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

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.