sex with her girlfriend. One day it’s legal, because they’re both under 18, the next it’s not because one of them turned 18. Thing is, we can say “well, minors can’t consent, so obviously there’s no valid consent, so that’s rape.” And that’s legally true, but you know what? I don’t particularly think it’s morally true that all minors are totally incapable of ever validly consenting to anything sexual whatsoever. Partially because I remember being 16-17.
And similarly, there have been times when I had sex and was drunk, but where I don’t have any reason to believe that I would have been less willing to have sex had I not been drunk, or where the reasons I’d have been “less willing” weren’t really consent issues, but other issues that I don’t necessarily really care about all that much.
Dogmatism: Still not actually helpful in making good moral decisions.
If you feel bad about it, tell her why, apologize, and let her decide whether she feels wronged or thinks you’re worrying too much.