While everyone is talking about the Stanford rapist and his lack of sentencing let's talk about the more important issue that this whole problem is centered around; sexual assault. Sexual assault is an issue that effects everyone and is all too common in the society that we live in. Women are taught from a young age to be cautious when they are walking alone and not dress too provocatively. We are taught to keep our eyes on our drinks and not accept help from a stranger for fear that they might snatch us up. Taught to travel in pairs and to keep our eyes down when being cat called, just ignore the issue and hope it goes away. This is wrong. These are not the fundamental lessons we should be being taught. We are burdening young women, making unwanted sexual attention their problem, rather than teaching our young men to be respectful.
This is not to say that sexual assault only affects women, but the statistics don’t lie; 1 out of 6 women will be victims of sexual assault in comparison to 1 out of 33 men who are victims. In 2012 statistics show that women only made up 1% of arrests made for sexual assault, so in this case women are not the problem. Obviously despite our efforts to inform and educate the victims, they are still being victimized; it’s time to try something new. In his letter to the judge presiding over the case the father of the attacker, described the incident as “20 minutes of action”, this blatant disrespect for the sensitive situation at hand and the victim is all too common in today’s society. We often hear the phrase “she was asking for it” or hear arguments against the victim because of what they were saying or wearing – but in the end none of that should matter, the definition of the word “no” still has not changed.
If we want to solve the problem of sexual assault we have to change the way our society thinks; what a woman is wearing is no excuse to make her feel like less of a human being or to take away her ability to make decisions about her own body. From a young age, men should be taught to not only respect other’s opinions but also other’s bodies. They should be taught to keep their hands to themselves, and learn to discipline themselves enough to not be sidetracked by a young woman in a tank top. Instead of teaching our young men that a women’s clothing is an excusable distraction we need to teach them that what that woman is wearing has nothing to do with you and everything to do with her preference in clothing. Dress codes should not be set with the thought of keeping young women from being a distraction, they should be set for comfort and practicality. We are raising our young men with the idea that not being distracted by a young woman's clothing is not their responsibility but the woman in question's.
Schools have a right to request uniformity, requiring a student to wear a button down shirt is not the problem here. The problem is when dress codes are set with restrictions that only apply to female students, such as not being allowed to wear leggings or yoga pants to school. It even extends to the tank top restriction – the idea that female shoulders are a distraction is archaic. If schools feel the need to set restrictions to the clothing worn during the day they should strive to restrict everyone, instead of tabooing certain articles of clothing they should set an easy uniform; collared shirts and khaki pants for example. A uniform like this doesn’t single out pieces of clothing or only apply to female students and is easier to enforce anyway.
Let’s start changing the rules where they matter to change our society’s outlook on women as a whole. The dress code problem is only a small issue on a larger scale, but solving this problem is important in the bigger picture. Our public educational system starts at kindergarten, and ends after graduation, that’s 12 years’ worth of influence our school system has on these kids; let’s start demanding that they teach the right lessons.
