Dr. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus and current professor of public service at The George Washington University (GWU), has become the subject of outrage from feminists on social media for suggesting that alcohol education may help prevent sexual assaults on campus.
During an episode of the Diane Rehm Show last week, Trachtenberg participated in a panel discussion about Greek Life at U.S. colleges in which he suggested that binge-drinking is a factor in instances of sexual misconduct.
“Part of the problem is you have men who take advantage of women who drink too much and there are women who drink too much,” said Trachtenberg, adding that “we need to educate our daughters and our children in that regard.”
Although Trachtenberg prefaced his remarks by saying people should further encourage women to not drink in excess “without making the victims responsible for what happens,” female students and women’s groups flooded Twitter, calling his remarks “irresponsible” and accusing him of “gross victim blaming” and being a “rape apologist.”
Sally Kaplan, a recent graduate of GWU and peace alliance coordinator at the non-profit organization, the Peace Alliance, created a petition using the online platform Change.org to demand that Trachtenberg “issue an apology to the GWU community” and match her and other students’ crowdfunding efforts to hire a full-time “Survivors Advocate” at the university.
The petition also calls on the university to provide “better support for university students including more prevention, intervention, education and survivor advocacy resources.” Ironically, in a piecepublished by administrators the day after Trachtenberg’s remarks, the university promoted a sexual assault prevention event sponsored by GWU’s Center for Alcohol and other Drug Education.
According to Campus Safety Magazine, “at least 50 percent of college student sexual assaults are associated with alcohol use.”
In a column published last October, Slate contributor Emily Yoffe explained that “a misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women that when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.”
“Let’s be totally clear: Perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes, and they should be brought to justice. But we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them,” wrote Yoffe.
I think I should not marry a radical feminist for the following reason. They want to be able to perform reckless actions and then blame other people when predictable consequences occur. That is scary to me. I want to marry someone who checks her own behavior and makes good decisions. When things go wrong, I want her to take responsibility for her own actions instead of playing the victim. I think the reaction by feminists is also revealing because it seems to show why they are so pro-abortion. In that issue, the feminists want the recreational sex, but not the responsibility for what the choice to have recreational sex produces. Except in that case, it’s the innocent child who suffers from the mother’s recklessness.
This study is from the Institute for American Values. Despite their name, they are not conservatives. It was done by Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt.
If you download the 88 page PDF, the first few pages are an executive summary.
There are a couple of things that really struck me about this IAV study on hooking-up.
First, this one from p. 15:
A notable feature of hook ups is that they almost always occur when both participants are drinking or drunk.
A Rutgers University student observed, “You always hear people say, oh my gosh, I was so drunk, I hooked up with so and so…” Perhaps not surprisingly, many noted that being drunk helped to loosen one’s inhibitions and make it easier to hook up. A number of students noted that being drunk could later serve as your excuse for the hook up. A Yale University student said, “Some people like hook up because they’re drunk or use being drunk as an excuse to hook up.” A New York University student observed, “[Alcohol is] just part of an excuse, so that you can say, oh, well, I was drinking.”
A Rutgers University student commented, “If you’re drinking a lot it’s easier to hook up with someone… [and] drugs, it’s kind of like a bonding thing… and then if you hook up with them and you don’t want to speak to them again, you can always blame it on the drinking or the drugs.”
Other women observed that being drunk gives a woman license to act sexually interested in public in ways that would not be tolerated if she were sober. For instance, a University of Michigan student said, “Girls are actually allowed to be a lot more sexual when they are drunk…”
A University of Chicago junior observed, “One of my best friends… sometimes that’s her goal when we go out. Like she wants to get drunk so I guess she doesn’t have to feel guilty about [hooking up].”
Some reported that drinking had led them to do things they later regretted. A University of Virginia student said, “My last random hook up was last October and it was bad. I was drunk and I just regretted it very much.”
And this one from p. 30 on the effects of hooking-up on their future commitments:
A few women did see an unambiguous connection between present relationships and future marriage.
