Rethinking intoxicated sexual encounters

Abstract

Social research on alcohol and sexual encounters has tended to be siloed into several different research endeavors, each addressing separate aspects of wanted and unwanted sexual encounters. While sociologists have focused on the patterns of social interaction, status competition, and emotional hierarchies of sexual encounters, they have left the role of alcohol intoxication largely unexamined. Conversely, the two dominant approaches to sexual encounters within alcohol research, the theories of alcohol myopia and alcohol expectancy, while focusing on alcohol have tended to take little account of the socio-relational dynamics and gendered meanings involved in those encounters. Our aim in this theoretical paper is to begin to bring together some of the concepts from these different research strands in examining how the social processes of intoxication potentially impact heteronormative sexual scripts and hence notions of femininity and masculinity among cisgender, heterosexual women and men. Our discussion is focused on the concepts of ritual and scripts; power, status, and hierarchies; and socio-spatial contexts, which are central to an understanding of the gendered and embodied social practices that take place within intoxicated sexual events; the emotional nature of the socio-spatial contexts within which they occur; and the socio-structural conditions that frame these events.

Keywords:

• Intoxication
• gender
• sexual encounters
• sexual scripts
• alcohol

Introduction

Young adults experience intoxication as empowering, and as offering pleasure, freedom, and greater opportunities to flirt. For heterosexual women, the latter also raises the possibility of not adhering to traditional gender boundaries in sexually connecting with men (Griffin et al., 2013; Petersen et al., forthcoming; Simonen, 2011). However at the same time, many young women also experience intoxication as compromising sexual consent, leading to sexual dominance, aggression, and violence (Hunt et al., 2022; Petersen et al., forthcoming; Young et al., 2005). Currently, social research on alcohol and sexual encounters has tended to be siloed into several different research endeavors, each of which has addressed separate aspects of the role played by intoxication in wanted and unwanted sexual encounters. To understand and effectively address these issues, we argue that it is necessary for social research to bring together findings and concepts from these different research strands and discuss how intoxication affects intimacy, sexual relations, and sexual power dynamics.

While sociologists have examined the interaction rituals (Collins, 2004) and scripted nature of sexual encounters (Gagnon & Simon, 1973); described sexuality as liquid, plastic or commoditized (Bauman, 2003; Giddens, 1992); analyzed sex as a form of capital tied to specific sexual fields (Green, 2014); and mapped the gendered, emotional hierarchies involved in sexual interaction (Illouz, 2012; Kemper, 2011), they have tended to neglect drinking and intoxication within their accounts, despite the central role of alcohol in intimate sexual encounters (Crowe & George, 1989; George, 2019). Similarly, research on ‘hookup culture’ (Wade, 2021) and research on sexual consent has rarely explored the specificity of alcohol’s potentially varying effects. In contrast, the two dominant theoretical approaches to sexual encounters within alcohol research – alcohol myopia (Cooper, 2002; Dermen et al., 1998; Dermen & Cooper, 2000; Steele & Josephs, 1990; Steele & Southwick, 1985) and alcohol expectancy (Baer, 2002; Cooper, 1994; Goldman & Roehrich, 1991; Kuntsche et al., 2005; Leigh, 1989) theories – while focusing on alcohol have tended to highlight individual, cognitive mechanisms and take little or no account of the socio-relational dynamics involved in those encounters hence forgetting, as Collins (2004) puts it, that ‘we are constantly being socialized by our interactional experiences throughout our lives.’ (p. 44). Similarly, alcohol expectancy research has tended to view gender as a ‘fixed individual attribute’ rather than as a ‘relational dynamic’ (Moore et al., 2021, p. 869). Overall, there have been few attempts in mainstream alcohol research to understand the gendered meanings that young heterosexual adults ascribe to intoxication in the relational processes of sexual encounters, even though some research indicates that both patterns of sexual interaction and alcohol consumption among young people are changing, allowing young women greater degrees of freedom than they had before (Bailey et al., 2015; Griffin et al., 2013).

In contrast to these different research approaches, we propose that in examining intoxicated sexual encounters we begin from the premise that sexual practices occur in specific intoxicated contexts, where young adults hang out and which are subject to cultures, conventions, social norms, rituals, customs, expectations and socially shared meanings. These aspects are all critical components in understanding intoxicated sexual encounters, as well as key to a ‘third sociology’ (Sztompka, 2008) highlighting the dynamics of such encounters as social events.

While the task of joining together these disparate theoretical silos is large, our aim in this paper is specifically to examine the extent to which the social processes of intoxication potentially impact sexual scripts and hence notions of femininity and masculinity, where sexual scripts is one of the key concepts utilized in analyzing the gendered nature of sexual encounters (Hlavka, 2014; Jackson & Scott, 2010; Masters et al., 2013; Wiederman, 2015). Much of the existing literature on intoxicated sexual encounters has focused on cisgender heterosexual women and men, and for the purposes of this paper, we will therefore primarily address the experiences of this group.¹ In so doing, we wish to contribute to the growing literature on the socio-cultural and relational dimensions of intoxicated sexual encounters by developing the theoretical idea that intoxication operates to reconfigure sexual scripts.

