Even if he’s a college senior, and she’s a freshman in her first couple of weeks of school who’s never been drunk before? And even if he keeps pressuring her to have more and more? Because this is what happens–these guys have an organized plan to do this. And the really predatory guy doesn’t stop just because she’s so drunk she doesn’t really know what she’s doing any more. How can anybody not be offended by this? To me, it’s almost like the people who take advantage of gullible senior citizens to defraud them out of money–I suppose some people might think those old folks should be responsible for themselves.</p>
<p>The problem I have with your assumptions is that they are not based on personal knowledge. While someone might be able to claim that this happened at XYZ fraternity at Unnamed University because they were there and it happened to them, making generalized negative assumptions about what happens at fraternity parties is conjecture and offensive.</p>
<p>All three of my kids have told me that at parties at their colleges, NO ONE CARES if you choose to drink alcohol or not. None of them felt pressure to drink. If they drank (and they did), it was because they wanted to. No one forced it one them, or tricked them into it.</p>
<p>Upperclassmen in a fraternity understand completely ways to get inexperienced drinkers super-drunk. The rapey ones are acting on it. Alcohol knocks out the taste buds and drunkenness inhibits your ability to gauge alcohol content of drinks. Sugar hides the taste and caffeine delays the depressive effects.</p>
<p>Here’s a common one for the potential rapists: Drink 1 - A sombrero, lots of milk and a little Kahlua. Drink 2 - A little more more Kahlua in this one. Drink 3 - Like Drink 2 but with 1/2 shot of vodka added. Drink 4+ - escalate the vodka content. Keep her distracted and refill her half-empty glass so it is harder for her to count.</p>
<p>To head off the questions: No, I’ve never done this, but the knowledge is imbued into our “guy culture” and disseminated by such paragons as radio personality Tom Lykis. </p>
<p>My fraternity even went so far as to keep a vodka bottle filled with water to let people appear to drink and avoid the peer pressure. We were careful of our reputation as a safe place, as are many fraternities today. </p>
<p>But it happens every weekend at every college. Notice how many of the assault reports have the word “punch.” I would prefer my D learns to drink beer.</p>
<p>You have the same problem with alcoholic drinks in that you can never be sure beforehand what you are smoking. Plus, there is evidence that it may impact brain development and, in susceptible individuals (especially a subgroup of men under 23), can trigger schizophrenia. So I wouldn’t recommend it as safe to anyone college age or younger.</p>
<p>“According to Hanna, showing contempt for your classmates is bad and is determined by intent, not necessarily content.”</p>
<p>You don’t agree that deliberately trying to get people drunk so that they change their minds about sex with you is obnoxious or hurtful behavior. OK. But you’re skipping another important point I made. I think there’s a big difference between judging your classmates over individual choices that are none of your beeswax, vs. judging your classmates for how they negatively affect others in the community.</p>
<p>I think we should give people leeway for choices they make that only affect them. If my classmate wanted to play video games 10 hours a day, I’d think that was kind of a waste, but not my business. But if my classmate wanted to play the games in a shared area so loudly that others couldn’t sleep or study, that affects other people, and it’s fair game for criticism.</p>
<p>“deliberately trying to get people drunk so that they change their minds about sex with you” is boorish, but perhaps there is a line between that and “deliberately trying to get people drunk so that they pass out or are too drunk to resist having sex with you”. “Change their minds” suggests to me that it is still a matter of choice.</p>
<p>Well, @Bay, this is what gets a fraternity a reputation for being rapey. Because, in the situation in which men are using alcohol as a tool to get laid, they are playing fast and loose with the law and with crossing the line into rape. And, any man who says, well we were both drinking, but was deliberately getting the freshman drunk, is already an unethical creep, to start with. So, if my daughter goes to campus, I definitely want her to know which fraternities are rapey. I definitely want any sexual encounter she has to be one she is fully engaged in and one she does not regret. </p>
<p>Actually, very few men are rapey and very few men are actual rapists, and most young men know the difference between a drunk girl and a willing sex partner. But, if a house, or group, has a reputation for this, it is best if a girl is interested in one of those guys, as @UCBalumnus pointed out upthread, to see him somewhere else, doing something else, entirely.</p>
