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The right to bare arms [Jan. 11th, 2013|12:48 am]
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People on Facebook have lately been linking to a Jezebel post (WHY DO I FOLLOW LINKS TO JEZEBEL POSTS?) called Batshit Ridiculous Modesty Website Reminds You That Women Just Can't Win.

The website (which seems to be down at the moment) purports to be for people to discuss different styles of dress and whether they are modest or not. Jezebel dislikes this. They say that:
"The problem with modesty is that the idea that society can tell you how much of your body to reveal or hide implies that your body does not belong to you."

and
"You can't purport to host an open, nonjudgmental forum while repeatedly enforcing the idea that women, and women only, are responsible for whether or not men lust after them. That's a pervasive concept that perpetuates rape culture; it doesn't help young women feel good about themselves or teach people to respect one another or help anyone in any way. Other than, of course, the sexually repressed dicks who get off on telling girls and women how to behave."

I have two problems with what they're saying, both of which conveniently present more general points I've been wanting to mention for a while.

You're Okay, They're Not Okay

First digression also comes from my Facebook feed: this article on What Is Polyamory?. I was told it had some kind of dumb comments, and it didn't disappoint.

The negative comments, of which there were many, all seemed to be along the lines of "If you have lots of nonmarital relationships, it increases the risk of children born out of wedlock" or "Relationships that include sex without a lifetime commitment are empty."

I don't want to evaluate these arguments right now. I think it's more interesting to point out that, of people having sex outside of marriage, probably less than 1% are polyamorous. I would be extremely surprised if the commenters themselves weren't having sex outside marriage at least a little.

Whatever merit any of those arguments may have, they are arguments against the ethos of our entire society, not against this tiny kind of weird minority group.

Arguing against everyone in society is a losing battle. Arguing against a weird unpopular minority group is a winning battle. Therefore, these commenters seem to be using an argument that could apply to everyone, but only actually applying it to weird unpopular minorities.

We see the same thing in arguments against homosexuality. A common argument against homosexuality is that it somehow cheapens or weakens traditional marriage by providing an alternative. Regardless of whether or not this argument has any merit, an honestly-intentioned observer would apply it to divorce culture and the cheapening of straight marriage long before they started worrying about a few gays. But because straight people with less-than-perfect marriages make up most of society, but gays are a weird unpopular minority group, they focus the argument on the latter only.

Getting back to modesty, is it acceptable to walk around in a bathing suit? In thong underwear? Naked? I'm not sure. I can't really think of any good reason why not.

If we should in fact have no problem with people walking around or going to work in their underwear, this is sufficient to prove we should have no problem with people going around dressed in clothes some conservative would find "immodest".

But if we have no problem with people going around dressed in clothes some conservative would find "immodest", then we either need to get rid of our problem with thong underwear, or else figure out what the difference is between those two cases.

The article makes no effort to do that and doesn't even seem to have realized the problem. It looks a lot like they are happy to attack a weird unpopular minority group (religious people with strong ideas about modesty) but totally willing to let the rest of society off the hook (people who think you shouldn't be allowed to go shopping wearing only thong underwear).

If Jezebel thinks everyone who doesn't want people going to school in thong underwear are just as misogynist and hypocritical as the conservatives on that website, they should say so and criticize the powerful as well as the lunatic fringe. If they think that not wanting women to come to school in nothing but thong underwear is an acceptable belief, then their argument that anyone with any ideas about modesty just secretly hates women and wants to control their bodies falls apart.

Churchill famously once asked a friend if she would sleep with him for a million pounds. She grudgingly admitted she might. Then he asked her if she would sleep with him for five pounds. She got upset and asked him what kind of woman he thought she was. Churchill responded "We've already established what you are; now we're just haggling over the price."

If you agree that people shouldn't be allowed to go to school in thong underwear, we've already established what your beliefs about modesty are, and now we're just haggling over the price. Haggling over the price is important and an argument we need to have. But it's not one that allows quite that level of offense-taking.

Society Exists, More At Eleven

Jezebel argues that "the idea that society can tell you how much of your body to reveal or hide implies that your body does not belong to you." Or to put it a different way, it places the responsibility for "men lusting after women" solely on women for inciting the lust, rather than on men for having the lust in the first place.

Let me throw out a metaphor and see if it sticks.

