I was encouraged to write this post because today, around 30 students in my year (including me) had a workshop run by the company TENDER. Tender is a charity that do lots of things to raise awareness of subjects like domestic violence, rape and abuse etc to try to spot when it's happening to someone (whether it's yourself or someone you see/know) and help lower the rates of this around the UK and the world.
This is the link to their website is down below:
TENDER LINK
Anyway, at one point we were talking about how woman shouldn't have to dress so they don't distract men. I have strong views about this and I just wanted to rant.
So in lots of uniform codes, girls can't wear their skirts too short or have their legs, arms or bra straps showing and I'm not saying that is wrong in any way as it can be seen as unprofessional but what I don't agree with is that girls should be told to wear clothes that completely cover up as 'men and boys find it distracting'. This is just going along with the fact that women are seen as sex figures. Girls shouldn't have to be worried to go out in slightly revealing clothes and be scared that they are going to be raped or manipulated. You can't say that the girl was 'asking for it' by wearing those clothes as that's taking the blame off the rapist and putting it on the victim which is really unfair and wrong. I am not saying that we should go out in practically underwear but what I'm saying is that we shouldn't be scared to wear items of clothing because of the fear of being seen as a sex item.
And even if it may be 'distracting' to some, by saying that they are not only putting down men as a collective group of people who can't control themselves but they are also not putting into account the girls who are attracted to the same sex (lesbian, bi, pan etc peeps). They have to get dressed surrounded with girls in underwear for P.E. and they can control themselves and keep their eyes off so why should men be distracted by fully clothed women.
There is a really good campaign going on called #iammorethanadistration. I will tag the BuzzFeed post about it below as it will explain better than I could.
BUZZFEED ARTICLE
I think that girls should be able to be proud of their bodies and we shouldn't be seen as sex items or 'too distracting'.
Thankyou to Tender for today's workshop as I really appreciate it and found it really interesting. I also have another tomorrow so I am really looking forward to it!
It also felt like an open environment where things could be said that we wouldn't normally get to talk about in schools.
Happy Reading,
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