“Don’t use that tricycle. Myanmar will face a drought if any passengers take that tricycle.” 177 However, the exclusion of women from civic space is usually less direct than this. Women’s dress is more strictly regulated. Participants identified the fact that women’s dress is often more regulated in Myanmar than men’s dress. This includes in universities and schools, at religious sites and, in effect, in the media. While it is common for school management in other countries to regulate the dress code within schools, women in Myanmar are forced to wear Burmese ‘traditional’ longyi and yinbong dress in universities too, regardless of their ethnic background. Whereas some universities such as Yangon University of Foreign Language (YUFL) allow men to wear non-Burmese dress such as trousers, all universities require women to wear traditional dress. Each student is checked at the entrance to the university. According to participants, some women feel “embarrassed and depressed” 178 about being forced to wear certain clothing, but those women who do not wear traditional dress are excluded from university, not allowed into classrooms or to sit for exams. Women’s dress is also regulated at religious sites. While signs show dress codes for both men and women, the participants believed that in practice men are often able to ignore the codes, whereas women are urged to follow them in order to “keep the peaceful mind of saints and congregations from the lust caused by seeing women’s bodies.” 179 A similar rule applies inside military compounds where the families of servicemen live under the rule “Clothes that divert from Myanmar culture are prohibited.” Participants said that women who don’t obey such restrictions in the military compound are insulted by even the lowest ranked soldiers. At other times, the women’s husbands or fathers, who are soldiers, have been warned or had action taken against them by senior officers, such as forcibly transferring them to distant rural areas. The participants were concerned that under these threats, women’s families enforce strict dress codes and other military rules using domestic violence. Women are punished for expressing their sexuality. The participants agreed that any woman expressing her sexuality, sexual orientation or sexual identity is often ridiculed by members of society and excluded from civic space. According to several participants, humiliation and other forms of gender-based violence are common in schools, starting with the teasing of girls by fellow students and teachers. When girls express their sexual identity, this humiliation can escalate into sexual violence used to punish such girls, sometimes with girls being forced by their male peers to “act and dress normally”. 180 According to the participants, complaining is likely to make the situation worse as teachers warn girls that they will be expelled if they insist on not wearing “appropriate” women’s dress. Several of the participants working in the area of sexual rights stated that girls often drop out of school early purely to avoid the continuing humiliation, which sometimes, as reported by one participant, includes being stripped in public: “My teacher pulled off my clothes during break time at school saying ‘You are a girl and must wear a girl’s longyi, so stop wearing a man’s longyi”. 181 The participant left school shortly afterwards as a result of this public shaming. The participants explained that sexual violence as a punishment for the expression of sexuality is common not only in schools but also in public spaces. In one case, a woman was beaten up by 30 men in Pyay market for expressing herself in a manner that they ARTICLE 19 - Censored gender: Women’s right to freedom of expression and information in Myanmar - Page 67