Getting drunk makes women more vulnerable to rape. Why shouldn't we say so?

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In one awful high-profile case after another - the US Naval Academy; Steubenville, Ohio; now the allegations in Maryville, Missouri - we read about a young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped.

As soon as the school year begins, so do reports of female students sexually assaulted by their male classmates.

A common denominator in these cases is alcohol, often copious amounts, enough to render the young woman incapacitated. But a misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women that when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.

A 2009 study of campus sexual assault found that by the time they are seniors, almost 20 per cent of college women will become victims, overwhelmingly of a fellow classmate. Very few will ever report it to authorities. The same study states that more than 80 per cent of campus sexual assaults involve alcohol. Frequently both the man and the woman have been drinking. The men tend to use the drinking to justify their behaviour, as a survey of research on alcohol-related campus sexual assault by Antonia Abbey, professor of psychology at Wayne State University, illustrates, while for many of the women, having been drunk becomes a source of guilt and shame.

Sometimes the woman is the only one drunk and runs into a particular type of shrewd - and sober - sexual predator who lurks where women drink like a lion at a watering hole. For these kinds of men, the rise of female binge drinking has made campuses a prey-rich environment. I've spoken to three recent college graduates who were the victims of such assailants, and their stories are chilling.

Let's be totally clear: Perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes, and they should be brought to justice. But we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenceless, terrible things can be done to them. Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue. The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people who, shall we say, don't have your best interest at heart. That's not blaming the victim; that's trying to prevent more victims.

Experts I spoke to who wanted young women to get this information said they were aware of how loaded it has become to give warnings to women about their behaviour. "I'm always feeling defensive that my main advice is: 'Protect yourself. Don't make yourself vulnerable to the point of losing your cognitive faculties', " says Anne Coughlin, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, who has written on rape and teaches feminist jurisprudence. She adds that by not telling them the truth - that they are responsible for keeping their wits about them - she worries that we are "infantalising women."

The "Campus Sexual Assault Study" of 2007, undertaken for the Department of Justice, found that the popular belief that many young rape victims have been slipped "date rape" drugs is false. "Most sexual assaults occur after voluntary consumption of alcohol by the victim and assailant," the report states. But the researchers noted that this crucial point is not being articulated to young and naïve women: "Despite the link between substance abuse and sexual assault it appears that few sexual assault and/or risk reduction programs address the relationship between substance use and sexual assault." The report added, somewhat plaintively, "Students may also be unaware of the image of vulnerability projected by a visibly intoxicated individual."

"I'm not saying a woman is responsible for being sexually victimised," says Christopher Krebs, one of the authors of that study and others on campus sexual assault. "But when your judgment is compromised, your risk is elevated of having sexual violence perpetrated against you."

Binge drinking needs to join smoking, drunk driving and domestic abuse as behaviours that were once typical and are now unacceptable.

Reducing binge drinking is going to require education, enforcement, and a change in social culture. Puking in your hair, peeing in your pants, and engaging in dangerous behaviours have to stop being considered hilarious escapades or proud war stories and become a source of disgust and embarrassment.

As a parent with a daughter heading off to college next year, I've noted with dismay that in some college guidebooks almost as much space is devoted to alcohol as academics. School spirit is one thing, but according to The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, when the University of Florida plays Florida State University, "Die-hard gator fans start drinking at 8am. No joke." I guess I'm supposed to be reassured to read that at the University of Idaho "not everyone is an alcoholic."

"High-risk alcohol use is the one thing connected to all, and I mean all, the negative impacts in higher education," says Peter Lake, director of the Centre for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law and author of "The Rights and Responsibilities of the Modern University."

I've told my daughter that it's her responsibility to take steps to protect herself. ("I hear you! Stop!") The biological reality is that women do not metabolise alcohol the same way as men, and that means drink for drink women will get drunker faster. I tell her I know alcohol will be widely available (even though it's illegal for most college students) but that she'll have a good chance of knowing what's going on around her if she limits herself to no more than two drinks, sipped slowly - no shots! - and stays away from notorious punch bowls. If female college students start moderating their drinking as a way of looking out for their own self-interest - and looking out for your own self-interest should be a primary feminist principle - I hope their restraint trickles down to the men.