Albert has terrible body odor. He works in an office, and every time he comes in, the entire place starts to stink. It disturbs his co-workers and drives away customers. His friends and colleagues suggest he shower more often. Albert indignantly replies "The idea that you all can tell me how much of my body I have to wash implies that my body does not belong to me!" When pressed, he says that this suggests "assumes that the responsibility for other people getting annoyed by my odor rests solely on me, rather than on them for feeling the annoyance."

On the one hand, yeah, it seems unfair from Albert's perspective that other people can tell him what he must and mustn't do with his body, merely to make their own lives more convenient. On the other hand, from his co-workers' perspective it seems unfair that they have to put up with body odor when they don't want to. The retort "Well, it's your fault for being disgusted by it!" sounds suitably glib but totally fails to resolve the very real conflict. At the end of the day, everyone has to live with each other.

The accepted method for settling this in every other case is that people are allowed to express their opinions, and in the end every individual decides for themselves. Albert can decide whether or not he wants to shower, Albert's friends can decide whether or not they want to keep hanging out with him, and Albert's boss can decide whether she wants to fire Albert.

We apply this kind of pressure to force people to act in ways convenient to ourselves all the time. It is called "society". Don't shower enough? That's a shunning. Masturbate in public? That's a shunning. Park in a way that takes up two spots? That's a shunning. Whistle loudly all the time? That's a shunning. SHOUT EVERYTHING REALLY LOUD INSTEAD OF SPEAKING AT A NORMAL VOLUME? THAT'S A SHUNNING. Refuse to turn off your cell phone in a theater or class? That's a shunning. Or at least it should be.

The idea that "society" "can" "tell" a woman what she can or can't wear is no more oppressive than the idea that "society" "can" "tell" a man whether or not to shower. It's part of the general process of balancing everyone's right to live a life convenient to themselves with their obligation to be considerate of others.

Women Less Dangerous Than Previously Believed?

I would like to discuss this issue further, but I have to admit I'm stuck at what seems to be the main point of contention. I...don't really experience any suffering from sexily dressed women in my vicinity.

This may be typical mind fallacy. Maybe there are other men who are completely unable to work or concentrate when there are immodest women around. Maybe it actively ruins their lives and they are only able to avoid their existence being a torrent of excruciating sexual desire by moving to Mount Athos where even female animals are banned.

I don't even have a basic intuition of how this works. Is it a cultural problem, the sort of thing where southerners felt horror and disgust at the idea of sharing a classroom with black people but got over it after a little while of actually doing so? Or would it be an actual testosterone-based unmodifiable brute fact of their lives?

If it were the latter, I would hope women would be nice enough to work with them, the same way most people are considerate enough to defer to people's preferences against body odor and cell phones in movie theaters.

Of course, it certainly is awkward that the burden would fall entirely on women. Which raises a question I have even less experience with than the original: are there women (or gay men) who get really upset when they see immodestly dressed men? Are their lives a torrent of excruciating sexual desire because some man they know is wearing unusually short shorts?

If so, having both sexes agree to be considerate to the other seems like a pretty clear gain. If not, and if there really are men who are suffering terribly because of female immodesty, maybe we can sign some kind of treaty where women agree to dress modestly in exchange for men being more considerate to women in some way?

But my intuition is that the number of men who are seriously harmed by immodest women is much lower than either side thinks it is. If I were Jezebel, condemning that website, I think this would be my main point. The most credible argument for modesty - that immodest clothing is hurtful to men - suffers from a lack of evidence. In terms of cost-benefit, immodesty just doesn't have enough costs to be worth worrying about.

But Jezebel isn't up for this. They accept almost without challenge the line that having to see women in immodest clothing hurts men. And then, having backed themselves into a corner, they try to extricate themselves by making some kind of Randian argument that no one should ever have to be considerate of other people. They go from bad science to good politics via screwed-up ethics.

The problem is that screwed-up ethics, no matter how much they save your skin in the immediate problem, are going to stick around. If Jezebel pushes bad philosophy, many of its readers are going to accept them because arguments are soldiers and we all have to stand up for women's rights. And then we're going to end up with a cohort of very politically active people whose zealous opinions on subtle moral questions are based on what argument allowed a blogger to sound most indignant fifteen years ago.
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Comments:
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[User Picture]From: drethelin
2013-01-11 06:48 am (UTC)

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Stop shaming perpetrators of slut shaming shaming
[User Picture]From: snysmymrik
2013-01-11 07:53 am (UTC)

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Slutshameception?
[User Picture]From: ciphergoth
2013-01-11 07:03 am (UTC)

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Are you not aware that trying to draw any kind of analogy whatsoever between two things, like a man with body odour and a woman wearing a thong at work, is called "comparing" those things and means that you think those things are exactly the same in every detail?
[User Picture]From: marycatelli
2013-01-12 03:24 pm (UTC)

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Personally I've found that shouting back that of course it's imprecise, it's an analogy, if it were precise it would be an identity.

