Home » Anti-Drinking Campaign Slammed As “Shockingly Misogynistic” & “Victim Blaming”

20 March, 2018

Anti-Drinking Campaign Slammed As “Shockingly Misogynistic” & “Victim Blaming”

An anti-drinking campaign by a local British council has been slammed as “victim blaming” after it suggested women who got drunk often ended up having one-night stands.

What started out as a good idea to draw attention to the dangers of excessive drinking among young people has backfired for Sunderland City Council.

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One of the posters for the out of home campaign shows a young woman holding a baby with the caption. “Talk to your daughter about alcohol now. Before it starts making decisions for her”.

It then adds: “In a couple of years’ time your daughter could go to a party, drink too much and be pressured into having unsafe sex. Talk about it with her now and help her make the right choices. Why let drink decide.”

However, local politician Niall Hodson was none to happy with the Council’s initiative, branding the poster “shockingly misogynist”.

“Suggesting to parents that if you don’t ‘help her make the right decisions’ your daughter will be some kind of victim, Hodson said, his comments reported on Metro.co.uk. “It says it is likely young women drinking alcohol will have decisions made for them, will be ‘pressurised into having unsafe sex’ and that they need help to ‘make the right choices’.

“Why would you want to reinforce these negative stereotypes? What on earth does this say about young women’s agency in 2018, and why do they feel the need to depict pregnancy and young mothers so negatively? I thought we were past this nonsense. Why does the campaign blame girls for the actions of people who abuse them?” he said.

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However, another politician, John Kelly, defended the campaign and said Hodson was out to “politicise children’s health”.

Kelly added: “This is a campaign to encourage parents to have a conversation with their children about alcohol. This is about people being in control of themselves.

“[Hodson’s] The Liberal Democrats are focusing on one poster. Another focuses on young boys fighting who might think they are invincible when they have a drink. These are hard-hitting posters for a specific reason,” Kelly said.

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