What I stumble upon--A Discussion in Modesty

More often than not, when I stumble upon something on the internet of a religious or anti-religious nature I tend to ignore it. In fact, I avoid it because the views are too narrow and fail to consider any other perspective, or acknowledge any other 'truth' than the limited version they're telling. These perspectives are 'all-or-nothing', and in the process of listening and accepting these perspectives we lose sight of what's really important. There are too many examples for me to point to them all. But, I've come across a couple of articles--blog posts, really--that have been markedly different. And interestingly enough, they were both about modesty.

The crap that is most prevalent out there surrounding modesty is that women must cover themselves to protect men from seeing them as objects. I could make this entire post a rant about feminism or rape-victim-blaming. I'll try to keep my rant in check by saying just that bottom line, this kind of thinking only spreads disease. The disease of blame-shifting, of belittling women, the very disease that leads to women being treated so badly. This kind of thinking takes responsibility away from men, and places it solely on women's shoulders. Even other women blame the female victim. It is that ingrained in our social psyche. And there really isn't a male to female equivalent, which only furthers sexism. Thus, women are not to be trusted--even amongst ourselves--and somehow deserve to be treated as less than our male counterparts.

What a load of crap!

Any man who loves a woman, be it his wife, daughter, sister, or friend, knows we are not "less than". And yet, even friends I've known for years buy into this horrible lie by accepting that it's the woman's responsibility to dress modestly so the men aren't tempted. They point to studies about the parts of the male brain that are active when seeing a woman in a bikini. (The particular location in the brain that is active is the location associated with identifying objects. But all anyone ever does is read the article and stop there. How many people have continued in the study of the brain? Did you know that the reason you get a queasy feeling anytime you see someone throw up, or maybe even just thinking about it, is because you brain is essentially reliving the last time you did it using what's called mirror neurons? And the parts of the brain you use to kick a ball lit up just now when you read the word kick. I bet that didn't make you hallucinate a ball in front of you, and you didn't just kick into thin air. Yes, there is something somewhat valid to the argument here. But fact of the matter is, while a bikini might make more of men's brains light up the object center, it doesn't do it to all of them, and likewise, a woman could be wearing more than just a bikini and elicit the same response.) As if that alone vindicates men from their bad behavior towards women. Women don't get raped because they were only wearing a bikini.

The real problem here is that we've missed the forest for the trees. Modesty is about a lot more than the clothes we wear. These are among the very few articles I've read that I can really get behind.

www.the-exponent.com/un-sexymodest-or-what-a-pope-can-teach-us-about-modesty/ 

http://natepyle.com/seeing-a-woman/

Why? Because if the root goal is about being seen for who we are, not what we're wearing or what we're driving, we have to teach ourselves and our children to look beyond the material; to see, really see the person before us. We can't do that while shaming that person. We can't do that while judging them. We most certainly can't do that while blaming them. The quickest and easiest way to truly see someone, though not the only way, is to follow God's second law: love thy neighbor as thy self. Why has this gone missing from the collective religious conversation? This basic, simple teaching? If you call yourself Christian, how can you forget this one? It's at the very core of everything! For those of you who aren't Christian, well, the Golden Rule, karma, or whatever serves as your moral compass still applies here. It's part of being a good person.


It's time we stop allowing the conversation to revolve around who is culpable. It's also high time we took the focus for women off of being sexy. There's another topic I could rant for hours about. Girls are taught from such a young age to dress and act sexy. That their value is based on attracting men and garnering popularity. While that was painfully true before the turn of the 20th century, on the whole our culture has been very slow to adopt a more modern view of female value. But I'm going to stop there before I start in on a feminist rant.

Read the posts I linked to. Go back and read them again. Search your feelings, not just the knee-jerk reaction, and learn to see people. If we could all just learn to see one another, we could put an end to conflict--both micro and macro conflicts.

Let us take a page from the pope's book. Let's learn to see our neighbors as friends. Let's serve them, wherever they may be, whenever the opportunity arises. Let us teach our children their value is based on what they bring to the world that makes it a better place; and that it's not based on how many Facebook friends they have. Let's teach the world that human value goes much further than a price tag, whether on clothes, or the person themselves.