Feminist Blogs Respond to Club Culture and Rape Article

By Jessica Valenti and Evan Derkacz, AlterNet. Posted January 4, 2007.

"Underage Women Sidle Up to Barroom Risks," originally published in Women's eNews and reposted on AlterNet as "How Bars Exploit Underage Women as Commodities" is being criticized by the feminist blogosphere for citing dubious "experts," shaming women for commonplace socializing, and for implying that young "scantily clad" women get what they ask for.

Below is an edited selection of responses from the feminist blogs. (Full disclosure: Liz Funk, the article author, wrote a less-than-favorable Huffington Post piece about me and my blog late last year.)

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon responds:

Please, god, let people stop getting enamored of the idea that the most important battle of all time for gender equality has got to be getting rid of the small perks of being female in the club scene. Yes, yes, it's true that ladies' night is discrimination against men, but for some reason anyone who complains about it doesn't want to hear my solution, which is that women pay 76% of the price men pay on every item until pay equity is reached. This fair solution that addresses all horrible injustices, from ladies night to actual injustices, just doesn't seem to be a marketable idea for some reason.

I bring this up because Liz Funk has stepped in it again with her latest article bemoaning the fact that because men basically run the nightclubs and women are desired to be seen in them, women get a secondary power of being able to manipulate male power for small favors. You know, like those horribly unjust 25 cent well drinks. To make this entire situation worse, Funk quotes Gary Miller in the story, who is mainly an expert in being a douchebag, as we learned when he got into a big war with Jill at Feministe and the fine folks at Gawker, who didn't appreciate his bizarre fantasy-masquerading-as-editorial of legions of club sluts crying into their hangover coffee because they keep getting the fuck-and-run. From this bizarre fantasy, so you know I'm not joking:

You just dance. Then you meet a guy, he buys you drinks, you go home with him, then you wait by your phone the whole next week; but he doesn't call until he's really drunk at 3 a.m. the following Saturday. So you analyze every detail of your encounter with your friends. You start to think maybe he's just busy. But really, you're just the slut from last week.

Women think every guy they have a one night stand with wants to marry them. Gary knows, because he saw it on the teevee. And the teevee will never lie to you about how people really act in order to reinforce stereotypes, now would it?

Gary's a pig with an overinflated sense of how much women need his approval, so why on earth is Liz Funk quoting him in her article about nightclubs?

"Bar and club owners definitely exploit women," said Miller, who wrote an article in November headlined "Girls exchange dignity for attention in trendy clubs" in the Washington Square News, New York University's student newspaper. "Women become a commodity of the establishment that owners use to draw male patrons in. I think the reason most men go to bars and clubs is to find women. This is why they'll pay a cover charge while women get in free; they're paying for the women inside. Bar and club owners know this. They know the success and appeal of their establishment depends on the quantity and attractiveness of the girls inside."

There are two major problems here, apparently:

1. That men have more power and money than women and therefore women end up getting treated like a sexual commodity.
2. Some women realize they can use their commodification in minor, limited ways to get favors.

Which is the concern of "feminist" Liz and her buddy Gary? Well, we'll get around to discussing how problematic male dominance is after we've convinced every woman ever to avoid ever turning tables and gaining some small pleasures here and there. Men feel they can use you for sex? You should cry and give up on sex rather than use them right back and show them payback's a bitch.

But in case this isn't appalling enough, Funk then breaks into hand-wringing about how women just keep going out there and apparently raping themselves. She invokes poor Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old rape and murder victim, and then goes on about how the booze somehow rapes you.

Over 70,000 alcohol-related date rapes a year are committed among students aged 18 to 24, according to "Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility," a 2004 report from the National Academies. The report also finds that 29 percent of those between 15 and 17, and 37 percent of those between 18 and 24, said that alcohol or drugs influenced their decision to do something sexual.

See more stories tagged with: feminism, rape

Jessica Valenti is the executive editor of Feministing.

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