Burkas, modesty rhetoric and where do we go from here

[bsjkki]

I get the feeling some would keep drawing the line more and more restrictively until they believe burkas a grand plan. Subjugate women in order to ‘help a brother out.’ We’ve come full circle. 
 

 

[Amulek]

2 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I get the feeling some would keep drawing the line more and more restrictively until they believe burkas a grand plan.

Well, at least then some people would be wearing masks.  

 

[Rain]

33 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

What Church-related behavior are you analogizing this to?  (I might actually agree with you, but would like to be sure we’re on the same page!)

That seems odd to me.  I mean, what one does when no one else is around, seems to have little bearing on “modesty” under any definition of the word.

Hmm.  That was my takeaway from your statement that “Men  -or women - may have an initial thought or feeling of attraction. But what they choose to do with that momentary thought or action is completely within their control. No one else is responsible for that.”

First of all, not my statement.

33 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

That seemed an awful lot like you, a female,  making assumptions about how males should be able to handle lust.  Happy to be corrected, if I misinterpreted you.  

Secondly, there is a lot of difference between "suggest that an adolescent boy can simply “switch off” a lustful and not have it recur thirty seconds later" and  "what they choose to do with that momentary thought or action is completely within their control."

I cannot control your thoughts no matter how I try.  You are the only one who can even attempt doing that.  That doesn't mean I think you, me or any teen boy is perfect at it. It takes time and experience, sometimes more time and experience than we have in this life.  

So I don't expect a teen boy to be perfect, but that still doesn't mean I have responsibility over his thoughts - his thoughts are completely his, not mine.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Rain

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Raingirl said:

Men cling desperately to this notion that they just can’t help who they are - because they’re a MAN. What are you guys so afraid of? This ridiculousness has got to stop. 

The hypersexualized masculine cultural ideal is one a lot of guys aspire to because a lot of voices are screaming that it is normal. Curtail it? Are you insane????? Got to amplify!!!

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Please out of compassion for my weakness, stop eating chips, stop referring to them, and throw any you might have away in case I accidentally encounter them.  

I can't. I'm sorry.

Definitely can't handle prawn flavored ones, though. And they got some VERY weird flavors of chips here in the UK. Excuse me. Crisps.

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I get the feeling some would keep drawing the line more and more restrictively until they believe burkas a grand plan. Subjugate women in order to ‘help a brother out.’ We’ve come full circle. 

That is the justification for the burka. The hijab was the norm and a strict reading of the Quran doesn’t even strictly require that. I wonder how it got stricter. I doubt it was women craving it for the texture of the fabric.

[MustardSeed]

1 hour ago, mgy401 said:

or suggest that an adolescent boy can simply “switch off” a lustful thought and not have it recur thirty seconds later.

I have no issues with boys or girls having lustful thoughts or feelings. This is how we were designed. Both males and females! I would be willing to bet that regardless of what I have worn in my life, me walking to the room has likely invited some lustful thoughtsFor men and women. Should I have not walked into the room? Was it wrong for people to have lustful thoughts? The answer to both is no. What a human wants to do with their lustful thoughts Is literally none of my business. I will not make it my business. I’m old now; however, in my youth, My turtleneck and sweatpants would not stop lust.  Someone else’s lust is not my responsibility. However I will say this, I have also been known in my heyday to wear clothing with the intention of getting attention from men. I was following all the “ rules” So I didn’t Believe I was doing anything wrong. Now as I have grown and understand human beings quite a bit better, I understand that my attention to manipulate other peoples thoughts and feelings By showing off was a demonstration of “immodesty” . Note I was following all the rules. I think it’s time to understand better what modesty means, which also invite to the boys to have as much responsibility for this law as girls do. And if belly buttons Are a problem, They need to be a problem for everybody and not just women. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by MustardSeed

[mgy401]

29 minutes ago, Rain said:

[1]First of all, not my statement.

[2]Secondly, there is a lot of difference between "suggest that an adolescent boy can simply “switch off” a lustful and not have it recur thirty seconds later" and  "what they choose to do with that momentary thought or action is completely within their control."

I cannot control your thoughts no matter how I try.  You are the only one who can even attempt doing that.  That doesn't mean I think you, me or any teen boy is perfect at it. It takes time and experience, sometimes more time and experience than we have in this life.  

