{"id":22067,"date":"2014-06-17T05:05:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T09:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=22067"},"modified":"2014-06-17T08:09:58","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T12:09:58","slug":"the-female-body-a-source-of-contamination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2014\/06\/the-female-body-a-source-of-contamination.html","title":{"rendered":"The Female Body, a Source of Contamination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I recently came upon a blog post titled \u201cHow the Modesty Police Are Hurting My Son<\/a>,\u201d in which blogger Ami writes about trying to teach her son that he is responsible for his own actions even as those around her tell him that girls are responsible for covering up so as to \u201cprotect\u201d him. As I looked through the mostly positive comments on her post, I was struck by this one<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s great that you teach your child all these things\u2014and I think it\u2019s great that parents teach their children modesty. And sometimes it is to protect boys\u2014they can\u2019t un-see a girl\u2019s body once it\u2019s been seen barely clad<\/strong>. Many parents teach their children not to use drugs, yet that same child grows up and becomes an addict. So I understand when people say they are doing it to protect others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now of course, this comment strikes at the heart of the entire point Ami was trying to make\u2014that her son is responsible for his own actions, and that telling him that it is girls\u2019 responsibility to cover up to \u201cprotect\u201d him suggests that girls\u2019 bodies hold some sort of power over him that he is helpless to resist. But there is so much more to unhash here than just that.<\/p>\n

As another reader\u00a0pointed out in response<\/a>, \u201ca girl\u2019s body is not an obscene object.\u201d People arguing in favor of modesty often put women\u2019s bodies in the same category as drugs or alcohol. These individuals objectify women\u2019s bodies and treat them as agents of destruction, discussed in the same sentence with alcoholism and drug addiction. More than this, they view the female body as a source of contamination<\/strong>\u2014\u201c[boys] can\u2019t un-see a girl\u2019s body once it\u2019s been seen barely clad.\u201d In other words, women\u2019s bodies have to be covered up lest they forever contaminate the minds of good, god-fearing young men. Except that this is not in fact how it works.<\/p>\n

Evangelical modesty teachings are grounded in the evangelical belief that lust\u2014which they tend to define as\u00a0\u201cdesiring sexually what God has forbidden\u201d\u2014is a sin on par with adultery or premarital sex. This belief is, quite frankly, a huge problem, because teenagers can\u2019t not think about sex and the result is a great deal of self-loathing. Rather than teaching young people how to handle their sexual urges in a healthy manner\u2014being safe, respecting others, not being pressured, etc.\u2014evangelicals tell them their sexual urges themselves are sinful and wrong.<\/p>\n

Modesty tends to be aimed only at girls because, within evangelical culture, boys tend to be seen as sexual beings while girls are seen as emotional beings. Girls want romance, the line goes, and boys want sex. This is starting to change as some parts of the evangelical culture are realizing that girls, too, are sexual, but at this point modesty teaching is still aimed at girls for the sake of \u201cprotecting\u201d boys. Protecting them from what, exactly? Protecting them from having sexual thoughts, of course. Because covering girls up will keep boys from having sexual thoughts, right?<\/p>\n

I remember talking to my now-husband about modesty, and pointing across the dorm lobby at a friend of mine as an example of dressing modestly, in her turtle neck and jeans. He laughed and told me my friend was just as sexually attractive in her turtle neck and jeans as women wearing short shorts and camisoles. So let me put it like this\u2014it is not possible to cover up teenage girls such that that teenage boys will not think lustful thoughts about them<\/strong>. And vice versa. Can we all just get it through our heads that preventing teenagers from having sexual thoughts about other teenagers is a no-go?<\/p>\n

But what about the idea that once a boy seeks a girl\u2019s scantily-clad body he can\u2019t \u201cunsee\u201d it? Isn\u2019t that image emblazoned on his brain forever after that one moment? Well again, to reiterate, it is not only scantily-clad female bodies that result in boys having sexual thoughts. If we want to keep teenage boys from having images of attractive female bodies emblazoned on their brains, we\u2019re going to have to segregate them out of society, send them to special boys\u2019 schools or the like. But also, I think these people are vastly underestimating the power of teenage boys\u2019 imaginations. Think you that teenage boys will not conjure up for themselves what a naked female body looks like? Frankly, it\u2019s not all that hard to guess what a woman looks like underneath her clothing. Even when clothing is especially \u201cmodest,\u201d the human imagination fills in the gaps.<\/p>\n

It is not possible to keep female bodies from \u201ccontaminating\u201d male minds<\/strong>. It is not possible because the \u201ccontamination\u201d does not come from the female body\u2014it actually comes from the male mind.<\/strong> Teenage boys are wired to think lustful thoughts and have sexual urges. It is inside them. That is how their brains work. Changing the external factors will not change that internal reality.<\/p>\n

Note: Some teenage boys are in fact wired to have lustful thoughts about other teenage boys (and the same with teenage girls), and that some teenagers are asexual and may not in fact be wired to have lustful thoughts or sexual urges.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People arguing in favor of modesty often put women’s bodies in the same category as drugs or alcohol. These individuals objectify women’s bodies and treat them as agents of destruction, discussed in the same sentence with alcoholism and drug addiction. More than this, they view women’s bodies as a source of contamination—“[boys] can’t un-see a girl’s body once it’s been seen barely clad.” In other words, women’s bodies have to be covered up lest they forever contaminate the minds of good, god-fearing young men. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[131],"class_list":["post-22067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-purity","tag-modesty"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Female Body, a Source of Contamination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People arguing in favor of modesty often put women's bodies in the same category as drugs or alcohol. These individuals objectify women's bodies and treat them as agents of destruction, discussed in the same sentence with alcoholism and drug addiction. 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