Modesty for women and men

[thewanderer]

Wear whatever you want, but if your desire is to tempt another (although men are not usually perceived that way) that is something you might want to think through. We have been talking about clothing on women and if there is a premeditated desire to tempt a man. I really do think it is time to start a new thread primarily directed at women about the issue. Theres seems to be an overwhelming amount of male perspective at this point which is not bad, just incomplete.

Again, I’m really not sure why you are bringing this up again. I know full well that if I wear something with the intention of tempting a man to sin that I would be sinning grieviously. I have already said as much more than once on this thread and I haven’t seen anybody disputing this fact recently.

 

[thewanderer]

I’m not really sure what you mean by an overwhelming amount of male perspective… In case you didn’t know I am female, I have no idea what gender everyone else on this thread is, and I dont really see that it makes a difference right now. But yes, I of course agree with you that if I wear something (or act in a certain way etc) with the intention of luring a man into sin then OF COURSE I would be grieviously sinning and culpable for my actions. I think everyone is in agreement on that fact!

 

[OurBeloved]

well, that helps a little… except that now it seems that you are reducing modesty to simply the amount of skin showing… which confuses me.

For one, I think it is possible for outfits to be immodest even without showing any skin

Secondly, what is ‘modest’ depends entirely on the particular situation. If it is immodest, say, to cover your elbows, then why is it ok to uncover them in the presence of a male doctor? Or why is it ok to have nude art?

Ok two very complicated and often very misunderstood issues here. Lets not get to the topic of nude art in too deep because we will open up a huge area of rather tangential debate. The reason, I hope that will suffice for not bringing in nude and why I feel it is too irrelevant is that it is not day-to-day interaction. A nude art is a piece that is confined to a certain viewing area and certain individuals and not something that is suppossed to be seen in ones day-day life.

But if you are interested in nude art, I would like to again refer you to the Theology of the Body by JP II. He does bring out the issue of personal sensitivity (a concept if you recall, that I brought up in my initial posts to you) and nude art. He speaks of how culture that contains modesty as a core value would instill in a person a healthy awareness of personal sensitivity (as in what should be revealed and what should not be revealed). Then he speaks of how ART may never compromise these limits set by personal sensitivity.

In any-case, as interesting as the discussion will be, we will have to confine ourselves to dress here and I hope the reason I gave for doing so is sufficient.

Now as for your first point about modesty being violated even without showing skin, that is quiet true. But unless this comes from a personal experience you had or by tapping on to some personal experience of others, it would be less valuable of a claim. Even more importantly, if this is the limited experience of you and a few others, then it would be much inferior if it does contradict the traditional values of centuries.

But I do recall, traditional values having some standards that would rule some dresses which show no skin at all as immodest as well. The elbow example was not suppossed to be representative of all the standards, as I am sure you understood, but an example of a standard to help distinguish it from fashion for you.

I am not just trying to be contrary, please understand that. However, I am going to ask again how you know that any particular traditional value of ‘thou shalt not show such and such a body part’ comes down to a matter of modesty as opposed to a different societal value?

What sort of other value do you have in mind? The only other one I can immediately think of, and which applies to even cultures that did not have modesty as a core value, would be purely functional requirements like exposure to weather, support etc.

Usually, cultures that have modesty as a core value are very aware of which values come as a functional requirement and which values come as a need to uphold modesty.

We are all given intellects and must use them to the best of our abilities, along with prayer to God for enlightenment to learn and follow his commandments and will. It is true that some traditional values are better than some modern ones, but I am very, very hesitant to claim that it is better simply because it is older. Every society has its failings. Which is why I suggested that people use as a rule to determine whether old societal values are legitimate the fact that no one should be prevented or discouraged from participating in a legitimate activity because of the society’s standard of dress.

The problem here is that while we do have intellect, our own intellect does tell us that it is more likely that the collective experience of many that was refined over centuries is most likely more accurate over our limited judgement over, at most 100 years of our life.

The other issue is that while the need to be modest is intellectual, how to be modest is built up on experience and feedback. It is not a purely abstract exercise like logic.

