Yes, “they were both drunk, so why is he the only one responsible?” is a bad argument when a tipsy man takes advantage of a woman who is passed out or barely aware of what’s going on. Yet in this case, the degree of impairment seems to have been similar on both sides. Is the man presumed to be the attacker because he was the one performing a sexual act on the woman? If a drunk woman was on her knees on a public sidewalk giving oral sex to a drunk man, it is doubtful (to say the least) that he would be readily seen as a victim.
Indeed, many people—including feminists—have a hard time seeing male victimization even in fairly clear-cut cases of alcohol-related sexual coercion. In a 2009 article on the women’s blog The Frisky, Amelia McDonell-Parry quoted a startling passage from psychologist Jennifer Austin Leigh’s book of advice for teenage girls, Laid or Loved?, which included a discussion of female sexual aggressiveness. A boy Leigh had interviewed recounted (and regretted) losing his virginity in front of an audience at a party while extremely intoxicated, when a girl pulled down his pants, stimulated him into an erection and had sex with him. McDonnell-Parry’s only comment was, “Wow. Crazy,” followed by griping about negativity toward sexually assertive girls.
Yet, if sexual assault is defined as drunk sex that one later feels was unwanted, the gender gap may not be that huge: several studies find that male college students are almost as likely as their female peers to have such experiences. In a 2005 survey of 2,400 students at the University of New Hampshire, 11 percent of women and 8 percent of men reported having sex when “too drunk to consent” in the past six months.
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