MN Daily piece fails to acknowledge the risks of using alcohol and engaging in sexual activity

The MN Daily prints their Beers and Bars section around this time every year, detailing some of the great bars and brews in the Twin Cities area. I read this special section last year and really enjoyed it. This year, not so much.

This year, the Daily printed an article titled “The Boozehound’s Guide to Love,” basically a how-to for getting sex when you’re drunk. I understand that this particular piece was likely intended to be light-hearted, and maybe even funny, but I still found it quite disturbing and distressing that the Daily would print such a piece with no discussion of alcohol, sex, and consent. Given the very public sexual assaults last fall and the fact that so many sexual assaults that occur during the college years involve alcohol, it reflects very poorly on the Daily to publish such a piece and not address this important issue. One line in particular was quite shocking: “Here’s a step-by-stumble guide to get you into somebody’s pants by the end of the night even if you can hardly take off your own.” If someone is intoxicated enough that they’re stumbling or can barely remove their own clothing, it’s possible that they are so intoxicated that they can’t LEGALLY consent to sexual activity.

At this University, our Sexual Assault/Relationship Violence policy states “if the victim/survivor is mentally or physically incapacitated or impaired so that the victim/survivor can not understand the fact, nature or extent of the sexual situation, and the condition was or would be known to a reasonable person, there is no consent. This includes conditions due to alcohol or drug consumption, or being asleep or unconscious.” In fact, someone can be charged with criminal sexual conduct in the third or fourth degree if they know that someone is incapacitated and they choose to engage in sexual activity with said person.

Anyone who knows anything about the criminal justice system and sexual assault cases knows how hard it is to charge and prosecute an individual for sexual assault (another issue to work on) but that doesn’t mean that we should simply avoid discussion of things like alcohol use and sexual assault. We should be encouraging people in the University community to respect themselves and each other, and we fail to do that when we encourage folks to get drunk and engage in sexual activity without thinking about the nuances of consent.

Originally posted at http://minneapolitanmademoiselle.blogspot.com.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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