I was posting about this on Facebook this week and thought I’d share my thoughts here, too.
This is a really awesome video. Go watch it.
It’s interesting to me how this video is extremely popular, and has been shared by a lot of people are are fairly liberal on the political spectrum, though her message is quite conservative. She says when you act like you have no self-respect, you are teaching men to treat you without respect. (“Teaching.” not “Inviting.”) And a lot of people seem to agree with that.
But the idea that when you dress like you have no self-respect, you are teaching men to treat you without respect is wholly rejected by today’s society. In a way, this is why I’m actually pretty surprised that the whole Miley Cyrus episode is generating as much interest as it is. When we tell our young women that no matter what they do, if men don’t treat them like ladies, with respect, etc., it’s the men’s fault because men are dogs and any problems that exist are men’s and men’s alone… then why are we surprised when our young women dance this way and show their goodies to everyone?
Because, NEWS FLASH, Ms Cyrus is NOT the only girl to ever do that. I’ve watched Roosevelt girls in their Jeggings popping and shaking their butts while waiting to cross the street.
So I posted this and got the typical liberal response. “I don’t buy that women dressing immodestly are responsible for provoking other people’s behavior. I don’t want my boys to get the message that they are entitled to treat women like crap if they dress ‘slutty.'”
Oy.
The whole “you’re saying women need to take some responsibilty for how they dress and act” getting twisted into “you’re saying men can’t help themselves and you’re telling your sons that it’s ok to treat women like dirt” thing is getting REALLY OLD. This is what happened the last time I dared to mention that women might consider taking some responsibility for how they present themselves (in appearance and in behavior) before complaining too loudly about how men treat them.
The two are obviously completely different things and I’m sorry of certain segments of the population are either unwilling or unable to tell the difference. Perhaps this is a part of the problem.
I would never tell my sons they EVER have the right to treat a woman disrespectfully. But I would never tell my daughter that she can act and dress like a hooker and not expect to be treated as such.
You EARN respect.
Yes, people ought to start out with a baseline level of respect they afford to everyone they meet, but unless we’ve recently moved to Utopia, I don’t think that really happens in the real world. You typically have to EARN respect. (Isn’t that one of the things that’s really at the root of gentle discipline – you earn the respect of your kids by treating them respectfully.) You earn respect by treating others respectfully and by treating YOURSELF with respect. By being someone that people want to respect.
You likewise earn disrespect by behaving like someone who doesn’t want to be respected.
It’s like self-defense courses teach people to not look like a victim. Don’t walk hunched over, staring at the ground, and flashing cash. Should people feel free to rob you if you do this? NO, absolutely not. They don’t have the right to rob you. But consider the message you’re sending when you walk/dress/act like that. You are making yourself an easy target. It’s not placing the blame on you – if you get robbed, it’s still clearly the fault of the robber. But you presented yourself as a target.
If you cross the street against the crosswalk, do cars have the right to run you over? No. If someone runs you over, will they face charges? Probably. But you could have taken steps to prevent your untimely death by simply crossing at/with the light.
By similar token, if men treat you like dirt, cheating on you and talking disrespectfully to you, they clearly have a problem. But are you teaching them to treat you without respect by the way you behave (as though you don’t deserve respect)?
And it’s not even necessarily YOU. We’ve spent GENERATIONS saying that we don’t want to be treated special, we don’t want to be treated with respect, we’re no different from you. We dress to show our boobs and then get mad when men oogle. We dress to show our asses and then get mad when men stare to see if we bend over too far. And we dress like that and act like that and have spent generations training men that way and then we’re mad when they treat us without respect. argh.
No, I’m not saying men can’t help themselves or that lecherous behavior is ok. I still maintain that if a woman walks in the room naked and demands sex from someone she’s not married to, that man ought to have the respect to say, um, no thanks. He absolutely has that responsibility. But it’s not ALL the men’s fault.
The View From Here 