I recently got involved in a discussion of nudity. Someone said that nudity was against Christian principles for women. That is, women should be modest in their apparel.
Then someone else pointed out there wasn't much that was more modest than nudity. "Hard to put on airs when you ain't got nothing else on."
Showing posts with label Modesty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modesty. Show all posts
What Causes Us to Think Immodest Women are the Downfall of Men?
Perhaps we can discuss once more the curious notion that immodest women are the downfall of men? But I am not so concerned today with refuting the notion. It seems to me an irrational notion -- and, as a friend likes to remind me, you cannot reason a person out of a notion they did not reason themselves into in the first place. So, instead of discussing its reasonableness, I would like to take a guess at its possible origins or causes.
It is a serious question why such an unwholesome notion is spread over several cultures and why it can be found in countries as diverse as India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America. Taking its strangely ubiquitous nature into account, is there any universal root for the notion that would explain why it appears in both India and Israel, in both Saudi Arabia and America, and -- apparently -- in most other countries?
I know of very little science on this issue, but I seem to recall one hypotheses: At root, the notion that immodest women are the downfall of men is part of a male strategy -- a tactic, if you will -- to put men in control of women's reproductive choices.
Sometimes the hypothesis is reasoned this way:
For the sake of discussion, let's now assume the hypothesis is sound. That is, the notion immodest women cause the downfall of men is a tactic men employ to assist them in controlling women's reproductive choices. Does that mean that every time we hear some man encourage some woman to "be more modest" we can be confident he is doing so to control her reproductive choices?
I don't think so. I think the hypothesis, if it is sound at all, would at best explain why the notion ever caught on, why it persists, and why it became nearly ubiquitous in its distribution. That is, it might explain the majority of cases. But as for explaining the behavior of any one person, I think it's quite likely that a significant minority of people who encourage women to be modest do so for reasons having nothing to do with the hypothesis.
For instance, I came across a comment left on a blog yesterday by a teenager that asked women to dress modestly for two reasons. First, to help the comment's author avoid masturbation. Second, to help its author avoid objectifying women.
Now, you might grin at that (as did I), but if we take his two reasons at face value, we have there a male who is asking women to "be more modest" for reasons other than to restrict women's reproductive choices. So, I think it would take a lot of work to sort out all the reasons people might have for the belief that immodest women are the downfall of men. But what do you yourself think might be the reasons or causes of such a heavy, gloomy, and unhealthy notion?
It is a serious question why such an unwholesome notion is spread over several cultures and why it can be found in countries as diverse as India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America. Taking its strangely ubiquitous nature into account, is there any universal root for the notion that would explain why it appears in both India and Israel, in both Saudi Arabia and America, and -- apparently -- in most other countries?
I know of very little science on this issue, but I seem to recall one hypotheses: At root, the notion that immodest women are the downfall of men is part of a male strategy -- a tactic, if you will -- to put men in control of women's reproductive choices.
Sometimes the hypothesis is reasoned this way:
(1) Women, when they have the freedom to choose their own mates, typically go about that task by a process of attraction and selection. Basically, they make themselves as attractive to men as needed -- especially as physically attractive as needed -- and then they select a mate from among the men who are attracted to them.
(2) Given that women most frequently exercise choice by a process of attraction and selection, men have a number of options if they want to control women's reproductive choices. Those options include placing restrictions on a woman's freedom to make herself attractive. Such restrictions might include requiring her to dress in a manner that hides her physical attractiveness; requiring her to walk with eyes downcast; requiring her to speak of herself "modestly" or dismissively; prohibiting her from asking a man for a date; etc.
(3) The notion that immodest women cause a man's downfall is thus seen to be a cover, mask, or rationalization for controlling women's reproductive choices by restricting their ability to attract mates.
(4) Men who succeed in controlling women's reproductive choices thus place themselves in a better position to make those choices for women. And if they can make those choices for women, they will presumably make them most frequently for their (the men's) own benefit.
For the sake of discussion, let's now assume the hypothesis is sound. That is, the notion immodest women cause the downfall of men is a tactic men employ to assist them in controlling women's reproductive choices. Does that mean that every time we hear some man encourage some woman to "be more modest" we can be confident he is doing so to control her reproductive choices?
I don't think so. I think the hypothesis, if it is sound at all, would at best explain why the notion ever caught on, why it persists, and why it became nearly ubiquitous in its distribution. That is, it might explain the majority of cases. But as for explaining the behavior of any one person, I think it's quite likely that a significant minority of people who encourage women to be modest do so for reasons having nothing to do with the hypothesis.
For instance, I came across a comment left on a blog yesterday by a teenager that asked women to dress modestly for two reasons. First, to help the comment's author avoid masturbation. Second, to help its author avoid objectifying women.
Now, you might grin at that (as did I), but if we take his two reasons at face value, we have there a male who is asking women to "be more modest" for reasons other than to restrict women's reproductive choices. So, I think it would take a lot of work to sort out all the reasons people might have for the belief that immodest women are the downfall of men. But what do you yourself think might be the reasons or causes of such a heavy, gloomy, and unhealthy notion?
