A Bit of Harmless Fun?

Makers of promotional videos for clubs quickly realised that putting a camera in 
someone's face makes them a lot more 
likely do something they're likely to regret 
in the morning; add alcohol to that equation and things escalate quickly. Strong positive 
reinforcement on the part of managers of clubs like this shows girls that the more 
provocative the outfit and the more importantly, the more willing you are to
parade your body, the better the reception you can expect; drinks on the house gleefully ensue and if the barman is lucky, enough attention can propel you into an intoxicating nest of whipped cream and a pool of tequila. 


But at what point do we draw the line between unfettered hedonism and something more
sinister, like the insidious and systematic undoing of decades of work and sacrifice by 
women who wanted femininity to encompass something more than a subservience to 
whatever dress code and behaviour is deemed most alluring by contemporary male 
attitudes. This isn't to say that every woman that goes to a club sporting anything less than a knee-length skirt and turtleneck is a puppet to male whims, as the idea is to avoid a restricted definition of what a woman ought to be or do, but there has to be some degree of awareness. When does it get more worrying than just the interaction of girls wanting to 
have fun and 'boys being boys'? Things can go too far and find young women plied with 
alcohol in a club becoming the  victims of opportunist sexual violence and part of a 
disturbingly overlooked statistic.


The act of rape gets easily shrouded and dismissed by both men and women insisting 
that the victims of rape in clubs were 'asking for it' and it can get to be a thinly veiled 
judgement dealt on the victims. Having spoken to a woman who was the victim of violent 
rape that left her in mental and physical anguish, the amount the act can be flippantly 
dismissed is made all the more shocking. She was told that she could not have been 
raped because she had had consensual sex with her attacker a year previously and was
known to have had multiple sexual partners besides that. Reporting it to the police was a
fruitless effort for her as an unsupported individual and she is not the only one. It makes 
me sick to think that in the 21st century there are still beliefs that if a woman has said yes
before then any subsequent no is are rendered irrelevant. 


Alongside this lies the ever powerful force wielded by mass media. Rihanna's recently 
published music video for her single 'Pour it Up' features her wearing a thong stuffed 
with dollars and a bra that scantily covers the bare minimum while she and some pole 
dancers twerk and dry hump to their hearts' and bank accounts' content. There is still a 
shortage of role models for young women to base appropriate levels of self respect on
and that might just be something to do with the producers and managers behind the 
scenes being predominantly men who benefit nothing they can cash in by promoting 
images of women that don't invite objectification. Endorsement of fully dressed female 
successes won't bring rape to a screeching halt or make men stop wanting sex but it just
might give pause to enough people for the prevalence of this crime to be challenged. 


This issue has to be tackled as more than a tag line that gets drowned out when interest 
in the pop song that triggered it dwindles, because for the victims, the repercussions 
endure. Earlier today I saw a bag with a slogan that read 'feminism is an unfinished 
revolution' and when you know the attitudes that have slipped through the net of human 
decency, it's not hard to agree.