So I don't expect a teen boy to be perfect, but that still doesn't mean I have responsibility over his thoughts - his thoughts are completely his, not mine.

1.  I don’t think I suggested it was.

2.  This is mostly true, but think is still a little facile and dismissive.  Let me draw an analogy.  Let’s say I walk into sacrament meeting, and I sit behind you with my Yorkshire terrier emotional support animal, and at some point he lets out a quick bark:  under your paradigm.  Now, I think we could both agree that it’s your responsibility to put that out of your mind and re-focus on the service.  All well and good.

But let us say that thirty seconds later my Yorkie barks again.  You are mildly annoyed but then manage to re-focus on the speaker.  And thirty seconds later—again.  And on and on, every thirty seconds, for the next hour.  Every time you get your mind quiet—woops!  There it went again.

First off—welcome to the experience of being a teenaged boy around a scantily-clad female.

Second off, back to our analogy:  Sure, I don’t mean any harm with my Yorkie.  Sure, I have good reason to have it there.  Sure, I have no power to control your thoughts—only you can do that.  But I am ultimately responsible for an ongoing distraction.  At a certain point, knowing full well that my Yorkie is having the effect that it’s having on you and potentially others in the meeting, common courtesy says that its churlish of me to just keep sitting there and smugly telling you that your lack of mental discipline is only problem here.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mgy401 said:

That seems odd to me.  I mean, what one does when no one else is around, seems to have little bearing on “modesty” under any definition of the word.

We are told to buy certain clothes and not buy others.  It isn’t like most of us can afford multiple wardrobes or can change quick out of a thin strap tank top and short shorts to answer the door if it is a man. 
 

We are not told it is okay to buy short shorts to wear at home and to buy longer ones for public use. Those kinds of qualifications are not provided in any instruction I am aware of. Instead it is more be a certain way at all times because you never know who could be watching. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

32 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

I can't. I'm sorry.

Definitely can't handle prawn flavored ones, though. And they got some VERY weird flavors of chips here in the UK. Excuse me. Crisps.

Ah, salt and vinegar…gone are those days (on low sodium diet for Meniere’s now)

[Calm]

27 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

First off—welcome to the experience of being a teenaged boy around a scantily-clad female.

Right, just the same as a barking dog because a boy is forced to keep looking at a woman and can never turn away. 
 

I get there are going to be some instances where a kid isn’t going to be able to stop looking, such as at a teacher.  But how typical is that going to be “scantily clad”?

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[Rain]

10 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

1.  I don’t think I suggested it was.

You replied, "That was my takeaway from your statement" this after you quoted me.  I don't know how else to take it.  I assumed you missed that I was not calm. 

10 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

2.  This is mostly true, but think is still a little facile and dismissive.  Let me draw an analogy.  Let’s say I walk into sacrament meeting, and I sit behind you with my Yorkshire terrier emotional support animal, and at some point he lets out a quick bark:  under your paradigm.  Now, I think we could both agree that it’s your responsibility to put that out of your mind and re-focus on the service.  All well and good.

But let us say that thirty seconds later my Yorkie barks again.  You are mildly annoyed but then manage to re-focus on the speaker.  And thirty seconds later—again.  And on and on, every thirty seconds, for the next hour.  Every time you get your mind quiet—woops!  There it went again.

First off—welcome to the experience of being a teenaged boy around a scantily-clad female.

Second off, back to our analogy:  Sure, I don’t mean any harm with my Yorkie.  Sure, I have good reason to have it there.  Sure, I have no power to control your thoughts—only you can do that.  But I am ultimately responsible for an ongoing distraction.  At a certain point, knowing full well that my Yorkie is having the effect that it’s having on you and potentially others in the meeting, common courtesy says that its churlish of me to just keep sitting there and smugly telling you that your lack of mental discipline is only problem 

 

[mgy401]

21 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

I have no issues with boys or girls having lustful thoughts or feelings. This is how we were designed. Both males and females! I would be willing to bet that regardless of what I have worn in my life, me walking to the room has likely invited some lustful thoughtsFor men and women. Should I have not walked into the room? Was it wrong for people to have lustful thoughts? The answer to both is no. What a human wants to do with their lustful thoughts Is literally none of my business. I will not make it my business. I’m old now; however, in my youth, My turtleneck and sweatpants would not stop lust.  Someone else’s lust is not my responsibility. However I will say this, I have also been known in my heyday to wear clothing with the intention of getting attention from men. I was following all the “ rules” So I didn’t Believe I was doing anything wrong. Now as I have grown and understand human beings quite a bit better, I understand that my attention to manipulate other peoples thoughts and feelings By showing off was a demonstration of “immodesty” . Note I was following all the rules. I think it’s time to understand better what modesty means, which also invite to the boys to have as much responsibility for this law as girls do. And if belly buttons Are a problem, They need to be a problem for everybody and not just women. 

