Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered to 18 in the US? - Read My HuffPo Piece

yes, the more americans hooked on booze can only be a good thing!

RKCNDY said:

oftenreading said:

ldent42 said:

rr165892 said:

Ann,Good article.

I absolutely feel the MLDA should be lowered.
My kids 20,22 and 24 all allegedly had or have fake Id for drinking.My concern is not drinking but drinking and driving ,and for the girls drinking and puttin themselves in a position to be taken advantage of.

We ask our young adults to sign up with selective service,we tell them they will be tried as adults if they get in trouble,they can now legally get into many establishments. Hypocritical to ask these young uns to kill or be killed for your country.Your old enough for that but not to drink.Kinda BS if you ask me.

Seriously? seriously? Ugh.

I do agree with your entire second paragraph though. If you can vote, purchase tobacco products, be tried as an adult, and above all serve in the military at 18, there's no logical reason why you should not be allowed to legally purchase alcohol.

I don't quite get your "ugh". Is it because rr only mentioned girls getting taken advantage of? Because I think as a parent of a teenager or young adult that is one of the biggies that you worry about - your kid drinking too much and getting into a situation where they can't make the decision that protects themselves. Whether that is not getting into a car with a drunk driver, or being able to leave when they're being pressured into sex that they don't want. Talking with your kids about staying sober enough to keep themselves safe, whether they are male or female, is not victim blaming.

So again, we are putting the responsibility on the girls to fend off an over zealous male that wants to get in her pants? Why not teach these 'young responsible adult men' to respect the word 'no'. Or in general, to respect a young woman who has consumed too much alcohol and passed out by making sure she is well cared for until she is sober enough to go home?
We hear of several cases of rape by underage college kids who 'drank too much...oops' correct?
If these so called 'adults', are old enough to die for our country, they damn well know better than to take advantage of a person who has had too much to drink. Alcohol use for unacceptable behavior needs to quit being used as an excuse.
Take some fucking responsibility for your actions.

RC,I don't disagree with everything you said here.I think it can go hand in hand with my concern.My 2 youngest the 20-22 year olds are both girls and college students.So as a parent my worries run the gamut.We have raised them well,but my concerns are for the stuff they can't control.
I had one of girls get shit slipped into drink at a party.I also have met a very scared young man who brought my very intoxicated daughter home late one evening after he and his girlfriend watched over her at a high school party.She was late by 2 hours,we couldn't reach her and we were worried sick.But they made sure she was safe.Now the kids are adults and good people.
There are some good kids out there with the values you advocate for.
So this stuff is concerning

I don't wanna derail so I'll keep it brief. If you're a parent that's actually concerned about your offspring's well being then more power to you, I hope your kids know how lucky they are to have you. I don't think for a second you spoke with malice, however your use of language does in fact denote victim blaming, whether you meant it to or not. These days they call it a "micro aggression", usually people don't even know what they're saying is wrong. But it perpetuates the idea that the onus is on a woman to keep herself safe rather than on every one not to prey on others. There's significantly more pressure on girls to "not get raped" than there is on men to "not rape". In the context of alcohol use, you could say the concern is for women not to drink in bars lest they be attacked, but the same concern isn't as great for young men, whose physiology allows for them to be drugged the same as women.

Don't get me wrong, I don't live in a bubble. In reality, as a woman in a bar you DO have to take certain precautions, that shit is drilled into us from childhood. My "ugh" wasn't in response to your point, which I take to be "I don't want anything terrible to happen to my kid at all, and there's an increased chance something terrible could happen to her if she's been drinking, because that's just the reality we live in." But it was specifically in response to your phrasing, because the reality we live in ain't gonna change until we can get the field levelled, so that perception isn't "chicks get taken advantage of cuz they were drunk" but "asshat took advantage of someone cuz he's scum". The way that field gets levelled, is to rid ourselves as a society of the idea that a girl "puts herself" in the position to be attacked. It's a latent idea we all have that people ought to keep themselves safe, and any failure of that is to some degree, their own failure. It's amplified in crimes against women, but it's there for any crime, you can see it in every headline in the papers.
"Why didn't they have the two person in the cockpit rule?"
"Why didn't they have smoke detectors?"
"What were they doing walking through that area at night?"
"Why didn't she just leave him?"
Etc etc

I said I'd keep it brief. I lied. (sorry Enkidu)

Wow! I'm an a__hole, have been known to be drunk, went to drunken parties, but would just never do anything like that.

Is it alcohol......or lack of common decency?

I've always thought fraternities could exhibit a bit of mob mentality.....and that's scary.

sorority mob mentality? bring it! (Sorry)

how about "I was so drunk, i peed in the closet"?

I hear ya, last.

Enkidu said:

How do we level the field?

obviously there's no bulletproof answer to this, but the best I can figure is to tackle victim blaming, which is such a common staple in our lexicon. I think we gotta get it to the same level as racism or homophobia, in the sense that most people perceive those who hold those views as the small minded ignorant minority, flotsam from a (shameful) bygone era.
Specifically in regard to the examples we discussed of girls getting raped while intoxicated, the only way that happens is over time, as in generations. Boys have to be taught how to not rape a girl, just like today girls are instructed how to not put themselves in a position to be raped. It might sound fucked up and gender biased but it's true. The "blurred line" of consent and the "not my responsibility" mentality that tends to come with privilege are problems that arise out of the sheer lack of respect those guys have for a girls autonomy. It might seem ridiculous, those two guys you mentioned might be otherwise complete upstanding citizens who send their mothers flowers on mothers day and idolize accomplished female professors in their uni, but because they are conditioned to think that a drunk girl's decisions are irrelevant, or meaningless, and because they're conditioned to think that if she went into bed with you she definitely wants it, in spite of what she might say while in the moment, shit like that happens and more often than not without any consequences for them, but nearly always with some level of trauma as a consequence for the girl. In this specific case the campus cops told her that her reputation was part of the case against her, but the boys' reputation is never something that came into question. That line of thinking needs to change.

I know I'm gonna regret posting this. I know it. I don't want to come off like I'm picking on anyone or nitpicking the subject, but even what rr said, "if she did say no" implies that there is/should be some doubt. That bit up there^^ about being conditioned to think about the situation a certain way? That's how we are conditioned to think that way, or rather further evidence of it. And I mean I know it's difficult cuz it does boil down to he said/she said a LOT in those type of situations but what a lot of people I think tend to forget is that there's no benefit whatsoever to a girl reporting that crime, as Enkidu's friend's kid found out the hard way. That why the vaaaaaaaast majority of sexual assaults are not reported. And the estimate is 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted once in her lifetime, but it increases once you become that 1 (I don't remember the figure, which I know invalidates my entire argument, but the point is once a woman's been assaulted her odds of being assaulted again increase.)
I'm sorry I know I probably should've not pointed out the second microaggression but it illustrated my point too well not to. I think this thread is getting a wee bit AMT-y and yea I know if that's anyone's fault it's mine, so I'm gonna have to bow out here. I get too defensive about this stuff and I think I've said all I can in a constructive philosophical/academic manner.