Q: And they do it knowing that you are their backup?
A: Yeah, and they are right because I always do.
Q: And you have had to talk to them and say, “Look, I can’t continue to do this”…?
A: Yeah, I am not going to go to jail for defending them. I don’t appreciate them relying on that fact.
Q: It’s usually just drunk people mouthing off and you say the masculinity…?
A: Yeah definitely, people aren’t willing to back down, I think it’s important, somebody is angry, whatever, man, just cool down. But it is easier to do when you are sober, and you are not drunk, somebody spills a drink on you and you can just blow it off, it’s not a big deal, it’s just a shirt. But if you are drunk it becomes a big deal, disrespectful.
Clearly, alcohol helps to make college men and women more disputatious (i.e., argumentative and sensitive to verbal slights) and increases the probability that physical violence—especially for men—will take place. Moreover, there is good evidence that alcohol intoxication promotes sexual aggression among college males. Researchers have estimated that, each year, more than ninety thousand students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are victims of “alcohol-related” sexual assault or date rape.28 College Alcohol Study research suggests that rape is significantly more common at heavy binge-drinking colleges and that 72 percent of women who reported being raped at school were raped while intoxicated.
While most rapes are committed by a single aggressor, nonconsensual sex on campus is sometimes a group activity. Though sexual predators often play semantic games to suggest that an assault was “consensual,” severely intoxicated women simply lack the capacity to agree to sex. Peggy Reeves Sanday, the author of a landmark study on sexual violence on campus, Fraternity Gang Rape, describes the manner in which groups of intoxicated college men identify drunk and vulnerable women to exploit and then justify their actions:
[T]he group looks for a “willing” woman to play the role of victim.… [S]he is vulnerable, unable to retaliate, and there is unanimity within the group that she is the one at fault—e.g., “she drank too much”; “she wanted it”; “she was provocative”; “she didn’t say no”; and so on. There is also unanimity that in the interest of promulgating group bonds it is acceptable to use a “willing” victim sexually.29
The next section explores this matrix of vulnerability, highlighting the ways in which college men seek to exploit the drunken vulnerability of women and identifying some of the strategies that college students use to respond to the risks of sexual victimization.
Wolves on the Campus Lawn: Drinking and the Risk of Sexual Victimization
A host of studies focused on the extent and distribution of college sexual victimization have revealed that sexual coercion on our nation’s campuses is startlingly common. In their comprehensive study of the sexual victimization of college women, criminologists Bonnie Fisher, Leah Daigle, and Francis T. Cullen estimate that approximately one in twenty university females will experience an attempted or completed rape during her time at school.30 Other scholars have estimated even higher levels of sexual victimization for college women. In a groundbreaking survey of female college students, for example, Mary Koss found that over 16 percent of her sample had suffered an act of sexual victimization over the last year.31
Despite these compelling numbers, most college men are not sexual predators. And alcohol doesn’t turn most college drinkers into rapists. But ask any college student: the “wolves” are out there. According to the current data, some college men strategically seek out relations with intoxicated women because they believe that such women will be more agreeable to their sexual advances. While the act of looking for drunk and vulnerable sexual partners does not necessarily constitute sexual assault, it does suggest a common interest in exploiting a temporary weakness for sexual gain. The following interviewees describe the dynamics of seeking out intoxicated sex partners:
Q: Is it your opinion that males would take advantage of obviously intoxicated girls?
A: I think that’s the common notion.… I know guys who try to get girls drunk. I think that they are more likely to try something with a girl that has been drinking because they feel that they’ve also probably been drinking, everyone’s guard is down.… (eighteen-year-old female)
Q: Do men look for intoxicated women as potential sexual partners? Do males do that?
A: Oh yeah.
Q: Can you give me an example?
A: Well one girl at the second party we went to, this guy was like rubbing… or he kept grabbing her butt and like, rubbing her and stuff like that. Like, right there, in front of everybody. So I was like, “come here, come with me, let’s go over here.” And so I grabbed her and pulled her with me away from him.… (eighteen-year-old female)
Evan, an eighteen-year-old male, has witnessed similar behavior. When women have their “guard down” due to intoxication, certain men regard them as prey. In the following account, Evan describes a time when he had to intervene when a potential sexual predator was about to take advantage of his trashed female friend:
Q: So in your opinion, do men look for girls, specifically target girls who are intoxicated?
A: I think so, it’s pretty sad and I don’t… approve of it and a lot of time I’ll go with my friends from the dorm, a lot of them are girls and I’ll go with them at night just because I don’t want to see something terrible happen that if I was there I could have prevented it, and it’s happened this quarter once already that I was there and I am fortunate that I was because I don’t know how I would have felt if I couldn’t stop something like that.…
Q: So you actually intervened?
