Re: Women, drinking, and blaming feminism

Yesterday Jessica took to task this diminishing and poorly thought out article in NY Mag about gender equality and drinking. Jesscia did a great job parsing the bullshit in the article as blaming feminism for women’s rate of drinking and I wanted to add to her analysis from a different angle, as that of someone who has had many close friends enter recovery.
In the last few years, I have had several close friends come to a cross-roads with their drinking where they have either decided that they can’t drink as much as they used to or they have entered recovery. Many of the transformations have been painful, they have been introspective for all of us and they have harnessed on the collective strength of women supporting each other in making the best decisions for themselves. Feminism has played a key role in this. Many of my female friends drink in excess, not because they wanted to be “one of the guys” but because they had lives that were difficult as women, either for internalized sense of failure, experiencing abuse, depression around money, depression around social stature or failed relationships. I am not just talking about drinking for fun, of course women engage in that as well, but I am talking about drinking as a way to numb the pain, difficulty and reality of this often cold cold world.
It has been through the support of feminism and the fundamental belief that women have the right to enjoy life and not hate themselves for the failures that society has in many ways set up for us have we found the strength to take care of ourselves. So while the type of thought expressed in the above article blames feminism for allowing women to act more like men, I am arguing that it is the pressure of patriarchy, racism and poverty that have frequently led women to drinking in excess and feminism that has given us the framework to understand it is not our fault, but a system built on our failures.