Conservative commentator James Taranto has come under fire for a op-ed he recently posted in The Wall Street Journal, entitled, "Drunkenness and Double Standards - A balanced look at college sex offenses."
Taranto spends a decent amount of his time cherry-picking cases where men were wrongly accused of rape, before appearing to insinuate that intoxicated female rape victims are just as much to blame for the event as the male rapists. The common denominator for him is alcohol, which he believes is the main reason for this alleged double standard with regard to sexual assault in our country.
In the article, Taranto writes the following:
"Winerip notes that between 2005 and 2010, 'more than 60 percent of claims involving sexual violence handled by United Educators'--an insurance company owned by member schools--"involved young women who were so drunk they had no clear memory of the assault.' We know from Sgt. Cournoyer that the accused men typically are drinking to excess, too. What is called the problem of 'sexual assault' on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)"
Taranto again mentions Winerip's writing, when he stated this:
"The main topic of Winerip's piece is a preventive program called 'bystander intervention': 'Mostly it is common sense,' he writes: 'If a drunk young man at a party is pawing a drunk young woman, then someone nearby (the bystander) needs to step in (intervene) and get one of them out of there. ... The goal is to stop bad behavior before it crosses the line from drunken partying to sexual assault. ... The hope is that bystander programs will have the same impact on campus culture that the designated driver campaign has had in reducing drunken driving deaths.'
It sounds quite sensible, not to mention shrewd. Bystanders are encouraged to favor subtlety over confrontation, to employ 'diversions' such as 'suddenly turning on the lights at a party or turning off the music; accidentally spilling a drink on the guy; forming a conga line and pulling him away from the woman he's bothering and onto the dance floor.... In the best of circumstances, a drunken aggressor won't realize he's been had.'"
Lastly, in what I found to be the most troubling portion of his piece, Mr. Taranto wrote this:
"Which points to a limitation of the drunk-driving analogy. If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn't determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver's sex. But when two drunken college students 'collide,' the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him."
First off, even if Winerip's numbers are accurate, that means close to 2 in every 5 reported sexual assault cases at colleges don't involve people whom were drunk, and these numbers don't touch on the issue of rape across a broader spectrum. If there were 100 reported sexual assault cases at a university and 60 of them involved excessive drinking, that means 40 of them did not, and every single one of them should be taken seriously.
Secondly, while "bystander intervention" may be a nice idea, this is unfairly placing the responsibilities of drunks' well-being in the hands of sober observers. Whether I was or wasn't in charge of "bystander intervention," if I saw someone misbehaving, I'd attempt to prevent the matter from going too far. While this may be naive of me to say such a thing, I'd like to believe a decent percentage of people would act in a similar manner. However, I'd also like to believe people should be more responsible for their own decisions. If a man gets drunk and starts sexually harassing a woman, the brunt of the blame shouldn't be placed on a sober person in the same room, who may have been in the bathroom at the time or watching someone else who had a reputation of causing problems at parties. I'm not saying this "bystander intervention" idea is a bad one. However, if an inebriated individual doesn't take responsibility to contact a designated driver, this would-be sober driver shouldn't get blamed if the drunk individual gets into an accident, and likewise, he or she should take some responsibility in the "bystander intervention" scenario as well.
Lastly, the drunk-driving analogy is a very poor one. While getting behind the wheel intoxicated is a very poor decision regardless of gender, if two such drivers collided on the road, one wouldn't have been taking advantage of the other. One wouldn't have needed to give the other consent in order to crash his or her vehicle into the other. Like I said, it's a very poor analogy. If both a man and a woman were drunk and can't remember much from the evening, it will be very difficult to prove that the sex was consensual or forced. However, if a man doesn't need Viagra in order to get an erection, chances are he wasn't as drunk as he claimed. In any case, it's time more people (of both genders) acted responsibly when consuming alcohol. I drink approximately once a week, yet have never engaged in a one-night stand nor had "drunken sex." While I have been propositioned more times than I care to admit, I've always said no, because even though my inhibitions may have lessened, I still possess a conscience and a somewhat functioning mind, and know the negatives far outweigh the positives in such a situation. It'd be nice if more people thought and acted similarly. Just because a woman places herself at risk by getting drunk at a party doesn't mean she deserves to be violated by a half-drunk man. No matter what situation rape victims find themselves in, nobody deserves to be raped, and claiming that the responsibility for such awful incidents is just as much the rape victims' as the rapists' is absurd to the point of being borderline crazy.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579374844067975558
Taranto spends a decent amount of his time cherry-picking cases where men were wrongly accused of rape, before appearing to insinuate that intoxicated female rape victims are just as much to blame for the event as the male rapists. The common denominator for him is alcohol, which he believes is the main reason for this alleged double standard with regard to sexual assault in our country.