I agree with nearly all of this (subject to the of the same concerns I expressed to Rain in my last post; and I think deliberately inciting/entertaining lust is more problematic than you seem to think).  I think “modesty” is mostly about how you act in light of your knowing that your behavior is likely to elicit a particular reaction amongst your community that tends to aggrandize/draw attention to oneself at the expense of the community’s harmony and progress towards its fundamental priorities.

When it comes to dress and grooming—it’s easy to rely on bright-line rules that in a binary way, tell us if we’re compliant or not (sleeves versus sleeveless is an easy call; but how tight is “too tight”?).  And ultimately, in some respects it doesn’t matter what dress/grooming standards the Church adopts, because the “immodest” among us will always be trying to push the standard (if the Church tells men that swimming shirtless is fine but that they should avoid Speedos, the guy will wear a Speedo; if the Church evolves to being OK with Speedos the guy will switch to a G-string, and so on into realms I dare not contemplate). 

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, mgy401 said:

…because the “immodest” among us will always be trying to push the standard (if the Church tells men that swimming shirtless is fine but that they should avoid Speedos, the guy will wear a Speedo; if the Church evolves to being OK with Speedos the guy will switch to a G-string, and so on into realms I dare not contemplate). 

[mgy401]

21 minutes ago, Calm said:

Right, just the same as a barking dog because a boy is forced to keep looking at a woman and can never turn away. 

Have a lot of experience as an adolescent boy, do you?

Telling a teenaged boy to look away from an attractive, exposed girl is akin to telling a woman with postpartum depression not to cry.  Just because it’s physically possible, doesn’t mean the person has the wherewithal to do it for a sustained period of time.

Edited August 21, 2021 by mgy401

[mgy401]

5 minutes ago, Rain said:

You replied, "That was my takeaway from your statement" this after you quoted me.  I don't know how else to take it.  I assumed you missed that I was not calm. 

 

I think I kept you straight. My post quoted a post from Calm, replied to it; quoted another from Calm, replied to it; and quoted a post from you and replied to it.  The section I directed to you, originated with a statement that you made in this post, no?

[Rain]

16 minutes ago, mgy401 said:

I think I kept you straight. My post quoted a post from Calm, replied to it; quoted another from Calm, replied to it; and quoted a post from you and replied to it.  The section I directed to you, originated with a statement that you made in this post, no?

lol No.  That's not me.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, mgy401 said:

Have a lot of experience as an adolescent boy, do you?

No, but I know what it is like to be shoving food in my mouth while crying because my stomach is killing me because it feels like it is going to burst. 50 lbs put on in 3 months due to a med known for causing compulsive behaviour.  Thanks again, Big Pharma, for convincing doctors such drugs were practically harmless. 
 

I willingly took the drug because I wanted to be a better wife and mother and had to get some sleep; it is also my body that I get to learn how to control again, no one else’s. 
 

Last I checked the Atonement applies to adolescent boys as much as 30-40 year old women who might be tempted to hire a stripper to stuff bills down…whatever.  Thankfully that was not how compulsion showed up in me, but it was not unknown. Gambling as well. 
 

Christ does not unjustly judge us. He knows our limits and our levels of control. He knows when our brains are without law and when they are learning to abide by the law. We were given our bodies for a reason and I don’t think it was to shift responsibility for our behaviours on to others. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[mgy401]

42 minutes ago, Rain said:

lol No.  That's not me.

D’oh!  Thanks for the correction.  🙂

[mgy401]

39 minutes ago, Calm said:

[1]No, but I know what it is like to be shoving food in my mouth while crying because my stomach is killing me because it feels like it is going to burst. 50 lbs put on in 3 months due to a med known for causing compulsive behaviour.  Thanks again, Big Pharma, for convincing doctors such drugs were practically harmless. 
 

