Dangerous Fashion: Brazil teen gets expelled from Universidade Bandeirante for miniskirt
Every once in a while I read something so unbelievable-it-has-to-be-true-because-they-couldn't-write-this-stuff, I have the sudden urge to run through my office (or apartment building, or coffee shop, or wherever I happen to be) throwing the headline in front of people's faces to see if it's really as crazy as it seems, or if I'm just overreacting. Well, thank goodness I have this blog, because I can do that without my neighbors calling the cops on my antics. And with the recent report that a female student from Universidade Bandeirante was recently expelled for wearing a "a mid-thigh length red dress," or, as the school more creatively phrased it, "flagrant disrespect of ethical principles, academic dignity and morality."
The story apparently goes like this:
a 20-year-old female student, Geisy Arruda, wore a short skirt to class. The outfit
was clearly unwelcome (or, in some cases, welcome in the worst way):
Word spread, and 200 students rushed out to catch a glimpse of the
offending sartorial choice. A group of girls cornered her, putting
pressure on her to "put on some pants." (I admit, I've had this same
thought when viewing images of Lady Gaga, but I've never been inspired
to corner her in a restroom and violently confront her about her lack
of trousers.) The restroom confrontation became physical when male
students rushed to take pictures between her legs with their cell
phones. After a school official literally locked her inside a room,
nearly 700 students gathered outside, shouting, "Let her out Professor,
we want to rape her." As a police escort lead the crying student out of
the room, students continued to shout "whore" at her. (See above video.)
As if the experience weren't traumatic enough for the young student--who, let's recall, was subjected to this treatment merely for her clothing choice--yesterday, the school announced, via a public ad in an newspaper, that she would be expelled from school. Titled "Educational Responsibility - Education is made with attitude not complacency," the note pointed out that Arruda, through her short skirt, was responsible for "acting provocatively," "which resulted in a collective reaction in defense of the school environment."
Let's be clear: the students who attempted to take upskirt pictures of a student, who yelled "whore" at her, who threatened to rape her in front of schools officials -- they were merely defending the school's respectability. (Let it be noted that I tried very hard to find a link to a definition of "upskirt," but was frightened away by the Google results. Suffice to say there's an international trend -- America, included -- of voyeurs taking cell phone pictures up women's skirts on, for example, subway escalators, in crowded elevators, etc, and posting them online to brag about their successes. Charming stuff.) It was Arruda who, a lawyer for the school noted, "always liked to provoke boys, the problem was not with her clothes, but the way she acts, talks, crosses her legs, and walks."
This argument has disturbing echoes of classic victim blaming in rape situations -- that a victim's dress or appearence is responsible for an assailant's actions. This implies that by changing the victim's behavior -- the student should have covered up when asked, the school said -- she can control or change the perpetrator's behavior. This is false. No one is responsible for an assailant's actions but the assailant, and no one "invites" attack through actions or clothing choices. No one deserves to be threatened with rape. But sadly, in this situation, the school had already labeled her a whore, and by this admission, it gives the students the permission to do the same. And expelling this one student, or evening getting her to cover up, isn't going to do anything to change the culture that's already in place that allows this to happen. It treats a symtom, not the illness.
I struggle when I read news stories of this kind. Clearly, Brazil, and the culture therein, is worlds away from the culture I know and understand here in Chicago. And it's obviously a complex one. After all, Brazil gives us both a Catholic church that excommunicates a 9-year-old girl after doctors determined that aborting the baby she had been impregnated with by her rapist stepfather was a medical necessity--right alongside those iconic and salicious images of scantily-clad Carnivale revelers. Both are acceptable. What gives?
It's hard to say. And therefore, as an outside observer, it's hard for me to do anything but scratch my head and shake my fists at my computer screen. Clearly a societal mindset that allows students to be threatened with rape merely because of their outfit choices is one that needs adjusting. But adjusting where--and with what first step?
UPDATE: Without saying why, Universidade Bandeirante has decided to reverse its decision to expel Arruda (perhaps because the floodgates of negative opinion opened pretty wide on them).
