Nudity and Permission

Posted on April 4, 2005 in Blogging Crosstalk Morals & Ethics Sexuality

shelli posted some provocative video footage (which is quite tame compared to much of what is out there) which in turn attracted the to-be-expected bawdy commentary:

One just one, I was unable to come up with a response too and it was some guy saying he wanted to lick my picture. Flattering as it might seam what do you say to that? Over the years I can say one thing I have been true to who I am.

There’s a strange conception out there that when a woman shows herself in the nude, she becomes fair sexual game for any man. Here in Orange County (where shelli and I both live), we have a trial going on which involves the rape of a comatose young woman who had had sex with her rapists the day before. A clever lawyer produced a hung jury for the son-of-a-cop, but prosecutors continue to press the case.

That one juror was persuaded that the woman asked for what she got suggests to me that we have a lot to learn about real morality. And the lesson here also applies to shelli: showing herself nearly naked does not grant men or women to assume that she is a “slut, whore or bitch”. I don’t like these referents any more than I like hearing people call those suffering from mental illness “crazy”. The effect of such language is to strip individuals of their dignity and their right to confront abusive behavior or refuse advances.

I remember here a particularly viscious scene in the film Frances when one of the orderlies brings his friends by to rape the former movie star, Frances Farmer. It’s the same attitude that informed the verdict in the Haidl trial and the verbal raping of shelli. This view is often promulgated by those who consider sex a sin. The logic works like this: nudity provokes men into arousal. Woman, therefore, is the cause of man’s downfall. It is not the fault of the man, goes the reasoning, that he becomes aroused and attacks the woman: the blame rests on the woman. What happens to her is just punishment.

Few steps separate this perspective from demands that women wear burkhas or cover their hair or eschew the wearing mini-skirts or avoid flirting with boys, etc.

I say this to counter that view: The display of a body is not a general license to touch or make sexual suggestion. If you have these kinds of thoughts, keep them in your head and reserve your attentions to the relationship between your left hand and your own genitalia.

I hold men (and women) accountable for the way they react towards others.