The time that scared me was when someone responded, as if in surprised discovery that of course that was true, the only thing exactly comparible to a thing was itself -- as if that were a new and striking thought.
[User Picture]From: cactus_rs
2013-01-11 07:22 am (UTC)

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I just want to say that the image in the article, of the girl with the blanket and the teddy bear, is incredibly bizarre. What is going on with that?
[User Picture]From: moshez
2013-01-11 06:08 pm (UTC)

Surprise

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If you are surprised by a phenomena, that is not a problem with the phenomena, but with your model of the world.

My model of the world contains the factoid "teenage girls often like to take 'artsy' pictures". It seems obvious that the picture is trying to say, very ham-handedly, "though I look like a full-grown woman, I sleep ['blanket is sleep'] with a teddy bear [sign of childhoood]", or in other words, "I feel like I'm still a child, though I look like an adult" which is totally plausible as teenager-perceived "deep wisdom". Why the heels? Because it's an artsy picture. Why would you be surprised by teenage girls trying to send a "deep" message in a less-than-subtle way?
[User Picture]From: xuenay
2013-01-11 07:52 am (UTC)

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If Jezebel thinks everyone who doesn't want people going to school in thong underwear are just as misogynist and hypocritical as the conservatives on that website, they should say so and criticize the powerful as well as the lunatic fringe.

Why?

If a behavior you disapprove of is popular in society, isn't it a perfectly reasonable strategy to first criticize low-status special cases of it and hope that some of the disapproval sticks on the higher-status cases, so that they could in turn be criticized later?
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-11 07:56 pm (UTC)

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Good point. Maybe one of those places where you have to distinguish between practical and epistemic virtue?

There are definitely some cases where I'd behave like you describe. For example, if slavery were still legal, it might be worth starting out by attacking low-status unpopular forms of it, in the hopes that at least some slaves get freed instead of none.

But I guess that assumes I know I'm right and I just need to manipulate those other idiots into doing what I want through the Dark Arts. It means that whatever the strongest argument against my position is, no one is going to get to give it.

It also violates sort of basic fairness norms. Imagine if I said "Minorities are contributing to global warming; we need to ban them from using industrial products to save our planet." In practice this might be a clever stratagem - everyone is contributing to global warming, but since cutting back on consumption is unpleasant, maybe we could only force people with little voice in the system to do it. But it would be pretty unfair to place all of the burden upon them.
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[User Picture]From: punzel
2013-01-11 08:47 am (UTC)

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are there women (or gay men) who get really upset when they see immodestly dressed men? Are their lives a torrent of excruciating sexual desire because some man they know is wearing unusually short shorts?

When someone dresses in a way that is a provocative sexual display, sure, one reaction might be to be aroused (or repulsed, if it's not your thing). But more importantly, we take cues about someone from their attire, we stereotype them in a role. During lunchtime weekdays, if I get in line at the grocery store with an apple in my hand, people with full carts will spontaneously insist that I should go ahead of them if I'm wearing hospital scrubs. They make up a story about who I am and what I do, and interact with me according to those assumptions. Even if I say I'm not in a hurry, they may insist. If I'm a sloppy mess in painting or workout clothes, they might defend their place in line as if they're afraid I'm going to cut in front of them. I'm the same person, and I'll own up that I do this same thing: I assess people based on how they appear to me in that moment and in that situation. I try to be open-minded, but I do react differently to different people.

While there isn't one uniform for highlighting the facet of oneself that signifies that you are a sexual being, people react to the simplified persona that a person presents. Dressing sexily isn't just about whether that person inspires sexual feelings in a viewer. Much more can happen.
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 09:49 am (UTC)

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Dressing sexily by the norms of one's peer group does signal that one wants to attract sexual interest, and presumably act on it at least some of the time, from some people. The cultural attitude that replaces "some people" with "everyone" or "me" is just weird. Is there some garment that appears as a miniskirt to people you find attractive and as baggy sweatpants to people you don't?

