Monday, January 21, 2013

Slutwalk and other things

So as my TV viewing increased as a procrastination method of avoiding studying I clicked onto Dr Phil confronting an online viewer who operated a Website criticizing the exposure of too much flesh by women in Public. The program was actually interesting as the mousy man was made to justify his site with two young women - one with the full works- impossibly bleached blonde hair, tight revealing clothes and the other an earnest teenager whose Website/blog aired her view that women should dress how they like and that THAT was not an invitation for rape. I sort of found myself craving the middle ground and siding with the overweight young mother who operated a conservative site decrying the sexualization of young children/pre-teen girls as in my opinion things have got too far when preteens want to copy young American media stars who display inappropriate dress for that age group.
It's bad enough here, on Mashramani Day to see under-10 girls encouraged to 'whine-down or up' as the case may be in a vulgar way clearly aping the sex act (http://gtobserver.blogspot.com/2011/02/mash-2011.html). Having said that I quite agree with the women's position that no woman wants to be raped and remember a Police person in London caused a furore when he advised women to be off the streets before Pubs closed and to use Public Transport which had another woman travelling in it - the women's groups countered that instead of putting the burden/restrictions on the women maybe the men should observe a curfew!
Recently, a Canadian police person warned women about dressing 'sluttily' and the women organised 'Slutwalks' to demonstrate their disapproval at that piece of advice. Our local papers have had a volley going between an imam who implied that women who dressed sluttily contributed to getting themselves raped and others who objected to that view.  Guyana is a hot country pretty near the equator - it makes all the sense in the world to wear the minimum of clothing. But the question of the socialization of the men is a different issue - sick people will prey on the vunerable even the company of other males as the tragic case in India demonstrates. Dressing makes no difference to them but if the woman is dressed provocatively they would use that as an excuse for their unacceptable anti-sociable behaviour.
** Postscript 23-Jan-2013  Heard on the BBC that there is a thing such as Slut-shaming-- I guess that must have been the Website run by the mousy man above-- however - this is a bit more creepy - young teenaged boys get pictures of their teenaged girlfriends in various stages of undress and send around the internet-- called sexting-- apparently the girls are complicit in the earlier stages not sure how they feel to be on the world wide web. But worse in the practice in South Africa of teenaged girls being invited to parties by their peers and made drunk/drugged and videoed being raped! As a young American girl speaking up against these practices asked 'Where is the empathy?' (for another human being). One person observed that children take their cues from their parents - it begins to feel like decent people are outnumbered or accused of being prudish to object to these practices!

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