The #MeToo Advice You Can Pass On to Your Daughters
A couple of essential elements get left out of our conversations
I thought about this issue a long time before I sat down to write. I’m not a victim myself, but I have a young daughter who will grow up in a post #metoo culture. She’ll likely be immersed in the narrative that from the patriarchy to harassment to rape, women are all victims of men in one way or another and that there’s nothing they should personally do to keep themselves from having a “me, too” moment. That leaves the question to be answered politically, beyond the laws we already have against harassment and assault — but that answer locks women into a victim class forever.
The #metoo hashtag has been used for a variety of negative sexual experiences, so I want to clarify up front: I’m not talking about spousal abuse or child molestation or abuse by manipulative authorities in school or church, or stalker situations. I’m not talking about victims of the rare psychopathic serial rapist. I’m talking about the harassment and assault of a woman by someone she doesn’t know or knows only casually. And it’s important to recognize that there’s nothing a woman can do that will completely guarantee these things won’t happen to her.
That said, I will share some insights I’ll pass on to my daughter, that I think can help us lower the chances of having to say “me, too.” They’re based not just on personal experience, but on human nature as revealed in the data.
Reflections on a dating life
I think I made some solid choices relating to dating and modesty, but I must preface these by saying I had good behavior modeled for me from my parents and church leaders. A stable family and moral foundation set me up for success where others have not been so blessed. I was taught the wisdom of guarding not just my heart, but my body along with it. For women, where the heart leads, the body soon follows.
As it turns out, even with that solid foundation, I still came perilously close to dragging my body into my heart’s entanglement. So I can only imagine how confusing it must be for women to navigate their relationships with men without it, and how much pressure they must feel from a “sexually liberated” culture. On several occasions I came close to having a moment I would've spent the rest of my life regretting, if I had been just a little more rebellious, a little more foolish, a little more prone to “following my heart.” It was all that wisdom that had been imparted to me through the years that held me back.
Yet, faith and family seem left out of the #metoo conversation, and that’s a significant oversight. Broken families produce more broken people, and broken people are more easily preyed upon by malicious people. (Ask any sex trafficker or groomer.) It all makes finding your way into a stable, loving relationship unscathed by the dating culture incredibly difficult.
One of the solid choices I did make upon leaving the shelter of home was not to "date," in the sense of serially going out on dates with a bunch of guys I didn't know that well. I didn't "kiss dating goodbye," as many Christians in my generation had been urged to do, but neither did I use my college years away from home to "explore my sexuality" or "have some fun" or even "find out what kind of guy I want to marry" by dating lots of them.
Perhaps more importantly, I didn’t attend frat parties, or drink alcohol, or get high. As one anti-sexual-violence activist told the Washington Post, “There is this idea in our college culture that alcohol and sex should always be available. The whole context around alcohol is this is something we do to facilitate sex.” A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that, “Women who say they sometimes or often drink more than they should are twice as likely to be victims of completed, attempted or suspected sexual assaults as those who rarely or never drink.” So by sheer math, my chances of being date-raped or having regrettable sex, or experiencing unwanted advances while in college were at least cut in half.
The person I dated, who later became my husband, was someone I already knew. We started dating as soon as I got to college. But if that hadn’t been the case, my plan had always been to connect with people through the local church, a faith-based or political organization on campus, or some other grouping of people who might share my values. That immediately excluded the vast majority of guys on campus. It made things simpler, and also safer.
Maybe my approach sounds extreme, but it worked. If you do want to date, here’s my advice: keep it public. Drive yourself to and from the meeting place, or arrange to have a friend do so. Limit your alcohol consumption, or do not drink at all on the date. Get to know a person casually before going on a serious date, and regard your own body as something precious you won’t give to just any nice guy.
Modesty Matters
Beyond not dating, which is the overwhelming cultural pressure on young people, I practiced modesty. I know, I know. No woman is asking to be assaulted, no matter how she dresses. I completely agree. And modesty alone won’t protect you from a psychopathic rapist intent on finding easy prey.
At the same time, we must admit that the way we dress does convey a message about ourselves. If you want to appear as a business professional, you wear a suit. If you want to appear as an arbitrator of fashion, you wear couture. And if you want to appear ready to mate, you make yourself look sexually appealing. So women wanting to attract an encounter wear a low-cut top to show off their breasts. They wear short skirts to catch men’s eyes with their legs, or perhaps they wear leggings to draw attention to an ass. And the women who look most ready to get it on are the prime targets for ungentlemanly advances. This is human nature. This is logical.
