Last week, I wrote about some disturbing Internet comments posted in the wake of the Richmond gang rape that blamed the victim for drinking alcohol. The post inspired some really positive responses . . . and more disturbing Internet comments.

Alex makes the case for victim-blaming—at least girls will now know "the possible consequences of decisions." Decide to have a beer, maybe you'll get gang-raped: A valuable lesson for young girls:

In all fairness, just pointing out that she did not act in the most intelligent manner is NOT the same as saying she deserved it. You’re right, no one deserves to get raped, however, there IS the lesson here which is to be aware of your surroundings and of the possible consequences of decisions you make. Why SHOULDN’T this be used as a lesson. If one less girl decides maybe she shouldn’t have another drink or walk home alone because of this story, then at least we have gotten something out of this awful situation.

Joe commends Alex for his bravery, and agrees that one high school gang-rape ought to inspire women everywhere to stop drinking and never walk alone:

Yeah, I agree with the one brave person who pointed out that there is a difference between excusing criminals and blaming victims, on the one hand, and pointing out how to be safe, on the other. And you are not required to view everyone who comments as either feminist enough for you, or a hateful victim-blaming rapist-defender. Where is real life in this? In real life, unfortunately, we can’t just rail against the bad things people do and hope they will stop, we also have to conform our conduct to our knowledge that people do those bad things and are probably not going to stop. It is not excusing muggers to suggest someone stay out of the alley at 3 a.m. It is not excusing abusive cops to suggest someone cooperate with the police even when they have done nothing wrong. And it is not excusing rapists to suggest someone behave according to their knowledge that there are rapists.

Watch as BakinCookies inserts enough qualifying phrases to attempt to slide his or her victim-blaming past the censors:

Men need to learn how to respect Women better and with that said, Women also need to learn how to have respect for themselves and their bodies! This applies to this article in so many ways, im doubting it was consensual because she was beaten and robbed Therefore men should respect women more! But she could have been Flirting a little and tempting the men to force themselves on her. Either way someone or all of them were lacking respect in some way which totally sucks for the girl. But we will never know the whole truth cause people fabricate stories to fit their needs. Im not makin excuses for the boys im just sayin, Ladies respect yourselves And maybe men will respect you too.
Either way rape is rape and its not right!!

Jane, for one, doesn't see the difference between blaming the victim and blaming the perpetrators. Also, something about racism?

It’s funny how all the people who chide those who opportunistically use this terrible misfortune to lecture women on how to ‘behave’ themselves don’t hesitate to use this terrible misfortune to lecture others on how to raise boys, respect another gender, etc.

However, maybe this event had little to do with gender and respect for women. Maybe it had more to do with race. Maybe the attackers saw the victim mostly as a white person upon which to vent their hatred of whites. Likewise, maybe all of the people who walked by without care for the girl did so because they had no affinity with nor sympathy for a white person.

Maybe the lesson here isn’t how women should behave, or how boys should behave, but how minority groups (including whites among predominately black and latino persons) should be wary of those who aren’t their kind—because it’s all too for majority gangs to treat minorities as sub-humans unworthy of the most basic consideration and respect.

Of course, unlike the other moral instructions people are retrofitting to this event, one of race consciousness and caution isn’t a particularly trendy sermon to preach. So people instead will preach the sermons that will get them gold stars pasted on the foreheads by either their right-wing cohorts or their women’s studies professors.

Sarah suggests that rape can be solved with more rape:

I don’t know about anyone else, but at 15 I was drinking (mind you, at home, with my gal pals and my parents around). I don’t see anything wrong on her behalf. If these men (or were they her age?) get away with this, there is something seriously wrong with society and the judicial system. I hope (since I don’t pray) that she gets the best of mental health care to overcome this. And I hope those guys are anally raped by huge 12 inchers in prison thrice a day (:

B thinks the victim wanted it:

Rape is a crime, but girls are getting wild and boys will be boys no matter what. I know by fact that is part of the deal to be raped by all the gang member before you can get in!. Girls are playing strong games and now someone got hurt very bad and the news are not working with real facts. LETS GET THE FACTS FIRST! IS SHE CAPABLE TO SPEAK OUT AND FIND OUT MORE IF SHE WAS GOING TO BE PART OF THE GANG!! Our society is allowing to much violent shows on Television and part of that is the imitation of tv in real life.