If I had a son, I would tell him that it's in his self-interest not to be the drunken frat boy who finds himself accused of raping a drunken classmate.

Educating students about rape, teaching them that by definition a very drunk woman can't consent to sex, is crucial. Also important are bystander programs that instruct students in how to intervene to prevent sexual assault on drunk classmates and about the need to get dangerously intoxicated ones medical treatment.

But nothing is going to be as effective at preventing alcohol-facilitated assaults as a reduction in alcohol consumption. The 2009 campus sexual assault study, co-authored by Professor Krebs, found campus alcohol education programs "seldom emphasise the important link" between women's voluntary alcohol and drug use "and becoming a victim of sexual assault." It goes on to say students must get the explicit message that limiting alcohol intake and avoiding drugs "are important sexual assault sex protection strategies." I think it would be beneficial for younger students to hear accounts of alcohol-facilitated sexual assault from female juniors and seniors who've lived through it.

Of course, perpetrators should be caught and punished. But when you are dealing with intoxication and sex, there are the built-in complications of incomplete memories and differing interpretations of intent and consent. To establish if a driver is too drunk to be behind the wheel, all it takes is a quick test to see if his or her blood alcohol exceeds the legal limit. There isn't such clarity when it comes to alcohol and sex. According to "Prosecuting Alcohol-Facilitated Sexual Assault," a study by the National District Attorneys Association: "Generally, there is not a bright-line test for showing that the victim was too intoxicated to consent, thereby distinguishing sexual assault from drunken sex." Bringing these cases is, the study notes, "an extreme challenge."

And who are the alcohol purveyors and predators?Researchers have explored how these men use alcohol, instead of violence, to commit their crimes. Lake observes that these offenders can be leaders, charming and well liked - something that comes in handy if they are accused of anything. "They work our mythology against us," says Lake. "We would like to see our daughters hang out with nice boys in navy blue blazers."

The three young women I spoke to who were victims of such men attended different colleges, but their stories are so distressingly similar that it sounds as if they were attacked by the same young man. In each case the woman lost track of how much she'd had to drink. Then a male classmate she knew took her by the hand and offered her an escort. Then she was raped by this "friend." Only one reported to authorities what happened, more than a year after the fact. In her case she was set upon by two classmates, and the university declined to take action against either one.

One of the rape victims was a senior who had been to a school-sponsored celebration where the wine flowed, then everyone went to a bar to continue the festivities. Her memories are fragmentary after that, but a male classmate came by. She remembers running down the street with him, then being in bed, then waking up the next day with her clothes inside out. She was sickened at herself for what she thought was cheating on her longtime boyfriend and confessed her infidelity to him. Ultimately that led to their breakup.

As she dealt with her shame and guilt, she talked to friends about that night, and the real story emerged. She was so intoxicated that her friends were worried about her when she stumbled out of the bar disoriented and without her shoes. They said they saw her being led away by the male classmate who was not drunk. She came to understand that she had been raped. "Since I realised it wasn't my fault, I crawled out of a deep, dark hole," she says. She also knew he'd done it before. "He had this reputation if you were going to be drunk around him, he was probably going to have sex with you."

The young woman laments the whole campus landscape of alcohol-soaked hookup sex. "Women are encouraged to do it, which ignores all the risks for us," she says. "You get embarrassed and ashamed, so you try to make light of it. Then women get violated and degraded, and they accept it. Who does this culture benefit? Alcohol predators. It doesn't liberate anybody."

Lake says that it is unrealistic to expect colleges will ever be great at catching and punishing sexual predators; that's simply not their core mission. Colleges are supposed to be places where young people learn to be responsible for themselves. Lake says, "The biggest change in going to college is that you have to understand safety begins with you. For better or worse, fair or not, just or not, the consequences will fall on your head."

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