Rape: Clothing Is Not the Criminal

I can sit in my living room and turn to a cable TV channel and watch local high school girls cavorting on pompon squads.

I can turn to ESPN and watch the national cheerleading championships.

And any spectator can watch pompon squads and cheerleaders at all college and most professional sporting events.

Also, during the last presidential election campaign, George Bush and Mike Dukakis had pompon girls and cheerleaders at many, many rallies.

The activity is seen by most people as fresh, wholesome, festive, and entertaining as well as good exercise for the participants.

But week before last, a task force on campus rape at the University of Illinois said the school’s pompon squad should be abolished because it could lead to sexual assault.

I think that conclusion is wrong and I think it is wrong in an important way. I am sure the task force wants to protect women. But I think its conclusion can put women in danger.

I’ll tell you why:

The report (which also dealt with alcohol consumption at sporting events) says a pompon squad “projects women as sexual objects” and creates an “environment that engenders sexual abuse.”

The task force was studying the serious problem of campus rape. The university found that 16.4% of the 537 women who responded to a survey said they had been victims of criminal sexual assaults.

That’s an appallingly high figure. The other appalling figure is that 64% of the rapes and 73% of the sexual abuse cases were committed in fraternity houses, according to the survey.

What does this have to do with pompon squads? Well, according to the task force, such assaults may have something to do with the skimpy costumes the squad members wear and the dance routines they do.

“The research I know of connects sexual assault with men getting the idea that women are there as sexual objects,” Laurna Rubinson, an associate professor of health and safety studies, who chaired the task force, said. “If women are there as sexual objects, they can be taken advantage of sexually.”

I do not question Rubinson’s motives or her obvious concern for the safety of women. But I think she is drawing the wrong conclusion.

I think she is dangerously close to saying women are at least partly responsible for their own rapes.

I don’t believe that. I don’t think wearing a leotard and dancing make a woman guilty of her own sexual assault.

I believe rapists are guilty of rapes. The crime originates with them, not with the woman.

There was a terrible example in Florida just a few months ago. Last October, Steven Lord, 26, was acquitted of the knife-point rape of a 22-year-old woman because jurors felt the woman’s clothing--a tank top and a short sheer white-lace skirt without underwear--suggested that she had “asked for it.”

After the verdict, her outraged lawyer said: “Every time a female goes out alone, does she have to look in the mirror and think is the dress appropriate or does it risk violence?”

Two months later, Lord pleaded guilty to the knife-point rape of a Georgia woman, whom he had kidnaped from a 24-hour banking machine. According to court records, Lord told the victim: “It’s your fault. You’re wearing a skirt.”

He was sentenced to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole after seven years.

I remember writing columns about rape victims 15 years ago when it was tough to get such stories in newspapers. And in all too many jurisdictions, prosecutors didn’t want to prosecute, juries didn’t want to convict and judges didn’t want to sentence rapists. The woman, all too many of them felt, was partly to blame.

I thought we had progressed some in the last 15 years.

Do I think a tank top and short sheer white lace skirt without underwear is proper street attire. No, I don’t. I think it’s tacky.

But such attire does not say: “Please rape me. I am asking for it.”

There is nothing a woman can wear that asks someone to rape her. Not the body-hugging costumes of pompon squads or the short skirts of cheerleaders.

Men who rape are violent criminals. They are not looking for sex objects. They are looking for victims upon which to perpetrate a violent act.

You can argue all you want to about pompon squads. You can make a case, I suppose, that they demean women and should be abandoned.

But don’t make the case that wearing a pompon costume and doing a dance invites attack. That blames the wrong person.

Blame the criminal.

Don’t blame the victim.