A: Yeah, we went to a frat house over there and she is one of my friends, and a lot of time I don’t know why, she’s just out of control and ends up doing stupid stuff, so we were getting ready to leave this party and there were a lot of frat guys and I knew what they were trying to do and it pissed me off.…
A: And how did you know that, describe that behavior?
Q: I don’t know; it’s the way you hear people talk about things and their voice and their mannerisms and if you see enough you can kinda look in on it, and so we were getting ready to leave and we had all the other friends and we were like where is so-and-so [the female friend] and somebody said they saw her go upstairs and I was like okay, so I went upstairs and I went in people’s rooms and I saw her and they were in one of the rooms and I told her it was time to go now and the guy got really pissed off and went downstairs and got two of his friends and I took off and I had to carry her home actually and that is a long way to carry somebody and if I didn’t do that I don’t know what would have happened.…
A: So he was going to get some of his friends?
Q: Because, this frat, I don’t know the name, I have been there a few times and was never a very big fan, but sometimes we were just looking for social interaction and we would go there and this time was probably the worst, and he threatened me obviously.
Q: What did he say?
A: As soon as I got ousted… when I went in the room he looked very upset; my idea was that he was not going to make a smart decision about it, so I got ousted and he went downstairs to get his friends and right when I was walking off the back porch I saw them all come out the front door… they weren’t going to do anything to me in the street so I just kept walking.
Q: So when you went into the room, were they already…
A: No they weren’t, he was working on it though… and she was really really intoxicated… and if she doesn’t know what she is doing, there comes a point where you just have to draw the line, and if I wouldn’t have done it and she would have told me what happened I couldn’t forgive myself.
Like Evan, many of my respondents employed various forms of informal support to help their friends to avoid risky sexual encounters. The most common form, the Cock Block, involves intentionally disrupting the discourse between a friend and another individual perceived to be u
nknown or unsafe in order to protect the friend from a potentially risky sexual event.32 It should be noted that the Cock Block has other, less altruistic connotations for college students. The term is also used, for example, to refer to the act of intentionally or unintentionally ruining someone’s chances at hooking up with a desired love interest. In this case, one man might be deep in the throes of flirtation with a woman when another man comes along and draws her attention away, effectively sabotaging the “progress” made by the first suitor. He has been cock blocked. The differences between recreational cock blocking and cock blocking meant to protect a vulnerable friend are illuminated in this interview sequence with Dennis, an eighteen-year-old male:
A: Okay, my friend was drunk and I won’t use names but … she was drunk and she was talking to a guy and I knew for a fact that he was completely sober and was intent on taking advantage. So I stepped in, talked to her, and took her away from the guy and the situation. I took her home.
Q: What did he do after you got in the way?
A: Well, he was pretty upset.
Q: Did he let you know about it?
A: Oh yeah.
Q: Is there a name for that sort of behavior… that move that you made to protect your friend?
A: I don’t know. Do you have a name for it?
Q: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard a name for that during the course of my research.
A: What is it?
Q: Some people call it a cock block… have you heard that term?
A: Yeah, I’ve heard that.
Q: There are two uses of it. One is, “Well I’m doing pretty well with this woman, I’m working my magic and then someone gets in the way and ruins it for me.” A: I don’t think that someone taking advantage of a drunk girl and then someone getting in the way of that is necessarily cock blocking.
Q: Right, but then the other use for the term, which describes the case with your friend, is when people are using the term “cock block” to describe taking care of someone who could be in danger.
A: Okay, so kinda taking it back with a positive connotation?
Q: Exactly.
Cock Blocking
As articulated above, taking care of fellow drinkers who may be vulnerable to sexual predators was a common theme within the data set. Respondents referred to the more supportive form of cock blocking as any instance in which an intervention was exercised when an unwanted, ill-advised, or potentially nonconsensual sexual encounter was in the process of occurring to a friend. In order to disrupt this process, they or another friend would intervene: “Sometimes if it’s a girl with a new guy you’ll intervene,… you know, cock blocks” (eighteen-year-old female).
The following two female respondents describe a typical, protective cock block:
Q: Do you feel protective of your friends when they’re out and they’re talking to a guy you don’t know?
A: Oh yeah I would pull her away, especially depending on the situation… because I know a lot of guys that she knows, you know, so if it’s somebody that I don’t know, then yeah, I would probably be a little proactive. (twenty-two-year-old female)
After that guy kissed her, I was like, “What are you doing?” Like she’s totally trashed, she’s falling over, she can’t even stand up. I was like, “Leave her alone, I’m gonna take her home.” (eighteen-year-old female)
Before executing the cock block, students often need to make a quick assessment of the situation to decide whether or not intervention is warranted. The following informant qualifies the need for cock blocking:
Q: Have you ever been in a situation where one of your friends was intoxicated and you were worried that they, that, you know, a male would, would hit on them or try to take advantage of them?