And Johnny is sick of all of you people:

Why do you guys comment on this stuff? Why write long paragraphs about your supporting or differing opinions? It doesn’t do anything, it’s just a waste of time.

Photo via stevechasmar, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Earlier this week, we looked at the popular fear of date rape drugs, and how that fear helps distract us from acquaintance rapes that involve willingly ingested substances, like beer. Beer, you say? In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I talk booze—the most common date-rape drug, the cause of a shit ton of other problems, and a pretty fun thing to drink, in moderation. After the jump: we bemoan the double standard of passing out, yearn for a consentalizer test, and check in on how our femininity is holding up—it's tipsy, thanks for asking!

SADY: hello! good evening! it is time to discuss date rape drugging, or so i hear!

AMANDA: it is that allotted time!

SADY: first of all, i have to say that your take on the whole scenario was (AS USUAL!) highly impressive and nuanced.

AMANDA: well—some issues were perhaps underrepresented there. there are A LOT OF ISSUES. with this ISSUE.

SADY: well, this whole report – that date rapes involving date rape drugs are less rare than date rapes involving date drinking—is kind of set to be a highly polarizing thing. like, some people have been like, "see? the floozies are just out getting drunk! and making up accounts of druggedness!" and others are like, "there are, too, date rape drugs!" and what impressed me about your take was that you didn't (a) minimize assault, or (b) discount that date rape drugs might in fact be less common than acquaintance rape without that factor involved.

AMANDA: I saw that Broadsheet had already written a pretty thought out post that discussed why some women might report being drugged when that was not necessarily the case—and obviously, i read the Daily Mail's amazingly stupid take on it which suggested that women are big drunk liars—so i thought i'd focus on the media's focus on date rape drugs. which is so interesting, because even calling them "date rape drugs" is misleading—the narrative really suggests that when this does happen, it's mostly strangers swooping in with these drugs, and not "dates" per se.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and this is a terminology flaw which i myself have fallen victim to: using "date rape" to mean "rape that was not the stranger-jumps-from-bushes-with-gun" sort of rape, rather than "rape by one's date," which is what it should (and does) mean. i mean: i have to tell you. i don't doubt that date rape drugs are used. a friend of mine just told me a story about how she suspects she may have been drugged, and although she was not assaulted, all the details line up.

AMANDA: oh yes! that is a point that i realized after i wrote my piece! it's possible that druggings are more common than they appear in these studies, but they do not lead to assaults. and that can skew the data, and getting drugged is still an awful thing to have happen to you, even if it doesn't end in assault. [Note: Marcella Chester has since counted the ways that the data on drink-spiking can go awry. Read it!].

SADY: right, it's still a violation.

AMANDA: but the whole issue of rape is an issue of skewed data, because reports are so infrequent. but i would THINK—and i dont know this—that reports of drug-assisted rapes are higher than those that don't involve drugs. because the media is pretty clear about reviling dudes who drug women, and less clear about reviling men who rape women who are drunk.

SADY: yeah. exactly. like, if you're drunk, it just means you're a big old mess and/or tramp anyway, and probably you were just drunk enough to "have sex" and "regret it" and etc.

AMANDA: and i think that "reporting" difference is true anecdotally as well—they may not even tell their friends or their boyfriends or what have you, or they will tell them and they'll be discounted. Etc.

SADY: whereas if you were DRUGGED, you can clearly point to an outside agency in getting you to the point where you could not give informed consent.

AMANDA: right. there's a degree of "proof" that society accepts with those rapes.

SADY: yeah, and, i mean, i have to tell you: i like to drink. i'm having a drink as we speak! and i am a lady who's pretty smart about listening to my body, drinks-wise, and not having more than i can handle. but there have been occasions – whether i didn't have enough sleep the night before, or forgot to eat lunch, or whatever – where A Normal Number of Drinks magically became, for that night, One Too Many Drinks, and i ended up in a messy state. and I was always surrounded by people who cared enough for me to point out that i was a mess, and call me a taxi, and whatever. but HOW SHITTY WOULD IT HAVE BEEN, STILL for someone to assault me in that state? i mean, why the fuck are Drinks considered an extra culpability on your part?

