Tsk! Look at all those Sluttie McSluttersons being silly and having FUN! Don't they know that fun is for MEN? We'll teach THEM! If they get drunk, we'll rape 'em! Bitches.

That's what I took away.

I feel like they're trying to address two completely different issues here, and therefore saying nothing at all.

Too many teenagers don't know how to drink responsibly. I know I didn't. Bottom line, drinking impairs judgement and slows your motor skills. If you choose to get drunk in the company of strangers, you do put yourself at risk -- of a LOT of different things, not the least of which is simply being unable to drive yourself home when you realize you're ready to leave. Parents need to talk to their kids about HOW to drink.

But to somehow try to tie drinking to being raped? As if you deserve to be raped for drinking? Wow.

I think it's funny (ok, maybe not 'funny,' but crazy) that EVERYONE in the video (the girl, her parents) is implicated in the rape EXCEPT the rapists. Why don't they make PSA's that say "Hey, stupid, don't fucking rape people or you'll go to jail"?

feminanimal, that's what the "Date Rape" song by Sublime does. Heaven forbid that a group other than a band come out with a statement that rapists are at fault.

Everyone knows who is at fault for a crime: criminals, who by definition don't really care what you tell them not to do. If I crippled my ability to defend myself with alcohol and someone attacked me, it would be THEIR FAULT they did it, but I'm still the one it would happen to. Putting the blame where it belongs (on the criminal) is important, but reminding people not to set their children up to be easy prey doesn't seem like a terrible thing to do.

The commercial doesn't say that if my child is abused it'll be her fault, it says that if I give her alcohol when she's underage I'm putting her in danger.

alecks said:

"criminals, who by definition don't really care what you tell them not to do."

So...I guess we should just accept that rapists are inevitable and give up? I'm not willing to do that. Rape does NOT have to be a fact of life or a given in humanity. We need to stop rape culture.

Annebella- I agree. The video's message is kind of a mishmash and ends up making no sense whatsoever.

Don't kid yourself, Queensland Government - rapists are to blame to rape. You'd think it would be a no-brainer...

Westerners seem to have difficulty with the concept that nothing happens because of a single cause. A large part of my religion is trying to see the net of incidents that lead to an action and to weed out what you have control over versus what you don't. Knowing what you can alter gives you the power over the action.

In this commercial, there were many things that were involved in the net leading to the rape: the boys' parents who did not teach them morals, a society that makes it acceptable to rape a woman who has been drinking, the parents' purchase of alcohol for their daughter's underage consumption within that society, a legal system that makes it difficult to prove a rape, etc.

Of these many nodes in the net, any could have stopped the rape. However, the parents only had direct control of a few. Indirectly and over the long term they could influence other nodes, but at the moment in time they had control over one single node. They had the power to stop the rape (in that commercial, of course not in all situations) by making a different choice. Not fair, no, but to recognize your power over consequences you need to get over the very Western fixation with fairness. The world is how it is. You can work towards fairness in the long term, but power comes from recognizing what you can influence in the short term.

"Everyone knows who is at fault for a crime: criminals,"

If you honestly believe that everyone thinks criminals are the ones at fault for a crime, then you are VERY naive. How often are the victims blamed? ESPECIALLY when it comes to rape. A LOT.

I agree with alice-paul -- "We need to stop rape culture." Victim-blaming just promotes rape culture. AND TIHS IS VICTIM-BLAMING, through and through. If you can't see that, you're blind.

There should be more of an effort made to inform young men that it isn't permissible to get women drunk and then take advantage of them or take advantage of women who happen to be drunk. As it stands now, this behavior is encouraged in groups of young men, and nobody dares correct them.

Unfortunately, I think any concentrated effort to discourage this behavior would be met with resistance for "assuming the worst of our boys", or some such thing.

Ha. Feminanimal, you made me snort. The funnest kind of laughter. Yes, if the QLD government wanted to address the issue of the rape of drunk or drugged women with any sort of respect or complexity, they would not have made this ad.

I feel like I should probably give some background to this before I have my rant, since I am one of very few commenters on Feministing from Australia. I don't know if this has been reported on much in America (probably not), but a year or so ago some studies and surveys in Australia found that binge drinking is a huge problem amongst teenagers. Then, they (the cat's mother?) found that it was quite common for parents of teenagers to buy their children alcohol for parties or let them have parties with alcohol at home, in the belief/hope that this would allow them to have some control over the type and amount of booze. The government (mostly federal, but clearly state as well) responded to this with a huge and expensive campaign against teenage drinking, called Drinkwise.