Dressing in a revealing and attractive way is not necessarily an attempt to dress sexily either, even if it arouses people. What the typical middle-school girl wears nowadays would have been considered scandalous a generation ago, so old geezers complaining about kids these days are just working across a cultural gap. Women's business attire also tends to conflate "professional" and "sexy", which is a double-bind for everyone wanting to signal the first and not the second.
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[User Picture]From: Andrew Hunter
2013-01-11 09:11 am (UTC)

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I'll make two points about modesty _qua_ modesty (though I know that's not the point of the post. :))


- I am one of those men you wonder about who finds scantily clad women incredibly distracting. I'm pretty good at isolating myself from any distraction whatsoever at work--my coworkers could tell you stories about me being accidentally snuck up on and jumping through the roof--so I don't care that much, but the answer to the question is yes, they do exist.

- While I wouldn't go nearly so far as the site Jez complains about in my standards, and don't see a good reason or method to try enforcing it (even by social pressure as explained here) I do appreciate some level of modest dress in those around me. My reason is that--in most cases--women dressing "immodestly" do intend to be seen and appreciated...but not by me. The point is for the men they think are their social peers and worth interacting with to see and appreciate it. While it's any woman's right to be uninterested in anyone else, and the right thing to do is to accept it, that doesn't mean I have to _like_ being effectively taunted.
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 10:34 pm (UTC)

(Link)

That can be an issue actually, and of course in stupid people a combination of that attittude and entitlement leads to some really nasty stuff including rape culture. Its good to see somebody who can hold the premises and not jump to the horrible conclusion.

I kind of wish our culture had some widely used unambiguous broadcast methods for signalling this sort of thing.
[User Picture]From: drdoug
2013-01-11 09:12 am (UTC)

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"We've already established what you are; now we're just haggling over the price."

A sufficiently large quantitative difference is a qualitative one. Among prostitutes, the difference between people who charge £50 a pop and those who charge £500 an hour is so large that I'd call it a qualitative one. Is it Ok to phone your ex to see how it's going? If you do it once, probably yes; if you do it every five minutes, day and night, so their life becomes a misery, probably no. Is it Ok to re-visit a website? At some point there's a qualitative difference between hitting reload and DDOSing.

Think sorites. How many grains of sand make a heap? Where precisely is the line between alive and dead?

I'm not sure it's an entirely helpful way of thinking of it, but if one considers amount-of-flesh-bared as a sort-of continuum, I don't see that it's entirely illegitimate in principle to say that one point is absolutely fine, but another point isn't.

It's also profoundly contextual. If they reported for work dressed only in boots and a daunting array of genital piercings, most people would be promptly sacked. But for some that's what the client has paid for.

This may be typical mind fallacy. Maybe there are other men who are completely unable to work or concentrate when there are immodest women around.

That's my guess. My overwhelming experience is that generalising from one's own experience is even more problematic in sexuality than in most other areas. Sexuality is quite startlingly diverse. Some people have sexual thoughts and desire almost all the time; some never have them; and you get people at all points between, moving around past each other, sliding and ... sorry, getting distracted a bit there. Ahem.

On this particular issue, I'm pretty sure that there *are* men whose experience of immodest women is like this. They get distressed and worked up even at the thought that there exist immodest women. The ones I've talked to (mostly Christians up the evangelical end) say this is the case, and seemed genuine.

I also find it personally convincing and plausible because I used to be similarly disturbed by the thought of gay men, until I came out, after which it seemed no big deal. I had feveredly imagined that any gay man would be burning with lust for me, much as I in my unacknowledged teenage way was burning with lust ... turns out not to be the case.

I'm quite sure, though, that self-repression isn't a cast-iron reason for others in general to be repressed in order to help you out. (Temporarily, for good manners, is another thing.) For one thing it's probably not going to work. I'll bet at least some the monks on the female-free mountain have a real problem with intrusive don't-think-of-an-elephant thoughts about sexy women.
From: ahhunter
2013-01-11 09:16 am (UTC)

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I'll make two points about modesty _qua_ modesty (though I know that's not the point of the post...)

-I am one of those men you wonders about who finds scantily clad women incredibly distracting. I'm pretty good at isolating myself from any distraction at work--as my coworkers about me getting accidentally snuck up on and jumping through the roof--so I don't care that much, but the answer to the question is yes, they do exist.

