The Journey is the Goal

Though I live in Shenzhen, I make an effort to follow the news from my home city in the Sydney Morning Herald. In truth, I don’t follow SZ news at all as I don’t really have an option to do so. Granted there is the Shenzhen Daily, but it’s rare that any of the shops near here stock it. I live in Bao’An after all and Bao’An isn’t really a hub of foreign activity. Anyhow, one of the recent stories in the Sydney news has been with regards to statements made by a man who used his position as a religious leader to convey his opinion on sexual freedom. While much of his sermon mirrored what many others in their various faiths had and have been espousing for centuries if not millennia, of particular offence were his comments on women, in particular, though not restricted to, his idea that immodestly dressed women have themselves to blame for inviting rape. Actually, I should quote what is said in this article.

“A LEADING … cleric’s explanation for his suggestion that women who were raped had their immodest dress to blame has been deemed unsatisfactory by the Federal Government.”

- SMH

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?” he said. “The uncovered meat is the problem … if she was in her room; in her home … no problem would have occurred.”

- Cleric in question

Now, a number of things should be noted. Firstly, the initial quote is the opinion extrapolated from the second quote (from what I can understand, I have had no luck finding a direct quote). Secondly, the second quote has been translated from another language. These two facts being out of my hands, I will engage with what material I have here and hopefully open some eyes to a reality in which no one controls.

Women who are raped have their immodest dress to blame.

Why would this be the case? While countless women across the world would be mortified at the audacity of the speaker to make sure a statement I’m sure there ought to be a fair number of men who would also be offended, though not to the same degree, by this statement too. On the assumption that an overwhelming majority of cases in which women are raped, men are the perpetrators (which I believe holds true), then it sounds as though all men are completely and utterly unable to control their carnal desires whenever they see a relatively exposed woman. Perhaps men stalk the earth driven by an insatiable need to mate, although this doesn’t sound right to me, as I’m sure it doesn’t sound right to many others. So that being said, do there exist any men who can be described thus? I believe it would be naive to say no; after all I have not met all men.

Of these men that do exist for the sole purpose of having sex irrespective of consent, what would their decision-making paradigm look like? If we all knew with absolute certainty that these men chose their prey depending on the amount of sexual appeal their victims had, then we might be able to say that women take a risk in dressing immodestly on the chance that a small miscreant minority of the male population might ravish them. However I do not believe anyone knows exactly what drives these men to make the decisions they do, perhaps our world’s highest minds might, but I am not among them.

Women take a risk in dressing immodestly on the chance that a small minority of the male population might rape them

Is this an offensive statement? Not towards men I think, but quite possibly towards women. This statement distances the majority of men from a small, corrupt segment of the male population who think that such behaviour is acceptable. Now, if a man in a leadership position said this to one of their female followers, is it sensible for her to heed it? I think it would be sensible for her instead to reply with “you take a risk not wearing Kevlar on the chance that a small minority of the human population might shoot you.” Would she be wrong? Certainly not, this brings us to the crux of why the statement is offensive. It is not because of what it says, but rather because it was said that makes it offensive. It presumes an ignorant female population, unaware of the fact that a portion of the population has a criminal leaning, a fact that is present, not just today and here, but has been true across all time and in all places. That said the offensiveness of this comparatively conservative, politically correct re-writing of the original statement is dwarfed by that of the original which clearly perverts obvious facts for the sole purpose of dealing an attack.

It is here that I think I will end this. I know what my original purpose with this post was although I cannot make my point yet as I will need a wide range of different issues before the extrapolation of a rule which connects them all can be arrived at. That said the key word in this post is chance. A word that has many values, both in what the speaker and reader each feel it holds.

I am grateful I have written this though as it has allowed me to order my thoughts on this particular topic. I invite any others who might have seen something different in this post or the article itself to reply and enlighten me and any other readers on this topic.

I am torn whether to put this topic under ‘Politics’ or whether to create a category called ‘Gender’, hmm, perhaps I should put it in a sub-category called ‘Gender’ under the ‘Politics’. This sounds like the best option to me, although if I fail to succeed in doing this, it will most likely stay in the ‘Gender’ category.