I think that there are some major flaws in reasoning in how the campaign is handling this which have skewed the entire issue, emphasising things that are inaccurate (drink and you're accountable for being raped, for example), and pushing other things under the carpet.

Firstly, a large part of the campaign has been an attempt to demonise people (parents, academics) who say that allowing your teenager alcohol is not always a bad thing. There is a show called Insight, a panel show that tries to review x or y contentious issue from multiple viewpoints, that had a program on this a while ago. Several people tried to explain that their children drank wine at the dinner table, or beer at the picnic, or whatever, because the parents wanted to encourage the idea that alcohol can be a moderate part of everyday life, and not just this glamorised, rebellious thing confined to adolescent parties. The way this idea has been incorporated in the campaign... well, it hasn't been. As you see at the (bizarre) end of that ad, parents who allow children alcohol are automatically implicit in that child binging and being raped. This ad says that if you get your kid to bring you a beer at a backyard barbecue, he will grow up to... um... drink beer with his mates at a backyard barbecue? Obviously this is meant to be a very bad thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNNtsJmZb4

This part of the campaign is zealously pushing the message to adults that if you don't demonise alcohol to your children, that means you're glorifying it and being an irresponsible parent. That's about as complex as it gets, nevermind the fact that the kind of drinking scenario a lot of parents try to encourage (everyday, moderate, downplayed) generally happens because of an explicit desire to teach responsibility and to break down the hype and taboos that young people might associate with drinking. On top of this, it completely ignores a fact that I thought was a cultural given – that if adult society paints something (drugs, sex, whatever) as harmful to the touch without any middle-ground, IT WILL BE HONEY TO TEENAGE FLIES. It will acquire an aura of sexy grown-up-ness.

So a large part of the blame has fallen on parents who allow alcohol. The other part... well, really the campaign just pushes the idea that alcohol is a pure evil, mind-mangling poison. This fails to address or even acknowledge the culture which sets the ground for the behaviours that binge drinking brings out. Evil alcohol doesn't turn nice retiring souls into offensive louts, or wife-beaters, or rapists, or what-have-you. It just lessens inhibition to be or do those things; and when that happens en masse within a certain demographic, it shows those behaviours to be cultural phenomena.

Ugh. I just re-read this and realised how formal and staid it sounds, expecially considering how angry I am about how this campaign has been run. I have to go to bed now, but hopefully my weird stiff rant has informed some of you on an interesting topic of conversation outside America!

But it is true that if you drink yourself stupid, you'd be less able to respond to anything that happens, whether it be a rapist, a sudden moving object, a tough decision, etc. That's more of a message to the drinkers, though: Keep yourself alert, able, and smart.

What kind of party are these underage kids having? It looks like an adult's party. It seems to take place in a number of hotels, with pools and a huge amount of people! Whoever booked that obviously could have gotten alcohol without getting the partygoers' parents to get it. I guess they wanted to get the "Gossip Girl" watching crowd... or maybe to imply the parent was enabling a huge, lavish, decadent orgy with his innocent... box of wine? Damn, dad!

"Unfortunately, I think any concentrated effort to discourage this behavior would be met with resistance for "assuming the worst of our boys", or some such thing."

Yep! Isn't it curious how it is somehow "assuming the worst of our boys" or "assuming all men are rapists!" if we try to educate boys and men that raping is NEVER OKAY ... but it seems to be completely okay to tell women not to drink, because if they do they are being stupid and putting themselves in danger, because they are drunk whores.

On the one hand, I don't mind anti-rape groups giving women good tips to keep in mind while drinking (or not, even). Similar tips are given to people to avoid being mugged - don't walk alone late at night, have a buddy system, don't drink too much with strange people, etc.

The difference is in how rape victims and theft victims are treated. A guy's wallet is stolen, a girl's purse is taken - no one says you were asking for it even if you were trashed out of your mind, because you obviously weren't. But with rape, somehow, it's your fault because you had a short skirt on or you went back to their room and therefore were OBVIOUSLY asking to be raped. It's just absurd. Like a woman's never gone back to a guy's room without intending sex (I sure have!) And I've been fortunate so far, the guys I've been with have always stopped. The only difference between me and other rape victims is those women have been with douchebags who seemed like nice guys until they decided to start raping them. (90% of rape is date rape, as I'm sure most of you know.)

So yeah, until I start seeing ads telling parents that they are responsible for their child being mugged b/c they gave them alcohol, I'm gonna go ahead and call this victim-blaming.