[…]Many women either saw little or no connection between present and future relationships, or their understanding of this connection was curiously flat. A student at New York University said, “[The present and the future are] connected because I will still have the same values and principles that I have now, but I just won’t be single anymore.”A number of women said that the present and the future are connected because whatever heartache or confusion they experience now gives them lessons for the future.
A University of Michigan student said, “Early relationships prepare you for marriage because it’s like, oh, what type of person do I want to be with? Oh, I’ve had these bad experiences. Or, I’ve learned from this relationship that I should do this and I shouldn’t do this.”
A sophomore at Howard University said that “I am kind of learning from a lot of the mistakes that I have made.” At a further extreme, some women saw their future marriage as the reason to experiment widely in the present. A Rutgers University student said,“I think hooking up with different people and seeing what you like and don’t like is a good idea. Because eventually you’re going to have to… marry someone and I’d just like to know that I experienced everything.”
Although it is admirable to take risks and learn from one’s mistakes, these women would probably find it difficult to explain how having your heart broken a few or even many times in your early years — or trying to separate sex from feeling, as in hooking up — is good preparation for a trusting and happy marriage later on.
And on p. 42, we learn what women think marriage is and isn’t for:
For instance, in the on-campus interviews one student complained, “[With] marriage…you have to debate everything… Why do you need a piece of paper to bond a person to you? …But I know if I don’t get married I’ll probably feel like… [a] lonely old woman… If anything, I’d get married [because of] that.”
This student went on to say that she would be satisfied to live with a man, but added that, if the man was committed to her, he would offer to marry her, and that this was the kind of commitment that she wanted. A student at the University of Washington said,“I don’t want to get married right after I graduate from college. I just think that would stunt my growth in every way that there is. I would like to be in a very steady, committed relationship with a guy.”
And on p. 44, we learn that they like co-habitation, which increases the risk of divorce by about 50% (but they don’t know that):
In the national survey, 58 percent of the respondents agreed that “It is a good idea to live with someone before deciding to marry him.” This belief often coexists with a strong desire to marry, because it was embraced by 49 percent of the respondents who strongly agreed that marriage was a very important goal for them.
[…]Women we interviewed on campus reflected a similar range of attitudes about cohabitation. Some women thought that cohabitation was a good way to test whether one could spend a lifetime with a potential partner. In such cases, women often cited fears of divorce as the reason for trying cohabitation first. A senior at the University of Washington said, “I kind of don’t really see marriages work ever, so I want to make sure that everything’s all right before [we get married]. I don’t see how people can get married without living together because I know like I have a best friend and I live with her and we want to kill each other, like, every few months.”
Other women felt that, in an age of divorce, cohabitation was a preferable alternative to marriage. A student at New York University said, “You see so [many] people getting divorces… I just don’t see the necessity [of marriage].” She went on to say, “I think that I don’t have to be married to [the] person that I’m with…. You know like… Goldie Hawn [and Kurt Russell]? They’re not married.”
But let’s get back to the drinking and the hook-up sex…
Once a woman abandons femininity for feminism, then sex is all that she can use to get noticed by a man. Men are like hiring managers, and courting is like a job interview for the job of marriage and mothering. If a woman tries to get the job by having sex with the interviewer, he isn’t going to hire her for the marriage job, since sex has almost nothing to do with the marriage job. Men have to think about things like fidelity and mothering ability when they are choosing a wife. The problem is that thanks to feminism, women have stopped trying to show their ability to be wives and mothers to men, preferring to instead act like men – no emotions, toughness, hardness, binge-drinking, promiscuity. Men may be happy to have sex with women like that, but they do not commit to them. Moreover, if a man is constantly being offered sex from feminist women during his 20s and 30s, he basically loses all the time that he could be training for his roles as protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. He will never take on those roles if he is handed sex before marriage for free. That is the root cause of the “man-up” complaint that women make. Why don’t men grow up? Because they don’t have to in order to get sex – women are giving them oral sex on the first date now. There is no need to prove themselves as husbands and fathers anymore.