Our discussion in the paper is focused on the critical examination of the notions of ritual and sexual scripts; the relationship between power, status, and hierarchies in intoxicated sexual encounters; and the settings or socio-spatial contexts within which intoxicated sexual encounters occur. We suggest that this conceptual discussion is central to our understanding of: (1) the gendered and embodied social practices that take place within intoxicated sexual events and the meanings embedded within them; (2) the emotional or ‘affective’ nature of specific socio-spatial or sexualized contexts within which they occur; and (3) the socio-structural conditions that frame these events. We will begin by addressing the concept of ritual, which has been utilized to capture the social-interactional dimensions of both drinking and sexual practices, and discussing its relation to the notion of sexual scripts (Gagnon & Simon, 1973).

Intoxicated sexual encounters, rituals, and scripts

One common theme in cultural research on intoxication is the role of alcohol as a ‘medium of sociability’ brought about by its capacity to symbolize a shift in the norms and meanings of interaction, release inhibitions, and relax social hierarchies and notions of privacy (Hunt & Frank, 2016). For example, intoxication brings what MacAndrew and Edgerton (1969) called a ‘time-out’ from regular social rules, norms, and routines. Thus, alcohol provides a ‘cover’ and an excuse for individual acts that others may perceive as improper or unacceptable and brings about an attitude of spontaneity and social solidarity (Gusfield, 1987). Some have interpreted this as indicating an antinomian situation or ‘anti-structure’ (Gusfield, 1987; MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969), while others prefer to see drunken behavior as a ‘new game’ with a new set of rules, norms, and routines of social interaction (Hill, 1978; Järvinen, 2003). Regardless of whether intoxicated behavior is seen as unregulated or as regulated by a different set of norms, the release from ordinary social roles and hierarchies, that it is said to produce, echoes the role ascribed to intoxication in classical social theory, where it played a part in orgiastic experiences of dance and sexual ecstasy during religious or Dionysian rites (e.g. Durkheim, 2008; Weber, 1970).

Inspired by Durkheim’s notion of the collective effervescence that results from ritual experience, Michel Maffesoli (1993, 1997) argues that alcohol is a vehicle for creating emotionally strong group attachments built on a common feeling of togetherness, not only in religious contexts but also in a variety of festive situations in contemporary life. Randall Collins (2004, 2011) takes the idea of ritual embedded in these perspectives one step further, in arguing that both sex and intoxicant use of various kinds can be understood as interaction rituals. He suggests that beliefs about sex and intoxicants originate in experience in rituals and vary across different situations: ‘what people think they believe at a given moment is dependent upon the kind of interaction ritual taking place in that situation’ (Collins, 2004, p. 44).

However, Collins (2004) has been criticized for extending the notion of ritual too far, excluding much routine interaction and interaction that fails to generate social solidarity and group symbols (Fine, 2005; Kemper, 2011), and for failing to adequately address the ‘relational aims and outcomes that engender the emotion in the first place.’ (Kemper, 2011, p. 3). An additional problem with approaches that privilege the concept of ritual is that they provide little guidance in understanding the gendered power relations and gendered patterns of sexual interaction and victimization that research consistently identifies as a common feature of drinking situations (Graham et al., 2014, 2017; Griffin et al., 2013; Hunt & Antin, 2019; Kavanaugh, 2013; Krebs et al., 2009; Wade, 2021). The notion of sexual scripts, however, incorporates both ritual and gendered power relations.

Sexual scripts

Sociologists John Gagnon and William Simon (1973) introduced the notion of ‘scripts’ as a metaphor for the social patterning of sexual desires, practices, and interaction.² According to sociological versions of sexual script theory, scripts are primarily social and dynamic, in the sense that they are molded in social interaction (Gagnon & Simon, 1973; Wiederman, 2015). Gagnon and Simon (1973) argued that sexual interaction is not radically different from other forms of interaction; it too ‘requires the organization of mutually shared conventions that allows two or more actors to participate in a complex act involving mutual dependence.’ (p. 20). These conventions include socially learned and shared verbal and nonverbal gestures, routinized language, and the sequencing of acts, as well as the different meanings people attribute to such stylized behaviors (Gagnon & Simon, 1973). In their perspective, sexual conduct is shaped by cultural scenarios, interpersonal scripts, and intrapsychic scripts. Cultural scenarios are shared collective narratives of sexual practice derived from existing social institutions, while interpersonal scripts are the sequences of acts people perform, adapt to, and change in sexual interaction with others, and intrapsychic scripts are ‘the motivational elements that produce arousal or at least a commitment to the activity’ (Gagnon & Simon, 1973, p. 20; cf. Simon & Gagnon, 1986). Importantly, because interpersonal scripts are routines (e.g. gestures, sequences of behaviour) that the individual learns over time during the course of interaction (Gagnon & Simon, 1973), an individual can only choose a script to the extent that it fits the definition of the situation, a definition that has to be improvised or adapted to the other people involved. In this sense, sexual scripts are more similar to ‘embodied schemes of action’ (Lizardo & Strand, 2010, p. 212) than to consciously held rules or norms.

