Date Rape Drugs as weapons
orca | 06.04.2007 19:42 | Education | Gender | Health
I don't agree with judicial attitudes to drugs, I think all drugs should be legal. I just don't agree with rape, with drugs being used as weapons. I hate the insecure 'macho-men' who feel they can take who they want by force, but still need to spike drinks. Anyway, apologies, but this is going to sound like like a lecture by your mum or your local neighbouhood copper, or worse, like a Guardian editorial. I can't avoid that.
I'm a male. I recently had my Pepsi spiked, and I knew it straight away, but I was being held at knife-point at the time so could do little about it. I didn't expect to be drugged while being kidnapped forcibly. You expect it even less in a pub, but it is becoming so common you should learn to expect it. Never leave your drink unprotected - not for a second. Take it to the toilets with you.
There are a lot a lot of new drugs that can render you vunerable depending on the dosage. Mostly, they have letters and numbers but no real name. And if you want to self-medicate yourself with them, I have no objection or complaint, I'm not a moralist Maybe a little moralist, I am not going to reveal all I know on these pages because I know some of the people who read here can't be trusted with the information. Read Erowid, search the press.
Even simple Chloroform is debilitating in the short term, and can kill if overdosed. Once, when I was a teenager, my friends spiked my drink with acid. They meant no harm and took care of me, it was a 'gift'. I would have willingly taken it anyway. I could see the funny side. Acid is totally debilitating in the short term - and in the long term in excesss. If I had a choice of drugs to use as a weapon against someone, I wouldn't choose acid, there are new kids off the block.
In my own home town though there has been a spate of date rapes, almostly always on teenage girls. Most go unreported. The drugs leave your body the first time you urinate, no current test will identify them after that. So basically there is no way to report it to the police, and the police don't like to chase difficult cases. You can endure the greatest ordeal and the police will label it as 'an unsubstatiated alleged assauly without corroborating witnesses'. Which hardly endears you to the police. 'If I wasn't an anarchist before then I would be now'.
The mainstream newspapers have recently attacked the still legal drugs. The illegal drugs are more widely available than marijuana or ecstasy in my town, which shows how fucked up we all are. Kids are quitting the local drugs due to the number of drug-attacks.
So. Well I won't back the moral clampdown on all drugs, that 'war' just makes things worse. And I can't condemn the drugs,they could be beneficial to some people. This is an 'older person lecture'. If someone wants to spike you then you won't know about it in advance. Take even your soft drinks with you at all times - take your pint to the toilet, take your coffee upstairs with you. Don't drink anything that you haven't kept with you all the time. There really is an 'epidemic' just now and you won't be being paranoid.
A bigger moral question is what to do when you see a pretty girl in a bad-state being frog-marched out of a pub by young guys. I've seen this before and let it slip, chalked it up to E, convinced myself they were her friends. Lately, no, I can't go for that.
Intervene. Call the cops if you are alone and aren't big enough to do something yourself. That could be your sister.
There are a lot a lot of new drugs that can render you vunerable depending on the dosage. Mostly, they have letters and numbers but no real name. And if you want to self-medicate yourself with them, I have no objection or complaint, I'm not a moralist Maybe a little moralist, I am not going to reveal all I know on these pages because I know some of the people who read here can't be trusted with the information. Read Erowid, search the press.
Even simple Chloroform is debilitating in the short term, and can kill if overdosed. Once, when I was a teenager, my friends spiked my drink with acid. They meant no harm and took care of me, it was a 'gift'. I would have willingly taken it anyway. I could see the funny side. Acid is totally debilitating in the short term - and in the long term in excesss. If I had a choice of drugs to use as a weapon against someone, I wouldn't choose acid, there are new kids off the block.
In my own home town though there has been a spate of date rapes, almostly always on teenage girls. Most go unreported. The drugs leave your body the first time you urinate, no current test will identify them after that. So basically there is no way to report it to the police, and the police don't like to chase difficult cases. You can endure the greatest ordeal and the police will label it as 'an unsubstatiated alleged assauly without corroborating witnesses'. Which hardly endears you to the police. 'If I wasn't an anarchist before then I would be now'.
The mainstream newspapers have recently attacked the still legal drugs. The illegal drugs are more widely available than marijuana or ecstasy in my town, which shows how fucked up we all are. Kids are quitting the local drugs due to the number of drug-attacks.