A: If it’s someone, it’s someone the girls know already and they’ve already dated or, umm, had some kind of physical encounter with before usually you don’t worry about it, ‘cause that girl probably trusts the guy. But if it’s a guy that, you know, pushed himself on her before, I’ve seen it happen, you would usually intervene. Umm, sometimes if it’s a girl with a new guy you’ll intervene, but I guess there’s kind of a hesitancy, and this is horrible but, people won’t call each other, you know, cock blocks and umm, usually I’ve seen people intervene the most with, if you have a good guy friend and you’re with some other guys he’ll try to step in, because guys, it just seems to work better with guys, I think, which is interesting. I have one friend, her best friend is a guy, and there’s been many instances where he’s stepped in and said, “You’re coming to sleep with me,” and this guy is truly not interested in her physically, she says that he’s probably gay. So, but I think girl on girl, I don’t, at least among my group of friends, I don’t have many friends that are extremely promiscuous, so it hasn’t been an issue really. But I know if I just up and leave with a guy and my friends think he’s cute, he just seems like a cool guy or a good guy, even if I just met him that night, they don’t really mind. But if they’re a guy that they, a guy that they don’t like, they’ll ask him a million questions.… So basically, it’s just, it’s based on a good first impression, or if I have a good first impression of a guy that they’re with, we’re pretty laid back about it. (Dee, eighteen-year-old female)
Dee suggests that male friends are particularly skilled at stepping in when unwanted attention or potentially predatory behavior is exhibited. Indeed, some male respondents described their role as protector in such instances. Tyler, a twenty-one-year-old male, and his female friend devise a theatrical ruse in order to discourage aggressive males:
Q: So, would you say when you are out drinking with your female friends that you are kind of keeping an eye out and kind of looking out for them, making sure people aren’t preying on them when they are drinking, you know what I mean?
A: Usually that is the role that I take, personally, I generally watch over my friends, no matter what because they’re more heavy drinkers. So I’ll just have a couple and just hang out and watch over them. Yeah, definitely with the females, I watch my friends, but I don’t have to do that so much because a lot of my friends are together, so their boyfriends will watch out for them and stuff.
Q: So have there been times though where you had, one of your female friends had too much to drink and you see some guy moving in on them and you have actually intervened?
A: Oh yeah, we’ll play games, I’ll pretend that I’m her boyfriend or something like that.
Q: Okay, so can you think of a time when that has happened and give us a little story?
A: [W]e were playing darts and I went to the bathroom and somebody came up to her, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek and we started holding hands or whatever, you know, and he kinda backed off.
Q: So it’s like she’ll give you a look…
A: Yeah, we have signals and stuff like that, you know, get this guy away from me and stuff like that.…
While some respondents, like Tyler, are merely reactive in their protective approach to predatory behavior, other respondents took a more proactive approach. Proactively shielding friends from sexual victimization often takes the form of escorting an intoxicated female home from a bar or party. The following field note illustrates the importance of acting as an escort for intoxicated females who have lost the ability to defend themselves against unwanted advances:
I’m at Range Fest [an annual student block party] on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not even 4:00 P.M. and a lot of them are already pretty drunk. Trissa is pretty intoxicated and needs a babysitter. Her eyes are slits and she is a little unsteady on her feet. Her “babysitter” (a friend or roommate I’m guessing) is holding her hand and leading her around. The babysitter treats her like a kid—“Come on Trissa, we’re going over here now” and “Don’t go to sleep on us Trissa.” Then some dudes join their group (maybe they are friends. I can’t tell.) and Trissa starts hanging on one of them. The vultures are circling. The babysitter has temporarily lost control. “Ohh no,” she says. “Let’s get you home.” The babys
itter tells another friend that she is going to walk Trissa home. “So you got her?” the friend asks. “Yes, I got her.”
One might argue that the babysitter failed Trissa by allowing her to get that intoxicated in the first place. If she was really looking out for her best interests, that is, she would have intervened before Trissa became so tanked and vulnerable. That being said, the babysitter—like so many of the respondents featured above—took aggressive actions to buffer her friend from the threats that intoxicated women face in the college drinking scene. And like those codrinkers who care for their drunksick friends, counsel their emotionally distraught drinking partners, and provide “backup” during drunken brawls, the babysitter has publicly demonstrated some socially celebrated attributes. In a twisted way, Trissa’s unfortunate condition allows the babysitter to display loyalty, responsibility, and self-sacrifice.
Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard Page 15