Ladies. Would you wear this outfit to walk through a city?

[RainWithSunnySpells]

Long, stripey socks, shoes, tail (I don't want to know how this is attached) and a bag. Yes, that is the whole outfit and it was worn in Seattle USA, not at Pride, but on a normal day.

Spot on 👍

It was in.

All the eye bleach in the world can't let me un see it. This was in public and someone had recorded it and posted it online so it's still out there. Definitely breaking public decency laws and then some.

I’m were a dandy cat, yes.

It was clear to me! Obviously no sane woman would parade around wearing that kind of outfit, which is not to say that we should all wear the niqab to protect ourselves, or that if we're wearing miniskirts we're 'asking for it'.
This crosses a line and most people will instinctively know that. Rather like most people will instinctively know when they see a male person, even if that person is presenting as their version of a woman. We know these things at instinctive level because we are social animals and society's cohesiveness is partly to do with these kind of nuanced understandings of the risks some individuals pose.

I posted the photo at 12.42 yesterday, upthread. The person in the photo is male, and possibly stunning and brave.

Thankfully, I am not talking about Bianca/Kanye which is extremely worrying IMO, but a different situation.

What the OP was asking was clear to me as well and I would’ve thought that such an outfit broke laws. Seattle is home to many tech firms and large gay (male) population but I would’ve thought Americans in general wouldn’t approve of visible fetish wear such as that to be out in public.

Maybe it’s too much MN, but the thread on which country you wouldn’t return to along with FWR and the stories of appalling husbands and dads on AIBU leaves me wondering what the hell is wrong with men? Of course NAMALT, but enough are to fill thread after thread. Why are they so controlling and have such weird sex fetishes? I despair.

It seems that the patriarchy fails men as much as it fails women. But must serve a tiny fraction of men in key positions of power, govt, media, industry etc, with enough resources to normalise and impose (what ought to be) ludicrous behaviour on wider society.

I hope that he doesn't sit down anywhere. Honestly, genitals being fully covered should be a minimum requirement anywhere just for sanitary reasons.

God that looks cold.

Because there is heavy a suggestion that what you wear is encouraging, and even potentially deserving (the likening of leaving your car unlocked and a police officer giving you a harsh telling off for that) due to what you’re wearing.

You’re now again insinuating that there is a correlation between the clothing women wear and sexual abuse - I’d like to see your evidence for this? Because to me, anyone making that link or suggesting that it would be worthy of a dressing down from the police is disgusting. You can think that being scantily dressed is unacceptable or immoral etc, but it should never be linked to sexual abuse. Men don’t attack women due to their clothing. They mostly attack due to the right circumstances, clothing doesn’t come into it.

The Dove Centre have done repeated exhibitions on this because they, and I quote ‘want to dispel the myth that what you wear encourages sexual attacks’.

The fact that people on this board are perpetuating the idea that your clothing can lead to sexual abuse is not only outdated but it’s extremely insulting.

It’s really worrying that you can’t see this. And really worrying that you’re inventing tenuous links and saying ‘I’d like to see the evidence in that’ well good luck finding it, because I can guarantee it doesn’t exist.

When you start inventing links with no evidence such as - it’s what she was wearing - you a) create an inverted situation where people think ‘it couldn’t happen to me because I dress like XYZ and b) every time we keep this idea up we are a few steps away from ‘it’s not the perpetrators fault, it’s the victim because look at what they’re wearing’. Hence how an underage girl is blamed for being raped because she had on red underwear. We know the reasons why rapists rape, and it’s never down to ‘well she had a short skirt on so I just decided to do it out of no where’.

These arguments are damaging to women.

Has anyone seen the work of a women’s group or charity that has a this is what I was wearing when they were raped. The clothes are hung up with the circumstances and story. I’m so sorry I can’t remember the groups name to link. It had just regular clothes for girls and women of all ages including little children’s clothes.

It was Judge Pickles that was famed in the UK for making remarks about women wearing short skirts way back when I was a young teenagers.

No idea what the law is regarding having your meat and two veg out in public is in America I think in the UK is if it causes offence you can be arrested.

Hi there, @SpiderPlanter : regarding our interpretation of the previous post, we should leave it at "agree to disagree" then, because as you say I just can't see that a woman making practical comparatives to state her point is the root of the male sexual violence problem.
I'm not "inventing links": I genuinely admit that I speak intuitively. As this is a general public forum, I think I can safely say that we're not talking as experts but as concerned individuals with limited knowledge. However I happen to know there's a field of study called victimology that focuses on the circumstances sorrounding victims and, in ny understanding, it's aimed at preventing crimes. That was my approach to the matter. Hence my intuitive assumption that yes, there are circumstances that may make you more of a potential target.
The supposed link to clothing I guess is as old as time and, while I totally agree with you in that it can lead to victim blaming, I was not being sarcastic when I said that I'd like to see studies about this because I too believe (as one pp put it) that there's some wisdom passed trough generations regarding this issue that we "moderns" tend to dismiss very easily.
I would never pretend to know more than I know in such a complex and sensitive issue and I'm really sorry if anything I said could be interpreted as blaming a sexual violence victim. We tend to get lost in theories and intellectual arguments and sometimes forget to keep our feet on the ground, but that's why I think a "practical" approach is needed.

