Consent is Sexy

The most common misconception in society is that women are “asking for it.” Whatever “it” is. Whether it’s attention, physical contact, or sex, people assume that women want “it.” They are under the impression that all women want the attention, as if they feed off of it like it is a drug.  If a woman leaves her house in a short skirt and a pair of high heels, men assume that she wants sex because she is dressed sexily. The idea that a woman can dress nicely for her own enjoyment seems foreign to men. Men think that every time a woman sees a man she wants him to notice her.  So when women fall victim to rape or sexual assault, it is automatically assumed that they were dressed sexually and were “asking for it.” Saddest of all, as a society both men and women see a short skirt and a pair of high heels as an open invitation for advances.

However, in the society we live in today, whether a woman is dressed scantly or modestly she receives all sorts of unwanted and unrequested attention. A video was released by Huffington Post last fall after a woman named Shoshana Roberts walked around New York City for ten hours and received over one hundred cat calls. A cat call is a sexual gesture towards a woman, whether it be whistling, shouting or an inappropriate comment. Shoshana dressed in jeans and a black crew-neck t-shirt, clothes that most would consider moderately conservative (definitely not “asking for it”).

Even without acknowledging the comments of her cat callers, she received unwanted feedback. One man followed her down the block for five minutes. Shoshana made no eye contact, walked briskly in the opposite direction and didn’t respond to his cat calls yet these men still assumed she craved the attention and was asking to be acknowledged. Even if these men are chasing her because they are truly interested, they need to realize that the way to a woman’s heart isn’t whistling at her like she is an animal.

Work Cited

Sieczkowski, Cavan. “Watch This Woman Receive 100 Catcalls While Walking Around For A Day.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.