fetishizing nudity: only I can give meaning to MY body

[belenen]

I recently overheard a conversation about how being "scantily clad" is a declaration that one wants sex, and it reminded me of being told that my clothing was "provocative" and more recently told that if I go naked in a public place, I am sexually harassing anyone who sees me, by drawing them sans-consent into my sex scene. In response to these

Comments

spend a few hours checking by reading up

[belenen]

"She was asking for it" will not be accepted as a reason for raping someone: however, it most certainly IS used, constantly, to "prove" that what happened was not rape but consensual sex. In the courts, a victim's character and intent is scrutinized, and how a person dresses IS used as "proof" that they consented to sex. In court, victims of rape are re-victimized because we live in a rape culture, where consent is assumed unless verbally and vigorously resisted. No one asks someone whose house was robbed if they had kept their curtains closed so that passers-by would not know they had expensive items, and insinuates that if they didn't keep their curtains closed it was actually because they wanted to give their things away to the first person who came along -- yet that is EXACTLY what happens in rape trials.

Further, what happens in the courts is unimportant compared to the reasons that people rape. One of them is rape myths like "if a person dresses a certain way, it's because they want to have sex." Want to know why rape happens? ask rapists why they did it. They're pretty candid.

To understand rape culture, I suggest the anthology Transforming A Rape Culture. There are many other resources but that's the best starting point in my opinion.

We do in fact use the way people dress to assume things about them. However that does not mean that wearing clothing can EVER be predicted as any intended implication. You're conflating two things. Your assumptions =/= others intentions. If some people intend to send signals, others don't. If I wear a sleeveless top, it's not because I want people to look at my arms, it's because I hate the feeling of sleeves, and I like to feel air in my armpits. I'm not sending ANY signal. You might be assuming one, but that does not mean I'm sending one. In your gang example, the colors are ASSUMED to be sending a signal but that does not mean that the person is actually flagging gang affiliation.

These assumptions are always a problem, but it becomes a crisis when these assumptions lead to rape; in the case of the nudity fetish, they do.

Re: spend a few hours checking by reading up

[dputiger]

There's several different threads of conversation here:

1) Rape / Rape Culture - Based on what you've written, I agree with everything in terms of how cases should be treated vs. how they are treated. I will check out the resource you linked, but I'm absolutely against the sort of scrutinization you describe.

I view what happens in the courts as extremely important. The reasons people rape tells us things about how they're thinking and why they think that way, but how rape is handled legally is an important component of changing how its perceived and treated by society in general.

As far as clothing and the conclusions that we draw, this is an enormously broad topic. The fatal flaw, again, is to assume someone is dressing to "Ask for it." But this is not in dispute. No one is asking for it, no matter how they dress.

I would say the following: Dressing and acting in a certain manner (in accordance with shared cultural understandings) can indicate interest in a person or encounter.

Signaling interest is never the same as consent, implied or otherwise. The line between the two isn't thin -- it's giant, and applied with a huge magic marker.

As regards your sleeveless top preferences: I'd assume you wore sleeveless tops because you wanted to wear a sleeveless top. If I discovered you hated sleeveless tops and wore them because it's the only tops you owned, I'd take you to the Salvation Army / Goodwill / TJ Max / Thrift Shop of Your Choice, and help you acquire something you liked more. If you were somehow restricted to sleeveless tops because of weight/size or some sort of skin issue, I'd go hunting on Google to locate something that would work for you.

The question of your armpits and their air-edness would not occur to me. :)

Re: spend a few hours checking by reading up

[wantedonvoyage]

I kind of want to take this to another level (and yes I know it's an ancient thread).

To me, even if you wanted to wear sleeveless shirts because your arms were particularly toned and you wanted to show them off on a warm day, that still shouldn't be read as an invitation to impose one's self on you. If someone has worked hard on hir physique and gets some validation from having people notice, to me that's all it is (it's freaking hard work, and in a sense your body is your "art"). I might comment favorably if I felt like it would be received favorably and not seen as aggressive, but there's no implication to me that anything further is "okay" just because of the amount of skin (s)he is showing.