As to the men at this college being too immature… There is a surprisingly large number of engaged couples coming out of this college, and all the alumni that I know are still quite happily married and in line with church teaching. Trust me when I tell you that this college is not swayed by the culture of the world around it. It is extremely catholic, traditional, faithful to the magisterium, and couter-cultural. Its formal dress codes all require women to wear skirts. co-ed dorms do not exist, nor are men and women allowed in each ot…
(Shortened to get it in to one post)
e that everyone is modestly dressed.

There are many couples who emerge from all Colleges and Universities. We cannot measure maturity by that it-self. Even the immature person may get married out of sexual attraction but might go on to build a more meaningful relationship once married.

So it is quiet hard to use the evidence you bring forth in that sense.

But more importantly, the matter still remains that even if there were 1 million students over 50 years, we are comparing this against the collective experience and knowledge of many in different environments (not just college), different age groups over centuries i.e. traditional values.

Reason seems to lean toward thinking that the traditional values are more likely to be right over the new experiences of such a unique demographic over a short time.

 

[OurBeloved]

Also, I again ask, If the men in a society that truly holds modesty as an important value explicitly tell you that they are not tempted to impurity by certain kinds of clothing, how is it immodest to wear said clothes in front of them? Are we to assume that they are lying to us simply because a different society had a different standard of dress?

Actually no, we do not assume they lie. We might be able to go and ask a group of men on a nudist beach if they are attracted to the nude female body they see in the beach and it might be that everyone of them says otherwise with full conviction.

But the point here is that they are not representative enough to think they are right over collective wisdom of centuries. It is possible that these men, while fully believe it is the case, are more likely to engage in lot sexual activity as a result of their attractions when they are left alone with the woman. Or it is possible that some of the men have less hormone activity compared to an average man, and some just don’t realize that they are sexually attracted but label it as attraction. Or it is possible that men who do go in to nudist colonies do have some psychological impediment in general. What I mean to say here is that it is more likely that our limited evidence is inconclusive over the traditional values built up over centuries.

The point of all of this is that no single person can then go and perform experiments on what to dress or not dress personally in their lives. Unless they want to spend a good part of their lives just investigating and conducting experiments on this very subject, it is really infeasible.

So you have to turn to traditional values. In this sense, it makes sense to turn to traditional values of old, which have been refined and passed down over centuries rather than turn to something new that began 50 years ago in an environment which was against modesty.

 

[Portrait]

Dearly beloved friends,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

Reading some of the posts in this current thread reveals what is fundamentally amiss within contemporary Catholicism, namely an obstinate refusal to see as normative the function of tradition in providing guidance on divers issues, including the one currently under review. This is actually typical of liberalism which always feels that it has come of age and no longer has need of the collective wisdom of yesteryear. As a matter of fact it is prejudiced by default against anything that preceded the day before yesterday and herein lies its chief error. However, it has unworthy reasons for wishing to commence new again with a fresh clean slate, and that is to render acceptable and normal all that was considered unacceptable and deviant in previous generations. It is the arrogance that insists that modern man always knows best and that his insights and values are more enlightened, more intellectually respectable,and more rational. Multitudes have bought into this, including, I am sorry to say, many contemporary Catholics. Indeed, this is why we are having the present debate about modest attire and why people are rejecting the moral sense of the faithful from former generations as unhelpful.

Men today are seriously wanting a reliable and sound criterion with which to judge what is modest and immodest and so it is hardly surprising that catastrophic errors of prudential judgment are being made with respect to the matter of modest vesture. The truth is that many within the Church, especially youth, are all at sea and have no plumblines and thus they invariably take their cue from the prevailing decadent culture and let it decide as to what is seemly or unseemly in the matter of clothing. Moreover, their deep seated antipathy towards tradition prevents them from drawing on the collective wisdom of the ages to aid them in developing a well-formed conscience, which would assist them greatly in making the correct choices, not only with respect to dress, but on a whole range of other matters. When this is coupled with Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the Church then I would make bold to say that will never be led astray and will make the correct choices, as many will testify.

