From India minister tells foreign tourists: 'Don't wear skirts', Mahesh Sharma, the minister of culture in India, made the headlines when he was giving the interview about a list of dos and don'ts, which the government provided to foreigners as a part of their welcome kits at the the airport. One of the tips for female tourists is do not wear a skirt and go out alone at night alone in the small town while you are in India.
_______________________________________
My Yes/No question is:
Do you think dressing modestly is a good way to reduce crimes against women, especially rape?
My answer is:
No, it's ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with clothing.
Support
It's really annoy me when I see something like this. It's always depressing to see the news regarding gender-based attacks such as trafficking, domestic violence and rape but this kind of attitude is even worse. This is not the first time I heard about this though. It's also not the first time for this politician to hit the nation's headline with his brilliant idea. Last year, this person publicly criticize westernization as an ill of india society, saying that a girl's night out was not the part of indian culture. Without realizing it, the current version of the nation's traditional costume, Sari, was actually influenced by the British culture in Victorian era. In the past, Indian women used to wear minimal clothing. According to the article Dressing the Indian woman through history, woman in some part of the country such as Bengal did not even cover their breasts with clothing. They started to change later so that it suited with the Victorian society (2014).
Talking about the crime, one of the classic reasons I always heard from the arrested rapists is the way she behaves or the way she dresses is like she was "asking for it". And that provoked them. By hearing this I come up with a question like.. can we punch someone real hard in the face just because their stupidities provoke us? Of course not. Surely we are going to be charged with physical assault for doing so. I think those kind of people might have some kind of mental illness, something like a logical disorder. And it made me wonder what kind of society they have been growing up with. I mean it, seriously. I heard that there was a study of this some malfunction in their brain which may effect them on how they think. More importantly, the society plays a very vital role in crafting one's personality and how they perceive things. The law enforcement would help minimize the crime rate, but the idea is epidemic. It has long-lasting effect.
Referring to the international rape scale above, do you see anything unusual? Most of the red zone are countries that women are required to wear modest dress code, e.g., India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and so on. So does clothing really associated with sexual violence? What do you think?
___________
Reference
India minister tells foreign tourists: 'Don't wear skirts'. (August 29, 2016). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-37212219
Dressing the Indian woman through history.(December 6, 2014). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30330693
This reminds me of the saying of the new vice-rector of my university in the event of junior orientation last year. He said something quite similar to Indian minister that university student should dress properly in order not to be raped. I can't believe I listen things like this. It's not logical enough for me. And if he wanted to convince students to dress neatly, he should provide other reasonable reasons. I think in every circumstances, women should not be raped or suffer from sexual harassment no matter how they dress.
ReplyDeleteI like Mieng's example to support her idea. I often get annoyed when people say things that seem to me silly (actually, I like Mieng's stronger word "stupidities"), but I don't that gives me an excuse to punch them, as Mieng rightly points out.
ReplyDeleteIf men commit rape, the men are to blame. If the culture condones the sort of excuse that "the woman asked for it," that seems to me to say that there is something seriously wrong with the culture's values and attitudes. My country was like this about 50 years ago, but has thankfully changed a lot, replacing bad old values with much better modern values. We update our ideas about science as better evidence and stronger reasons become available, why wouldn't we do the same for our moral beliefs? Is it sensible to think that our ancestors knew better than we should?
One of the people who annoy me a lot is my mother. I love her and we get on well, but she often says things that really annoy me. It would be a totally wrong response to punch her out because her obnoxious comments "are asking for it." I usually try to shut up and ignore it, but sometimes she says something so silly and offensive that I have to object. She isn't happy, but it hasn't destroyed our relationship. I think it's strengthened it because she knows that we don't have to agree on everything to have a strong, healthy relationship, and if I tell her I agree, she knows that I really do, that I'm not just being polite and perhaps dishonest.
I can imagine this situation as I said in class before that my friend was wearing skirt when we went to the Indian market last year and every guys stared at her, some of them even came and talked to her. I felt like it's very dangerous and I only wear trousers.
ReplyDeleteI like your topic, especially your scale of rape which is illustrated in the map, your information can convince me that wearing modest dress isn't involved or can't reduce rape rate in those countries you mentioned. I think it may be about cultural believe or other factors which men in those countries aren't afraid of punishment of trafficking, rape, or so on. In addition, It also may be that those countries are still poor in development; I mean that lack of rules and regulations to force people to avoid from doing such illegal things.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in my view, it's appropriate that women should aware of wearing their clothes to avoid from bad guys, and wearing polite dresses for public places is better than the opposite one.
In Thailand, I usually read newspaper and I saw crime news such as murder and rape. For rape cases, I think that dressing modestly might be a good way to reduce crimes against women in some situation; for example, wearing sexy clothes could be attractive from criminals. However, the women who dress modestly could be rape too because they are good-looking or the penalty in country isn't severe enough. So, dress modestly could reduce crimes against women. Personally, safety first is a good way.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the map, there seemed to me to be a correlation between rape and religion. The more traditionally religious a society, the greater the rape, while declining religious belief seems to also reduce rape. The dark green bits are largely developed Western nations where religion is disappearing as democracy, reason and good morals become more important.
ReplyDeleteI really agree with you. I think that religion is one of the problem of raping. Also, education has the effect on raping too. In some country, education is also poor because of the believe that people have. In my opinion, it is because of education that causes the declining in religious belief. Science disproof most of our religious belief. Still there are groups of people that still believe in this belief and do not change their mind.
DeleteI really like the way Mieng represent her data in the picture and really see the relation between raping and the condition people live in.