In Defense of Emily Yoffe

     Judging by the reactions to her article "College Women: Stop Getting Drunk" it seems that Slate columnist Emily Yoffe said that women are to blame for being raped.
     Her argument couldn't be farther from that. 
     Instead, Yoffe explains that there is a strong link for women between binge drinking and sexual assault. When women drink copious amounts of alcohol they are putting themselves at a higher risk of being sexually assaulted by a male who may take advantage of their foggy states. She cites a 2009 college campus sexual assault study that found that 80% of assault cases involved alcohol. 
     To prevent these attacks, Yoffe advises that the culture of binge drinking (for both females and males) be addressed. She is exactly right. When a woman gets excessively drunk in party situations she is putting yourself at a higher risk of sexual assault. It's not her fault that our society is that way it is: men prey on drunk women. Yoffe doesn't  blame woman as much as saying this is the way it is; men are going to sexually assault people and a way to protect herself is by not drinking so much. She never says don't go to parties and don't have fun, but in a response piece, another Slate writer Amanda Hess, says this: 

"We can prevent the most rapes on campus by putting our efforts toward finding and punishing those perpetrators, not by warning their huge number of potential victims to skip out on parties." 

     I agree with the first part. Yes, we should put our efforts towards punishing the perpetrators of these horrible crimes. But why not protect ourselves from the beginning? Why wait for the punishment after the assault? To the second part, I say this: Yoffe never says to stop drinking altogether, and she definitely does not say stop going to parties. Women can go to parties and drink. Yoffe is addressing the culture of binge drinking, which as a college freshman, I can tell you is prevalent. Just look here.
     In another article in the wake of Yoffe's piece, Washington Post writer Ruth Marcus supported the Slate writer, when she wrote, 

"Young women everywhere — not to mention their mothers — ought to be thanking Yoffe. Instead, she’s being pilloried... Excuse me, but no one’s suggesting that our daughters should be holed up in the library studying every night, forswearing any semblance of a social life. Yoffe (disclosure: she’s a close friend) is saying that the responsible advice is the one that I’ve been trying to impart for years to my now-teenage daughters: When you drink (because, let’s be serious, they’re not waiting until 21), don’t drink too much." 

     I couldn't agree more. Why not protect ourselves?