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Blaming drinking
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Women who increase their alcohol consumption during the first year of college boost their risk of falling victim to sexual abuse, according to a recent report. But is it right just to blame their drinking?
The University of Buffalo report found that 22 % of almost 900 women surveyed experienced sexual assaults during their freshman year. Of the 22 %, 13 % suffered severe physical victimization while 38 % suffered severe sexual victimization.
“People blame the alcohol instead of the man who targeted her in the first place,” Dr. Walter DeKeseredy, chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Critical Criminology, told WoW. “The men most likely to abuse college-aged women belong to certain peer groups that motivate members to target women who are drinking because it is easier to work a ‘yes’ out of them.
Because 80 to 90 percent of sexual attack victims know their assailants, assaulted women often don’t report the attacks, according to a 2005 National Institute of Justice report. Students only report five percent of sexual assaults to campus police departments. A woman who reports her assault may face doubt that an actual attack occurred, DeKeseredy said: “It is particularly common on college campuses to ask if a woman was really assaulted because she was drinking.”
“If someone breaks into your car, no one asks why you parked your car there,” DeKeseredy said. “But if a woman is assaulted, we ask what she was wearing and why she was drinking. We wage wars on drugs and crime in this country, but no one screams in outrage at violence against women.”
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End of an illusion
Consent is important and it can’t be given when a power differential exists between two people. A difference in reasoning ability due to blood alcohol levels is a power differential that makes consensual sex impossible.
I wonder if being away from home has anything to do with the increases in assaults, both sexual and physical?
Are non-college women of the same age more likely to be assaulted?
What were the assault rates from the storied 1950’s?
Is the world having birth pangs?
Big issue for me…
When I was in school, I was assaulted and conceived my son. I had had a few drinks and still, to this day, have no memory of it except what the man said happened. He has never met his son.
Praise God for His grace and mercy on my life, though! He has provided a godly man as husband and father of “our” son and we now have a baby girl. We also study/lead worldview classes at our church.
There is redemption, of course. But, this problem is epidemic. I take responsibility for my own actions and loathe the culture which says a woman can do and be anything she wants, without consequence. Thanks, Cosmopolitan magazine (and the like) for untold numbers of women whose minds you have helped sully.
Primarily, there is personal responsibility but,
I think there is some blame to be placed with the makers, distributors and servers of alcoholic drinks.
GDSUFFERN,
Thank you for living out the pro life sentiment. May God continue to use you to bless others as He has today with post 3.
Alcohol is a tool often misused. Blaming it is not terribly helpful. Pointing out the need to be aware of the dangers, though often ignored in a society that promotes it, is important. Teaching girls and boys that they are the same except on the surface is misleading, damaging, and (I believe) a sin. Predators are out there, teaching our kids to be ever watchful without living in fear is important.
Another day, another study that confuses correlation with causation. I bet the reporting of these studies can be correlated with slow news days.
If you’d like an extreme example of this mindset, look to several Islamic countries who punish the rape victim because they dishonored the family.
I’m certainly not for punishing the victim, but a certain amount of responsibility lies with the woman and her actions. If you dress seductively, go to wild parties or bars, and get drunk, then you’ve almost made yourself a target for some predator. I do not excuse these guys one iota, and they deserve whatever punishment the courts mete out, and possibly more…. But I think we do our daughters, wives, and girlfriends a disservice it we don’t advocate some kind of personal responsibility.
Most preventative teaching I’ve seen advocate staying in very public well lighted places to avoid getting mugged at night. Also it teaches you be very purposeful in your movements,carry your keys and walk directly to your car. You don’t wander around dark parking lots in dangerous neighborhoods at night looking lost if you’re smart.
If you’re playing a card game at least play the odds.
