This has popped up a few times over the years.
The details differ but it’s the same story:
A parent – often the father, sometimes the mother – has rules about how their daughter should dress. Don’t expose the midriff. If men are in the house, don’t traipse around in your underwear. Wear loose tops or long, flowing dresses.
How you dress sends a message brighter than any neon sign.
In chime the feminists:
“Grr! Men are the problem! Women should dress however they want without it being an invitation for intimacy!”
Come on, ladies, you can do better than that.
Yeah, any guy who lets his lusts drive him – in any context – is a loser. Strong men control themselves. Weak men succumb.
And the weakest of all men impose.
I have to say the obvious here because otherwise some shrieky freak with blue hair will accuse me of apologising assault. Nope. I founded Antipater on the principle of making men better. I don’t tolerate such pathetic lapses of control and virtue in any man.
With the obvious entrenched:
Yes, actually. Certain ways of dressing are invitations for intimacy.
If I dress like a gangster and hang out in front of a police station, I’m going to get hassled.
And any woman who dresses like a harlot is going to have men assuming intimacy is for sale.
Now, sure, even harlots have the right of refusal. If they tell a customer it’s not happening, then it’s not happening. No Means No applies even to streetwalkers and any man who forgets that embarrasses himself before peers and God.
But even if men don’t buy the merchandise, they’re still going to look.
Dress like a harlot and you’re going to attract attention.
“Women should be free to dress how they want without getting leered at!”
What a self-defeating objection. Why do some women even want to dress in such a revealing way? Because it makes them feel beautiful? There are countless ways to look beautiful and modest. For confidence? Then dress like that at home, then put on more layers when you go out.
No – wanting to dress like that only makes sense if you want the attention you’re complaining about.
Again, for the foolish, the memory-impaired and the out-of-context quippers: a desire to be ogled isn’t a desire to be touched.
But, also again, there’s a way to fine-tune that. If you dress beautifully but not like a harlot, then you’ll turn heads without attracting too many creeps.
It’s not perfect.
But I figure you’d want to stake the odds here, given what’s at stake.
Now, I have no clue why I wrote this. Few of my readers are women.
So I must have wrote this for the men.
The lesson for you, then, is obvious:
Control your lusts and your conduct. Teach your sons and brothers to do the same.
And teach your woman, sisters and daughters to dress with modesty.
Boom. If we all did that, we’d all solve a lot of problems – not just around assault, but deeper social problems too.
Another thing that would solve so many problems is this: