The Sexual Assault of Women Isn’t a Problem of Women Drinking

Ann Friedman’s response to Emily Yoffe is priceless.

I understand Yoffe is well-intentioned and qualified her argument by making it clear that rapists are responsible at least twice. But putting the responsibility for avoiding being raped on women is still very problematic given the context. Consider the justification of the prosecutor who declined to prosecute a young man who had sex with a woman whose blood alcohol content was still 0.13 seven hours later:

Sitting in his nicely decorated town square office — on one wall is a small collection of framed NMSU jerseys, on another is a framed photo of Graves — he defended his decision, calling the rumors of political favors a “total red herring.”

Rice said charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but he added, declining to go into the specifics, that information brought to his attention regarding what happened “before, during and after” the incident also played a role in his actions.

“There wasn’t any prosecuting attorney that could take that case to trial,” he said.

“It had to be dismissed. And it was.”

Making the sexual assault of women about women drinking too much feeds into this kind of illogic even if it doesn’t intend to. Which is one reason that analogies to telling people not to walk in unsafe neighborhoods are null; nobody blames mugging victims for being mugged or refuses to prosecute the mugger because it happened in a neighborhood with an above-average crime rate.

…Amanda Hess has more.