Helen Redmond: Is Alcohol the New Short Skirt?

Alcohol is a game changer, when it comes to rape. If a woman was drinking when she was raped, she will be doubted, and told it was her fault. Like Hester Prynne, she'll be ashamed and blamed. Society will force her to wear the Scarlet Letter A, for alcohol. Friends, family,and if she goes to court, lawyers and judges will scrutinize her behavior. She will be bombarded with questions: How much did you drink? Were you drunk? Were you binge drinking? Why were you drunk and alone with him? These questions are asked to establish that the woman set herself up to be raped, because she consumed alcohol, and you can never trust an intoxicated woman, because she really doesn't remember what happened. It is classic blame the victim! Drink and get raped, and you are chucked into the alcohol rape closet. I was: After a long night of drinking at a bar, I got in a car with a man who later pulled out a knife, and said he would use it, if I didn't do what me told me to. For years, I blamed myself for getting raped because I was drunk. I believed that if I hadn't been drinking, I would never have been raped. I'm not alone. Alcohol is involved in a staggering number of sex crimes. In a national study of college students, 75% of males, and 55% of females involved in date rape, had been drinking or using drugs, prior to the sexual assault. According to a study, done by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: "At least one half of all violent crimes involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrator, the victim, or both. Researchers have consistently found, that men who have been drinking alcohol, commit approximately one half of all sexual assaults. Depending on the sample studied, and the measures used, the estimates for alcohol use among perpetrators have ranged from 34 to 74 percent. Similarly, approximately one half of all sexual victims, report that they were drinking alcohol at the time of the assault, with estimates ranging from 30 to 79 percent. The leading rape myth used to be about what a woman was wearing. The twisted logic goes like this: Women who wear provocative clothing are sluts who are "asking for it." But the feminist movement has seriously chipped away at this rape myth. Thousands of women in Muslim countries who wear the burqa, hijab, and dress modestly are raped and sexually assaulted. In India, according to the National Crime Registry, a woman is raped every 20 minutes. Egypt's Interior Ministry reports that 20,000 women and girls are raped every year.