So...Gentlemen...here is a list of things I never need to witness from ya'all ever again.
1-Hitting the pause button on a movie that has a certain actress in it and groaning at it as if you were having an orgasm right then and there...in front of ladies and gentlemen.
2-Watching and sharing music videos of people sharing filthy/ misogynist/ chauvinist jokes, or dancing or dressing provocatively...and groaning and or cat-calling together as a group.
3-Street harassment. Catcalling, honking your car horn at, or calling out at women who are complete strangers to you and then driving away before you can face the consequences.
4-Commenting on a celebrities/ models/ "friends" body parts disrespectfully to communicate either disdainful scorn or disgust or objectifying, lustful, arrogant approval.
5-Verbally and socially objectifying the human person and the human body by looking at photos of your "friends" on Facebook and people you "follow" on Twitter and appraising them solely on terms of sexual attractiveness to you, and then sharing your opinion with everybody.
6-Announcing a particular fetish or sexual preference of yours to people. Especially if they did not ask. Especially since it is none of their business. I certainly never asked. What makes you think the world has an interest in your sexual preferences? Yeah, you definitely are never getting a second date...and if my girlfriends ask me how the date went I am going to pass your announcement on to them so they will never date you either and tell all their pretty friends not to date you...who will tell all their friends and relatives...yeah you better move to another parish...or else clean up your act. Which brings me to # 7.
7- Assuming that other women or men have a duty to conform to or care about whatever your particular fetish or sexual preference happens to be, no matter how racist/ unrealistic/ unattainable/ shallow/ demeaning/ filthy/disrespectful/ ageist /unhealthy/ sexist it is.
8- Telling blonde jokes/ fat jokes/ old lady jokes/ fat lady jokes/ fat old lady jokes/ fat old blonde lady jokes/ Hillary Clinton jokes/ pretty much any joke that suggests falsely that only a certain type of woman is a daughter of God whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit but that any female who ages, looks a certain way, disagrees with your views, or acts in a way that you disapprove...is not.
9-Ever asking or answering the question, "Would you do her?"
10- Ever asking or answering the question, "Hot or Not?"
11-Ever asking or answering the question, "On a scale of one to ten, how do you rank her?" Because I have never heard it used for work performance...or for ranking mind or personality.
12- Okay, I take it back. I did hear this gem once, "I give her face a 5, her body a 4, her brain a 4 and her personality a 2." Um...that is demeaning, and objectifying. I will see you in the line for confession.
13-Saying that ladies do not curse, and then proceeding to curse in front of ladies.
14-Making obscene gestures at people, particularly at ladies, particularly because you know that they will not return the gesture because they are ladies. That makes you cowardly as well as immodest and disrespectful.
15- Going to the beach, ogling a girl in a bikini until you are drooling with lust. Laughing at an older woman whose cover-up can't hide all of her baby-weight, varicose veins and cellulite. Teasing or touching inappropriately your date in the one piece that cost her 85 bucks plus shipping. Then proceeding to go on a rant as to why Christian girls don't cover up enough at the beach.
16-Calling women who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "sluts".
17-Calling men who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "fags".
18-Dating and heatedly making out with someone with no promise of or intention of marriage.
19-Running in public without a shirt on and then getting shocked and surprised when girls sharply avert their eyes from you and blush. Then proceeding to act shocked and surprised when you are visually assailed by a woman in running shorts and a sports bra. But not averting your eyes. Again, hypocrisy alert.
20-Looking at a woman lustfully, getting caught at it by someone, and then blaming the girl for what she was wearing.
Oh, you were expecting this list to be directed at women? Perhaps you were expecting another sermon dictating a certain dress code as if it were gospel truth and deviation from it were heresy. Nope. I have heard dozens and dozens of sermons about modesty in my life. Before I hit puberty...all during my High School years...all throughout college I have heard them. In fact, and let me really stress this part-I have heard more admonitions and sermonizing about the virtue of modesty than I have heard of ANY OTHER VIRTUE IN MY LIFE.
