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The Real Side | Commentary by Joe Messina
| Monday, Nov 11, 2013

joemessinamugThe war on women is brewing up again.

Says who? Says feministing.com.

In a recent column in a non-conservative blog, the columnist advised parents to warn their daughters about some of the things they can be expected or pressured into when they get to college. Among them, binge drinking. Sounds OK to me. I would warn my daughter that among the many things they do at college, one is to encourage incoming females to party and fit in, which almost always includes binge drinking.

No matter how hard we try to raise our kids right, peer pressure is tough to push back on. Parents who care to be involved in their kids’ lives and want them to be safe in their learning environment will always reach out with encouragement and, yes, sometimes warnings.

Your kids are your responsibility. This may be your daughter’s first time away from home. Maybe she hasn’t been in the big city or doesn’t understand what a real predator is, and not the movie kind.

You would think parents who care like this, who had the guts to have these frank conversations with their kids, would be hailed as heroes. But no, not by one columnist. Emily Yoffe’s Slate article about binge drinking and sexual assault came under attack by the left-wing male-hating group at feministing.com.

A writer for the blog states the piece was nothing more than “a rape denialism manifesto” full of “plain old victim-blaming,” Another writer on Jezebel.com accused Yoffe of “admonishing women for not doing enough to stop their own rapes.”

Isn’t that just like the left to jump all the way to the negative? No one is saying the way a woman dresses or carries herself or how drunk she gets gives others license to rape or abuse her.

Amanda Hess from feministing.com says, “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.”

Is she serious? Hey, Amanda, we put away many murderers every year, and yet we continue to have many more murders committed every year. We put away many rapists a year, and yet many rapes are still committed every year. From what LSD-based logical thinking book did you pull your reasoning?

What you’re saying is, if we put more rapists away we will have fewer rapes because new rapists will never come a long? Unfortunately, you can’t actually accuse and catch a rapist until after a rape occurs.

No one is suggesting you tell your daughters to stay home with a Kevlar suit and chastity belt on. We are simply suggesting they use a little self-control and discipline.

As one writer put it, if two people walk into the lions’ den and one has a dress on and one has a meat dress on (like Lady GaGa), the one with the meat dress is probably not going to leave alive.

If a really pretty woman, wearing skimpy clothing, goes into a bar full of sailors just in from a 6-month tour and decides to get rip-roaring drunk and play strip poker with them, can she realistically expect that nothing will happen? Can you ever put yourself in a situation that will most likely end badly? Yes, you can.

I know, that example is really far-fetched. But it’s ridiculous for a reason – because I believe Ms. Hess is being ridiculous.

There are lots of sick people around the world, and they’re on college campuses, too. If trying to protect my daughters, your daughters, and others’ daughters by asking them to drink sensibly and not to go places where they don’t have a safe way out, and to start their college experience off cautiously makes me a parent who is trying to take away my daughter’s “right of passage” or “right to go out and have fun by having a few too many,” then so be it.

I am more than happy to be the wet blanket on my daughter’s fun. I’d rather have her back “un-raped” as a “non-alcoholic” than a mess from her “anything goes” college experience.

 

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also the current president of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.

 

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