What is "Rape Culture"?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 8, 2015.

  1. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    Rape culture follows the template used to grow government; ultimate goal is regulations and a new bureaucracy. The template is the government via a political party, will create/define a new problem, based on making a mountain out of a mole hill. If one plane crashes, make this look like this is the new norm. Then government will claim it is the only one who can solve such a large social problem.

    There is a rape culture, but it is perpetrated by the government on the people who get screwed. The template is they will get the most vulnerable people drunk with fear or outrage. This will then create social division, with those who try to dispel the fear with reason. Now only government is above the problem it created, since all are biased/divided. When the drunkards are intoxicated enough, and not able to hear their friends or think clearly enough to resist, the government will take advantage and screw the people.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Yet you've admitted that you are more careful when you walk alone, and you would talk to your daughters about making such decisions. Why is that?
    Right. But women are, unfortunately, raped a lot more than men are. We should fix that - but we can't fix it if we keep denying it's a problem.
    I think it will be shared by both sexes. But if you think women will contribute more in technology - great. I do a lot of work with K-12 women in STEM outreach projects to encourage them to go into the more technical specialties; hopefully that will help improve the engineering and science fields that are today dominated by men.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. tali89 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    343
    So while on my enforced two week break from sciforums, I had the opportunity to sit back and reflect on the discussions in this and other related threads. After some pondering, I discovered that perhaps I had taken the wrong approach by choosing to focus on the tree over the forest. Instead of attempting to get left-wing participants in this thread to concisely define their terms and substantiate their claims with empirical evidence rather than assumptions, it's probably more productive to analyze their motivations.

    Upon re-reading the threads, I've noticed one common element about people pushing the concept of 'rape culture', and that is *anger*. Whether it is pjdude's and Tiassa cussing, Tiassa labeling ideological opponents as 'rape advocates', or iceaura's attempts to stir up the audience to criticize a participant's mental health, the anger is self-evident. The presence of anger can have a number of possible explanations. Anger can sometimes be a reasonable emotion that occurs in response to an actual injustice or harm perpetrated against an individual. However, it's rather telling that many left-wingers I've encountered who display anger tend to *seek out* the source of that anger. There has been a certain level of outrage about some of my comments on this forum, as well as the comments of others who are in ideological disagreement with senior leftist posters. James R has remarked in the past that I'm unpleasant to have discussions with, and has fled discussions after posting what is essentially a character assassination against myself , yet he continues to engage with me. Indeed, both Bells and James recently sent me a PM criticizing my integrity (indeed, the overall message of their PMs is uncannily similar), which suggests that I remain a burning issue with them.

    It's also worth noting that certain leftists I have encountered here misrepresent other people's statements and beliefs in order to make them appear more heinous, possibly because it gives them an excuse to be angry. Several participants have been labelled as 'rape advocates', and my own statements have been misrepresented in a transparent attempt to construe me as being a proponent of rape culture. I'd like to point out that I never denied the existence of a rape culture, I simply asked those who were pushing the concept to clarify what a rape culture was, where they felt it existed, and why they thought one existed. Asking questions was apparently enough to incite their anger and pigeon-hole me as some sort of misogynist. Angry people sometimes attempt to hide their fury behind a thin veil of faux politeness and passive-aggressiveness, but if you don't dance to their tune the mask falls off pretty quickly, as it has in this thread.

    In light of all this, it appears that some posters who are exhibiting anger here actually enjoy being angry. And this may explain why they hold to notion of the 'rape culture' so adamantly, despite it being obvious that they haven't thought through their ideology too deeply (which is why they get frustrated when caught in contradictions or supporting assumptions with assumptions). I'd observe that a good way to make yourself angry is to imagine a number of perceived injustices, and to create schisms based on arbitrary and meaningless differences. By creating schisms and imaginary or exaggerated injustices between different groups of people, they make themselves and other people angry.
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2015
    milkweed likes this.
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    tali89:

    Here is what I wrote to you regarding your ban two weeks ago:

    If you wish to post in a topic, try to make an argument about the topic itself. Do not attack other posters, but instead try to make a case for your own point of view. Similarly, you should strive to address counter-arguments that are put to you, rather than ignoring them. Continued ad hominem attacks on other posters amount to nothing more than trolling.
    Tread very carefully. You are on very thin ice.
     
