Alcoholic Drinks and Social Interactions
Alcoholic drinks are growing in fame and their use has become increasingly important in all social settings. They have been used to grace occasions that are casual to even the most formal social events. With the increase in the use of alcoholic drinks so has the dependency on them increased. It is really difficult to find in the present a social event that is totally non-alcoholic even the simplest such as first-time dates. As many would still perceive alcohol use as a harmless activity, it has not really been given much thought on when it is important to completely maintain a sober mind during social interactions. Therefore, this fact builds the question of our subject today: What are the effects of alcohol use? And if it increases the chances of date rape occurrences.
Keywords: Alcohol use, date rape
Effects of Alcohol Use and Date Rape
Alcohol use has been known to have a verse effect on social behavior. This verse effect has been dubbed by the name alcohol myopia which defines how alcohol use affects the brain and impairs one able to judge or make conscious decisions resulting to that time when we describe one as being drunk(Pumphrey -Gordon " Gross, 2007).
Date rape is any forced sexual encounter that takes place during a social engagement (Somei, Oshiriki, Hasegawa " Yamada, 1999). Therefore whenever two people meet for a social engagement and during the engagement one party takes advantage of the interaction or the seemingly social situation to satisfy their sexual lusts by coercing the other unwilling party to engage in sexual activities with them, that action is termed as a date-rape. Most date rape occurrences are reported to have taken place between people who have met before in time and therefore would to some extent know each other or exceedingly have knowledge of each other. In most case date-rape victims are able to pinpoint their assailants.
Research on Alcohol Use and Date Rape
Researchers have gone further to try and relation how alcohol use would result in the occurrence of date-rapes and sexually assaulting. According to the research by Pumphrey -Gordon " Gross (2007), drunkenness is usually a sign for an assailant to take advantage of their victim, this is because the affected woman is expected to be less resistant or more gullible to the sexual advance by the man. Another report showed that women who have alcohol in their system have a higher probability of getting completely raped as compared to their more sober colleagues who their rape incident ends up being attempted (Loiselle " Fuqua, 2007). Therefore we can say that the alcohol level in one's blood is relatively correlational to the percentage of complete occurrence of a rape incident. However, with date rape situations it is quite difficult to determine whether a situation qualifies to be a sexual assault leave alone determining whether the assault was instigated by alcohol use since there a couple of ambiguities (Loiselle " Fuqua, 2007). Therefore the purpose of this research is to establish how much alcohol use results in date rape.
Methods
Sample
In order to carry out the study, a sample of 200 individuals, 100 male and a 100 female all from different campuses, aged between 18years and 26 years all over the country were picked randomly. This was because the study intended to get information from a more widely spread pool, therefore, making the size from which the sample was picked as wide as possible. The main reason for the study being based on on-campus students as much is because prior reports have reported that date rape occurs mostly in college based parties and among college scholars. It is also the most convenient universe to study the relationship between alcohol use and date-rapes since there are as many opposite-sex interactions and sexual engagements in campus settings. Let us not eliminate the fact that alcohol use is most among campus students.
Research Procedure
For the study, questionnaires were administered to the students with simple and comprehensible grammar. The questionnaires did not need any personal information that would eventually identify the responder but still sought information concerning the alcoholic use tendencies of each individual. The effect of their alcohol use to their judgment and decision-making process was also enquired. The other field that was looked at was sexual occurrences when one was drunk and whether it was as an effect of alcohol myopia or not. However, the last field differed according to the gender under study. For the female subjects, the questionnaire sort to find out who the victims of date-rape were and whether the incidents were as a result of alcohol use. The questionnaires that were answered by the male subjects sought to find out how alcohol use acted as an advantage for coercing ladies to sexual activities.
Findings
The questionnaires were analyzed and looked at after they were answered and collected back. There were a few findings as a result of the answers that rose from them. 70% of the sample engaged in alcohol use be it by drinking while or strong liquor. They felt that alcohol was an important aspect of shaping up the present day social engagements and gathering all over the world. Over alcoholic drinks, people could talk and make merry about different subjects. This showed how much alcohol use had grown in the twenty-first century.
80% of those who used alcoholic drinks, did so in anticipation of the high feeling that drunkenness. The drunk feeling helped them escape the world of reality and into a more joyous world. This was a clear indication that most of the subject used alcohol in anticipation of their brain activity being altered. Therefore they acknowledged that alcohol myopia resulted from their alcohol use.
60% of the total sample size felt that getting drunk led to more sexual encounters. Close to 90% of those who used alcoholic drinks hard-core than once gotten themselves in sexual activities while still drunk. 70% feeling that they would not have had the encounters were they not on a drinking spree.
The answers to the last question were split according to gender. 90% of the female subject around had in one way experienced a sexual assault. 80% of this population was by alcoholic perpetrators. 40% of the population unwillingly gave in to sexual intercourse since at the time they were too incapacitated to resist any sexual advances in social engagements such as dates. 50% of the male subject also agreed that they had used alcoholic ways as a way of getting to coerce their lady partners to sexual engagements.
Discussion
From the above results, we realize that the occurrence of date rape over alcohol use is fairly higher. The reason is that alcohol use leads to a passive impairment of decision making which results in less resistance of the lady to sexual advances by the male counterpart. The male if aggressive could be more coercive and go to any length to ensure that they get what they want from the drinking lady. The lady, on the other hand, would be too drunk to really think straight. There is also the fact that due to alcohol myopia, ladies would tend to get aroused sexually even faster. Therefore the man would have less resistance if they needed to have there way with the lady. It is a clear fact that alcohol increases the chances for risky behavior such as sexual encounters between two strangers during their first romantic date. We should also not eliminate the fact that under the influence of alcohol, there have been so many cases of one night stands and women waking up to a day that they do not know the events of their previous night.
Conclusion
Alcoholic use impairs one ability to think straight or even to react to certain situations. It increases the chances of engaging in risky behaviors too which could lead to sexually transmitted infections. It is therefore important that one really controls their amount of intake in any social engagements.
References
Klein, W., Geaghan, T., " MacDonald, T. (2007). Unplanned Sexual Activity as a Consequence of Alcohol Use: A Prospective Study of Risk Perceptions and Alcohol Use Among College Freshmen. Journal Of American College Health, 56(3), 317-323. doi: 10.3200/jach.56.3.317-324
Loiselle, M., " Fuqua, W. (2007). Alcohol's Effects on Women's Risk Detection in a Date-Rape Vignette. Journal Of American College Health, 55(5), 261-266. doi: 10.3200/jach.55.5.261-266
Pumphrey-Gordon, J., " Gross, A. (2007). Alcohol Consumption and Females’ Recognition in Response to Date Rape Risk: The Role of Sex-Related Alcohol Expectancies. Journal Of Family Violence, 22(6), 475-485. doi: 10.1007/s10896-007-9104-0