- While I wouldn't go nearly so far as the site Jez complains about in my standards, and don't see a good reason or method to try enforcing it (even by social pressure as explained here) I do appreciate some level of modest dress in those around me. My reason is that--in most cases--women dressing "immodestly" do intend to be seen and appreciated...but not by me. The point is for the men they think are their social peers and worth interacting with to see and appreciate it. While it's any woman's right to be uninterested in anyone else, and the right thing to do is to accept it, that doesn't mean I have to _like_ being effectively taunted.
[User Picture]From: mstevens
2013-01-11 10:17 am (UTC)

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Probable counter-argument to the smell analogy:

Disliking being around sexy sexy women is a voluntary choice. If the anti-revealing clothing people will just stop being so awkward, they can easily decide to be comfortable with it.

Disliking about being around smelly people is involuntary. You just hate smells, and you can't control it. Therefore it is more reasonable to expect people to accommodate it.

This is a bit straw-womanny, because I wouldn't actually say this myself, but it's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from our hypothetical jezebeller.
[User Picture]From: mstevens
2013-01-11 10:21 am (UTC)

(Link)

To quote myself:


argumentative antipattern ramblings from irc -

< mstevens> Imagine two people arguing. One is in favour of X, and hates Y, the other likes Y, and hates X

< mstevens> both X and Y are members of class a

< mstevens> There's a good chance that the X-supporter will argue "all things in a are perfectly fine!" in an attempt to support X

< mstevens> Then, the Y-support will say "aah, you must also like Y", and the X-support will basically splutter and try to deny this obvious conclusion

...

< Tenoke01> mstevens, an example which doesn't create a lot of tension will be marijuana smokers who say that it is fine to smoke because it is a plant and is natural but when asked on their opinion of tobacco for example will say that tobacco is bad even though it is also a plant

(mstevens is me, I asked Tenoke01 for permission to quote)

Maybe we should have a name for this?


http://lesswrong.com/lw/fjo/open_thread_november_1630_2012/7x99

This seems like very much the same sort of thing.

I think we decided (ie someone told me) this was a specific subset of an already recognised fallacy, but I've forgotten which one.
[User Picture]From: cartesiandaemon
2013-01-11 10:30 am (UTC)

(Link)

Hm. That's really interesting.

Jezebel

Jezebel write an article about people who shame women for wearing, well, just about anything. But inappropriately describe that as if people shouldn't be able to express ANY opinions on how women dress EVER.

Scott

And you point out:

(a) people should be able to express some opinions on how people dress and

(b) if jezebel really think that people shouldn't be able to express ANY opinion, it's unfair of them to attack this particular website rather than more prominent examples of people caring what people wear, such as decency laws.

(c) The idea that immodesty is a problem is ridiculous and jezebel should attack that, rather than saying "everyone has the right to dress how they like whether it's distracting or not"

My response to (a) and (b)

I think you're right conceptually, but I think that's somewhat independent of the main point.

I think that they are TRYING to say there's a BIG HUGE GIANT PROBLEM with people expressing MUCH MUCH MUCH too much opinion about how other people dress, with bad effects like:

* People (especially women) who are perceived as dressing "sexy" are much more likely to be sexually assaulted
* People of both genders who dress in gender-variant ways are likely to be bullied, assaulted, beaten up, and even arrested or killed.
* People of both genders who are naked and harmless are prone to being arrested (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gough)
* Women are judged much more on their dress in the workplace than men are

And I think that, in expressing this GIANT PROBLEM, they accidentally went too far and said "society should have NO right to police how you dress" instead of "society should have MUCH MUCH MUCH less right".

And I think that if you take that claim literally as a proposal for how society should work, it's not a good end goal.

But I very much think that if someone is trying to draw attention to a great injustice, it behoves people to hear what they argument SHOULD be, and not judge their underlying point on whether the person articulating it is a trained debater or not.

So, no, I don't think society should have NO say in how people dress, but I don't think that's what they're really saying, even though that's what they said.

My response to (c)

I think you're right that the "oh no men can't control their urges around sexy dressed women" argument is specious, but I think Jezebel have a good point that even if some people are like that, and whether or not it would be a good idea to not dress sexy, it gives no-one any right to suggest that dressing sexy makes you a bad person!
[User Picture]From: naath
2013-01-11 11:14 am (UTC)

(Link)

I think there's also a difference between some subsets of society having clothing rules "if you want to join our club you have to wear this club scarf", "if you want to work in our lab you must wear a lab coat" and trying to enforce a UNIVERSAL clothing-rule. Especially when the universal rule is going to be enforced by being violent towards people who transgress. (Although perhaps worth noting that women who wear "modest" clothing do not thereby escape street harassment).

