Comments on: Alcohol and Assault: Who’s to Blame?

By: grey matter

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 21:38:16 +0000

As a believer of the rationalist school of thought I just wanted to lay my sight on the objectively problematic portions of the article because for the rest you may avail the defence of personal views.

The premise of your arguments which relied on establishing a relationship between unreasonable amount of alcohol consumption and sexual assaults seems to have failed while we understand them within the governing aspects of psychology and neurosciences.

Yes, I accept the facts that excessive alcohol consumption does lead to short sightedness and absolute environmental synchronisation. However, our behaviours are mainly affected by transmission of alcohol in the GABA receptors. The most prevalent consequence of the same is a feeling of increased self worth and consciousness in a subjective manner.

In psychological terms there’s overemphatic operation of ID, but its not absolute in nature. Therefore, it is impractical to say that an individual can’t regulate its conducts despite being low on egoistic elements to process information.

Its an inherent physiological process where we tend to develop tolerance to the substance in question and therefore, the consequential ability to think from ID, keeps declining after each experience.

Hence, if you aspire to develop a contradictory sentiment to the pre-established notions, you need a lot of data to do the same.

Also for the record, the psychedelic cover image is the only great thing about this article.

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By: Megha's Post from FB

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:38:25 +0000

“Re: the debate around hypersexuality and alcoholism and its connection to sexual assault.
I’ve had the benefit of reading both pieces on Quirk w.r.t. this subject and I thought of penning my thoughts here (and saving them from the horror of editing a never ending cycle of response pieces )
I don’t think a critique of hypersexuality and alcoholism should necessarily be taken as a stance that favours victim blaming or the conservative academic view that college kids should focus on their books instead of getting wasted. However I do think that the analysis should not stop at looking at just the surface level correlation between environments with hypersexuality/alcoholism and sexual assault, and go further.
The general party hook up culture within law school has in my opinion led to a very transactional view of sex-at least within heterosexual culture, a queer person’s understanding of this might be different. Sex is seen as a ‘checkbox’ to be ticked off in the journey from naive first year to worldy wise adult and not as something with intrinsic meaning/pleasure for your body or a way of developing a connection with someone. This leads to inevitable dehumanization of the persons involved. For men, there is a pressure that you should be ‘doing’ xyz no of girls to prove your virility and heterosexuality, and for women there is a pressure that as the ‘modern liberated independent’ woman you should be willing to let go of the expectations of Victorian/upper-caste morality drilled in you by your parents from an early age and indulge in sex even if you (like many women) don’t find the experience very satisfying. The other person stops being a person and becomes an object for performing one’s own internalized plus externally imposed cultural expectations of sex, which is why all the complicated essays that people read and write about consent suddenly go out the window. Alcohol consumption aggravates this by creating an environment of lowered capacities that enables peer pressure to get the better of you. In fact many a times people drink alcohol just so they can ‘let go’ and indulge in hypersexual behaviour.
This is not to say that those who commit sexual assault in quad parties should be excused for their behaviour. It has to be understood that these are background factors and not justifications. Think of it in terms of a minor thing like installing streetlights in an area to make women feel safe v. focusing on long term overhaul of patriarchal structures. Of course the factum of installing streetlights does not suggest that if women go out in the dark it excuses men who sexually assault them. Not does it mean that sexual assault will never happen in well lit areas-it remains a possibility so long as a patriarchal society continues to exist. But it does make things difficult for those men who would earlier have taken advantage of a dark/remote area to sexually assault someone.
I think the same attitude has to be adopted towards the hypersexuality+alcoholism debate. It cannot be denied that law school culture places an overinflated premium on sex (irrespective of the actual pleasure it brings to the parties involved) especially in contexts when both parties are drunk, so that the next day our bored community has something to gossip about. This neoliberal glorification of hook up culture inevitably erases any discussion about the structural constraints within which sexual choices are made-there is zero discussion on the power dynamics of seniors singling out freshers, of people inducing someone to drink more so that they can hook up later, of people submitting themselves to bad sexual encounters because they are told that xyz is so hot, why don’t you just give them a chance, of whether free consent can be given while under the influence of alcohol, etc.
I know this is going to sound like a boring grandma’s opinion but it would make things much healthier if we were to promote the understanding that casual sex or fumbling around at parties are activities that should be undertaken only when both parties are into it and your hormones actually vibe or whatever and not just because ‘my friends told me I have to score today’ or because ‘it will look SeXy if people see me grinding on the dance floor’ or ‘it’s your 20’s, you should be boning every 2nd person in the room!’ Further that the laissez faire attitude towards hook ups with skewed power dynamics does need some introspection.
Just some jumbled thoughts I had, felt like putting them down.”

