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News of Note: ‘You know what men are like’: Indonesia to ban mini-skirts over links to rape
Indonesia’s powerful religious affairs minister believes that mini-skirts are pornographic and should be banned under the country’s tough new anti-porn laws.
Minister Suryadharma Ali has been appointed to run Indonesia’s new anti-porn taskforce, announced by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this month.
He told reporters in Jakarta yesterday that before deciding what they must ban as pornography, the taskforce would consult widely to come up with “a set of universal criteria”.
However, “one [criterion] will be when someone wears a skirt above the knee,” according to the Jakarta Post.
“Pornography is something that we can feel … but we have to make the criteria,” said Dr Suryadharma.
Wanting to be or feel sexy is an entirely justifiable and natural human behavior. This reminds me of a conservative high school’s dress code, not something that an actual country would enforce on its citizens. With the growth of anti-women and anti-other fundamentalism, how soon will we see this type of repression on Main Street USA.
Indonesia’s new anti-porn taskforce must not have heard about the fallacy of slut shaming, so aptly in the hands of our SlutWalk advocates, who assert that no one asks to be assaulted no matter how s/he appears to their rapist, or murderer. Blaming the victims of rape for dressing sexy is simply absurd and offensive and deflects an act of violence to something akin to a sex act gone awry.
Stories like this reveal the astounding depth of sexual repression our world must still conquer. With laws like the one being pushed in Georgia to exchange the words “rape victim” with “rape accuser” in all state law, we have a long way to go to assure a world where no one even conceives such a vile thought, or mounts a task force to tell us how we must dress to not incite the insane violence of rape?
*Creative Commons Image by: “Applegurl“