A good dressing down
Chang Ming-jen’s letter (Letters, April 17, page 8) concerning the Wenzao Ursuline College dress code stands as a good example of the ubiquitous slut shaming and double standards that remain a central feature of Taiwanese culture.
First, why did Chang feel it necessary to mention the French professor’s experience? Was it perhaps to imply that Taiwanese students should feel lucky not to be beaten up for wearing “skimpy” clothing and if so, is this not a clear case of apologizing for the “she was asking for it” line of argument?
Second, why is it better to “dress up?” Does what a person wears affect their ability to use their intellect or study?
Third, aside from the blanket assumption that “students like to wear skimpy clothing,” why does Chang single out “girls wearing hot pants or revealing clothes on campus” as inappropriate?
Finally, Chang’s ideas for handling “the problem” are both laughable and betray a deep misogyny. Chang’s call for girls to mind the length of their skirts or shorts reminds me of a scene from the film Persepolis in which Iranian police stop a young woman as she is running to class. Their reason is that when she runs her bottom moves in an obscene way. To which the young student brilliantly retorts “then stop staring at it!”
The problem is not young female students and their clothing (I also wonder how Wenzao would cope with transsexuals and their dress codes) but the arcane chauvinism that classifies women as objects of desire and seeks to control their bodies and thoughts, both on and off campus, throughout their lives.
In Taiwan, girls are often forced to wear skirts to high school. Aside from the issue of the not-so-subtle sexual fetishization of a girl’s school uniform, if we accept the argument that skirts are cooler and more comfortable to wear in the summer than trousers, why are boys not allowed to wear skirts?
How a person answers that question can say a lot about how they define male and female, masculinity and femininity. The issue of dress codes is complex and rooted in social constructions of sexuality, gender and identity.
In principle, I have no problem with a dress code for students as long as it is fair, applied equally to all and consistent. The problem is how to introduce dress rules for campus.
If you claim it is “to help students in the outside world” as Wenzao administrators did, all you teach students is that with power comes the ability to be deeply patronizing and inconsistent. If you claim it is to establish a certain aesthetic value on campus, then you need to establish who this rule applies to and when it will go into force.
Since the dress code was not part of the university’s regulations when the students signed up, can they be contractually obliged to obey new rules retroactively? Is this new rule going to be published clearly in the university in all its promotional and marketing material so that prospective students include it as a criterion for judging whether this university is the best fit for them?
If the answers to those questions from the university are, respectively, yes and no, then I think the students have every right to just go ahead and ignore the rule.
Finally, if we are honest, the intent of this rule is as much about regulating sex and female sexual power on campus as it is building a better reputation for the university off campus.
Separate dorms for men and women on many Taiwanese campuses also sends the message that they can’t be trusted to be together. To the university, the students are still children who require it’s patronage, wisdom, tolerance and guidance if they are to become fully functioning adults in the “outside world.”
If Wenzao wants to implement a dress code, then I suggest the following: It should publish the code in all university prospectuses and marketing material at least two years before introducing the rule and it should also require students to read and agree to the dress code as part of a wider, formal legal contract they will sign to enroll as a student.
In addition, dress codes should be drawn up for both male and female students but with no restriction on individual choice of use, current students should be exempt from complying and finally, a dress code for all members of university staff should chosen by the students.
Ben Goren
Taichung
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS