I follow a blog called "Life in the Shoe." It's written by a Mennonite lady, a
minister's wife, mother of many fascinating, mostly-grown children, writer and
columnist for the Eugene Register-Guard.
Dorcas is a woman I would love to meet, though I think she would
probably be...uncomfortable with me. Funny,
we think of Mennonites as a closed, unworldly society...but this lady has had a
much more expansive and exciting life than I will ever have. She lives her faith utterly, yet that fact has
not limited her or closed her mind.
Her posts always lead me on a voyage of contemplation. Most recently, she wrote about "men who are
not nice"--men who catcall and harass and are generally disrespectful to
women, in public. She wondered whether
the conservative dress and prayer veil that Mennonite women wear in public
protected them from that sort of harassment.
But she made a point about the power women have; the power they don't
use...or, as I took it further in my own contemplation, the power they tend to
misuse. So many girls and women
understand the power of their sex to be their ability to turn men into
salivating, sex-enslaved dogs. What we
don't seem to comprehend is that we also have the power to command respect,
courtesy and, yes, even chivalry. All
with how we dress. And if we possess the power to calm the savage beast, why don't we use it?
Sexual harassment, abuse, rape... all these have become
problems of epidemic proportions in our society. Sex in 21st-century America has become so
overt, so in-your-face, so "everybody's getting it on and if you're not
there's something wrong with you."
Men have begun to think they're entitled to sex, any kind, any way, any
time they want. And many women, not to
be outdone, claim that entitlement as well. With all that sexual entitlement flying
around, something has got seriously out of whack. There's a growing subset of men who will take
what they want with little provocation, much less an actual invitation. And there are women who end up in situations
they can't control because they dipped a toe into the sexual revolution only to
be grabbed and pulled under by the evil that lurks just beneath the water.
Am I victim blaming here?
I don't know. I think the lines
have become so blurred, the emotions surrounding the act have become so exaggerated,
that it's almost impossible to use the label of "victim" when trying
to sort out the players in the drama.
Of course a woman
never asks to be raped, or sexually assaulted, or verbally harassed. In a perfect world, sex wouldn't always be the
undercurrent of everything. Women would
be able to appear in public wearing whatever struck their fancy, whatever made
them feel pretty. I hear some people say
that if a woman walks down the street stark naked, she isn't asking to be raped. I get that.
I really do. But I think you have
to put the "I have every right to..." aside and just see that actions
have consequences. Is it right that a
man should get turned on by a woman wearing revealing clothing? Probably not.
But what is "right" and what actually happens are two
different things. And women would do
well to act in accordance with what IS if they want not to be harassed, or even
raped. Sorry, ladies. You do stuff to protect yourself. You don't jump into a pool of sharks wearing
a pork-chop bikini and then sue the sharks when they bite your legs off.
I get that there is such a thing as date rape. I get that guys will drug girls or take
advantage of them when they get stupid drunk.
I get that a man is much stronger than a woman and can overpower her and
take what he wants even when she's not into it.
But, I'm not one of those who thinks a girl should be able to go back to
a guy's apartment, neck, pet, get undressed and get in bed with him, and then
cry "rape" when the guy didn't stop because she said
"no." Is the guy
entitled? Of course not. But if you didn't want to have sex, why the
hell did you put yourself--and your date--in that position?
Yes, mothers...you need to teach your sons not to rape. But you also need to teach your daughters how
to control this sexual freedom that we, their mothers and grandmothers, worked
so hard to win for them. Because, as it
turns out, men are not interested in gracefully giving up their position of
sexual dominance...or even sharing it. A
complication that I don't think any of us on the forefront of the Sexual
Revolution foresaw. And now we need to
figure out how to deal with that.
Anyway, Dorcas shared her formula for raising strong young
women who respect themselves:
What I teach my girls is that they belong to God, their
lives ought to reflect Jesus, and their bodies have the sacred role of being
temples of the Holy Spirit. So their
clothes should communicate dignity, royalty, value, beauty, femininity, and respect.
Somehow, that has also worked to protect them.
Surely, even without the Christian frame of reference, there is universal wisdom in these words.
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