Religious fundies are giving out tracts that claim women who dress “ungodly” are asking to be raped:
Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.
“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.”
The crazy woman gave the two girls a tract:
“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”
It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:
“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”
It’s pretty amazing people are stupid enough to believe these things. Dressing immodestly is relative. Many Muslims use this same argument, except it’s with headscarves — because if a woman shows her face, it’s obvious she’s asking to be raped.
In a way, these people are trying to excuse the crime of monsters — people who assault others for their sexual pleasure. Instead of laying the blame where it is due, they put it on the victim.
It might be true that provocatively-dressed girls draw more attention by rapists. So what? Nice cars are more often stolen than ugly ones, too. Maybe they’ll be handing out tracts to new car owners telling them that they are at fault for car theft.
Regardless, these people are trapped in the Dark Ages. I feel sad for their children and the guilt and oppression they must experience every day.
I hate to admit this, but many years ago I once got reeled into a debate about this. I was for it, not against it — and no, I’m not proud that I did it. It was an absolutely stupid topic and I had no choice — I either take part or lose marks for it. We obviously lost as none of our points could stand up against them, though deep down I’m happy for that.
I’ll never forgive that asshole lecturer that made me try to justify/validate rape.
The thing that always gets me about this argument is: What about those men who are turned on by women in full dress, or headscarves, or burkas, or whatnot? If women wearing those things then are raped, then are they also guilty of leading the men into temptation?
Ugh. Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. It doesn’t matter how you are dressed. Period. A man broke into my apartment on the night of July 4th when I was 20. He tried to rape me in my bed at three o’clock in the morning. Clearly, my dress wasn’t the issue.
This pamphlet business is deplorable. Once again, the religious are showing their ignorance on matters that are too complicated for their little pea brains.
:(
If I had to take a guess, I would say at least some portion of rapes are about sex, not just wanting to dominate someone. I do hope that the guy who tried to rape you was not successful, and that the incident caused you no lasting harm.
LRA is dead on (in her first paragraph anyway). Rape isn’t sex, and dress has nothing to do with it. Sorry to hear that story, LRA.
Honest to FSM (sauce be upon him), reading that has made me feel like I’m going to throw up.
This is the exact philosophy of the islamic pea-brained men. So because the islamic and xtian & jewish and well all other religious schite-head males can’t control their impulses then the women have to be dressed in tents!!!!
Personally I have a better solution for those who lack control. It involves the coming together of a dull rusty blade and a 3″ piece of dangling flesh. And I also know a good lesson for the women who distributes this type of literature. This would solve both problems at one go. Oh well it wont ever happen but one can dream.
I don’t know where I saw it but there are religious nuts who think that people who want to rape or have some urge to rape should also be thrown in jail because it is just as bad as the act itself. I am slowly getting less and less surprised at the things that fundies come up with. Maybe they can be hold accountable if they get beat up by someone because they are talking about a provocative subject which can annoy a lot of people. I wonder what they would think if they got beat up. Would they think it was a punishment from god because they are doing something wrong or is it the devil trying to hinder them because they are doing an excellent job. I think it would be the latter.
The latter.
Gorram it, I hate my state. Between this and the anti-anti-gay discrimination stuff, I really have no hope left for humanity.
I’d like to print up some “atheist slaps” to hand to the mental midgets who hand me Christian tracts although I seriously doubt that fighting passive aggression with passive aggression actually works.
Good idea, but they’d just discard whatever you wrote as being from Santa. Clearly trying to undermine the good work that they’re doing for ceiling cat.
Santa vs. Satan. I lollered.
I agree that this literature is disturbing and dangerous rape-apology and I very much appriciate the coverage of it. However, studies have found that the way a woman dresses has very little effect on their risk of assault, infact it is more often that victims of random assault are dressed conservatively. Same goes for nice cars, more often it’s the ’99 Toyota Carolla that is joy ridden then stripped instead of the Escalade. Also I feel none of the parellels between bodies and cars are appropriate, and may intentionally trivialize rape and assault.
That is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. How can anyone blame rape survivors?
The same way they blame abuse survivors.
“Well, what did you do/say that made him angry?”
Been there, done that, got the PTSD.
So, was Mary in a halter-robe or something?