Two additional points are relevant for our purposes here. First, Gagnon and Simon (1973) suggest that rituals shape sexual interaction. They argue ‘[…] for conventional actors in relatively conventional settings, the invocation of the erotic, necessary for sexual arousal, frequently requires a series of rituals of transformation before the participants or the setting license (as it were) the sexual moment.’ (Gagnon & Simon, 1973, p. 26). Second, they argue that sexual scripts are gendered (Gagnon & Simon, 1973), a finding that is repeated in contemporary research on sexual scripts (Wiederman, 2015). These gendered power differentials are particularly pronounced in sexual scripts that rely on a logic of heterosexuality and gender complementarity where men are expected to have strong ‘sex drives’ and women weaker ‘sex drives,’ while acting as gatekeepers of men’s sexual advances (Farvid et al., 2017; Farvid & Braun, 2017; Gavey, 2005; Masters et al., 2013; Simon & Gagnon, 1986). There is an emotional or affective component to these gender complementarian sexual scripts, in that expressing sexual desire means accomplishing a specific form of masculinity, while expressing affection and emotional closeness and suppressing sexual desire means accomplishing a specific form of femininity (Shields et al., 2006). Thus, the concept of sexual scripts allows for an analysis of sequences of socially patterned interaction, and, via the notion of interpersonal scripts, for an analysis of how scripts are molded in response to the actions – and potentially, the levels of intoxication – of others present in the situation. Moreover, the theory of sexual scripts acknowledges that rituals – in the form of rituals of transformation, similar to those Gusfield (1987) and others discuss – may be involved in sexual interaction. While some research suggests that emotionally intense interaction rituals of the kind Collins (2004) describes, involving intoxication and sexual encounters, do happen (Tutenges et al., 2020), it is unlikely, given the wide variety of practices and meanings of drinking and intoxication in social life (Hunt & Frank, 2016), that such interaction rituals capture all forms of intoxicated sexual interaction. Thus as a concept, ‘sexual scripts’ has the capacity to capture a broader variety of social-relational and interactional aspects of sexual encounters, and allows us to discuss both ritual forms of interaction and gendered power imbalances involved in intoxicated sexual encounters. The question then becomes, how might intoxication be related to sexual scripts?

Intoxication and the reconfiguration of sexual scripts

The concept of intoxication itself is multifaceted. It may be defined according to externally visible physiological criteria, the individual’s subjective experiences, or the set of social and cultural practices that it involves. Intoxication may also be experienced as having different stages, and as having physiological, psychological, and social effects, both pleasurable and painful (Campbell, in press; Hunt & Frank, 2016; Hunt et al., in press). Rather than providing a specific definition, instead we discuss young adults’ varying and sometimes contradictory experiences of intoxication as a socio-relational, contextual, and embodied phenomenon.

Although the effects of intoxication on sexual scripts has not received a lot of attention in research, some empirical studies suggest that there is an interconnection. For example, in a study of alcohol and sexual victimization among young heterosexual adults, Cowley (2014) suggests that intoxication may exacerbate sexual scripts that rely on gender complementarity, with heterosexual men becoming more sexually aggressive and heterosexual women more sexually passive or emotional than they would be when sober. These cases we suggest may be described as an alteration of sexual scripts, where intoxication means that sexual scripts become aligned with hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity, respectively. Research also shows that, while young heterosexual women’s increasing involvement in hooking-up and casual sex and the existence of gender egalitarian scripts that are focused on female initiative and mutual pleasure can be seen as part of a more active sexual agency (Cense, 2019; Gill, 2007; Levy, 2005; Masters et al., 2013; Paul & Hayes, 2002), women are also more exposed to sexual violence and experience greater difficulties in managing the reputational work ‘hookup culture’ entails (Cense, 2019; Farvid et al., 2017; Wade, 2021). Therefore, apart from exacerbating sexual scripts that rely on gender complementarity (Cowley, 2014), intoxication may also be expected to allow, for example, heterosexual women the chance to deliberately lose control, offering relief from the constant watchfulness in their gatekeeping role. Findings from a Danish study supports this alternative, in suggesting that women drink in order to feel free, enjoy the moment, and be able to follow their own desires in intimate, sexual relationships, regardless of whether they are already involved in an existing relationship or new to their partner (Petersen et al., forthcoming). In these cases, we might speak of a reconfiguration of gender complementarian, heteronormative sexual scripts where women feel able to be silly and carefree but also more assertive, aggressive, and controlling of the sexual situation (Petersen et al., forthcoming). Nevertheless, because both realities may operate at the same time, a deliberate loss of control may still be judged on the basis of gender complementarian sexual scripts. This can produce ‘schizoid subjectivities’ (Renold & Ringrose, 2011), forcing young women to occupy an ‘impossible space’ of double standards (Griffin et al., 2013).

One consequence of adopting this perspective in studying intoxicated sexual encounters is that we need to ask to what extent does intoxication change the definition of the situation, and are the actors knowledgeable about the ways in which intoxication is changing or potentially changing those definitions? The notions of ‘time-out’ (MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969) or a ‘new game’ (Hill, 1978; Järvinen, 2003) suggest that intoxication does involve a change in the definition of the situation, because it potentially involves a different set of social roles or identities and behavioral possibilities (cf. Altheide, 2000) than sober situations do. An example of this in our research is that some young adults drink to intoxication to be able to do things they cannot do when sober. The collective element in the definition of the situation is also visible in that they are also sometimes surprised at how situations change without their intention (Hunt et al., 2022; Petersen et al., forthcoming).