<p>You have some very old school ideas. I hope you realize that encouraging young men to use alcohol for sex is encouraging them to flirt with breaking the consent laws in almost every state in the country, and certainly the consent rules on almost every college campus in the US.</p>
<p>"“deliberately trying to get people drunk so that they change their minds about sex with you” is boorish, but perhaps there is a line between that and “deliberately trying to get people drunk so that they pass out or are too drunk to resist having sex with you”."</p>
<p>Well, sure. It’s the line between creepiness and rape. But in practice, to quote a popular song, it’s a blurred line. As I said upthread, it’s very hard to do the first without running some risk of the second. I don’t know any fraternities that stock breathalyzers to check BACs before having sex.</p>
<p>Oh, come on. Have you ever smoked pot with other people? There is no individual bong or joint. Everyone smokes the same thing. No fear of someone trying to slip you something they aren’t consuming themselves.</p>
<p>
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<p>Totally overblown. But in any case, the point is that it is without a doubt infinitely safer than alcohol. On many levels. People don’t get into fights, pass out, vomit, inhale vomit, or die of over-consumption. The worst thing that they are likely to get is the munchies. So if people are going to indulge in something, it is a far, far better choice.</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly with everything Hanna posted in #301. In my worldview a man, or woman, who plies someone with alcohol in hopes of changing their mind about having sex is manipulative and disrespectful. It may not be illegal, but I can’t imagine voluntarily having anything to do with people like this. It’s just downright nasty behavior.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, in the Bay universe, there are no potentially dangerous fraternity houses, women have all the power in sexual relationships, and the Deke’s rape slogans are just stupid, not rapey. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there are huge concerns about young men being at risk from predatory women, including those underage.</p>
<p>At a certain point the discussion becomes just too absurd. And at that point I always ask myself if Bay is just having fun with us?</p>
<p>" But, if a house, or group, has a reputation for this, it is best if a girl is interested in one of those guys, as @UCBalumnus pointed out upthread, to see him somewhere else, doing something else, entirely."</p>
<p>Pizzagirl said something similar upthread. If I had a daughter, I would have serious reservations about her having a relationship with someone who chose to belong to a house with a rapey reputation. This is based on the experiences of sorority sisters who dated, and then married, men from those groups, though for sure they absolutely never ever in a million years had sex in those houses. They took the men elsewhere. From the vantage of 40 years later, not a one of those men made a decent husband.</p>
<p>If all you are looking for is a quick good time - fine. I absolutely support you. But I would tell my own kid to look elsewhere. </p>
<p>adding. one thing I do agree with Bay on is that women have the power to take the “rapey” out of the rapey fraternities. I would suggest all the women looking for hook ups just look elsewhere and not encourage and support rapey behavior of fraternities.</p>
<p>Pot users…including heavy stoners are also much easier to live with/around compared with heavy drinkers for the same reasons. </p>
<p>Comparison between my college years on a campus where weed/psychedelics were the dominant vices to living not too far from a few Boston area colleges where alcohol was the vice of choice…night and day difference. </p>
<p>My husbands fraternity was one where a girl could pass out naked on the pool table and the guys would just get her a blanket and get her home safely. I had a couple of guy friends in bad houses, but they figured it out and really just moved on and moved out with the other few guys they liked. Just like a girl can end up naively in a rapey house, I think a young guy can have that happen, too. </p>
<p>I liked the young man who wrote the OP article. One of my sons was in a fraternity. Just guess what that phone call sounded like when he called to tell me he was joining… ; )</p>
<p>He had all his talking points arranged in order.</p>
<p>I’m not “encouraging” any type of behavior. My position is neutral. I do not assume that men serving alcohol at their (private) parties, which no one is forced to attend, are trying to “change” anyone’s mind about sex. My approach is to assume, absent actual, real life facts to the contrary, these adult women are attending these parties willingly, consuming alcohol voluntarily, and are freely engaging in sex as they are entitled to do, without judging them to be helpless, brainless pawns or victims of some powerful, patriarchal force. That is not what I have observed in my own experience as a Greek, nor heard about from my kids. </p>