Burkas, modesty rhetoric and where do we go from here

[secondclasscitizen]

23 hours ago, ksfisher said:

Why the insult?

It’s not an insult. Girls can dress according to the strength of youth and actually be in the majority possibly. Here… I’m not in utah and Mormons are vastly outnumbered. I can pick Mormons out of a crown by the way they dress and so can the heathens.

Edited August 21, 2021 by secondclasscitizen

[Hamba Tuhan]

11 hours ago, mgy401 said:

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

I do. About ten years, give or take.

Quote

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.

This is the sort of potentially very damaging nonsense that I was exposed to at the MTC. Normalising overly sexualised Western culture by blaming it on hormones sends the wrong message to literally everybody.

[Tacenda]

11 hours ago, mgy401 said:

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.

Nah, not buying it. Just pretend the girl is wearing a clown suit and move on.

[Stargazer]

 

12 hours ago, Calm said:

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”?

Ah, yes. I remember when as a freshman in high school I had this English teacher who was so pretty and sweet that this alone was a good reason to be in her class. I think most of the boys were enthralled with her.  A beautiful person both inside and out, dressed perfectly modestly, and a California girl.  Last year I had the idea to look her up on Facebook to see how she might be doing, only to discover that she had died of cancer the year before. It made me so sad, but at least she had a good life, a number of children and grandchildren, and was well-regarded. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Stargazer

[Tacenda]

16 hours ago, bluebell said:

I think that MS's point is, how do we know where the line is, and more importantly, why does it only seem to exist for women?

The only thing that men aren't allowed to show and still be considered modest are basically their butts and their genitals.  Do men honestly believe that those are the only two body parts that could make things difficult for a woman?  Because one of those body parts probably doesn't even make the top ten list.

I just read a whole thread on facebook where women talked about the male body parts that 'turned them on' the most and one of the top three answers was muscular forearms.  Knowing that, do you now have a responsibility not to show your forearms in public? 

I would say no, but according to the argument presented above, you do.

This line of reasoning often comes from men and I think it's because they haven't given much (if any) thought to the other side of the equation.  Most men in the modesty movement haven't ever been told to be concerned with making sure that they aren't causing someone else to sin with how they are dressing, and they also haven't been tasked with ensuring that the body parts females struggle with the most are covered. 

Most boys and men have only ever been on the receiving end of the 'change how you look to make it easier for those around you' so they've never considered how harmful and dumb it is for those on the other side of the isle. 

Think back to the forearm example above.  Imagine as a teenage boy being publicly shamed for showing your forearms, or having people question your commitment to the gospel or your testimony every time you wore a short sleeved shirt (and having people stop your mom and dad in church to berate and question them for letting you wear it), or being singled out and sent home from a church activity or camp because the sleeve was a few inches too far from your wrists. Imagine that you had really long arms and the style was short sleeve shirts so it was almost impossible for you to find 'modest' clothes with sleeves long enough unless you ordered them online or had them altered by a tailor.

You've never lived in that world but every girl who is a member of the church has and every woman still does to a degree.  But this 'world' is where Mustard Seed is coming from, to answer the bolded statement above.

The bold made me think back on the day I showed up to play church volley ball and was sent home for wearing a sleeveless shirt. Luckily I had a sweet young women's leader that made it not be so traumatic.

[Tacenda]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

How do you know this?  I have heard it and still hear it…it was just a few years ago a woman posted on FB about her teenage boys shouldn’t have to deal with immodest girls exposing their stomachs and such while she was posting pictures of her boys running around in swimsuits.

https://youtu.be/n2S888TocQ0

One of the young men says “why would you date a girl that would show it to everyone?”

Why would “showing it” be a problem in your view?

Another says “when I see a girl who dresses immodestly, it doesn’t create good thoughts in my mind”.

It is old, but not taken down.

Things like this video spawn these guys to go look at porn IMO. Is it any wonder we have such high numbers that are addicted to porn. 

