Tuesday 15 September 2009

Young Women In Booze Britain

When I was a young woman, way back when, not once do I remember anyone saying in my hearing "I want to get drunk" or " I plan on getting wasted tonight"
Certainly people did get drunk, but it was not every night out that you would see the one idiot who'd drunk to much either puking or lolling about outside the club.

People knew their limit and generally stuck to it. The idea of a night out was never to down as many drinks as possible as fast as possible with the sole intention of becoming legless! People who regularly got drunk or seemed too keen on their drink were noted and disappoved of.
For a woman to have planned to have got drunk would never have gone down well in any of the varied social circles I moved in..because a drunk woman is a completely selfish woman and becomes very unattractive, and no pleasure to be with.
When a woman is intoxicated she becomes vulnerable to rape, assault and accident. For those accompanying her who aren't 'off their face' all she is..is.. well she is a liability.

My generation always knew to stay relatively sober so that we could fend off the continuous unwanted advances by amourous men (in those days men were never backwards in coming forwards and an attractive girl was often approached every several minutes in a nightclub) or ready to even defend ourselves physically from attack by a man on the way home- the possibility of ending up in a ditch was at the very front of out minds.

Staying safe was our own responsibility and we took it seriously.

If we were dressed like whores and out until 4am we were well aware that this was one of those situations that carried an element of risk. There were certain times within the evening that carried more risk than others....eg walking home alone in the dark, accepting a lift with a stranger, having one too many drinks, seperating from our friends etc So we had to stay switched on and we didn't naively imagine that just because feminism had arrived and in theory that we were entitled to dress how we will, that we are entitled to not have men assault us, that any decent man would never take advantage if we'd had one too many drinks, that we should be safe walking home at night, that this was how it was going to be in reality- as though our sense of entitlement would magically make all men behave better. No, we knew we had to keep ourselves safe and that having too much drink would mean that we put ourselves at increased risk.
If we were groped by a strange man in a club we considered ourselves to have been sexually assaulted.
We valued our virtue and while some of us took stupid risks we also took our share of responsibility for the outcome of those risks. If a woman got drunk and then went back to some strange man's house and spent the night and she woke in the morning realising they had had sex she didn't cry 'rape'. She shouldn't have got drunk, shouldn't have gone off with a stranger and if she was taken advantage of it was her own stupid fault basically. Nowadays men get sent to prison solely due to women's stupidity and unwillingness to take responsibility for themselves.Nowadays, despite an increasingly violent and dangerous culture in our towns and cities at night, there is still no social stigma among young women getting drunk.Where for my generation if a woman had announced and intention to get drunk and laid she would lose her friends and her reputation, now it's a common and shameless norm for women to behave in this way once or twice or more a week. It's totally socially acceptable.

And they have no shame about it either- not even seeing it as a bad or risky thing at all. Young women lose control of themselves in our pubs and clubs every week- remembering little the following day about how they got home or who with or anything else. They commonly have no idea what conversations were had, who groped them or had sex with them...and what's alarming is that they don't seem to care either.
For if they cared for themselves at all they would regret and learn and never do it again...but No...they are out again doing it all again the next night!
There is nothing liberated or feminist about dressing in a manner that leaves little or nothing to the imagination. Or getting so drunk that you lose control of your mind, your body and your moral integrity.It is a wholly self destructive and dangerous way to behave.

Observing a club full of young people in their late teens/ early twenties recently I noticed that whereas in my day most of the men and women would be partnered up, even for just a couple of dances, everyone was in groups. Groups of girls or groups of boys. The young men were not even noticing all the gorgeous girls dressed up to the nines..they were more into each other..not even glancing occasionally at the women....it was as though the young women weren't even there.So is it that women are making themselves so drunk that they loose inhibitions so that they don't have to face the reality that young men nowadays like each other but just aren't that into women..or is it that women cheapening themselves, dressing like whores and losing their ability to function as a human is just a massive turn off to young men, as it always was in my generation?

Women need people to start vocally disapproving of drunken behaviour.
The culture of going out specifically to get drunk is only going to be changed by social and peer pressure. Naming and shaming and showing drunks for the fools they are is the way forward. And sober young people who understand this need to start saying it how it is to their mates.The language for and expectations of a night out needs to be challenged and changed.Women need to start protecting their own honour once more.
Feminism was supposed to mean women would reach down into the gutter and give men a helping hand out of it..instead our young women have jumped down into the gutter with the men.
Now anything goes and noone is supposed to notice or judge the actions of others.
Their dignity, reputation, health, liver, safety and life is risked ...and for what?

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