From The Jakarta Post:
Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, the task force’s chairman, said Wednesday that the definition would be universally applied to all regions in the country, regardless of cultural background.
“We have yet to set a standard definition of pornography on which we will base our work. However, there must be a set of universal criteria to define something as pornographic, one of which will be when a woman wears a skirt above the knee,” Suryadharma told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting with the House of Representatives’ Commission VIII overseeing religious and social affairs on Wednesday.
If the Religious Affairs Minister really considers showing knees to be “pornographic”, then perhaps we should at least be consistent and apply it in a gender-neutral fashion? Let’s ban shorts and swimming trunks for men as well. Even the Afghan Talibans were more even-handed in this regard when they punished a visiting Iranian (male) soccer team with lashings for showing their elbows and knees!
This culture of blaming the victims (of sexual objectification, harassment, and violence) for the indecent thoughts and actions of (mostly male) perpetrators is rather dubious.
The Prayerful Skeptic 