I don't think there should be any national rules about what people can wear; I don't think that that's the same as saying that no group or place should have rules about what may be worn by members/in that place. I really do think that a blanket "no nudity" law is very different from a "no nudity in this church" rule; for a start I can avoid your church, whilst I can't avoid "every public space".
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[User Picture]From: cartesiandaemon
2013-01-11 10:45 am (UTC)

A few random specific examples

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Workplaces in general

I think it makes sense to have some sort of uniform dress for the workplace, even if it's completely arbitrary, to signal "we're in work mode and we're happy to work with the rest of the team".

Workplaces for women

However, there's a problem if the improved dress code is discriminatory, eg. "Men wear suits, preferably good suits, but we don't really care. Women must wear skirts AND hosiery AND high heels AND make-up AND be a little bit sexy AND not be very sexy" which is unfortunately typical.

I recall Oxford University recently gender-neutralised its guidelines for graduation dress.

Nakedness

If someone turns up at the high street naked, if people disapprove, it's appropriate to glare at them, but I think that the disapproval should be purely social (unless there's a genuine problem that needs legislation), not physical violence or arrest.

The problem with judging women's dress is that some people do genuinely think that everyone, men and women, should dress appropriately, and express mild social disapproval if they don't. But there's a big background narrative that women who dress too sexy or not sexy enough are bad people and deserve punishment, and any criticism along those lines, even if it's broadly reasonable, is likely to support that background narrative, which in turn leads to assaults, violence, discriminatory laws, etc.
[User Picture]From: cartesiandaemon
2013-01-11 10:57 am (UTC)

Re: A few random specific examples

(Link)

I don't know, but I've always assumed what is distracting is somewhat culturally determined, mainly by what you're used to.

If you're used to wearing clothes and someone of either gender waves their naked buttocks near your face, that's likely to be distracting. If you live at a nudist colony where nakedness is normal and not especially sexual, it probably isn't.

By analogy, I imagine that many people with a normal libido would find an unusually tight T-shirt distracting, or people used to 90% or 99% flesh coverage might be distracted by seeing only 80% or 98% flesh coverage.

So, within one environment (say an office), you may want to enforce a reasonable consistency. But we shouldn't have national laws about it, because that unfairly penalises people from different culture, when in fact, if people have to mix with people used to a different standard of modesty, they'll probably get used to it.
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 11:38 am (UTC)

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I think you're missing part of the argument. The second quote fits the structure "this has bad consequences X, and doesn't do any good, so it's bad." The bad consequences are "perpetuates rape culture," which presumably in turn means "makes rape a worse problem, which is bad." So with the body odor example, you go over the possibility of harm to other people and how it's totally normal for society to have norms, but you never actually touch the argument of "these norms are harmful."
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-11 07:45 pm (UTC)

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The only study I've ever seen that tried to quantify the relationship between modesty and rape found that women in "less modest" clothing were not, in fact, raped more often.
[User Picture]From: jordan179
2013-01-11 02:00 pm (UTC)

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Maybe there are other men who are completely unable to work or concentrate when there are immodest women around.

Devout Muslims make this claim.
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-11 07:45 pm (UTC)

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And if we can't trust devout Muslims, who can we trust?
[User Picture]From: widgetfox
2013-01-11 02:04 pm (UTC)

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Did you write this entire post for the title?
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-11 07:45 pm (UTC)

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..........yes.
From: deiseach
2013-01-11 02:04 pm (UTC)

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Personal opinion: I'm a woman, and there have been times I have definitely wished the Fashion Police were a thing, because I've seen cases where my reaction has been "Put on more clothes!"

Not because I've been driven into a frothing fury of lust, but because I really, really don't want to gaze at your hairy back/hairy arms/belly/buttocks/cleavage. I don't mind what you wear in your own home or amongst your friends, and if you're dressing up to go for a night on the pull that's a different matter, but walking down the street in an Irish late spring/early winter, you need to wear more than that. Honestly, you do.