AMANDA: i too love drinking! and perhaps that should be disclosed whenever i defend ladies who like to drink against charges of flooziness! so, FULL DISCLOSURE, drinking! but so: the researchers note that drinking can be sometimes unpredictable, and if your diet or sleep or mood is different it can affect how alcohol affects you. so when, a couple weeks ago, my boyfriend told me he "felt like he had been drugged" because his level of hangover way outstripped the number of drinks he had, i thought it was kind of interesting. but i didn't actually think he HAD BEEN DRUGGED. though i suppose that's possible. but i feel like, perhaps, when women are unexpectedly slammed with alcohol—and particularly if they are assaulted while in this state—they may be told over and over again that these experiences are a result of being drugged. i'm not sure if that actually ever happens. but i DO know that if a woman was ever considered unreliable because she reported she was drugged and raped, and it turned out she wasn't actually drugged, then that would be very sad.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and that's the thing: while saying you were drugged can be pointed to as an example of how you didn't exercise agency in the matter (which is important for rape survivors, because as we all know making Bad Decisions means you totally shouldn't have the right to pursue a criminal sentence for someone who had sex with you against your will) it is also a wedge that can be used to destroy your credibility. which is why women i've known who came to the conclusion that there must have been some drugging involved in their assaults have been hesitant to come forward, because they're afraid that would be used against them. which, in that case, what was your crime? having too many drinks? FALLING ASLEEP????? not to be a big old spoiler, but dudes get to have too many drinks and fall asleep all the time! i mean, a gentleman of my personal acquaintance had too many drinks and was wandering around and got – apparently – randomly beaten up by some dudes in his neighborhood, and as far as i know the police did not tsk-tsk him for wandering around all drunk and beatable.

AMANDA: i know. dudes get to have SO MUCH PASSING OUT without the consequences! and young dudes still binge drink a lot more than women do, not that you would realize that given the media attention given to the matter. male drinking tends to be a bit invisible, i think—it's just something men do, so there's no excessive fear about it. even though men are more likely to be victims of violent crime than women are. i mean, there are fears about men drinking, but they are fears about literally drinking too much and dying from drinking too much. not fears about drinking too much and getting raped, or even drinking too much and raping another person.

SADY: which maybe SHOULD be a fear. i think this is an important point: these studies which say women who have been raped frequently have also been drinking? they maybe miss the point that women have been drinking while in an environment where everyone – dudes included – is also drinking. and i genuinely think that, if ladies have these regimens over watching their ladyfriends' drink consumption and making sure they are safe, dudes should also have people watching them to make sure that they don't get to the point where they are legitimately too drunk to even get what consent MEANS.

AMANDA: yeah. and, i mean, it would help if kids knew what consent means before they knew what "body shots" means. i think it should be on the driving test, personally.

SADY: yeah. that's a worrisome statement i just made, because it seems to remove some culpability from the rapist. but i suspect that (a) assholes who drink become bigger assholes, and (b) since we all recognize that a drunk asshole is liable to get in a bar fight or whatever, we should also recognize that a drunk asshole might be an asshole who is even more inclined to rape than he was previously.

AMANDA: yeah. it seems that while society's prescriptions for female drinking include "drinking correctly"—covering your glass, going with friends—male drinking is just defined by "drinking more." which—again—i like drinking. and if my drinking becomes a personal problem, that will be bad for me. but if my drinking becomes a problem for other people—like i end up raping women or hitting my kids when i'm drunk—then that's something that REALLY needs to be addressed by society.

SADY: yeah, precisely. and the reason i think this relates to date rape drugs (ha, remember those? HI, date rape drugs!) is that, you know, they exist. and even if they exist less than rapes which occur while the rapist and/or the victim were drinking, that's still a problem. one incident of someone drugging a person in order to rape them is too many, i would estimate. but the fact that rape occurs more often in proximity to alcohol – well: first of all, i can recall being pressured to drink A Bit Too Much by certain dates, so i think it's reasonable to state that alcohol can also be an agent of coercion. and, (b) people drink. Specifically young people who want to socialize. As an extremely shy person who is far less shy after drinking, I get the reasons for this. And the fact is that if alcohol coincides with rape, this DOES NOT MAGICALLY REMOVE THE FACT THAT RAPE IS BAD from the equation!