  9. tali89 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    343
    • Please do not goad, bait or troll other members. Try to post on the topic.
    Haha, because I didn't just post my point of view? If the previous post wasn't a clear expression on my view on the issue of rape culture, then whose view was it? Also, I find it rather ironic that just after I observed how certain posters who have pushed the issue of a rape culture appear to be exhibiting unreasonable anger, you pop into this thread to remind me about the Damocles sword hanging over my head. What's wrong, James? Are you too scared to have your beliefs challenged without first tying one of my arms behind me back?

    By the way, why don't you post the remainder of that PM you sent me? You know, the bit where you went beyond your scope as administrator to personally insult me? Or don't you want the audience to know that you personally insulted me via PM when Bells and yourself have sanctioning me for supposedly doing the same thing in the past?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  10. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Moderator note: tali89 has again been warned for trolling. As a result of accumulating warning points, he is again automatically banned from sciforums, this time for a period of 1 month.

    I reproduce in full the message sent to tali89 at the time of his previous ban, as requested by tali89.

    I might as well have sent the same warning message for the latest ban. Let us hope that tali89 uses his additional month away from sciforums to reflect on his own behaviour rather than to focus on others.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    In case there is any confusion about the reason for the repeated warnings given to tali89, an extract from our site rules follows:

    "Trolling is the posting of inflammatory posts with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional (often angry) response."

    Check.

    "Trolls aim to disrupt normal on-topic discussion, often by raising tangential or irrelevant hot-button issues. Trolling posts are intended to incite controversy or conflict and/or to cause annoyance or offence."

    Check.

    "Trolls are damaging to online communities because they attempt to pass as legitimate participants in discussions while actually seeking to disrupt normal conversation and debate. If permitted to remain, trolls tend to reduce the level of trust among members in an online community. One consequence may be that truly naive posts are rejected by sensitised members as just more examples of trolling."

    Check.

    "Trolls tend to follow certain patterns of behaviour that may include:
    • Posting of similar responses and topics repeatedly.
    • Avoiding giving answers to direct questions put to them.
    • Never attempting to justify their position.
    • Demanding evidence from others while offering none in return.
    • Vanishing when their bluff is called, only to reappear in a different thread arguing the same point.
    • Deliberately derailing discussions onto tangential matters in order to try to control the flow of discussion."
    tali89 repeats himself incessantly, avoids answering all inconvenient questions, never justifies his position, demands evidence from others while offering none of his own, runs away when things get difficult only to pop up later arguing the same topic again, and derails discussions onto tangential matters rather than discussing the topic.

    In other words, he ticks every single box in this definition.

    "19. Repetitive or vexatious posting is considered trolling. Sciforums reserves the right to reject contributions that have been widely canvassed in the forum and to reject contributions from participants who seek to dominate the discussion."

    Check.
     
  12. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    wow 37 minutes. i didn't think it would take him long but hell i thought he could have made it an hour.
    there is nothing unreasonable about the anger toward you. mocking sexual assault victims to their faces, which you and your girl milkweed seem to love to do, is reprehensible. that you lack the ability to perceive it doesn't mean its not there. I suggest you look up the questions i asked milkweed that she with heart of a lion ran away from and see if you can answer them when you get back from your new self imposed vacation.
     
  13. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    "Rape culture" is PC hyperbole. It's a good hashtag and rallying cry, but aside from its intended emotional effect, it's meaningless.

    The argument usually boils down to: rape culture is institutionalized by patriarchy and the female half of the population only contributes due to internalized patriarchy. The problem with internalized patriarchy is that cultural momentum is not gender dependent, so behaviors of one gender justified by it are equally justified of the other, if we care to be logically consistent.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Male Prerogative

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    We might start with Amanda Marcotte↱:

    The Republican war on women is mostly focused on trying to control what women do with the parts below the belt, but in New Hampshire, that urge to put conservative men in charge of lady bodies has drifted upwards, focusing on the nipple. Republican men in the state legislature, clearly having nothing better to do with their time than worry about what strangers do with their boobies, recently proposed a bill banning women from having exposed nipples in public.

