Ben Goldacre is a genius. He was born in 1974, which would be enough to regard him as an extremely bright man, but that’s not the only reason. His weekly column Bad Science, where he combines wit and scientific rigour like no other, will grant him a place among many other benefactors of humanity. This time he’s taken the Daily Torygraph to task. In their unceasing moral crusade against Gin lane and the sexual emancipation of women, Britain’s right-minded people’s highbrow pulp published an article claiming that science showed that “women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped”. It only took Ben a telephone call to show how the whole report was a mishmash of badly reported unfinished postgrad research, twisted evidence, half truths and blatant lies. Sadly, no matter what pains he takes to get the record straight, it seems that people will not listen; and many of the responses to his column were just the confirmation of our own caveman’s prejudices. Take this chap, for example. He’s a regular on Cif and Ben’s columns, he leans quite to the left and he tends to show a good deal of compassion in what he writes. Nonetheless, he reckoned that,
if women wear clothes which show their sexuality, men are more likely to rape them, if rape is in their minds anyway
I can’t see how he came to that conclusion. If rape is in someone’s mind, why would he give a hoot about his female victim’s attire? Tired of that old canard, I gave it a go and put forth my own theory on not dressing modestly.
If you think about it, an attractive girl wearing high-heels, tight clothes and a cleavage that shows the white of her boobs is likely to attract the attention of many men. They will “compete” against each other, cancelling out their chances of “success” and unabling each other to pull the girl. The girl will be in control of the situation, which will boost up her confidence and leave the guys looking out like horny idiots who are not ripe enough for her. If the boys are drunk, they’ll act so pathetically that their chances of hooking up with her would be minus ten. If you’re a bloke, you know I’m right. We’ve all been there and we’ve all made fools of ourselves more often than desirable when we were young, randy and unexperienced (some of us not that young).
Contrary to what the moral brigade thinks, dressing up provocatively can be seen as a protective weapon, rather than as an invitation to rape. In fact, it seems that dressing modestly can work as an invitation to harassment in some occasions. According to Khalil Al-Anani, writing at the Egyptian Daily News,
(Egyptian) Women today are merely combating sexual harassment on the streets, which has increased despite the fact that more women don the veil…. A report by the Egyptian Center for Womens rights revealed that 84 percent of women in Egypt are subjected to sexual harassment, 70 percent of which at least are veiled
Of course, this is all speculation, but so is the theory that states that “she was dressing like a slut, she brought it upon herself”. This is just blame the victim, which is akin to moral bankruptcy. There has never been any proved correlation between not dressing modestly and soaring rape statistics. And I hope we blokes pull ourselves together and stop insulting our own intelligence.