However, in contrast to alcohol expectancy research, which tends to assume that intoxication is a clearly definable phenomenon, our research suggests that young adults do not necessarily experience intoxication as a delimited state of mind or set of behaviors that is clearly discernible and understood by all parties involved in interaction (Hunt et al., 2022; Petersen et al., forthcoming). For young adults, it may be difficult to tell both what constitutes intoxication and how drunk another person actually is, difficulties that are particularly important in intoxicated sexual encounters. To manage these situations, some young adults tend to aim for ‘intoxicated parity,’ a state where potential sex partners should be equally intoxicated. While intoxicated parity may imply that the partners are on an equal footing in the situation and that they share an equal responsibility in deciding what happens sexually, in practice their interaction may be structured by gendered sexual scripts (Hunt et al., 2022).

To explore the ways intoxication may influence sexual scripts, we argue that intoxicated sexual encounters should be ‘opened up’ for analysis by examining the meanings and practices of alcohol use and intoxication as they intersect with entrenched sexual scripts, evolving cultures of sexuality, and gendered power dynamics. Next, we address the issue of power in more detail.

Power, status, and hierarchies in intoxicated sexual encounters

While gendered sexual scripts have been identified as playing a role in sexual assault (Hirsch et al., 2019; Muehlenhard et al., 2017), the relation between sexual scripts, status, and power, and the role of intoxication in these processes, are less well understood. For example, how are we to understand the power of intoxicated aggression and the relative lack of power resulting from reputational costs? In this section, we argue that research on intoxicated sexual encounters needs both to distinguish status from power and specify the different forms of power that are involved in such encounters.

Turning first to status, recent social theory has highlighted its role in creating and reproducing emotional hierarchies of dignity and worth (see Turner, 2009, for a review). Some have applied such perspectives to the topic of gender and sexuality, for example in linking social status and class to discourses of shaming (Armstrong et al., 2014), while others have also discussed the role of drinking practices and drinking stories in shaping moral hierarchies of sexualized status among young heterosexual adults (Fjaer et al., 2015; Pedersen et al., 2017). On a general level, sociologist Eva Illouz (2012) argues that status plays an increasingly important role in broader patterns of contemporary sexuality and intimacy. According to Illouz (2012), contemporary sexual interaction is shaped by a status-based dynamic of moral inequality derived from gendered differences in sexual and emotional choice. Sexual freedom and choice while often perceived as indicators of sexual equality are in fact dependent on competition and constant evaluation of one’s own and the other’s sexual attractiveness, and Illouz’s (2012) argument is that heterosexual women and men are not equal in this respect. The social values attached to youth, sexiness, and modes of expressing sexuality, among other factors, still speak to heterosexual women’s disadvantage, generating emotional domination. For example, while choosing the ‘wrong’ women to have sex with when one is drunk is a potential loss of reputation for men, it is not as damning as the slut label for women (Hunt et al., 2022). Thus, in discussing the emotional consequences of competition for socio-sexual status, Illouz (2012) emphasizes that given current gendered differences in sexual and emotional choice, intimate relations tend to be more ambivalent for women than for men. In her perspective, heterosexual men tend to ‘have a cumulative and emotionally detached sexuality’ and women to be ‘caught in more conflicted strategies of attachment and detachment’ (Illouz, 2012, p. 243).

In relation to sexual scripts, Illouz (2012) perspective suggests that seemingly gender-neutral cultural scripts focused on sexual freedom and choice may in fact result in gendered patterns of interaction due to lingering gendered status hierarchies. The impact of intoxication on these cultural scripts and status hierarchies appears to follow a similar path. Rather than leading to the dissolution of social hierarchies, we suggest instead that as intoxication shifts the definition of the situation towards pleasure, sociability, and flirting, participants shift to a new set of interaction norms, which, when compared to norms for sober behavior, allow women to be more relaxed, act ‘silly,’ exhibit higher levels of agency, and perform gender differently. Examples suggest that women feel able to display – according to their own views – both femininity and masculinity at the same time, combining being silly and carefree with being more assertive, aggressive, and controlling of the sexual situation (Petersen et al., forthcoming) – experiences that appear similar to those of queer people (Race et al., in press). However, this does not mean that status hierarchies and power imbalances necessarily disappear or are absent from such situations. In a situational perspective, although drinkers may experience intoxication as empowering, the behaviors that it allows place them in different social positions and relationships with others (cf. Harvey, 1994). Because social interaction is founded on interdependency, these positions and relationships have to be improvised, managed, or negotiated socially. Socio-cultural research on alcohol indicates that tensions and conflicts often arise in these situations because participants question the legitimacy of others’ drunken behaviors or identity displays (e.g. Harvey, 1994; Hill, 1978; MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969). Hence, the others present may not accept the identity and social position an intoxicated person enacts in the drinking situation, and they may respond by invoking status or power (e.g. gossiping, name calling, or forcing the person to leave). Or, as another alternative, the alcohol expectancies and sexual scripts of two people may clash, leading to a situation where one attempts to persuade or force the other to adapt or comply.

