How does fatal drunk driving compare socially to the things that happened in Steubenville? If campaigns against drunk driving don’t work, how do you design a consensual sex campaign? What effective messages have you seen that could apply?
This is a comment by Marcus Williams on the post “Questions that Plague Me in the Wake of Steubenville“.
Marcus Williams said:
In as much as drinking lowers inhibitions, there are lots of people who drink to excess and never wind up raping people, beating up gay kids, or abusing their spouses. Or driving. Mostly cause that’s not in them to do.
Many people drink, not to excess, get behind the wheel, and don’t kill anyone or even get in an accident. That’s most drunk drivers, in fact. What distinguishes them from the ones who have fatal accidents is luck, not that it’s “not in them to do”. It was in them, they rolled the dice, and they got lucky, so no one called them monsters even though they followed the same decision tree. The same is true of a lot of drinking and sex, IMO. There is no monster line which divides drinking people who commit sex crimes from drinkers who just “don’t have it in them” to commit crimes. For something like interpreting whether consent is present and behaving appropriately, alcohol is impairing, just like it’s impairing as to the judgement of whether or not it’s safe to get behind the wheel.
But I think that root issue of the rage and anger and etc, the lack of compassion and empathy are part of that public health concern.
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Do drunk drivers who kill innocent people lack compassion and empathy to be so reckless as to get behind the wheel when they were intoxicated? Yes, I’d say that might be part of it, so campaigns that foster more compassion and empathy, out of concern for what you could do accidentally, are reasonable and apparently, effective. Are those same drivers motivated by rage and anger toward the victims they kill? I’d say probably not in most cases.
Not me going to a bar and trying to have a few drinks. I get it. There are predators out there. That may always be true. But I’d prefer to work on policing them, not my actions, getting others to step up if I get in trouble rather than blaming me. Me being anyone who gets hurt by individuals or groups that have predation on their minds.
I get the feeling you overlooked the gender-neutral aspect of what I’m saying. I’m not saying we need campaigns teaching women not to mix alcohol with sex. I’m saying alcohol impairs the judgment of BOTH perpetrator and victim, regardless of their respective genders. It’s about increasing awareness that just like impaired driving can lead to loss of life and prison terms, impaired sexing can lead to rape and prison terms. Encouraging others to “step up if [someone] gets in trouble rather than blaming [them]” isn’t just about intervening on behalf of the victim. It’s also about intervening to stop someone else from becoming the perpetrator. There’s already “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” and that’s not gender specific. Why not extend that to sex?
I don’t think rape is going to be eliminated by a Don’t Drink & Sex campaign, but drunk driving isn’t going to be eliminated, either. Drunk driving used to be so off the radar that I’m sure the earliest efforts to reduce it seemed hopeless. People are going to party and have sex, but imagine the good if we could get as many people thinking, as their default “safe” position, that mixing alcohol with first-time sex with someone is as dangerous as mixing alcohol with driving. Some will do it anyway, often with no harm resulting (just like drunk driving) but some might wait to sober up more before going ahead with that sex, just like now they wait before driving. Again, I’m talking about *both* men and women, not just saying drunk women deserve what they get and shouldn’t drink. There’s already been some success in getting people to use condoms more often in the name of “safe sex”, so why not promote sobriety as another component of “safe sex”. Just like w/ condoms, it’s not about saying sex without condoms is always bad, so it wouldn’t be saying alcohol is always bad with sex, but it could change the default of what people consider safe with relative strangers.
BTW, I think this would line up well with enthusiastic consent ideas, because among other things, alcohol can impair the ability to communicate, intepret, and *remember* consent, and again, that’s true of both victims and perpetrators, and no one wants to become either one.