I really appreciate your arguments re victim blaming though.

Ah yes, I see now.

Well, no, I would not expect to see anyone think it is ok to wear that in public.

I don't know that I think only a man would do something like that. Because I don't think most men would even consider it a little bit.

Women probably would be more wary to wear something like that for reasons of safety, and also, I think men like this feel they can hide behind their special rainbow person status. But there are women who walk pretty close to the line of public exposure as well. The local to me comic con can have some serious envelope pushing examples walking around downtown - the excuse then is that they are in costume.

Again - you are assuming that there is no link because you think it will cause people to blame women.

That is bullshit logic. Like an F- on any kind of logic exam. A link is true or not true, even if you are unable to determine whether it is true or not. It's a fact. The moral implications of the fact don't tell us what is actually true.

You cannot decide something is not true because you don't like what you or others might see as the implications.

If someone was able to do some kind of good study that showed that clothing could affect a person's chances of being sexually assaulted, what are you saying - that you wouldn't believe it because you don't like it?

I mean, there are clear links between certain things and sexual assault. The #1 being alcohol consumption, by both the victim and the perpetrator. Booze is also implicated in a lot of other crimes like plain old beating the shit out of someone kind of assault.

There are patterns in sexual assault whether anyone finds that offensive or not.

…because it already HAS caused people to blame victims, time and time and time again. Judges have ruled it in cases with CHILDREN. You think children wearing fewer clothes are to blame?!

Seriously, why do you think there are groups out there working so hard to dispel the myth? Because it is continuously perpetuated and there is no truth in it. Look up the Dove Centre, see the work they do to stop people believing that the clothes a victim wears makes a difference. Circumstances are often at play, not clothing.

This isn’t coming from me, it’s coming from groups who work with rape victims in rape cases. Are you saying because you don’t like it, you don’t believe them?

Are you saying that if that child hadn’t worn red knickers she wouldn’t have been raped? Are you saying if I hadn’t worn skinny jeans and a fitting top? How far do you go with this clothing rule you’ve decided is true? How about the teenager in my city who was raped by a paedo with a school girl fetish several decades ago, are you blaming her for wearing uniform? Where do you draw this line?

and tell me, who gets to decide? Is it a bikini that’s too much? A short skirt? A knee length skirt? Tight trousers? A top showing shoulders? Come on, who gets to decide what is risky clothing? A judge? You? Society? How do you decide which clothing items are deemed ‘potentially going to stir a rapist’?

Yes, absence of evidence is not evidence that it isn’t true. But when there are people and groups who work within the rape sector repeatedly telling you that what a victim wears is irrelevant, at what point are you going to sit up and listen?

Was it in the suburb called Fremont? There were naked people walking about regularly when I lived there, a thing! Also naked bike rides were a thing

People using information inappropriately does not make the information untrue.

Do you understand that?

You can point out all you like people have actually drawn conclusions that are wrong, it does not mean the link itself is wrong.

Now, is it the case that clothing can put someone at a higher risk for sexual assault? I think in some cases it can, and in others, it doesn't have anything to do with it. I think there are a few different reasons it can affect the situation sometimes.

I don't think it would be viable to try and collect stats on it, so we are left with looking at specific incidents and trying to understand what happened, what led some perpetrator to choose a particular victim. Sometimes that' s the best we can do as far as collecting evidence.

The questions you are asking about particular incidents are ridiculous though. No one has said that it would be relevant in every situation. And no one here has claimed that what people wear mean they are "to blame" for the assault.

The fact that you can't understand the difference between blame (and especially criminal blame), and risk factors, is not something anyone else can remedy.

@TempestTost"The fact that you can't understand the difference between blame (and especially criminal blame), and risk factors, is not something anyone else can remedy."

I find it baffling how very common this is! As well as the "magical thinking": if an organisation with clearly honorable goals repeats again and again some statement regarding an injustice (e.g. "the myth of the clothing") it doesn't necessarily make it true. "Should be" (or more likely "I would want it to be") doesn't mean "is".

@SpiderPlanter How about the teenager in my city who was raped by a paedo with a school girl fetish

That was a sex crime (not just a crime of violence) triggered by the clothes the victim was wearing.

Of course the victim was blameless, and of course men rape all kinds of women and girls, from the extremely old to the tiny young. But we shouldn't lie to ourselves about clothes either. Some clothes are more likely than others to trigger a violent sexual response in some disturbed and criminal men. I hate having to avoid places where I know I'm more vulnerable, I hate that women have to audit their behavior and appearance because male sexual violence and misogyny is not taken seriously enough by law enforcers, but it is there, and a woman wearing sexual fetish gear in the street would be at increased risk of dangerously hostile attention.

Not quite the same as not wearing gang insignia in an area controlled by the other gang, but not totally different either.

And we know about exhibitionism and acceleration. The man described in the OP and pictured elsethread is not only 'dressed' in a way that would increase a woman's vulnerability if she 'wore' it, he is doing it as an act of sexual assertion if not outright threat. Which is why up to a few years ago it would have been illegal in public places.

Henry II of England hoped to make the country so safe a naked virgin could walk from south to north carrying a bag of gold. Sadly, he realised he was unlikely to manage this. But I think that might be the origin of the woman walking naked at night.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that! Thank you! 😊🙏