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?
@Joanna that’s Amish as in the community right? Not Amish as in “like Ami” 😀
Cuz NWO would jump off a bridge if he had to dress Ami-ish xD
Nah, Seraph, he probably just didn’t notice that post. NWO stops at nothing.
And thus, really, loses all his power. I expect him to say I deserved it, the same way I expect him to be all “grarr women, existing at me” and “grrarr Jews” and grrrar really everything, so it’s white-noise hatred. It’s just the sounds he makes. They’re amusing to play with when they’re particularly logically inconsistent, but they don’t bother me because that’s just what he does.
A nice dog that suddenly growls can scare and upset me. A dog that growls at everyone who walks past its fence–well, I don’t like it, but I can hardly take it personally.
If he dressed up as a feminist, would it have a similar effect to chucking a fluffy blanki over the boogeyman?
Lol, Ami, yes I was talking about the community. Though a community of Ami’s would be interesting….
I think NWOs costume should be a sexy milkmaid. Come on, why else does he claim to work on milking machines?
I vote for a fluffy kitten because CATS.
blitzgal: Like Eddie Izzard, it’s always a good time for Wanda. Because she brings the awesome.
I’ve kinda lost hope that Slave will answer the question “What should women wear?”
I… wha… nani?! Congrats, NWO, you successfully put my brain into vapor lock from the stupid. The sheer fucking stupid.
What’s my animal state NWO? xD
You know, Dave Barry was once talking about those stupid ‘tricks’ Cosmo put out – you know, three little words to make him hot, shit like that. He explained, in his usual good-humored way, that it’s not generally necessary to use any tricks to turn a man on – the simple knowledge that you are, under your clothes, naked, should be enough to do it. Now, Dave was joking – like he does, to good effect, but I think NWO actually read that and decided that since men know women are naked under our clothes, and yet we persist in being naked under said clothes, we are clearly out to turn men on with our nakedness, and are therefore all slutty McSluttersons.
By having a body. That’s why he can’t bring himself to answer your question honestly. There is no right answer.
So, your analogy assumes that well-fed : hungry :: women : men.
That’s interesting; you are assuming that a desirable woman is not only “flaunting her sexuality” by having a body but also somehow possesses a greater quantity of sex than a man does by virtue of being female alone. For her, existing is the same thing as having sex. You have objectified women so much that you cannot conceive of a situation in which a woman is not sexualized, even when she’s alone.
Anyway, the well-fed usually don’t eat to show off their food. I’m very well-fed compared to most people in the third World, and so are you, but we’re just living our lives.
Crap, html fail.
Since when do Slut Walkers (TM) have to dress up for Halloween?
Well, EWME, I was Batman for Halloween. I am a Slutwalker (TM) but do not usually dress as Batman in my daily life.
…Although perhaps I should.
People have to dress up for halloween? I thought it was a thing done voluntarily… is Jack Skellington holding people hostage and demanding random members of society to wear silly costumes?
I had a few guys catcall at me while I was walking from my car to my apartment after a 12 hour workday. Bear in mind that, I clean houses, so I was all kinds of dirty and I stunk like a mixture of bleach, oranges and urine. I was carrying a huge bag of dirty cleaning rags in one hand and a vacuum cleaner in the other. For reference, I was wearing a pair of properly fitting jeans (not very tight, but not hugely baggy) with holes in both knees, a zipped up hoodie about 2 sizes too big and black workboots.
If that’s an example of me flaunting my sexuality and thereby inviting the catcalls, there’s absolutely nothing that any woman can do or wear to avoid it.
And, when I did turn around and say something, namely “Really? You really thingk this is sexy? Are you fucking crazy?” Most of the guys involved looked kind of embarassed that they catcalled at a cleaning lady.
One of them, to his eternal credit, asked me if I needed any more Lemon Pledge.
Touche, my dear sir. Touche.
(The last bit is the only reason I continued the story after the bit about flaunting and whatever.)
I was propositioned at my work while wearing my Halloween costume. I was wearing a witch’s hat, ankle boots, stripey tights, one black ankle length skirt layered with a green calf length skirt over it, a black Renaissance shirt with baggy sleeves that fastened around my wrists and a neckline that literally went up to my collarbones, with a purple corset to hold everything in place. The corset was a waist cincher, it didn’t even push my breasts up or anything, in fact, I had to wear a bra with it so that they didn’t get in the way. Oh and to top it off, you couldn’t even see the corset because I was wearing my ugly, dirty, orange Home Depot apron on top of it. The only skin that was showing were my hands, face and neck. In fact, my boss came up to me and said that my costume was the only one worn by a woman that complied with the company dress code.
Now let me ask this: Was I too sexy?
Some people will find anyone in a witch’s hat sexy.
I think Dave should just make a topic asking NWO what women should wear that isn’t slutty.
Or do what I do: if someone is ignoring questions, put them in moderation until they submit an answer. But I’m a despot like that.
I can’t find the one I was searching , but here are two slut walk photos. These sluts, how dare they taunt men like that…
http://act.mtv.com/files/2011/05/IYSL-Slut-Walk-3.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lshpnwUMXO1r35bavo1_500.jpg
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.
NWO, just a quick question, do you believe that women are less likely to get harassed and abused and raped in countries where the burqa is mandatory?
It is interesting how much slut shamers underestimate the threat of rape by partners and acquaintances while at the same time overestimating stranger rape. After all, some studies put the percentage of rapists that were known to the victims prior to the day of the rape at over 90%. See, that’s the thing about the “stay home” and “don’t go out alone” advice, the home is one of the most dangerous places for women in terms of violence, and it is often men they know who betray their trust.
But, even if we are only looking at stranger rape, does the fact that stranger rape is taken to be such a high threat that all women must curtail their drinking and clothes in response suggest that there is in fact a massive stranger rape epidemic? After all, we generally don’t give people advice on how to avoid very rare crimes, like serial killer cannibalism. And how many men are rapists in this scenario? Is it a few men who serially rape, or is it that most/many men are rapists? If the former, then isn’t removing those men from society a better solution than letting them intimidate women and police women’s behavior? If it is the latter, then why aren’t women justified in treating men with fear and suspicion?
Wow… NWO is really slipping these days… Reading through this thread, I’m honestly convinced that he thinks that a) clothing doesn’t actually matter, because sluts will always act slutty no matter what they wear and b) nearly all women are sluts. That’s why he can’t name an outfit that wouldn’t be slutty, yet he still condemns women for their obvious slutitude.
This is conjecture… but I’m starting to wonder whether he has some actual mental issues… As if, in his general attitude of blaming problems on mysterious outside forces, he takes his feelings of attraction towards women in general and decides that it is the women forcing him to feel this way… As if the entire population is purposefully trying to make him horny, rather than it being a standard biological reaction…
Creepy.
WHAT SHOULD SHIT WEAR?
I think NWO should dress like Sean Connery’s character in Zardoz. Who was, after all, a slave.
Really, all of our trolls are hitting new lows these days.