My male friend took advantage of me when I was drunk- is it my fault?
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That’s where I came around to dinoceros. There can be value in telling some women things can do to make themselves less vulnerable to sexual assault in the same way there can be in say, telling car owners how to make their cars less vulnerable to car prowls, but not this woman. Not a woman that’s just been assaulted.
She just needs reassurance and support.
I also regret making assumptions her drinking. I initially interpreted it that she was a regular binge drinker, and even absent an assault, I would encourage young binge drinkers to evaluate their behavior because it might just be a phase, but it might mean you have a problem with alcohol. But a) I was wrong in my assumption about how much/how often she drinks, and b) even if it were true and she might need to evaluate her relationship with alchohol, again that should’ve been tackled in a different conversation at a different time.
All I should’ve told her was that yes you were clearly violated and it’s 100% not your fault.
I’m not going to apologize. I was in a situation – slightly different where someone was trying to get me drunk so that he could take advantage of me. I knew it. There was no trust and I couldn’t simply walk away from the situation. So, I limited my alcohol because I read the situation correctly.
She made a lot of good choices, but she made one choice that she can control going forward, she drank beyond her limits and increased her vulnerability. I hope that this awful and undeserved experience doesn’t haunt her. But I also hope that she learns how to establish her boundaries and insist that other people respect them.
Yeah, I am not apologizing either, though I wouldn’t have been so harsh if A) she didn’t imply initially that she gets very drunk anytime she goes out with friends and B) seemed to really be concerned about the danger she was in rather than the disrespect to her boyfriend. I don’t have the opportunity for a separate future conversation with this poster, so I wanted to get the message across about trusting male “friends.”
I think if a girl’s parents have a foolish “open door” policy that invites and encourages drunk teenage boys to spend the night, it’s entirely possible that she does not know how to protect herself. And I’d rather give her the tools while explaining what the guy did was WRONG (of course) than ONLY tell her she’s a victim and leaving it at that. If her actions were the wisest and most correct—logically, there was no possible way to actually prevent this from happening or prevent something similar from happening again. Right?
It would be like telling a girl she doesn’t have to insist on a condom if she’s on the pill and her new boyfriend says he has no STDs. Yeah, he shouldn’t lie. But he MIGHT—and you just don’t know. So better protect yourself.
I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to beat her up for wrongly trusting this guy. Sounds like they had been friends for many years. Sounds like they had been drinking with him before. She was with someone else for most of the time.
We build trust with people over time. She’s known him a long time, before this night sounds like he never gave her a reason to question that trust. Are we saying women should never trust their male friends, no matter how long they’ve known them and no matter how many safe interactions they’ve had? I don’t think that’s reasonable.
And while this guy did was reprehensible, MOST of the time when you have a male friend you think is trustworthy, he’s not lying in wait for years until the right moment strikes to get you drunk and take advantage of you (perhaps passing up similar opportunities in the past). Most of the time, male friends you trust are actually trustworthy dudes.
RoseLousie, unfortunately many of these follow-up comments have very little to do with your personal situation.
For what it is worth, I disagree that your feelings and desire for reassurance over your relationship means you are unaware of the vulnerable situation you were in. If anything, I infer it means you feel MORE responsibility and anxiety about how getting shit-faced is going to impact the way you can socially navigate this situation with your friends and boyfriend. I infer that you asked because you were willing to read anonymous blind opinions to better cement your understanding and soothe your understandable discomfort.
The fact that your ex-friend apparently didn’t rape you but still tried to make a pass, but told you what happened might be more than you remember WAS a complete mind-fuck. A lot of commenters are being hypocritical about letting a friend of the opposite sex sleep downstairs at their parents house when they are adults.
People want to feel personally empowered and will use the comments on someone else’s thread to make sure they don’t feel weak.
The same people who keep trying to scold you even though you came back and told them why their (reasonable) inferences were factually incorrect, don’t want to get piled on.
And furthermore, we all have to balance possible risks vs living our GD lives without constantly being in fear or constantly being on guard.
Trusting your long-term male friends is one of those trade-offs, I think. I wouldn’t advise a woman to constantly treat her long-term male friends as a possible threat. Why have friends then? Why ever spend anytime alone with men? You hamper your ability to live a normal life if you do that.
Yes, most rapes are acquaintance rapes, your more likely to be raped by someone you know than by a stranger, but most people you know aren’t going to rape you. That’s what makes it hard.
It kind of reminds me of a discussion I had with someone who was super pro-conceal carry and had a gun on him at all times. He basically said he was always at least a little bit on alert and assessing his surroundings for danger. Which I guess I appreciate his diligence if he’s going to be carrying a dangerous weapon all the time, but all the same, who would want to live like that? Always being somewhat on guard? First of all, you likely will never find yourself in a situation where you have to defend yourself like that, let’s be honest. And if allowing myself to relax in some situations means there’s a risk that I get caught unprepared in a suddenly life threatening situation, I accept that risk.
The small chance of me needing to defend myself with a gun and not being ready to do so outweighs me constantly having to be in a mindset where I’m looking for danger.
This is obviously an extreme example, but the principle stands. Women should be able to have male friends they trust. Constantly questioning every man you know well isn’t worth it to have a normal existence.
Most people you know aren’t going to rape you, but when a guy keeps buying you drinks and shots and you’re getting drunker than you want to, you can take a step back and decline the drinks, because like L said, it should make you cautious.
The entire point of useful books like the Gift of Fear, and I’m not sure why people are resistant to this concept, is that you don’t have to be constantly on guard and living in fear. You have an incredibly powerful weapon, your intuition, that keeps you safe if you use it. But excessive drinking messes it up, and guys know that. Women are in situations literally all the time where they need their best defense mechanism – their intuition – to stay safe.
I don’t know Kate. Assuming they’ve been close friends along time now, that they’ve been drinking before, I don’t know if I were in her shoes I’d read his behavior as dangerous either. Maybe just an old friend that wanted to party hard while on break and is doing the normal peer pressure thing so he doesn’t feel alone getting shitfaced.
A dude I didn’t know well, or that I had always side-eyed in the past trying to feed me shots, yeah I might be on alert? But an old friend I’d long known and trusted, I doubt it would’ve triggered alarm bells for me.
Basically, you’re saying you have to be skeptical of every man’s behavior, even men you know well. Which, I said above, maybe that will protect you more, but I personally am willing to accept that risk so I don’t have to distrust every man in my life all the time.
To me, that’s not a way to live.
All right, well, it’s not either “trust everyone” or “trust no one.” It’s knowing what to look for and be aware of before you go out. A guy who keeps pushing drinks on you is one of those things.
She is reacting to something that already happened, Kate. She isn’t asking about how not not re-live the exact same circumstances over. I think it comes across as condescending to keep reasserting the same book and advice when she is already challenged with wondering to what extent she should blame herself and her drinking for what her friend did. She isn’t asking about how to spot weirdos in a novel situation, presumably she already has known the friend for at least a few years and he passed the “gut” hurdles. I don’t know why you keep pushing to get this writer to feel empowered when she has given feed-back that your approach doesn’t work for her in this particular time interval.
