“Me Getting Plastered and Her Provoking My Eyes”

• Date: 01 July 2015
• Author: Sarah Becker,Justine Tinkler
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085114541142
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

Feminist Criminology

2015, Vol. 10(3) 235 –258

© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085114541142

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Article

“Me Getting Plastered

and Her Provoking My

Eyes”: Young People’s

Attribution of Blame

for Sexual Aggression in

Public Drinking Spaces

Sarah Becker1 and Justine Tinkler2

Abstract

Barroom sexual aggression—especially unwanted groping, kissing, and touching—is

ubiquitous and largely unregulated. While research explicates how alcohol interacts

with other precipitating factors to cause incidents like fistfights, the causes of less

serious forms of sexual aggression remain understudied. Normalization of non-

consensual sexual contact in bars means much of it goes unnoticed and is difficult

to quantify or predict using conventional statistical methods. We use 126 young

people’s narratives about experiences with barroom aggression to explore how/

when it is tolerated or socially sanctioned. We find that alcohol, context, and gender

shape attributions for sexual aggression in public drinking settings.

Keywords

alcohol, aggression, sexual assault, gender

Introduction

While rape and sexual harassment are taken quite seriously by the legal system, sexual

aggression in public drinking settings—especially non-consensual groping, kissing,

and touching—is ubiquitous and largely unregulated (Armstrong, Hamilton, &

1Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA

2University of Georgia, Athens, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sarah Becker, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, 126 Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge, LA

70803, USA.

Email: sbecker@lsu.edu

541142FCXXXX10.1177/1557085114541142Feminist CriminologyBecker and Tinkler

research-article2014

236 Feminist Criminology 10(3)

Sweeney, 2006; Graham, Wells, Bernards, & Dennison, 2010; Ronen, 2010). Most

men and women who patronize nightclubs or bars have witnessed or directly experi-

enced sexual aggression (Graham et al., 2010; Kavanaugh, 2013; Parks & Miller,

1997). In fact, the overwhelming majority of college-age men report using sexually

aggressive tactics to “get women” at bars and parties (Thompson & Cracco, 2008),

grabbing a woman from behind is a common and normalized form of aggression on

the dance floor (Ronen, 2010), and many people perceive aggression by men to be an

inevitable (albeit unpleasant) part of socializing in bars and clubs (Armstrong et al.,

2006; Kavanaugh, 2013).

Although commonplace, the causes of these less serious forms of sexual aggression

in public drinking settings remain understudied. Research tells us plenty about how

alcohol works alongside other precipitating factors to cause aggressive behavior such

as fistfights or bar brawls (Graham, Rocque, Yetman, Ross, & Guistra, 1980; Graham,

West, & Wells, 2000; Leonard, Collins, & Quigley, 2003). Studies also reveal factors

that predict more severe forms of sexual victimization in bars (Buddie & Parks, 2003;

Parks, Miller, Collins, & Zetes-Zanatta, 1998). However, the ubiquity of non-consen-

sual grabbing, touching, fondling, and kissing in public drinking settings means that

much of it is so normalized that it goes unnoticed. This makes it difficult to collect

quantitative data on victimization rates or to identify the factors that contribute to this

type of sexual victimization. In this article, we use young people’s narratives about

their experiences with sexual and non-sexual aggression in public drinking settings to

examine the factors that encourage non-consensual sexual contact in bars and clubs.

By looking at how people recall and attribute blame for such incidents, we are able to

gain a better understanding of the conditions under which this behavior is tolerated or

socially sanctioned. We find that alcohol, context, and gender moderate how people

attribute responsibility and blame for sexual aggression in public drinking settings.

Alcohol and Aggression in Public Drinking Settings

Concern about alcohol consumption and violence has yielded a wealth of scholarship

devoted to understanding how alcohol fuels aggression (Hingson, Zha, & Weitzman,

2009). Although people who drink heavily and/or frequently are disproportionately

likely to be involved in aggressive confrontations (Barnwell, Borders, & Earleywine,

2006; Wells, Speechley, Koval, & Graham, 2007), research indicates that there is no

straightforward physiological alcohol–aggression link (Graham, 2004, 2009). Instead,

alcohol interacts with other variables to produce violent outcomes (Graham, 2009;

Wells, Graham, & Tremblay, 2009). For example, individuals who see violence as

situationally appropriate/necessary or who have aggressive personalities are more

likely to experience alcohol-related aggression (Egan & Hamilton, 2008; Leonard et

al., 2003; Quigley & Leonard, 2004). In addition, people’s beliefs about alcohol’s

physical effects (i.e., their alcohol expectancies) affect the likelihood that consump-

tion will lead to violence (Barnwell et al., 2006; Quigley, Corbett, & Tedeschi, 2002;

Tremblay, Mihic, Graham, & Jelley, 2007). Believing alcohol has specific behavioral

consequences—that it causes increased sensitivity to insult, heightened emotion(s),