Modern man prides himself on living in an age of enlightenment which has cast off burdensome Victorian inhibitions, enabling him to be ‘healthly frank’ in presenting and appreciating the beauty of human beings in the natural state of nudity. Well, the good God designed our bodies male and female. However, the sad fact is that sin has entered our race and man is now subject to concupiscence or evil desire and must contend daily with the reality of his sad predicament. It is no accident that historically our genitalia have been termed our ‘private parts’. Some time ago I recall hearing about a lady reader writing a forceful protest to the editor of a women’s journal which was making its first venture into pictorial representation of semi-nudity. She did not say, ‘This is disgusting’. She did not even say, ‘I am outraged’. She simply remarked, ‘Leave something for my bedroom’. The point was surely a jolly good one. In this sphere we have lost the distinction in our sexualised Western society between the public and the private. Alas, it is just one more of those ironings out of distinctions which mark our degenerate post-Christian mentality. Catholics in the last 50 years have not remained impervious to this outlook and to some extent have become imbued with it because they lack a solid grounding in the collective wisdom of tradition. This is turn has resulted in radically defective consciences that are unable to know what is modest or immodest in the matter of dress - hence the errors of prudential judgment of which I spoke earlier. This is a monumental tragedy and as I said previously in the thread, parents must take a large share of the blame as must also poor catechesis. The need of the hour in these Laodicean times in which our lot is cast is a bold return to the ancient paths and that means allowing the tradition of the past to again be normative in our decision making. For this is to think with an authentically Catholic mind and not a secular mind that is blown about with every opinion; a world in which everybody is right and nobody is wrong; a world in which put up our hands in despair and cry with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”.

Beloved, my plea is that you prayerfully ponder what OurBeloved especially has written in his responses on these boards, for what he has said is not novelty but is fully in accord with Catholic moral teaching and has the ring of truth.

God bless and goodbye for now.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[johnnyjones]

I’m not really sure what you mean by an overwhelming amount of male perspective… In case you didn’t know I am female, I have no idea what gender everyone else on this thread is, and I dont really see that it makes a difference right now. But yes, I of course agree with you that if I wear something (or act in a certain way etc) with the intention of luring a man into sin then OF COURSE I would be grieviously sinning and culpable for my actions. I think everyone is in agreement on that fact!

No, I didn’t know you were female. If you read through this thread from the begining “everyone” is not in agreement with that belief. Several posters imply that the man must hold pure no matter what the female wears. Although they should try, my point was that a tempter is "guilty’ of sin whether the man looks with sin or not.
Sorry for any misdirected quotes making you a male.

 

[johnnyjones]

Dearly beloved friends,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

Reading some of the posts in this current thread reveals what is fundamentally amiss within contemporary Catholicism, namely an obstinate refusal to see as normative the function of tradition in providing guidance on divers issues, including the one currently under review. This is actually typical of liberalism which always feels that it has come of age and no longer has need of the collective wisdom of yesteryear. As a matter of fact it is prejudiced by default against anything that preceded the day before yesterday and herein lies its chief error. However, it has unworthy reasons for wishing to commence new again with a fresh clean slate, and that is to render acceptable and normal all that was considered unacceptable and deviant in previous generations. It is the arrogance that insists that modern man always knows best and that his insights and values are more enlightened, more intellectually respectable,and more rational. Multitudes have bought into this, including, I am sorry to say, many contemporary Catholics. Indeed, this is why we are having the present debate about modest attire and why people are rejecting the moral sense of the faithful from former generations as unhelpful.

Men today are seriously wanting a reliable and sound criterion with which to judge what is modest and immodest and so it is hardly surprising that catastrophic errors of prudential judgment are being made with respect to the matter of modest vesture. The truth is that many within the Church, especially youth, are all at sea and have no plumblines and thus they invariably take their cue from the prevailing decadent culture and let it decide as to what is seemly or unseemly in the matter of clothing. Moreover, their deep seated antipathy towards tradition prevents them from drawing on the collective wisdom of the ages to aid them in developing a well-formed conscience, which would assist them greatly in making the correct choices, not only with respect to dress, but on a whole range of other matters. When this is coupled with Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the Church then I would make bold to say that will never be led astray and will make the correct choices, as many will testify.