In this context, distinguishing status from power becomes relevant. Status generally refers to the ‘rank or standing in amount of worth or prestige […] that attaches to a person or social position in a group.’ (Kemper, 2011, p. 13). While status implies voluntary compliance, one common definition of power is centered on the use of some form of coercion, where a person attempts to realize ‘one’s own will or gain one’s own interests against the resistance of others.’ (Kemper, 2011, p. 21). Considered from this perspective, reputational costs brought on by being labeled a slut is about the loss of status, while intoxicated aggression is about the use of coercion, and therefore power. In addition, getting someone intoxicated – a strategy that some men use to circumvent consent from women (Baer, 2002; George, 2019; Leigh, 1989) – could be seen as a form of coercion, since it renders the intoxicated person less capable to act. The extent to which women use this coercive strategy is less well explored, and the current evidence is mixed (Parent et al., 2018; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2020). Therefore, one issue to address in studying how intoxication affects sexual scripts is to examine the similarities and differences between women and men with regard to strategies for giving and getting status and managing power in intoxicated socio-sexual situations.

Emotions arise as a consequence of socio-relational action; for example, an individual may feel anger or shame when others act in ways that reduce her status (Kemper, 2011). This, in turn, raises important questions about the role of subjective experience and social relations in understanding coercion. Some of our research indicates that it is not uncommon to redefine one’s experience after an event, later realizing that one had been coerced (Jensen & Hunt, 2020; Petersen et al., forthcoming). Friends and friendship groups, the passage of time, and later experiences play an important role in determining how individual women and men view their intoxicated sexual experiences and negotiate sexual boundaries and sexual consent (Jensen & Hunt, 2020; Petersen et al., forthcoming). Potentially, an individual’s status position in the friendship group, and the drinking practices and sexual scripts that prevail within that particular group, would also influence how they negotiate sexual boundaries and manage other people’s ‘power behaviors,’ i.e. actions oriented towards asserting their will (cf. Kemper, 2011).

Finally, in discussing power in intoxicated sexual encounters, it would be illuminating to distinguish between different forms of power. As we argued earlier, people often talk about drinking and intoxication as empowering in the sense that it allows them to do things they feel they cannot do when sober, such as flirting and initiating sex. We suggest that this talk about power could be interpreted as ‘power to do something,’ that is, as referring to agency in the broader sense of action that ‘produces an effect on the world or upon other people.’ (Burkitt, 2018, p. 531). This ‘power to do’ is enabled or constrained by, and integrated in different ways with, people’s social relations to others and the socio-spatial contexts in which they interact (see, e.g. Cense, 2019, for a discussion of sexual agency). The interpersonal form of ‘power as coercion’ (Kemper, 2011) that we discussed above is another form of power, often described as ‘power over’ (Lukes, 1974). In turn, a third form of power – disciplinary power (Foucault, 1978) – would help in analyzing the ways in which subjectivity and one’s perceived ‘power to do’ are themselves shaped by prevailing discourses and normative approaches to sexual practice, gender, intoxication, and consent. In other words, via practices of self-regulation, disciplinary power is connected to, and works through, cultural sexual scripts and normative beliefs about intoxication. For example, narratives from a Danish study suggest that intoxicated young women often feel pressured to participate in and consent to sexual situations in order not to be perceived as ‘boring’ (Petersen et al., forthcoming). The notion of being ‘boring’ can be understood as an implicit normative conception which is integrated into alternative sexual scripts that highlight sexual freedom: in order to be ‘fun’ or the ‘life of the party,’ you are expected be more interested in sex and to flirt with or kiss several men while intoxicated. To live up to these expectations, some young women talk themselves into engaging in such practices, even if they are initially reluctant (Petersen et al., forthcoming; cf. Linander et al., 2021, for a similar analysis of sexual consent). Thus, while intoxication may allow heterosexual women to perform gender differently hence granting them what they perceive as a greater degree of sexual agency, they may also simultaneously be subject to disciplinary power and to other people’s attempts to exert interpersonal power (e.g. coercion) over them.

To summarize, we suggest that in studying intoxicated sexual encounters, research would benefit from identifying the different ways in which such encounters are socially stratified. This involves identifying: (1) The different types of hierarchy (status hierarchies, power hierarchies), emotions, and forms of power that are present in the situation; (2) Other people’s responses to an individual’s status or power behaviors in the situation; and (3) The social processes, emotions, and other people involved in interpreting an event as coercive, abusive or otherwise.

The theories discussed above while arguing for the importance of interlinking power, status, and emotions with social relations generally do not situate these power dynamics within specific socio-cultural contexts. We turn next to the socio-spatial dimension of interaction, another topic that has been central to socio-cultural research on intoxication in recent years. Our purpose here is to discuss how different drinking contexts, like sexual encounters themselves, may involve their own scripts and power dynamics patterning the behavior of young heterosexual men and women. Two gaps will guide our discussion in this section. First, we address a part of the literature on sexuality that has not gained much interest among scholars studying alcohol and sex, namely the theory of sexual fields (Green, 2014) and the notion of sexual geographies (Hirsch & Khan, 2021). Second, we discuss how an examination of social space can be incorporated into the approach that we are advancing in this paper, namely that intoxication operates to reconfigure sexual scripts.

