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Showing posts from March, 2016

The Fabric of Blame

It always starts with fabric. Not the fabric of culture or kindness—no, the literal kind. The kind stitched into skirts, cropped into tops, wrapped or not wrapped around skin. Because apparently, what you wear is the consent you forgot to give. And how convenient—how comfortingly lazy—that makes things for those too bored to question their own entitlement. I've overheard it in barber shops, read it in comment sections, seen it slide past like an afterthought in Sunday dinner conversations: “Eh, kasi naman, tingnan mo suot.” As if cloth is code. As if cotton speaks clearer than the person wearing it. We have managed to build an entire theology around knees, a doctrine around waistlines, an ethical system that begins and ends at the neckline. And the sermons are always the same: If you don’t want to be looked at, don’t be visible. But here's a thought: maybe the problem isn’t that we’re showing too much skin—it’s that some people were never taught to look at skin and see ...