Make It Man,
I totally agree (see my story above)that women will NOT be victims of drunken sexual assaults if they are not living a lifestyle conducive to the act. I mean, it has happened, historically, and will happen in benign situations and a woman bears responsibility for being there in the first place. In this society, you will get both extremes: the pass for the guy because of the fast living girl and the full responsibility laid on the male with no question of the girl’s behavior in the first place. This is tricky. It is a crime, no doubt. And the women do feel the full measure of shame as any rape victim…but,there is the undeniable mark of conscience within us knowing full well that the role we’ve been playing is not even remotely acceptable. It isn’t fair to women to lie about this. If they go to these parties and go home with men thinking they can even just “kiss,” it is bound to happen. Many times more than once.
That was confusing. Sorry. I meant that historically, rapes have happened and in many benign situations. BUT, a women in this situation bears some responsibility for being in the risky situation in the first place. Just clarifying that second sentence.
GDSUFFERN,
Thank you for your commitment to your son. May God bless you and your family and I grieve for what happened to you.
GDSUFFERN,
I’m terribly sorry that awful thing was perpetrated against you. It seems that God has redeemed the situation though, and you have grown from it.
Would that I had the grace to do so myself.
This whole argument is like blaming a gun for aiming itself at it’s owner or a victim.
Or to bring up the Radical Islam subject again, it’s like blaming the US for the actions of these terrorists…
Any guy who takes advantage of a woman is fully to blame for it.
However, it should not be any news to women that there are guys out there who will indeed take advantage of drunken women - so it is prudent not to be a drunken woman (at least in situations where one might find oneself in the company of such guys).
If I walk down certain streets here in Chicago with money hanging out of my pockets, I am likely to be robbed. It would be fully the robber’s fault for robing me, but I would have been foolish for putting myself in the situaton where such a robbery was more likely.
From that study - “The significant predictors of sexual victimization were psychological symptoms during the first year at college, number of consensual sexual partners and increased drinking. Women who have more consensual sexual partners are more likely to encounter a sexually aggressive individual and are more likely to experience sexual victimization. At the same time, women who increased their drinking are more likely to be behaviorally and cognitively impaired and less likely to recognize, avoid or defend against sexual aggression. ”
Why are drinking women with prior sexual experience more likely to encouter sexually agrssive males? Again [while not “blaming” anyone other than the sexual abuser] it sounds like there is a degree of unneccesary risk taken by a woman in such a situation - in that she unwisely places herself in a needlessly vulnerable and defenseless position. He is still a despicable felon, but a wise woman will heed the danger and avoid it.
I truly believed that I could live like the Sex in the City women (as many, many, many college girls and beyond suck in that worldview like water and food) and I also (as well as my roommates) read magazines which extolled the virtue of sexual liberation of women. I wanted to be the desired “party girl” who all the guys wanted to be with me while I held the reigns.
We are reaping a harvest of death here. Not only countless aborted babies but the working out of sin in lives of so many people. I do not know why God chose to open my eyes to this. I DO know that my “choice” was no choice at all…I did what God had always ordained we do with babies in wombs. And, wow…He was/is just amazingly, abundantly lavish in His provision. I did nothing good…the LORD is just (words fail) faithful and true.
KRM - maybe it’s just semantics, but I may kinda disagree with your post in #12. I think we all take risks just by living and need to try and accept the losses when they come.
Don’t get me wrong - the perp is still to blame for the crime in a case like this, but the girl was the one assuming the risk, and she bears some responsibility for that, if nothing else.
We live in a wilderness, in a constant state of risk from something or other, and that means we all need to be able to accept consequences for the risks we take just by living in this world.
We can acknowledge those risks or ignore them, but they still exist. We can mitigate them or elevate them, but they are there, and we own them. It’s a fallen world.
My main mitigation plan is Jesus.
#4 VS,
With your reasoning, we should blame Boeing (at least partially) for the 9/11 attacks!! Think again.
GDSUFFERN-Thanks so much for your story. I know you are a much stronger, wiser person now for what you went through. We are like that from many experiences that we sure never want to go through again. God is truly a Redeemer.
I once watched 3 young woman at a campground/beach area. All three of them were in swimming suits and very obviously intoxicated. They were obviously staying at the campground and I watched as they walked the path back to their tent or other accommadation. I was so worried for them. Anyone could have watched them and easily taken advantage of them. I used the example as a lesson to my own daughters, warning them about the possibilities. This scene is repeated countless times on college campuses.
