'Rape Culture' Blamed After a Woman Is Told Her Swimsuit Is Inappropriate

A woman goes to the pool in her apartment complex, and is told that her swimsuit is a bit too much — or too little, to be more accurate. It’s a scene that has played out thousands of times at thousands of pools.

But this is the era of the Social Justice Warrior, when a disagreement can’t just be a disagreement.

So a Tennessee man has claimed that his fiancee being told her swimsuit was inappropriate is sexual harassment and “rape culture”:

“There are a lot of teenage boys in this complex, and you don’t need to excite them.”

That’s what 20-year-old Tori Jenkins says she was told by a leasing consultant at Smoky Crossing apartments in Seymour, Tennessee, after being forced to change her bathing suit, cover up or leave the complex’s pool, according to a viral Facebook post by her fiancée, Tyler Newman.

“I have never really witnessed sexual harassment and/or ‘rape culture’ until today with Smoky Crossing Apartments,” Newman wrote after the incident Tuesday. “Today my fiancée was told that she is less important than how men feel around her. That Tori is less important than a man’s urges to be sexual towards her.”

According to Newman, he and Jenkins went to the pool at the apartment complex where they live with some friends. After “roughly three minutes” at the pool, he says Jenkins was “accused of wearing a ‘thong bathing suit’ and told there were complaints about the way she was dressed.” She then went to the apartment office to address the complaints, where the leasing agent — who was not named in the post — instructed her to look at her body in the mirror and told her she would not want her kids around Jenkins.

Assuming Jenkins was wearing the one-piece swimsuit Newman claims she was, it’s hard to see how it was inappropriate. Unless you’re using Sharia standards.

That said, it doesn’t make it sexual harassment or “rape culture.”

Especially because of one tidbit Newman mentions in the Facebook post:

Further down, Newman added:

When Tori explained that yes, she does indeed have a larger butt than a lot of people, and that 95% of the things she wears ride up when she walks, the woman told Tori that a “normal bathing suit covers your entire butt” and again deemed my fiancée’s body inappropriate.

In other words, the complaints were that her swimsuit was not covering her rear, as it is in the above picture. Further, no one said her body was inappropriate, or that she was going to be raped. I have to imagine that if Tyler wore a Speedo revealing much of his butt, he would receive the same complaint.

So for better or worse, there is a legitimate argument to be made for the leasing agent — and BuzzFeed notes that the pool rules do include a stipulation that “appropriate” attire should be worn at all times.

In other words, Jenkins was in violation of the rules. She didn’t mean to be. But it doesn’t matter.

What we have here isn’t a case of “rape culture” or sexual harassment. What we have is a couple of snowflakes so conditioned to see everything through a lens of outrage that they can’t respond rationally to a common situation.