Happy Halloween! The LA Times has decided to celebrate the unholiest of holidays with a convoluted op-ed from conservative ideologue Charlotte Allen using Halloween as an excuse to bash both sluts and slutwalks. Because, you know, if you dress like a slut – whether to protest rape or to go to a Halloween party – it’s like you’re begging to be raped. Bad feminists! Bad Halloween revelers dressed as sexy nurses!
Here are a few of the more coherent passages from the piece:
[T]he SlutWalk feminists are in denial of a reality that is perfectly obvious to both the women who favor “sexy” for Halloween parties and (although perhaps not consciously) the SlutWalkers themselves. The reality is that men’s sexual responses are highly susceptible to visual stimuli, and women, who are also sexual beings, like to generate those stimuli by displaying as much of their attractive selves as social mores or their own personal moral codes permit. … It’s no wonder that SlutWalks have quickly outstripped (as it were) Take Back the Night as anti-rape protest. Women get another chance besides Halloween to dress up like prostitutes!
Just watch out, ladies, because dressing sexy is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, with your wallet hanging out!
[T]he vast majority of rape victims are under age 30 — that is, when women are at their peak of desirability. …
[T]he fact that rapists tend to target young women rather than grandmotherly types suggests that in the real rape culture (in contrast to the imaginary rape culture of some feminist ideology), the faux-hos of Halloween and their SlutWalker counterparts marching in their underwear — like a man walking at night with a bulging wallet — should be careful about where they flash their treasure.
So thank you, Charlotte Allen, for once again showing just why the Slutwalks are necessary in the first place.
Jill at Feministe has an excellent response to Allen’s nonsense, which points out that while, yes, younger women are more likely to be victims of rape,
Younger people are also the most likely group to be the victims of aggravated, non-sexual assault. … In fact, younger people are victimized by violent crime more often than older folks as a general rule. A person between the ages of 12 and 24 is six times more likely to be the victim of a robbery than a person over the age of 50; about half of people who report being the victims of aggravated assault are under the age of 25. Men are much more likely than women to be the victims of violent crime. In every age group, black people are the most likely to be the victims of violent crime.
So yes, it is true that younger women are more likely to be targeted for sexual assault than older women. But it’s not because of The Sexy — unless hormones and hard-ons are what are causing criminals to choose their (mostly male) targets for robbery and assault also.
So, really, the only really safe costuming strategy for young people on Halloween, regardless of gender, is to dress up like an old white lady. Might I suggest Dame Judi Dench?
Clearly the mere act of being a woman in the proximity of a man is inappropriately slutty and harassment.
For all their homophobia, MRAs are a wonderful example of how sexuality isn’t a choice. They obviously hate women, but they can’t choose to be gay to get away from them.
Shoot, now I want to know too.
WHAT SHOULD WOMEN WEAR?
NWO’s mind is a clear example of a corollary to Rule 34. If a woman wears it he can imagine porn about it.
Moewicus: Judaism is now a nationality. This is going in the Book O’ Larnin’.
Don’t forget that they are big on immigration, because less than 5 percent of Jews are ethnically Jewish, and only by proselytising to they avoid going extinct as a people.
Do you, as a woman, get to decide what action a man does is inappropriate? Than I, as a man, get to decide what action a woman takes is inappropriate.
And he misses the point. Anyone gets to say what someone else does to them is inappropriate.
What you don’t get to do is say that people who don’t do things you don’t like (that don’t actually harm you) ought to be punished, or forbidden (by law) from doing it.
I realise this is, apparently, too subtle a distinction to comprehend.
Ktrie: The problem with the wallet/money/food analogy is that you can hide all that, but no matter how you dress, rapists will still know you have a body and genitals.
Well, yes. Which is NWO’s real point. It’s Meller’s too: Women are inferior creatures to men, and men should get to control their every action.
And they should be grateful for it.
Wrong, NWO, and animal mating and human mating are different.
Take birds, for example. The male has the showiest display to attract females. Are male birds sluts?
@kirbywarp: Nah, he’s just an asshole.
There’s a certain personality type that, odd as this sounds, prefers being miserable. You’ve probably run into them. They complain about their romantic life, or their jobs, or their living situation, yet never do anything to improve those things – and they actively reject and/or sabotage any help. (I’m not, here, talking about people in abusive relationships or trapped in work situations they really can’t get out of easily.) They will berate and explain away the simplest solutions and offers of help.
