Now I would never condone any kind of act like that, but I'm also the type of person that applies risk management strategies to everything and to me common sense was just screaming out so I piped up and asked "well why wouldn't you be talking to women about not allowing themselves to become black out drunk around a bunch of men?" I got gasps. I know how it could have sounded, but if the actual point of the training is to prevent this kind of thing then you have to look at everything or you aren't being pro-active and nearly as effective as you could be.
The bottom line is that if those girls hadn't been blackout drunk chances are that those rapes wouldn't have happened. Not to mention that being blackout drunk isn't exactly like just going to the store; its not healthy, it's dangerous for a whole litany of reasons and it's just stupid. There's a distinct difference between unwinding or even having fun and becoming nearly comatose from your body shutting down because you have poisoned it.
Look, I absolutely get your point here and believe me; I'm at least partially with you on one point that is:
"friends don't let friends get so drunk that they pass out".
Or rather: "friends don't let friends alone when they passed out".
That being said: at a certain level of alcohol (and/or social/private pressure) things like this can happen.
Everyone is a human being after all. Maybe this girl lived through hell the days before the party and just wanted to forget about it. It happens.
Putting *any* blame - no matter how tiny - on the girl who passed out for the resulting rape is just
very dangerous argumentative territory.
Don't do it. It's bullshit.
Mistakes happen. Life happens. Taking advantage of anyone who is clearly not able to express any kind of consent is outright disgusting and inexcusable. There is
no reason at all to give the victim any kind of partial blame on whatever happened. Same goes for "she clearly wanted it... look at how she was dressed!". Duh. Maybe she just wanted to feel pretty just once after a horrible week?
Seriously,
in most countries in the world simply ignoring someone who passed out from alcohol
is illegal as denial of assistance.
But I absolutely agree with you on the "buy a girl a drink" thing. I hate it. I always tell girls that I won't do that as I feel it sends the wrong message. Besides, the unfortunate implications are: I'm too boring to get an interesting conversation going, so I need alcohol to be mildly entertaining?