Found this link interesting. https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2014/06/03/modesty-rhetoric-in-church-magazines/

One of the comments ties in with the topic, I c/p'd a portion:

As to the topic at hand, my opinion of the church’s stance on modesty is colored by the mistreatment and degradation of women common among religions and cultures preaching female modesty. Having spent time in Afghanistan, where girls as young as six and seven were forced to wear full body coverings (under the pretext of preventing their becoming unbearable temptations to their male counterparts), I have found myself believing more and more that preaching modesty not only teaches women that they are sex objects (in a way males are not), but also teaches men that they are controlled by their sexual impulses and not by their rational minds. I find both of these teachings abhorrent. If we are ever to reach a point where men and women are social equals, it can only be through consistent treatment. Women are not defined by the amount of skin they show, and men are capable of equality if we simply stop teaching them that being a man means viewing women as sex objects. When an authority figure publicly asks women to cover themselves for the sake of modesty, the underlying implication is that men are only capable of viewing women through the lens of sexuality.

Another interesting article:

https://religionnews.com/2014/06/05/mormon-shoulder-war-whats-stake/

Edited August 21, 2021 by Tacenda

[bluebell]

38 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

The bold made me think back on the day I showed up to play church volley ball and was sent home for wearing a sleeveless shirt. Luckily I had a sweet young women's leader that made it not be so traumatic.

It's so arbitrary too, and that can add to the trauma. 

You were sent home because sleeveless shirts were immodest but in 1994 my best friend and I wore sleeveless shirts on an out of town temple trip and it wasn't even an issue with our leaders (or her dad, who was a bishop).  We were as obedient as they came as teenagers and we would have never worn anything that we thought was immodest, especially not on a temple trip. 

Sleeveless shirts weren't immodest for us.  Apparently they were for you.  That isn't a coherent message to be sending to young girls in the name of God.

[Tacenda]

13 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It's so arbitrary too, and that can add to the trauma. 

You were sent home because sleeveless shirts were immodest but in 1994 my best friend and I wore sleeveless shirts on an out of town temple trip and it wasn't even an issue with our leaders (or her dad, who was a bishop).  We were as obedient as they came as teenagers and we would have never worn anything that we thought was immodest, especially not on a temple trip. 

Sleeveless shirts weren't immodest for us.  Apparently they were for you.  That isn't a coherent message to be sending to young girls in the name of God.

This was back in the middle 70's and I can't remember how immodest my sleeveless shirt was. But thinking that even back then it was a toss up on what was immodest or modest, I guess the person in charge had their own ideas on it and pointed me out. 

[MustardSeed]

14 hours ago, The Nehor said:

We are just that way but we can control our reactions to it. Teenage boys don’t know how at first but they can adapt. I also am convinced that the male only leadership is sometimes ignorant that girls experience similar reactions.

The longer term problem with this is sexual imbalance- we set ourselves up to desexualize girls so when they (we) get married, girls believe (and boys) that sex is mostly for the man. Men feel entitled and women feel obligated.  Nothing is less intimate than this arrangement.  It robs women of their own sexual understanding of themselves and turns sex into a task.  If we stopped this whole setup, we would have much healthier sex lives as married partners IMO. 

[bluebell]

14 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

The longer term problem with this is sexual imbalance- we set ourselves up to desexualize girls so when they (we) get married, girls believe (and boys) that sex is mostly for the man. Men feel entitled and women feel obligated.  Nothing is less intimate than this arrangement.  It robs women of their own sexual understanding of themselves and turns sex into a task.  If we stopped this whole setup, we would have much healthier sex lives as married partners IMO. 

And you end up with married women in therapy struggling with feeling like they need to repent every time they have an orgasm when they are with their husbands.

[MustardSeed]

12 minutes ago, bluebell said:

And you end up with married women in therapy struggling with feeling like they need to repent every time they have an orgasm when they are with their husbands.

Or when they have been sexually abused.  As if the body isn’t sexual innately.  Or when women at 35 finally decide it’s time to know her own anatomy.  What boy has never looked at or touched his own anatomy? If a girl does, she’s deeply ashamed because it’s so wrong we don’t even TALK about it.  Can you see the disparity? It’s deep and it’s a problem. 
 

we have ruined our women’s sexual identity with the idea that men are The Ones with sexual needs and have no control. Women have to control the environment.  So what do they do? They control sex in the marriage and then everyone gets upset about it.  Things need to change. 

