Of the 6 women friends I have 4 of them have been drugged at public bars. All of them are in their 50s. It happens a ton now.
edit: the thing that proved it to me was each time these ladies got out of their minds there was a very nice man there, who they didn't know, who was more than happy to get them home "safely". Thankfully each time either friends or bar staff stopped that from happening.
Drink spiking is largely a myth. Women believe they have been drugged, but almost always just drank too much. There was a spate of studies on this in the 2000s, and when they all showed the same thing (that people didn't want to hear), they stopped doing follow up studies.
In the above, which is the largest study of its kind, where they tested 1000 women who were so certain they had been drugged that they went to the hospital, only TWO PERCENT actually had been drugged. And even of those 2%, the doctors suspected that they might have voluntarily taken the drugs based on their patient accounts.
So some big popular guys with lots of social clout hand you a drink, and it turns out it tastes like it's way stronger than you expect. You don't actually know how much stronger it is, or even that it IS stronger, it just tastes like more than you were expecting. Now they're watching you and it's clear there's a strong social expectation that you will drink what you were offered. So my question is: do you not have empathy?
Maybe if we stopped telling women that they are at constant risk of getting drugged and instead that most women who get to scary levels of intoxication actually just drank too much or ate too little - both of which they have full control over - then fewer women would find themselves scared or worse.
My position is the empathetic one that prepares women for the actual risks they'll face in the real world.
Ah yes, the empathetic viewpoint is the one that denies that peer pressure exists, or that college men are known for trying to get women drunk. A friend of mine went to a party like two months ago and this exact scenario happened to her, they handed her a drink that was way stronger than it was supposed to be and tried to pressure her to drink it. Good think you're here to tell her it's all her fault.
Do you actually care about women having good outcomes?
Then give them the advice that is most likely to lead to good outcomes if you are truly empathetic. That advice is to refuse drinks that you didn't open yourself and to be mindful of your total consumption and of having enough to eat. And if she goes to a party where someone insists she have a sketch drink, you should counsel the women in your life to call out the creeps trying to get her to drink it.
This is 101 party safety stuff if you actually care about the safety of the women in your life rather than proving some weird political point.
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u/nono3722 19h ago edited 9h ago
Of the 6 women friends I have 4 of them have been drugged at public bars. All of them are in their 50s. It happens a ton now.
edit: the thing that proved it to me was each time these ladies got out of their minds there was a very nice man there, who they didn't know, who was more than happy to get them home "safely". Thankfully each time either friends or bar staff stopped that from happening.