Intoxicated sexualized settings

While much mainstream alcohol research does not address the socio-spatial dimensions of drinking settings (for exceptions, see Bersamin et al., 2012; Freisthler et al., 2014), socio-cultural research on intoxication suggests that a complex and multiple array of factors operate within intoxicated sexual events, including the spatial, temporal, and material arrangements of specific settings (cf. MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969). Recently, scholars have begun to conceptualize such factors, in their multiple and varied relations, as complex assemblages (Bøhling, 2015; Duff, 2007, 2011; Pedersen et al., 2017), which can ‘act as mediators capable of transforming’ (Hart & Moore, 2014, p. 408) the effects of alcohol and the actions of the intoxicated. Affective experiences and embodied perceptions contribute to and are recursively shaped by the particular drunken atmospheres that exist within specific intoxication contexts (Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2017). Similarly, research has addressed how drinking and drunkenness are connected to the ‘emotional geographies’ of place, highlighting how emotions such as resentment or anger or affective experiences such as pleasure may be engendered in part by specific urban settings and how the meanings, experiences, and impact of intoxication on drinkers is different across urban and rural areas, city streets and local, rural pubs (Jayne et al., 2008; 2010). These perspectives suggest that in understanding intoxicated sexual encounters, we need to examine the ways in which gendered power differentials and sexual scripts play out in various contexts, a topic currently neglected in sexual script theory.

Theories of space, place, and assemblages have been utilized in analyzing sexuality as well (e.g. Bell & Valentine, 1995; Fox & Alldred, 2013; Hubbard, 2018), but due to their ontologies, these approaches are not primarily focused on the social interrelations between people. This subtle difference leaves us with a relative lack of concepts for studying ‘localized’ human interaction. The wider literature on sexuality includes social theorists, who do prioritize social relations, but nevertheless talk about ‘sexual fields’ (Green, 2014) and ‘sexual geographies’ (Hirsch et al., 2019; Hirsch & Khan, 2021) as ways of incorporating notions of place within their analyses. Their perspectives allow us to conceptualize if and how space is indicative of status, dominance, and power, and how such socio-spatial patterns affect actors’ definitions of the situation. Moreover, while being in a specific place at a specific time may instill specific emotions – for example, feeling afraid when one is walking home alone from the pub along a dark path (cf. England & Simon, 2010) – these perspectives also allow us to acknowledge that ‘emotions emerge, are experienced and have meaning in the context of our social relations’ (Bericat, 2016, p. 495).

Turning first to the theory of sexual fields, Green (2014) argues that a sexual field emerges when several people meet and locate one another in a hierarchical ranking based on attractiveness. This ranking arises relationally, is specific to the field, and is visible in patterns of interaction as well as the spatial design of a venue (e.g. décor and layout), spatial segregation (e.g. VIP-rooms), and the social reputation of a particular place (Green, 2014). For example, the spatial segregation of visitors into VIP-rooms and regular rooms in many clubs is a sign of a specific status-hierarchy, and in itself signifies a certain definition of the situation. According to this theory, the very fact that several people are gathered gives rise to social-ecological effects, such as the generation of specific structures of desire – ‘site-specific, transpersonal valuations of attractiveness’ (Green, 2014, p. 14). Via field-specific sexual socialization, people learn the sexual practices that dominate the field and eventually internalize its structures of desire. This theory raises the question of how intoxication affects context-specific sexual socialization and hierarchies of attractiveness. For example, does intoxication transform interpersonal sexual scripts in some contexts, but less so in others? Is the transformational effect of intoxication particularly pronounced in the growing number of commercial bars and clubs which research has identified as intensely ‘sexualized territories’ (Grazian, 2007; Hunt et al., 2010; Kavanaugh, 2013)? Given the difficulties involved in determining another person’s level of intoxication, what role does intoxication play in context-specific processes of sexual socialization and hierarchies of attractiveness? Studying the similarities and differences between contexts will be illuminating of the ways in which intoxication operates to reconfigure sexual scripts and has the potential to highlight how spatial design and segregation intersect with intoxication in affecting the definition of the situation.

