A new article by DruGS Program Lead Adrian Farrugia in collaboration with Kiran Pienaar (Deakin University) and Fay Dennis (University of London) explores the relationship between gender, harm and fun in young women and gender diverse people’s experiences of alcohol and other drug consumption. Building on recent DruGS team scholarship such as David Moore’s research on gender, alcohol and violence, the article examines the gendered character of consumption harms articulated during in-depth interviews with 22 young women and gender diverse people.

Inspired by recent work on ‘narcofeminism’, the analysis enacts a ‘double vision’ that holds in focus alcohol and other drug consumption benefits and rewards, risks and harms, and examines how these young people navigate these counterposing forces in their embodied practices. Highlighting the gendered character of harms in these settings, the young people in this research characterise the conduct of men as central concerns during consumption events. For example, the article reports routine experiences of harassment and unwanted attention from men in different settings such as nightlife districts and private parties. However, their accounts also highlight the affective appeal of alcohol and other drug consumption despite these concerns. As this research explores, these young people described in depth the ways consumption practices can be implicated in (1) meaningful forms of sociality in which friendships and other social relationships are established and developed and (2) generative embodied pleasures and new agential capacities for being and doing in the world. Given the generative potential of consumption for these young people, they also mobilised strategies to promote these positive dynamics while managing the risks that men’s conduct can pose.

Importantly, unlike many public health efforts in which risks and harms are overdetermined, the young people who participated in this research often sought to generate positive affective dynamics without sacrificing the potential pleasures and other benefits offered by their alcohol and other drug consumption. Given these dynamics, the article concludes with discussion of the how responses to young people’s alcohol and other drug consumption could be productively informed by a narcofeminist politics that considers not only the reduction of harm but the desire to live well. As lead author Adrian Farrugia says,

These young people gesture towards approaches to alcohol, drugs and harm in ways that balance concerns about harm with the potential contribution of consumption to a meaningful life. This research suggests that this kind of political or ethical orientation could productively address the complexity of consumption and harm, especially as it relates to gender.