Why What Women Wear Matters

[Lady Julian]

(08-09-2012 01:05 AM)lucrezaborgia Wrote:  Modesty is a state of mind, not of clothing.

Agreed. I have a friend who spent three months teaching English to women in conservative Muslim countries. In a world where everything is covered for modesty reasons, the women are free to breastfeed publically; nobody thinks a thing of it. It's the butt and the arms (big whoop) that are sexual there.

[Lady Julian]

(08-09-2012 08:51 AM)boymom Wrote:  "Dear women,
Follow more rules so I don't have to.
Sincerely,
Men."

Yes, I skimmed the first page and reached this conclusion pretty quickly.

[Historian]

(08-09-2012 09:14 AM)Persnickety Polecat Wrote:  I once heard an entire sermon preached on Mat. 5:28, "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

No, wait, not the ENTIRE verse, just one word: WITH. The pastor insisted that if the man lusted after her, it wasn't the MAN'S sin alone but both of theirs because the Bible specified he'd committed adultery WITH the woman. So every woman who had ever been lusted after was an adulteress ... talk about having guilt heaped on your head for things you had literally no control over. And then add in the fact that some men will lust over you regardless of what you are wearing/doing/etc., and you're pretty much screwed (apparently literally, according to that pastor's interpretation).

So glad my boys aren't being raised in that woman-hating environment.

WOW

So, then I guess the extreme practice in some Muslim countries of punishing a woman who has been raped is totally justified! And clearly you can see the whole WITH thing is true, because their women are covered head to toe and it still doesn't seem to stop male lust. So there must be something just sinful about women as a species.

That explains everything...

[Historian]

(08-09-2012 09:20 AM)Persnickety Polecat Wrote:  

(08-09-2012 04:28 AM)lucrezaborgia Wrote:  What is provocative tho? Who decides that?

Exactly. I can get a LOT more attention from my husband while wearing one particular little flippy dress (that, I might add, would most likely pass in EVERY fundy U) than a pair of tight jeans and a stretchy tee. And then we can get into the fact that some men are leg men and are going to pay tons of attention to women wearing shorts while other men will totally ignore a woman in shorts because they're far more interested in what's up top ...

Provocative is absolutely relative.

I'll try and say this again.

By "provocative" I mean "the person wearing the clothing themselves designed to provoke others to sin by their dress."

That's what is sin. By "provocative" I do not mean that "I judge you to to be in sin because I think what you're wearing doesn't follow my standards." That is judging the heart, which is impossible.

But there are people who deliberately dress for the purpose of provoking lust in other people–I've heard people admit that is what they are doing. And that is sin. It's perfectly possible to say that and not judge what a person wears in itself.

[captain_solo]

If these complaining men aren't wearing these, then I don't want to hear it, since they are not serious about following the Bible

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/is...-1.1133397

[Klasie Kraalogies]

Modest clothing is also relative to culture.

But in the final analysis, modesty is a disposition, not a set of rules.

[JeseC]

(08-10-2012 01:33 PM)Klasie Kraalogies Wrote:  Modest clothing is also relative to culture.

But in the final analysis, modesty is a disposition, not a set of rules.

I remember a fundy friend of mine agonizing over how swimsuits could ever be ok, when they were so tight and showed so much off. Obviously they were immodest, because of the skin they showed!

My conclusion? Modesty isn't just relative to culture, it's relative to where you are within the culture.

[Bob M]

(08-09-2012 01:05 AM)lucrezaborgia Wrote:  I posted this:

"Oh look, yet another article on how women need to be modest. Let me act in shock and surprise because no one has ever told me any of this before. *yawn*

Riddle me this...in certain societies that don't wear clothing, they certainly don't feel that they are being immodest by not wearing western clothing. Yet the first thing missionaries do is force them to cover up. This leads me to believe that the whole modesty thing is a social construct. Modesty is a state of mind, not of clothing.

You want to be original? Write an article on how men need to be modest and how they need to stop sexualizing everything about women. Oh wait...that would mean men would have to worry about how they look and think instead of laying the blame on women.

By the way, when you pepper your statements with "but", that means "forget everything I said before I said 'but', now here is what I really think!" Try re-writing this article without using a single "but" and you will see how much of a controlling ass you sound like."

I pretty much agree with you. However, my expereince has been that women and men react differently to seeing flesh. You may say it is a culturally conditioned reaction, but I disagree. However, the problem is not the women, but the men. It is men who need to deal with their hearts and their perceptions of women as sex objects. We as men must ask God to help us look at women as people, not objects. And our popular culture does not help. For all the bloviating of feminists, why don;'t they blasst the hollywood culture for making women out to be nothing more than flesh to be sold at the box office?

[Persnickety Polecat]

(08-11-2012 09:40 AM)Bob M Wrote:  

(08-09-2012 01:05 AM)lucrezaborgia Wrote:  I posted this:

"Oh look, yet another article on how women need to be modest. Let me act in shock and surprise because no one has ever told me any of this before. *yawn*

Riddle me this...in certain societies that don't wear clothing, they certainly don't feel that they are being immodest by not wearing western clothing. Yet the first thing missionaries do is force them to cover up. This leads me to believe that the whole modesty thing is a social construct. Modesty is a state of mind, not of clothing.

You want to be original? Write an article on how men need to be modest and how they need to stop sexualizing everything about women. Oh wait...that would mean men would have to worry about how they look and think instead of laying the blame on women.

By the way, when you pepper your statements with "but", that means "forget everything I said before I said 'but', now here is what I really think!" Try re-writing this article without using a single "but" and you will see how much of a controlling ass you sound like."

I pretty much agree with you. However, my expereince has been that women and men react differently to seeing flesh. You may say it is a culturally conditioned reaction, but I disagree. However, the problem is not the women, but the men. It is men who need to deal with their hearts and their perceptions of women as sex objects. We as men must ask God to help us look at women as people, not objects. And our popular culture does not help. For all the bloviating of feminists, why don;'t they blasst the hollywood culture for making women out to be nothing more than flesh to be sold at the box office?

They do, actually.

[Bob M]

(08-11-2012 09:44 AM)Persnickety Polecat Wrote:  

(08-11-2012 09:40 AM)Bob M Wrote:  I pretty much agree with you. However, my expereince has been that women and men react differently to seeing flesh. You may say it is a culturally conditioned reaction, but I disagree. However, the problem is not the women, but the men. It is men who need to deal with their hearts and their perceptions of women as sex objects. We as men must ask God to help us look at women as people, not objects. And our popular culture does not help. For all the bloviating of feminists, why don;'t they blasst the hollywood culture for making women out to be nothing more than flesh to be sold at the box office?

They do, actually.

Where?