News about sexual harassment on women in Thailand have never been absented from pages of newspapers. Everyday at least one has to be shown on a News channel on TV and radio. There are two things I notice from hearing and talking about those news.
First, when a woman encounters with sexual harassment, people tend to feel pity for her, but… at the same time, they think that the woman herself is the cause of the incident. I have also heard a comment from someone I know when News reported that a woman was raped and killed on a footbridge in Bangkok. The person said, “I feel sorry for her, but she’s the one who’s wrong. She shouldn’t have gone out in the middle of the night.” I was surprised to hear that. The commenter noticed, so she added “because going out like that will lure bad men who see her to harm her. She is not careful enough”
One more thing that I notice is… our society set a lot of rules for Thai women on what to do or not to do to shelter themselves but there are almost nothing for men to prevent sexual aggressiveness toward women. It is said that women should dress properly. Women should not let men see parts of their body. Women should not walk alone in the middle of the night, women should be careful and many other “women-should-do”. Whenever women fail to follow the rules, even they have been severely hurt, they are blamed.
The comments I heard and the rules I learnt let me ask myself. Does it mean that men cannot control their sexual desire at all? ….Actually, I don’t think they can’t. I know men are mature enough. I think, the real cause of the problem is not because of men instinct or wrong behave women. It has something to do with the way people think about women.
In my point of view, the way that our society portrays women’s images is one main cause of the problem. Our society treats women as goods. People treat women as weak and inferior. The mass media also create the thought of women as sex objects (everyone is now framed by the media to think of women as sex objects. Even women themselves are not the exceptions.) All of these ideas affect on women’s security.
I think this idea of women as sex objects makes it convenience for some men who are bad enough to take the opportunity to sexually harm women. Very often that I hear them make some excuses by accusing that women use their appearance to lure them. They are likely to say that… as women appearance causes sexual desire, women are the ones to blame because they are not careful enough. I think what they say are so unfair.
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3 comments:
Sexual harassment has been a serious issue on women all over the the world. Women are subjected and disturbed my men unfairly. In my opinion, it is so unfair for women to be a victim of those irresponsible and embarrassed activities. I can say that I am the one who had this experience before; I know how terrible this circumstance is. Thus, it is time that women need to fight for their rights. Men should not threaten women. Respecting others’ space is something that everyone needs to be aware in mind. It is not right to disturb. To change people attitude toward sexual equality is rather difficult and takes time, but it’s better that doing nothing.
I do agree with you about the way people should change their idea or theor thought about women. I do think that although some women dress themselves improper or "too sexy" that might seduce many men and can be dagerous for herslef, she has her right to do that. It is their desire and their characterisc to dress in that way. I think the point is the security that people should have for standard. Government should take this serious that it is not only for all women but for every citizen including tourists that would gain the trustfulness and peacefulness for everyone in town.
It is quite normal issue in a male dominated society like in Thailand whenever it comes to gender. I don’t think Thailand have this kind of problem alone as we share some values and traditions in gender with other Asian countries. The difference is how different of practical law we do practice comparing to those strict societies like in Singapore, China and Japan. These countries have very practical law to control those misbehaved men and sexual harassment. Even in western countries if they don’t have strict law to be practical forces men would go crazy beyond what they are in these days (do you know about phedophile and other terrible stories from some old white men in our country right?) Another thing is it seems that media are the victims to blame again. Well, actually they have both good and bad functions in my opinion. The bad things as we already know they like to distort stories and want us to perceive things like they think and want our society to be. It is about media ownership and need another topic to talk about but it related though. Talking about good things they have are at least they are like a warning alarm to women to be careful of crime and how dangerous men are, at least to me though.
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