Modern man prides himself on living in an age of enlightenment which has cast off burdensome Victorian inhibitions, enabling him to be ‘healthly frank’ in presenting and appreciating the beauty of human beings in the natural state of nudity. Well, the good God designed our bodies male and female. However, the sad fact is that sin has entered our race and man is now subject to concupiscence or evil desire and must contend daily with the reality of his sad predicament. It is no accident that historically our genitalia have been termed our ‘private parts’. Some time ago I recall hearing about a lady reader writing a forceful protest to the editor of a women’s journal which was making its first venture into pictorial representation of semi-nudity. She did not say, ‘This is disgusting’. She did not even say, ‘I am outraged’. She simply remarked, ‘Leave something for my bedroom’. The point was surely a jolly good one. In this sphere we have lost the distinction in our sexualised Western society between the public and the private. Alas, it is just one more of those ironings out of distinctions which mark our degenerate post-Christian mentality. Catholics in the last 50 years have not remained impervious to this outlook and to some extent have become imbued with it because they lack a solid grounding in the collective wisdom of tradition. This is turn has resulted in radically defective consciences that are unable to know what is modest or immodest in the matter of dress - hence the errors of prudential judgment of which I spoke earlier. This is a monumental tragedy and as I said previously in the thread, parents must take a large share of the blame as must also poor catechesis. The need of the hour in these Laodicean times in which our lot is cast is a bold return to the ancient paths and that means allowing the tradition of the past to again be normative in our decision making. For this is to think with an authentically Catholic mind and not a secular mind that is blown about with every opinion; a world in which everybody is right and nobody is wrong; a world in which put up our hands in despair and cry with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”.

Beloved, my plea is that you prayerfully ponder what OurBeloved especially has written in his responses on these boards, for what he has said is not novelty but is fully in accord with Catholic moral teaching and has the ring of truth.

God bless and goodbye for now.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

AMEN my brother, Amen!

 

[OurBeloved]

Do they agree on the liminal cases? And how does their potential agreement justify the state of the cases as immodest?

To perhaps clarify, take scientific research. If the academic community had agreed upon a certain result, does it justify the result?

As far as practical matters goes, it does.

This is the same with traditional values. They are the agreed upon set of standards that have been passed down. It is practically justified to follow it because it has been passed down and refined over centuries by many.

Now you might say that you want to redo this experiment. But unfortunately, due to your short life span and the fact that you are currently living in a society that does not promote modesty as a core value, and therefore have less scientists with the same goal you have, you are less likely to get good experiment results.

As to whether they agree on liminal cases, usually they do. Even if they did not, for practical matters, it is not as important. It is not important from the validity of passing down values and the importance of it either since the variation can be accounted for due to age of each of these cultures in holding modesty as a core value.

I do not think that is a fair comparison. A fifth grader can rest assured (assuming a competent school system) that what he knows now is correct. The same does not apply to historical societies and modesty, or at least the connection has not been demonstrated.

Aah yes, see, you might be missing the point of that example though. Even if we talk about a “competent school system”, that too is a socially agreed upon concept built on experience and values. So school X is socially competent school why school Y is not socially competent.

Remember, what I gave was an analogy to highlight how practical matters deal with collective experience and knowledge that is passed down. So even in your counter-point, you can see this at work in the form of judging ‘competency’.

So with respect to modesty, the values passed down are the ones that were refined and formulated through experience over centuries of experiences of everyone in that culture. It seems more likely they got it right over what you might discover over your shorter life span and hostile environment.

Correct. I fully accept that.

That is good.

But that is not an explanation. The fact that they values modesty does not mean that their judgments on modesty are correct, only extant.

The judgements will indeed not be Perfect. But they cannot be invalid either. The correct term would be imperfect. The standards of modesty handed down through traditional values are ever refining based on the collective experience.

We must not forget that the reason why we have this sudden break in traditional values is because we deliberately threw out these values and reformulated society without modesty as a core value. So after 50-60 years of cultural evolution, we have what we have today.

There is nothing facilitating modesty in our culture because it simply wasn’t on the cards as a core value of our culture. Even the ones we might develop over our life spans are more likely to be inferior to that of centuries of development.

