These quotes are so maddening. And you see it in other cultures also.
Going from generation to generation, not only enforced by man. Also by peers, mothers, sisters.
Instead of learning boys → man how to behave and restrain there selfs, if needed. Or just look the other way if bothered. Girls and woman are made responsible.
In this very mixed part of the city I live in, you still see, 3th generation, happening this. Girls with a skirt, or short, and/or hair loose, seem to be fair game to be schuss’t on (don’t know the correct English name for “pssst, pssst”). Or worse, called names. And when you address* such a group (yes, group mostly) of boys, the answer is likely “Yes, but she should not dress like that”. Argh… upbringing…
From the other side there is a big group of Latin/Caribbean people, and these girls (mostly, do generalize a bit of course, sorry for that) dress like they want and take no sh*t from such groups.
*At the place where I volunteered for a long while I got the chance to see, address such things and be witness and mediator of the literally fights and clashes that happened.
I know. Even as a young thing I felt the unfairness and helplessness of the position that girls are put in because of this responsibility-especially as I became more aware of the overt sexualization of women and girls throughout our culture.
I still remember innocently asking my mother why boys were allowed to look at women and see them undressed, but the reverse was not allowed…and she told me unironically that it was part of being a woman.
That was the first in a series of “breaks” in my psyche and perspective of the world I lived in.
I never accepted much of what my parents or others had to tell me about cultural norms. So much of it appeared to be arbitrary and self-confirming. Not socializing into every foolish notion they confronted me with started me on a divergent cultural (and possibly biological) path, which has been difficult for them to accept.
And of course it is arbitrary and self confirming.
There is no question that the suffocating feelings of those norms drove me to find other perspectives and ways of thinking. And that in itself has been challenging enough for my parents. I can’t imagine how they would have reacted if my rejection of norms were more apperant in my appearance.
