Cover up, slut – your skin is showing

Yuni Kim
News Editor
Ladies, are you tired of walking around, being wary of dark corners on campus and unlit hallways? Do you tremble at the thought of walking across the parking lot, car keys already in hand, not knowing what dark shadow of the night may pounce upon you?
Then, dear ladies, do I have an innovative idea for you!

Stop dressing like damn whores.
Those warm-weather shorts and skirts hibernating in your drawers have got to go. So do your leggings. What are you thinking? They’re so tight they’re practically a second skin! Unless I can fit an extra person in your shirt, any tight blouses, tank tops and strappy things must be murdered.
Put your tits away, slut. Don’t you know that’s what triggers slobbering men?
Actually, burn your jeans, too. Your ass looks far too inviting in them. I now declare, as your moral superior, that the crotch of your jeans must hang at least five inches from your ass cheeks to protect you from dirty, rape-happy men.
Has this world gone insane?
It shouldn’t be surprising given York University’s safety record – its lowest point being the infamous Vanier residence rapes in 2007 – that community members tend to be sensitive about safety issues.
There was nothing sensitive about the Toronto police officer’s comments made at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School Jan. 24, which, if you hadn’t heard, noted women could avoid being sexually assaulted by not dressing like sluts.
He’s not alone in his thinking. The Winnipeg Free Press reported Feb. 24 that because a female rape victim was wearing heavy makeup, high heels and put on a flirtatious mood at a Thomson bar (the nerve!), the Manitoba judge presiding over her case accepted that the perpetrator “might not have understood that the woman did not want to have sex with him.”
Look at the online comments section of these stories, however, and a quick skim will net you an overwhelming number of variations of the “she dresses like it, she’s asking for it” rationale. The misogyny is devastating.
It’s enough to make your stomach churn.
This kind of dangerous mentality is what brands the everyday woman a sexual she-devil, a jezebel who deserves her punishment. Not only that, it makes the average man into a Neanderthal-like creature, a one-track-mind buffoon who loses his shit at the sight of skin.
According to this logic, a woman who tarts herself up – whether it is for a fun night on the town, a hot date or because she just felt like dressing up – is a succubus, willingly putting herself out on the meat market.
According to this logic, a man is justified in ignoring his sensibilities and any form of human self-control if he is in the vicinity of a pretty young thing. In court, he is allowed to pull a Pontius Pilate and wash his hands clean because she was the one dressed dirty.
Many argue that if women dressed more modestly, they would not be inviting these kinds of sexual attacks. But again, according to this logic, no woman wearing a hijab, niqab or burkha could ever be raped. We know this is not true.
If this is what is considered logic these days, I spit in its face.