There is an article going around about a TSA officer who shamed a 15-year old for her outfit (link here). Maybe it is my lack of sleep, maybe it is a lack of coffee, but this seriously pissed me off. Men, we need to get our shit together and take responsibility for ourselves (and hold our peers accountable).
If you can’t look at a half inch of flesh without lust in your heart that is YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM! Stop attempting to shame and control what women wear. Stop cat-calling every jogger in yoga pants. Stop assuming that a woman at the club dancing wants your penis inside of her. Did she say she wants your penis? Did she say she wants your attention? Did she say you can touch her? NO? Then the answer is no. It isn’t “if I try harder”, it isn’t “maybe if I holler at her from the corner she will see all my wonderful values and fall in love with me”, the answer is no until it is explicitly yes.
The human form is not sexual by default. I realize we have all been brought up in a country that treats the body as a purely sexual but taboo object. We’ve been told that showing skin is wrong because it is sexual. But our upbringing is not an excuse for individual behavior. There is a time and place for sexual activity, and that time and place is not every time you see the outline of a nipple, cleavage, or a woman exercising in form-fitting clothes. And any attempt at blaming evolution for this is a strawman at best, there are a lot of things that humans do that no other species has done, certainly we can add “treats everyone with respect, judges people for their character not their clothes, honors them as individuals, and requires explicit consent” to the list of things like “cooks food, wears clothes, uses technology, discusses philosophy, and shares pictures of cats”.
It is not men’s place to tell a woman what to wear, try to make her feel bad about what she is wearing, or to make assumptions based on what she is wearing. Seriously, if you lack any self control and feel like you need to prove you have a penis by hollering at everything with two X chromosomes do us all a favor and stay indoors until you are ready to be a part of civilized society.
Men, not only do we need to stop acting like sex-deprived shitheads but we need to call out our friends when they do it. It should be socially unacceptable to see a woman and assume “sex”, regardless of what she is or is not wearing. One of my favorite things about Burning Man was a woman could walk alone at night wearing nothing and feel safe. We men should help provide that safe place throughout society by holding each other accountable and treating women as something more than a potential lay.
-End Rant-
Wandering Oak 