The world dressed to be raped?

An exhibition in the United States shows clothes that wore victims of sexual aggressions to denounce moral judgments against them

"Something pants and a shirt.That day I had to make a presentation ".

"Squa pants, a university shirt and a baseball cap".

"My favorite yellow shirt.I don't remember the pants what were ".

"A black skirt and a red sweater.They were from my roommate, he left me to go to my appointment.I was so nervous.I liked that boy so much...It looked like a nice uncle.But when I told him to stop and started crying, he didn't stop ".

This is how some women were dressed at the time they were raped.His clothes, sad and soulless, now hang from the exhibition hall of the University of Kansas, in the United States, to dismantle the myth that there are women who cause rape.

The exhibition, under the eloquent title, what did you wear?, Collect 18 outfits of 18 victims of sexual aggressions.Next to each of the clothes, it hangs a small panel in which the victim describes in a few lines the clothes he wore when he was raped.

There are even children's clothes, like that summer dress of red, roses and white stripes that a girl, already adult, had when they abused her."Months later, my mother, in front of my closet, complained that I didn't put that dress anymore.I was six years old, "concludes the victim.The outcome of the sample are small and overwhelming stories such as that, together with the victims' clothes, they generate horror in who contemplates them and forces to ask questions...

@Mandoline_blue and a brain.And an Instruction Booklet on How To do His Job.But i doubt he’ll know how to use c ... https: // t.CO/JBYAVIODOD

— Sack Boris - Save Lives⚫️💙 Wed Jul 14 17:32:25 +0000 2021

"Sport shorts and an orange shirt.I went through his house when I finished running.He kept telling me that I was very sexy, and I didn't stop looking for excuses to go.But he didn't let me go, "reads one of those posters, next to the corresponding clothes."A bathing suit.We had spent all day riding in Canoa through the river, I had fun a lot.They entered my tent when I was changing clothes, "says another file.

And on another of the walls of the exhibition hall, always under the heading, what did you wear? Another brief horror story: "I missed a couple of days to work after that.When I told my boss, I asked me just that question.I told him that a shirt and jeans, what is supposed to take a baseball game? ".

The 18 stories that make up the exhibition are real stories of university students from the American West, collected by the University of Kansas team.The exposed clothes, however, are not the ones that the victims carried at the precise moment of being attacked, although they have been chosen based on their descriptions to fit as much as possible to reality."We have not exposed the real clothes of the victims by their own decision, because it can be any shirt, dress or pants, not that shirt, that dress or that particular pants," says Jen Brockman, director of the Center for Education and Prevention of AggressionSexual from the University of Kansas.

What the exhibition seeks is to force the spectators, the vast majorMiniskal or any other garment is inviting to be raped, that before sexual assault the focus must always point to the butcher, not to its victim;that it is not to receive a moral judgment to whom she has been attacked and thus justify the aggressor.

"Many narratives still use that what were you wearing? To blame the victims and validate the aggressors," says Jen Brockman, responsible together with Mary.Wyandt-Hiebert (his counterpart from the University of Arkansas) of this shocking exhibition."Ask what did you wear? He goes free to the one who asks, it costs nothing.We wanted to humanize the answer and return it to the entire community.We want anyone to feel reflected in these clothes and the stories they contain ".

It was in the distant February 1989 when the Lleida hearing issued a shameful sentence in which it was pointed out that a 17 -year -old girl who had been sexually assaulted "could cause, if innocently, to his aggressor because of his clothing".The girl had a miniskirt and, although her aggressor was convicted, the moral reprobation went to her.

But prejudices are still campaigning at ease.In October 2011, the Provincial Court of Murcia ruled that the one who a man described as "fox" his wife does not constitute contempt or insult, but simply "describes an animal that must act with special caution".And before, in 2004, a court in Barcelona acquitted a man accused of assaulting his wife because there was no evidence of ill -treatment and the appearance of the woman."Not only was I fixed, but wore every different day, fashion.