Pornography, Not Modesty, Encourages Sexual Assault

To the editors:

Mikhaela Reid's editorial cartoon (Cartoon, April 27) is egregious for its mindless offensiveness, error and harmful nature. After the rather irrelevant and ad hominem fashion police argument, which effectively mocks the clothing styles of certain orthodox Jews and Christians, Reid goes on to insinuate that modesty is somehow linked to rape.

Is modesty really responsible for rape? Or is there a more obvious cause all around Harvard's campus--namely, pornography? Common sense indicates that a rapist is more likely to be involved in pornography than in avoiding lustful thoughts. Indeed, the facts colloborate common sense: psychological studies and even the Attorney General's 1986 Commission on Pornography point to pornography as encouraging sexual assault.

Reid's cartoon is harmful precisely because it draws attention away from one of the genuine causes of rape: society's glorification of both violence and consequence-free sex. When an overwhelming percentage of movies, songs, advertisements, books, etc. glorify both non-monogamous sexual relationships and violence, is it a surprise that rape is an everyday occurrence? Is it a surprise that rape happens at Harvard when a large percentage of campus organizations use sexual innuendo to promote their events?

Reid is right to warn against a return to the societal stigmas of the Victorian era, but she does Harvard and women a dangerous disservice to claim that modesty fuels rape. The magazine selection at Out of Town News needs to be worrying us a lot more than women in turtle necks.

Lawrence P. Morris

April 27, 1999

The writer is a resident tutor in Mather House.