Edited August 21, 2021 by MustardSeed

[Tacenda]

Another idiotic video of young men and they are thrusting themselves while telling women to be modest. 

 

[MustardSeed]

I’m going to attempt to circle my ideas back to the original topic.  When we suppress women’s bodies and attempt to desexualize women, as is the purpose I believe of the burqa covering, it’s pretty evident that it is quite ineffective in suppressing men’s sexual drive. It creates a definite hierarchy as well, in silencing women on many levels.  It attempts to make her invisible.  
 

Though we are not as extreme in our church standards, there are many outside the church who Do see our standards as extreme.  We stand out like sore thumbs.  We are in the center of it and can’t always see the impact of our attempts to cover up our women and desexualize them and hold them responsible for men’s thoughts and actions .  
 

In my opinion, in this setup we are destructive to the very institution we uphold as most precious: marriage.  I am all for the changes I am beginning to see and mourn that I missed that window as a youth raised in the era just following the sexual revolution- the purity era, the modesty era etc.  I trust myself entirely to be classy, appropriate, etc when left to my own device.  

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Another idiotic video of young men and they are thrusting themselves while telling women to be modest. 

 

Yeah, that's a hard one.  

I love their intentions, and I'm sure that there were girls that benefitted from hearing this from boys.  And girls need to hear from boys that their virtue and integrity is worth something to these guys--that there are guys out there who aren't going to treat them like sexual objects.  That the boys in their lives actually care about them as a person.  That is a huge thing and I love that these guys wanted to do that.   

But implying that virtue and modesty are interchangable, saying that the boys 'need' the girl's modesty, and otherwise suggesting that modesty is about how it impacts boys and not about the impact it has on the girl, is sketchy.

 

[MustardSeed]

Haven’t looked at the video but my takeaway would likely be, let’s see a video of boys celebrating their own independent virtue. 

[MustardSeed]

I too will take sabbatical with Ahab, I’ve shared enough- thanks

[Amulek]

49 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Yeah, that's a hard one.  

I love their intentions, and I'm sure that there were girls that benefitted from hearing this from boys.  And girls need to hear from boys that their virtue and integrity is worth something to these guys--that there are guys out there who aren't going to treat them like sexual objects.  That the boys in their lives actually care about them as a person.  That is a huge thing and I love that these guys wanted to do that.   

But implying that virtue and modesty are interchangable, saying that the boys 'need' the girl's modesty, and otherwise suggesting that modesty is about how it impacts boys and not about the impact it has on the girl, is sketchy.

 

Were boys responsible for the video? It looks like it was part of a standards night organized by the YW leaders. 

 

[Tacenda]

52 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Were boys responsible for the video? It looks like it was part of a standards night organized by the YW leaders. 

 

Women leaders aren't innocent in all this. I remember watching the movie "Not Without My Daughter", with Sally Field and those women were very stern about showing skin from memory, which can be from how you're raised.

I was even under the impression that I needed my daughters to be modest but should have understood that modest doesn't always mean what you wear. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2761551.pdf Although, I do think a nudist colony would definitely be a difficult experience, so do appreciate clothing. Not because I would be aroused, just don't need to see those parts and am grateful for clothing to cover parts that shouldn't be touching a chair that I sit in, haha.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODESTY AND CLOTHING. No ALTOGETHER satisfactory theory of the origin of modesty has been advanced. The naive assumption that men were ashamed because they were naked, and clothed themselves to hide their nakedness, is not tenable in face of the large mass of evidence that many of the natural races are naked, and not ashamed of their nakedness; and a much stronger case can be made out for the contrary view, that clothing was first worn as a mode of attrac- tion, and modesty then attached to the act of removing the cloth- ing; but this view in turn does not explain an equally large number of cases of modesty among races which wear no clothing at all. A third theory of modesty, the disgust theory, stated by Professor James" and developed somewhat by Have- lock Ellis,2 makes modesty the outgrowth of our disapproval of immodesty in others -" the application in the second instance to ourselves of judgments primarily passed upon our mates."3 The sight of offensive behavior is no doubt a powerful deterrent from like behavior, but this seems to be a secondary manifestation in the case of modesty; and I hope presently to show that the genesis of modesty is to be found in the activity in the midst of which it appears, and not in the inhibition of activity like the activity of others; and that it has primarily no connection with clothing whatever.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Tacenda

