My male friend took advantage of me when I was drunk- is it my fault?
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I’m so glad this thread came round to where it did.in many european countries excessive drinking culture is part and parcel of student life .OP should absolutely not be judged or admonished, and her friends should have been better friends,–actually, not going to blame her friends. It was him, he should have been better.
Fine. Women everywhee should routinteky get falling down drunk. Hey — why not? That always ends just swell. Personal responsibility be damned! Maybe if they drink enough they’ll even forget being raped. *rolls eyes
so yet again everything that happens to women is all our own fault. Maybe men should be taught from a young age not to think that if a woman is drunk she is somehow fair game and it’s all her own fault- by, oh I don’t know- maybe stopping blaming women all the time?
Hazel, yes. I’ve said several times here that the problem is men, and that boys are somehow still being raised to think they can harass, belittle, assault, and rape women. But they are. Something like 1 in 4 college women, or maybe it’s 4 in 10, are sexually assaulted. That’s the reality we live in, I’m sorry. Not one person on here blamed the OP, or blames women in general for assault.
I know, I was pleased to see people say that they did not blame her- (thought BGM was being pretty disdainful but that’s his way sometimes) just wanted to point out that young men hear the message that women shouldn’t get blackout drunk or they are endangering themselves so very very often that some of them almost begin to think that if a girl, who has been told this repeatedly, still gets blind drunk then well, she probably doesn’t really mind. And that’s dangerous.
It’s also dangerous to normalize excessive drinking culture. Kids on campus die from alcohol poisoning, haze each other to death, freeze to death, etc etc etc (and yes, sorry, it’s a major risk factor in sexual assault). Parents can teach their boys not to be rapists and their kids in general how to drink responsibly and maybe that will help. But it doesn’t help for adults to be like, oh, everyone gets blackout drunk, it’s no big deal. It really is.
Yeah, the normalization of drinking like abject idiots is a bad idea. PS — if a guy casually implied they routinely got black out drunk and then penned in the same exact letter (hey, it happens) my response would have been even harsher.
fair enough BGM. It is just that the LW was obviously already blaming herself, and its like when you drop something and it breaks and everyone shouts “careful!” like she’s not going to get blotto in a hurry again any time soon. personally I think mankind made a big mistake in its choice of alcohol and tobacco as the legal drugs permitted by society but we are where we are on that one.
I wouldn’t brag about that Mark. The reporting rates of male sexual assault are even worse than they are for women. Reactions like those in this thread are a part of why both rates are pathetically low. You can tell yourselves that you’re trying to make people safer but all you’re actually doing is making yourself feel smart. NEWSFLASH you’re not too smart to be assaulted, nobody is.
I don’t really feel smart here. I was raised by Christian non-drinkers and never learned how to drink. Never saw moderate drinking modeled. It took me well into my 30s to learn how to regulate properly. And when I’d drink to getting sick / losing control, a lot of bad stuff happened. Everything from alcohol poisoning to fights to sex I didn’t want. Nothing bad happens when I have 2-3 drinks and call it a night. I wish there had been some kind of campus program that would have taught us about personal safety and how to moderate drinking. For both girls and boys. But no one ever told us shit about it, maybe because they weren’t supposed to acknowledge that kids under 21 drank? Maybe because I didn’t live on campus? I don’t know.
@Juliecatherine believe me I don’t feel smart. I feel lucky that when I was binge drinking nothing terrible happened to me. I look at my behavior then and I shake my head at myself. My comments all come from a place of familiarity.