Regardless of these advantages, and while it attempts to address context-specific forms of sexual power, the theory of sexual fields is less well-suited for understanding local, socio-spatial hierarchies based on other forms of dominance, such as gender inequality and heteronormativity. These are more clearly integrated into the concept of ‘sexual geographies,’ as developed by Hirsch and Khan (2021). Sexual geographies ‘encompass the spatial contexts through which people move, and the peer networks that can regulate access to those spaces’ (Hirsch & Khan, 2021, p. xix). Access to and control of space and the extent to which different social groups feel at ease in a particular setting is central to the spatial dimension of institutional power and therefore also to social inequalities (Hirsch & Khan, 2021, p. xx). The organizational arrangements of the drinking context (Hirsch & Khan, 2021) or the alcohol policies operative within these spaces (Graham et al., 2014) can operate as a ‘social power’ influencing the sexual and intoxicated behaviors that take place there (Johnston & Longhurst, 2010). For example, college campuses and specifically college fraternity parties, have been viewed as social settings within which rigidly defined gender arrangements are present, where heavy alcohol consumption occurs, where sexual encounters take place, and where the risk of sexual assault is high (Armstrong et al., 2006; Benson et al., 2007; Kuperberg & Padgett, 2017; Sanday, 2007; Sweeney, 2011). Because alcohol tends to be allowed in college fraternity but not sorority parties, some intoxicated sexual encounters, hookups, and cases of sexual assault tend more often to take place in the male-controlled spaces of fraternities. The lack of neutral spaces in such settings may limit or present obstacles to women’s agency, for example in the sense of feeling forced to rest in a male student’s room if one has had too much to drink. Combined with the gendered expectations of heteronormative sexual scripts, which imply that a female student who enters a male student’s room at a particular time of night in the context of a party would be taken to have consented to sex, the context and the gendered alcohol policies that operate within it may facilitate sexual assault (Hirsch et al., 2019). Researchers have also noted the tactics used by the drinks industry to re-design drinking places and alcoholic drinks to attract younger customers and especially young women, tactics which have had the effect of modifying the gender ratio found within these public drinking places (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003; Measham, 2003; Measham & Moore, 2009; Szmigin et al., 2008). Within these contexts of drinking, dancing, and socializing (Fox & Sobol, 2000), displays of hypermasculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), sexual assertiveness and aggression are also common and even normative (Krebs et al., 2009; Mellgren et al., 2018). In these ‘hot spots,’ young men are encouraged to transgress certain boundaries of conduct and engage in sexual harassment and provocation, knowing that few consequences will occur (Weiss & Dilks, 2016). Apart from the fact that some settings appear to idealize or at least accept as unavoidable displays of hypermasculinity, some research also suggests that a conflict between the notion of masculine autonomy and an ethics of care for others may help explain why men are less inclined than women to intervene in sexual assault situations in drinking contexts (Duncan et al., 2022). Given these socio-spatial patterns, and given the different meanings of drinking and intoxication in women-only groups, as compared to mixed gender groups (Hunt et al., 2000), we suggest that in studying how intoxication operates to reconfigure sexual scripts in different contexts, research should take into account both the gender composition (male-dominated, female-dominated, mixed gender) of the people present and the gender typing of the setting and activities taking place there (cf. Britton, 2000). To summarize, when studying the drinking settings where intoxicated sexual encounters take place, we suggest that research should consider insights from both the theory of sexual fields and research on sexual geographies. The relevant socio-relational aspects may be divided into the following types:

1. Structure of the setting: (a) Organizational arrangements (e.g. the physical layout of a nightclub, local alcohol policies, and guest policies such as ‘safe spaces,’ etc.); (b) Access to and control of space; (c) Patterns of spatial segregation of social groups and activities; d) Gender composition of the setting.

2. Emotions and affect generated in the setting: (a) Belonging (feeling ‘at ease’ or ‘out of place’); (b) Local or field-specific structures of desire.

3. Status and power hierarchies of the setting: (a) Local or field-specific status hierarchies of desirability/’sexiness’; (b) Gender typing of the setting (e.g. the masculinities and femininities that are encouraged).³

Conclusions

In this paper, we have suggested that intoxication within heteronormative sexual encounters operates to alter or reconfigure sexual scripts. Furthermore, promoting this suggestion and using concepts and approaches from the broader discussion of social theory on sexuality and intimacy in this paper, helps us to begin to disentangle young adults’ experiences of intoxicated sexual encounters which on the one hand can offer pleasure and freedom from traditional gendered expectations of sexual behavior and on the other hand are experienced as gendered, confusing, and potentially dangerous and violent.

Our argument is based on existing perspectives of intoxication as involving a ‘new game’ (Harvey, 1994; Hill, 1978; Järvinen, 2003), indicating that intoxication involves a change in the definition of the situation. Cues to the definition of the situation are not only temporal and relational, but also socio-spatial, i.e. they are also manifest in (physical) space as ‘traces’ of social relations, for example, in forms of social segregation, in access to and control of space, in the organizational arrangements of specific contexts, and in the gender composition and gender typing of specific contexts (Britton, 2000; Green, 2014; Hirsch et al., 2019; Hirsch & Khan, 2021). Thus, intoxication places the drinker in a different set of socio-sexual positions and relations with the others present, and allows a different set of behavioral possibilities, such as different ways of flirting, making contact, and initiating sex. Current empirical evidence suggests that these positions, relations, and possibilities are gendered in several ways and that others’ responses to the intoxicated person’s action may be gendered as well (Cowley, 2014; Graham et al., 2017; Griffin et al., 2013; Hunt et al., 2022; Jensen & Hunt, 2020; Wade, 2021). Thus, while intoxication may allow some flexibility in gender performance, heterosexual gender relations – which depend on others’ responses to a person’s gender performance – may be less flexible. Hence, we have emphasized the importance of inserting a gendered power structure approach in attempting to understand why it is that although many wish to become intoxicated in order to engage sexually, the results of that engagement while intoxicated may have very different consequences and may be viewed in hindsight in very different ways.

Moreover, we have suggested that the different social relations that result from intoxication produce specific emotions related to: (i) the status claims and power positions (Illouz, 2012; Kemper, 2011) that the individual implicitly or explicitly enacts in these different social positions, and, (ii) to others’ responses to those status claims and power positions. Thus, for example, an initial feeling of pride in being able to exercise a greater degree of agency in flirting may quickly shift into feelings of sadness or anger if one does not receive the status one hopes for, or fear, if one is subjected to coercion. In addition, gendered ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild, 1979; Jaramillo-Sierra et al., 2017) affect how women and men experience and express emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear in particular situations. The complexity and ‘layeredness’ of these processes, as well as their being part of embodied schemes of action, implies that the actors involved are not always knowledgeable about the ways in which intoxication is changing or potentially changing the definitions of the situation. We suggest that this may lead both to a sense of freedom and to confusion or insecurity in managing intoxicated sexual encounters.

