Should women be allowed to drink?

Dear Hannah,

In an age of social liberalism you can expect to see many stupid things become legal. One thing that hasn't become legal and almost nobody has considered legalizing is childhood drinking.  And the reason nobody has really suggested it is obvious: because each and every one of us knows that children are idiots.

You never really know what kids will do when they're sober, so you're almost afraid of what they'll do when they're drinking.  What if we gave them the right to wander into bars with their friends?  We'd end up cleaning vomit off the walls and watching them ride their tricycles into trees. The plain fact is we all know this, and our knowing this is our best and biggest argument against letting kids buy beer: that they're much more likely to do terrible things than their parents. Which is why we distinguish them from adults in the first place.

An adult is much different.  Give him a bottle and maybe he'll go wild.  But instead of grabbing him by the ear and dragging him to his parents, you tie up his hands and you throw him in jail.  In fact the grown man is distinguished by the idea that even in his irresponsibility he's held responsible; that whether he does something stupid while sober or trashed, he can always be called to account for his behavior.  If he gets into a car while he's trashed we take away his license.  If he goes to his job while he's wasted we send him to the soup kitchen.  The one thing we've always said to the man who ruins our happiness at happy hour is that he shouldn't be drinking at all -- which is why we have a special term for the man who nobody wants to see drinking.  We call him an alcoholic and we send him to meetings.

Which brings us to Budweiser.  Now, anyone who really enjoys beer knows that Budweiser is a shitty beer.  But what it shares in common with all the other beers is that it's good at helping us do terrible things.  This is why Budweiser, instead of going the insincere but "moral" route of all the other liquor manufacturers, and telling us to drink responsibly, is giving us what we really wanted by telling us to drink a little more purposely -- to turn that grown-up no into a childhood yes. A yes which could have meant anything, but was widely interpreted by feminists as rape.

It may be that by yes Budweiser really meant yes to sex (hooray!) instead of yes to dancing and singing and skinny dipping.  But if they said yes for women, didn't they also say yes for men?

This to me sums up why feminists lost: nobody ever worries about a drunken man taking off his pants for an ugly coworker.  After all the talk about equality in intelligence and responsibility and personal strength, Budweiser proved the man's the only one left standing -- even if he's reeling.  A man knows if you've played the field long enough you've probably made a horrible mistake.  Nearly every one of us libertines, when trashed, has let someone into our beds when we otherwise wouldn't have. But the man is the only one who's capable of meaning yes when he says it, while women claim she's completely irresponsible when she's drinking.  Yesterday consent was consent and a choice was a choice and a yes meant a yes.  Today a woman's consent is questionable, because we've questioned whether women are even capable of giving it.  Which is why we ought to reconsider whether women should be drinking in the first place.

I don't believe women are stupid, but in complaining about the Budweiser commercial they've confessed the one thing they never should have confessed if they wanted us to take feminism seriously.  And that is there's a really obvious difference between what a woman wants to think about herself and the way she actually does think about herself. On the one hand she wants to think of herself as equal or superior to a man.  On the other she knows she needs special protection because she feels in many ways inferior to him.  The former position comes from her pride.  The latter position comes from her brains.

Generally speaking, all law-abiding citizens ought to have our protection, but women know they need more of it.  Set up by nature for reception, the female's characteristics are designed for attraction: her slighter frame, her softer voice, her more voluptuous curves all mesh into a picture of someone capable of responsibility, but a responsibility of a woman's nature.  To put it simply she has to be wary.  Unlike the man, whose frame sets him up as the aggressor, the depositor, the defender, the adventurer and the hard laborer, we find her better disposed to welcoming, to nurturing, and to the manipulation of feelings; and we call her attractive because her powers lie in attraction.  And someone who's physically weaker and at the same time totally desirable brings us to one obvious conclusion: that she has to be defended, like a precious resource and a household goddess, against any man who wants to take her.  Every blow to her resistance is an insult to her dignity; and despite all the talking about woman's intelligence, we find that women really cherish something more than their brains, and that something is their supremacy in the matter of sexual selection.

So if someone were to ask me if women are stupid, I would say no.  They've bullied men into pretending we're equal white getting the benefits of dependents; and beyond this they know that men are stupid -- and that we're most stupid of all when we're dealing with women. The question, then, is whether men are going to begin asking uncomfortable questions.  The first question will be whether women should be drinking without parental supervision if rape charges can ruin a man's life, and women are incapable of controlling who gets into their pants.  The second will be whether a person incapable of managing the most important aspects of her personal life will be capable of voting for the public good.

Your father,
-J