‘Woman, if You Don’t Want to Be Seen As a Sex Object, Stop Dressing Like One’
The voice of entitlement.
I want to make something clear from the get-go: it’s impossible to dress like a sex object because people are not objects. Period. Any other explanations after this belong to someone looking for excuses to objectify.
Just because some interpret certain clothes as those of a sex object, it doesn’t mean there is any intention to look like one or be treated like one.
What a lot of people fail to realize is the difference between being sexual and being a sexual object.
People are not objects. And manifesting your sexuality doesn’t entitle anyone to treat you like one.
I remember this one weekend a few years back. I was chatting on Facebook with a friend of a friend, a guy I met about a week before. It was an innocent conversation, no flirting or anything, literally just talking and getting to know each other.
Because we happened to live very close to one another, at some point I asked him to come over to continue the conversation face-to-face. He came, we talked, drank some wine, no big deal. He left a few hours later.
The whole thing had 0 romantic or sexual implications to it. None of us said or did anything in that direction and there was never a question of it.
At least as far as I was concerned.
The next day our common friend called me to ask if I had a thing for him.
I found it bizarre since I didn’t do anything of the sort and neither did he.
And then I found out why.
He told my friend I called him over and I wasn’t wearing a bra. Obviously to entice him…
I was stunned. The attire I was supposedly trying to entice him with was this yellow sun dress I had been wearing for years around the house. It was what I had on the entire day because it was comfy. I didn’t put it on, especially for him and my braless breasts were that way because of one simple reason: comfort. Bras are uncomfortable, you know.
I told her the story and she concluded he was an idiot, as did I. Sadly, this is not an uncommon situation.
It was just one example of how delusional some people can be. And how something as simple as an unintentionally revealing dress can be considered an invitation for something more.
This happens a lot and sometimes with very unfortunate consequences.
Women’s attire is often considered a reason for them to be raped, sexually assaulted, laughed at, or slut shamed.
As we all know, in some countries women are covered in fabric head to toe, for fear the sight of their bodies can pose a threat to men who can’t contain their urges.
Although not to the same extent, it also happens in the Western world.
Women are not forced to wear huge body bags to cover themselves, but anything more or less revealing is frowned upon, and more religious societies consider it a shameful attempt to entice men and make them lose their minds and control of their fiery loins.
This perspective on women’s bodies effect on men, and I’ll say it loud and clear, is a lie.
Men can very well control their urges. If they couldn’t, you’d see men raping left and right in broad daylight. That’s how an uncontrollable urge functions: it doesn’t care that others can see you, judge you or punish you. That hardly ever happens, though.
But that’s only half the problem.
If men can’t contain their urges when seeing women’s bodies, why are we considering blaming the victim instead of the aggressor?
Why aren’t we addressing the problem at the source? And what is the problem? Men’s entitlement over women’s bodies. Nothing else.
This entitlement, a lack of personal accountability, and superior physical power give them a prerogative for a lot of sexually abusive behaviors, some of which are nothing less but rape.
One in 4 women has experienced completed or attempted rape. More than 4 in 5 female rape survivors reported that they were first raped before age 25 and almost half were first raped as a minor (i.e., before age 18).
It’s preposterous to motivate such behaviors with a few tight-fitting blouses!
Because sexual objectification doesn’t only lead to rape, but to all sorts of unwanted types of sexual attention, from inappropriate touching to catcalling, to soliciting sexual favors for career upgrades, to deep fakes of a sexual nature, sexual scams, etc.
There is a myriad of possibilities and they all have sexual objectification as the source. Just like most murders are committed because the murderer is completely disconnected from the victim and considers it nothing but an object at his disposal.
If men are pushed towards rape or sexual objectification because of a low cleavage or short skirt, maybe we have to look at this the way it really is. A way to deflect responsibility for men’s own actions towards women.
By the same reasoning, you could be saying that someone wearing a gold necklace in public entices people to steal it. But nobody is saying that.
They are only saying it about women dressing ‘provocatively’.
This can only mean 2 things: women are naturally deserving of rape just because they exist and they have bodies. Those bodies should be hidden or they will be objectified and sometimes even assaulted.
And even the word ‘provocatively’ hides the intention of provoking someone to do something. Which is inherently wrong. Revealing clothes are not an invitation for anything.
Not everything women do is meant to get men’s attention and it’s ridiculous to ask women to cover up just because some control-challenged dudes refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.
A problem just as big as sexual assaults per se is the misogynistic culture that leads to them happening.
This culture advises women to watch what they wear. Slut shames women who wear skimpy outfits, whether accidentally or on purpose. Tries to find reasons behind women getting raped, such as ‘she was walking alone at night’, ‘her dress couldn’t have been longer than a handkerchief’, ‘if she slept with everyone in town what did she expect?’, etc.
This attitude, under the guise of protecting women from a cruel world, actually perpetuate a culture of violence and shame by placing the blame on the victim.
And while I wouldn’t advise anyone to walk alone at night in a deserted area, wearing revealing clothing if something happens is never the victim’s fault.
Being sexually desirable is not an invitation to let that desire become active in damaging or inappropriate ways.
That’s where society should draw the line.
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