As if the experience weren't traumatic enough for the young student--who, let's recall, was subjected to this treatment merely for her clothing choice--yesterday, the school announced, via a public ad in an newspaper, that she would be expelled from school. Titled "Educational Responsibility - Education is made with attitude not complacency," the note pointed out that Arruda, through her short skirt, was responsible for "acting provocatively," "which resulted in a collective reaction in defense of the school environment."
Let's be clear: the students who attempted to take upskirt pictures of a student, who yelled "whore" at her, who threatened to rape her in front of schools officials -- they were merely defending the school's respectability. (Let it be noted that I tried very hard to find a link to a definition of "upskirt," but was frightened away by the Google results. Suffice to say there's an international trend -- America, included -- of voyeurs taking cell phone pictures up women's skirts on, for example, subway escalators, in crowded elevators, etc, and posting them online to brag about their successes. Charming stuff.) It was Arruda who, a lawyer for the school noted, "always liked to provoke boys, the problem was not with her clothes, but the way she acts, talks, crosses her legs, and walks."
This argument has disturbing echoes of classic victim blaming in rape situations -- that a victim's dress or appearence is responsible for an assailant's actions. This implies that by changing the victim's behavior -- the student should have covered up when asked, the school said -- she can control or change the perpetrator's behavior. This is false. No one is responsible for an assailant's actions but the assailant, and no one "invites" attack through actions or clothing choices. No one deserves to be threatened with rape. But sadly, in this situation, the school had already labeled her a whore, and by this admission, it gives the students the permission to do the same. And expelling this one student, or evening getting her to cover up, isn't going to do anything to change the culture that's already in place that allows this to happen. It treats a symtom, not the illness.
I struggle when I read news stories of this kind. Clearly, Brazil, and the culture therein, is worlds away from the culture I know and understand here in Chicago. And it's obviously a complex one. After all, Brazil gives us both a Catholic church that excommunicates a 9-year-old girl after doctors determined that aborting the baby she had been impregnated with by her rapist stepfather was a medical necessity--right alongside those iconic and salicious images of scantily-clad Carnivale revelers. Both are acceptable. What gives?
It's hard to say. And therefore, as an outside observer, it's hard for me to do anything but scratch my head and shake my fists at my computer screen. Clearly a societal mindset that allows students to be threatened with rape merely because of their outfit choices is one that needs adjusting. But adjusting where--and with what first step?
UPDATE: Without saying why, Universidade Bandeirante has decided to reverse its decision to expel Arruda (perhaps because the floodgates of negative opinion opened pretty wide on them).
1 Comment
Morena said:
Yes, I find it extremely unbelievable. However what I find even more unbelievable is that this could deserve international attention when a far more sinister situation that exists in Brazil, goes unnoted. Through a political slight of hand, and American Child has been kidnapped and "given" to the highest bidder. Besides the 70 or so U.S.children that were kidnapped to Brazil by a non-custodial parent and kept there against the will of the remaining parent, WITH the blessing of a government that signed a treaty with the U.S. stating they would return any children kidnapped to their counry within 6 weeks for custody, there is the case of Sean Goldman which Brazil keeps out of the press, and out of the public eye. This is the child who like the other 70, was kidnapped by a selfish and self-serving mother, who used her new lovers political connections to keep the father out of the childs life, using dirty underhanded tactics. Well, she paid the ultimate price in a poetic fate of hand, and died giving birth to this "new husband's" child.
The father of the child, David Goldman of N.J. went to get his son that he had fought 4 long years to gain after hearing of the mothers death......Not so says the new step-father......using his connecrtions of the courts without even so much as a notification to the father, he attempeted to have the court erase the father's name AND replace it with his........NOW, tell me how moral these people are.......Hipocrites, masquerading as a family oriented, religious, and just society.....HOW THE HELL DID THIS GET MORE MEDIA ATTENTION ,then that of the poor child who's life is in limbo and is suffering from severe emotional abuse as determined by 3 court appointed Brazilian Child Psychologists.....Lets NOT even get into the case of poor Sophie Zanger, 4 who was killed in Brazil by her caretakers after Brazil denied the father to have a return of the children and instead "gave" them to step relatives in Brazil who murdered the little girl....
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