So this, apparently, was a thing:
Every few months this issue seems
to rear its head again. Some well-meaning individual decides that young women
must be woefully uniformed about sexual violence in our society. The same
individual believes that alcohol is the primary vehicle for making young women
vulnerable and they would do best to avoid it or minimise its use.
As anyone who reads this who
knows me probably should know, I have been embarrassingly, ridiculously drunk
in my time. I have blacked out with a faint impression of standing on a table
in a Sydney karaoke bar singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as if my life
depended on, only to wake up in a King’s Cross backpackers with no wallet but a
monster hangover indicating the likely location of my now missing funds. I
drank enough at an art gallery opening that I became completely suggestible and
at the urging of my mischievous co-drinkers interfered with artworks before
getting lost in the city and getting cabs home with strangers, and got motherly
advice from a Taxi Driver to “drink a glass of water”. I’ve developed infernal
concoctions of Malibu and Tequila that lead me to giving prized possessions
away to strangers. I’ve used my martini making skills to run a bar only to wake
up the following morning with a black eye bad enough that I spent Christmas eve
in a hospital. I’ve met random travellers, sang to piano players, gotten lost,
kissed strangers, swam in fountains, and raised a general level of agreeable
mayhem.
Should I have done these things?
My liver probably says no. A
number of these incidents could have been worse, and I guess I’ve been lucky,
to an extent.
But these adventures have formed
the backdrop of my youth (and not so youth). My drunken foolishness made me friends in Japan, has
given me great stories and has led me up many wonderful garden paths. My life
without these stories would not even be recognisable to me. It might be better,
I might be wealthier, but can I imagine my life without them? Not even
remotely.
I’m sure that many would
recognise their own misdeeds and stories in the list above. And although you
might want to edit some of these out, would anyone really want to excise from their
life of every night of excess as a method of forestalling the possibility that
someone else might choose to do something horrible to you?
Because that’s what we seem to be
saying to young women. And we don’t seem to recognise what we’re asking them to
give up.
We’re certainly not asking men to
give up drinking. Given as they are the segment of the population
overwhelmingly responsible for these crimes, that seems a lot fairer.
But instead, we demand that for
the sake of their safety, young women forgo what is, for good or ill, a major
part of Australian identity; our drinking culture.
This is done, because rape is an
inevitable and unavoidable part of society, or so the story goes. Because warning women about rapists
is the same as warning people about sharks; they are just part of the backdrop
of our lives.
Firstly, does anyone really
believe women don’t know this? Women, in my experience, are aware of the limits
to their safety in a way I have never had to consider. Women know the risks,
and they make calculated choices on the basis of that risk. If I had to choose
between a life of stories and avoiding that risk, I doubt I’d choose the safer
choice. Of course, I’ve never had to, and that's the point.
And of course, the other thing a woman has to consider is that they face the risk of sexual assault if they go to work, if they go to school, or in a disturbing number of cases, stay at home. So given as the risks exist, why not enjoy what they can?
Lots of people have made the
point, better than I, about how telling women to be the source of control
normalises rape culture. What I wanted to raise, was what we ask women to do
when we state that their only chance of being safe comes from renouncing all
excess. It’s not just swimming between the flags; it’s giving up on the ocean.
A choice they shouldn’t have to make.
PS. I've been out of the writing thing for a while, my brain is full of study nonsense. I hope to shake the rust off with this one. It's rushed, so please, if you have criticisms, expansions, counter arguments please post - my rhetorical skills have dwindled arguing only with teenagers!
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