Should women watch what they wear? That hoary question has come up again in the wake of some recent assaults on Catholic school girls in Toronto. As always, the focus of the public ire has been on the alluring attire of the victims; and the cops have reinforced this unwanted attention with advice that perhaps the girls shouldn't wear their sexy uniforms on city buses for the next little while.
Here we see 'common sense', that creaky social construct, again dictating what is in women's best interest; in this case suggesting the proper dress code for ladies who do not wish to be raped or ogled whilst going about their proper lady-like business. Rightly, many have been offended by this misguided and misogynistic advice.
Women's autonomy includes the right of women to wear what they want and to not be held responsible for other people's responses to their clothing. Moreover, not only are women not responsible for how other people act upon seeing them--but they have every right to negotiate these responses as well. Women can wear clothes that draw attention to them--sexy clothes even--and they can respond positively to wanted attention and negatively to unwanted attention. They do not have to take the bad with the good. It is not their fault if perverts refuse to control themselves. And it is not their fault if other people are offended that they didn't dress erotically for their unique pleasure.
That being said, the issue of school uniforms may complicate these conclusions somewhat. School girls are being subject to sexual harassment in this situation not because of clothes they chose to wear but specifically because of uniforms they are forced to wear. Defending women's autonomy in this situation would mean supporting the abolition of school uniforms as an anti-egalitarian institution. Free Catholic school girls from the bonds of their uniforms at the same time that we free them from the confines of the male gaze.
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