That masculine tongue giving instructions to women

It was back in 2013 when British Conservative MP Richard Graham recommended that women should not wear short skirts and high heels if they wanted to avoid rape while walking home alone through London’s Gloucester Park.  

“Solutions” proposed by male politicians on women’s issues rarely go beyond insolence. In the above case, you might expect a politician to better suggest increased security, more lights on the roads, and more security cameras in the area… 

Everywhere in the world you can identify incompetent politicians by their efforts to police women’s bodies rather than implementing correct policies. The names, nationalities and religions change but the reasoning of these people never changes - it is the same everywhere. 

In Brooklyn, when sexual crimes increased four years ago in the South Park Slope neighborhood, a police officer was tasked with stopping women on the street to inform them of the risks, but actually he ended up commenting on their clothes: “Don’t you think your shorts are too short? Isn’t this dress too open? This type of clothing may give the impression that you are ‘easy.’ With this outfit you are exactly the kind of person that rapists target.” 

Sexual attacks will only decrease if these men, including politicians and police officers, do their jobs properly. But both their minds and their capacity fall short of this and they instead spend their working hours debating women’s clothes. They are incapable of recognizing that these attacks would continue even if women wear tracksuits day and night. If they accept that it is not women who are responsible for sexual assault then they will have to accept the real guilty party: Male mentality. 

Sometimes women are blamed for “exposing” themselves, sometimes they are targeted for covering up their bodies too much. Disciplining women through their clothes into “appropriate” gender patterns is a sickness of the male world. 

A couple of years ago in Italy, high-heeled shoes were ordered for 14,750 woman police officers. Yes, high heels while fighting crime. Whichever male official ordered this was lucky that none of the women police officers threw their new high-heeled shoes at him. 

The same tune is played here in Turkey.  

We have seen a politician who was elected to solve the country’s problems become fixated on the outfit of a woman TV presenter, eventually being able to get her fired. 

We have seen a sham writer, commenting on the rape case of a 19-year-old girl near Baghdad Street, one of the most popular streets in Istanbul, say “it is an undeniable truth that some women go around in sexy and alluring clothes that enchant and drive men crazy, thus increasing rape incidents. No woman has a right to roam around in sluttish clothes.”   

Some have pledged to raise faithful generations eager to fight against low-cut dresses. Others have defined low-cut dresses as “disrespectful of society.” 

Insolent men on the opposite political side for years used all kinds of swear words to target women who covered their heads. 

In other words, whoever has power has openly enforced their views on women’s bodies and clothes however they wish. 

Two photographs depict perfectly the world we live in and the masculine bullying so prevalent everywhere. One is in France, where the police can be seen forcing a woman on the beach to take off her “burkini.” The other is in Iran, where the police are warning a woman by the sea because her hair is too exposed. 

We are all tired of you. We are tired but we are not defeated. If your bullying does not end then our resistance against masculine domination will continue until our last breath, until we finally get rid of that masculine tongue that insists on instructing women.