T-Shirt Corruption
© Melina Magdalena 2008
Synchronicity comes to me this week in the loose conjunction of four events. Firstly, I read A Thousand Splendid Suns, my birthday present from my own splendid son, and the oppression of women in Afghanistan has been heavily on my mind; secondly a teacher at my school displayed a blatant disregard for democratic process and has deprived a fairly elected young Afghan woman of her position of President in our school’s newly formed service club because she is a young Muslim woman; thirdly, a male colleague asked me recently what I thought about a South Australian parliamentarian who blamed the t-shirts women wore, for their being raped; and finally let’s not forget the commemoration of International Women’s Day this week, the eighth of March.
T-Shirt Culture
Just before Valentine’s Day this year, Independent MP Bob Such is reported to have accused women who wear t-shirts with provocative slogans, of demeaning their sex, and encouraging sex attacks. The article does not describe the T-Shirts to which he refers. I was naturally outraged when I heard about this on commercial radio as I drove to school that day.
Such sensationalised trivialised news items always trigger me back to a moment when I remember what I was wearing when I was raped – a flannelette nightgown. Hardly provocative, you might say. And where was I? Tucked up in my own bed.
DO RAPISTS STOP TO READ THEIR VICTIM’S T-SHIRTS? I DON’T THINK SO.
It reminds me of Ramadan 2006, when Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali compared uncovered women to abandoned meat that the cats will come and eat. Remember that?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to go out and eat the meat I find in the street; nor have I ever been tempted to leap upon and have sex with men who wear provocative and demeaning t-shirts, not even during my most desperate sperm-seeking adventures.
I am neither cat, nor man – and I wish no disrespect to either creature. Cats are known to be discriminating. Cats are known to be survivors. Men are human beings, with the same capacity for compassion and empathy as women. I don’t believe it is because a man is a man that he rapes. This proposition is as demeaning and outrageous as the proposition that a woman is to blame for being raped, because of the clothing another woman was wearing. Where is the causal link?
When a (male) colleague raised this issue with me in the staff room recently, I was speechless. I gazed at him with pity and horror – after all, he has two young sons himself. Does he really believe men cannot control their sexual impulses and lust for power over women? I wanted to say to him – just listen to what you’re saying for a moment. Where is the logic? Do you believe this about yourself? And what does it say, about the way you relate to me?
Instead I said simply “No, the women who wear those t-shirts are not the women who get raped.”
As for the t-shirts that I have seen on men’s bodies in the last year or so, here in Australia, where the culture of alcohol prevails, these t-shirts frequently have lewd, crude, boozy messages on them, whether displayed pictorially, through stick figures, or with words. I no more enjoy seeing men dressed in clothes that display their apparently cavalier and uncaring attitude towards women, than I enjoy seeing women who are dressed in clothes that to me, scream sensuality and sexuality. I don’t think this is a new phenomenon, although perhaps the rise of so-called raunch culture amongst young Australian women might be seen as something new, though the web references to it date back to 2006. It’s something I know little about, and find confrontingly uncomfortable.
In some ways it’s odd to compare the ubiquitous and concealing baggy t-shirt favoured by so many people, with the scant, flesh-revealing styles of dress favoured by many contemporary women. From what Bob Such said, it seems it’s the almost defiant messages on the t-shirts worn by young women that have caught and offended his eye, rather than the flashy eye candy of the sleazy and skanky.
I note that Khaled Hosseini quoted in A Thousand Splendid Suns the decree of the Taliban as they took power in Kabul, 1996, several special laws:
Attention women:
You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander wimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative. If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.
You will not, under any circumstance, show your face. You will cover with burq when outside. If you do not, you will be severely beaten.
Cosmetics are forbidden.
Jewellery is forbidden.
You will not wear charming clothes.
You will not speak unless spoken to.
You will not make eye contact with men.
You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.
You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.
(Khaled Hosseini (2007), A Thousand Splendid Suns, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New York and Berlin; pages 248-249)
I am tempted to ask – for whose protection are women to be so severely restricted? Is it that men risk their afterlives because they may come into contact with a provocative force so strong that they may temporarily forget their own humanity and commit acts of such depravity that G-d will not forgive them?
Is a woman not a human being? Is she not worthy of freedom of expression, freedom of movement – of laughter, for heaven’s sake? It is such apparently small things that make life worth living.
Service Clubs
Our school has a philosophy of peace and multiculturalism. It is our explicit aim to educate our students so that they may fully embrace life in Australia. Explain to me then how it can come about that a miscarriage of justice is justified and talked away. How does this not contradict everything our school stands for?
I recently took my class to the Australian Electoral Commission, where they learned about elections, the history of voting in Australia, and had a mock election to demonstrate how preferential voting works. The phrase that our guide used continually, was that Australia has free and fair elections. Not one of my adult students had ever had the opportunity to vote in a government election.
How an election which a student won by a landslide, chosen by her peers for the leadership qualities they see in her every day, can be distorted into invalid because of her success, makes no sense to me. As another teacher exclaimed angrily, it does violence to our students who are taught that elections in Australia are free and fair.
The only reason offered for this distortion and perversion was that a young Muslim woman would not be allowed to go out at night and therefore cannot be the president of a service club.
Let alone the obvious answers to this claim – the young woman in question enjoys a trusting relationship with her parents who are also adapting to the different demands of Australian public life, and she is in fact awarded a degree of independence that reflects her background and has shaped her into the person she is – the teachers who decided she could not take on the role she was elected to came to this conclusion without even talking to the person in question. She would not have accepted her nomination, had she believed she would not be able to do a good job in all aspects of the role.
I’m spitting mad about this, but the issue has been hushed up and whitewashed. It smacks of paternalism and racism, and has burst my bubble about my workplace and colleagues.
Happy International Women’s Day 2008.
Clearly, there is more work to be done.
