My male friend took advantage of me when I was drunk- is it my fault?
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Why is there such a disconnect between acknowledging what should be and what actually is? Nobody is shifting the blame. The OP is blameless. Completely. Unequivocally. Everyone has said so and I hope you hear all the voices saying that to you Rose.
This situation is made sadder because your attacker was your friend and you shouldn’t have to have your wits about you and guard up all the time. You shouldn’t. But, sadly, you must. The world just isn’t safe for women. We all think it should be. But it isn’t. So until it is, protect yourself. We all have to modify our behaviour with an eye towards safety. We don’t walk at night alone if we can help it. We don’t park near vans in dark lots. We lock our doors and text our girlfriends before going on dates with strangers. You yourself look after your drunk friends. Assigning a friend to look after you if you drink to excess or not drinking to excess at all is just another precaution. I’m sorry that asshole betrayed the trust you placed in him. I’m sorry women have an additional burden when it comes to our safety. And I’m sorry we have to teach the next generation of women that righteousness doesn’t save us from harm, and as between the two, you have to choose safety.
It’s not a disconnect between what is and what should be. The reactions on this thread are damaging. This woman didn’t ask for a goddamn safety lesson. Do you really think she needs to hear about all the things she should have done? Do you really think she hasn’t been torturing herself over this shit? Leading with a lecture about drinking puts the blame on her. Intended or not that’s what it does. Not cool. Not helpful.
Eh… It’s hard to make much of a case when you were so fucking shitfaced you don’t even vaguely know what actuallybhappened. Were there even physical signs of sex? Of rape? I have no idea. The LW curiously said zip about that.
I don’t agree that it’s damaging to say, look, we get that you trusted your friend and your parents have a well intentioned open-door policy, but unfortunately this guy demonstrated that he’s not trustworthy. This situation occurred because he deliberately plied you with alcohol to the point that you weren’t in control of yourself. On purpose so he could take advantage of you. That was his strategy. He assaulted you. He’s to blame. But it benefits you to understand what happened here and how you can hopefully avoid a similar situation in the future. You can’t blindly trust your friends. If you let someone get you drunk to blackout then you’re at high risk of harm.
I feel like it’s more damaging to say to her, hon, men are predators, there’s nothing you can do about it, and no way to protect yourself. It just happens. Oh, and if you do try to take precautions, he’ll just rape another girl. Is that helpful?
Finally, this OP wasn’t raped, thank god. Yes, this was assault, but it wasn’t clear she recognized the seriousness of it and the potential danger. She was worried about the disrespect this guy showed to her boyfriend. I mean. Worry about the fact that you could have been seriously hurt. Thank god you weren’t, but this is a wakeup call, and here are some thoughts for future avoidance.
The point of talking about drinking IS to be helpful. For next time. She may not have asked for safety lessons but she needed to hear some. The same way women write in asking to fix an abusive situation and the advice goes beyond what they are asking for to tell her what she has to do for her safety.
What I think is harmful is for her parents and others to not acknowledge that guys you know well can potentially assault, abuse, and rape you, and to think that you’re safe in your own home with guys you know. Her parents would better serve and protect their daughter if the rule was, drunk girls are totally welcome to stay here, but we’re going to put guys in an Uber. Here’s a credit card you can use for that situation that we’ll load into the app.
I also think it’s harmful to not make any distinction between having a drink and drinking to loss of consciousness, and not to acknowledge that alcohol is a major contributing factor to assault and that society doesn’t believe or protect drunk women.
Edit: the reason she didn’t ask is because she didn’t even realize she was in danger. She was taught that she can trust drunk guys that she knows. And unfortunately she can’t, because people are raising their boys to be sexual assaulters. Probably at least 1 in 10, if not more, college age guys would sexually assault a woman if the opportunity arose.
Kate there was a recent poll in which 1/3 of men said they would “rape” however some argued that the study was flawed. The gist was that a list of behaviors / actions were listed and participants were asked how likely they were to do that action – assuming no negative consequences. So when someone said something was highly likely, it was counted similarly to “not very likely” whereas “not likely at all or never” was a strong “NO”
However… the salient part of this – the thing we really need to take away is that of that list of actions, many men said they would force a woman (on a scale of likeliness), assuming no consequences, but many of them did not consider some of those actions rape. I don’t have specifics but I think it’s safe to assume that these guys did not consider forced touching to be assault or rape-y.
Yeah, so that’s worse than I thought. And guys would have plenty of reason to believe there would be no negative consequences, the way society punishes victims from coming forward, and with a victim being too drunk or drugged to remember.
I wish I could take back my earlier comments.
I don’t disagree with what I said, in a global sense, but right after someone was assaulted is not the time for a “lessons learned” or “here’s what to do in the future to prevent being in this situation again in the future” discussion.
It was critical that the letter writer get confirmation she was assaulted and be told it’s not her fault. Saying anything more at the moment muddies that message.
Talking about what women could do to make themselves less vulnerable belongs in a different discussion, at a different time, and I personally regret bringing it up in this specific thread.
I don’t, in this case. It’s important to understand that this guy deliberately set out to get her drunk, that you can’t trust a guy just because you know him, and that she actually was in danger.
Sorry you had to go through something so horrible like this.
This is a messed up situation that should never happen to anyone ever, but we do not live a in a perfect world. Your well being and safety should be something that you look after and not rely on others. Someone else should not be relied on if you chose to have too many drinks and get shit faced to blacking out.
My wife hangs out and drinks with the opposite sex in a social setting often and she knows she has to watch her limits on drinking so she doesn’t get to shit faced that she would not be able to defend herself from situations like this or have no recollections of what happened the night before. The number 1 rule of drinking for a lady should be that you have to be present when the drink is being served and don’t accept drinks from strangers, epically if its an open bottle or glass and you did not see it being served prior to accepting it. Ya this really sucks that you would have to think this way with people you consider friends and trust worthy, but most rape cases the victim was raped by a close friend or family member. This is the world we live in and your safety is something you should be accountable for at all times.
My wife may trust her colleges but if she wasn’t present when the drink was served to the person that handed her the drink she will most likely pour it out when no one is looking.
I hope you get the help you need to get past this and learn to be more vigilant when it comes to your own well being.
I think that what a lot of people ignore/don’t understand when they are justifying “helpful advice on how not to get raped” is that people who are assaulted feel a lot of guilt and shame to begin with. Before they even tell anyone. Before anyone blames them or not. So, while saying, “It’s not your fault, but you shouldn’t do this” seems pretty neutral, it’s being heard by someone who is already probably blaming themselves. Because that’s the only consistent message that people hear from society about it.
I also think it’s not as useful as people seem to think it is to say it to someone who has already been assaulted. If you want to teach young women that you can’t trust men and that you’re not allowed to drink much in public because you’re a women, then go for it. But I don’t think that this is going to be ground-breaking advice to an assault survivor to where it’s worth the shame you potentially cause by telling them AFTER the fact what they should have done differently.
