Letter to the editor: “Women Don’t Need Your Blessing”
In her article entitled “Women Don’t Need Your Blessing,” Emily Himes claims that the CDC is trying to regulate when women stay sober or drink and when they have or deny sex, citing a “very intentional subtext” in the information that was given. To give credence to this conclusion, Ms. Himes states that the information given in the infographic was already “common knowledge,” and that “alcohol does not cause STD’s, pregnancy, or violence; men and women without self control [sic] do.” However, the CDC infographic never claimed that alcohol “causes” any of these things, rather it cites these as “risks” of alcohol consumption. In much the same way that skipping breakfast does not “cause” you to order a bigger lunch, it certainly encourages that behavior. If skipping breakfast causes you to be hungrier, and being hungry leads to you ordering a bigger lunch, skipping breakfast would thereby have caused you to order a bigger lunch. Ms. Himes states that a lack of self-control causes STD’s violence or pregnancy. Alcohol is known to decrease one’s self control. Therefore, could it not be said that alcohol can cause these things? Although it is understandable that the infographic could be seen as slighting or even blaming solely women’s drinking on causing these problems, concluding that the CDC should not be warning women about the effects of alcohol consumption on their actions because it can be seen as “playing dad” is unfounded since alcohol is in fact a cause for these negative effects by Ms. Himes’ own logic.
-Keegan Edgar, Philosophy 230
