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Posted on 05/12/2011 7:56:10 PM PDT by Salvation
Will modesty return?
I think it will.
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I pray it will.
Honestly, I don’t see how the pendulum can swing any farther in the slut direction.
Perhaps it was blind luck but I think criminals are absolute genuises at reading what women are at risk and what women are on the ball.
***
Exactly, I am a woman, and, when I am alone in a situation that could be iffy, I always make sure I seem in control and attentive to my surroundings.
No, rape is not really about sex; it is about degradation and power, as you said. But I am sure that a provocatively dressed, drunk woman gets the rapist’s attention. These scum will attack children and old women, as well.
I think that the reason young women are among those most frequently raped is that they are often too casual about their own personal safety, and therefore put themselves in danger without realizing it.
“I am all for modesty but I don’t think statistics bear out the notion that the less modestly dressed get raped more often.”
When were such statistics ever collected—that is, by honest persons who were more interested in finding the truth than in supporting their preconceptions?
I’d be astounded if they had ever been collected.
The FBI used to publish statistics showing how many sex crimes against children were homosexual in nature; I haven’t been able to find that statistic in years.
The only recent study I trust is the one which found that over 99% of studies are crap.
“Among normal human populations, the rapist will pick a target ahead of time or take an opportunistic chance.”
Plan ahead or attack a target of opportunity. What would the third choice be?
“Agreed. Rape generally has more to do with power over and degrading the victim.”
I think there must certainly be such cases, just based on what I know of people. However, I would also assert that in a large number of cases—especially “date rape”—the male is just stealing sex.
“I agree with the article.”
Me, too.
“And let me tell you, it is not easy teaching this to teenage girls with all the outside influences touting the opposite view.”
I’ve asked mothers and other women, “Don’t these girls realize that they’re making themselves targets?”
The answer seems to be “no.” They want to attract the boys they find attractive, but seem to think that the mantra, “Old guys being attracted to teenagers is creepy,” will somehow protect them from harm. Would that it were so.
“What, (other than a few degrees), is the difference between what the good monsignor is saying and the wrapping of women in burqas and hajibs as the Mohammedan death cult does?”
What is the difference between arresting shoplifters and Nazi death camps?
Hence the word modesty comes from the word “mode” meaning “middle” or “mean.” So modesty involves observing a certain middle ground wherein we do not oppress women (or men for that matter) with severe standards and cumbersome cover-ups. But neither do we neglect to understand that some degree of charity and understanding is due to those who are possibly tempted by tight or revealing clothing and immodest postures or movements. It is wrong to tempt others when we can reasonably avoid doing so. But inhuman and unreasonable standards are also to be rejected.
The burqa is meant to obliterate the woman as a human being. Modest dress allows the woman to be seen as a human being. Not merely as an object of desire.
I understand your skepticism.
The women I know who’ve been attacked were not immodestly dressed at the time.
I read in the paper of women in parking garages, getting groceries, asleep in bed, grandmas just getting into the house, children certainly, getting raped. My assumption is that few if any of them are dressed like ho’s.
I don’t think you should dress like a ho. But I am not sure it makes you a more likely rape victim. Maybe a more likely date rape victim?
Anyway, I can’t cite the studies I’ve occasionally read, and for all I know they are bogus.
Do you know any women who have been raped? If so, were they immodestly dressed at the time?
Enjoyed your post.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the old feminist saw that rape is not about sex - it certainly also is about degradation and power. Women - no matter how they dress - need to be aware of their surroundings and develop an instinct about who is dangerous and who is not. Given women’s natural intuition, why is that so hard? Or have the feminists given them the idea that the onus is always on the male - never on the common sense and wisdom of the woman.
The only women I know who were raped (about two) were not date raped. One was entering an elevator in an old building in NYC (very frightening places to be - but where all the old theatrical agencies had their offices) and she was dressed quite modestly. Another had someone enter through her bedroom window. I think you are right in that date rape probably involves sexy clothes - and booze, of course.
