Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne says
Early on in the conference, I was at a bar with friends. One lovely man was flirting quite nicely with one particularly lovely woman. They are friends back home, and here they were away from the daily constraints. When the man went to get another drink, the woman confided in me that he had been interested in her for sometime, and that she wasn’t very sure about it. The evening ended and everyone went home alone, more or less drunk.
I’m not going to wreck the story, which is cool and turns out not the way you might expect. Even if you think you know what to expect.
But I am comfortable quoting from her analysis
Alcohol clouds judgment. Many bad sexual choices come about when the participants are intoxicated. The people in my story are in their mid-twenties and thirties. They have experience drinking. And yet they still get high holy drunk and do things they wouldn’t do sober…
...
I am frustrated by the cavalier attitude of people around sex and alcohol. So go talk with your friends, your family, your children about how alcohol has the capacity to change how you think about things and how you act. Talk about ways to drink responsibly – not too much and preferably with a sober friend along to watch your back and do the driving.
It’s a seriously cool story with a couple of morals. Including, importantly, an interesting illumination of men’s response to conflicting social pressures when intoxicated.
But the main thing is that people’s responsibilities (not just men’s, not just women’s) are altered by alcohol in ways that, as in Rayne’s story… usually are agreeable and inconsequential. But also as Rayne points out, who we all are while drinking can be markedly different from who we are when we’re sober.
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Another point about the man’s behavior, by the way, is that it illustrates just how close our drunken and sober sensibilities can be. And same, though it’s a bit less clear, with the woman’s. Resulting in strong evidence that we really don’t need to get roasted before doing the sensible… as opposed to proper thing to do.
Submitted by 2788 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-03-22 09:01.
so very true. interesting post.
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loves autumn
Submitted by 2788 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-03-22 15:47.
You hit the nail on the head with this one. It is very weird how there is not a lot of difference between the sober and sloshed mind.
Submitted by 2788 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-03-22 16:45.
I always understood that the thinking on this type of thing was that drinking alcohol lowers your inhibitions - hence the making poor decisions when drinking (like sleeping with a co-worker when you really oughtn't). Maybe the difference you mention between men and women in their sloshed and sober sensibilities comes from women inhibiting their sober selves much more (I wrote a post not too long ago about how women are forced to be the gate-keepers of sex which contributes to making some uptight about it) - thus there is a bigger difference when drinking takes away some of their inhibitions.
Submitted by 2788 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-03-22 18:24.
I think it's partly that, Shay, and partly that some inhibitions are more fundamental to society than others. A friend of mine works in a hospital psych ward, and there's a fellow there with no impulse control. He does things like try to bite people.
How many times have you thought about jumping off Niagara Falls, pulling the fire alarm, throwing something at the idiot at the next desk?
When I get drunk, the first inhibitions to go are the ones that keep me from freaking out. If I'm not in the right setting, I get anxious and overvigilant. The socialization that says, "Hide it and be polite," disappears.
That's what I think happened with the guy being willing to go with her when he understands, sober, that it is not okay.