[trigger warning: modesty, rape. please enjoy this immodest, nonrapey otter instead.]
Of course, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you've seen them before, and you don't consider seeing my boobs to be an aggressive move on my part. Your reaction was probably "meh", "nice!" or "Oh, c'mon, again?"
If you were raised in the fundamentalism subculture, however, as millions of Americans were and are, you would see my choice of clothing, the way I move, my body itself as assaultive towards you. Assuming you are a man, of course. (Since women have no sex drive and only have sex in exchange for shelter and food, men can't assault us with their sexiness.*) Men are not responsible for their own actions, and lust is a sin, which creates a situation where, if a man finds a woman vaguely attractive, it's because she is a WHORE and she is flaunting her WHOREisness in front of the innocent mens.
This creates some frightening beliefs and attitudes, btw. Some of these men are angry, which makes sense, really. If you believe that lust is evil and that women are responsible for your thoughts and feelings and actions, you would be constantly angry. You would be angry at every woman in a tank top, every woman in a short skirt, every woman whose breasts bounce** as she moves, every woman whose hips sway as she walks**- in other words, every woman.
And you would be angry at the fact that you can't control it at all. You can't control how women dress or move. You can't control where they walk in those low cut shirts and short skirts.
Here are some comments that reflect that anger from the modesty survey at Rebelution:
Saddened; disappointed; sometimes angered. They're distracting good men, dishonoring God and marriage, and offering themselves cheaply---which makes me desire even more strongly a girl who is modest, who is valuable. I would be disingenuous if I didn't concede that these kinds of girls are a temptation. But I always remind myself that if a girl flaunts herself before I marry her, she'll do the same thing afterward. As a husband, that would make me pretty mad.What would make me happy is dedicating all my energy to loving a young woman who reserves herself for me.It's not their body to flaunt. It belongs to Christ and their future husband. How dare they flaunt something that God did not permit them to flaunt? How dare they write a check the Bible doesn't allow them to cash? When a girl purposely flaunts her body, she is almost immediately ruled out for anything beyond acquantenance in my eyes.Yes, you can turn me on, but don't expect me to respect you. Yes, I might find you attractive on the outside, but that won't make me think of you as attractive on the inside. Sure you might get my attention, but it will be negative attention.Men are easily stimulated visually. It doesn't take rocket science to figure that out. But this leads to lust - not love.Love is a commitment. In order to get a commitment from a guy, he needs to perceive you as respectable and of immeasurable worth. Flaunting your body communicates that you don't have a lot of self-worth. God made women and by flaunting their bodies, they are insulting the creator and cheapening his invaluable creation.
It's not my body to flaunt. It's God's body, it's my (future) husband's body, but it's not mine. I just live in it.
So, how many steps do you suppose are between that and rape? One, maybe two? I mean, it's not my body and I'm hurting every man who can see me, so . . . let's teach me a lesson, huh? I mean, I am flaunting and dishonoring my (future) husband and GOD and cheapening myself so I must want to fuck every guy in the world and men aren't responsible for their actions and . . . rape.
Funny thing, Rebelution, sexual assault is higher in countries that do control what women wear and where they go, like Saudi Arabia***. You won't see anything of a woman but her eyes, no bouncing, no swaying, nothing but black fabric broken only by a tiny mesh window. And sexual assault is far more prevalent than in the US.
Why is that? Because the entirety of Saudi Arabia has bought the lie that women are responsible for how men feel and act and that men carry no responsibility for their feelings and actions, which sexual assault is always whose fault? I'll give you a hint: not the one doing the assaulting.
Look, I'm not feeling bad for rapists, and I'd like pictures of the men who gave those comments so I know whom to avoid, but I feel bad for them, too. According to their upbringing, they are constantly being victimized. They are the victim of virtually every woman they see. That must really suck.
Psst . . . guys! Yeah, you. Feminism can help you. No, really. Once you understand that feelings are okay and you are responsible for your own actions and that women's bodies belong to the women and nobody else, you will stop being a victim. You'll feel so much better, I promise.
Well, I doubt any of those guys saw that, but let's keep saying it. Eventually someone stuck as an eternal victim will hear it, statistically speaking or something. At the very least, our children will hear it and that's a start.
*HAHAHAHAHAHA!
**These things are unavoidable. The construction of breasts, the way they are attached to the chest, their composition, makes bouncing and bobbling unavoidable. As to hips, I honestly don't know how not to sway a bit when I walk. I mean, my hips are 11" bigger than my waist, I think swaying is also unavoidable given that build.
***Official statistics put Saudi Arabia at the lowest per capita, with a rate of .003 per 1,000. This is because fornication is punishable by death, and rape counts as fornication. Private, anonymous surveys show that as many as 80% of women were sexually assaulted in some way at some point in their lives.
