Lessons in Women's Safety

“Most women won’t know they are pregnant for the first month or so, when they might still be drinking. The risk is real. Why take the chance?” This appeared on an infographic the CDC put out about the risks of drinking for women seven years ago. If you’re a woman, it’s best to become a teetotaller because you never know when your lack of contraception might sneak up on you unawares.

I’ll give you one guess what the CDC listed as the biggest risk of drinking. Take your time. I’ll wait.

<taps foot>

Violence! Banzai! If you drink, you’ll get beaten and raped, so just don’t do it, m’kay? Cuz you weren’t raped because he was a criminal, you were raped because you had one too many glasses of wine.

Let’s take a moment to assess the infographic the CDC put together for the male of the species. Oh, wait. The risks of drinking to men were not put into infographic form because only women need pretty pictures to help us understand things. Men are smart enough to read ordinary prose without the help of images. But I digress.

“Excessive alcohol consumption increases aggression and, as a result, can increase the risk of physically assaulting another person.”

You didn’t assault her because you’re a disturbed sociopath. You did it because you had a tequila.

Let’s work all that information into one overriding theory:

Women are responsible for getting assaulted. Alcohol is responsible for assaulting them. Men are not a part of the picture.

When it’s spelled out so explicitly, it makes you think this was just a one-in-a-million error, but it’s not a one-in-a-million. People say it every single time I post about rape culture. We don’t say it in such simple terms, but our opinions are inherently aimed at women being at fault and men being the unwitting observers of their assaults.

You saw her. She was wearing a short skirt. You heard her. She didn’t say her safe word. You know it. Women are always making up lies about rape. Ever heard of personal responsibility? Well, if you’re a woman, you don’t have enough of it, and if you’re a rapist, you’ll never have too little of it. These are the standards by which we live our lives and prosecute our crimes.

If you’ve ever reported a mugging, you will know that police don’t ask victims like that whether they drank first. They don’t ask whether they wore tempting Rolexes or walked after dark. In the world of mugging, all muggers are at fault no matter what the victim did. I’m still trying to work out why rape is any different, but it is.

That’s why you don’t simply report an assault without first asking whether you can survive the abuse of the courts. There are even forensic psychiatrists on this planet whose sole purpose is to find out if rape survivors will make it to the end of a trial. I saw one 15 years ago when I was thinking of reporting my rape. She did a two-month assessment and informed me I would never survive a court case.

A few years ago, the man I was considering reporting sent me a cute little message including the name he was going by and which city he was living in, just in case you were wondering how scared he was of getting thrown into prison. Life sure is easy for a garden variety rapist. That man is out there because the courts are so traumatic that most of us can’t survive them.

The CDC knows why. You saw her. She had a tequila.