Nestra- if what you said was in fact the purpose of this video, then it still would have failed as getting it across.

The message that gets across in this video is: "if you give your teenage daughter alcohol, then she'll probably get raped and it will be all your fault." Which I don't think either one of us thinks is a good or helpful message.

I firmly believe that effects have multiple causes, some of which are beyond our powers of control and some of very much within our grasp. While victims of rape often have some control over what situations they find themselves into (staying home, staying with a group, not drinking, etc), being RAPED is always out of the victims control. So being against victim-blaming is never about "fairness" it's about who is really responsible. I call that a question of justice and ethics. I also don't appreciate it being assumed what I believe because of what side of the planet I was born and raised on. I call THAT ethnocentrism.

Wow, that Australian BBQ ad was really disturbing too. I had no idea that if I drink a beer in the presence of my children, they may, one day, drink a beer in the presence of their children. I am shocked and appalled and will never drink again.

Besides, if I do drink again, and I am then raped (God, I've been drunk many times, I guess it's bound to happen soon), I can blame the liquor store where I, an adult, purchased alcohol, because the liquor store made it available to me. It was the liquor store's fault that a third party decided to violate me because they turned me into a slutty drunken tease that was asking to be raped.

Glad I got that cleared up. Phew.

alecks said:

"criminals, who by definition don't really care what you tell them not to do."

So...I guess we should just accept that rapists are inevitable and give up? I'm not willing to do that. Rape does NOT have to be a fact of life or a given in humanity. We need to stop rape culture.
Posted by alice-paul Author Profile Page | October 14, 2008 12:19 PM

Well what do you know, if you make up a position you want to argue against and attribute it to me, you can beat me easily. Bravo.

"In this commercial, there were many things that were involved in the net leading to the rape: the boys' parents who did not teach them morals, a society that makes it acceptable to rape a woman who has been drinking, the parents' purchase of alcohol for their daughter's underage consumption within that society, a legal system that makes it difficult to prove a rape, etc.

Of these many nodes in the net, any could have stopped the rape. However, the parents only had direct control of a few. Indirectly and over the long term they could influence other nodes, but at the moment in time they had control over one single node. They had the power to stop the rape (in that commercial, of course not in all situations) by making a different choice. Not fair, no, but to recognize your power over consequences you need to get over the very Western fixation with fairness. The world is how it is. You can work towards fairness in the long term, but power comes from recognizing what you can influence in the short term.
Posted by nestra October 14, 2008 1:16 PM "

Right, and more eloquently than I could put it. I'd care a lot more about protecting my daughter's safety than maintaining the confidence that if someone hurt her it would be their fault.

Nobody ever asks for rape, but I do think being wasted off your ass makes you more vulnerable to assault. Does that mean someone who is intoxicated when a rapist attacks them is any less violated? Of course not. Does it mean if women don't drink rapists will magically disappear? Again, no way.

When I was 17 I got totally wasted at a graduation party and ended up making out with a guy I wouldn't have normally touched with a 10 foot pole. I don't remember most of it, but he kept grabbing at me despite me repeatedly pushing his hands off my ass and half suffocated me shoving his tongue down my throat. I was too weak and confused to really push him away, but eventually some of my friends pulled him off me and made him leave because I was more or less passed out and he was all over me and touching me everywhere whenever people weren't paying attention. If he had done something to me, it would not have been my fault, not at all. But you know what? None of that would have happened if I had been sober. It just wouldn't have. Could I still be a victim of assault whether I drink or not? Sure! But not getting so trashed I can't protect myself at all certainly lowers my risk.

Rape is always the rapists fault, but that doesn't make rape any less horrifying for the victim. Women need to try to protect themselves. Nobody else is going to.

Blaming alcohol is stupid.

Change the conclusion to something like "Talk to your teenagers about being aware of their environment and judging the people they're with" and it's not a bad PSA.

But...

Why is it that conversations about rape never talk about the boy, and always stop at the act? Think about this same PSA, which rewinds showing the _boy_ getting ready to party, and then flashes forward to show the girl sobbing in her room (with her parents) and the boy going to jail. "Rape: a little murder." Or "Real men don't use force." Or "If she's not laughing, you're a rapist." That last one's close, but it's not quite there. If she's not... Anybody?

Rape is not a women's issue. If anything, it's a men's issue. We shouldn't be complaining about the end of the commercial, we should be complaining about the subject.

This message is all too common. I guess it's a lot easier to tell women and girls to "protect themselves" than to address all of the root causes that perpetuate sexual violence in our culture.

