Women R Peepul 2

Sometimes I am literally stunned by the idiocy of things I read:

The campus of Framingham State College is roiled by reports women are being groped, pushed to have sex or are too drunk to even recall if they had intercourse.

The coeds say a feeling of “shame” keeps them from going after their alcohol-pumped male counterparts.

Let me just take a wild stab in the dark here. As is so happens, I'm not particularly naive about this sort of thing. I went to a college with a reputation for out-of-control drinking (the movie Animal House was modeled on it). There were 3.5 guys for every girl when I was there. There were no sororities on campus so the only place I usually went, other than a very overcrowded little tavern called Peter Christian's and the odd small gathering at someone's place, was to frat parties.

Could it possibly be that just maybe these ladies need to practice some situational awareness?

Is it just possible that if you show up in Babylon and drink yourself into a stupor, people naturally tend to assume you're there for the ensuing fun and games?

“I was kind of shocked,” senior Kelley Donley of Millbury said yesterday of the sexually charged atmosphere exposed in the college newspaper.

“In a school like UMass, it is definitely something you expect,” she said, “but you don’t expect it here at a small school.”

If a senior at the college is "shocked", then apparently she has managed to avoid these types of situation herself for almost four years. That certainly suggests that it might still be possible to engage in social (not sexual) intercourse in relative safety.

The article tells nine stories from anonymous female students about the unwanted sexual minefield come party time.

One woman said she became so drunk at a party that she could not remember whether or not she had intercourse with the guy she was with. Other women tell of being grabbed and pressured to have sex.

At the risk of seeming heartless, unless someone else has spiked your drink or held you down and poured liquor down your throat, becoming "so drunk you cannot remember whether or not you've had intercourse with the guy you're with" is entirely a voluntary act. The odds are the guy who "grabbed you and pressured you to have sex" was drunk too.

Both voluntary acts. As far as I'm concerned, that fits the textbook definition of consensual sex. It's interesting how being drunk is viewed as an exculpatory circumstance for these young women ("I couldn't help it! I was so drunk I didn't know what was happening!"), but not for the young men who they had sex with ("I couldn't help myself! I was so drunk I didn't know what was happening!"). Rape is a serious crime and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but women who engage in this kind of victimization politics just make it harder for legitimate rape victims to obtain justice.

Should men take advantage of an intoxicated woman? Of course not. But on the other hand, a woman should be adult enough to realize that if she chooses to become so drunk that she can't object (or even remember) having sex, and regularly socializes with men whose inhibitions are similarly impaired, human nature is going to take its course, with entirely predictable results.

The only crime here is stupidity. Perhaps that explains that feeling of shame.