My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that it's alarming because what's being tracked is a rise in binge drinking among young girls specifically, and that kind of rise is distressing, not that it's distressing that the rise is distressing because they're drinking more than boys are. It's clearly a gender-linked rise if it's happening only among girls, which it must be, because otherwise the proportion between girls and boys would be the same.

I'm not sure what it means about "more likely to have sexual abuse," but honestly, I'd agree that 13-15-year-olds should not be having sex, let along unprotected sex; they're not at an age where they can make good or thoughtful decisions, and it's a bad idea for them to be making any decisions while drunk off their asses. So, yeah, in this case, I'd agree that "becoming sexually active" in this age group, under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol, should be counted as a danger.

in my previous life, i worked at an alcohol use/abuse prevention agency, so my take on the story is a little different. traditionally, girls have lower rates of underage alcohol use, so it is alarming that young girls (10-14) are now drinking at higher rates than boys. in fact, i'd argue that any increase in the underage drinking rate is alarming.

its true that the problems than can result from underage binge drinking are the same for boys and girls. girls DO tend to be more susceptible to being coerced into sex or being sexually assaulted during/after binge drinking episodes, but boys tend to more susceptible to physical violence (fights, etc).

i'm unclear how much of it is a alarming b/c young people are drinking more (who happen to be girls) and how much of it is specifically b/c GIRLS are drinking more.

as a side note, i'm extremely disappointed in the news coverage that makes NO mention of the alcohol industry's role in fueling underage drinking. research shows that sweet fruity drinks like Mike's Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice are the drink of choice for girls 10-14 and are specifically marketed to that population.

I think this article is horrifically alarmist and skewed. If you look about halfway down the page, you'll note that it says binge drinking is going DOWN overall.

That the media chose to focus on GIRLS drinking proportionally more, rather than the overall LOWER incidence of binge drinking, betrays sexism. So I'm officially pissed off.

Well, that sentence is kind of unclear. It says "While binge drinking is going down, there's been a big change between the ages of 12 and 14, where girls are drinking more than boys."

That could mean a number of things. It could that binge drinking is going down except in that age group, where boys' drinking has stayed the same and girls' has spiked, which does strike me as something for those of us concerned about girls' and women's health to worry about. Or it could mean that in that age group, boys' drinking has gone down and girls' hasn't, which, ditto. Or it could mean that while binge drinking in that group has gone down overall, girls' has spiked, but that spiking has been offset by the number of boys who are not binge drinking. Or it could mean that both boys' and girls' binge drinking in that particular age group has risen, but that the rise is offset by a drop in the other age groups. And so on. It's a remarkably opaque sentence.

Are 12- to 14-year-old girls really going to be drinking and driving?

are they implying that a 13-year old boy is more capable of handling serious drinking than a 13-year old girl?

A few comments:

(1) I am not sure whether this would extend to kids as young as 13, but in general (due to differences in body mass, hormonal effects, etc), females tend to have less alcohol tolerance than males. Does that mean Ms. X has a lower alcohol tolerance than Mr. Y? No ... but on average, there is a difference -- so, at one level, the answer to this question may very well be, fairly so, yes.

(2) As to the consequences: a boy and a girl get really drunk one night and wake up in bed together the next morning: the boy remembers they had consentual sex, the girl doesn't remember anything (each had the same number of drinks). Some would argue the most likely explanation of what happened is that the girl did not, in fact, consent (or if she did, her consent was meaningless if she was so drunk that did not remember it the next morning) -- under this mindset, taken by many people who claim to be feminists, the serious drinking was indeed more of a problem for the girl than the boy as it was the girl who ended up victimized.

So, yes, according to the way some -- who are bona fide feminists -- view these sorts of events, heavy drinking is riskier for girls than for boys.

DAS, I think (for me anyway, and I'm definitely a bona fide feminist) the point is not who it's RISKIER for. The point is what we focus on. If drinking more puts girls at risk, that's something that their parents and loved ones need to be concerned about. It's not something the media at large should use as a finger-wagging tool, which is precisely what's happening here.

The problem is that so much freedom-restricting goes on under the guise of it being "for women's own good" that never EVER happens for men. On another post just today, we see that this precise rhetoric is being used as a reason to tell women they're not allowed out after a certain hour. You can serve bullshit on a beautiful, shiny, benevolent-sounding platter, but at the end of the day, it's still bullshit.

Well, but this isn't about restricting women's freedom. It's about restricting girls' freedom, and we, as adults, restrict children's freedom all the time. 12-14-year-olds should not be binge-drinking (and those who know me know that I'm not a puritan when it comes to alcohol consumption--I'm specifically talking about binge-drinking here, not having a celebratory glass of champagne at an older cousin's wedding). If more girls of that age are engaging in that risky behavior than are boys, then I am concerned about why they're doing it and how to make them stop.

EG, right, and I absolutely understand and agree with this concern.

But I don't trust the media to go the right way with this. This is going to turn into another in a litany of stories about "girls gone bad" and inevitably will wind up as a rant about how feminism has "masculinized" and "ruined" our girls. Because, of course, girls don't really WANT to drink alcohol on their own, it's the nasty feminists convincing them to be like boys that makes them want to drink.