Daytime or evening? If memory serves, there were different dress codes for different situations.
And then, the children's chorus sang with us the last time we performed. Usually, the kids come in jeans (mostly skinny jeans, unfortunately) and their polos. Well, one young lady who was about 15 was in four inch heels, black leggings and a SHORT, tight ruffled skirt. From behind me came, "What club is she going to?" Sad, but true.
I will agree with other posters that rape is more about dominance, but when one goes clubbing, dressed, well, with nothing left to the imagination, you're asking for trouble. I have to agree with the cop there, because a lot of rape cases aren't reported.
“While I don’t necessarily agree with the old feminist saw that rape is not about sex”
I don’t agree with it either. But it’s not about normal sex. I think rape is a perversion.
In a violent (not necessarily statutory or date) rape, the rapist gets his jollies over the fact that he is terrorizing a woman. He doesn’t want normal sex. He wants to terrify, and often hurt or kill, a woman in the process. That is what excites him sexually. The terror.
You’ve got an excellent point. The good attention of the father is so important!
Placemark.
“Do you know any women who have been raped? If so, were they immodestly dressed at the time?”
I certainly can’t claim that every raped woman I have met has confided in me. There must have been some who did not want to talk to me about that.
On the rare occasions when a woman has confided that sensitive information to me, it did not seem appropriate to ask that question.
The point, as I see it, is not to establish that the victim is “to blame,” but to establish that there are ways to make yourself more attractive to a rapist trolling for a victim.
Thought experiment: Makeem Ahmed Mohammed (born Dionne Washington, but changed his name when converted to mohammedism in prison) is out cruising for some good times on a Friday night. He buys a couple of loose joints, and shoots some meth. A vague idea forms in his head.
He walks to a trendy club located in a warehouse district, finds a shadowed doorway across the street, and checks out the trendy chicks waiting to get in. Three nuns in habits walk past; he barely sees them. A bag lady trundles past; he wishes he hadn’t seen her.
Ah, but what’s this? Tall, leggy, blonde, bosomy, showing seven inches of cleavage and wearing a skirt only six inches wide, stiletto heels, and whatever else young women may be wearing these days.
She lights a cigarette. Not surprisingly, the tobacco nazis around her in line begin to berate her. Being stubborn and something of a dimwit, she decides that, instead of extinguishing her glorious nicotine administration device, she will strut, sway, and jiggle her way past the end of the line and around the corner to finish her smoke.
For some inexplicable reason, her strut down the catwalk catches the attention of Makeem Ahmed Mohammed, even though the nuns and the bag lady didn’t. Go figure.
Quicker than thought he bestirs himself, crosses the street, and follows her around the corner. As he approaches, his criminal spidey sense informs him that no one is watching. When he’s close enough, he balls up his fist and gives her a roundhouse to the side of the head, hard. She is too stunned even to cry out, much less resist, as the horny Makeem steals sex from her.
Is she to blame? Certainly not. Makeem is to blame, as are we, to a lesser extent, for not having executed him earlier in his criminal career.
She is not to blame. She is not to blame. She is not to blame. However, if she had not been doing what she was doing, dressed as she was dressed, it would not have happened to her.
Where people’s heads get twisted around, I think, is in trying to resolve the apparent contradiction that lies in a person not being to blame for something she could have prevented. We have to work through that contradiction, though, or endorse the notion of women engaging in behavior that puts them at greater danger from criminals.
I’m a white guy. There are neighborhoods I wouldn’t walk through. If I did, and got stomped for being a white guy, people would readily see that it wouldn’t have happened if I had exercised a minimum of common sense. Why does that principle not hold for a woman who dresses provocatively and then goes to places where a rapist could hunt her down?
“she’s very frustrated with not being able to find cute modest clothes”
There are some Web sites for that. I found them for my older daughters some years ago, but can’t find the links now. Your friend should be able to search.
