Alcohol education is not rape apology

It’s not victim-blaming to educate women—and men—on alcohol’s connection to sexual assault.

Yesterday, Slate writer Emily Yoffe published a story on the importance of teaching college women that binge drinking raises their risk of being raped. It was a story your mom probably would have approved of—prescriptive, groaningly fuddy-duddyish (“it’s possible to have fun without being drunk”), with the cadences of a health education video.

But the basic point seemed to me indisputably sensible: College-aged women should be taught that moderating their alcohol use is an important tool in staying safe from sexual assault. In this age of beer pong and Jäger bombs, when 64 percent of college women drink more than the recommended weekly amount, this seems well worth repeating.

The Internet, apparently, did not agree. Within hours of publication, the story was generating furious responses.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/alcohol-education-is-not-rape-apology/280661/

As someone who works to prevent rape and sexual assault this conversation is an important one for us to have in our society, communities, homes and schools. The health concerns that arise from binge drinking are real for women and men. The reasons that binge drinking is occurring at such high rates is a question to be asked as well. What is driving the behavior of binge drinking? We know that trauma contributes to high rates of alcohol and drug use; we also know that alcohol and drug abuse is highly correlated with experiencing and committing crimes. The problem and the answers are more complex than simply taking "one side or the other" -- real solutions come from understanding the complexity of rape and sexual assault behavior-- what drives it within a society and what maintains it at the individual level. Most importantly are what informed strategies do we take that prevent it from happening in the first place.

Alcohol education is not rape apology

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