Letter to the Editor
Males Shouldn't Be Aroused
by Women Athletes
22 February 2007

Also published in Malaysiakini

It has been recently declared that Muslim men are allowed watch women’s sporting events only if athletes in the latter are ‘decently clad’. Particularly baffling is the assertion made by the said mufti that it is imperative that the sporting events ‘do not arouse males’.

This eventually boils down to the issue to which heated debates had been dedicated - what constitutes decent clothing and what is the standard to be followed and applied in various circumstances?

And most importantly, it is the thought that women are the ones to be blamed for arousing males which infuriates us all. As many women’s activists have aptly put, the victims of sexual harassment and rape have been in all size and shapes, of all ages, in all attires and everywhere.

It is a wonder as well as a great disappointment that religious officers could simply free themselves from the responsibilities of preaching and inculcating the value of respect for women in all believers by putting the blame on women for being too enticing and seductive.

They simply do not understand that for all sexual harassment and rapes to happen, it is the mind which conquers people to play the villain.

It is not at all difficult to foresee that if respect for women in this country is not quickly promoted and instilled, we will soon see women losing their status, freedom, rights and value and descending to being a chattel to men - an object to be condemned, despised and discriminated.

LK
WAO Volunteer