    As reported by Mark Stern at Slate, this bit of government overreach annoyed Democratic state legislator Amanda Bouldin, who took to Facebook on Tuesday to express said annoyance.

    New Hampshire state Rep. Bouldin (D-12) denounced the bill via Facebook:

    [Making it a crime to expose your nipples―but ONLY if you're female. MISDEMEANOR. As far as I understand, multiple convictions will result in listed in the state Sex Offender Registry.]

    "AN ACT relative to the circumstances that constitute indecent exposure and lewdness."

    YES, all the sponsors are men. And Republicans. So much for "smaller government" ....

    Well, there is no way a decent, red-blooded New Hampshire man is going to stand for that manner of uppity bullshit from a woman. Bouldin's Hillsborough colleague, Republican state Rep. Josh Moore (NH21) offered his retort, also via Facebook, and subsequently deleted:

    Who doesn't support a mother's right to feed? Don't give me the liberal talking points, Amanda. If it's a woman's natural inclination to pull her nipple out in public and you supprot that, than [sic] yous hould have no problem with a mans [sic] inclanation [sic] to stare at it and grab. After all… It's ALL relative and natural, right?

    Because, you know, for all one might want to talk about "a male prerogative", and disdain the notion of rape culture because, "It truly makes men, all men, look like savages by nature", they might wish to pay attention to who is casting men in the role of savages by nature.

    A woman doing what mothers do? Breastfeeding? Really? It would seem the problem is that the people who worry about the sexualizing of breastfeeding are also among those who sexualize breastfeeding. And along the way? Well, you know, sexually assaulting a woman breastfeeding an infant is simply "a man's inclanation".

    Sic.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Marcotte, Amanda. "The GOP’s nipple ban: The war on women gets personal — and even more hateful — in New Hampshire". Salon. 31 December 2015. Salon.com. 4 January 2016. http://bit.ly/1R5TILP
     
  15. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,623
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    ¿Who'd'a Thunk?

    "It truly makes men, all men, look like savages by nature. It's an insult to our gender and to our culture. I don't buy into it."

    Bowser↑

    "The term 'Rape Culture' is a false flag easily recognized by simple, hey, wait a minute. Most men are not rapists and I dont support portraying them that way i.e. rape culture and I will ridicule attempts made to do so."


    We might observe yet again the correlation of misogyny with a dependence on a misandrist presumption of the incivility of males.

    There is, after all, a curious rejection of the very notion of rape culture according to fallacy; while some will actually try to complain that rape culture "truly makes men, all men, look like savages by nature", or reject the notion because they "don't support portraying [men] that way", these are also the people who ignore the fact of Infinite Prevention Advice from the Guardians of Female Chastity, claim a male prerogative toward sexual harassment and belligerence, suggest a chimpanzee humping a toad to death explains rape behavior "better than culture" because it is "something we all have in common"↑, and otherwise depend on the very generalizations they denounce in order to justify themselves.

    Jordi Lippe-McGraw↱ filed a report last month for the Today show Style section:

    An Oklahoma teen was sent home from school earlier this month after being told by teachers that she needed to change because her outfit — leggings, a loose top and long cardigan — was deemed inappropriate and distracting.

    The 17-year-old student, who goes by the name Rose Lynn, followed the school's orders but returned to MacArthur High School in Lawton, Oklahoma, making a statement.

    She came back wearing a baggy white T-shirt with a handwritten message: "If it doesn't cover your crotch, you'll distract the boys."

    I'm starting to wonder if maybe places like Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee―places where we've heard these rumblings recently―aren't simply way the hell behind the times. Women have been wearing tight pants for decades. I'm an eighties metalhead; females wearing tight garments on their legs stopped being controversial a half a lifetime ago.

    Well, for most of us.

    But apparently, boys in Oklahoma, well, it would seem the reason people want to tell girls what they can and can't wear is that the boys just can't help themselves.

    You need your #WhatAboutTheMen?

    Well, there you go.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Lippe-McGraw, Jordi. "Oklahoma teen fights back after being sent home from school for wearing leggings". Today. 29 December 2015. Today.com. 4 January 2016. http://on.today.com/1kFo3m1
     
  17. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Oh, do go on.

    Remind me again why they would be.
     
