By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 9 years ago

“Stop asking people’s clothing to have sex with you, and start asking people.”

As we well know, there are several things that women can do to avoid sexual assault. Get married, buy special anti-rape underwear, and, perhaps most commonly, wear more clothing. Because clearly someone’s clothing communicates everything you need to know about their willingness to have sex.

In this video, slam poet Anna Binkovitz imagines a dystopian world in which all our intentions were based only on our sartorial choices and makes a novel suggestion: “Stop asking people’s clothing to have sex with you, and start asking people.” An intriguing idea! 

Transcript available at Upworthy.

Maya DusenberyMaya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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