I have a bee in my Veil. A large one and buzzing loudly to ignore. And I need to catch it and “de-sting” it, maybe pull its wings off for good measure.
A couple of afternoons ago, a colleague at work brought up the news on ‘slut-shaming’ protest in the UK. And guess what, it is going to happen in Delhi too! For those of you who haven’t heard about it, it was basically a group of women making the point, publicly, that even if they are sluts, they deserve not to be raped. Not unreasonable right? Or is it?
When Mary brought it up, she said ‘slut-shaming’ with a smirk on her face, like ‘how ridiculous – if you’re a slut then you’re asking for it no?’ I couldn’t be certain; after all, Mary is in her late Twenties, grew up in Male’ and was well educated and working in the field of Teaching – not the type I’d imagine would have such archaic and un-feminist ideas. So I asked.
I was right. Sadly. And she went on to elucidate her argument (I use this term quite lightly) with absolute disdain. According to her, yes it is sad when women are raped, but rapists have a mental problem no? And women should be responsible enough not give these mentally ill people any reason to ‘lose control’ over their impulses. I had to stop her right there –mental problem?? There may be some men who raped a woman because they managed to escape from a mental institution, but does that mean a majority of men who rape women have a mental ‘illness’? Really? We’re going to give them that excuse now? I asked her about women who get gang raped – are all the men involved mentally ill? She really thought so. She really believed it was a mental problem that caused men to rape women. Nothing to do with their lack of respect for a woman, nothing to do with their insane power-trip, nothing to do with their innate violent tendencies, nothing to do with their arrogance and the belief that they can have what they want when they want and from whom they want – mental illness.
So then I asked why it was the woman’s responsibility – why should she be liable for some ass-hole not having the willpower to keep his pants up. Surely that was asking too much of her? How can she control how another human being will behave?? She gave me some more illustrations. All men look at a woman and their first impression is based on how she looks. Again, obviously, I had to disagree. I said (a) it is too much of a generalization to say that of all men and (b) if we did have to generalize, then surely it was safe to say everyone, man or woman, makes snap judgments based on a person’s appearance, until of course, you get to know the person and revise your opinion thereafter, right? No.
Men do this and decide how seriously to take a woman based on what she is wearing and it is the woman’s fault. After all, would I like it if a woman wore a sexy outfit and tried to break up my marriage or my relationship? God how I loathe this one especially!
No I said. If some sexy woman came along and my marriage broke up I would not blame the sexy woman. She thought I was being too permissive. No Mary, all I mean is that if my husband or boyfriend decided to leave me for another woman, sexy or not, it would be between him and me. NOT the other woman’s responsibility. She decided I couldn’t possibly have understood what she meant and decided to give me another illustration. What if, she said, “a new male friend joins and when he comes to sit with us in this table, I show off my cleavage and get to him to pay more attention to me than anyone else in here, wouldn’t that be unfair – to get his attention by using my physical charms?” I almost laughed.
Again, patiently, I said no, it would say more about him than you. I’d think he was an idiot because he was paying you attention not because you have anything intelligent to say but because you’re showing him some cleavage?!
She refused to acknowledge that I might have a point. She was adamant that it was a woman’s responsibility to dress appropriately and not draw unwanted attention to herself. After all, you (that’s me) can’t deny that men will rape women and it would be safer for a girl if she could “just not add to his temptation.”
I couldn’t deny it. It is a pathetic reality that men will rape women. But I have a different strategy to deal with that. “What’s that?” she asked. Rather than teach my daughter to dress differently, I would teach my son to respect women and teach him some impulse control. Impossible! That was her last word on the topic.
I sat there and thought. As educators we tell our students they are the future of the world. As a history teacher, she tells her students they must learn about the past so they can change the future. That they must ‘be the change they want to see.’
But do we all really believe this change is possible? And if we don’t really really believe it how can we convince the young people in our charge that they can make changes.
Why did she say impossible? Why is it impossible to stop telling our girls to dress differently and start teaching our boys that respect has nothing to do with how a person dresses, that respect has nothing to do with a person’s age or gender. That respect is a basic human courtesy that every individual deserves just by virtue of being a human being.
In the Qur'an, the Bible, the Bhagwad Gita (probably other religious texts too, but I know these for sure) it is said – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
You wouldn’t like it if you got raped and people said it was because you wore too much lipstick right?
Ridiculous? Perhaps it was the stockings and high heels.
Nonsense! Might have been the short skirt.
Rubbish! Must have been the cleavage-showing blouse.
Preposterous! Obviously then, it was the language you used – told you, you shouldn’t have said ‘fuck’ so much.
WHERE DOES THIS END??
And if you don’t like the idea that you might be told these things, why do you have such insane ideas about others?? Or, oh this is the best one, are you really just that naïve/stupid that you think you’re immune to rape because you’re not ‘that kind of girl’??!
Please. Say it with me – really???
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