If a woman chooses to dress provocatively does that mean it’s
her fault if she gets sexually assaulted?
According to Toronto police officer, Constable Michael Sanguinetti during his Crime Prevention Forum, it
is. Sanguinetti’s quote “I’ve been told
I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts
in order not to be victimized,” outraged many women, including 3000 women who
chose to protest, this started the SlutWalk.
When I first read this article
and his quote I was appalled. How could
someone who is obviously in the eyes of his department, qualified to get give
talks about Crime Prevention, so unintelligent.
At the beginning of the quote he states “I’ve been told I’m not supposed
to say this…”, Yes Constable, you were told not to say this because you just
made yourself look like an idiot, apparently someone was trying to save you
some embarrassment. According to
Wikipedia in 2010 there were 84767 recorded rapes. Of course this
chart doesn’t indicate whether or not the females were dressed in provocative clothing
or not, but common sense would tell you they were not. Rosemary Connors, the elderly woman living
alone, the child walking home from school and Trisha Meili, jogger at the park
are all examples of people that have been sexually assaulted and were dressed
in “appropriate” clothing.
When the media, The Toronto
Star, first revealed it was depicted by a photo of “young, attractive white
women” which is addressed by Joanna Chiu’s article SlutWalk: Does The Media Make the Message? Joanna
Chiu believes this photo was a “the typical underrepresentation of
people of color and the overrepresentation of young, attractive white women in
the mainstream media.” I agree with her. I feel the media, like Sanguinetti, wanted to
put all the protesters in a general group of young, attractive white women so
it appealed to more viewers. Ads in
magazines, TV commercials and billboards usually have a certain look when trying
to have sex appeal, for example look at Playboy magazine.
So to
answer my above question, No the clothing a woman wears does not give a
criminal permission to assault her. It
is unintelligent comments like that made by individuals in the public eye, such
as police officers, that give the public a bad opinion of them. The good cops live in the shadow of a man who
clearly has no respect for women and their rights. A bank gives out money freely to the customers
coming in, the tellers are handing it to customers, and we can see the money
on the counter and in the drawers. Does
that mean because I see the money and want it, I can take it? NO.
Would the police who investigated the crime say “I’ve been told I'm not supposed to say this –
however, banks should avoid advertising and showing their money in order not to
be victimized.”?
