A comment by “Linda” published on Mia Friedman’s “warning” isn’t “victim-blaming” really, honestly, it totally isn’t, so there piece of foolishness this week:
“Slut shaming” is just a new buzz word to put a complete stop to a decent dialogue about women’s behaviour. My husband is a policeman and is astounded at the situations that women, especially very young teenagers will put themselves in. It is all very well to say that women should be able to wear what they like and drink what they like without men laying a finger on them. The reality is very different. There are still men in society who will spike drinks and who prey on women who are in a vulnerable state. My husband has often rung the parents of drunk teenagers in a state of undress because he is concerned for their welfare. What should be of even more concern is that the parents of these girls often know and don’t care.
Another point I would like to make is that women are sending very mixed signals to men. On the one hand they are dressing provocatively and yes, I use the word provocatively, because exposing your breasts, legs and often backside can only be for the benefit of attracting men. Yet on the other hand, they are saying, you had better not lay a single finger on me, no matter how badly I behave. That may include lying in the gutter spewing my guts out (as my husband has seen on numerous occasions), screaming obscenities and on many occasions exposing their breasts. At all times they are to be treated as complete ladies! If you think I am exaggerating, go to any nightclub in Melbourne at closing time and see what comes staggering out or even many of the railway stations around Melbourne.
CAN ONLY BE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ATTRACTING MEN. “HOW BADLY I BEHAVE”.
While there’s a single part of this comment you think is reasonable, we’re not there yet.
UPDATE: And here’s another idiotic doozy from Susie O’Brien of the Herald Sun, trying to defend Mia on 3AW:
“We need to be educating our girls to make good choices and not put themselves in situations where they can’t give consent to a sexual act,” O’Brien said.
Yes, because women should only be in situations where they are capable of consenting to a sexual act. I mean, that’s what they’re for, right? What the hell are they doing in a place where they’re having fun and enjoying themselves and sex is off the table? How very dare they!
Does anyone remember Sheikh el Hilali and his notorious “uncovered meat” line? It appears that a lot of Australians actually agreed with the essence of his comments. Nauseating.
Why do these people think so little of the boys and men of this world? Why do they assume that we’re all ineducable, incorrigible animals who simply can’t be persuaded to behave ethically in the presence of a woman, so why bother even trying? Why when people talk all this talk of women taking precautions, do I keep hearing “don’t tell the boys anything, don’t tell the men anything” etc? What’s wrong with teaching boys and men about pride in their decency and humanity? I just can’t believe it isn’t possible.
For so long, the passage of boys toward manhood has mostly been a matter of peer pressure. And we’ve pushed ourselves into all sorts of, well, bullshit, including homophobia, misogyny and a kind of offensively defensive emotional necrosis – a plague on legs. Feminism appeared 40-50 years ago; the world (or at least, our part of it) has rightly changed. Unfortunately, boys are still stuck with the same old peer-led homogenisation, that only alienates men from women, treats them as another species. Which, as a means of establishing women as subordinates, was fine for men until the women managed to start talking back, but now leaves a lot of men looking a bit lost and in need of someone to blame – guess who that’s gonna be?
I think it’s high past time that adults intervened in this mess and began to think up pedagogical solutions to a problem that isn’t going away. It’s time we started telling the boys of this world that they have so much more in them than they’ve been led to believe.
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Hear, hear Zara.
It is as if people believe that only young, sexily dressed, beautiful women that get drunk and walk home alone are the only victims of sexual attacks. As if women in burqas don’t get raped. As if the elderly don’t get raped. As if your chance of being sexually assaulted by a woman isn’t actually higher in your own home then on the street walking home…
The majority of men are good men. The majority of men do not rape. Why should we excuse the few that do? Why do we not realise that the moment we start to blame the victim, the moment we start to excuse the perpetrator, we do only one thing: tell rapists that what they are doing is a-ok. We tell rapists that it is ok to attack that girl because she should have not put herself in that position. We tell rapists that their reaction, their lack of self-control, their violence – that is all understandable because that short skirt was legit provocation.
Just look to the ADF saga – throughout the entire case, the men involved contested it based on her consent to sex; as if she’s just some slut so she gets what’s coming to her huh? We see people defending the ADF boys as per the Staubenville boys – that this slut ruined the boys life – nothing about the men’s act against her (or at best it is ‘they shouldn’t have but…’)
**typo note: ‘by a woman’ should have been ‘as a woman’
An interesting view by Clementine Ford
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/women-innocent-victims-of-entitled-boys-club-20131025-2w6rs.html
The classic irony in this, is that it is the media that conditions women and girls, regarding popular trends in the way they dress – so, if they do happen to be dressing provocatively they’re being obedient to MSM interests, but then at the same time they get to be vilified too, victimized by abuse and harassment – they really cannot win and it is designed that way because the most dysfunctional people set the agenda.
Regarding the wife’s comment – she doth protest too much… defensive almost…