So. Well I won't back the moral clampdown on all drugs, that 'war' just makes things worse. And I can't condemn the drugs,they could be beneficial to some people. This is an 'older person lecture'. If someone wants to spike you then you won't know about it in advance. Take even your soft drinks with you at all times - take your pint to the toilet, take your coffee upstairs with you. Don't drink anything that you haven't kept with you all the time. There really is an 'epidemic' just now and you won't be being paranoid.
A bigger moral question is what to do when you see a pretty girl in a bad-state being frog-marched out of a pub by young guys. I've seen this before and let it slip, chalked it up to E, convinced myself they were her friends. Lately, no, I can't go for that.
Intervene. Call the cops if you are alone and aren't big enough to do something yourself. That could be your sister.
orca
Comments
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having shot a rapist
06.04.2007 23:52
Bangor
ta
07.04.2007 00:44
It is brutal and barbaric and macho but it is all we have. You either get your friends and family and neighbours together and take the rapists out of society, or you wait on the police turning up three days later demanding a humiliating physical examination that will be ridiculed in court.
It's not a nice side of me, or of you, but if you mean what you said, well done, be proud not ashamed. It is how we regulate ourselves. It was a local fascist group that drugged me, and this is hard to say but I have no idea if I was raped or what happened for seven hours. You can be sure something worse is going to happen to the ones I can remember soon enough.
I'd ask the feminists reading this not to criticise the macho attitude. Think of how Dworkin felt when he was raped. There is seriously a wave of date-rapes happening, this isn't tabloid hype, this is street, this is everyday.
Don't ever leave your drink unguarded, don't ever walk on by an incapacitated girl and pretend it isn't your problem. That is your sister being marched out the pub.
I'm pretty smart, I'm going after the dealers. I'm not even going to name the drugs but if you deal them then you know what they are used for. So stop dealing them or look up vigilante in your dictionary. You can be found.
orca
as sad as Asda
07.04.2007 13:15
Fire with Fire
Still, I was shopping in my local Asda “part of the WALL*MART family” - I know I shouldn't have but I am broke – and I came across a T shirt that said 'If at first you don't suceed then buy her another beer. Ha fucking ha. That's incitement to rape. So being sad'n'bitter, I went into Mary Whitehouse mode and fired off an angry letter and made a calmer telephone call. Seemingly I wasn't the only one offended at the implication of the slogan, the sympathetic girl on Asdas PR line said she had been taking thousands of complaints. And Asda withdrew the T Shirts, and down played it claiming to have only taken ten complaints.
Sure. Now, I just got a rather dismissive letter from their PR folk, a Mr Mark Wright. He used the fact they had sold 15,000 of the T shirts to show how unreasonable I was being complaining. He called the T Shirt 'simply a bit of fun'. He pissed me off in other words. And I'm not the sort to see the funny side or to back down from a fight, so I'll add my letter of response. I've never went up against Wallmart before so I am being careful in my choice of words, but I am also deadly serious while having 'a bit of fun'.
Oh, and if I come across any male wearing one of the 15000 Asda T Shirts, they are going to get a kicking. I have zero-tolerance on this issue. I find them joking about raping a drunk slightly less humorous then them waking up in a hospital bed - that is a punch-line I appreciate.
Dear Mark Wright,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my complaint about the T Shirt. You apologised 'if I found this T Shirt offensive' and ask if my faith in your 'commitment to customer care has been restored' by Asda no longer selling it. I'm afraid not.
Firstly, I wasn't complaining about the T Shirt being offensive, I was complaining about the slogan being irresponsible. It condoned and encouraged what in my country is seen as statutary rape. Perhaps you feel justified in calling it 'simply a bit of fun'. And perhaps the men who get your daughter or neice , or your younger female employees, drunk simply to rape them would call that 'a bit of fun'. I hope you would agree that it is not acceptable or legal to force sex upon someone too drunk to give consent, that is rape at least in Scottish law. For your store to sell 15,000 T Shirts encouraging this attitude is socially irresponsible and may have contributed to subsequent sexual abuse.
Since complaining I have heard that you have been targetted by a letter-writing campaign on this issue. I am not part of that campaign, I am just genuinely shocked at Asda promoting rape. I don't feel it is enough simply to withdraw the T Shirts. Say you had been selling race-hate crime T Shirts, it wouldn't be enough to pass it off as a bit of fun, or to simply stop selling them, the police would be arresting your staff.