Some of the general points our argument is based upon are drawn from well-established and often repeated knowledge about the cultural meanings and practices of drinking. As summarized by Marshall (1983): ‘How a drinker behaves after ingesting alcohol has much to do with where he is drinking, with whom he is drinking, what the occasion is that prompted the drinking, and why he is drinking.’ (p. 192).⁴ In this paper, we have addressed the context (where), the relationships (with whom), and the motives and expectancies (why). However, mainstream alcohol research has not been as good at addressing the social processes, or social mechanisms, through which these behavioral effects occur. One of the primary social processes in need of greater attention, especially in research on intoxicated sexual encounters, is the role of gendered power structures. The theoretical outline that we have presented in this paper suggests that future research needs to consider how gendered power balances or power ratios are configured in different contexts where drinking and sexual encounters take place. The following are some of the issues that could benefit from further exploration:

If different contexts have their own sexual scripts, what characterizes the social or socio-sexual relations in these contexts, and how are they affected by intoxication? For example, how close are social relations, and to what extent is interaction focused on attachment and a common cause, as in the notion of interaction ritual advanced by Collins (2004), or on more impersonal transactions and rational calculation, as implied in the notion of sexual freedom and choice (cf. Illouz, 2012)? What is the typical gender composition, gender typing and gendered organizational arrangements of these places and to what extent are they characterized by different sets of gendered ‘feeling rules’. (Hochschild, 1979)?

The dynamic nature of sexual scripts (Gagnon & Simon, 1973; Masters et al., 2013; Simon & Gagnon, 1986), the shifting meanings of intoxication across generations (Hunt et al., 2010; Hunt & Frank, 2016), and the shifting meanings of intoxicated sex as one transitions from youth to young adulthood (Petersen et al., forthcoming), also suggests that comparisons between age groups or a life course perspective would add important knowledge about the processes behind the impact of intoxication on sexual scripts. For example, gendered power structures may operate in different ways across an individual’s life course, and the effects of intoxication on sexual encounters might vary accordingly.

Finally, some existing research on sexual scripts among sexual and gender minorities suggests that their scripts may be less unequal because they are less traditionally gender-coded (Gabb, 2022; Lamont, 2017), even though queer drinking spaces may be regulated by alternative norms of acceptability (Hunt et al., 2019). Moreover, as Race et al. (in press) note, queer practices of intoxication may be understood as practical strategies for (playfully) managing social norms of gender and sexuality (see also Pienaar et al., 2020). Exploring the roles that alcohol and intoxication play in influencing sexual scripts among these groups would therefore have the potential to be illuminating of the complexities of gender in intoxicated sexual encounters.

In conclusion, the theoretical outline that we have presented allows for an understanding of intoxicated sexual encounters as dynamic social events that are both ‘special’ – in that they involve drinking and sexual activities – and similar to other everyday events, in that they include relationships with others, happen in specific local contexts, involve repeated and habitual ‘scripted’ action, engage the human body, and have a temporal duration (cf. Sztompka, 2008). Through research based on theories of alcohol myopia and alcohol expectancy, we currently know more about alcohol’s role in the cognitive processes involved in sexual motivation than about the social relations and contexts within which intoxicated sexual encounters actually occur. The approach we present here adds a socio-relational perspective to the smaller but growing body of research on socio-cultural aspects of intoxication and sexual encounters in extending beyond the individual and examining the ways in which intoxicated sexual encounters are shaped by and performed in the local settings or interactive spaces where people meet. To divorce intoxicated sexual encounters from the socio-cultural and socio-structural environment, within which they occur, is to ignore some of their most salient elements. It also limits the extent to which we can identify social processes that can be targeted in public health prevention or intervention efforts focused on sexual violence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The present research was financially supported by Helsefonden, Brottsofferfonden.

Notes

1 However, an examination of intoxicated sexual encounters among LGBTQ is an important task not only because these groups are at an elevated risk of sexual violence victimization, but also because alcohol has long played a central role for LGBTQ for example by facilitating exploration of sexuality and gender (Hunt et al., 2019; Pienaar et al., 2020; Race et al., in press; Valentine & Skelton, 2003). Thus, research among LGBTQ has the potential to further enrich our understanding of the complexities of gender in intoxicated sexual encounters (Hunt & Antin, 2019).

2 Alcohol expectancy research sometimes references the literature on sexual scripts or incorporates the related notion of ’alcohol scripts’ (e.g., Bowleg et al., 2015; Davis et al., 2010; Tyler et al., 2017), often as shorthand for sexual scripts where alcohol plays a key role. Alcohol expectancies are then conceptualized as part of an individual’s internal, cognitive schemas of sexual behavior, and social interaction is understood as being guided by such expectancies and schemas (e.g., Bowleg et al., 2015; Davis et al., 2010).

3 In extending this approach, the typing of the setting according to hierarchies of age, social class, and sexuality will be equally important to address.

4 Except of course that in Marshall’s (1983) text the drinker is unproblematically assumed to be male.