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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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"Clothing that draws attention to your sexual characteristics" is very culturally relative. Fundamentalist Muslims aren't lying when they say they think women who aren't in burkas are flaunting their sexuality, and even in relatively liberal Muslim countries like Egypt (where a hijab is not required, just "strongly encouraged"), women not wearing hijabs are subject to levels of abuse and catcalling that would make New York steelworkers blush. (And incidentally, even conservatively dressed women don't get much less harassment because once you accept that you can determine a woman's modesty and how much she deserves harassment based on how she dresses, it's easy to rationalize that even women in full burkas are doing something to deserve it.)

There is definitely clothing that is intentionally meant to draw male attention, but if women have a motte and bailey, so do men whose motte is "drawing attention to your sexual characteristics" and whose bailey is "dressing in any way that I notice, especially if the bitch isn't with me."

I mostly agree with this and would say that both extremes here are bad, but I believe that in the West women are getting away with more than men in this case. For instance, women who wear shirts like this should be recognized as doing so to harass men and such harassment should be punished to a greater extent than it currently is.

I really don't think you want to establish a precedent of labeling message t-shirts "harassment" because you think they are meant to annoy you. And how exactly would you like women who wear it to be "punished"?

I really don't think you want to establish a precedent of labeling message t-shirts "harassment" because you think they are meant to annoy you.

That's already the precedent for men with message t-shirts. EDIT: Or rather, the harassment isn't in the message itself, it's in the fact that simply looking at where the message is written is a social faux pas.

And how exactly would you like women who wear it to be "punished"?

I already said above, they shouldn't be granted the additional protections against "sexual" harassment that women are typically given. They are giving shit, they should expect to deal with it given in return. EDIT: Importantly in this case, if you don't want people staring at your chest, don't put words there.

That's already the precedent for men with message t-shirts. EDIT: Or rather, the harassment isn't in the message itself, it's in the fact that simply looking at where the message is written is a social faux pas.

I've seen plenty of women wearing message t-shirts. And I have looked at their t-shirts long enough to read said messages. I've never been accused of harassing them. If you keep staring at her tits while talking to her, she might perhaps feel harassed, though I think this is imagined by men far more often than it actually happens that a guy looks too long at a woman's chest and gets berated for it.

I think you are making up scenarios where women print a message on their t-shirts and then report any man caught reading it to HR. I think you are also pretending that people can't tell the difference between your eyes falling on someone's shirt long enough to check out the message on it, and your eyes being glued to her chest.

As long as it's considered harassment for men to read the message, there's no worse precedent set by labeling women wearing the shirt also "harassment".

Reading the message isn't harassment.

Of course it is. "Eww, that creepy guy was harassing me; he was staring at my tits!"

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