Let’s Talk About: Queerness, Chemsex, Drugs, and Consent

Picture it: a French village in the Dordogne with barely 1,500 inhabitants. In the 2010s, rural France wasn’t exactly a gay heaven. When I turned 18, I left (dare I say, I fled) to Bordeaux – the biggest city nearby, two hours away – for university. This is when, finally, little by little, I started to come to terms with and embrace my sexuality. But there is a big misconception about being queer – even though I started to make queer friends, go out to gay bars, and sleep with other men, nothing (and no one) properly prepares you for how to navigate the queer world as a young man in his late teens and early twenties, and I’m speaking here, specifically, about the queer male world. You’re on your own, kid.

Naively, having brought myself up on gay films such as 120 BPM (Beats per Minute) or Sorry Angel (France loves to romanticise the LGBTQ+ activism of the late twentieth century with the HIV/AIDS crisis as a backdrop), I started to dabble in activism and attended a few LGBTQ+ organisations’ meetings and gatherings. But I was soon to realise that those organisations were no longer attracting much funding or attention, either from queer folk or public authorities. Thus, like many of us, I downloaded Grindr to find a sense of community. Plus, in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, it quite literally was the only resort.

As if fleeing to Bordeaux wasn’t enough, I went for a study exchange in rural Wales. I was barely 21 when I attended a chemsex session for the first time. I had no idea what it was, I’m not even sure that I had even ever heard of the term at that point. This was years ago, but I still remember the powder, the credit cards, the syringes, the toys, and the porn on the TV. I didn’t take any drugs; I was too scared. The three guys were lovely, but I eventually left after a couple of hours. Someone else was entering as I left. They checked on me on Grindr the day after, making sure that I reached home safely, as there is no public transport at six in the morning in rural Wales.

It is when I moved to Paris that it got out of hand. The feeling of finally being able to be yourself, not to be the gay but a gay, had me euphoric. It was also the time when I decided to finally deal with my poor mental health and was put on antidepressants. Night after night, I was drinking ever more, until I hit rock bottom. One night, on an empty stomach, I downed half a bottle of tequila and half a bottle of gin by the shot glass and went out to the Marais. There, in a gay bar, I had some spirit. Shortly before midnight, the last memory that I have is a man ordering a mojito for me. Next thing I know, I woke up in A&E. Someone had called an ambulance as they found me unconscious on the ground of a subway platform. I spoke to a nurse, and they let me go. I couldn’t remember what had happened. The trip back home on the subway from the hospital was painful, I was struggling to stay awake. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw this hickey on my neck, and, when I used the bathroom, my anus was sore. I took a nap and then went back to the hospital, where I was examined and put on PEP.

I’d like to tell you that things ended there, but the following weekend, I went back to the Marais, alone, again. I was going out every weekend, sometimes during the week, till the clubs would close, and, when I didn’t end up at an afterparty, I would end up at a random guy’s place, drunk and high, barely aware. I was doing this repeatedly, until I finally broke down. When, years later, I watched Baby Reindeer, naturally, Donny’s words resonated with me: “Until you’re passing out from GHB on his living-room couch, while he tears at your trousers with his disgusting hands. And you know it’s wrong, deep down, what he’s making you do. But you just keep going back.”

Sadly, if you genuinely listen to queer men, I know I’m not the only one. Those events did not happen in a chemsex context, although they could have. However, don’t get me wrong – I don’t think chemsex is the issue, and I don’t think that drugs are the issue. I think the problem is – What do we do with the legacy of years of bullying at school? What do we do with the legacy of years of self-hatred? What do we do with the legacy of years of repressing our desire? What do we make of the disappointment in our fathers’ eyes? What do we do with the loneliness? What do we do with the shame? Now that homophobia has been ruled illegal, but still pervades our societies, institutions, and systems – What do we do with the pain? Queers are made to trust institutions that failed them barely forty years prior and continue to do so; institutions which never publicly apologised. Queers are supposed to be content and happy with apparent equality freshly provided in law. What equality are we talking about? In what system?

We don’t just bring ourselves to the social order, we don’t just bring a blank physical appearance, a naked body – we bring our attire, our movements, our gestures, our postures, the language we use, tightly coloured by our lived experiences. We bring our queer beings, we bring our stories, understood within a broader history. Where does sexual consent stand in the middle of this? How do we understand consent in the context of queer male sexuality?

In England and Wales, the law defines consent as follows: “a person consents if he (sic) agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.” However, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 does not further define what the notions of choice, freedom, and capacity exactly entail. Ever since, landmark cases have attempted to clarify the legal meanings of these concepts, stating that “drunken consent is still consent” but also that “capacity to consent may evaporate well before a complainant becomes unconscious.” However, still, the point at which intoxication invalidates capacity, i.e., the point at which someone is deemed too intoxicated to be capable of consenting, is left to judges’ and juries’ interpretation on a case-by-case basis. If we take my experiences described above as an example, how do we understand choice, freedom, and capacity in that context? How do we apply those concepts to the queer male experience?

Furthermore, systemic homophobia from institutions such as the police and the criminal justice system add to the reluctance of many male victim-survivors to report sexual abuse happening within environments where drugs are involved. As chemsex predominantly involves men who have sex with men (MSM), expectations relating to gender roles play their part in the underreporting of sexual violence occurring in these settings. Because of received ideas around masculinity and queerness, the hyper-sexualisation of gay men and the trope that they are always sexually available make them ‘bad’ victims of sexual assault in the eyes of institutions (and the public), including the police.

Additionally, victim-blaming paradigms dissuade many male victim-survivors of sexual assault occurring within chemsex situations to report to authorities as they would likely be blamed (if not shamed) or discredited because of their chemsex practices. The involvement of drugs, criminalised and illegal, further deter chemsex participants to report sexual abuse for fear of judicial retaliation. Moreover, it could be argued that the stigma attached to chemsex is (partly) due to its popular accounts in the mainstream. Chemsex is far too often portrayed in the media through a prism of risk and danger, and rarely from positive perspectives and experiences, such as the sense of community it could generate, or elements of care and pleasure. This sensationalised and catastrophising depiction of the phenomenon with the masses adds to the shame chemsex participants can feel and is likely to discourage them from reporting sexual violence that happens in these contexts.

My project focuses on queer male desire and criminal law, and more specifically on sexual consent in chemsex contexts. I am conducting this study as part of my PhD in law at Northumbria University, in Newcastle upon Tyne. With my research, I aim to propose ways in which chemsex experiences as lived by MSM can inform the legal understanding of intoxication and capacity to consent in England and Wales. As such, it will paint a broader and more comprehensive (and nuanced) picture of consent as negotiated within chemsex environments by queer men. As part of this research, I am looking for participants who fit the below criteria.

If you are:

• Aged 18+ years,

• Currently living in England or Wales,

• A man who has sex with men,

• Engaging in chemsex or have been at least once within the past 12 months,

• Interested in participating in an online semi-structured interview lasting 60-90 minutes,

Please contact me at vincent.gaillard@northumbria.ac.uk to arrange an interview.

Processed data will be completely anonymised. Alongside my PhD thesis, the data collected in this study may also be published in scientific journals or presented at conferences. By telling me about your experiences of consent within chemsex contexts, you will be helping to draw a picture of consent as navigated within chemsex environments, which can then inform future legal decision-making and crucial policies on the matter.