<p>"College Women: Stop Getting Drunk
Its closely associated with sexual assault. And yet were reluctant to tell women to stop doing it."
Sexual</a> assault and drinking: Teach women the connection.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t we be giving that message to the men?
They are both drinking, but who is committing the crimes?</p>
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<p><a href=“http://counseling.uoregon.edu/dnn/ParentsFamilies/PreventingViolenceonCollegeCampuses/tabid/164/Default.aspx[/url]”>http://counseling.uoregon.edu/dnn/ParentsFamilies/PreventingViolenceonCollegeCampuses/tabid/164/Default.aspx</a></p>
<p>Probably pretty typical numbers unfortunately.</p>
<p>Problem isn’t drinking; it’s serial rapists.</p>
<p>[Myths</a> That Make It Hard To Stop Campus Rape : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124272157]Myths”>Myths That Make It Hard To Stop Campus Rape : NPR)</p>
<p>If you actually read her entire article, she makes it clear that binge drinking IS a problem in MANY ways, not limited to sexual assault, and that serial rapists and predators use alcohol as a tool. She does not buy into the myths. She does not blame the victims.</p>
<p>Except she does blame the victims. No matter how many times she says she doesn’t – which is about once a paragraph – everything else she says sends the message that a woman who gets drunk is volunteering to be raped. And that’s blame-the-victim talk. Not that she justifies the rapists’ actions, not at all. But her message to her daughter and others is “You are responsible for keeping your wits about you, and if you fail in that responsibility you are likely to be victimized.” If she’s right – and maybe she is – I don’t see how anyone avoids thinking that a woman who gets raped while she is drunk bears some measure of personal responsibility for what happened to her.</p>
<p>I would rather my daughters be offended than raped or otherwise injured. Therefore, I will continue to remind them to keep their wits about them.</p>
<p>Actually, that’s great advice in all circumstances. If you have wits, keep them about you.</p>
<p>If someone walks through a known dangerous neighborhood with crime statistics in the stratosphere, at night, while inebriated, wearing a Rolex and expensive shoes and wads of cash protruding out of one’s pockets, and one is robbed, it would be completely inappropriate to blame the victim, right?</p>
<p>I don’t think we should avoid acknowledging a common sense reality - drinking to excess increases your chances of being raped - even if it does cause some pain to victims. In what other scenario do we not tell people to take reasonable precautions out of fear that, if they don’t and become the victims of a crime, they will be blame themselves? If I forget to lock the door of my apartment and get robbed, I’m no less a victim and the criminal is no less a criminal; I’m just a victim who, like everyone, behaves irresponsibly on occasion and, unfortunately, happened to run into someone who took advantage of that. And yes, I would probably feel worse about myself in that scenario than I would if someone had broken in by picking the lock or breaking a window, and yes, there is a chance that even if I had locked the door, I would have been robbed anyway, but I really don’t think anyone would either suggest that there was no correlation between the open door and the crime or become incensed if someone wrote an article reminding people to lock their doors when they leave the house. </p>
<p>Of course we need to tell men not to rape. But until that message sinks in, it is beyond irresponsible not to also teach women how to take reasonable precautions to defend themselves. Note that I say “reasonable” precautions, which do not include telling a woman that her skirt is too short (which has not been shown to increase the risk of rape anyway) or that she should never leave her house alone after dark (which may decrease your chance of being raped, but also radically interferes with your ability to live a normal life).</p>
<p>In the example in post 7, I’m sure we all agree with austin. Clearly, in that example the person has knowingly made a series of bad choices to put himself in a horrible situation. That does not give permission(or “volunteering” as JHS says) to a robber, but it does put some degree of responsibility on the drunk for his choices that led him to becoming too easy of a target. Similarly, the unlocked door example in post 8 makes sense.
Booze and sex aren’t always so clear cut though. As has been discussed on this forum before, sometimes a woman chooses to get drunk, and says yes to sex when normally she would have said no. Some call that rape. Some put the responsibility on the guy even then, believing she cannot be considered responsible for her own choices but the drunk guy with her should be responsible for his choices and her choices.