Being miserable and howling about it is their comfort zone. It’s much easier to stew in the MRA juices and proclaim about the bitches than to actually try to clean up, develop some personality and take the risk of actually, like, getting a bitch to tolerate you.
Terry Pratchett interlude . . .
Magrat has adopted trousers as practical for traveling by broomstick:
“I don’t ‘old with it,” said Granny. “Everyone can see her legs.”
“No they can’t,” said Nanny. “The reason being, the material is in the way.”
“Yes, but they can see where her legs are,” said Granny Weatherwax.
“That’s silly. That’s like saying everyone’s naked under their clothes,” said Magrat.
“Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,” said Granny Weatherwax.
“Well, it’s true!”
“I’m not,” said Granny flatly, “I’ve got three vests on.”
Wait, we’re forgetting that NWO lives in a parallel universe where all women dress in see through tops and thong underwear every day, everywhere they go. I wonder what the women wear on Halloween in NWOland? Maybe their thong underwear is also see through, and they put on witches’ hats?
For me, Halloween is about taking my kids trick or treating and then spending the rest of the evening by the door, waiting to give candy to the trick or treaters. Sadly, not many kids came to our house last night. People probably don’t like to walk their kids around the tornado zone because there’s too much trash everywhere. Now I have a huge bag of Snickers left over.
I’m still saying Awwww about the man that dressed as Luke Skywalker and had his baby be Yoda. That’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever heard of. Surround those two with kittens playing with yarn, and then you’d have the cutest scene in the history of the world.
Everyone! Everyone! I know why NWO can’t answer!
I am the Ur-Slut. Therefore, whatever I’m wearing today is a slutty outfit, and anyone who dresses like me is a slut. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what I’m wearing, so he doesn’t know what’s slutty.
Today, sluts wear:
–Purple pants.
–Skinny jeans.
–Clothes that are several days old.
–Tight yet breast-flattening shirts.
–No shoes.
–Shirts that say LOVE on them in sign language.
–Glasses.
–Black underwear.
–No bra.
If you dress like that, you deserve to be harassed. Everyone else goes scot-free!
I think NWO has just lost the internet =D
NWO, you clumsy slave you! Everyone, don’t move! Look down and make sure you don’t step on the internet! Thousands of kitten pictures and porn sites depend on us!
i declare my new religion to be Amiish! as in Ami Angelwings!!!!!! All Hail Ami!!!!!! <3 <3 <3
I have a theory about why NWO won’t tell anyone what sort of clothes women should wear. It’s because he assumes that any woman who is harassed or assaulted must have been slutting it up, all other evidence be damned. It doesn’t matter what you wear, it retroactively becomes slutty if you’re harassed while wearing it.
Ozy – But if you go outdoors, you may put on shoes, possibly even a jacket, thus sending a ripple through the Slut continuum and abruptly transforming all shoe/jacket wearing women into sluts!
This will be very inconvenient if they’re away from home (and possibly on rough ground and/or cold weather) when this occurs.
LOL @ everyone who said they were “propositioned”
Excuse me, but do I have a deal for you…
@aym:
Here. Specifically this:
I haven’t had any propositions this year. Freshman year, when I was dressed as the Joker, of all things, I had a very drunk man ask me to suck his dick as I was walking to Rocky Horror, though. Tell me, aym, o wise one who knows when one has been propositioned or not without even being there, does that count?
“Excuse me, but do I have a deal for you…”
I’ll give you sex, if you give me sex. That kinda sounds like a deal of sorts. lol
But Joanna, giving you sex also gives me sex! Meaning… I get two sex! But wait, that means you get two sex as well, by the same argument… So I get… four sex? Which means… *thinks hard*
INFINITE SEX!!!
@kirbywarp: *head splodes*
ACTIVATE THE HYPERSEX DRIVE!
Some fool just tried to divide sex by zero!
Man, did this thread blow up. My final word on the subject, which I will be happy to repeat in all subsequent discussions: A straight man who complains about women going around in skimpy clothing is the dumbest sumbitch on earth.
I really don’t get this mindset. Living in the San Francisco area, I see hot gay men going around in sexy clothes all the time, just rubbing my nose in the fact that they’re not going to have sex with me (because of the gayness), and frankly it’s pretty awesome. I mean, they’re hot.