Denim Day

By Kylie Werner

Denim Day grew out of a 1998 Italian Supreme Court decision that overturned a rape conviction for an assault that happened in 1992 because the victim was wearing tight jeans. An 18-year-old girl was picked up by her 45-year-old driving instructor who then took her to an isolated road, wrestled her out of one of her jean legs and raped her. She told her parents later that night about the incident even though he threatened her with death. Afterwards, he was arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to jail. He later appealed and the case was brought to the Supreme Court where in a matter of days the case was overturned, dismissed, and the perpetrator was released. The reasoning the Chief Judge gave was, "because the victim wore very, very tight jeans, she had to help him remove them, and by removing the jeans it was no longer rape but consensual sex." After, as they were enraged by the verdict, the women in the Italian Parliament launched into immediate action and protested by wearing jeans to work. This encouraged people all over the world who were also outraged and wearing jeans became an annual international symbol of protest against the sexist and destructive attitudes about sexual assault. This case just adds on to the fact that people have a tendency to victim blame in sexual assault cases. This case is just one example, when you look at the collage you see that there are many other cases where what the victim is wearing is used against them and they are said to be 'asking for it.' This case very much reminded me of a few different things we learned about in this course, but specifically the film No Más Bebes as similarly the women in this documentary with all the evidence of there assault got no justice. We constantly see this in history and still today where women are not taken seriously, victim-blamed, and forced into silence.

Sources:

History of Denim Day. History of Denim Day - Campus Awareness for Relationship Education. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.uwosh.edu/care/denim-day/history-of-denim-day

Sterling, A. (2021, November 25). Undressing the victim: The intersection of evidentiary and semiotic meanings of women's clothing in rape trials. Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/7194

Is clothing probative of attitude or intent - university of minnesota. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1412&context=lawineq

Humanities, N. E. for the. (n.d.). The Pioneer Express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [n.d.]) 1883-1928, January 13, 1905, image 1. News about Chronicling America RSS. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88076741/1905-01-13/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1777&index=0&rows=20&words=dismissed+rape&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=rape+dismissed+&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1