What group is doing this? This must be their spring campaign. I saw a booklet in the Post Office titled “Party Girl.” The cover had a silhouette of a woman apparently dancing – wearing a long skirt about 2 inches below her knees.
Keshia should have told the customers to talk to the manager if they didn’t like her attire. Personally, I would have asked the driver if that was his boyfriend sitting next to him.
If these people really thought about it, wouldn’t they be ashamed to think that they were telling God how he/she/it should think? What about the “sin” the men have committed for thinking that way? Like JohnMWhite, it makes me feel sick.
Some people gets sexually exited to seen nuns.
First, I object to your comment at the end:
“It might be true that provocatively-dressed girls draw more attention by rapists. So what? Nice cars are more often stolen than ugly ones, too.”
Rape isn’t a compliment, and this seems to be what you’re implying here.
A woman (or man) should be able to walk around naked without fear of being raped. That is the true sign of a decent society.
“Rape isn’t a compliment, and this seems to be what you’re implying here.”
I don’t see that implication at all. He seemed to me to be saying that whether or not dress is a factor in a rapist’s choice of victim, it is irrelevant, and rape shouldn’t be happening regardless of what people wear.
The suggestion is that ‘nice’ looking girls are more likely to be raped than ‘ugly’ girls. ie If you’re raped, your attractive. A compliment.
This is rarely true. Even if it was true, it is victim blaming.
A woman (or man) should be able to walk around naked without fear of being raped. That is the true sign of a decent society.
Hear, hear!
“By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”
Hey, some murder victims would not have been murdered if they wore armor/were athletes or soldiers/had a gun/took a different route to work/it was a rainy day/gravity was abolished/they were invisible/accepted his noodly appendage into their hearts.
There is a lesson to be learned here, folks.
Abortion prevents murder? People wouldn’t be getting murdered if they were never born.
Not only are these people in deep denial about human nature, but they are obsessed with sex. The proper response is to tell them so: “You are obviously obsessed with sex. It is good that you are not ashamed to admit it publicly, but you should seek professional help.”
One has to wonder then, about the awful rate of rape among all those indigenous people living in the Amazon Forest, that go around their business completely naked…
Do these pious people know anything about the world beyond their small realities?
They live far too sheltered lives.
Its seems these people think that men are hyper sexual animals who can’t help but jump a woman in a short skirt. Where do they get this idea? Yes we can get turned on by seeing a sexy woman but thats fleeting. Even if there are some guys with some mental disorder that makes them hyper sexual, they can always go to the bathroom and pleasure them selfs or just think of something else.
These people make me sick,
Lone Wolf: As they see it, getting turned on, even fleetingly is a sin. For most of us it is just one of the joys of life. Their god designs men to be turned on by women as a necessary condition to maintain the species, then declares that it is a sin to be turned on by women. If one accepts that it is a sin to be aroused, but can’t avoid being aroused because it is natural and normal, then one either has to blame God or blame the women. They completely miss the point that it isn’t the arousal that defines morality, it how one responds to it.
Very good point but I was more talking about the whole blaming the victim thing, not just this one story. I’ve done three posts (two talking about news stories (including this one) and a rant) talking about blaming rape victims and there is a bunch of video about it at Youtube after an atheists pretty much did it.
Some seem to have this idea that men are hyper sexual and can’t help them selfs.
Your point is very good, it’s an excellent analyses of the story. The demonization of sexuality in the abrahamic religions has cause nothing but problems including this.
I completely understand your revulsion at blaming the women for rape. And you’re spot on about abrahamic religions. In “Infidel” Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about Muslim men becoming aroused by the sound of women’s footsteps, and her eventual realization of how perverse it is to make women responsible for men’s sexuality.
I’m not surprised that that old (ancient) hate-filled blaming myth is still around. Repulsed, yes.
Actually maybe a little surprised. I keep thinking something that ridiculous can’t last.
There was a secretary where I worked years ago that belonged to one of those über-fundy churches (along with her crazy mother) and actually believed women were inherently evil and always in a state of sin because of Eve. She told me once that we were put on earth to tempt men and could never be without that sin.
Poor thing was very neurotic and so hateful of herself that she would frequently have breakdowns.
I tried to reason with her once, but she was too far gone.
“It’s pretty amazing people are stupid enough to believe these things.”