Young people should be warned and warned over and over about the dangers involved. They should also realize that they have some power, in many cases, whether or not they will be victims.
If I leave my purse out in open sight unintended, it is the perpetrator who is to blame, but I certainly bear some of the blame for so misjudging human nature or simply being foolish.
JAck S - I don’t see a point of disagreement.
As to “full responsibility” of the guy, I would put it this way: the fact that she was drunk will still warrant a conviction and a full prison sentence.
As to foolish risk aking on a drunken woman’s part, the guy should still get convicted and fully sentenced byt she should come to an understanding that she could have minimized or avoided the problem by not taking the risk.
#16 - I was thinking of the verse in Scripture from Habakkuk where it says, “Woe to him who gives his neighbor drink.” (I confess I don’t know the context of this verse.)
And a few years ago in our area, a local bar who refused to quit serving a man was jointly sued when their customer left the bar and struck and killed another motorist.
GDSuffern, you are quite a witness, and I hope all the young girls who come here read your posts. Society did indeed tell the recent generations of girls to pick up the bottle and be just like the boys, which did them a great disservice.
My mother told me about an attempted rape by one of her employers. Sometimes a girl is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She also told us it was our responsibility not to invite such attacks. She’d give us the same lectures KI gave. Yes, the guy who takes advantage of a drunk girl is surely guilty, but girls don’t have to make it easy. That’s self respect and taking care of yourself.
GDSUFFERN-
That was an amazingly humble post at 8
I think that in general our young women need to realize they are vulnerable and not posture strength. And Christian young men need to be taught that women are vulnerable, and taught to protect them. (I was appalled at how unprotective male students were at my Bible college–even the campus security scoffed at women needing protection when they ended up in vulnerable situations, like being the only one in the library at 11:00 at night because a co-worker hadn’t shown up to help close, and someone unknown came into the building.)
We need to think ahead and be aware. When I lived in a less-than-safe part of Chicago, I tried to avoid late nights. When I did come in very late, I made sure I wasn’t carrying a purse (I locked it in my trunk earlier in the evening a few times) and was very aware of my surroundings as I walked from my car to my home. I wasn’t a drinker, so that part of things wasn’t an issue.
A year ago I locked my keys in my car at a public park. I was very discreet about calling AAA lest anyone know my vulnerability, and as it grew dusk and the locksmith was due, I moved to the playground and swung on the swings–within sight of my car, but not obviously watching it.
We simply must think ahead and be aware of what’s around us. And if drinking is involved, the caution is extra true.
#4
rimarily, there is personal responsibility but,
I think there is some blame to be placed with the makers, distributors and servers of alcoholic drinks.
Could not the same blame be apportioned for the makers, distributors and sellers of firearms for gun related violence?
The current liability laws/court decisions which place blame on the bartender do not bode well for gun sales.
The above is slightly off-topic but it raises an other interesting point; education and training. Just as we train our children to drive properly and, for those inclined, use firearms safely so to do we have to teach the proper and safe use of alcohol. Total prohibition only increases the lure instead moderation and responsibility need to be taught. One could also apply the same principle to sexuality.
As for the article; I agree with Luke - big surprise.
Luke says:
“Consent is important and it can’t be given when a power differential exists between two people. A difference in reasoning ability due to blood alcohol levels is a power differential that makes consensual sex impossible.”
One could also say:
“A difference in driving ability due to blood alcohol levels makes personal responsibility impossible.” One could say that, but it wouldn’t be true. You take responsibility/choose the moment you start drinking more than you can safely handle. This is not about rape. This is about women lowering their standards through lowered inhibitions from inebriation. Rape is another issue entirely. To say a woman or a man can’t engage in consensual sex when inebriated is just plain ignorant.
HRW - I wouldn’t worry too greatly about expansion of the tavern’s liabilty for overserving customers because it is derived from statute rathr than common law. The laws are generally called Dram Shop Acts and are an offshoot of the greatly hieghtened authority of states to regular in the area of alcohol/liquor (these laws are old too, the liability os not a recent development).