  19. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    You're the one who just seemed to imply that being against "tight pants" (which in your cited story was referred to as "leggings") was somehow contributory to "rape culture". Or were you just conflating the two for effect?
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Another Morning: "Even now, an anxious feeling like that, an unbearable moment still lingers in me." (the pillows)

    Ah, I see.

    As I advised in another thread↗: Try offering something affirmative. You know, an actual thesis you can promote and defend, instead of just hanging out on the fringe like some wingnut who thinks he's clever for jumping through the same stupid flaming hoop that every other poodle has mastered.

    To reiterate from the present thread↑:

    • We might observe yet again the correlation of misogyny with a dependence on a misandrist presumption of the incivility of males.

    The implication is straightforward; I even provided examples of what I was referring to:

    • There is, after all, a curious rejection of the very notion of rape culture according to fallacy; while some will actually try to complain that rape culture "truly makes men, all men, look like savages by nature", or reject the notion because they "don't support portraying [men] that way", these are also the people who ignore the fact of Infinite Prevention Advice from the Guardians of Female Chastity, claim a male prerogative toward sexual harassment and belligerence, suggest a chimpanzee humping a toad to death explains rape behavior "better than culture" because it is "something we all have in common"↑, and otherwise depend on the very generalizations they denounce in order to justify themselves.

    Then came the particular example I was referring to, via the Today show, describing a situation in Oklahoma:

    Jordi Lippe-McGraw↱ filed a report last month for the Today show Style section ....

    And then I mentioned other examples, as well as making a point about my own perspective on the matter:

    • I'm starting to wonder if maybe places like Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee―places where we've heard these rumblings recently―aren't simply way the hell behind the times. Women have been wearing tight pants for decades. I'm an eighties metalhead; females wearing tight garments on their legs stopped being controversial a half a lifetime ago.

    And then I wisecracked:

    • Well, for most of us.

    And then reiterated the underlying problem with the traditional logic among Guardians of Female Chastity, which also happens to be the asserted logic in the Oklahoma situation:

    • But apparently, boys in Oklahoma, well, it would seem the reason people want to tell girls what they can and can't wear is that the boys just can't help themselves.

    I closed with a potshot at the male supremacists:

    • You need your #WhatAboutTheMen?

    Well, there you go.

    And then you went and asked some bizarre question↑ about leggings and yoga pants, and then a random one about some YouTube video that you can't even explain the significance of.

    And it turns out you were just changing the subject↑.

    It would be one thing to try to actually answer your inquiries, but they are incomprehensible.

    To wit:

    One answer is that between tributary and symptomatic, it's a dynamic interrelationship. This answer would point to the relationship between gendertyping, sexual roles, and what any garment is for.

    Or perhaps I might simply laugh off the general stupidity of it all and note that I don't expect the reiteration of what is pretty straightforward will take this time, since you missed so widely the first. This point would orbit the posts from others I quoted. Those people reject the proposition of "rape culture" according to some fear of unfairly typing men, yet we see time and again that the misandrist typing of men as "savages by nature", &c., does not, in fact, come from feminists or analyses of rape culture but, quite apparently and repeatedly, from those who disdain the idea according to the straw man about stereotyping.

    It isn't the proposition of rape culture that types men as rapists. Infinite Prevention Advocacy, male prerogative, man's inclination, the boys can't help but be distracted, and so on; these are all assertions against women, and in order to do it, the misogynists only need to indict all males. Bowser and Milkweed, for instance, are just really clumsy examples, but they are also quick distillations by which we can actually watch the transformation from complaining about stereotying men straight into actually stereotyping men. The larger societal manifestations are not particularly less simpleminded; they're just a bit more sublimated in their expressions.

    In other words, your laughable notion of what I implied only really comes about because you're looking past the blatantly obvious, that this entire thread orbits a bogus proposition. That fallacy is either deliberate and therefore unacceptable, or else a result of disqualifying stupidity.

    To that end, though, it's interesting. Even given their fallacious starting point, the rape advocates couldn't do any better.

    And, you know, for some of us it would be funny except that it isn't. This particular contradiction is one I've explicitly been trying to get rape advocates to explain for well over seven years.

    No, they can't explain it. But there's always someone else to keep trying.

    Like in this thread. You're only, what, the fourth person to try some manner of the political correctness retort, and you couldn't even be bothered to account for the failures of those who preceded you.