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By: Hypocrisy of Commentators

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:36:07 +0000

90% of the comments above are totally unrelated to what has actually been said in the article. Megha’s post on Facebook gives an appropriate response which most of you would choose to not read. I think her post should have been a comment here but it looks like she has also lost hope. From what I have been told the author of this piece was more than open to discussions and explanations before all of the commentators tried to literally lynch him.

Batch of 2018 has been so proactive in this debate but cannot forget the sight of them forcing alcohol down the throats of the juniors and ragging the students in front of Himalaya. Without naming, there have been people who have commented above opposing the article, but I remember them as first people who initiated my exposure to objectification by asking my “top 5”. This is what is called misuse of ‘social capital’ and not the article that calls out the disturbing culture of law school.

I may choose to disagree with somethings that have been said in the article but saying that is irrelevant will be a fraud on my consciousness.

Also as a person, who has read a lot like many of you on issues of sexual harassment, I can say that the article is not ‘bullshit’, ‘utter piece of garbage’ etc. Please look into the published scholarly studies relating to campus party assaults, you would be better informed.

Power to you Daksh. For being one of the few people who chose to build upon the existing discourse without fearing.

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By: Quirk

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 07:00:25 +0000

Dear Random,

Please note that your comment has been redacted as it related to the private circumstances of the person referred to, without their consent. Thank you for engaging with the article!

Best,
Quirk Team

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By: Expected better

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 18:55:41 +0000

This article seems to have slipped through because of all the intellectual sugarcoating. Translate its conclusion to Hindi then it is a familiar and crass dialogue “tum sab zimedar ho sexual abuse ke liye kyu kim tum daru peete ho, chote kapde pehente ho, make out karte ho waghera waghera…” The author seems to have found alcohol and “hypersexuality” (WTF is that even) as prime causative factors for sexual harassment. The campus discourse on sexual harassment should focus on consent and strict enforcement of SHARIC code. This piece only legitimizes moral policing, any victim will think twice before approaching the authorities if the incident happened while he/she was drunk.

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By: Dear Quirk..

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 12:13:55 +0000

Dear team quirk/ Mallika, funny how you said that this post has been reviewed multiple times and still ended up getting published, yet the backlash that it has received within a day shows that maybe there’s something unsettling about this piece??
I completely agree with what @Sonia (Sunners) has stated towards the end of her comment and advise you to go through the same.

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By: Quirk

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 11:53:12 +0000

@Anon, we try our best, and review everything multiple times. We wish we could publish without review, would save us all so much time! (jk ofc) But alas, that is no way to run a magazine 😛

Unfortunately, we still don’t always make the perfect decision, we are human! We take all feedback very seriously, so thank you for writing in. We will try to do better, as always.

Best,
Mallika
(Writing in my personal capacity)

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By: Don't be an Apologist for your friends, Daksh.

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 11:49:21 +0000

While the article is fucked up on the first count of whitewashing a harasser’s conduct. It is also important to point out that it also makes me culpable when I haven’t done jack in life, being drunk or sober. What it does is it imputes a mark on my actions when they cannot be blamed. Even casts aspersions on all those times where my friends (some of them are also SHARIC facilitators) and I have gone out of our comfort zone to make the parties a safe space for others, even when we didn’t owe it to anyone. So, it just makes my conduct culpable when it is in fact not (I am using Me, I and my for anyone like me, includes you if you are not a harasser).

Also, while you have said you not having alcohol doesn’t determine your lack of experience in commenting about how alcohol fuels assaults on campus, I would recommend you have it for once. Or talk to friends who have alcohol and are not harassers (if you have any, because rn you look like an apologist for your harasser friends) and ask them how it is not that difficult to not assault someone while being high and have a good time like your Camba guys.

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By: Anon

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 11:39:31 +0000

@Quirk Editorial Team- There is a difference between encouraging ‘alternative’ views and views that are downright regressive.
Kindly tighten up your screening process. This is the least that you owe to your readers.

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By: Anonymous

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 11:37:11 +0000

@Quirk editorial team- this has been pointed out before but please do review the pieces before posting them. There seems to be less to no reviewing done these days. You cannot absolve yourself of any blame just because you did not write this post yourself.

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