Saying “that women who are sexually desirable are asking for it” is saying that women who are sexually desirable are asking to be raped. That’s a stupid, vicious, sexist, primitive, ridiculous, foul thing to say, and I profoundly resent not being able to say what I said on this thread without being accused of saying that.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just complaining about stupidity, which is unfair, because people can’t help being stupid. That’s a stupid reading of what I said. But I don’t think I am complaining about just stupidity – I think I’m complaining about a combination of sloppy reading and self-righteousness and willful blindness to the obvious unwavering feminism of this website. I think it’s both moronic and malicious to pretend to think that I was saying that. It pisses me off.

I’m afraid all that looks to me like a lot of words to point out the obvious.

But that’s just it. It’s not obvious, to a lot of people, and when you say that women who are “sexually desirable” are “asking for it” (whatever “it” is) then it raises red flags, and it’s not unreasonable for me to get heated about it. Considering what sort of penalties are inflicted world-wide on women who are too “sexually desirable.” You clarified your meaning, sure–I’m just explaining my initial reaction.

This post is more than a week old; comments dried up five days ago, apart from two stragglers; now you suddenly drop in to make comment #79 accusing me of beating a dead horse?

And what’s with the sneering? Who the fuck are you? If you want to disagree with me, go right ahead, but just turning up all of a sudden to accuse me of protesting too much and beating a dead horse (got any other banalities in your bag?) and roll your eyes and declare a straw man and say there’s nothing to discuss and tell me to stop digging -

Well it’s not very impressive, is it?! Let’s see: quote; sneer, sneer, sneer; quote; sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer.

Notice a certain lack of substance? Or are you too busy with the sneering.

Okay, I see the hole. Would you like to jump into it?

First of all, to clarify again, I’m not criticizing Jen or her joke; I am expressing reservations about some of the reactions to some of the reservations about the joke.

Oh, hum. So, why does the phrase “protests too much” jump to my traitorous mind? Along with “beating a dead horse”?

The overall yay-cleavage line

*roll eyes*

And off we go, with a sneaky little straw man to get the blog post going. Well, after such a beginning, there’s nothing much to discuss, is there?

But, hey, I’m optimistic. Maybe, just maybe, it’s still time to see the hole and stop digging.

Then, Ophelia, you said:

Does it mean she is inviting men to desire her but also to conceal the fact?

No. But it means that they must express their desire in socially acceptable ways! You can always ask a woman (or a man) to have a drink together or something. If you already know them a little, you can say they look nice. It’s not about having your cake and eating it too; it’s about eating your cake but not shoving it into your mouth in an unsightly, offensive manner and then chewing with your mouth open and spraying people with the crumbs.

I think your statement that they’re inviting leers, comments, etc. seemed to me like you were justifying rude behavior. But that’s apparently not what you meant. Leers are rude, though, and yes, the line between looking and leering is a fuzzy one. But then, so is the line between “attractive yet appropriate” and “inappropriately sexual,” no? It’s a bad idea to condition people’s right to basic politeness on something fuzzy, but it’s a good idea to make them aware that the line exists, even though it’s fuzzy. So women should be aware of their dress, as should men, although inappropriate dress is not an excuse for rudeness to either; but men (and the few leering women out there) should be aware of the line between looking and leer. For clarification, the way I’d describe the difference is that leering involves threatening intent. It’s sexual, but it’s also somewhat hostile (unlike the more neutral “staring”–possibly rude if it goes on too long, but without malicious intent–or the totally innocuous “looking”).

You’re quite right that the cultural meaning of tits-display is more sexual than male chest-display. But that’s arguably part of the problem, albeit a minor one. There are cultures where bare-chested women are as normal as bare-chested men, and you could make an argument that the Western distinction between the two harms women somewhat.

As for the clothing you described, I’m not sure why faculty there are so “concerned”, but I do kind of see your point about it. I’m not actually a big fan of the sort of “glamour” clothing that you’ve now clarified that you had in mind, and I can see how it could be mildly disruptive if taken to an extreme. I also think it would look pretty ridiculous on a university campus, but that may be because I have a certain cultural bias.

