Ugh, here’s a story with classic victim blaming based on clothing…

In Sao Bernando do Campo, Brazil, administrators at a university expelled a 20 year old student for wearing a short dress to class and allegedly acting immorally by doing things like taking the long way to class to increase the number of students who would see her. Hundreds of students heckled and catcalled her. Super outrageously, the university (after expelling her) paid for newspapers ads to publicly shame her and accuse her of immorality.

Of course various places have dress codes, which if justified, should be respected, but there is no indication that she violated a dress code. It sounds like the university officials just did not like her  and the student responses to her dress.

The student has been speaking out against this treatment saying, “It’s a great injustice. I always dressed in a way that makes me feel good and that doesn’t offend anybody. I was always like that and was never recriminated by anybody.”

Since the media caught wind of it (in part because of a youtube video), the university has since conceded to let her return to school, with a police escort. Good. Now civil police in the city are going to investigate the students accused of heckling her. The university said it would temporarily suspend some of them. Good. Sexual harassment is socialized, learned behavior that should not be tolerated.

And the accusations of immorality? Come on… get real. It’s convenient that their type of immorality is something only women can be accused of. Next thing you know they’ll want women to wear burlap sacks over their heads or to be banned from school altogether because they could probably construe being a woman and having female body parts as being immoral…

I’m sure there are plenty of child molesters and rapists and street harassers on campus and in their town (and maybe among their faculty) that they could spend their ad money on to shame rather than on a 20-year-old student who wore a short dress to class…!!  Those are the real crimes of immorality!!