Rape By Laura Bates Summary

Do Strict Dress Codes Lead to Sexual Assault?

In Time magazine online, Laura Bates’s article “How School Dress Codes Shame Girls and Perpetuate Rape Culture” talks extensively of first hand experiences with children and dress code violations. She believes that because schools are so strict on dress code for girls especially, there is a message being taught to little boys that when girls are wearing more revealing clothing they are asking to be sexually assaulted. Then this message gets carried with them as they enter college, where a significant proportion of girls report being sexually assaulted. So her main belief is that if dress codes weren’t as regulated based on gender, there would be a decrease in the number of women who are sexually assaulted in college. She thinks that dress codes are inherently sexist, and that girls get in trouble for violating code much more often than boys. Her argument is effective in that it uses many primary source examples of how young girls have been unfairly targeted, but this argument is ineffective because it does not have a way to directly connect the rapes in college to the dress codes that are seen in younger children's education.

Bates establishes her credibility by starting off the article with an introduction which talks about her position at The Everyday Sexism Project.

This makes her seem credible in that she works with people who have experienced either extreme dress code punishments or sexual assault. She introduces her topic by talking about how much is learned in school, and she thinks one of those things learned is that young boys are taught that “Girls’ bodies are dangerous and harassment is inevitable.” Bates uses very inflammatory and drastic descriptions for the way dress code violations are handled. “Shoulders and knees become a battleground, leggings and yoga pants banned and girls in some cases reportedly told to flap their arms up and down while their attire was inspected.” It is made very obvious that the author believes very strongly that there is an issue here, but due to the amount of dramatic and over the top word choice, it becomes difficult to take the information she is presenting seriously.
Throughout the article Bates continues to use quotes from stories received by her foundation. These are stories from children who have been targeted because of dress code violations. The stories enhance the argument because the first hand account gives the argument ethos. Since the examples are coming from kids, the amount of credibility is decreased, because it’s hard to know how much the kids are exaggerating about the stories they are telling. For example, one of the kids says, “I’ve been told by a teacher that the way I was wearing my socks made me look like a prostitute in my first year of school, making me 13,” I found it to be pretty unbelievable because I didn't trust what the kids had to say, just because I am aware of how much children tend to exaggerate. These quotes are her main source of information, Although Bates uses primary source quotes, I found them to less trustworthy than they could’ve been because they are from children.
In the middle of the article there is a video about a girl who goes to Columbia who was raped and didn’t get a very fair trial, so the charges were dropped and she still sees her rapist around campus. This video is ineffective in enriching the argument, because it is not well connected to the rest of the article. It is a well made and effective video on its own, but in the context of the article it doesn’t do much to add to her argument. This is because it doesn’t draw connections between childhood dress code and sexual assault. It doess appeal to pity, because it is obvious how traumatizing the experience was for her. In parts of the video it looks like she is about to, or just finished, crying. There isn’t any mention in the video of children's dress codes somehow contributing to her rape, which is essentially the main idea of the writing. The video was also done by Time, so it could be that it was just placed there to break up the text, not to add to the argument. But due to the close nature of the topic of the video, it seems as it is intended to enhance the argument. If there were to be an introduction or explanation which tied the video to her argument, this would’ve been a successful addition to the argument.
Something that is missing from this article is statistics, or just cold hard facts. The author is so focused on children’s perspectives and anecdotes about particular situations that she lacks to include information from other sources. This causes her argument to be less persuasive because all of the stuff she is talking about is information gathered from her own job and experiences. If she were to talk more extensively about how many women are raped in college and what their assailants thought about their actions, or if she were to bring up studies showing how little people are aware of what constitutes sexual assault and link that information to dress codes and how they are giving boys a misconstrued perspective on women and how they should be treated, the article would make much more sense and be more complete in general.
Throughout the article. Bates fails to mention much about the intention for dress codes in the first place. It is mentioned that “many schools respond to criticism of dress codes by citing the importance of maintaining a ‘distraction free’ learning environment, or of teaching young people about the importance of dressing appropriately for different occasions.” Bates could’ve improved upon the argument by citing actual dress code rules, or by having a direct quote from a school administrator as to why they are so strict. Since the whole idea of dress codes is what she is saying is wrong, there should be more examples of dress code rules that she can argue against, saying how unreasonable they are.
Throughout the text the author complains that school dress codes that are inherently sexist are “setting up a lifelong assumption that sexual violence is inevitable and victims are partially responsible,” but she fails to suggest any way to combat the issue.

The argument starts out as a definition, and doesn’t really move past that. If there were to be more of a proposal suggesting how to change the way dress code works, or to suggest ways to make dress codes more gender- equal, this article would have more purpose. Right now it is just tugging at the heartstrings of parents and some educators without putting ideas for real change into their

heads.
Bates’ article How School Dress Codes Shame Girls and Perpetuate Rape Culture is initially effective in that it appeals to people’s emotions with the use of children’s firsthand experience in being unfairly dress coded, but it fails to create a coherent connection between childhood dress codes and college sexual violence. The author also fails to suggest a way to fix this issue, which causes the article to have no real purpose. Although “It matters very much indeed,” Bates fails to adequately persuade the reader that there is a link between dress coding and sexual violence.

Works Cited

Bates, Laura. “How School Dress Codes Shame Girls and Perpetuate Rape Culture.” Time, 22
May 2015. Web. 02 September 2015.