Asking for it

Maybe it was the low-cut baby blue wrap blouse, the one that criss-crossed my cleavage and clung to my curves, that inspired two different men to grab me uninvited when I was 23.

Maybe they just couldn't help themselves because it was just too tempting. Maybe by wearing that blouse, I was ''asking for it.''

Or maybe they were just perverts with a sense of entitlement, certain in the knowledge that they'd get away with it because, back then, women suppressed their anger and felt nothing but shame.

Well, no more. At least not for the many women who wrote to me today in response to my column on men groping women on public transit.

Back then we didn't call this sexual assault. It didn't have a name. It's just what women put up with.

We also had no "date rape," no "grey rape," nothing but you'd-better-have-the-scars-to-prove-it-lady penetration rape.

And God forbid you looked sexy. Because that meant you were asking for it.

Consider last Sunday's Star story about how, in Toronto high schools, girls are subjected to harassment, groping and other assaults.

As reporter Louise Brown wrote, it's girls – the victims – who must learn how to behave, how to stand up for themselves, how to fight back.

The boys? Well, poor dears, maybe it's all that rap music.

Which is why I was dumbstruck by another story last week – "Women-only bus service makes first stop in Mexico." There, jam-packed buses move millions every day – while men take advantage of the situation to get up close and much too personal. And so, like Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Cairo and elsewhere, Mexico City now offers segregated transit.

It goes beyond buses. In Italy there is a female-only beach. In the U.S., at least one hotel is designating women-only floors. Here in Toronto, we have women-only gyms.

But, while they all certainly give woman varying levels of comfort, they are all wrong.

That's because they put the onus on the women rather than the perpetrators of the crimes.

It's like when feminists had to "take back the night.'' Before women's liberation, nice girls did not go out alone after dark. Those who did were "asking for it."

All this raises the idea of burqas and the Taliban and that incident last year in Montreal when an Orthodox Jewish community paid a YMCA to frost its windows so male students at the neighbouring synagogue would not be distracted by the spandexed aerobicizers.

If men can't stop from looking, grabbing and groping, then cover the women! If men are weak, then women must be strong! Put them in purdah! Make them stumble around under a long black veil.

Where is Golda Meir when we need her? The former Israeli prime minister, when confronted with a growing problem of rape in Tel Aviv, rejected the police force's decision to impose curfews on ... the women.

“But it is the men who are attacking the women. If there is to be a curfew, let the men stay at home.”

One thing that can and should be done. Start educating boys, now. One teacher wrote to say that she would like to make my column a topic of discussion next week. YAY!

Meanwhile, a man wrote to say the problem was that too many girls were dressing ''like Madonna'' and so ... well, you know. They're ''asking for it.''

I wonder how that would play out if the guy committing the assault on the bare-midriffed (or whatever) teen were 50, and not 15.

Incidentally, just as my column was going to press yesterday, this came over the wires.

ST. JOHN'S -- An Iranian man studying in Newfoundland has been sentenced to two months in jail for kissing a woman on her breast while the two were sharing an elevator.

Farhood Azarsina, 25, pleaded guilty last week to sexual assault.

Mr. Azarsina, a PhD student in engineering at Memorial University, admitted kissing the top of the woman's breast while the two were on a school elevator on Sept. 27. He apologized in court last week, saying he acted on impulse.

Judge David Orr said during sentencing yesterday that Mr. Azarsina "has a superficial understanding of the effect of his actions."

<SNIP>

Mr. Azarsina said he didn't realize the seriousness of the offence in this country.

"You can't expect all males to control themselves when the breasts are out," he said.

Right. She was ''asking for it.''

Comments

[MissMay12]

While I really appreciated your article and admire many of the points you made, this worries me: "Not that anybody would try for a grope this point." I realize you're being funny (and that you go on to say that "even octogenarians have been attacked," but I think it's dangerous to perpetuate, even in jest, the notion of "she's not young/pretty/desirable enough to be raped."

