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Government considers banning free drinks for women. I should mention that I don't drink, never have, and have never even seen the appeal. So I'm having to think my way through this more than most people would, and may miss something obvious.
I see no problem with banning free drinks in general. The British public does not have a constitutional right to freebies. In the area of drinking it probably does cause a lot of trouble, and would reduce drinking a certain amount if it were stopped. I don't think the pubs would lose money - people are more likely to give in and buy the extra drinks than they are to stop going to the pub - so there shouldn't be a problem there.
What I can't understand, and what is left completely unexplained in that article, is the gendering. Problem drinking is rising amongst women, though it's deeply significant in both genders. Are women more likely than men to go to establishments which offer free drinks? Perhaps they think women handle drunkenness worse? Or this is about rape risk (which implies that it's the victim's fault)? Are men less prone to getting so pissed they have unprotected sex with a complete stranger than women are? Or is it seen as less of a problem when men do that? Maybe it's because we're used to seeing drunk men, but there are more drunk women these days and people are disproportionately shocked at seeing them?
I can think of reasons, mostly social and not necessarily particularly valid, why this approach might be considered for women alone. I can't see any medical or legal reasons why it should be gendered, and I'm fairly sure it counts as sexual discrimination. Yes, it takes less alcohol to get a woman drunk than it does a man, but the current law is that you refuse to serve alcohol to someone if they appear to be drunk, not based on their gender or by totting up how many units they've had, and for driving it's down to the solid evidence of percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream. Targeting pregnant women is a good idea, but that's not what this is about, as somehow I doubt the happy hours are thronged with pregnant women, or that it's the only situation in which pregnant women have access to alcohol.
Last I checked, alcohol-induced violence and crime are mostly committed by men, not women, though there might be a few fights breaking out if men are given free booze and women are refused. The "Safe, Sensible, Social" report you can access here does not give an increased overall risk for women of developing alcohol-related illness, and shows that twice as many men as women are admitted to hospital for alcohol-related harm. The same report reckons that the main cause for the rise in drinking is increased affordability, which brings us back to the idea of banning free drinks.
Unfortunately, I think this comes down to people being more shocked at the sight of drunk women, due to changes in traditional patterns and also I think sexuality issues. The Mail on Sunday's version of the story says it's about "public drunkenness and booze-related health and social problems": appearances are coming first, not medical issues. Drunk men are associated with violence; drunk women are associated with sexuality, which sooner or later involves the double standard, women being stigmatised for behaviour which is accepted in men. People don't like the idea of women having drunken sexual encounters. Even though both parties are usually drunk in those situations (to assume a heterosexual norm for the moment; stereotyping of this sort does not go hand in hand with accurate recognition of varying sexualities), it's the women who get remarked upon, it's the women who make headline news (which is generally true about women's drinking), and it now seems that it's the women who are considered the problem. To call for reducing women's access to alcohol but not men's, if this is the reasoning behind it, is like saying that women should cover their entire bodies lest men get driven out of control by the glimpse of a female ankle or neck. To say "Happy Hour - Men Only" sounds suspiciously like an attempt to drive women out of the bars and pubs altogether.
On the other hand, this may just be poor reporting. I've just Googled the story, and the Telegraph mentions, "Some bars and clubs attract trade by offering free drinks to all female customers, which would be banned." I suspect that what has happened is that the report simply says that, and the press has turned it into something different. While that would be better news, in that UK legislation is not about to mimic the Taliban, it still shows how the subject of women and drinking is perceived. The photo in the London Paper's article says it all. Give women a glass of wine, and next thing you know they're lying on a couch giggling, with the bottle in the other hand, skirt ridden up, legs waving invitingly in the air.
I see no problem with banning free drinks in general. The British public does not have a constitutional right to freebies. In the area of drinking it probably does cause a lot of trouble, and would reduce drinking a certain amount if it were stopped. I don't think the pubs would lose money - people are more likely to give in and buy the extra drinks than they are to stop going to the pub - so there shouldn't be a problem there.
What I can't understand, and what is left completely unexplained in that article, is the gendering. Problem drinking is rising amongst women, though it's deeply significant in both genders. Are women more likely than men to go to establishments which offer free drinks? Perhaps they think women handle drunkenness worse? Or this is about rape risk (which implies that it's the victim's fault)? Are men less prone to getting so pissed they have unprotected sex with a complete stranger than women are? Or is it seen as less of a problem when men do that? Maybe it's because we're used to seeing drunk men, but there are more drunk women these days and people are disproportionately shocked at seeing them?
I can think of reasons, mostly social and not necessarily particularly valid, why this approach might be considered for women alone. I can't see any medical or legal reasons why it should be gendered, and I'm fairly sure it counts as sexual discrimination. Yes, it takes less alcohol to get a woman drunk than it does a man, but the current law is that you refuse to serve alcohol to someone if they appear to be drunk, not based on their gender or by totting up how many units they've had, and for driving it's down to the solid evidence of percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream. Targeting pregnant women is a good idea, but that's not what this is about, as somehow I doubt the happy hours are thronged with pregnant women, or that it's the only situation in which pregnant women have access to alcohol.
Last I checked, alcohol-induced violence and crime are mostly committed by men, not women, though there might be a few fights breaking out if men are given free booze and women are refused. The "Safe, Sensible, Social" report you can access here does not give an increased overall risk for women of developing alcohol-related illness, and shows that twice as many men as women are admitted to hospital for alcohol-related harm. The same report reckons that the main cause for the rise in drinking is increased affordability, which brings us back to the idea of banning free drinks.
Unfortunately, I think this comes down to people being more shocked at the sight of drunk women, due to changes in traditional patterns and also I think sexuality issues. The Mail on Sunday's version of the story says it's about "public drunkenness and booze-related health and social problems": appearances are coming first, not medical issues. Drunk men are associated with violence; drunk women are associated with sexuality, which sooner or later involves the double standard, women being stigmatised for behaviour which is accepted in men. People don't like the idea of women having drunken sexual encounters. Even though both parties are usually drunk in those situations (to assume a heterosexual norm for the moment; stereotyping of this sort does not go hand in hand with accurate recognition of varying sexualities), it's the women who get remarked upon, it's the women who make headline news (which is generally true about women's drinking), and it now seems that it's the women who are considered the problem. To call for reducing women's access to alcohol but not men's, if this is the reasoning behind it, is like saying that women should cover their entire bodies lest men get driven out of control by the glimpse of a female ankle or neck. To say "Happy Hour - Men Only" sounds suspiciously like an attempt to drive women out of the bars and pubs altogether.
On the other hand, this may just be poor reporting. I've just Googled the story, and the Telegraph mentions, "Some bars and clubs attract trade by offering free drinks to all female customers, which would be banned." I suspect that what has happened is that the report simply says that, and the press has turned it into something different. While that would be better news, in that UK legislation is not about to mimic the Taliban, it still shows how the subject of women and drinking is perceived. The photo in the London Paper's article says it all. Give women a glass of wine, and next thing you know they're lying on a couch giggling, with the bottle in the other hand, skirt ridden up, legs waving invitingly in the air.