(continued…)

 

[OurBeloved]

(continued…)

First, why is modesty important? I believe that it is important in se, but clearly jj and some others disagree. Let us assume that the judgment of what is modest is not based on what should be covered v. uncovered and instead purely on what is sexually tempting toward others (whether the two can be connected is not relevant here).

If modesty is meant to address the issue of concupiscence, I would recommend knowing what is sexually attractive. Conduct a study on men on a wide variety of body parts and see what the responses are. Hair is sexy? All women and men cover their hair. Toes are sexy? Shoes in, flip-flops out. Cleavage only attracts 10% of men? It is fine.

My alternative is an empirical and thorough analysis of what constitutes sexually attractive clothing (vis-a-vis what it reveals). This to me seems the only reasonable approach to this issue.

That is a most excellent idea. But what you have to realize is that your suggested experiment was exactly what was carried out for centuries that resulted in the traditional values, and if it had not been stopped, would have carried on to this day.

If you think about the practicality of your experiment and holding it as a strict experiment, you will find several problems.

1. the ones who attend your study simply might not be honest
2. you might not grab enough of a representative sample
3. a person might not feel sexual attraction today due to perhaps being depressed for an example but might feel it tomorrow
4. a person might not be able to identify sexual stimulation
5. the fact that they are under test might affect their responses due to anxiety or other conditions

So in this sense, your experiment is something that cannot ever be conducted without the participation of everyone over a long period time living as they live their lives naturally. The longer you can run the experiment, and more people you can account for, the more successful it will be as well. So what better way to conduct this experiment than have the whole community participate?

And that is exactly how traditional values came in to being. It was through an experiment, run over centuries and built and refined on the collective experience of many.

So I agree with you that your suggestion is perfect. But I think if we put some thought, we can identify that this is exactly what took place for a long time and we just abandoned all the results and took away the reason for the experiment in our new society i.e. need for modesty it-self.

This is actually skirting the issue. Whether the current society promotes modesty or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether bare shoulders are immodest. If they are not sexually attractive now, showing them is fine. I fail to see the connection between this and whether the current society is modest.

Of course, I thought this might be a little hard to understand immediately.

Taking your suggested experiment above, your data over this limited time window of your life will always be likely inferior to that of centuries before you.

Your observation that bare shoulders are not sexually attractive might be explained as a blip in the data and indeed there is more reason to think that it might be due to the time of your data collection and possible methodology.

The issue about the current culture being anti-modest was to highlight to you how we cannot use current cultures values on modesty because there are none. The experiment was not performed to see what is sexually attractive and avoid it. So no data was gathered and no conclusions were made to refine on how to accomplish it. The only values you have today are observations by random individuals over their own life time over a limited set of data.

Yet it should not be claimed that such societies were universally correct. If the society is risk-averse, their conception of what is modest may be skewed.

Since values were built on experiences of many, though the conception might be skewed, it won’t be imperfect. It will refine it-self and improve upon its concept and over-time always tend toward the mean as long as the experiment is still conducted with interest (i.e. modesty is still held a core value) and past experimental data is not simply discarded (i.e. abandonment of old values).

So this is why it is not about doing the absolute right thing because sometimes we can only do the best thing according to what we know to accomplish the absolutely right goal. We know what we want to accomplish in this case i.e. modest society. The best way and the most likely right way to do that is by adopting, refining and passing down traditional values that were built through the collective experience of many on the subject.

The other alternatives like us performing our own personal experiments like the one you suggested during our life time are infeasible and more likely to be wrong (i.e. a spurious blip in the data) when contradicting that of the standards set by traditional values.

 

[AthenaC]

So, as usual, I have a bit of a different take. I grew up in a house with oppressive standards of modesty, so when I left I decided to show off the awesome body I had. I had the opportunity to ask quite a few men what they found sexy when they first approached me, and the answer was … wait for it …

Was it my cleavage? Nope.

Was it my tight pants? Nope.

It was my red hair. Apparently there is a not-insignificant proportion of men who have lots of explicit fantasies regarding women with red hair.

So basically, the fact that I had red hair was, in and of itself, inciting lots of lust in the men around me. In my case, I dyed my hair red, but the color could easily have been anyone’s natural haircolor.

