By encouraging women to wear ‘sexy’ costumes, Hugo Schwyzer writes, we’re selling both men and women short.

It’s a Halloween perennial, as predictable as the warnings about razor blades in candy apples, or endless reruns of Nightmare on Elm Street: outrage over sexy costumes for girls and women.

The latest tiresome iteration comes from Charlotte Allen, writing in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. Allen, an editor at the Manhattan Institute, wonders why so many advocates for women and girls lament the sexualization of Halloween—and in almost the same breath, support the SlutWalk movement. Allen sees “irony” and “contradiction” here, missing the essential coherence of these two positions.

If you read the many excellent critiques of sexy costumes for girls and women (here’s one that Allen cites, and here’s another excellent one from Adios, Barbie), what you’ll notice is that those of us who advocate for girls aren’t primarily concerned that girls are showing too much skin. Rather, the problem lies in the compulsory sexualization that is so much a part of today’s Halloween celebrations for teens. A lot of us are more upset by the absence of options than by the absence of fabric; we know that pressuring girls to act sexy is not the same thing as encouraging them to develop a healthy, vibrant sexuality that they themselves own. I don’t have a problem with “sexy bar wench” costumes; I have a problem when those sorts of costumes are the only ones young women are expected or encouraged to wear.

SlutWalk, on the other hand, was about challenging all of us to recognize that sexual assault has nothing to do with what women wear. Whether in a miniskirt or a burqa, women have the right to expect men—not just in general, but every man—to exercise self-control. Women have the right to be publicly sexual (or, perhaps, to play awkwardly at being sexy, as some will do on Halloween) with the expectation that the justice system will not hold them complicit in their own victimization if they are assaulted.

But where Allen really falls down is in her staggeringly low opinion of men.  She peddles the myth of male weakness shamelessly. It starts simply enough:

The reality is that men’s sexual responses are highly susceptible to visual stimuli, and women, who are also sexual beings, like to generate those stimuli by displaying as much of their attractive selves as social mores or their own personal moral codes permit.

That’s fine as far as it goes, though she gets it only half right: women are visual creatures too, though Allen’s Victorian prudery won’t cop to that now well-established truth. (Does Charlotte actually know any teen girls?  Has she ever asked them if they check out hot guys—or other young women?)

But there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be wanted. There’s nothing wrong with inviting others to want you. Men are neither as simple nor as helpless in the face of desire as Allen (and the other purveyors of the male myth) would have us believe. We can be turned on and still not rape. We are—even when we’re filled to the brim with teenage testosterone—always capable of distinguishing between desire and action, between wanting and doing. That’s not just true for the few and the particularly virtuous. It’s true of all save the genuinely sociopathic.

It’s not too much to ask men and boys to “look, but don’t touch.” A young woman who wants to be noticed, even desired, without being assaulted isn’t making an unreasonable request. She’s not defying the facts of biology. She’s asking to be watched, appreciated, and left unharmed. Saying that she’s asking to be raped is like saying that a talented actor who portrays an unsympathetic villain particularly well on screen is asking to be attacked by an outraged member of the movie-going public. There’s a difference between a performance and an invitation, and it’s not that hard—really, it’s not—to distinguish the two.

Allen drops a bigger whopper in her next paragraph:

The other reality that feminists tend to deny is that rape and sexual desire are linked. Rape, in that view, is a purely political act of male dominance. This ignores the fact that the vast majority of rape victims are under age 30 — that is, when women are at their peak of desirability.

Um, Charlotte?  First of all, younger women get raped because they are more vulnerable. Girls under 18 are at even greater risk of rape than women 25-29.  Perhaps Allen believes that girls peak in desirability at 16?  Because that’s when they peak in vulnerability to sexual assault. Indeed, 9 year-olds are more likely to be sexually violated than 29 year-olds. Rapists don’t rape based on uncontrollable lust—they rape based on a potent cocktail of rage, opportunity, social reinforced entitlement, and lust. They rape the ones who are easiest to rape, not the ones who turn them on most.

None of this means that a parent should feel compelled to allow a 13 year-old to dress up as a prostitute for Halloween. Parents and other concerned adults ought to remind girls that there’s a difference between playing at being sexy and the authentic expression of sexuality. Adults need to push hard for a greater number of options for girls, so that fewer of them feel pressured to perform “sexiness” every October 31. At the same time, responsible adults need to remind girls and boys that it’s OK to want to be wanted, and it’s OK to want. But it’s never OK to use your own desire as an excuse for hurting another person.

I’m troubled that younger women don’t have a greater selection of Halloween costumes. But I’m far more troubled by the lie that boys and men cannot exercise control when they see a “sexy nurse” on the street or at a party. The absence of choices sells our daughters short; the myth of male weakness does the same to our sons.