In a feature titled “The Scary Crime No One’s Talking About,” Cosmopolitan’s cutting-edge reporting team wrote about a new scary thing for women to worry about besides STDs, how to wear capes and the state of Kristen Stewart’s love life: getting roofied by bartenders.
Are you serious? After all the talk of not accepting drinks from strangers, never leaving a drink unattended and never accepting open containers, I have a fresh anxiety to keep me awake at night. I’ve resolved never to leave my house, just like SpongeBob SquarePants in the episode where he breaks his butt while skiing.
According to the article, some bartenders are now acting as go-betweens for customers who offer them money to drug women’s drinks. The bad news is there continues to be many resources for potential rapists: among known date-rape drugs GHB, ketamine and Rohypnol (aka roofies), anxiety medications, like Xanax are now being used as well.
The reporter interviewed both bartenders who had been cornered by men and offered cash to drug women’s cocktails and women who had been drugged. The bartenders, naturally, were appalled by the offers, refused and called the police. If only every man was like Dave, the bartender from San Francisco. The evidence points otherwise, however.
It was an interesting piece, and it even included a diagram of white wines that had been drugged and had a different tint. At the bottom of the page, however, I saw a plug-in from Cosmo that really rustled my jimmies.
Cosmo urged its readers to visit drinksafetch.com and purchase special coasters that act as a litmus test for GHB and ketamine. One simply drops a bit of one’s beverage on the indicated area and if the area turns blue, “it’s likely the drink contains GHB or ketamine.”
My initial thought was, “Gee, that’s pretty cool!” It’s always good for women to have resources; after all, it’s a cruel world, and creepers are now paying off bartenders to do their dirty work.
But then I got to thinking.
Are we really at this point? Are the pink stun guns, pepper spray canisters that look like pens, pocket knives disguised as lipstick and brass knuckles shaped like kittens not enough? I’ve probably spent more money this year on self-defense weapons than on actual drinks at a bars, and now I have to order and carry special coasters with me?
I’m a little miffed that these coasters are being hawked in Cosmo and not in trade magazines for restaurant and bar owners. That seems like that would be more effective, after all. If a rapist walked into a bar and saw a sea of women bent over their coasters, testing their drinks for drugs, I’m pretty sure that might deter them.
It all just seems like one more thing I have to buy in order to protect myself, and quite frankly, I’m sick of living in fear. Whether men know it or not, fear of sexual assault dominates women’s lives. Just this week I read an article on Jezebel about the hushed-up Amherst College rapes. Now I have to become a forensics expert every time I go out?
Don’t get me wrong; the coasters are a fantastic resource, and if they stop even one woman from being raped or sexually assaulted, then they’ve succeeded. But why on earth, in 2012, is it the rape victim’s responsibility not to get raped?
From what I’ve found in my research, restaurants, clubs and bars are doing little to nothing to prevent criminals from drugging women’s drinks other than bartenders refusing to do customers’ dirty work (which should be obvious, but apparently isn’t). Furthermore, it seems as if no one is trying. Are we really content to shrug our shoulders and say, “Rapists will be rapists”? The correct answer is no; you shouldn’t be.