    There's always another one waiting to try.

    And, yeah, when this idiocy shows its head, these days my inclination is to stomp it into the grease under the dust that followed the car that ran over the dog that was humping the leg of the horse you rode in on.

    Honestly, man, if you've got a point to make, then make it.

    And if your point is just to be the next vapid dismissal of rape culture as some sort of politically correct bogeyman, been there, done that, twice at least, and still don't like it but that doesn't matter since it doesn't fucking work, anyway.
     
    pjdude1219 likes this.
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    According to your link, leggings are not designed as undergarments.

    According to your link, the problem with wearing them seems to be that people can see the outline of your vulva if it's not hidden behind a shirt or something. A fashion faux pas. So you have to cover your crotch with some other layer, says fashion lady - but not too much: leggings are for skirts or tunics to mid thigh only, with longer lengths requiring tights or hose or something else.

    Not sure what the relevance is here, though - some kind of connection is visible, but what, exactly?
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    It occurs to me that there is also a question of whether or not Syne is reading the article properly.

    Nor is that intended as a sleight against our neighbor; I missed it the first time through, too.
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    One of Those Things

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    It once occurred, though we need not be so specific as to intrinsically and specifically keelhaul somoene for a gaffe so long ago, that a conservative arguing in defense of what seemed a throwback racist tantrum from many hardline conservatives and alleged libertarians as Barack Obama ascended to the White House managed to make exactly the wrong point; more specifically, he used a political cartoon as an example to the exact opposite of what the panel actually meant. These years later, it doesn't seem so extraordinary, as the lack of pathos now seems not only obvious but common. Perhaps it seems a lot more complicated arguing back and forth about the artistic merit of Piss Christ, but it's one thing to disagree with the photographer's general view of life; trying to say the artist's intention must necessarily be what the disdainful critic made the criticism a caricature. Fast-forward all these years and the solution seems to be to make the behavior so common that it's not so much a caricature as a mere description of a seemingly everyday rhetorical device. It might seem a lot more complicated when arguing about a crucifix in a jar of urine, but in truth it's not. One need not argue what is wrong with the cartoonist's perspective if one simply replaces it with their own, such as it was on the occasion I am recalling. One hundred eighty degrees off. Diametrically opposed. And, really, I would have thought it obvious.

    We should not be surprised that I digress from the outset; nor should we expect I find the digression completely irreleant.

    My own mistake on the present occasion, which in turn recalls that once upon a time, was to read something in the context by which it was presented to me; despite my general suspicion of certain rhetorical scraps offered in lieu of something more properly rhetorical, I read the article the first time as if the tatters of implication were in some way reasonably accurate.

    As a result, I was a bit disoriented and disbelieving, resolving two points:

    • The construction of the article, with a man saying feminist things as a counterpoint to a prudish female, seemed nearly significant; taking the article in the context it was offered, though, I could not figure out what that significance actually was.

    • I do not recognize the society Kelsey Hughes describes.​

    Indeed, the whole thing seemed so amiss I started looking around to figure out if she was some manner of conservative propagandist.

    Somewhere along the line, after a couple of attempts to describe my disbelief and confusion, the significance finally struck: Hughes is setting up Joe Antoshak to make the point.

    Yoga pants have apparently "caused a real problem" because of "what they've led to" for having "snowballed into a newer trend", which in turn is "wearing leggings as pants"? No, really: What society is she describing?

    I've been hearing arguments about women wearing tight pants for decades. I mean, elastene been around since the 1950s, and when I was in junior high school many girls wore spandex tights.

    The article itself is written in 2013; my daughter was born in 2002, and from the outset, she and her female age-peer extended relatives have been wearing leggings as pants pretty much from the outset; indeed, the idea that "wearing leggings as pants" is somehow new is not so much suspect as laughable.

    The leggings-as-undergarment assertion is itself hilarious:

    Leggings, however, are not pants.

    They are designed as an undergarment — solely for additional warmth, maybe to show peeking out under the skirt for some added flair. This yoga pants sibling is more similar to stockings than sweatpants. Wearing leggings as pants in public is essentially like wearing tights as pants, except leggings show bare skin from the calf down. So really, they're worse. And nobody wants to see what color underwear you're wearing through your pants.


