Alcohol Education Is Not Rape Apology

[intaglio]

145. Indulging in dangerous behaviour is a separate issue from people exploiting those behaviours

Do you also tell your children to avoid being alone with friends or family members? because that is a situation that is far more likely to lead to rape.

I have no objection to you advising your children to avoid binge drinking, binge drinking is bad and of itself can kill you or lead to permanent damage. But to tell them that binge drinking of itself can contribute to them being raped is wrong. You do not tell your children not to take heroin or meth or krokodil because they are more likely to be raped, you are more likely to tell them or show them the damage it will do.

When someone, not necessarily one of your children, gets drunk and is raped; how do you think they feel? Remember a parent has advised them "binge drinking can get you raped" so do you think that they might be likely to blame themselves or to think that their parents and the police will put part of the blame on them, the victim? If they ever have to be on a jury are they likely to think the victim contributed to their their rape because that victim was binge drinking?

These last are the reasons I am objecting because it assigns part of the blame for what happens to the victim and, more perniciously, gets the victim to blame themselves. You know of a male friend who was drunk and was raped (the sex of the rapist does not matter) but I will bet that they never reported that rape and that they blamed himself.

I too have had friends who were raped, in one case she got drunk with her brother and for years blamed herself for his rape of her because she was drunk and, he told her, she "led him on". She did tell her mother who told her not to be silly because he would not have done that and then punished her for being drunk; she was 9. In another case a woman (who later admitted she was a lesbian) would get drunk so that she could not fight when men sexually abused her; she never did stop blaming herself for that despite having male friends who had tried to protect her and who did not "take advantage".

In another case a man went out with some friends who fed him alcohol and sexually assaulted him. Luckily there was no rape because they wanted a Bear who would penetrate them and he would not get hard. For 35 years he made light of it, blaming himself for that assault because he had trusted and he had got drunk. That man was me.