Well, I have much to report (football, a celebrity birthday party, a day spent on Planet Weird yesterday) and much to catch up on in writing terms (work aside, there's the small matter of the KirkbyGirl gauntlet to deal with). So what's a girl to do? Procrastinate, that's what! But only sort of. I've been droning on about posting that rant about women drinking here for quite some time; that time is now. Enjoy? Cheers! And see you very soon.
Women drink nearly 4% more than they did ten years ago. The average 30-year-old woman regularly drinks more than two glasses of wine a week. 14% of mothers ‘admit’ to including wine on the weekly shopping list - three hardly shocking but genuine examples of leading news stories last week. But check out the statistics buried in the small print following those headline-grabbing, front page spreads: of the 3.8m people thought to be dependant on alcohol in England and Wales, 3m of them are men. 11 people in the UK die every day as a direct result of alcohol abuse – less than one every 10 days will be female. 46% of men (as opposed to 12% of women) exceed their recommended alcohol intake every week. Clearly, the inability to handle alcohol is largely a male problem. Why, then, is Nanny intent on putting women in punishment corner?
Regardless of gender, it’s never cool to be comatose; bedraggled bodies lying in a vomit-strewn gutter at kicking out time are never a pretty sight (although in Britain, it’s hardly a rare one). I know that alcohol can wreck lives, and I'm not attempting to refute the fact that anybody who regularly guzzles their way through a month’s worth of recommended units in one night is heading for trouble of some sort of another. But why is the sight of a group of dishevelled girls wobbling their way down the street after three too many spritzers deemed to be far, far more ‘shocking’ than a group of burly, fist-swinging yobs pissing up walls, belching threateningly at all who pass by and looking for the inevitable fight? Compared to such behaviour, behaving in an ‘unladylike’ manner is hardly the sin the media would have us believe it is. Every year, Father’s Day cards are decorated with images of frothing pints and bottles of whisky. Meanwhile: “Mummy, please stop drinking”, whispers the tousle-headed blonde girl at the start of yet another ‘Tonight’ show on the subject, before Trevor McDonald solemnly asks, “What is the future for the children of the Ladettes?”.
‘Lads’, of course, is an acceptable term – a jolly, ho-ho-ho depiction of boys being boys (beer bellies, casual sexism, fists and all). Lengthen the idiom with the feminine diminutive, and Satan(ess) has entered the building. But boy, does she get her comeuppance! “She was drunk - case closed!”, proclaim the bewigged men of court, as yet another weedy, opportunistic sex pest gets away with rape. “She was begging for it!”, hollers WOSPs mate, as he raises his fist in triumph on the court steps. Hey, idiot: the only begging that girls who cross your path will ever do is beg to get away. Last time I walked across Bristol’s Centre on a Saturday night, it was Ladcentric, Bacchanalian mayhem: brawlers in blood-soaked shirts, taxi drivers refusing to stop and police everywhere, ineffectually pretending to do their job. This scene is typical of the Britain that ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith wants us to swear an oath of allegiance to, following a recent report commissioned by Gordon Brown. Gordy’s now planning to commission another report on British women and alcohol – lord alone knows what that one will recommend: a return to the ‘workhouses for fallen women’ (ie, those who drink 4% more than they did a decade ago), perhaps? That’ll teach those naughty floozies to go over the recommended ‘one Snowball every Christmas’ limit when they should be at home mopping hubby’s vomit off the bedroom floor and hoping to avoid a black eye. Because some far more sinister statistics hide behind the misogynistic headlines. Research from the organisation ‘Alcohol Aware’ indicates a strong connection between men, alcohol and domestic violence (including child abuse and incest), concluding that there’s a higher rate of assaults when the perpetrator is drunk. But hey, boys will be boys - and ‘wicked women’ will always be blamed for their misdemeanours. Crikey, no wonder we drink.
3 comments:
Well said! Fantastic stuff, on many levels *huge round of applause*
Ooooh, she's gone all serious and shouty! What a fabulous floozie. I'm la-la-lovin' it. Excellent work, Madame M!
I completely get your point (how could I fail to, when written so succinctly?). But I still think you have to be a bit careful stating that alcohol isn't as much as a problem to women as it is to men. When drunk to the point of out of control, women leave themselves far more vulnerable to attack. That isn't a sexist statement, just another nasty fact of life. And perhaps male-to-female domestic violence is, although obviously related to alcohol abuse, a much wider issue. What comes first: male prediliction to violent behaviour against women, or six pints over the limit? I know plenty of men who can drink themselves silly, only to just become more silly, and never, ever violent.
But you're absolutely right in saying that the general attitude to women drinking is based on something equally sinister: men who don't want to see women being real people. For some people, women will remain to be seen as pedestal-balancing Madonnas.
Thank you for yet another thoughtful, well-written piece. I'm a huge fan of this blog.
Post a Comment