Rape Has Nothing To Do With How Women Dress

5 Responses to “Rape Has Nothing To Do With How Women Dress”

1. blodyn on June 2nd, 2008 5:51 pm

   A guy in my uni class once did a presentation concerning the issue of rape. And he brought forth the theory that rapists are more likely to rape women with long hair. At that point, EVERY girl in the class turned to look at me. Why? Because I have long hair and I was the only one in the class who wasn’t wearing a headscarf. It got me annoyed and I retorted with “Almost all the rape victims reported in the news are women wearing headscarves. So you guys should be the ones worried, not me.”

   Hasn’t anyone noticed that rape victims in Malaysia are mostly women who wear headscarves? So, that proves that what women wear has nothing to do with whether she is more likely to get raped or not. If it does, well, then, people should stop wearing headscarves since women wearing headscarves seem to be the most targetted group for rapists in Malaysia. If anyone didn’t get the tone, that was me being sarcastic. It still amazes me how ridiculously dumb and ignorant some people are.

2. Roman Kalik on June 2nd, 2008 7:46 pm

   Actually, blodyn, there is a kind of twisted sense to the statistic you present. If the rapist is a street hunter, then he’d look for insecure women - and men could take the headscarf as a sign of being weak-willed, easier to subdue and less likely to report it after the deed was done. This would also apply, albeit being less of a factor, to women raped by close acquaintances.

   It’s a pity that some people don’t actually bother to try and enter the rapist archetype’s mind to try and understand how he thinks, and thus attempt to counter him. Instead, people focus on reeducating the victim, implying that were one to do that, the rapists would then somehow disappear.

3. Howie on June 3rd, 2008 5:07 am

   I don’t know how well “typologies” go with rapists…I just think then tend to be guys who are enormously angry at women, a bit sociopathic and have a cruelty streak mixed in with a warped sense of entitlement.

4. Deborah on June 13th, 2008 4:57 am

   Rape is about control, not about sex. That being said, I think lots of women protect themselves from being raped by traveling in groups, staying in public around men they don’t know well, by being assertive, and by steering clear of men who say or do things that make them feel uncomfortable. And, while I don’t think a woman is ever to blame for rape, I do think that school sanctioned uniforms should not be in the least bit provocative. So I’m all for the administrator saying in her opinion, the way the uniform appears on her female students is too “sexy” for them to wear safely in public. If I had a daughter at a private school, I wouldn’t want her wearing something that some horny old man would see as an invitation to hit on her. Whether women like it or not, when a woman is dressed in a see through or low cut shirt, she does attract attention and certainly that attention would include that of a potential rapist who is already looking for someone to victimize. Why not teach the girls to dress with respect? We teach people how to treat us and the schools should encourage modest dress and respect for one’s self.

5. anna on June 15th, 2008 9:05 am

   While I’d echo the above commenter’s opinion in that you can never blame a woman for another man’s heinous actions, I don’t think it’s at all true that what you wear cannot sometimes be a factor-n.b. this is never justification for rape though. Denying that rape is about sex is like denying that the burglar has no interest in getting the loot when he burgles a house. You can have control blah blah by doing lots of other things to people, there is a specific purpose for rape. Sexual instinct exists, it’s a very powerful instinct that rape can satifsy…It is about sex and it’s a fact of life that guys are visual creatures- which is why glamour/porn is so popular the world over.

   That said, you can be dressed perfectly respectably and still have to cover up to avoid sexual harassment. where i come from bare arms can be a turn on for significant parts of the men population. even though there is nothing indecent about having bare arms, it is advisable to cover up. I’m sure those ‘transparent’ shirts are probably not transparent at all and are actually about as thick as sack cloth, but cultural considerations have to be taken into account and if they’re considered a turn on then it’s in the girls’ best interests to avoid them.

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