My High School Math Teacher Was A Space Alien!
I am fascinated -- I have long been fascinated -- that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.
If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.) How can the same person be both smart and stupid?
I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others. And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.
I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways. Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence. Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.
Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.
No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician. I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.
I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s. William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man. He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party. That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party. The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.
The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party. The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense. For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America. Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism. Perhaps he was right.
My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.
I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone". "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different." "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now." "Women don't need equal rights. Men do! Women are smarter than men." "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."
I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence. Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit. Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect. I disagree. Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.
Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer. How can we account for that?
Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”
I think it sometimes happens that way. But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field. We will always need the help of others. Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes. That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.
Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic". To some extent, those two things go together. A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas. Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy. That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.
But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors. It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.
The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do. Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".
Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases. By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary. The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false. Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.
Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others. That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.
That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution. It might come in the form of whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again. Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.
Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions. Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go. Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.
I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others. It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth. He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic. And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions. Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.
If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.) How can the same person be both smart and stupid?
I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others. And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.
I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways. Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence. Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.
Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.
No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician. I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.
I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s. William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man. He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party. That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party. The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.
The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party. The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense. For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America. Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism. Perhaps he was right.
My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.
I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone". "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different." "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now." "Women don't need equal rights. Men do! Women are smarter than men." "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."
I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence. Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit. Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect. I disagree. Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.
Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer. How can we account for that?
Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”
I think it sometimes happens that way. But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field. We will always need the help of others. Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes. That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.
Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic". To some extent, those two things go together. A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas. Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy. That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.
But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors. It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.
The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do. Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".
Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases. By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary. The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false. Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.
Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others. That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.
That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution. It might come in the form of whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again. Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.
Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions. Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go. Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.
I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others. It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth. He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic. And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions. Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.
Sexual Modesty and Adolescence
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| (H/T: Life as a Reader) |
Now, the girl was not physically attractive by American conventions. For one thing, she was much too fat to be fashionable (but see this post by Dr. Klein to get a refreshing perspective on our American notions of what's fashionable). For another thing, she had a rather plain face thickly coated with cosmetics. And, though her clothing was notable for being revealing, it did not seem that she had put much thought into the combination she'd chosen.
So, it wasn't long before I began to wonder whether the poor girl might be suffering from low self-esteem. That is, it seemed possible that she thought of herself as not having much to offer the boys besides sex.
I was thinking along those sad lines when I heard a male voice at the table behind me say, "God! Look at that slut!"
Of course, I don't know whether he was talking about the girl, or about someone else. I didn't ask. Yet, I assumed he was indeed talking about the girl -- and that made me feel old. Old and tired.
You see, the one attractive thing I had noticed about the girl in the few minutes I'd been watching her was that she seemed so full of life. Even if her dress and mannerisms were motivated by low self-esteem -- and I didn't know that for certain -- she appeared at the moment happy. She was, if only for a while, the queen of her universe. It wearied me to think anyone would simply dismiss her as a slut.
As the above "poster" suggests, we need to decide as a society which gender bears the primary responsibility for controlling sexual desires. Are women responsible for men's desires? Or are men responsible for their own desires?
Put differently, was the girl within her rights to dress in an overtly sexual manner?
Now, I'm one of those insufferable people who is of the opinion that men should take full responsibility for their own desires. I see no reason why men cannot. That is, I simply do not buy into the notion that men are so weak they cannot control their sexual desires without the help of women. And I suspect many readers will agree with me.
Where some of my readers might not agree with me is that I also happen to think women should be largely free to dress any damn way they please -- including as sexy as they please. I would only specify that they dress appropriate to whatever venue they're in. For example, I don't think it's appropriate for a fire fighter to dress in nothing but a corset and fishnet stockings (Unless she's responding to a call at my house, that is).
It seems to me that freedom and liberty should be maximized when doing so harms no one. And I just don't get the notion that a provocatively dressed woman endangers me. In fact, she's more likely to make my day.
For those and other reasons, I think that girl was more or less within her rights to dress as she did. I say "more or less" because I think that, at 14 or 16, her parents should have the final decision. But if she had been a little older, then I believe the final decision should be hers.
At the very least, she should not have been condemned as a slut. That's just sick. She was only being a kid.
It's no secret that kids -- both boys and girls -- experiment with what makes them sexually attractive. Many girls, for instance, go through a phase when they paint their faces in enough colors to give a gaudy sunrise an identify crisis. And most of us, during our adolescence, have worn clothing intended to sexually arouse the gender of our choice. Maybe the effect of that clothing wasn't always what we intended (much to our embarrassment), but that doesn't change the fact we wore it. Yet, how well does anyone learn about these things without experimentation? And when is a better time for experimentation than during adolescence?
Our society comes down too hard on adolescents while at the same time emulating them. We should tolerate their foibles and blunders more than we do while refusing to follow in their footsteps as much as we do. But it is a strange thing: We have a cult of youth going on at the same time we grow less and less tolerant as a society of youth. Nevertheless, it is a fact that adolescents quite often overstate things, very much including their sexuality. Understatement -- and perhaps sexual modesty itself -- seems to be an adult taste.
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