In a previous post, I explained how feminists wanted to get women to drink like men, have sex like men, and to abolish courtship and marriage. Under the influence of cultural definitions of what makes a good man and a good relationship, women began to choose men to have sex with without any consideration of morality, religion, marriage, etc. This results in a cycle of binge-drinking, one-night-stands, cheating, co-habitating, breaking-up, stalking, aborting, etc., until the woman’s ability to trust and love anyone – including herself – is completely destroyed. And yet these college women somehow believe this is is “fun” and “adventurous”, that it makes them feel “sexy”, and that the experience of being selfish and seeing the worst kind of men acting in the worst possible ways, point blank, somehow prepares them for marriage and motherhood. They are told this, and they are so unable to break out of their need to “fit in” with their peers and culture that by the time they realized they’ve been had, it’s too late to fix it. And yet, they themselves made those decisions. They are responsible.
The problem is made worse because their feminist mothers often deliberately chose men who were poor moral and spiritual leaders. Often, a young unmarried woman’s biological father was NOT selected by her mother based on his ability to make commitments and moral judgments. Many feminists prefer men who do not make moral judgments or present exclusive religious views persuasively. Those are the very things that young unmarried women today seem to dislike most about men. And yet those are exactly the things that make men good husbands and fathers. Some women don’t want to be judged morally or led spiritually, so they choose immoral, non-religious men. The problem is that those men cannot then be counted on to act morally and spiritually in a relationship. They make terrible fathers for daughters, as well – perpetuating the problems of women being unable to resist a secular, relativistic, hedonistic culture. And when these marriages to bad men fail, the daughters grow up fatherless, which is arguably worse than having even a defective father.
An interesting discovery in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, reported by Science Daily. (H/T William B.)
Excerpt:
It only takes one time. That’s the message of a new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School on binge drinking. Their research found that a single episode of binge drinking can have significant negative health effects resulting in bacteria leaking from the gut, leading to increased levels of toxins in the blood. Published online in PLOS ONE, the study showed that these bacterial toxins, called endotoxins, caused the body to produce immune cells involved in fever, inflammation, and tissue destruction.
“We found that a single alcohol binge can elicit an immune response, potentially impacting the health of an otherwise healthy individual,” said lead author Gyongyi Szabo, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, vice chair of the Department of Medicine and associate dean for clinical and translational sciences at UMMS. “Our observations suggest that an alcohol binge is more dangerous than previously thought.”
Binge drinking is defined by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as a pattern of drinking alcohol that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08g/dL or above. For a typical adult, this corresponds with consuming five or more drinks for men, or four or more drinks for women, in about two hours, depending on body weight.
Binge drinking is known to pose safety risks associated with car crashes and injuries. Over the long term, binge drinking can damage the liver and other organs, but this [study] is key evidence that a single alcohol binge can cause damaging health effects such as bacterial leakage from the gut into the blood stream, according to a statement released by George Koob, PhD, director of the NIAAA.
I’ve never been drunk, thank goodness – mostly because I like putting money into bank accounts more than giving it to other people for entertainment related products and services. Scheming works better with money, and I love to scheme and plan and achieve. Not only that, but drunkenness is forbidden in Gal 5:21 and Eph 5:18. So there is the Bible and the stewardship of money. Two good reasons to not drink excessively.
I made my way through high school and college without drinking once (except maybe Kahlua with milk, or something like that, at holidays with the family, I don’t remember). My first beer was when I graduated and had my first full-time job. It was the height of the dot-com bubble, we all had good jobs and were making money. So when we went out as a team, I had one beer with the team, and then they would feel comfortable talking to me about spiritual things. Since then, I’ve averaged about a beer a year. It’s just not something I can afford to spend money on regularly. You don’t get rich by spending money, and we all ought to be very worried about our future prosperity, at this point, given what’s going on in Washington.
I think my bigger concern though is that with non-Christians, I don’t let my guard down. I am always “on duty” and ready to answer their questions. Can’t afford to do anything that is going to compromise my ability to reason well and make good decisions in front of them. I know enough people who have had alcoholic parents or been harmed by alcohol that I find it easy to just avoid it completely. The tragedy of drunk driving is one of the things that really pushed me away from alcohol entirely when I was younger. The idea that some drunk person can kill or seriously injure an innocent person doesn’t sit well with me.
WINTERY KNIGHT 