A Brief, Unpopular Opinion

Ask yourself why bars have “Ladies Nights”.

If a business offers a consumable product for a lower price, they want to bring you in and get you to consume more.

If you consume too much alcohol, you get drunk, possibly suffer lapses in judgement.

Men don’t get discounts at most bars on Ladies’ Nights, so the reason they go is to meet women. But the bar has been encouraging the women to drink more and maybe get a little (or a lot) drunk, which means that men go to bars on Ladies Nights to meet drunk women.

Why do the women have to be drunk? Maybe so that their judgement is impaired and it’s harder for them to say ‘no’.

Following this wobbly logic, I wonder if Ladies Nights are simply Unofficially Sanctioned Date Rape Events, which offends me deeply. If you doubt this logic, spend some time in a bar on a few ladies nights and watch the behaviours. Especially campus bars.

I’m not just tossing out an opinion here. I used to be a bartender, a shift manager. I was also a drunken male college student, and then a drunken resort staff member. I know the business practices of bars as well as the motivations behind drinking, especially for the shy and awkward.

I first posted the above rant on Facebook and received much support and some “you’re exaggerating” responses. Someone even said that people need to take responsibility for their own behaviours and not put themselves in risky situations. You know, I agree completely. I believe that victims sometime demonstrate a complete lack of common sense, which in part leads to them becoming victims. Stupid is as stupid does, they say. But a lady has a right to drink as much as she wants without fear of someone taking advantage of her condition. Maybe that’s why they go to the bathroom in groups when they’re out…they don’t trust us men.

Some even say that a woman shouldn’t “dress and behave like a slut” if she doesn’t want the wrong kind of attention. Really? Then maybe a man who doesn’t want to be dragged out back of a bar and have the shit kicked out of them because he said something inappropriate to a woman should keep their mouths shut. But men should have the right to use words of their choice without fear of being pummelled and women should have the right to wear clothes of their choice, drink drinks of their choice, dance the dances of their choice, without becoming victims of someone else’s desire to overpower and hurt someone.

A man’s  natural state should be ‘gentleman’, not ‘douchebag’. I’ve not always been a gentleman, but I’ve never been a douchebag, and  I always understood that ‘No’ meant ‘No’.

That’s my long-weekend-Saturday-night-waiting-for-the-pizza-to-cook rant. If you own a bar and you have a Ladies Night when the specials are only for the ladies… stop.

That’s it, that’s all.

Ciao for now.

T-Bone.

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