If you haven’t heard about Emily Yoffe and her recent Slate op-ed, “College Women: Stop Getting Drunk,” then buckle in; it’s a doozy.
Yoffe, a regular contributor to Slate, wrote a column which said if women were to curb their drinking and not make trying to go “shot for shot with men” a “feminist issue,” they would have less of a chance of getting raped.
And you know, she has a point…
No, I’m just kidding. Yoffe is an unempathetic rape apologist filled to the brim with internalized misogyny and she makes me want to vomit.
Numerous people have already written columns and critiques of Yoffe’s piece and how her identity as a rape apologist and pseudo-misogynist is dangerous, so I want to bring up something else I believe to be extremely problematic.
What is this crap about going shot for shot with my guy friends being a feminist issue?
First of all, it isn’t true. I’m personally a beer and wine snob and not so much a shots person, but I do not know any women who take shots just to “keep up” with her guy friends; she does it for herself, for her own enjoyment and not because she is so absorbed by the notion of fitting in with her guy friends.
What Yoffe is saying is particularly dangerous because she’s saying that something she believes to be a feminist issue is male-centric, and that is obviously not what feminism is about.
In the past two decades, the feminist movement has become very self-defined. For me, feminism is a safe haven where I can relate and not feel the pressure to live up to normal, and subtle (re: sinister) patriarchal standards. Feminism is not male-centric, as Yoffe implies. Bottom line, women shouldn’t have to curb their enjoyment to fit into patriarchal standards. Anyone who insinuates otherwise, to be blunt, is a moronic misogynist.