Flip this around and see what it does your head (trigger warning):

1) Parent gives case of beer to son.

2) Son gets tanked on beer and drugs at party.

3) Son talks friends into luring a woman away from party to alley.

4) Son assaults woman with friends.

How does this change the message of the commercial? Personally, I think if you're going to blame parents for facilitating sexual assault through purchasing alcohol, this make more sense.

In any case, I think the concept of blaming anyone (rapist or victim) for a rape because alcohol is involved is a cop-out. It denies the personal responsibility of the rapist and blames the victim in a ridiculous way. I've heard from guys who say "well, I wouldn't have tried anything if I hadn't been drunk," and I have the same response to that excuse as blaming the victim who might have had a drink: nonsense.

This message is all too common. I guess it's a lot easier to tell women and girls to "protect themselves" than to address all of the root causes that perpetuate sexual violence in our culture.
Posted by MHeald Author Profile Page | October 14, 2008 5:07 PM

Yes, and more effective. Do you have an actionable plan for eliminating all rapists? If you do, send it to Obama so he can set the wheels in motion. If you don't, you shouldn't be sneering at defensive efforts. People are valuable in themselves, not just as martyrs.

I can't believe that people are actually against telling parents not to give their children alcohol because they might get hurt. The fact that the rapist is a fucked up excuse for a human being doesn't do his victim a damn bit of good.

the message of this ad makes me angry on so many levels....during my junior year at Mills College, the head of "public safety" told a group of us during an event planning meeting that "Alcohol gets women raped and molested" I wanted to reach over the table and smack him...alcohol doesn't rape women, rapists rape women....*fumes*

This concept of disproportionate female responsibility is not a situation unique to rape, nor is it unique to western "booze culture". Once you understand this, you can see why leaving male responsibility out of the equation is grounds for concern. I think that is the outrage here.

At present we have low reporting rates and low conviction rates. This is actually a global issue. Women continue to be plagued by sexual violence under many circumstances.

And at every step, male responsibility is minimized. It's always someone else's problem: It's the government's fault for not enforcing laws, it's the woman's fault for not protecting herself, it's the economy's fault for not giving women better choices, it's the war's fault for putting women in harms way.

I believe in the concept of common denominators. Once you find it, you deal with that, and stop dancing around everything else.

There are men who are trying to do something about this, aleks. Have a look.

There are men who are trying to do something about this, aleks. Have a look.
Posted by ShifterCat Author Profile Page | October 14, 2008 8:36 PM

All good people are trying to do something about it. We are also, obviously, failing, because it still happens, a lot. If I'm a parent, I'm going to raise my sons right, but I'm sure as hell not going to wait for everyone else to do the same before I do what I can to keep my daughter safe. Yes even if I have to resort to such patriarchal measures as not providing alcohol when she's 16. I'll accept her starting a blog to complain about it as a small price to pay.

It's bizarre the way rape is being treated solely as a cosmic matter of justice and fairness here. It's also a real thing that happens to real people. It's not a hypothetical, and even though my hypothetical daughter's risky (and illegal) behavior doesn't make it "fair", "just", "ethical," "ok," or "right" for someone to rape her, SHE'S STILL THE ONE BEING RAPED! The fact that she doesn't deserve it is pretty cold comfort.

I know this isn't that important, but I just want to correct those people who keep talking about the West, like the person above with "Western 'booze culture'." I don't think the drinking culture that the Drinkwise campaign is trying to change can be broadly attributed to the West. It mainly applies to the big Anglo countries; Britain, Australia and the U.S. I'm not sure how applicable this is to the 'rape culture' idea because I'm not familiar with many European cultures.

But, America ? the West. There is a lot more to Western culture than the American/Anglo drinking one. Europe is a vast, varied place and just as much the West as the U.S. It's not productive to simply talk about 'the West', because it's an almost meaningless term and it's also inaccurate.

That was meant to read America [equal sign with a slash through it] the West.

Yeah, Aleks. Complaining about victim-blaming totally misses the point. This is just like with those Blacks. Did you hear about the Black who was drinking at a party and got bashed by a racist? If that Black hadn't been drinking he'd have been able to outrun or outfight his attacker. Blacks need to be protected and that starts with keeping them indoors at night, and keeping them away from alcohol, because then their defenses against racists are lowered. Arguing about how it's the racists' fault is cold comfort to the Black who irresponsibly drank, it's not like we could ever change the racists anyway so why bother talking about it.
/end snark/

Yeah I was getting sloppy, Rosie. Western also can be a reference to Western European societies and their former colonies. Yeah, it's Euro-centric and not very specific...but that's what I meant.