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I’m all for a campaign. The only people who benefit from drunk sex are the Quagmires of the world who want to giggity-giggity. I think it would be important to inform women that alcohol affects their bodies differently than it does male bodies. Women think they can match their guy friends drink for drink but more than likely she cant. Women accuse men of spiking their drinks much more frequently than it really happens. Sometimes women drink too much point blank and dont want to own it. The Steubenville victim thinks she was slipped something in her drink, but more… Read more »
You hit the road, during a snow storm, on bald tires.
You are running out for a bag of chips, not medicine for your ailing infant.
You wreck your car.
Is it entirely the DOT’s fault for not plowing, sanding & salting?
While you are recuperating from a broken pelvis does the knowledge that you had every right to be on the road alleviate some of the pain?
I’ve been talking about it for years. People don’t want to hear it. Drunk sex is just too important I guess.
“We already have ‘Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.’ Why not extend that to sex?”
Because good luck getting people to treat sexual assault as a momentary lapse in judgement rather than something men do because of toxic masculinity?
Alcohol + 1st time Sex = Rape. Not true. The problem here is a culture that encourages/allows under-age drinking, violence, and rape. Gang rape, mass shootings, and other crimes are symptoms of a sick society.
Alcohol + 1st time Sex = Rape. Not true. You have negated a point I never made. I’m comparing the risk of alcohol-impaired judgment leading to rape (or sexual assault) with the risk of alcohol-impaired judgement leading to drunk driving that leads to killing or hurting someone. Even in drunk driving, the driver, passengers, and all other motorists don’t have an accident or cause harm most of the time. So, since I’m saying “alcohol + driving = significantly elevated risk of fatal accident”, the analogous statement about rape is “alcohol + 1st time sex = significantly elegant risk of rape”.… Read more »
Why is it so difficult for so many to acknowledge that right smack in the middle of the majority of Rape pieces posted at GMP is alcohol is a question I’ve had for at least 6 months….
The latest, Steubenville, incident features drunks raping a drunk- as appropriate an observation as that they were students, football players, rust belt citizens….
I am curious Danielle: Do you troll websites that have the word RAPE on them.
I have only ever seen you post on sites that have a story relating to rape in some way.
Rape and drunk sex are not the same thing. Sorry try again. We KNOW alcohol makes people more vulnerable to a dangerous situation but the fact fucking remains that is she had been blackout drunk and not around rapists she would have been fine.
Pretty damn hard to get consent when she is passed out in the car.
I didn’t say rape and drunk sex are the same thing, just like I don’t say, and you probably don’t either, that murder and drunk driving are the same thing. Take the victim’s sobriety out of the picture, just to make sure we’re not victim blaming. I assert the people under the influence of alcohol make impaired judgments, including ones that can and do lead to criminal behavior. So, based on how cliché it is to hear that rapists *were impaired by alcohol*, I’m arguing that there would be fewer rapes and sexual assaults if *the rapists* avoided drinking, or… Read more »
Which would be fine in the case of sex. This was a gang rape, more akin to group bonding through extreme humiliation, possible use of date rape drugs, and not entirely the same situation at all. The physical act looks the same in each case, but the message is completely different.
The don’t let friends message….is more “don’t let friends bully, humiliate, and assault your other friends. Stand up for them.
Julie, do you believe alcohol was irrelevant enough to what happened at Steubenville that even if everyone had been stone cold sober, it would have gone down the same way? That when a bunch of teens (or a bunch of teen boys with one teen girl) hang out unsupervised without alcohol, the rape and sexual assault rates are just as high as with, since it’s mostly about bonding? On the second part of your comment, about “don’t let friends…”, I don’t think your re-phrase is incompatible with what I’m saying. I’m not sure if you’re agreeing and extending that part… Read more »
Marcus. I get it. Believe me. But right now the common argument online and all over everywhere is, “If she hadn’t been so fucked up.” which is about as close to victim blaming as I ever want to see. So yes, the more sober people are, the better. The more all of it shifts the better. There is more going on than just alcohol. I don’t want to lose sight of that with solutionism.
I nominate that for inclusion on the list of things that explain what Rape Culture is.