OWN UP

In relation to my post Who Should Be Ashamed, let’s address this culture of shaming women for the way they dress or requiring them to “cover up” in the presence of men. Growing up, my Father always told me to “cover up” or dress a certain way because it was “decent” or “respectable”. Little did I know that these terms were being flung around due to fragile masculinity and the objectification of women.

I call it fragile masculinity because for many years, victims of sexual assault have always been asked what they were wearing at the time of assault. When I got older and got to understand this dynamic, I got both angry and disgusted by the way women’s bodies have become men’s possessions. Even my ex husband used to sometimes get upset with my dress choice; he wanted me to wear short dresses for him and no one else. Let’s not forget the fact that I wore these short dresses long before I met and eventually married him, and they were not to attract male attention. I wore them for me.

Stories of children being molested and raped by especially men they trust are unfortunately a weekly occurrence, and yet there will be people defending the abusers saying they were seduced by their victims. Explain to me like I’m a child how a six month old baby seduces a pedophile. The culture of protecting, defending and exonerating sexual predators based on women’s and girl’s dress choice needs to stop, and replaced with a culture of teaching the young generation basic respect for their bodies and other people’s bodies. Because in all honesty, even Muslim women covered from head to toe in buqras and hijabs are still cat called and sexually harassed.

A woman’s dress choice has never been and will never be the cause of sexual assault. The blame squarely lies on the shoulders of the perpetrators, for their inability to control their sexual impulses and lack of basic home training. There is no way you can convince me that a baby or a twelve year old girl seduced a rapist, neither can you justify dire measures like breast ironing in parts of Cameroon to protect girls from sexual abuse and harassment. Girls and women should never be blamed for the mistakes of men, men need to own up to their own mistakes. With all the chest thumping they do, one would assume men are man enough to own up.