Throughout South Africa there is a longing for more justice, harmony, peace and happiness in our world torn apart by violence, suffering and spiritual deprivation.
An incident such as the recent rape and murder of an 86-year-old nun in Ixopo rightly creates shock, and highlights the all-too-frequent abuse of women and children.
But what we need is a firm commitment to attempt to address the situation and act to change the world for the better.
The article “Women’s dress is immaterial to success” ( Post, May 20-24) ends with the wise words, “If the world is truly concerned with the emancipation and empowerment of women, provide them with education and opportunity to assert themselves.”
The debate on whether women’s choice of clothing is responsible for how they are treated and with what respect, is a hot issue.
In Delhi in 2012 after a woman student was gang-raped and murdered, many people, including a rapist, claimed that women were responsible for being attacked because of what they wore, and for going out alone at night.
India’s male leaders often propagate the view that if women do not dress “properly” they deserve to be raped.
Much clamour has resulted about the dangers of women going out at night, not going to clubs and bars, and dressing modestly. Numerous fathers responded by demanding that young women be kept at home at night, others demanding castration and death for rapists. Many Indian women expressed outrage at attempts to restrict their movements and control their sexuality.
Feminists explained that men who rape were asserting their superiority by undermining and violating women’s rights.
Rapists attempt to intimidate women, keeping them permanently fearful, so that efforts to restrict their freedom and the way they dress only serve to exacerbate the violation of their right to live full, meaningful lives.
The women said, “We will be adventurous… Don’t you dare tell us how to dress, and when to go out at night, in the day, or how many escorts we need.”
We don’t deserve to be raped!
A reality check of who is raped and where reveals nuns wearing full habits, Muslim women covered with veils/hijabs or conservative burkas, extremely elderly women, even small babies, have been raped, often in what they assumed were safe environments.
While we should express outrage at suffering inflicted on women, too often this goes alarmingly wrong, advocating action that subverts women’s empowerment and emancipation.
Feminism seeks to reorganise the world on a basis of sex-equality, abolishing all sex-burdens and sex-privileges, rejecting the traditional patriarchal definition of the world which ignores the crucial contribution of womankind.
Because of their concern for human rights, feminists worldwide are committed to struggling against gender, racial, sexual-orientation and class oppression, advocating equality in all social systems.
Thus, they reject the injustice of the death penalty or castration being advocated for rapists and any other crimes, however heinous.
However, although clothing should not be blamed for rape, it has relevance in other aspects of feminist analysis. Since the birth of Western feminism in the 18th century, women have debated the differences between women’s and men’s clothing, and as women moved out of the home to become active in the world, they found their clothes uncomfortably restrictive.
An 1852 magazine commented on the need for freer styles – liberation from corsetry and other impediments.
Two world wars where women worked in factories introduced them to overalls and comfortable, practical clothing, allowing greater freedom of movement, making riding bicycles and running away from danger a more efficient exercise.
Still today, girls’ and boys’ clothing tends to be gendered: girls’ fashions accentuating prettiness and femininity; boys having more robustly fun fashions.
Surely the early inculcation of attitudes affects self-image, influencing later life choices? We’ve come a long way from restrictive Victorian dress, but women and girls are still encouraged to wear what men, and fashion designers, claim makes them desirable. However, we need to distinguish between looking good, what feels comfortable, and being dolled up as sex objects, defined by one’s sexual availability.
High-heels, apparently a lure to many men, ruin one’s feet and are difficult to walk in, making a quick getaway impossible. Chinese footbinding had similar effects.
Marketing “looking good” as the way to self-expression, autonomy and self-esteem should not result in fashion becoming a preoccupation with body-image, manipulated by consumerist, media-directed societal obsessions of ideal body shape which can, paradoxically, result in despising one’s natural looks, the vicious cycle of dieting, eating-disorders, and cosmetic surgery, ensnaring rather than liberating.
Independent women often express their individuality by deliberately defying fashion’s dictates, dressing flamboyantly, wearing traditional dress or tailored “power suits” to make their own, authentically-chosen statement.
Recent favouring of comfortable, healthy, yet attractive, unisex leisure/ sports-wear indicates self-confidence and autonomy.
It’s not her clothes that make a woman strong; it’s her inner attitude of principled determination to make the world a safer place, where all women are respected.
Alleyn Diesel has a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Natal. She co-authored Hinduism in Natal with Patrick Maxwell in 1993 (UN Press); edited Shakti: Stories of Indian Women in South Africa(Wits Press 2007), and has written numerous articles about women and religion, especially Tamil religion and women worshipping the goddess (firewalking).