"If a woman wears a revealing outfit in public, she has no right to be angry if a man looks at her"

Fair.
/17 year old's opinion.

You're making an assumption that one needs a justifiable reason to be angry and that someone needs permission to look at someone else in public. Neither are true. Someone can get mad for the lamest reason you could think, it's their choice, but it's not "your" problem, it's theirs. Likewise, it's rather irrelevant what someone's wearing people will look at them for any number of reasons, not the least of which will often be sexual attraction. But hell, they might have reminded them of someone they knew back home.

If someone got mad at me for looking at them I guess I'd probably just say something smartass like, "I guess you have an attitude problem you need to work on then, huh?"

They probably just havn't had an orc staring at them before. Green skin does that to some people...


Of course, if you explain the mad bonus's you get to Strength and Constitution I'm sure they will warm to you..

I had a long debate about this in college with a really smart girl who wore tight as hell jeans but said any man looking at her ass was objectifying her and was on the road to becoming a rapist. It was pretty amusing.

The most I will give them is that there is a difference between looking a leering. No outfit is an invitation to leer and make someone uncomfortable. If you don't have the social manners and common sense to look discreetly and with class then stay at home and play MMOs.

That said, yes, in general if you wear revealing clothes then you shouldn't get upset when men look at the goods you're showing off. The problem is they want certain men to look at them and get pissy when the wrong ones do, because they want to live in perfect worlds.

Well... never mind that emotions aren't necessarily choices... or that you can't deny anyone their "right" to feel however... I guess it's fair enough.

Now, replace "look" with oggle, leer, stare, peer, or any other description of a rude behavior that might make a reasonable person uncomfortable... and I'd then say we have something to talk about.

I'd say this statement is way too broad. There's looking and there's looking (<-invisible tone change), and then there's all that situation relevant stuff.

For example, once this drunken man just suddenly pulled down his pants (all of 'em) in a bus and was walking towards me. I looked at him, or rather stared, in slight confusion and hoped that he wouldn't come to me. If a woman did the same, I'd react the same way as with the guy, and I think it'd be pretty natural/acceptable to do so. It'd be pretty silly to get angry at people for staring after you pull down your pants in a bus (or similar) (to those interested, the guy didn't come to me, he stopped a few seats before and took a seat)

On the other hand, if that statement covers stuff like wearing a shirt with a big neck hole and some guy just walking up to the lady and staring down into the shirt, then I'd say that in that case it's pretty sensible to get angry.

Slightly special cases, but I think the answer to your questions depends a lot on what the person saying it actually means. I'm assuming that the "no right to be angry" means "getting angry would be a bit silly or misplaced".

I hate being stared at, and will gladly extend my "it's okay to hate being stared at" approval to other people as well.

You're the second person to do this recently, which I hate. In no way did I say women are alone in such things. In no way did I even knock them for it, or use it as some sort of sexist justification. The topic is on women, so I was talking about women. Yes, of course men do the same thing... we're all fucking flawed humans, that's the point.

Your smug little dig for sexism where it doesn't exist doesn't make you look wise or superior, it just makes you look silly. It really depends on how you do it. If you just check out her rack for a moment and maybe another moment later on, no harm no foul. If you happen to get caught then I would just laugh it off. If she gets pissed over it then she needs someone to tell her not to show her boobs to everyone if she doesn't want men to look at them.

If you go up to her and stare at her boobs for an uncomfortable amount of time though, or leer at her creepily, or god forbid make a comment on them, then yeah... you're the asshole there.

truer words were never spoken

Depends what looks mean. Seconds long gaze? Right to be angry. Short admiring glance? Nothing can be said.

Privacy in public spaces is still privacy, whatever you wear.

If you talk about clevage, it was DESIGNED to atract men's looks, this is the whole point :P

Seeing as the whole point of revealing clothing is to get looked at, I'd say it is fair to say that becoming angry when it happens is not appropriate. After all, it was your choice to wear that clothing, at that place, in that company, while fully knowing the harmless (in the case of being looked at) consequences.

That's all that should happen though. Getting angry at rude comments or other unsolicited actions would be perfectly reasonable. Anyone who says "she was asking for it" because of what she was wearing should have no problem with being hit in the face with a baseball bat because they were asking for it...

I think there is always a balancing between a requirement on someone else not to do something (social responsibility) and requirement for you to avoid causing it to happen (personal responsibility). In the OPs case it would be social responsibility to be civil to the woman wearing revealing clothing by everyone else and her responsibility to not wearing revealing clothing if she didn't want to be looked at.

I'm not actually sure if "revealing clothing" is a term that means a very specific kind of thing, but if it's just "clothing that is revealing", then the whole revealing part might be an undesired attribute. For example, when it's really hot outside, I may do outside chores without a shirt or with some really thin shirt. I don't do it to show everyone my still-and-forever-acne-infested torso. :p

...and I know this might sound crazy, but a lady wearing revealing clothing might be wearing 'em without intending to wear clothing that is revealing. Like some crazy vegetarians wear hunting clothes because they're amazing and appropriate for the weather or stuff. :p

I am setting my glance everywhere I want in a public space. No one can rightfully come to me and say "What are you looking at me ?" - I look wherever I want in public spaces. Even if there is say a dwarf or an albinos in the street, I have no problem looking at it for a couple seconds more than I would anyone else. I don't want a world where I cannot socially look at a stranger for more than a few instants.

Now, of course, invading personal space to have a top-down look on the cleavage, or making unsavory comments, is another issue, but that's not what the OP meant.