Opinion Kerala judge’s remarks: Her guilty dress and other lies men tell themselves about sexual assault
Saurabh Kapoor writes: Dismantling the myth that the female form is some dangerous, corrupting weapon aimed at all men would require a new emotional language — one for brave, daily conversations in schools, homes and safe spaces where boys are raised
In the past few years, while NCRB data have shown an increase in crime figures, the state government has maintained that the spike is because of its policy of compulsorily registering every complaint as FIR. (File) 
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The world into which boys are born has men as its heroes. They may be good or bad at their assigned roles in society or their profession, but they are heroes nonetheless. A hero can proclaim that another was provoked into committing a sexual crime under the spell of a woman’s dress, and both can get away with it. In any case, we must love our heroes with their flaws and faults.
But should we?
While granting anticipatory bail to an accused recently, a Kerala court observed that prima facie, a sexual harassment charge would not be attracted if the woman was wearing a “sexually provocative dress”. The observation has been met with righteous rage. But while the outrage bump on our social media timelines will flatten out in a few days, the everyday misogyny of this legal argument will endure. It always does.
The obsession with a sexual assault victim’s attire is not new, and neither is our collective failure to detach women’s clothes from sexual crimes. Run a web search on sexual crimes and you will see the compass of blame pointing to a woman’s dress in an assemblage of cases across geographies. In 2006, a woman was raped off a highway in Manitoba, Canada. The judge spared the accused jail time as he blamed the victim for creating “inviting” circumstances, noting that she and a girlfriend wore “tube tops with no bras”. An Italian priest, in 2012, matter-of-factly declared that women triggered violence by wearing “filthy clothing”.
There have been countless moments of a similar nature in India too, but the questions they have raised have not for once sent men looking for answers. For you see, “but what was she wearing?” is a hero’s question, born out of pungent patriarchy that is hardier than it appears.
Dismantling it clinically would require flipping the question itself, to ask, “why do men do this?” Maybe engaging this way can reproduce with near-perfect resonance the lies men tell themselves, including the trope of the woman’s “guilty” dress. The disdainful scrutiny of female clothing is based on the premise that by dressing a particular way women can arouse men into a heady buzz where they lose all self-control.
Sexual arousal among genders comes in complex coded colours, but experimental studies have by and large supported the idea that a visual spark matters more in the case of men. But can it break the barriers of self-control? Have no doubt that men can check themselves unless this ability is impaired by injury or intoxication. But then drinking is a man’s choice, and so are its consequences.
As for those invoking the dress as an excuse post the crime, it is well documented that such responses are deliberate “thinking errors” (cognitive distortions) which offenders use to absolve themselves of guilt or shame. It’s a cover-up.
Beyond resorting to causal character assassination, the other argument bandied around is that men sometimes confuse clothes for consent. There is no debate here. Those reading a t-shirt slogan or a short skirt as a swipe in their favour are engaged in self-deception that makes them put a supposed sartorial cue above words — yes or no — or an actual wigwag of resistance.
Why are our efforts to counter such behaviour in sloppy disarray? Maybe because societies and cultures have lowered the cost by surreptitiously accepting sexual violence as endemic — something you just learn to live with. The only way then is to get dirty in the trenches and fight atomised misogyny in close quarters.
For long, young girls have been taught that their dresses are either meant to attract male attention or to somehow deflect it. Look around and you will not find boys being fear conditioned enough against such objectification.
Dismantling the myth that the female form is some dangerous, corrupting weapon aimed at all men would require a new emotional language. One for brave, daily conversations in schools, homes and safe spaces where the “darling sons” are raised. A mass travelling text of metaphors against patriarchy that can occupy arenas beyond the echo chambers of existing converts.
Not that big bang efforts will not be needed. For starters, how about guidelines to explicitly address the admissibility of a woman’s clothing style as evidence in a sexual crime case?
In the meantime, until we recast the untidy script of inequality, let us rewrite the dialogues our heroes speak.
saurabh.kapoor@expressindia.com
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