Of course, drunk and passed out is not the same as the poor judgment example I gave.</p>
<p>To have some degree of fault is not the same as committing a crime, but the 2 do not have to be mutually exclusive as proven in post 7. If I choose to put on a blindfold then cross a busy street, though as a pedestrian I may legally have the right-of-way, I may get hurt.</p>
<p>JHS if you think about it, a woman who gets drunk is putting herself at risk (of getting robbed, assaulted, whatever.) A man who gets drunk is also putting himself at risk (of getting robbed, assaulted, whatever). My oldest son did get assaulted walking from campus to his off campus apartment after drinking (probably alot of drinking). This IS an article about women so while the author does talk about males, the article is primarily about women, the headline is “teach women” etc.</p>
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<p>It is COMPLETELY inappropriate to blame the victim. There is no excuse for stealing. If I find someone’s purse, I am not justified in taking their money. If I walk by a car with the keys in the ignition, I am not justified in stealing it. But to say that leaving the keys in the ignition, frequenting lawless areas, etc makes one MORE VULNERABLE to criminals is a simple fact, it does not EXCUSE the criminal.</p>
<p>What Emily Yoffee is saying is that drinking to excess makes one vulnerable to predators. She is not excusing the predators in any way, shape, or form. She also says that young women should be aware that predators will try to use alcohol to get control of you. She is not excusing the predators or “blaming” the victims in any way, shape or form.</p>
<p>Can people not hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time? I am so unbelievably sick and tired of this.</p>
<p>^ Blame is assigned rationally to those who could have prevented the harm by avoiding known risks, particularly when that avoidance would have been at no significant cost to them or any other innocent parties. Of course a rapist is to blame for a rape as is a robber for a robbery, but the victim of robbery in my example should be blaming himself/herself, even if the law does not, because that person needs to be motivated into putting more effort into avoiding taking stupid risks.</p>
<p>What Emily Yoffe is saying should be obvious to anyone who has the remotest passing awareness of the college drinking culture. She’s not excusing rape. She’s trying to reduce its occurrence. </p>
<p>She calls out, completely correctly in my view, the weird pseudo-feminist notion out there that young women should have every right to behave as stupidly and unhealthily as young men have historically been permitted to do. How about making it embarrassing to, as she says, vomit in your hair and pee in your pants, no matter who you are. It’s not hi-larious; it’s dumb.</p>
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<p>That article has this quote:</p>
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<p>Basic safety and security precautions for anyone include avoiding getting drunk and therefore vulnerable. That is not “blaming the victim” any more than saying to lock your doors and windows to keep thieves out.</p>
<p>Yes NJSue. I agree.</p>
<p>We advise our daughters (and sons) to avoid excessive drinking because it puts them at risk for injuries (sometimes fatal), alcohol poisoning (sometimes fatal), and making decisions they may later regret (such as unplanned and probably unprotected, but consensual, sex). </p>
<p>It seems hypocritical not to also point out that intoxication also places them at higher risk of being victims of crimes.</p>
<p>Another problem with being drunk is that if one is a crime victim while drunk, one may not notice or remember enough to help to police catch the suspect or the court convict a suspect who is caught.</p>
<p>“Of course we need to tell men not to rape.”</p>
<p>We don’t need to tell serial rapists not to rape. We need to put them in prison rather than welcoming them on college campuses. Do we go around telling killers not to murder?</p>
<p>I’d be happy to turn this around and tell college men not to binge drink if they don’t want to rape or be accused of rape - those statistics work too. Or people of both genders not to binge drink if they want to be exposed to less rape.</p>
<p>It’s important not to victim-blame; it’s also important not to normalize the peculiar rape-enabling social construct that is college binge drinking.</p>
<p>I agree, Marian, but if you have the temerity to do so the ideologues will jump down your throat and claim you are victim-blaming. </p>
<p>I think some people just enjoy being outraged. Frankly, I think they would rather be outraged and subject someone else to a Stalinesque thought crime accusation than actually prevent rapes. It’s just so much fun to boast of your ideological purity all over social media. (I see a lot of this on FaceBook.)</p>
<p>I strongly doubt that binge drinking turns men into rapists. For one thing, while heavily inebriated they are less likely to be able to perform. 
Also, as Yoffee points out in her article, studies show that men are likely to use drinking as an excuse, meaning an excuse for behavior they want to engage in anyway. And lastly, as has been pointed out ad nausem, the predators usually are comparatively sober, since they are using alcohol as a tool to incapacitate their victims.</p>
<p>I used to be concerned about the so-called “accidental rapist,” but at this point I’ve become convinced that they are so rare as to be not worth worrying about.</p>
<p>And yes, mini, we need to tell men that if you rape a woman you are disgusting, everyone will despise you, and YOU WILL GO TO JAIL. (Although a strong message that unconscious or too drunk to resist does not equal consent might help deter some of the less hardened perps.)</p>