(You may be like “hey, where is Monday Roundup, that was my favorite part of the week?” If so, you are weird. Also, neither Noah or Ozy has much of anything new this week, as we were both busy. Noah’s busy was a lot more fun than my busy though.)
No Longer Quivering, which is a seriously excellent blog devoted to a creepy-as-fuck social movement focused around how God will hate you if you don’t have twenty kids and devote your life to your husband, has ran an interesting article about how modesty hurts men.
- It teaches men to be afraid of women because their sexual power is too great to be resisted.
- It teaches men to despise women and hampers their relationships.
- It teaches men to be afraid of their own bodies.
- It teaches men to control and criticize women in order to protect themselves.
- It teaches men to be paranoid about their sexual orientation.
- It teaches gay men that they don’t exist.
The modesty doctrine I find absolutely fascinating because of how it negotiates the Madonna/Whore and Knight/Beast dichotomies. It has a firm position on the Madonna/Whore dichotomy: you’re supposed to be a Madonna. Instead of negotiating sexy-but-not-too-sexy, girls are instead given a single set of rules: be completely unsexual, and your One True Love will come.
On the other hand, men are taught “you’re supposed to be a Knight, but you are a Beast. It’s the responsibility of women to keep you from being a Beast.”
God. Can you imagine how much that fucks you up?
To be taught that your sexuality is uncontrollable and that the sight of a breast or a thigh will drive you to rape. To not be given any space at all for honest sexual attraction for fear that the inner Beast will be unleashed. To be trapped between an American society that calls virginal men fags and a Christian subculture that calls sexual desire sinful. To be taught that the one out is to blame women for so much as wearing nice jewelry or shorts on a hot day, because if they just didn’t provoke your sexual desire you wouldn’t have to deal with it.
(I’m going to pause here to say that I have no problems with any fashion choices, including those generally considered “modest,” nor do I have any problems with any consensual, emotionally and physically healthy sexual choices, including virginity until marriage, refusing to watch porn, not masturbating, etc. I speak only about the cultural narratives that prescribe these choices, not the choices themselves. Do what makes you happy.)
The Modesty Doctrine fucks up everyone. That’s Ozy’s Law, right there.
Of course, the number of even evangelicals who have to deal with the Modesty Doctrine is fairly small. No matter how horrible it is (and it is horrible), it’s a societal group about as small as bronies are. However, it’s still interesting because it provides in a hyper-concentrated hyper-toxic form a lot of cultural assumptions about how sexuality works.
You notice there’s no Modesty Doctrine for men. You tend not to see women explaining that you should skip those tight pants because they show off your ass, and you have to wear long sleeves so we can’t see your arms, and don’t you dare take your shirt off in public do you want to be raped? That’s the Myth of Men Not Being Hot, right there. As if women can’t experience lust for men!
And the Modesty Doctrine itself occurs throughout American culture. Just look at the reaction to SlutWalks. There are a lot of people being reasonable and realistic and “you know what men are like” and “don’t you agree that there are some outfits that increase your chance of being raped?” and “you should just watch out for your safety” and making metaphors about wallets and inner-city neighborhoods.
What they don’t seem to realize is that the Modesty Doctrine is the obvious final point of that line of thought. To quote the incredibly badass Holly Pervocracy:
So what if we did [stop dressing like sluts]? It would go one of two ways. Either some women would still be in short skirts and they’d have even bigger targets painted on their backs, or all women would start wearing pants… and then the harassment would focus on women whose pants were deemed too tight, or too colorful, or too low-cut, or whatever. In a crowd of prudes, people would still go after whoever seemed “sluttiest” relatively–you can see this happening in schools with uniform codes, where the slightest variation in girls’ shoes or the way they wear their uniform sweater can make the difference between “cool” and “nerd”… and “slut.”
Or among Christians who believe in modesty, where wearing nail polish or sandals could mark you as immodest and a stumbling-block.
That’s not fair to women OR men. Women should be allowed to wear what they like, and men should be expected to be able to experience sexual attraction without doing something they believe is wrong. Men are not automatons powered by their cocks. Men are human beings who are capable of having sexual values and following them– even if there’s a lady in a short skirt involved.
Right on! Kudos for writing this – it proved to be a breath of fresh air after running into far too may examples of the opposite viewpoint, wherein MRAs keep saying how women are downright “abusing” them by flaunting their damned sexuality in front of they’re despoiled eyes.
@Ozy: On the other hand, men are taught “you’re supposed to be a Knight, but you are a Beast. It’s the responsibility of women to keep you from being a Beast.” God. Can you imagine how much that fucks you up? Like Danny, I don’t have to imagine. I’ve been through it. I think a lot of (most?) boys/men go through this in our culture, and get fucked up to greater or lesser degrees because of it. Our culture in general is already saturated with these messages; you don’t have to go to creepy cults to find it. The whole… Read more »
Yeah, see we’re not that removed from the absolute psychoses of Victorian times where tablecloths had to go all the way to the floor because (allegedly) if men saw the leg of a TABLE they might be consumed with uncontrollable lust.
Yay, I am so glad you guys are mentioning NLQ. They are a most interesting group and necessary group indeed.
Keep spreading the love!
Iranian-Swedish comic artist Marjane Satrapi actually explained in her autobiographical graphic novel that in Iran, men must where long sleeves and long pants and a beard, since showing off arms, leg or chin is supposed to arouse women.
Arms! I remember a friend in 8th or 9th grade telling me how much she liked looking at guys who rolled up the sleeves of their work shirts.
With flamethrowers? Or just take of and bombard the site from orbit, which I’m sure will win hearts and minds. All kidding aside, St. Augustine can fuck right off, what does it matter who I woo? Or in my case fail to woo? I think the worst part is how this reinforces oppositional sexism, men and women are so different that they must be kept separate and must not talk in any meaningful way about anything other than… something I’m sure.
Ozy, you left out the most important question: aside from our actions as individuals, HOW DO WE BURN THE MODESTY DOCTRINE TO THE GROUND?
On point #5, the modesty doctrine doesn’t teach any such thing, at least not directly. Rather, they “learn” that only from picking up some additional toxic attitudes that have little or nothing to with the modesty doctrine but interact with it in bizarre ways. (Things like “gay is bad” and “if you’re not out sexing women you’re gay”.) Get rid of even half of those and point #5 wouldn’t exist.
God. Can you imagine how much that fucks you up?
Not only can I imagine but I can recall actual experiences of how fucked up it makes you.
To be trapped between an American society that calls virginal men fags and a Christian subculture that calls sexual desire sinful.
If it were just those two it might not be so bad. There’s also saying that virginal men must be defective in some way, virginal men are pathetic losers,etc…. (In short there is more to virgin shaming guys that homophobia, as I’m sure you know.)