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?
No kidding. They’re trying to spoil all the fun for everyone that enjoys seeing women in skimpy clothing. I think their main beef is that women are dressing sexy and then having the audacity to not sleep with them.
I haven’t had a guy ask me how much (unless he was kidding), but I have had a number of strange men pull over ask me to get in their car. Um, no. I’ve also had men walk up to me and state they wanted to fuck. And I’ve had men that I don’t know ask to have sex with me.
I guess those count as being propositioned?
“I have had a number of strange men pull over ask me to get in their car.”
Guys yell at me from their car. It happened to me about an hour ago actually. I was wearing a jacket, jeans and runners. And it was dark. I wasn’t doing anything particularly slutty either. I was just walking home. Why do guys do that? They just make themselves look like retards.
I really don’t know. I’ve considered actually noting the license plate and making a complaint one day. (In the instances where the guy is driving some kind of service vehicle.) But I doubt anyone would care.
When I lived in Atlanta, this behavior was common as daylight. I had to walk home (about 1-2 miles) one day, and I was honked, hooted, and hollered at by the occupants of more than 50 cars. I was wearing ordinary clothing, but I was a woman walking alone on the sidewalk, after all. I suppose the poor men couldn’t help themselves.
I hate getting honked at. Scares the bejeezus out of me.
Dracula! You’re a mess! Can’t even spell your own name right! lol
I also hate being honked at or yelled at. Why do creeps do it? Do they enjoy making random women feel scared and embarrassed?
Um.
You just used a slur to essentially say that everyone with certain types of neurodivergence is a predatory douchebag.
Can we try to not be assholes to people with non-normative brains?
I also hate being honked at or yelled at. Why do creeps do it? Do they enjoy making random women feel scared and embarrassed?
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why they do it, sadly.
Didn’t one of the trolls explain once that it’s not about the women, it’s about showing off and bonding with other men?
So apparently they don’t want to scare you, they just don’t care about you at all.
I went hiking recently in Spain, and kept being mildly annoyed by truckers honking when they could see hikers from the highway. It seemed extra useless on their part, really, honking at women hiking a hundred metres or more away. But then someone explained that in that part of Spain, the drivers were honking to *encourage* the hikers. For real. Every other time in my life–just plain old harassment.
Sorry Feyline. Apparently slurs are a no-no on the internet. Don’t ever come to Ireland if you don’t want to be offended =P
“Didn’t one of the trolls explain once that it’s not about the women, it’s about showing off and bonding with other men?”
I’d say that’s about right. Men can be idiots around each other >.>
Oh yeah, I remember that. He also said women should be flattered by harassment. He even mentioned rape fantasies, but never tied said how rape fantasies relate to street harassment. Or was that a different troll?
” He also said women should be flattered by harassment.”
I’d still much rather a “You look lovely today.” rather than a “Shake it, baby!”
The “it’s flattery” excuse doesn’t fly. You only have to watch the shouty guys for a few minutes to see that they shout at lots of people (anyone who isn’t them, really) and all the other shouts are insults. The “cute arse” shouts are said in the same voice in exactly the same way.
I tend to get a lot less frustrated at the catcalls from passing vehicles–which are very rarely actually threatening and are generally just annoying as heck–than I do when I tell the men in my life who love me about how hurtful it is, and hear back “if some girl yelled out at me that I was sexy I’d be flattered.” Implication being, your actual emotional response to a real situation doesn’t match my imagined emotional response to a hypothetical situation, therefore your emotional response is incorrect.
I don’t find the “you look lovely” comments any better unless I know the man or I am in a non-threatening environment. There have been too many times when a man has approached me on the street while I was alone (and not near anyone else) and started telling me that I was beautiful/pretty/exotic/gorgeous/whatever. Technically, they are only offering a compliment, but…
I mean, here is an example. I was walking to my car, parked about a mile away, around 9:30 pm. It was dark, and the area was not well populated. A bus pulled up and a man stepped off and began to walk in my direction. He walked to within a few feet of me, paused, looked me over, said “beautiful woman” and started walking again. Was he technically rude or threatening? Maybe not. But he was much taller and larger than I am, no one else was around, and he communicated sexual desire for me. So, I still felt frightened, unsettled, and unsafe. It’s different from a guy I know mentioning that I look nice that day. I mean, isn’t it? I get far more “you’re beautiful” comments than “nice tits” comments, but I still don’t feel comfortable with these remarks coming from strangers who have no reason to be speaking to me. Besides, it also implies that I exist as a woman for aesthetic judgment to be passed upon me. That can be a disquieting thought.
I’m sorry if this seems oversensitive.
I don’t think it seems oversensitive. I think it’s generally pretty easy to tell the difference between “genuine compliment from a stranger” and “creepy objectification from a stranger.” I’ve never had a problem with strangers, male or female, who approach me in, say, a grocery store and say, “I just wanted to say that I love your hair. It’s really pretty!” I DO have a problem with dudes who follow me on the street late at night yelling, “Lookin’ SEXY!” (Although god knows I still like them a lot better than the guys who’ll shout, “HEY BIG TITTIES! SUCK MY COCK!” instead. Ugh.)
@malcontent: I suppose time, place and demeanor of the guy are all factors too.
Viscaria – Ugh, I hate the “if some girl yelled out at me that I was sexy I’d be flattered” thing. Because they don’t get that it’s not just a girl yelling you’re sexy. It’s:
-A girl making extremely specific and disgusting sexual suggestions and speculations on your body and sex life.
-A girl who is laughing at you and your reaction with all her friends.
-A girl who may, at any moment, flip into calling you a stupid fat bastard instead.
-A girl who may try to grab you and/or block you from walking away.
-Not just one girl. It’s a parallel universe where lots of girls do this to you, all the time, and you don’t get to pick when, and every time you go out you don’t know whether it’ll happen or not.
And if you feel bad about it, ever, even if you’re sometimes okay with it but this one time made you feel bad, all you’ll get for comfort is “gosh, you’re so oversensitive, I wouldn’t mind a guy saying I was sexy.”
I’m totally fine with genuine compliments that aren’t accompanied by a leer or any sort of demand for something in return for the compliment. It’s when it’s clear that the person is either bullying or demanding a response that it becomes unacceptable.
@Holly: Thing is, guys would always say they would feel flattered, which sorta makes sexual harassment towards men seem trivial. When they do feel sexually harassed, it’s difficult for them to be taken seriously.
Guys really do gotta mind what they say when it comes to these issues, cos it just throws up more gender stereotypes.
I think part of my problem with the incident I mentioned and similar incidents is that I have had men approach me, make an innocuous comment, and then turn physically violent when I didn’t respond. A man who looked very similar to the man who approached me in the story above once grabbed me by the arm and shook me around for a while when I didn’t respond to his greeting.
I understand that some men are baffled (or angered) by women who ignore a “hello”, but I guess they don’t understand what it’s like to hear “why, hello there, pretty girl, what’s your name? blah, blah, blah” so many times you can hardly register it any more. And when any response means being followed and pestered for personal information, it just seems better not to respond.
FYI, in the States, it’s generally agreed that calling someone a “retard” is rude and unnecessary.