Stanford University has been forced to take down a website that cautioned new female students about the potential hazards of excessive alcohol consumption after feminists on campus complained that it “protects campus racists” by taking “victim-blaming to a whole new level.”
The website, called “Female Bodies and Alcohol,” was part of a new effort by Stanford to address what feminists call the “rampant” sexual violence on campus. The effort included banning large containers of booze, and what administrators thought was a helpful treatise on the effects of large quantities of alcohol on the human body.
According to the site, which is now only available in screenshots, women need to be more careful than men when consuming alcohol. “A woman will get drunk faster than a man consuming the same amount of alcohol,” the website said. “Optimize the positive effects of alcohol and avoid negative consequences.”
The site also warned women that appearing drunk might make them easier targets for sexual predators: “Research tells us that women who are seen drinking alcohol are perceived to be more sexually available than they may actually be,” it read. “Individuals who are even a little intoxicated are more likely to be victimized than those who are not drinking.”
It also warned women that men who have consumed alcohol might be “more responsive to erotic stimuli, including rape scenarios,” and that being drunk might lead men to justify being more aggressive with their sexual partners.
The advice, while perhaps a bit outdated in its vocabulary, was generally good, especially if one believes, as some campus feminists do, that colleges and universities are crawling with sexual predators in search of easy targets.
The site told women to be mindful of how much alcohol they consume, mindful of whether they are in control of their faculties when deciding whether to have another drink, recognize that men might be able to drink more than them, and to pay attention to whether their partner’s behavior gets aggressive.
Campus feminists prefer that personal responsibility be taken out of the equation completely, and immediately complained that the website did not list the penalties for committing sexual assault and did not lecture men on why any sort of sexual contact is wrong without affirmative consent.
They also complained that the site, which warns about the “party culture” at college, implicitly sided with convicted sexual predator Brock Turner—a Stanford student who received a lenient sentence for a sexual assault because he was a member of the school’s swim team. Part of his defense in the case relied on the school’s culture.
As a @Stanford alum, I'm so angry at them making "female bodies and alcohol" as the problem to solve, not rape. https://t.co/0Hut5TftuE
— Kathryn C-K (@kathrynbck) August 24, 2016
Sadly .@stanford appears to agree with #BrockTurner that "alcohol" and "party culture" are to blame for his conduct. https://t.co/A9jw82KjsJ
— Michele Dauber (@mldauber) August 22, 2016
Jesus. @Stanford went so far as to publish a patronizing, victim-blaming "Female Bodies and Alcohol" page. https://t.co/rPFNDtUGOS
— Sasha Perigo (@sashaperigo) August 22, 2016
'@Stanford You have taken victim- blaming to whole new level w/ Female Body and Alcohol content. RAPISTS CAUSE RAPE. Period. Shameful!
— JD Ouellette (@jugglingjenn) August 24, 2016
Stanford has now replaced the site with a more “scientific” version of the same information, stating the obvious about alcohol metabolism and the social and health effects of consuming liquor in a way that’s less “demeaning” to the fairer sex. The school is maintaining its prohibition on large alcohol containers, however.