In the article, Taranto writes the following:
"Winerip notes that between 2005 and 2010, 'more than 60 percent of claims involving sexual violence handled by United Educators'--an insurance company owned by member schools--"involved young women who were so drunk they had no clear memory of the assault.' We know from Sgt. Cournoyer that the accused men typically are drinking to excess, too. What is called the problem of 'sexual assault' on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)"
Taranto again mentions Winerip's writing, when he stated this:
"The main topic of Winerip's piece is a preventive program called 'bystander intervention': 'Mostly it is common sense,' he writes: 'If a drunk young man at a party is pawing a drunk young woman, then someone nearby (the bystander) needs to step in (intervene) and get one of them out of there. ... The goal is to stop bad behavior before it crosses the line from drunken partying to sexual assault. ... The hope is that bystander programs will have the same impact on campus culture that the designated driver campaign has had in reducing drunken driving deaths.'
It sounds quite sensible, not to mention shrewd. Bystanders are encouraged to favor subtlety over confrontation, to employ 'diversions' such as 'suddenly turning on the lights at a party or turning off the music; accidentally spilling a drink on the guy; forming a conga line and pulling him away from the woman he's bothering and onto the dance floor.... In the best of circumstances, a drunken aggressor won't realize he's been had.'"
Lastly, in what I found to be the most troubling portion of his piece, Mr. Taranto wrote this:
"Which points to a limitation of the drunk-driving analogy. If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn't determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver's sex. But when two drunken college students 'collide,' the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him."
First off, even if Winerip's numbers are accurate, that means close to 2 in every 5 reported sexual assault cases at colleges don't involve people whom were drunk, and these numbers don't touch on the issue of rape across a broader spectrum. If there were 100 reported sexual assault cases at a university and 60 of them involved excessive drinking, that means 40 of them did not, and every single one of them should be taken seriously.
Secondly, while "bystander intervention" may be a nice idea, this is unfairly placing the responsibilities of drunks' well-being in the hands of sober observers. Whether I was or wasn't in charge of "bystander intervention," if I saw someone misbehaving, I'd attempt to prevent the matter from going too far. While this may be naive of me to say such a thing, I'd like to believe a decent percentage of people would act in a similar manner. However, I'd also like to believe people should be more responsible for their own decisions. If a man gets drunk and starts sexually harassing a woman, the brunt of the blame shouldn't be placed on a sober person in the same room, who may have been in the bathroom at the time or watching someone else who had a reputation of causing problems at parties. I'm not saying this "bystander intervention" idea is a bad one. However, if an inebriated individual doesn't take responsibility to contact a designated driver, this would-be sober driver shouldn't get blamed if the drunk individual gets into an accident, and likewise, he or she should take some responsibility in the "bystander intervention" scenario as well.
Lastly, the drunk-driving analogy is a very poor one. While getting behind the wheel intoxicated is a very poor decision regardless of gender, if two such drivers collided on the road, one wouldn't have been taking advantage of the other. One wouldn't have needed to give the other consent in order to crash his or her vehicle into the other. Like I said, it's a very poor analogy. If both a man and a woman were drunk and can't remember much from the evening, it will be very difficult to prove that the sex was consensual or forced. However, if a man doesn't need Viagra in order to get an erection, chances are he wasn't as drunk as he claimed. In any case, it's time more people (of both genders) acted responsibly when consuming alcohol. I drink approximately once a week, yet have never engaged in a one-night stand nor had "drunken sex." While I have been propositioned more times than I care to admit, I've always said no, because even though my inhibitions may have lessened, I still possess a conscience and a somewhat functioning mind, and know the negatives far outweigh the positives in such a situation. It'd be nice if more people thought and acted similarly. Just because a woman places herself at risk by getting drunk at a party doesn't mean she deserves to be violated by a half-drunk man. No matter what situation rape victims find themselves in, nobody deserves to be raped, and claiming that the responsibility for such awful incidents is just as much the rape victims' as the rapists' is absurd to the point of being borderline crazy.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579374844067975558
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