Rape isn't caused by drinking. It's fostered by a culture that tells some men they can act with impunity
SORAYA CHEMALY

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First, sexual assault on college campuses happens in environments of overwhelming cultural and institutional tolerance that support discriminatory double standards. While the overall rate of sexual assault in the US has declined since the late 1970s, it has stayed constant on US campuses. The Center for Public Policy and the Department of Justice estimate that 95% of college sexual assaults are not reported because victims, regardless of sex, gender or sexuality, do not have confidence that they will be believed, that their schools will help them and that they won’t be humiliated and shamed. Our culture essentially gives rapists the message that they’re entitled to be believed and respected; their victims aren’t.

Since women’s basic right to bodily integrity seems to confuse some people, let’s talk about sexual assault that involves men and boys. Decades of Catholic Church sexual abuse tragedies, the Boy Scouts, Penn State, rape in correctional facilities, sexual assault in the military, recurring episodes at high schools around the country are all examples of entitlement to rape in the face of institutional tolerance.

These cases all involve situations where people, usually men, with uncontested power use that power to abuse more vulnerable people. Their victims are vulnerable not only because they are smaller or younger, and certainly not because they are drunk, but because they lack cultural power – the power to be believed or have their rights of bodily integrity respected by society. Sometimes, those people are children; other times they’re men. Much more often, however, they are young girls and women. Alcohol only highlights deeply rooted ideas about who has the right act with impunity. As Jaclyn Friedman explained five years ago, drinking “is not a risk for nearly half the population. I’ve never met a straight man who worried about being raped as he contemplated a night of debauchery. Vomiting in public? Yes. Getting rejected by sexual prospects? Sure. Getting in a fight? Maybe. Getting raped? Come on.”

A false accusation of rape is, indeed, a fearsome prospect. But the likelihood of being falsely accused of rape are no different from that of being falsely accused of any other crime. And women are far more likely to be raped than men are to be falsely accused. The insistence on treating the two as equally prevalent issues is ….an entitlement.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/10/24/5_ways_sexual_assault_is_really_about_entitlement/