I've also had the experience where another person was not dressed immodestly, as such, but when she bent down to write something on a piece of paper on my desk, I could see right down her cleavage, to the point where I didn't know where to put my eyes (I felt as though I was staring, yet if I looked elsewhere it would be extremely obvious I was avoiding looking at her). Now, I can imagine how awkward that would be for a man in the same situation.

So, basically, I'm old enough to be in favour of wearing adequate tops/bottoms to your clothing - for both men and women - so that if you do have to bend down or bend over, nothing gets seen that you wouldn't want to be seen by a stranger or colleague-but-not-that-close-a-colleague.
From: nomophilos
2013-01-11 09:26 pm (UTC)

(Link)

"Now, I can imagine how awkward that would be for a man in the same situation."

Actually I wouldn't mind much in such a situation, cleavage is not unpleasant to look at, I don't really go out of my way to avoid it.

I wonder if that makes me a creep? (it is pretty hard "from the inside" to tell whether women perceive you as a creep)
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 05:33 pm (UTC)

(Link)

There is another angle that you haven't covered. Immodesty is an unfakeable signal of looking good naked.

I am male, and overweight enough to the point where I would not look good shirtless. As a selfish agent, I would heartily advocate modesty norms for men, because I compare unfavourably to all the ripped beefcake dudes wandering around without a shirt.

I would be extremely surprised if this didn't make up a significant chunk of the motivation for modesty norms amongst women. It also seems to me that women are in a significantly stronger position for imposing social punishment on female defectors than men are.
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 05:39 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Yes, why do you follow links to Jezebel? ;-)

I was reading a sort of anti-Jezebel on a similar issue recently, and from what I gathered, the masculists not only disagreed, but thought this terrible hypocrisy on the part of feminists. The masculists' suggested counterpart to bare skin wasn't smell, but flirtation, which seems more closely linked. In a nutshell, they argued that women signal interest by dressing in a revealing way, and men counter-signal interest with expressions of how sexy they find the women - or used to, anyway, before the Jezebeloids instituted sexual harassment legislation to clamp down on the stereotypically male form of interest-signalling, while defending the stereotypically female form of interest-signalling. The masculists want to even this out by either inclusively defining slutty clothes as sexual harassment (admittedly a retaliatory-defection strategy, aka "lose-lose") or remove most sexual harassment legislation as it pertains to catcalls, come-ons, and independent sexual advances (ie. "do you want to have sex with me" advances with no strings attached, as opposed to hints and offers about trading sex in return for favors such as workplace advancement (and now I could get into a recursion about implied expectations of such trades, but that's an argument of its own)).

Since you say that you "don't really experience any suffering from sexily dressed women in my vicinity", I'd next like to ask if you experience significantly different amounts of suffering from flirty women in your vicinity? And what would your expected experience be if most sexual harassment legislation was removed as described above? (Assuming that society and expectations change in much the same way. Cue footnote about the extent to which laws drive behavior as opposed to being codifications of existing social mores.)
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-11 07:48 pm (UTC)

(Link)

One big difference seems to be that flirtiness is directed and sexy clothes are undirected. If I flirt with someone, it's because I'm trying to signal interest in that specific person; if people interpret sexy clothes as a signal of interest specifically in them, that sounds like a failure mode.

This makes it kind of hard for me to answer the question "Do I experience suffering from flirtation". I mean, if someone is flirting with me, I don't suffer, I feel good about it. If someone is flirting with someone else, I guess it's annoying but it's pretty easy to get away from.
(no subject) - (Anonymous) Expand
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-11 05:44 pm (UTC)

(Link)

My reaction to "suffering from sexily dressed women":

In most workplaces, you can't even have pictures of sexily dressed women. You can't even talk about sexily dressed women. If you do these things, it is considered "creating a hostile work environment" and women can sue you for sexual harassment. I think the argument is that women get really tired of being asked for sex all the time, and even bringing up the subject can be seen as a form of asking.

If you can't even have pictures of sexily dressed women, then surely having an actual sexily dressed woman is even more harmful, right? Because, y'know, the men would give her compliments, and then they'd look over at the non-sexily dressed women just trying to do their job, and they'd think: "why can't those other women be like this one?"