Yeah, it's slippery-slope-ish, but I don't trust the MSM as far as I can throw them.

There's a book out about one woman's experiences with alcohol at that age, it's called 'Smashed' and I'd reccommend it to anyone who wants to get a better idea of the mindset of the girls participating in this behavior and a first hand look at some of the dangers. It also details the way some parents will ignore a drinking problem in their own children or pretend it's not happening or that it's all under their control, which is likely part of the problem.

And the article is unclear, and I don't like the way it talks about these risks specific to girls. But I have seen that young girls are more likely to get drunk with older boys around, as opposed to boys who tend to drink with people their own age. I can easily see where that would lead to more young girls being sexually assaulted than boys. If 14 year old boys were getting drunk around predatory, older gay men on a regular basis, the risk would probably be the same.

Yep, sure is a plenty opaque sentence: but for the the takeaway message is positive. As recently as ten years ago the gender gap in binge drinking was big. If boys and girls are acting more alike now than different, I infer that their lives are becoming more similar in other respects. That means more freedoms and prerogatives for girls than they used to have. In other words, feeling entitled to binge-drink might be a proxy for feeling like a full human being.

Well, only if we define "feeling like a full human being" as "behaving like a boy." I think that the inference you're taking away from that line is far too big. It seems to me to fall right in line with the general trend for girls to deal with difficulties by internalizing the problem and self-harming, and boys to externalize it and inflict the harm on others.

Girls are committing more violent crimes than before, too. This isn't problematic because boys are allowed to beat each other up but girls aren't wearing poodle skirts and girdles; it's alarming because a segment of the population is engaging in bad behaviour.

Alongside the issue of girls having less tolerance than boys, there are a few other issues:
1. women of the same height and body mass have a lower tolerance than men; and
2. women process alcohol out of their systems at a slower rate (approximately 3/4th of a drink per hour for women v. a drink an hour for men).

Binge drinking is alarming among women (or girls, or especially girls) because they cannot keep up with men, although many try to. I have an extremely high tolerance for a woman, like my drinks strong, but cannot go drink for drink with my guy friends.

Apropos of fruity drinks: many women (and girls) mistakenly believe that the fruity drinks have less alcohol, or do not know how much alcohol is in each drink. If you have six beers or three Manhattans, you know how much alcohol you are getting. You don't know that with Puckers, vodka, and cranberry that someone mixed up for you. Not trying to infantalise anyone, but I can't help but wonder if these young women are even intending to binge drink.

I was definitely one of those young women (22-years-old now and still struggling with binge drinking) and I knew exactly what I was doing. I turned 13 and just wanted to get fucked up. I'm still not sure why. I don't really have much to say about this, but do want to take this opportunity to bring up something related that has been on my mind.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE feministing fan but I do find it disturbing how so many posts celebrate drinking. I mean, I love drinking, but I just wish that I could read the site without being reminded how cool drinking is. I'm all for bloggers being themselves, they don't have to be role models or anything, but I do think it would be nice if there wasn't so much booze promotion on the site.

Patriarchy hurts women too! :(

*rim shot*

"I would think most of these are the same “risks� for boys, don’t you think? ....they [are]implying that a 13-year old boy is more capable of handling serious drinking than a 13-year old girl? Just a thought."

Thanks for pointing that out. No, boys are NOT more capable of handling it, but boys ARE alot more vulnerable to two things: 1)social perceptions that they should be tough and do 'manly' things like taking foolish risks
2) the financial consequences of sexual encounters that end in pregnancy because of uninformed decision making based on innapropriate social steerage of supposed male behaviors.

Its worth noting that the definition of "binge drinking" that the CDC uses is likely very different than what most people think of as "binge drinking". From the CDC's www site, "[f]or women, more than 3 drinks during a single occasion." Men get to drink 4 drinks before they are binge drinkers. "Single occasion" is not defined by time, so by the CDC's definition, someone can be a "binge drinker" and yet not consume enough alcohol to become legally drunk.

Obviously there are correlations between drinking 4 drinks on a given occasion and in having out-of-control behavior . . . if you never drink 4 drinks, it is impossible to drink 8 drinks. And from a long-term health perspective, drinking 4 drinks on a regular basis may be harmful. Outside of those kinds of issues, we generally understand the relationship between drinking and bad behavior . . . concentration of alcohol in the blood leads to being drunk. It isn't simply a matter of quantity, but of quantity over time. The way many researchers operationalize "binge drinking" is to me a shell game because to the lay reader, a "binge" is something greater than drinking 4 beers while watching the Superbowl.

That said, picking up a drinking habit before age 15 is definately associated with major problems down the road. Regardless of what you call it, its a bad thing for a 13 year old to be having 4 drinks. They typically are smaller and lack the mental capacity of adults. Its going to lead to more bad outcomes, and if this is growing among any segment of the population that's a bad thing.

As William points out, the CDC considers a woman a binge drinker if she splits a bottle of wine over dinner.