What I read
In “Teaching boys that'real men' would stop rape”, Donovan,
Wangari, & O'Neill (2018) shared a story about a program in Kenya, run by a
non-profit organization, called “Ujamaa”. The program aims to raise awareness
of sexual harassment and violence among pre-teen and early-teen boys in a Kenya’s
slum as well as self-defenses in girls. Due to their belief – men exclusively take
the leading role in the society, severe inequality has been adopted in African society
for ages. To solve that “huge problem”, Ujamaa teaches the boys to respect women
and how to help a girl in a sexual violence situation. The program successfully
got a positive feedback in Kenya, then it’s gradually spreading its success in
Malawi and Uganda.
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My response
This article reminded me
of recent news in Thailand that Cindy Sirinya Bishop, a supermodel, expressed her
opinion against the government advice for women during the Songkran festival. Thai
women are advised to wear cover-up clothes during the festival to protect them
from any harms, especially sexual harassment. Heard of that, Mrs. Bishop pointed
out that it is better to tell men to respect women instead of telling
women what to wear. That made the hashtags #DontTellMeHowToDress and
#TellMenToRespect become one of popular trends in Twitter for a couple days. (If
you want to read for more details, please look at https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/donttellmehowtodress-thai-women-clap-back-govt-advice-cover-songkran/)
I understand that it is good
for women not to take themselves into troubles or risk situations. It is easy to
nip it in the bud. Are women’s wearing the bud? Can proper wearing solely
stop the disgusting crime? I don’t think I can take that side – women are the
bud.
I’m on the other side.
I deeply appreciate and
accept the ideas of the Ujamaa and Mrs. Bishop that we should fix the problem,
sexual harassment and violence, at its root. To respect women. Wearing sexy
clothes may cause sexual harms to them, but is it the real cause? If yes, can that advice can stop the violence? Opposite to
the Ujamaa program, Thai women seem to be less respected as we should. Indeed, not just men have to respect women, but women
themselves need to respect men too. Recently, women
made some, dirty, jokes about men online that was taken as a kind of verbal
sexual harassment. Thus, sexual harassment
isn’t just one gender’s actions. It’s an action done by a group of disrespectful
people. Every gender deserves better treatment. We should treat each other equally
as a human being. Everyone’s life is the priority.
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My question
What do you think about sexual harassment in modern society?
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Reference
- Donovan, L., Wangari, F., & O'Neill, H. (2018, March 20). Teaching boys that 'real men' would stop rape. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/education-43466365
As I have commented in Melon's 'Sex should not be a censored topic' post, Sexual harassment can be both verbal and physical and most of the time people doesn't even know that they are being sexual assault to others, they just thought it is a common thing to do to say such a word to others. I agree what Cindy Sirinya has said and women have rights to dress how ever they want as long as it is not obscene, and men just have to learn to control themselves and keep their hands to themselves. I have read an article about sexual harassment around my university. They had a survey asking students if they have been sexual harassed and 50 out of 200 students said they have. This shows that this issue are everywhere. I do agree that people have to respect each other and other bodies are belong to them.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading Prim's summary of her chosen source, which was a piece of good news with my breakfast. The rape and traditional social customs it discusses are not good, but the effort to reform the bad old ways of traditional society is encouraging. And as Sine also points out in her comment, the fault for sexual abuse of women by men is the fault of the men, whatever Thailand's traditionalist prime minister might think and say. Perhaps he should be sent to Africa to reform his own bad old thinking that blames women rather than the men who abuse them.
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