Because I was a young woman, the one thing that I was singled out for to get regularly reminded of the importance of was not courage, diligence, charity or wisdom. Not even in college. And I went to two "Good Catholic Colleges". No, the mandatory talks were about Modesty. Most of them were unsatisfying, because they talked so little about Modesty. They talked about sleeve length. They talked about skirt length. They talked about necklines. They talked about rape. They talked about better attracting the "right kind of man". They talked about speaking and dancing and sitting and acting "like a lady". Did the men get the mandatory monthly talks about the importance of modesty? No. Oh, if I am lucky, occasionally I will get a blog post or an article reminding men to avert their eyes. Sometimes they will even say that Modesty is not merely about a dress code. Sometimes they will actually give the definition of the Holy virtue from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Tonight I was pleasantly surprised by reading one that called out the people who are treating modesty as if it were a feminine virtue and not a universal one. It was rare when I was growing up to find a sermon about modesty that did not place 95% of the responsibility for it upon women. I remember once reading a "book of virtues for young women" as a teenager and when I got to "Purity" it read, "Purity is the most important virtue for women, along with Modesty, her handmaiden."
Purity and modesty were and still are, two of my most beloved, treasured and esteemed virtues. But I remember reading that and saying to myself "What?!" And then going down and showing my mother and my sister and my girlfriends and saying, "What about Charity? Isn't Charity the Queen of all virtues? Besides Purity IS Charity! It is seeing with God's eyes. But he does not say that anywhere? What about Humility, the mother of all virtues? What about Courage? What about Wisdom? Is what we heard before wrong? Why is he saying that?"
Then I read further and all that was left in the sermon were admonitions that if we "lost our virtue" we "lost what made us precious". Then it had cautionary tales about how we should avoid flatterers and mistrust men in general because they were probably trying to seduce us. Then it had more cautionary tales about how we should not ever be vain about ourselves because it would make us susceptible to seduction and immodesty. Adjurations to abstain from anything that could lead to fornication. Cautionary tales about girls who were raped by their uncles. Then blaming the girls for trusting their uncles. It was a very eye-opening read for a fourteen year old girl and I never forgot it. I will never forget how sick I felt afterwards. I felt sick like that many many times as I made that transition from girlhood into womanhood. I still see things every day that make me feel sick. The behaviors I listed above are the things that most offend my modesty. They also offend my sense of the sacred, my respect for people, my respect for men, women, children, the elderly. They also offend my sense of justice. They offend my sense of propriety. And the worst offenders I have seen are men. Not women. Yes, I have seen immodest women on the internet, in movies, in TV...all sponsored by men, directed by men, watched by men, participated in by men. I have even witnessed some things from women that I knew that I thought unworthy of their dignity. But most of the offenders that I have met were men. And yet it is women who get the majority of the sermons during the warm weather months. It is women who get told to respect themselves and act like ladies.
Fine, bring them on, I will keep listening to your complaints about strapless or sleeveless dresses, plunging necklines, bikinis, cut-offs, yoga pants, leggings worn as pants...fine. But do it for the right reasons, and do not pretend that you are talking about modesty when you sermonize. If all you talk about is rape prevention, that men are beasts (they are not! And I am sick of hearing it said! I love men!), that if we get treated like excrement it is because of how we dress, our demeanor or the way we talk or how much makeup we wear...do not pretend you are encouraging virtue. "Do not advertise what is not for sale"? What does that even mean? NONE OF ME IS FOR SALE! Did you just compare my body with a commodity? I guess your hands are for sale then, because you are not wearing gloves. "Don't show anything you would not want him to touch"? Oh is that why he keeps playing with my hair? Because I am not wearing a veil? And my body is up for grabs if I am not wearing a burka? You are not encouraging modesty with that kind of talk. You are enabling and justifying immodesty.
I want us to win this culture war, but we are not going to win it if people do not even know what Modesty is. We won't win it if any effort they make at encouraging or fostering lady-like behavior is only nurturing a sick false "purity culture". We won't win it if we enable a culture that makes "purity" the only thing that makes a woman "worth it" and real purity is rejected by men as only for saints or would-be priests. For that matter we are not going to win if sanctity or the priesthood are rejected as unattainable by the vast majority of our men.
No comments:
Post a Comment