It's no use denying it. If a certain summer dress earns you catcalls as you walk down the street, and yet you continue to wear it, you must at least admit that your dress has something to do with what you frame as "unwanted attention." A paper published last year in Frontiers in Psychology outlining the extensive research linking provocative clothing to objectification, and objectification to sexual harassment and assault, explained:
Women in provocative clothing are rated as more flirtatious, seductive, promiscuous, and sexually experienced—and as less strong, determined, intelligent, and self-respecting, emphasizing sexual availability and objectification.
Even if you want those double-takes and long glances and compliments in certain circumstances, there is a probable cost of dressing like this habitually. Lewd comments will be made. Unsolicited and persistent advances will be made. Some reason that they can reduce this cost by only dressing provocatively on social media, so there's physical distance between them and creepers. Sure. As a matter of physical safety, that works. But consider the self-objectification at play, which has its own negative mental health outcomes. The online reactions affect women emotionally, if not physically. About one in five women between 18 and 29 say they’ve been sexually harassed online, according to Pew, and over half say they’ve been sent un-requested explicit images. 35% of women surveyed described their most recent incident of harassment “extremely” or “very” upsetting.
Furthermore, for those who hide their face behind their phone when snapping a bathroom pic — it’s an attempt to divorce being from body to avoid the shame of shamelessness in the quest for male attention. It's not worth it. A girl can't make future intimacy more intimate, more special, by exposing so much of her body to random strangers. She is trying to be vulnerable without the consequences of doing it "irl,” but there are still consequences.
Modesty, or more accurately, being non-provocative, isn't just about what you wear, though. It's about manner and attitude. In short, I made myself “unapproachable.” Not in that way, at least. Both in college and when I worked in an office environment, I made it a habit not to stand close to people or hug people who aren’t close friends. I was conscious of who might see down my shirt if I bent over. I didn’t behave in any way that is remotely flirtatious.
Could I have taken it too far? Was I a little more distant, and less warm than some of my peers? I’m sure, at times. But generally, it was worth the tradeoff for being less of a distraction, and being less distracted by male attention in turn. Modesty is about respect for ourselves, and others. I’m most definitely not saying women should fear male sexuality, as if it’s uncontrollable but for a woman’s efforts (as the extremists of purity culture would have it), but that we should respect their weakness as fallen creatures while maintaining our own dignity.
So how do you go about pursuing a romantic interest, then? If you want someone’s attention in particular, turn on the charm. But seek him out, and send your affection in that man’s direction, not in a 360 degree radius. The message will come across much clearer, and other people will be less likely to misinterpret your behavior. The danger of using provocative clothing (or lack thereof) to impress is that it sends the wrong signal to everyone else.
It’s weird to read something like that, I know. It is perhaps the very inverse of what you’ve learned from the culture: the more attention, the better. The more attention I get, the more beautiful I can think of myself. The more attention I get, the more confident I can be. We all tend toward this thinking, especially if we don’t derive our worth from the love of our Creator, or we don’t have a spouse that reminds us we are worth committing to for a lifetime.
I’m not saying all this to shame women for past behavior, but to let you know that you are not helpless. Culturally, we’re told that we are strong and independent, but on the other hand, we’re told that suggesting anything we could possibly do to reduce our own suffering, to keep us from becoming victims, is “slut shaming,” and should be put out of our heads entirely. That truly does make it more likely for us to be victims. There’s no set of policies that can completely ensure you won’t be victimized, obviously, but you don’t have to surrender to a victim mentality that deprives you of your agency.
The truth is that you have the power to avoid or extract yourself from various situations that could lead to you getting hurt, whether that be physical, emotional or spiritual pain. You should learn not just how to defend yourself from attack physically, but how to impress on people through manner and dress that you are not up for anything, and that you wish to relate to others as a whole person, emotionally and intellectually, and not just as a sexual prospect.
There's much to be said about reforming systems that exploit women physically before they can move up the ladder of success, and there are certainly many apologies to be made by men who've mistreated women. There’s never an excuse to demean or abuse a woman. But once we realize the only behavior we can control is our own, we can start to leave the bitterness and enmity between the sexes behind, and take responsibility for how we conduct our own lives. That’s how women can reduce their chances of having a “me, too” moment.