So now we’ve both clarified what we meant, and it seems that we were thinking and talking about different things, we’re not so far apart after all. Yes? It’s always good to make progress. :)

But of course that’s almost the opposite kind of display from tits-display. Very covered; very formal, very rigid (phallic if you like); obviously linked to power; all that.

That difference is part of my discomfort with this stuff, as I’ve said. Tits-display is weak and wheedling in comparison; seduction is weak and wheedling in comparison. [shrug] There’s nothing I can do about that, but it’s one reason I find it impossible to rejoice in the Display of Female Desirability.

But it would also be disruptive to turn up in a gorilla suit or in clown makeup or dressed as Conan the Barbarian or in full bridal regalia. The latter would be appropriate for a bride, and the others would be fine at Dragoncon, but they would be disruptive in a tutorial.

That said, many young women turn up to tutorials on hot summer days wearing the following: short skirt or shorts (which may be quite short), a sleeveless top (which may expose cleavage), and sandals (which are likely to get kicked off when the woman sits down and gets comfortable). Depending, I suppose, on how short the shorts are and how plunging the sleeveless top is, this outfit could go beyond “being comfortable in summer weather” to “sexual display”.

Yet, I’ve never, in all the ridiculous number of degrees I’ve done, or in all my own teaching, including four years as a full-time academic and a helluva lot of sessional tutorials in addition, found that this manner of dress causes disruption. I think it’s perfectly appropriate summer wear for university undergraduates. The other students are invariably nonchalant about it (if it’s hot they won’t be wearing all that much more themselves), and it’s certainly never embarrassed me. Nor have any of the many academics I’ve spoken to about pedagogical problems ever raised this as a cause of disruption in classes. I have a fair idea of the sorts of things that can cause class disruptions at university level: e.g., students who haven’t done the set reading, but insist on having their say in way that’s not responsive to the issues, making the rest get impatient for him or her to shut up. The wearing of the sort of clothing I’ve described isn’t even on the list of disruptive behaviours. It doesn’t rate. (Nor do I think it has much to do with anorexia, but that raises another raft of issues, e.g. the problem of maintaining a healthy weight with the modern Western diet, and the use of absurdly emaciated models and actresses by the fashion and entertainment industries.)

I admit that I once read an article in the Chronicle by a curmudgeonly male academic complaining about his female students wearing this sort of garb. But even he seemed to be talking more about his personal embarrassment/moral disapproval than about actual class disruption. My response is that he ought to, like, Just Get Over It.

Again, it’s contextual … and I doubt that going to uni dressed in the way I described, if someone choses to do it for Boobquake, will adversely affect her legal career years later or prevent her getting a job as a judge. And as I said previously, I don’t believe that Jen was ever suggesting that people go beyond the envelope of what might be appropriate for their own context.

Maybe all this has been covered in one of the comments that I skimmed over, but I think I owed a more cogent comment of my own.

In practice, this doesn’t seem very difficult. I spent a lot of time in the summers of my long-lost youth hanging around at nude or topless beaches, and occasionally at waterholes up the valley, in the company of young women who were, ahem, not circumspect about showing their beauty to the world. Needless to say this was after my brief stint as an Evangelical Union apparatchik.

I don’t remember there being any terrible problems. In fact the only issue I ever remember was when a woman (a stranger) made fun of my two friends for taking off their bikini tops when sunbathing by the river (I still have no idea what her problem was). Different social contexts evolve workable ways of doing things.

This seems a bit remote from where the conversation was last I looked, but I’m not sure I have the energy at the moment to trace through how it got to here.

May 3, 2010 at 9:35 amThe reaction to the protest is the effect of it – as is the reaction to the reaction – as is the reaction to the reaction to the reaction – which is about where we are now. They are all ripples from the same pebble.

Never mind Noel Coward, where’s Frankie Howerd when you need him?

One of the problems of life as a male academic is in having to conduct serious conversations with young women who are showing you their breasts, but who would be shocked, horrified and mortifyingly embarrassed if you pointed out to them that they were showing you their breasts, even if it were done in a Noel-Cowardish sort of way…

It’s not a major problem, you understand, but tact is everything, as is so often the case.