G'day all,
I missed something here. Polynesian society, historically, has been the least clad societies aside from aboriginals around. Maori's often wore little but New Zealand is cooler and so clothing became a common sense thing. I'm pretty sure that there isn't any research that shows Polynesian society had more rapes than normal or that aboriginals had the most rapes of any traditional society because many tribes had no genital covering at all or the covering actually emphasised rather than hid.
The Polynesian societies became the target of missionaries who told them it was shameful. So where did the problem of believing less clothing is wrong come from? The lack of clothes or the guilt instilled?
Last week a Muslim cleric in Australia (the most senior Mufti in Australia) said that 90% of adultery was the fault of women because the devil gave them the tools to use. He also likened women to meat left out in the street and men to cats that chose to eat the meat. He then asked, ?Is it the fault of the cats for eating the meat, or the person who left the meat uncovered in the street?? Apart from the offensive comparison between women and meat, his argument was that those women that were locked up in there homes, safe behind their hajibs, were protected against rape. Those that went clad in fewer clothes were inviting rape.
Personally I thought what he said was an insult to Muslim men. Obviously they have no ability to control their urges and so naked women are too tempting to avoid committing a sin that the Koran says is punishable by death (providing of course you have four male witnesses to the act itself - now if that's not a get out of jail free card I don't know what is).
If this issue about scantily clad women is right then surely rapes in nudist resorts and communities where nudism is the norm, would be astronomical and rapes in societies where women were covered would be non existent. Having lived in Kuwait and worked in Saudi, the anecdotal evidence that came to me indicated that your chance of being raped in Saudi was very high indeed. Your chance as the perpetrator of being caught was non existent. The "security" and "protection" of women by their isolation actually acts to ensure that the shame of the rape goes to the women. If they do report it, the assumption is they did something wrong. You can actually get prosecuted for reporting a rape in Saudi (or at least you could when I was there).
And goggling at naked or partially clad women, Alnitak, is not quite the same as the sight enticing you to commit a rape.
I don't like billboards with women with little or no clothes or for that matter male models with similar lack of clothing. Not because I find them offensive but because they are erected in positions where they do distract drivers and accidents then happen. That's just common sense that you don't put things near a road that lead to accidents. You also wouldn't stick up on a billboard a really funny joke, or one of those adorable kittens, that is, if you believe that accidents are caused by distraction.
Not much science in here, since no one has brought up any sociological or anthropologic research that supports one position or another, but sometimes freedoms come at a price.
If women were locked up in a small room at all times except when guarded by suitably strong males who themselves somehow could be trusted not to commit rapes, then rapes would not happen. Of course most rapes are by those that are known so the guards would need to be eunuchs to ensure that there was no chance of rape. How about returning to harems, that would keep women safe and sound? Would anyone wish to live in a society like that?
And since we are on the subject of rapes, how about male rapes? Are the men raped responsible because of the clothing they wore? ?It was the 10 year old boy's fault, your honor. He was wearing shorts that were alluring. No one could avoid that much temptation?. ?Of course you were provoked. Case dismissed?.
This one hits home quite personally. I have two female persons close to me that were brutally raped and it happened to me as a child. Out of the three incidents that have effected me very personally, the two women were conservatively dressed. I was wearing a school uniform. It isn't funny when the appalling criminal behaviour happens to someone you love. In the case of one of the women, she had the habit of wearing small bikinis on the beach and was never molested or accosted but if she had been raped at the beach or coming to or from it, even suggesting that the bikini was the cause, is a good way to really increase the odds of a suicide. Being in law enforcement when much younger, I saw this a lot. So the comments about clothing are not just intellectual or something to joke about. To women that have had such experiences it can trigger terrible distress.
I'll finish this with a memory that stuck in my mind for years and still isn't a pleasant memory. I was doing court duty and a 15 year old girl was to give evidence in a pack rape. She was the only one of more than a dozen girls willing to testify. She had already done this two times previously for this particular defendant but because of an overturned conviction and a mistrial, was going to have to do it again. This was in the days before questioning about what you wore was banned in rape cases.
This young girl started to crack up and I called for a women Constable to support her. She had gone through the trauma of giving evidence, I think six times so far (multiple defendants) and each and every time she was mercilessly queried about what she wore and how she wore it and surely she realised that hiking up her school skirt would tend to attract untoward attention. She kept asking: "You're a man. Do you think it really was my fault because I pulled up my skirt? It was wrong, wasn't it? I shouldn't have done it. They raped me because I didn't like the school uniform below the knee. It looked daggy. It really was my fault, isn't it?"
She didn't give evidence and the defendant walked free. Oh, and she had done what every other girl did then at her age. She had rucked up the uniform skirt, that really did look very out of date, probably about 4 inches (100mm). This brought it a little above the knee.
I never did find out what happened to the girl but imagine her trying to live a normal life after all this. I just cannot.
Richard