In Europe proper "west" usually means those countries that were not aligned with the former Soviet bloc, too...so again it gets used all kinds of ways....

Well said Hallidite. Don't blame the victim! Sure, drinking puts her more in harm's way; but how about educating teenagers about drinking safely instead of just saying, "No, don't do it!" We all know how well THAT tactic works. Teenagers always listen to their parents, right?

For that matter, why are we also blaming the boy's parents for not "raising him right?" What's with this parental blame?

Gosh, this PSA is so original. And tasteful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irr%C3%A9versible

P.S. Why not tell parents not to give their rapist sons alcohol instead? If 67% of teenagers are abused while drunk, I suspect more like 90% of abuse happens at the hands of drunk teenagers.

"Yeah, Aleks. Complaining about victim-blaming totally misses the point. This is just like with those Blacks. Did you hear about the Black who was drinking at a party and got bashed by a racist? If that Black hadn't been drinking he'd have been able to outrun or outfight his attacker. Blacks need to be protected and that starts with keeping them indoors at night, and keeping them away from alcohol, because then their defenses against racists are lowered. Arguing about how it's the racists' fault is cold comfort to the Black who irresponsibly drank, it's not like we could ever change the racists anyway so why bother talking about it.
/end snark/
Posted by hallidite Author Profile Page | October 15, 2008 2:22 AM"

What an unexpected turn of events. Thinking that parents shouldn't give their children alcohol because it increases danger to their safety doesn't only make me sexist, now I'm racist too. Wow, if only my name had Arabic/Swahili origins you could really go to town with these weird guilt-by-random-nonsense non-sequiturs. I do love Bob Dylan, maybe you can link me to the Weather Underground through him?

"P.S. Why not tell parents not to give their rapist sons alcohol instead? If 67% of teenagers are abused while drunk, I suspect more like 90% of abuse happens at the hands of drunk teenagers.
Posted by paanta Author Profile Page | October 15, 2008 4:09 PM"

Did you actually see the commercial? It said not to give "your children" alcohol. "Children" includes sons. Anyway, if you're not willing to protect your daughter (by not providing alcohol when she's underage, oh patriarchal tyranny!) because you expect the parents of "rapist sons" to keep them properly leashed, you probably shouldn't have children at all.

And somehow, they always find a way to blame rape on women.

So, this really hit home for me. I was 18, and drunk for the very first time. That night I was also raped. I spent a long time blaming myself. "Well I was the one who got drunk, so obviously it was my fault for getting myself in a vulnerable situation in which someone could take advantage of me," was my thought process. And you know why it took me so long to be angry at him instead of myself, to see it as "maybe he shouldn't have been raping a girl who was too drunk to talk let alone consent" instead of "maybe I shouldn't have gotten drunk?" Because of things like this commercial, right here. Yeah, no one forced me to drink, that was free will. To be fair, I really had no concept of what alcohol would do to me or what my tolerance was, but I did know that alcohol would impair me in some way. However, now, after a long time (and therapy) I realize that I need to put the blame where it belongs. ON THE RAPIST! And others should too. A drunk girl getting raped is not the fault of her for drinking. It is not the fault of whoever supplied her with alcohol. It is the fault of the man who raped her, and it is the fault of this messed up rape culture we live in that she would feel even for a second that it is anyone else's fault but his. And it is commercials like this that perpetuate this awful victim-blaming rape culture. Maybe parents shouldn't provide alcohol to their children because it's illegal. Because teens are not often responsible enough to handle alcohol properly. Because they could make a decision that would cause them to engage in risky behavior that could lead to injury. Because they could drive and kill someone or even themselves. There's a lot of reasons parents shouldn't give their kids alcohol...but this commercial is ridiculous and hurtful. We need to educate society about rape culture, not perpetuate it.

I'm actually very pleased with my college, because in our orientation they had split us up based on sex to attend different workshops. For women, it was geared towards empowerment and not feeling at fault for being raped, and for letting us know about various services in our school that offer to teach us protection, and so on.

For the men, it was geared towards educating them on what actually constitutes rape, that if a girl is drunk that does not give them the right to have their way with her, and so on. They also put on a skit that showed a common rape scenario, and then the two perspectives from the boy and girl, and it was very educational for both sexes. Rape is very rare here, I think, because of these efforts.

Actually just a couple of weeks ago, some older man who doesn't even live here tried to rape a student, and she kicked his ass. Ha! He was arrested within a half hour of the incident.