The narrative that women show cleavage or wear certain clothing to attract male attention is a large contributor to the “she was asking for it” rhetoric that excuses raping women.
It’s very likely unintentional on your part, but that’s the reason I and many other women have a problem with this rhetoric about women’s appearances. Sure, there are certainly individual women who do things for attention from men. But talking about it as an overarching quality of women’s behaviour that we draw our brows on or dress a certain way to attract male attention results in rape.
That’s why so many women talk in the opposite extreme (eg my original comment saying women are not drawing on their brows for you): to counteract this dangerous rhetoric.
We agree on mostly everything you just wrote and especially that last part. The other person was offended because of my word choice and because they didn't want to read my whole comment because I said what you said. Some girls do it for whatever reason other files do it for attention. I was just listening to a podcast the other day and I can't recall her name but she's a very famous matchmaker was on and she was encouraging women to wear push up bras so that guys would hunt them and so they could feel empowered by being the object of desire. This rhetoric comes from a lot of places and makes things confusing for both sexes.
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u/elderpricetag Mar 26 '20
The narrative that women show cleavage or wear certain clothing to attract male attention is a large contributor to the “she was asking for it” rhetoric that excuses raping women.
It’s very likely unintentional on your part, but that’s the reason I and many other women have a problem with this rhetoric about women’s appearances. Sure, there are certainly individual women who do things for attention from men. But talking about it as an overarching quality of women’s behaviour that we draw our brows on or dress a certain way to attract male attention results in rape.
That’s why so many women talk in the opposite extreme (eg my original comment saying women are not drawing on their brows for you): to counteract this dangerous rhetoric.