I dunno. You've got 22 comments and none of them have suggested this. Usually when that happens it means I'm pretty badly wrong and probably about to embarrass myself. :( Let me declare for this comment an Epistemic Status of "this is probably wrong but I can't exactly see why".
[User Picture]From: vinaigrettegirl
2013-01-11 06:02 pm (UTC)

(Link)

"Modesty", however, is a codeword in a specific American discourse, used by Dominionists and the ultra-right to indicate how righteous women should represent themselves. By extension, women who are not modest are sinful and merit disapproval, or punishment, and control. There are a number of websites with home-sewing patterns for ankle-length pantalettes to be worn under long skirts, head coverings for all occasions including nightwear, ensuring that from a girl's puberty, fathers don't see their daughter's hair, and so on. This then extends to essentialist arguments which tie in to demands for legislation about women's reproductive healthcare.

If "modesty" wasn't also a codeword then I'd say much of this interesting reasoning was spot on. But with the significant numbers of bills which attempt to interpose religious values and employment or healthcare law affecting women, this isn't a matter of simple intolerance. Although Jezebel doesn't make its underlying context specific, does it?
[User Picture]From: marycatelli
2013-01-12 12:06 am (UTC)

(Link)

Ah, "codeword". "Codeword" is a codeword to indicate "We know perfectly well that we can't argue with our opponent, so we will make up vicious hateful substitute meanings for his words, and impute them to him, and pretend that this slander and bigotry actually means that he means the meaning we made up for him."

Edited at 2013-01-12 12:07 am (UTC)
(no subject) - (Anonymous) Expand
From: michaelvassar
2013-01-11 09:15 pm (UTC)

targeting homosexuals etc

(Link)

Ironically, Anne Coulter gets this one right and is actually honest about it.
From: nomophilos
2013-01-11 09:18 pm (UTC)

(Link)

As a couple of people have pointed out, I think modesty rules are there because women want them more than because men want them (at least in the West); women don't want to have their men ogle someone else's goods, older women (who have more power for shaping norms) prefer limiting the ways young girls can compete with them, and it can also be seen as a way of preventing an "arms race" that could result in all women spending more resources on looking good, for the same result.

I would expect a mild effect whereby in a society with modest dress, relationships last longer because men are less prompted to consider dumping their old wife to get a cute young one (and also because you can't "show off your new chick" as much).

The whole "modest dress" issue seems more about a conflict between young/attractive women versus older/uglier ones, with the opinion of men not being very important (I'd kinda expect most pen to prefer immodest dress except of course for their daughter, but I may be generalizing from one examples; as some have said here, revealing clothes *can* be distracting).
[User Picture]From: vinaigrettegirl
2013-01-12 11:45 am (UTC)

(Link)

Men in women-covering societies ogle too. They also find other people to ogle: dancing boys in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

Women spend vast sums of money on " looking good": the entire beauty product industry is a huge, billions-of-dollars scam. It's why women's clothing is more expensive and less well-made than men's clothing, why enormous sums are spent on fancy emulsions of oil and water, and why Maybelline runs the same ads they ran when I was a girl, 40 years ago, which were little different from those when my mother was at university.

And most older women I know really rejoice in youthful attractiveness, although to a woman they worry that girls will choose blokes and babies too soon, before they know how much more the world has to offer. I see, or read, almost nothing in literature from the North about older women as a class perpetuating modesty norms: I think this is partly a phenomenon in the States of specifically Conservative social groups reinforcing patriarchy. And it is definitely a phenomenon in parts of the global South, but it is explicitly also part of patriarchal replication, where women reinforce "women's rules" in order to fit into the dominant structure creating male privilege and maintaining "men's rules".
[User Picture]From: cakoluchiam
2013-01-12 11:47 pm (UTC)

(Link)

http://www.wrongingrights.com/2013/01/what-if-we-responded-to-sexual-assault-by-limiting-mens-freedom-like-we-limit-womens.html

Haven't yet fully processed for myself, but seems relevant to this post (at least, topical to its inspiration).
[User Picture]From: squid314
2013-01-13 07:33 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Seems dumb for a number of reasons, the first being the relative level of inconvenience in blindfolding yourself all the time versus wearing a dress (or whatever modest clothing is supposed to be these days). If there was some way to make it hard for men to rape by making them wear slightly archaic-looking clothing, I assume it would not only be a social norm by now but probably an out-and-out law.

Edited at 2013-01-13 07:34 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
2013-01-17 05:52 pm (UTC)

(Link)

On the polyamory thing - conservatives would argue that liberal policies are responsible for most of the sex outside of marriage too - see this: http://www.rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/a-really-really-really-long-post-about-gay-marriage-that-does-not-in-the-end-support-one-side-or-the-other-by-jane-galt/
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