Addressing dressing

“I notice you have the assault proof vest -

So it's my fault I guess.

So apparently I didn't say 'no' as loud as my clothes could say 'yes.'

You see I didn't know that my ‘no’ wasn't enough -

I didn't understand that my body became less precious

because certain dresses

make me look hot.

And I guess if I'm wearing the wrong top

then my ‘yes’ is the same as ‘stop.’

And you shouldn't have to, just because I begged you to.

I'm begging you -

Tell me the magic outfit and I'll buy it.

Apparently my ‘no’ wasn't heard,

even when I screamed.

So I need my clothes to be quiet.”

― Steve Connell,

Women, if your clothes were quieter, would you be safer? How quiet can you make them? Quiet enough that no man will want to make you an object? So muted, that he will see another person instead of a sexual outlet?

How quiet must your dress code be for you to be seen as human?

For too long, too many women have asked themselves, and each other. how much women should be blamed for the way men act. For too long, the answer has been for women to accept some portion of the blame. For too long, women have accepted responsibility for the other gender’s reprehensible actions.

As a leader of young men, and as a minister of college students, I am asked if there is a solution that would stop men objectifying women in response to the strong sexual urges those men experience. 

Yes, there is.

I stress self-control and the essential need for men to take responsibility for their own bodies and the urges that they feel within. 

Men, if we must die from the sexual monster within us, let us at least die on our own feet, fighting to the last gasp, and not be found hiding behind our women’s skirts.

I then explain that the only way to actually objectify a woman is to first dehumanize her. Only then do men find it okay to use her as an object to divert the internal monster that is their sexual tension. No man easily objectifies a woman he sees as a person whether that person is called wife, mother, sister or lover.

I am not immune to sexual urges. I am not immune to the need to divert those urges. But because I use self-control to force myself to see women as human beings, I then find it intolerable to abuse them as objects.

To you men who want to place this burden on women, I say there is no “but” or “if”or “and” this is a call to battle. We men must gird our loins and face the test alone. Return to those we love as men or as tragic victims of an endless war.

It is not a woman’s fault that men have sexual urges that they choose to surrender to. It is not a woman’s fault that men find it easy to dehumanize them and then use them as objects of lust.

Women, you are not what you wear, and your gender’s inalienable rights ought not to be the victim of another gender’s pathology.

Must you become less a Woman, because I cannot be more a Man?