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Notes -
If you're with a girl and she's slipping in and out of consciousness (i.e. struggling to keep her eyes open, head lolling, nodding off etc.), you shouldn't have sex with her. I don't understand why this is so complicated.
What does "too drunk to say no" mean? You've fixated on "not conscious," but that's obviously a limited and extreme subset of "too drunk." What are the other cases?
If a person isn't drunk to the point that they are drifting in and out of consciousness, but are drunk to the point that they:
a) have become profoundly physically uncoordinated ("falling-down drunk")
b) are behaving in a way consistent with them having "blacked out" (e.g. quickly forgetting things that you told them minutes ago, asking the same questions over and over again)
c) are throwing up
d) seem confused or disoriented about their location and circumstances
e) have extremely slow reaction times
f) are slurring their words to an extremely obvious extent
they're almost certainly too drunk to be able to give informed consent to sex.
(The list above is non-exhaustive.)
The person you're arguing with is probably worried about this part. Specifically that you'll keep adding items to the list until it hits "inhibitions are slightly lowered territory".
Speaking as a guy who's had sex with my fair share of women who were pleasantly tipsy at the time, I can assure you and Tyre_Inflator that I'm not advocating for a situation in which any man who's had sex with a woman who's had so much as a mouthful of sherry can be hauled off to jail at the drop of a hat. But I think it's intuitively obvious to essentially any sensible person when a woman is too drunk to give meaningful consent. If a woman is so drunk you have to practically carry her home from the bar, you know damn well you shouldn't be having sex with her - don't play dumb.
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