You made a small profit on those 15,000 T Shirts. I see that as profit made from a criminally negligent act, a T Shirt that enourages a criminal act. What I asked for in my original letter is that you donate that profit to a rape charity. I know Asda have promoted both mens and womens health charities in the past, I see that as commendable and it is part of the reason I chose your store over the many other local retailers. I think you have yet to realise exactly how reprehensible that T Shirt slogan is, and so have failed to properly make amends. I think you realise you have made a huge PR blunder, especially since most of your shoppers are female.
One way you could turn that around is by following my suggestion and donating the small profit you made to an appropriate cause.
Another way you could make amends would be to promote a rape charity in your store.
Another suggestion would be an Asda led campaign educating about the dangers of date-rape drugs, which recently has become a huge problem in my home town.
I hope you realise although I feel strongly about this, I am making positive suggestions rather than threatening consumer boycotts or legal action, and I hope you consider some of the suggestions I have made. However, if you don't agree with any of my suggestions, I myself design T shirts and could easily sell quite a few outside your stores with the design included, with the profits going to some rape charity. If you find them offensive then I promise to withdraw them once I've sold 15,000.
sincerely,
orca
Excellent Article
07.04.2007 15:52
In those departments you are not allowed to think for yourself. I would suggest everyone who reads this article to write a letter to ASDA asking them to take up the points mentioned in your letter and to make a grovelling apology and appropiate reparations for their quite frankly appalling behaviour. If I was in charge of ASDA then everyone who was in charge of approving and buying these t-shirts would be sacked for bringing the company into disrepute.
Well off to write my letter to ASDA now.
Wallace
cheers Wallace
07.04.2007 16:35
His address is
Mark Wright, Customer Relations Management
Asda House
South Bank
Great Wilson Street
Leeds LS11 5AD
tel 01132435435
fax 01132418666
minicom 08000683003
And here is the standard reply I got in case you get the same one, and since you are from his industry I trust you can see through the bullshit :
"Thanks for your recent letter to my collegue Andy. I've replied in his abscence since I am his customer service manager.
Naturally, we're sorry you found this t-shirt offensive. Our range of comedy t-shirts are intended to be exactly that - simply a bit of fun. They've been very popular with both male and female customers alike. The entire design was produced by a team of women who certainly didn't mean for it to be itnerpreted in this way.
We've sold 15,000 of these t-shirts, but we always listen to our customer feedback as it's an invaluable tool which helps us improve our products and services. In response to what our customers have told us, we''ve now withdrawn this particulat t-shirt from sale.
I hope this action restores your faith in our commitment to customer care. We look forward to serving you again."
Rape Crisis Scotland seem to have been placated by the withdrawal of the t-shirt. I guess they can't be seen to pressure a corporation for funds. I can though, and I can squeeze hard.
Anyway, here are their links which I first accessed just now, like I said I complained before I heard of Rape Crisis.
ASDA T-SHIRT INCITEMENT TO RAPE - PROTEST!
Asda are currently selling a t-shirt depicting 2 women sitting back to back like the Kappa logo. Round them is the slogan, “if at first you don’t succeed, buy her another drink and try again”. We deplore the contempt for women and incitement to rape this encourages and have written to Asda demanding the removal of this item.
Anyone wishing to complain about this can call 0113 2435435 or write to Asda, ASDA House, Southbank, Great Wilson Street , Leeds LS11 5AD
You can see a copy of our letter here.
orca
Da Kappa
07.04.2007 20:08
I am aware Kappa have used a liberal attitude to sex to sell clothes. I have no problem with that, I have never been offended by any of your logos. Asda, the UK branch of Wallmart, recently stole the Kappa logo to sell a 'comedy t-shirt'. It has eventually been withdrawn after a storm of protest. However Asda/Wallmart are refusing to donate the profits of the 15,000 Kappa-style t-shirts they have sold to a rape-charity. They portray this as 'a simple bit of fun'.
Getting a woman drunk for the purposes of having sex with her is definded as rape under Scottish law. It is hardly a simple bit of fun. I don't have much power over such a large multinational as Wallmart. But you do. You could sue them and donate some of the settlement to a suitable womans charity.
If I were you I wouldn't want my logo being misused by another corporation to promote rape.
orca