Russian Orthodox Church Condemns Women's Dress As Inviting Rape & Destroying Lives of Children

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin (right) receiving the Order of St Prince Daniel of Moscow (2nd class) from Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow. Beyond the Veil| Archpriest Vsevolud Chaplin, a top official for the Russian Orthodox Church, has proposed an “all-Russian dress code,” condemning women who leave the house “painted like a clown” and “confuse the street with striptease.”

The church official said recently that a woman wearing a miniskirt “can provoke not only a man from the Caucasus,” which is the predominately Muslim region on Russia’s southern border, “but a Russian man as well.”

Accusing women of inviting rape, Father Chaplin continued: “If she is drunk on top of that, she will provoke him even more. If she is actively inviting contact, and then is surprised that this contact ends with a rape, she is all the more at fault.”

After hearing the ire of Russian feminists who launched a series of protests and petitions against him in his role as head of the church’s social outreach department, Father Chaplin lashed out against women yesterday in a letter. The cleric continued his diatribe, writing that provocative clothing leads “to short-term marriages, which are immediately followed by ratlike divorces, to the destruction of children’s lives, to solitude and madness, to life-catastrophe.” via NYTimes