    (Boldface accent added↱)

    No, really, at this point ... well, yeah, trying to take those paragraphs seriously was more than a little difficult.

    Aside from the exceptionally narrow definition of leggings―we might thus similarly suggest that pencil skirts are bad for showing leg from the knee down, and someone might ask about an ankle-length jersey pencil, and then I'd end up muttering something about not being able to wear those without gaffing, and, frankly, I have yet to meet the skirt worth the effort―the bit about bare skin from the calf down is astoundingly prudish if we take it in any literalistic context; as mockery, the vice really is in the prim confidence.

    But I'm also a bit puzzled at the bit about underwear.

    "Nobody wants to see what color underwear you're wearing through your pants"? Really?

    I mean, there are plenty of issues about how we perceive and prioritize the existences of other people, but the panty check is almost automatic among men of my cohort. I mean, it wasn't just the boys at my school; two school districts and then a Jesuit school, and the question of dots or hearts or flowers or teddy bears with balloons or stripes or whatever was never an outlier. It would not have occurred to me to wonder, among the wanker's voyeur porn, just how unusual the panty checkers are.

    These weren't Satanists or atheists or bra-burning feminists. They were tame Lutheran mothers dressing their girls in white trousers that showed us what underwear our female classmates were wearing. And in all the years I've heard parents and daughters fight about how the young one isn't going out dressed like that―and this includes the literary and comedic propositions, as well, and also the downright horrifying vignettes about parents or other adults in the community deciding to inspect a girl's underwear to determine if it is sexually appropriate―I have never encountered the one when the parent wants to know what she's wearing under those otherwise modest white trousers because.

    And before leggings became a market force such as we know them today, I remeber iterations of stirrup and stretch pants, and, yeah, the whole time there were plenty of light-colored fabrics through which we could (ahem!) count the dots.

    That is to say, we need not offer any specific moral defense of the behavior in order to observe that "nobody wants to see what color underwear you're wearing through your pants" seems at least a little presumptuous. Among many of my generation, it was actually a significant part of boyhood.

    But if we read Hughes as teeing up for Antoshak, the twisted history and absurd prudery make a bit more sense. And Antoshak delivers:

    The United States in particular loves to protest newfangled clothing styles. Consider the flappers of the 1920s. Though scandalous in their time, when compared to the typical garb of today, their style would look closer to that of convent members than sexual revolutionists.

    It's a safe bet American society will grow used to the idea of yoga pants. In 50 years, there's a good chance they'll even seem tame. Nonetheless, this controversy has presently brought out the worst in a few of its antagonists.

    Some complain that the pants are being worn by women not only for comfort, but to cheaply catch the eye of the modest, vulnerable men they encounter. But since dressing to attract the opposite sex is not against any law, given certain body parts are covered, it might be time to put those patriarchal views to rest.

    He even goes on to essentially gloss his way through body shaming, making the obvious point that nobody is forcing anyone else to look, and the sympathetic can, if they choose, try to read a nod and wink into this: The only time "nobody" wants to know about her underwear in any consistent fashion is among those who go out of their way to criticize women they consider too large, because Spandex, according to the vernacular, is a privilege and not a right.

    More likely, he's just glossing through because body shame and fashion are a minefield, and such gaffes have a way of blowing up in really nasty ways. That is, if one can reduce the risk of wrecking the point, it would seem wise to do so; to the other, Antoshak is also pushing a very important point:

    But really, considering the national debt clock is set to hit $20 trillion in the not-so-distant future, yoga pants may be among the least of our problems.

    In a time where Dennis Rodman is the United States' best chance at avoiding a North Korean nuclear attack, reassessment of priorities seems to be in order.

    In the end, why is the question important? Marching in the rain in white pants could be entirely distracting to middle school boys, yet we managed to get through the parades well enough. And in those circumstances, the fact that we could see wasn't really problematic; the real question is just how big a deal we should make of it, or, more specifically within that range, why.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Hughes, Kelsey and Joe Antoshak. "FACEOFF: The Yoga Pants-Leggings Debate". The Diamondback. 27 March 2013. DiamondbackOnline.com. 5 January 2016. http://bit.ly/1mxJDL3
     

Share This Page