I willing took the drug because I wanted to be a better wife and mother and had to get some sleep; it is also my body that I get to learn how to control again, no one else’s. 
 

Last I checked the Atonement applies to adolescent boys as much as 30-40 year old women who might be tempted to hire a stripper to stuff bills down…whatever.  Thankfully that was not how compulsion showed up in me, but it was not unknown. Gambling as well. 
 

[2]Christ does not unjustly judge us. He knows our limits and our levels of control. He knows when our brains are without law and when they are learning to abide by the law. We were given our bodies for a reason and I don’t think it was to shift responsibility for our behaviours on to others. 

1.  First, truly, thank you for sharing that.  It sounds like you well understand the futility of, in a moment of hell, just being told “If you’d just [not] move that one muscle, everything would be okay!”  No doubt it took a prolonged struggle to work through that, and I hope you’re doing better now.

2.  Agreed.  I may be teaching “He Sent His Son” in Primary this Sunday and I love its summation of what the Father asks of us:  “Have faith, have hope, live like his Son, help others on their way.”

Holding people accountable does not mean flat-out refusing to help them, and I worry that some critiques of the Church’s traditional dress and grooming standards are rooted in the mentality that “I don’t have to even think about inconveniencing myself to help you on your way if I find your struggle to be incomprehensible/personally repulsive.”  
 

We can’t do everything for those who struggle, but often it costs is relatively little to do something—even if to our rational minds, it seems like that something is likely to be irrelevant or ineffective in solving the problem.  It’s why I’m wearing a mask to church, FWIW—probably doesn’t do a heckuva lot of good, but some of the people around me are scared and if my wearing a mask makes them feel better it’s really not that much of an imposition.

Edited August 21, 2021 by mgy401

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mgy401 said:

No doubt it took a prolonged struggle to work through that

The compulsion to gorge practically every night went away after 3 months of the drug.  The damage it caused (not just weight gain, but augmenting the disorder) I am still dealing with 20 years later.  Me, my body, my need to control.  If I were to expect the doctors to solve my problems for me, I might as well give up right now.  I would have stopped taking it if there had been another option that allowed me to function (there actually was, one that has much fewer side effects for me, but doctors refused to prescribe it till I moved the the States…love Canada dearly, but in that instance it screwed me royally, but everyone makes mistakes and it wasn’t intentional, it happened, I am not a victim, nor do I get to shift my accountability on to anyone else simply because mistakes were made).

Just yesterday I learned of another misdiagnosis by 4 doctors that has kept me in pain for 25 years…one that may be solved by 5 minutes of simple exercises nightly.  My responsibility to keep looking for answers and finding the fifth doctor who gets it right (I suppose he too could be wrong, but the X-rays were unmistakable).  The Lord gave me my body, it is not someone else’s toy to play with…just mine.

I am looking forward to hearing the Lord explain to me how this all works out for my good.  I trust that it will, I just don’t see how at this point.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mgy401 said:

but some of the people around me are scared and if my wearing a mask makes them feel better

There is a difference between bearing each others’ burdens and enabling unhealthy or even self destructive behaviour.  Allowing young men to blame young women for their moments of weaknesses rather than accepting them as their own is not going to help teach them how to control themselves eventually.  Accepting our weaknesses for what they are is the first step in learning to control them and it may be important for us to accept in some cases it will take more than this life to gain that control.  Giving someone a crutch when they don’t need one won’t help them learn to walk upright.  Forcing someone else to be the crutch, to see one’s purpose is to be a crutch is as unhealthy and unkind.  As long as it is someone else’s fault, we will see ourselves as helpless victims.  At times, we may still be helpless, but we don’t have to see ourselves as victims.

True compassion doesn’t really allow for shortcuts and faulty assumptions of what will help, IMO.  Compassion for adolescent boys and their hormones means helping them understand what their weaknesses and strengths really are, not pretending that part of their life is someone else’s responsibility. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[MustardSeed]

Delete

Edited August 21, 2021 by MustardSeed

[Calm]

deleted

Edited August 21, 2021 by Calm

[bsjkki]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

IMO.  Compassion for adolescent boys and their hormones means helping them understand what their weaknesses and strengths really are, not pretending that part of their life is someone else’s responsibility. 

Exactly.