Well, you said what I wanted to say a lot better than I said it, so my post must be only worth a penny.
That’s pure gold, and almost word for word what I told my daughter when she went off to college. Except I think I might have used the words “posse” and “woke” at some point… causing much eye-rolling.
but maybe making this political point consistently and loudly is the best say of effecting systematic change because interim solutions are within the limit cycle of the status quo
Knowing what I know about @Medievalist, I am venturing to guess a full plate mail ensemble, possibly with one of those banded metal skirts.
What I’m trying to convey to you is that as a woman, with a job that I have to dress for, your suggestion isn’t practical or helpful. My sister was raped by a highschool friend at my childhood home. A heavy jacket could not have helped her. The guilt and responsibility that she felt stopped her from reporting him, and suggestions of what she should have done still haunt her.
Since most rapes are comitted by people the victims know, and in places that they feel safe, heavy leather jackets aren’t going to help. That’s not politics, that’s the reality that women live with.
I am sorry to hear about the all-too-common experience of your sister. It has happened to people close to me, too.
Don’t let my description of my own sartorial habits mislead you as to what I am saying. I’m a poor writer.
If your workplace has a dress code or internal culture that prevents you from dressing appropriately for life on the planet Earth, people with attitudes like mine are not the source of that problem. I’m not supporting rapists, but that culture or office sure as hell is.
Making it necessary or desirable for someone to wear clothes that prevent self-defense is not much different than foot-binding, in my opinion. Preventing someone from running or fighting is directly enabling assault, and a very great number of other evils. And it’s a choice someone’s made, at some point. Perhaps an office manager, or a group of judgmental customers.
Nobody should wear clothes that they can’t run or fight in, that prevent them from raising their arms above their head, swinging their limbs freely, or seeing what is happening in the environment around them. Nobody should wear a silk scarf or necktie or other strangling device that will not break before their neck does. Don’t wear a platinum ring unless you are willing to lose a finger for it (like my father nearly did, thanks to a church fence).
When you castigate people for speaking these truths, you’re in danger of actively supporting social conditioning that makes people unnecessarily vulnerable (to all sorts of problems including earthquakes, fires, animals and bunions), supporting a fashion culture that treats human beings as disposable things that primarily exist for the viewing pleasure of other humans, and approving of something not too far removed from the burka and niqab; a potentially lethal set of shibboleths that, in practice, do harm to women and the poor. This does not help anyone who is suffering.
All of the above are my opinion, that I share only in the fervent hope that it will help somebody somewhere. If someone can’t take my advice due to physical disability, that’s very unfortunate and I hope that their condition can be improved. And if someone wants to ignore my advice, that’s up to them. I don’t go around forcing people to stop smoking or wear motorcycle helmets or whatever for their own good, so I’m not going to stop someone from teetering around on high heels by their own choice.
For anyone joining late in the thread - I am not supporting Angela Lansbury, I am trying to mark a distinction between promoting a strong healthy culture (we all should wear functional pragmatic clothes as much as possible) and victim blaming (that person got hurt because they wore clothing that maddens the minds of men). I wish to do the former without doing the latter and I seem to be having little success.
Thanks for the clarification.I can better see where you are coming from.
I think you must know that almost all tradional office workplaces would not allow dressing in the way that you describe. I think this also again leans to heavily on what victims should be doing, instead of what predators should not be doing.
I think we agree that the centuries of forcing women into helpless positions through fashion and social constraints has been bad for women. I also think that as man, you’ve not experienced the weight of social pressure and the centuries of momentum that is behind it.Women suffer socially, economically, and sometimes romantically when they go against these social conventions. To me, it is putting the problem of rape back in victims’ laps instead of on perpetrators where it belongs.Back to my sister again, the jeans and shirt she was wearing were ordinary. But it wasn’t her clothes that resulted in her being raped, it was the “friend” who decided to rape her.
This is fantasy. Bad things happen, but no one can forsee every possible danger. No one follows all of those rules except maybe yourself.
They aren’t truths just like telling people to carry guns to protect themselves from being shot aren’t.This line of thinking doesn’t help the suffering either.
You’re welcome to your opinion. If things are to change the focus MUST stay on disempowering rapists, not on asking women to reverse social conventions that come at a tangible cost on the off chance that their shoes even matter.I want you to know that I don’t think you’re a misogynist pig or anything like that. I think you mean well. I also think that you don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and that your prescriptions are extreme even for a lot of men. Self defense is good, and so is practical clothing, but some people won’t ever have access to those things and neither is a magic bullet.
Wow. Took 8 whole comments to get to “well, sorry it’s an inconvenience for you ladies, but it sucks to be you” comment…
Women have been doing factory work since there have been factories, actually. There has never been a time where factory work was the sole domain of men. There were certainly times when they tried to make that happen, by pushing women out of the factories, but there have always been women in industrial labor.
Please educate yourself.
Women were some of the first factory workers.
Stop victim blaming.
So you solution is that women should walk around in full Kevlar? Come on man, really?
What kind of dystopian planet Earth are you living on? It sounds to me like some kind of mix between Mad Max and Waterworld. I prefer to live in a society in which people do not have to constantly worry about being assaulted. That’s what we should try to strive for. Not everybody can defend themselves. Children get raped, disabled people get raped, old women get raped, drugs are also used to disable and rape women. The solution is not self-defense, the solution is zero tolerance for abuse.
They were also common in the English coal mines (as, for example, cart haulers) until the passage of the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842. This is usually remembered as workplace rights regulation, but I think it was probably more about controlling women.
I will slightly defend her position depending upon your definitions, if and only if your definition of “harassment and rape” includes looking at a woman. There is no amount of attractiveness, clothing or lack thereof that warrants verbal or physical abuse. However, accusing a man of “harassment” because he looked at you (as a few women have posited as legitimate) is a reductio ad absurdum argument that devalues the position of women who actually have been assaulted.
Perhaps women do bear some of the blame for constantly going out with poison needles hidden in their purses, belt buckles and rings. As a man, I typically have a sword concealed in my cane and a knife in my boot just in case I’m physically attacked by my employer or my aunt.
Even societies with conservative religious dress codes have men who ogle women as sex objects. Just ask Marjane Satrapi.
Yeah, you’re right.
I should have said women started entering business, politics and the professions in the US during my lifetime. And, even with the added specificity the statement is not completely accurate.
Oh and thank you for your kind request that I, what was it again, “educate myself.”
I’ll endeavor to do just that.
and
