Indecent exposure and the subversion of masculinity

While I was away, two young women were assaulted for dressing in a manner that offended the sensibilities of the "ordinary man in the streets."

The latter is a legal formulation that defines the collective known as raia, or the citizens, even though it is common knowledge that the men who hang about our streets are no ordinary mortals. They are opportunists who sit and wait for something to happen and seize the moment to gain something for nothing.

It could be the men who offer to push your vehicle when you get stalled in the middle of the road and scorn at you for being broke if you can't pay their extortion fees.

Alternately, this is the group that mills around in the event of an accident, offering all manner of interventions before they can understand the problem.

Put another way, the spectacle of women being adjudged as inappropriately dressed and humiliated publicly with a dressing down, are hardly the problem. It is the men who have nothing to do.

But that's not the problem. It's actually a question of power. For if the men in question were sincere about their intentions, they would confess the problem isn't about the women's over-exposure but under-exposure. They are drawn to them on account of their dressing, and since they stand no realistic chance of encountering those women beyond what their eyes can see, they decide to take things into their own hands.

So the bands of youths assaulting young women in the streets are actually expressing their helplessness; a subversion of their masculinity.