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?
I dunno…I saw some v-necks on that website
http://www.funkyfrum.com/product_p/4s78qz.htm
What about this, NWO? A nice sweater from a store that caters to the Orthodox Jewish crowd. Does the lace panel ignite the lusts of men? Are we on the right track here?
Good luck, Joanna. He wouldn’t know sarcasm if it jumped up and bit him in the ass, so maybe a clue-by-four will work.
“I dunno…I saw some v-necks on that website”
Hussies everywhere!
Seraph, I wish there was a sarcasm font.
BTW: So my sexuality is expressed not by pursuing a man, nor by approaching him, but by displaying myself so that the man will approach me, and this IS a sexual activity on my part, and this display of my flesh is equal to a man’s sexual advances, or the actual sex, or what?
That would solve a lot of problems.
That was @ Joanna, btw.
@lauralot: oh yeah i watched a clip that got leaked online from that show, it was unfortunate. I want a BIG budget movie though!! 🙂
I got cat called last winter twice on a ten minute walk to my car in Portland, Maine. I remember because I made a post about it on facebook about how I could’ve easily been a dude in lazy-drag. I had my hood up even. I was wearing a women’s black parka and women’s boots beyond that you couldn’t see anything though! Sure I wasn’t assaulted but was my parka too scintillating to those car fulls of men to not bother me?
zhinxy, in NWO land people are peacocks.
Nah, he just puts all the candy on the porch under a rock, so it doesn’t blow away.
^ I was referring to the comment about NWO scaring trick or treaters. I forgot how darn fast the comments go.
Ding ding ding, Cassandra! You get a coconut!
It’s hardly an ORIGINAL form of misogyny, but it is refreshingly retro!
I’ve been trying to get into the character of Lulu (from the opera) and it’s really damn hard, because she literally has no inner life. As in another character asks her what she wants/feels and she doesn’t know. Of course, she is a sociopath.
I think the reason NWO has so much trouble with the “name an unslutty outfit” question is that he thinks literally every outfit conventionally worn in America is slutty, but he’s too racist to condone anything from another culture.
Also, of course, he wants to keep his victim-blaming options open, because God forbid he hear about a victim he couldn’t blame. I saw a 90-year-old woman in the ER who’d been raped, but if NWO doesn’t define “an ankle-length flannel nightgown” as unslutty, he gets to keep blaming her.
Also, of course, he’s extremely dim and thinks “they’re asking this a lot it must be some sort of trap.”
Does anyone know what on earth Slavey is referencing here?
No idea David. Link us, NWO!
Side note: What is up with the fabric on the cowboy in the picture up there? It looks like the whole thing is made out of gummy candy or something.
Lyssa, I was propositioned in an elevator last winter while wearing a complete gender-neutral snowsuit and balaclava. The only possible clues that I was female were my shortness and my impeccably-groomed eyebrows, but this guy took the plunge anyway.
I wonder how the dude would have reacted if I had turned out to be a really short guy with great eyebrows. Somehow I don’t think it would have ended well.
Funny thing, but when I see someone in a Halloween costume I think is sexy*, it makes me happy. I say to myself, “Hey, awesome, a sexy person!” and I just go on with my day. I don’t see what there is to get so bent out of shape about, I really don’t.
Store-bought “sexy [whatever]” costumes don’t fall into this category, generally.
Side note: What is up with the fabric on the cowboy in the picture up there? It looks like the whole thing is made out of gummy candy or something.
Vinyl? I’m guessing vinyl.
And now that I think about Wonder Woman, didn’t she piss NWO off by being Zeus’s daughter in the new continuity? Man, pissing off Slavey is yet another reason she rules.
right Kristin? i mean the only thing particularly “womanly” about my coat was that it was slim fitting and had a belt that you usually don’t see on coats sold in men’s stores and my boots were wedge boots…guess that was enough for them to assume i was a woman and should be harassed
Let me fix NWO’s rant: Nah. What we have is rich people being unwilling/unable to monetarily restrain themselves. Rich people dress to show off their wealth, period.
And the, natural result is poor people rob them. If the well to do just had some common sense they would never be robbed.
On the other hand, you think that men attacking women is perfectly normal, and expected, and the fault of the women.
Men rape women, and He thinks that’s a normal state of affairs.
This his your idea of liking men.
Men rape women and women think it’s wrong.
This, He thinks, shows that women hate men.
So, according to NWO, women can show the aren’t hating men by letting men rape them.
Men can show they don’t hate women by… raping them?
@ClioPersephone
“Guess what? My Halloween night was ruined when some guys decided to shout insulting and disgusting catcalls at me because of my costume. What was it? I dressed as a Hogwarts student. No, not the “Sexy” Hogwarts student. I was wearing black uniform skirt, a sweater, stockings, and some ballet flats. They decided that as a woman my body was obviously public property and they had ever right to comment on it as they chose. It isn’t about clothing, it is about the idea that women are somehow less than human. Why can’t people just understand that?”
No, your night was ruined due to your actions. You choose to dress sexy to attract attention. You chose to display your body publicly. If it’s not about the clothing why’d you dress in that clothing? When you dress sexy to turn men on you see THEM as less than human; just an object to feed your sexual animal instinct. Poor little snowflake. Will you melt at a few harsh words? It’s time to put on your big girl pants and be accountable for your actions.
You say your night was ruined due to men saying something you found unpleasant. Right? YOU, want to tell men to stop acting that way. Correct? Something like that wouldn’t bother a man but it bothers women. Correct? And men can’t change your mind because it wouldn’t be right for men to tell women how they feel. Correct? Well then; when men tell women how they dress effects men, YOU, don’t get to tell them it shouldn’t.
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@Joanna
“@ClioPersephone: Boys are stoopid.”
And women are total shit and should be treated as such. The days of womens casual misandry are over.
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@Holly Pervocracy
“I also expect women to 100% sexually control themselves in the sense of they also are not allowed to rape people.”
Since men and women are completely different, they have totally different sexuality. A females animal sexuality in the animal kingdom is to sexually entice as many males as possible and mate with the highest status male, (victor/winner). The males sexuality in the animal kingdom is to mate with any female by any means possible.
When a man rapes, he has devolved down to an animalistic state. When a woman dresses and acts sexually, she has devolved down to an animalistic state.
Actually as frum from birth and having left the community, I find practically any outfit really ahem interesting if stylishly worn by almost any woman, but I don’t make the leap to unwanted touching/advances. My experience of the black hatter realm at least in Jerusalem was that street harassment is/was a huge problem in the Orthodox Jewish community.