It’s not stupidity. Although the people involved may be stupid as well — they aren’t mutually exclusive — the principal agent at work here isn’t stupidity. It’s hatred of women.
Some people are drawn to Christianity because it encourages the abuse and degradation of women. Others because they hate homosexuals. Others because it justified slave-owning. People have their preconceived horrific beliefs, and they find some passages in the Bible to justify them.
The person who gave the girl this leaflet is probably jealous of someone who looks good in tight clothes because she doesn’t. And uses the Bible to justify her bile and anger over being unattractive. You find the same thing with many anti-abortion activists, they are so homely and smelly that they can’t get laid, and so they make it their life’s work to punish other women for having sex, using the pretense of being against abortion.
I realized I shouldn’t make it seem like I am picking on the women. Many male anti-abortion activists are also angry and ugly, and use the abortion issue to club women who have sex, but won’t have it with them.
This is where I live. I’m embarrassed.
Alison, the Hi-Lo burger is just down the street from my house. I pass it every day. This thing is big lunchtime discussion around here
I was thinking about the women dressed provocatively. Heh. I mean, well, I meant that some women are trying to attract attention, even sexual attention from men. In the vernacular, we might even call such women a “tease.” It does not mean she welcomes advances from every man who lusts after her. It might not even mean she is really intentionally trying to attract attention. When I gained weight, my blouses were tight, but I did not want to buy new blouses because I was in denial. As long as everything still buttoned, it fit.
I was temping at a place where my “business” attire was not wholly necessary, and one day, filing (actually unpacking files from an office relocation) in a narrow and very warm room, while there were only other women in the office, I removed my sweater and had on a tank top underneath. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do professionally, so maybe I should have been sent home. The only man who worked at that office came back from somewhere and paused to stare at me in the file room and said nothing. I put my sweater back on to talk to him about something and didn’t take it off again. It was wool and the office was cranked up to 90 and I was performing manual labor as opposed to office work that I was tricked into believing I’d been hired to do. A few weeks later, my temp job ended, and he made a remark about “photographic memory” of that day he saw me filing in a tank top in the card everyone signed for my going-away party. I’m supposed to have a sense of humor about this, but really just glad I was moving on from that office.
Anyway, I guess my point was that even if a woman does want to show off her body, or even if she doesn’t mean to, those men who think they are so powerful and dominant can keep their impolite thoughts to themselves, or else we can just regard them as weak, if that is what they are admitting to. They might be ashamed to be so weak, but they accept it as their nature, which is a lame excuse. A woman’s nature might be to let one special guy know she is available, not the entire male population.
A woman who is hoping to attract a sexual partner has every right to reject men who don’t meet her standards, he has no right to force himself on her, and if he can’t control himself, it’s just a cultural anomaly that men who are supposed to be more awesome at everything fail at being respectful and in self-control. Women are people, they do not exist to be pawed and blamed and to have senses of humor for male perversions, and awkward, forward remarks as to their virility. A man with such an ego as to believe a woman was “asking for it” doesn’t seem to understand she might be asking for it from someone else, and she does have prerogative to reject him, like it or not.
I work very closely with several attractive women (we’re all database analysts) and I love working with them because they are intelligent, knowledgable, capable workers who bring creative ideas to solving problems, and who appreciate my ideas. We all get great satisfaction from our work and build on each others strengths without the slightest sexual tension because we’re all well adjusted adults.
Your co-worker was not well adjusted and apparently didn’t mind displaying it publically. His obsession is not your fault or your problem. IMHO the best response to such a public statement is to call him out publically by saying something like “Your obsession with sex can be successfuly treated these days.” Especially since you were leaving the company and he chose to dispay his obsession publically.
Raymond, I know your’e being respectful, and this is a threat about treating women with respect. So why can’t I get your scenario as a possible plot for a porno out of my mind?
Probably because that IS the “plot” to a porno. (Rule 34)
i wonder if people who hand these pamphlets out get slapped across the face very often, because that’s what happened to me the last time i said “what? the bitch was askin’ for it” about a rape victim.
:
Quite a few years ago, in Australia, there was a senate committee looking into shoplifting. One of the senators remarked that stores should stop putting up big displays with flashing lights, bright signs and other attractive features as that would tempt people into stealing. The other senators were appalled, to which she replied that it was the same logic they’d used about rape victims.