In defending Harvey Weinstein, Donna Karan exposes how victim-shaming is universal

Fashion designer Donna Karan recently made a comment that would not have been out of place in a khap panchayat in rural India. Commenting on the allegations of sexual harassment against film producer Harvey Weinstein, Karan said women "were asking for trouble" when they dressed or behaved in a certain way.

While Karan apologised after her comments generated massive outrage, including calls to shun her products, the statements once again bring into focus that we might be closer to colonising Mars and yet years away from treating women as equals on Earth.

According to a Los Angeles Times report, Karan, speaking at a red carpet interview, said: "You look at everything all over the world today and how women are dressing and what they are asking by just presenting themselves the way they do. What are they asking for? Trouble."

The same report quotes Karan as saying: "To see it here in our own country is very difficult, but I also think how do we display ourselves? How do we present ourselves as women? What are we asking? Are you asking for it by presenting all the sensuality and all the sexuality?"

Et tu, Karan? That the comments come from a fashion mogul, who has spent decades designing clothes that supposedly make women "ask for sexual harassment", make them all the more troublesome, driving sane people to gnash their teeth and tear their hair with frustration.

I will no longer buy products associated with Donna Karan following her comments on sexual assault victims.

— Madison Gesiotto (@madisongesiotto) October 10, 2017

Will be tossing all my @dkny clothing. Donna Karan says women deserve to be sexually assaulted beause of the way they dress. #boycottdkny pic.twitter.com/HIsOjPbzzr

— Will Byrd (@WilliamByrd055) October 10, 2017

Donna Karan, a man should be able to control himself regardless of what a woman wears, RAPE/ASSUALT IS NOT THE VICTIMS FAULT. Shame on you.

— Steph (@stephi1978) October 10, 2017

The allegations against Weinstein are serious, coming from a string of actors, including Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow. What emerges from the stories is that the film producer allegedly spent decades sexually harassing women he was working with. Weinstein's wife, Georgina Chapman, has decided to leave him. His company - The Weinstein Company - has fired him.

But Karan's comments show that men accused of sexual crimes will always find defenders, and the easiest way to do that is by shifting the blame on the woman.

Let us go over the basics of sexual consent and the bodily dignity of women once again.

No, a woman is never "asking for it", unless she actually asks a man for sexual relations in so many, literal, words. A woman's clothes can be an indicator of many things - her mood, her personality, her financial status, but never of her sexual availability.

Every time we excuse a man for staring at a woman in a short dress, we are reducing the woman to just an object of sexual desire. If a man catcalls a woman in a revealing outfit, emboldening him is the confidence that most of the society agrees with him, that by wearing that outfit, the woman has made herself available to sexual solicitations.

A man in a Delhi Metro would not boldly stare at a woman's legs if he knew that the respectable uncles and aunties in the train would condemn him for staring, and not the woman for wearing that outfit.

The oft-trotted advice - that men are "like that only" and it is a woman's duty to cover herself up so as not to provoke him - is deeply offensive to men too. It suggests that men have no control over their desires, that their civility and morality are slaves to their libido, and hence it is left to the women to not wake up the beast within men.

In a case like Weinstein, the harassment of women is not just about sexual desire, but also about power. A man in a senior position - employer, senior colleague, professor - feels he is entitled to harass his subordinate, that she is fair game for his sexual advances.

This entitlement has been put into his head by millenniums of patriarchy and its lingering hangover on society, which is ever-ready to jump to the aid of the poor man who succumbed to his natural desires, and to condemn the woman who led him on in the first place.

Karan has apologised, saying "sexual harassment is not acceptable and this is an issue that must be addressed once and for all regardless of the individual".

Truth be told, sexual harassment will not end until society continues to criminalise the victim.

Also read: How Indian men perpetuate a rape culture