[Traela]

My husband served his mission in Argentina in the early ‘80s, when it was very common for women to go around topless, or even take off their shirts in the middle of a discussion.  He got very good at keeping his eyes on their faces.  A compassionate and practical mission president told his missionaries that one inadvertent look was just seeing, a second quick look just confirmed that they saw what they thought they saw.  Anything more was “looking at a woman to lust after her” and should not happen.  I believe this is how we should be teaching all the young men, and women, to deal with their hormones.  

As far as modesty goes, I appreciate that the clothing standards are technically the same for men as for women.  What I do not appreciate is how those standards are not equally enforced.  If girls have to wear clothing that would cover temple garments, then boys should too.

 

[pogi]

Just came across this headline:

“The ‘pin-top’: latest summer trends suggests it’s curatains for modesty”
 

https://apple.news/A2OsV_0nET9GGOqhekLTYIg

 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

Were boys responsible for the video? It looks like it was part of a standards night organized by the YW leaders. 

 

It could have been. Women leaders can be just as culpable. They’re were raised in a certain culture and they often support that culture being passed down to the next generation. 

[Vanguard]

So could someone clarify what should be the approach regards to dress standards in the church? I've read a lot about easing up on giving girls a hard time though certainly there must be a line somewhere? Anybody have a 'line range' they would be willing to articulate? And if so, who would be those tasked with holding that line? And how would those individuals go about holding that line?

[Tacenda]

48 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

So could someone clarify what should be the approach regards to dress standards in the church? I've read a lot about easing up on giving girls a hard time though certainly there must be a line somewhere? Anybody have a 'line range' they would be willing to articulate? And if so, who would be those tasked with holding that line? And how would those individuals go about holding that line?

I don't think any line because they will feel inside if something doesn't feel comfortable, I'm thinking. Joseph Smith said something about governing ourselves right?

Edited August 21, 2021 by Tacenda

[bluebell]

41 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

So could someone clarify what should be the approach regards to dress standards in the church? I've read a lot about easing up on giving girls a hard time though certainly there must be a line somewhere? Anybody have a 'line range' they would be willing to articulate? And if so, who would be those tasked with holding that line? And how would those individuals go about holding that line?

I don't think there needs to be a line very often, and rarely one that an adult needs to enforce.

I'd rather have a girl in hotpants showing up for the activities than staying home.  In my experience, when a girl's relationship with the gospel and Christ becomes personal, then her dress naturally changes.  Sure, we don't want people showing up naked but it's rare (I've never personally seen it) where someone voluntarily shows up to an activity dressed in a way that everyone else at the activity will be uncomfortable with.  Most teens are trying to fit in with their peers.  Those times when a girl has shown up showing too much skin, it's almost always been the girl who works to fix it, because she doesn't want to stand out in that way.

And the ones that do want to stand out in that way, well, we love them and show them they are welcome anyway.  The boys might need to put their hormonal weaknesses on the back burner, and the leaders might have to do some deep breathing and activity mitigation to keep body parts from flying out, but if the girl feels welcomed and loved, and like a daughter of God when it's all over, then it's worth it.

And of course, the reverse would need to be true as well if a boy managed to come to an activity with too much skin showing.

When a line is necessary (like for the temple perhaps, or a stake dance that has dress standards), then the best option would be for the friends of a girl to step in before the event and let her know that the standards will be stricter, and to help her find an outfit that will work (or to help her make an outfit work if she's already there).

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I don't think any line because they will feel inside if something doesn't feel comfortable, I'm thinking. Joseph Smith said something about governing ourselves right?