The Same Guys, Every Party

Julian’s birthday party was good, mostly—then it wasn’t. Private party, vodka in generous supply, and at a certain point a few people weren’t entirely upright anymore. And then, as reliably as anything in the known universe, there were those guys. The ones who seem to have been waiting for exactly this moment. The drunk girl slumped in a corner represents not someone who needs water and a cab home, but a window—an opportunity that ordinary human interaction keeps refusing to give them.

My best friend and I argued about it the next day. Not the specific guys, but the principle. Her position: it wouldn’t bother certain people to be touched without knowing it, if they’d normally be into the person doing the touching. I said that was an insane framework. She pushed back: wouldn’t a guy feel differently if the roles were reversed and the person doing it was someone he’d find attractive? He’d probably enjoy it, right?

I said that was completely different. She said I was being inconsistent. We went in circles for a long time.

Where I ended up, and where I still am: the question isn’t whether the unconscious person might, in a different scenario, welcome it. The question is whether they’ve consented to anything at all, which they haven’t, which makes the rest of the argument irrelevant. Attraction is not consent. Hypothetical enjoyment is not consent. The guys who wait for a girl to stop being able to say no aren’t operating in some ambiguous grey area—they know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it precisely because that moment of incapacity is the only way they’ll get what they want. That’s not a grey area. That’s the whole thing.