This is utter nonsense. If there were any proof of this at all it would not be on supermarket shelves or pumps on the bars of pubs. It is a man that beats a woman in a situation where he is abusing her. He is responsible for that in every case.
Sometimes he may use a bottle or a glass as an instrument of his assault or murder. The alcoholic liquid inside him, of whatever brand, does not kill or assault the woman. He does. It is a choice he makes sober. It is a choice he makes drunk.
A man may drink and may be drunk at the time he hits or attacks with an implement and/or murders a woman because it may make him bolder in his abuse and less fearful of potential consequences. In the moment he has no fear or inhibition. But his abuse is not of the moment. Abuse is not usually encapsulated in a single moment. It will not be confined to a drinking session or its aftermath. It will have been weeks, months, years of ongoing incidents while the man is both sober and drunk.
The 2018 Femicide Census notes that "femicide is best understood as an act of ultimate control rather than a loss of control". This means that observing, as some commentators and journalists do, that drink makes men "lose control" and that is why they hit women is dangerously inaccurate for a number of reasons.
This removes the entire surrounding framework of men's domestic abuse of women from consideration. This suggests there is a chemical causation which eliminates structural male violence against women. Men escape responsibility for their violent behaviour towards women. They may "use" booze but they deliberately choose the woman in their own life to abuse.
If a man enjoys hitting a woman and enjoys drinking there is no reason why he shouldn't enjoy those two things together. Is there? Especially if one allows him to excuse the other. He might even actively seek to enjoy them together. If men didn't "enjoy" or gain positive feelings from hitting the women in their lives they would probably stop. As stated above - it is an act of ultimate control to kill a woman. It is an act of control to abuse her. Suggesting that men don't make that choice but are instead "slaves" to booze which makes them beat women gives rise to the obvious question of ...why don't they hit their best friend at the bar instead before they get home? Or their boss at the Christmas do? Lots of them hate their boss if their claims of work as a reason they beat women is also true. Why do they not immediately hit the barman who calls time on their drinking session?
If the message to men is that the booze is to blame not them. They will keep on boozing and abusing. It's all in the timing isn't it? Then they will stand back and hold up their hands in abdication of responsibility. Sometimes those hands will be covered in a woman's blood.
Simultaneously, if an abused woman is regularly told, and therefore thinks, that the drink is to blame she will keep believing him when he says he can change. She will stay. She will be part of his fictitious cycle where he promises to stop drinking and then everything will be fine. He will direct her to how nice he is "most of the time until I have a drink... you know this love". Until the next time he hits her. It is then perfectly possible that she will also blame the drink. Because he has primed her to do so. He has "saved" his act of violent abuse UNTIL he is drunk. It is part of the gaslighting sequence.
There is the "next morning" apology to back up this myth. The man will apologise and blame the drink. She will believe him because this is how it happened last time. He may stop drinking for a while and behave better. All of this reinforces the idea that the drink was the issue. It prolongs her deciding to seek help and/or leave.
The really clever abuser will go further than that. He will say it is because "they" were drinking. That she also needs to stop drinking with him so that he doesn't hit her again. That she provokes him when she is drunk and that is why he hits her. The abused woman will believe him and do as commanded. It feels supportive. She will count herself to blame also, if she had, perhaps, been drinking. She therefore inadvertently shares the blame for his abuse of her. If she drinks or he does and he hits her .... she has been primed to believe the drink or herself is to blame. Not of course him. She won't ever question why she doesn't become violent when drinking. She hasn't time to do this while fighting his constant gaslighting. She may even have fought back. She may therefore feel guilty of "similar". He will reinforce this self-doubt and take advantage of it.
The Femicide Census also shows us more about these men to consider. 56% of women murdered by men in 2018 were in incidences of overkilling. This is where more than one method of killing is used. If a man was simply drunk and "spontaneously" violent, would he have sufficient capacity to find more than one implement? Would he - as in some cases - spend days sourcing the implements to kill a partner or ex partner? Would he be drunk the whole time? Or only some of it? Would he open a few beers when he was ready and then take out the large knife, the axe and the rope he had spent days obtaining? In these cases it is obvious that drink makes little contribution to his planning or the eventual murder. Drink might be used to gain "courage" but the motivation is the man's desire to kill a woman not his desire to drink alcohol. According to the Femicide Census report for 2018, of 147 perpetrators of Femicide (not all murdered are in a domestic context) only 24 had problematic substance abuse issues.
This idea of a man who hits a woman when drinking also takes no consideration of other forms of abuse of women which are no less harmful or easy to escape from. Coercive control including emotional abuse and financial abuse are not committed only because a man has been drinking. These are careful practices of the abuser. He will be calling her names, accusing her of sleeping with other men, telling her she is a bad mother etc etc throughout the day. This won't be an "isolated incident" when he has cracked open a can of beer or poured the Merlot a bit freely.
Of course a man may become more belligerent when drunk. Drink lowers inhibitions in many ways. But the abuser is already abusive. He will be abusive in many different ways and at many different times of day.
What about the abuser who is not with his victim? The stalkers and harassers and the ones who text threats and the ones who carry those threats out? Their behaviour isn't induced by alcohol. It is committed by men who use alcohol and those who don't.
Abusive men in a lockdown situation are now in the house with few opportunities to leave and some are drinking alcohol. Women are seeking help in growing numbers. This is to be expected with or without the men drinking increasing levels of alcohol. Women are now subject to all the many and varied forms of abuse for longer periods of time, more frequently and with less access to support systems - which includes friends and family alongside women's services. His abuse hasn't suddenly flowed out of a bottle or from a lockdown policy. It was there. The man just had less opportunity to control the woman's movements. He had less access to her in some cases. She had some periods without him if she was able to work or if he did. Some women can now see more clearly what he was able to shield or hide or keep to a managed cycle which kept her permanently disorientated. Some women have finally realised what their future looks like with him more starkly. Some women are unable to accept the increased level of his violent and/or coercive behaviour. Other women are accessing help because his behaviour has escalated. In some cases that may be because his inhibitions have been removed by alcohol. It can also be that his inhibitions are removed by the fact that he may not be as easily detected if she never leaves his sight.
He may be wondering what has he got to lose? He might die anyway. Men in war/battle historically have seen the rape and assault of women as a right of soldiers. A current sense of siege mentality might escalate his behaviour. A woman who had been pondering her abuse and her exit might be more acutely aware that this is the time she is most at threat. Her mind has been focused in a way that it hasn't before with the many life distractions that normally surround her.
Those who have never experienced abuse might be learning about it for the first time. I know it seems many in government are. It is almost like women's organisation haven't been screaming themselves blue in the face for decades. Male journalists are tagging it into articles because it seems a bit zeitgeisty and click worthy. Lockdown has suddenly made them see the abused women behind the closed doors. Yet they never saw those women when they were out on the streets bleeding to death with 86 knife wounds to the head. At a rate of one every four days.
So in a lockdown situation like this, you have abusive men, you have alcohol, you have the women the men abuse.
But..... an abusive man starts when he opens his eyes, not when he opens the bottle.
