What a woman wears or does not wear is not the reason men who make passes or unpleasant remarks or sexually assault women do such things.
I totally agree. I think it's a red herring.
Sorry to be a pedant, but the only study cited so far suggests otherwise for the 1st one (passes). As to unpleasant remarks, I don't know. I suspect (fwiw) that what a woman wears or doesn't wear may affect that, though perhaps her behaviour would have to be added in and it may not be the clothes themselves. Sexual assault, yes, what a woman wears is not correlated to that, according to the two studies I've heard of. As far as I am aware, other recent studies seem to confirm this. As to touching, I don't know. I mean just touching, not groping or pinching. Touching can be said to be a form of sexual assault, if it's unwanted, of course, particularly touching exposed skin, and perhaps even more so for certain parts of a body (back of hand versus inner thigh?) but imo it'd be a comparatively mild example. And we might even distinguish briefly touching from both 'keeping your hand there' and also from stroking.
As for rubbing yourself up against the person standing next to you on a crowded underground train, which is apparently very common and has happened to several women I know, I would suspect that does not depend on the clothes.
Now we've swerved into territory that is a problem when discussing these things. We're using the same words to mean different things. Unwanted touchers in subways exploit that it is crowded and sometimes we bump into each other. Super damn hard to evaluate whether or not it's predatory. I've certainly bumped into my share of boobs and buts, in spite of trying really hard not to.
As for unwanted comments... Men who are flirting almost never say straight out what they want. It's all hints and innuendos. You can tell a woman she's pretty and depending on how you say it, it can mean a whole range of different things. How would such a study even look like? What would we measure? How the hell do you study tone of voice? That's not factoring in women who are hyper sensitive, and men who lack social skills.
I was at a party last month and there was a guy that I know superficially, who was all over a woman (who I didn't know at the time, but now I know). The man is pretty aspie and clueless when it comes to reading body language. The woman is super submissive and completely lacked skills in communicating disinterest clearly. I intervened and told the guy that he was making her uncomfortable. They were both very grateful that I intervened. The take away from this is that they were both at fault. Yet, if this would have been a #Metoo, he would have gotten all the blame.
Communication around flirting is hard, and difficult to get right. Also, different rules apply. An attractive/hot guy is expected to be much more sexually aggressive than a less hot guy. A hot guy who isn't extremely sexually aggressive will get zero action. Because women are typically just too shy around them to show any interest. Which means that when hot guys fuck this up, the damage is greater. But when it comes to #Metoo, we don't care. We treat these kinds of men the same.
As has been pointed out, an attractive woman provocatively dressed can be intimidating to at least some would-be male approachers and perhaps many if not most would-be assaulters, because it implies confidence, so in some ways, wearing sexually provocative clothes may be a deterrent. Though not in terms of getting unwanted looks or stares, perhaps.
I think being provocatively dressed as a woman acts as a filter to filter out less confident men. And that's all it is. Confident men will be more sexually aggressive. Because they always are, if they're interested. That's what confidence does to people.
Consuming alcohol. That, apparently, is a risk factor. For both potential victim and potential perpetrator of...whatever they perpetrate (going all the way from looking.....up to rape, and everything in between).
Which is another interesting factor. We drink in order to inhibit our ability to make judgements. When we're around people who drink, we want their judgement to be worse. Drinking will increase all human behaviours, unwanted and wanted. I'm not saying that a woman who drinks deserves what happens. But it does put her in the line of fire.
Camille Paglia said something interesting on this. She said that when they fought for women's right in the 60'ies one issue was being allowed to leave the dormitories at night. Because it was known that men are something sexually violent and predatory women weren't allowed out at night. What they objected to was being treated like children. They were all aware that sometimes men are sexually violent and predatory, but they wanted to be the ones who decided what risks were worth taking. She's criticised later generations of feminists for living in a fantasy world and making unreasonable demands. Or as she has put it, they want to be treated like children again.
Some men will always be sexually violent and predatory. I think it's in our genetics. I'm not saying that therefore men should be free to rape. Or that we shouldn't do our best to stop it. But if women insist on going out and having fun, and want to be able to freely chose which men they spend their time with, this is part of the risk calculation. It doesn't really matter how angry we are about it or how much we think it shouldn't be like this. Or how much we use caps lock. It is like this, and is most likely unfixable. Unless we want to have a police state. These violent men are typically in and out of prisons. Unless we just shoot them in the head immediately upon first infringement we're stuck with them, and stuck with having to figure out a way to have fun anyway.
And loads of women find these violent men exciting. They'll be sad if these men disappear. I think the psychological mechanics of this is exceedingly complex and are typically not taken into account at all when we discuss this.
It also brings to mind something else. Afghanistan refugees in Sweden are over represented in sexual assault statistics, and this is causing people to freak out about the rape culture of Afghanistan. And Sweden wants to have re-education camps for Afghanis. Completely ignoring that sexual assault for any group of men is exceedingly rare. Almost all men, Afghanis and ethnic Swedes don't rape anybody ever. When discussing the prevalence of rare events we constantly forget that these are rare events. We constantly forget that nearly all men have clearly never been part of any kind of rape culture.
The number of men responsible for all sexual assaults is a very small group of men.
Either way... I think how they're dressed is neither here nor there.
fancy grown-ups for the evening.