AMANDA: exactly. and i think a lot of it comes down to ladies drinking, because drinking is a dude thing, and when ladies drink it means they're, horror of horrors, ACTING LIKE MEN, or taking away dude-time, or revealing that drinking does not actually make you more masculine and / or awesome. but sorry, dudes, i'm not going to stop drinking!

SADY: yeah! i mean: i think the Horror of Drinking is the Horror of Unladylikeness, presented in vaguely medical terms. fact is: yep, when ladies drink a bit, they let down their various guards and DO NOT always behave in the manner in which society has accustomed us to expect from ladies. they get loud. they get a bit rude or wacky, at times. they EVEN make out with people that they would otherwise be constrained from making out with! (and oh, how I know that feeling.) BUT, with all the loud and wacky and unladylike behavior they are engaging in, GUESS WHAT? you still don't get to assault them! because we are not in Ye Medieval Tymes any more, and rape is not just something that happens to Virtuous Women of Goode Renowne. it can happen to ladies who are acting up, too. and, miraculously, it is still a crime. just like you don't get to rob somebody because you think he is a jerk.

AMANDA: yeah. ok, do you wanna break? i think i'm going to go buy some beer

SADY: do it, lady! ENJOY YOUR BEERS. YOUR BEERS OF FREEDOM.

Photo by jbcurio, Creative Commons Attribution License

Date Rape Anthem: Asher Roth's "I Love College"

Relevant Lyrics:

I can't tell you what I learned from school but
I could tell you a story or two, um
Yeah, of course I learned some rules
Like don't pass out with your shoes on (get the sharpie)

And don't leave the house 'til the booze gone (no we're not leaving)
And don't have sex if she's too gone
When it comes to condoms put two on (trust me)
Then tomorrow night find a new jawn

Why It's So Rapey: On the surface, Roth's love-letter to undergraduate debauchery condemns date rape ("don't have sex if she's too gone"). So why would this Village Voice detractor call the Morrisville, Pa. rapper's first album "nothing more than a soundtrack for date rape"?

Maybe it has something to do with the context of Roth's one-line defense of consensual sex. At the beginning of his video for "I Love College," Roth awakes on a fraternity house couch with a half-naked girl passed out on his lap. He doesn't date-rape her: He just pushes her off onto the floor and starts drinking again. Later, when the party is in full-swing, Roth boasts that he drank the party house dry as he "danced my face off and had this one girl completely naked." He doesn't date-rape her: He just uses her naked body to boost his cred in a rap song.

Roth's song does sets limits for consensual sex—don't do her if "she's too gone"—while simultaneously urging college students to push those limits by getting wasted and getting it on—in other words, doing her when she's juuuust gone enough. In a fraternity house full of people partying naked until all the booze is gone, "she's too gone" might start to seem pretty relative.

Meanwhile, one in four women will be sexually assaulted while in college, making the listener wonder how Roth learned the "rules" of college behavior. Roth knows now not to a) pass out with your shoes on, b) leave before the booze is gone, c) date-rape a girl, and d) have unprotected sex. Has he learned from experience?

Still, it's enough for commenters on feminist blog Feministe to defend Roth against charges of racism and sexism: "He does the bare minimum of saying, '…don’t have sex if she’s too far gone,' whatever his motives," one writes. "I honestly didn’t expect that much because date rape is usually so fucking hilarious to frat boys."

Today is the Washington City Paper's first ever Food Day, meaning that all the paper's columnists have been sent out into the wild to report on what our people are consuming. Though food and sex are inextricably linked "in the limbic system of the brain" and in "pop culture," I'm eschewing edibles today. I've been tasked with reporting on a less sexy, but more noble, enterprise: daytime boozin'.

You can read my posts over at CP's Young and Hungry blog once I get my ass to a bar. In the meantime, let's get started by reading up on Earl, D.C.'s greatest Erotic Photo Hunter, who manages to get some daytime drinking in between pokes of the Megatouch console.