Rape is not about sex; it's about violence, control and power.

[Jennifer]

I just wanted to tell you that I have been reading your blog for the past several weeks and I really appreciate what you have to say. It makes me so sad to read about many of the things you write about because I know them to be true. We want to believe that we have come so far, and we have, yet misogyny continues to thrive all around us. How many places do we have to Take Back before every wrong done to women stops being our fault?

[K. Mackey]

I really enjoy your blog, and thought this post was especially good. After reading this post, I realized that I've also been caught in the "treating the symptoms and not the cause" trap. Your post has made me more aware of how people deal with these "problems" like the YMCA frosting the windows. Thanks, I really enjoyed this post and am sharing it with others! Also I look forward to future posts.

[Shaunna aka Shrunk]

The whole "asking for it" mentality just INFURIATES me.

[Dave]

I was raised by a feminist - I have a profound respect for women. On this topic: when I was about eight years old, somebody grabbed my mom while we were walking in the street in New York - that guy got a strip torn off him in front of lots of people. etc...My mom didn't back down.

What really saddens me though is that the feminist vision my mom espoused - which seems so logical (respect women, respect their minds, respect their bodies!) didn't really come to pass. I know so many women who seem to like being on the receiving end of what I would consider sexual harassment. e.g. I would never comment on a female co-worker's physical appearance. Yet many of the guys who engage in what appears to be mild sexual harassment are well-received by the professional women in our office.

Another e.g - one of my old roommates used to harass this one guy's fiancee (the guy lived in another city.) He would constantly comment on her breasts, her butt, whether he thought she was getting fat - and then he'd tell her to come sit on his lap. I would do no such thing...I maintained eye contact at all times...And she hated me for it...

So there is an element of 'enabling' here. My male colleagues who harass our female co-workers have never been shut down, even though they know their behavior is inappropriate, primarily because the women seem to join in. I tell them that they shouldn't be talking about "strippers and hookers" at work and/or in front of female co-workers. It doesn't make a difference because the women we work with laugh at it and contribute their own anecdotes about taking pole-dancing classes or making out with other women. It's not like these are important guys with power who can't be crossed - they are at the same level in the company as me, and these women could ignore them in the same way that they ignore me :)

And the same goes for my old roommate. He was a total pig but he got such a good reception from women that he would never stop or change.

The net result is that women who don't want to be harassed find it more difficult to get their complaints heard. My girlfriend works as a budget analyst in the fire department. It has gotten better, but [often married] firefighters always hassle her to go out with them, and there's no end of sexist commentary. You can send these guys to seminars, educate them on city policy, make them the target of lawsuits, even fire some of them for violating the rules, but when a guy who's a pig is well-received by a significant number of women, it's difficult for other women to stop their inappropriate behavior.

My girlfriend had to suppress a lot of her anger when she was younger (now she tears a strip off of these guys) but what do we make of women who aren't angry that it's happening?

My mom's take: it's only harassment if the guy is ugly.

[Feel free to edit...]

[Antonia]

You make a great point, Dave.

Men are on the horns of a damned-if-the-do, damned-if-they-don't dilemma.

But I think that we can all agree that groping and grabbing is out of line, and that if sex talk in the office makes any woman even slightly uncomfortable (and the reverse is true, by the way) even though other women in the place enjoy or encourage it, then it is inappropriate, period, full-stop.

Women should not be made to feel like ''prudes'' or whatever because they demand dignity and respect, as well as a professional environment.

[Chimera]

"'You can't expect all males to control themselves...'"

Say WHAT??? I've been verbally inarticulate over this since I first read about it yesterday. An otherwise educated man can't understand that he committed assault, and that it's not up to his victim to prevent it, but rather it's up to him to keep himself under control? That women have every right to dress as they wish without fear of being accosted by every sample of pond scum that floats by their proximity?

I...I...I...oh...*pfsht!*