“I certainly can’t claim that every raped woman I have met has confided in me. There must have been some who did not want to talk to me about that.”
I agree, we both probably know women who’ve been raped, but don’t talk about it over dinner. I’d assume it would be a closely held secret.
I also agree with your scenario, but I think it’s written by a non-rapist (you). I am not sure that’s how a rape fetishist thinks. I think he’s looking forward to inspiring terror, not lusting after the particularly attractive. I could be wrong.
Bag ladies apparently suffer multiple rapes, from what I read in homeless articles, etc.
Also, agreed that no matter how dressed a woman doesn’t “deserve” a rape.
“I am not sure that’s how a rape fetishist thinks. I think he’s looking forward to inspiring terror, not lusting after the particularly attractive. I could be wrong.”
I agree that such people exist. Ted Bundy, Mao Tse Tung, and Janet Reno, to name just three. I’m quite willing to admit that there are people whose brains go to places I can’t follow, and wouldn’t want to. I also admit that I don’t know what percentage of rapes are committed by these monsters.
However, I have been made aware that there are some people, mostly men, whose MO is to just take what they want. If they want cars, money, drugs, or other such portable stuff, they steal it from somebody. To them, a sex act is just another commodity to steal.
“Bag ladies apparently suffer multiple rapes, from what I read in homeless articles, etc.”
Good grief. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, and be our fortress against the wickedness and traps of Satan. Amen.
- Most convicted rapists do not remember what their victims were wearing.
- Victims range in age from days old to those in their nineties, hardly provocative dressers.
- A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence Study found that only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved provocative behavior on the part of the victim. In murder cases 22% involved such behavior (as simple as a glance).
In western cultural today the theory is highly politically incorrect, and it seems to have been an unresolved and contentious issue for most of human history. Today one is mocked and derided for even suggesting it.
But if that fact sheet is representative of what is available as a rebuke to the theory, well, that's *very* lightweight. Provocative is in the eye of the beholder. Clearly just being a woman is provocative enough to some males to trigger them into the predator mode of wanting to rape!
Nor does the fact sheet, or the sample of essays and blog posts I just quickly reviewed, give a sense of old school common sense in the discussion. What do I mean by that? Well for one thing, old school common sense says that rape is not just about sex, it is about power. The assertion of a male or gang of males of power over others who are weak.
It is helpful to think of such crimes -- crimes of power -- in a predator vs prey motif. Take a given street scene in a busy city, town, campus, or shopping district. There are many prey. But the most provocatively dressed females are often the most physically powerful of prey. Common sense suggests that the sexually provocative dress will turn on the hunting mode of the predator. But where will the predator find his prey?
As in the animal kingdom! The predator targets the weak, the old, the very young, the injured. As a class this group will be dressed modestly, but have the one aspect that the predator is seeking. They are female.
And that's just one aspect of really honestly analyzing rape and modesty, common sense-wise. Where is such common sense?
Hard to find. Rape is a highly emotional issue.
Rape is common in Arab cultures where "modest" dress is the law. Yet it is not right to call such overdone coverage as face veils and full burkas, or the old Catholic nun garb, modest. Such overblown super-covering is immodest in the other direction. By covering up too much it is equally screaming about what is covered. Sexual imagination is a fierce awesome power, the over-modest dress of burkhas and old nun's garb constantly says "we're hiding something from you that you want".
The effect is like how the high value of the gold at Fort Knox is constantly suggested by the immense security around it, so that even one who lives day-by-day near Fort Knox ever forgets that there is really valuable gold there. If the security around Fort Knox were truly modest, no one would be aware of it day-by-day.
The common sense truth is YES, sexually immodest dress will case more breakdowns in a community's sexual behavior. And thus more rapes, among other forms of breakdown in sexual mores. But the VICTIMS of such sexual provocations can be the ones who dress modestly.
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