Also, I got the same answer from men that approached me while I was wearing a turtleneck and baggy pants, so I have no reason to believe that they are lying. Does this mean that all women with red hair are walking occasions of sin? Do they have an obligation to dye their hair? Does it mean, in the words of Cartman from South Park, that “Gingers don’t have souls?”

So, along with Baelor, I have to ask - what does it take for something to be immodest? What proportion of men have to find something sexy for us to make a blanket prohibition that something is immodest? Baelor uses shoulders as an example, which I have yet to see anyone adequately address (unless I missed something). I am using red hair, which in my experience is a fantastic tool to incite lust while simultaneously covering up everything else.

 

[AthenaC]

Also, it has been my observation that the same guys that want to lecture women on modesty have little sense of what modesty is for a guy. In addition, the idea that men can be eye candy and objects of lust to women is completely ignored.

So, in the spirit of equal representation, I would like to issue some guidelines to the men:

1. No highlights in your hair. Those only encourage women to look at your face and gaze deeply into your eyes, which brings me to:
2. Do not, under any circumstances, show your eyes. They are the windows of the soul, are deeply sensual to women, and you should value yourself enough to reserve such intimacy only for your wife.
3. No visible piercings or tattoos. That will show women that you are rugged and tough and can handle pain, which signals that you can handle the rough patches of life. Incredibly sexy; don’t go there, lest you unleash the beast.
4. Don’t work out. Not too much, anyway. Even if you don’t wear tight shirts (or pants), the way that conventional shirts rest on your shoulder, biceps, and pectorals (and gluteals, below the belt), leaves little to a woman’s imagination and encourages her to picture you without said clothing.
5. Related to #4 - make sure that you wear underwear that keeps your man bits in check. If you don’t, the effect of seeing your bulge is similar to the effect described in #4.
6. Don’t wear nice shoes, or frankly anything fashionable. If you are heterosexual yet observant enough to successfully navigate the intricacies of fashion and color coordination, that is a trait that is highly desirable and sexy to women. Don’t tempt us. In the interests of modesty, of course. Just show a little Christian charity.
7. Most importantly, don’t wear deodorant, don’t use body wash, and don’t wear cologne. I can’t go into what that does to a woman without earning an infraction.

Anyway, since many men are so concerned about modesty (and rightly so!) I thought it was only the Christian sisterly thing to do to provide the above guidelines.

P.S. Hopefully some of you have enough of a sense of humor to laugh at the above while simultaneously understanding my point.

 

[Baelor]

This is the same with traditional values. They are the agreed upon set of standards that have been passed down. It is practically justified to follow it because it has been passed down and refined over centuries by many.

But the difference is that the scientific community operates on an empirical basis of hypothesis, observation, and revision. It is not clear to me how societies are following this process in determining what is modest and what is not. It is not a scientific experiment in the same sense unless the previous societies have conducted experiments of their own on what is modest and what is not.

It is not important from the validity of passing down values and the importance of it either since the variation can be accounted for due to age of each of these cultures in holding modesty as a core value.

What values do society pass down that the Church does not discuss specifically?

Remember, what I gave was an analogy to highlight how practical matters deal with collective experience and knowledge that is passed down. So even in your counter-point, you can see this at work in the form of judging ‘competency’.

And I have been clear about the judgment of competency of historical clothing. You still have not presented any reason why one should accept that historical societies have correctly determined what is modest and what is not.

To return to my hypothetical, my daughter is still left wondering whether bare shoulders are immodest or not. She is precocious, and critical. An answer of, “Oh, well, our forebears thought so,” would simply be met with, “How do we know they were right?”

And if you consider this question, it does not apply to morality in general – we have the Summa, we have Church teaching, we have philosophical discourse on a wide range of issues.

If modesty is meant to prevent temptation into lust, I think it reasonable to ask how we know that a particular garment is problematic or not. The fact that a past society thought X, or that all societies did, is not an actual justification unless we also assert the infallibility of such societies, and at the same time provide a reason for how they arrived at their decisions.

So with respect to modesty, the values passed down are the ones that were refined and formulated through experience over centuries of experiences of everyone in that culture. It seems more likely they got it right over what you might discover over your shorter life span and hostile environment.

And why is this? We now have the ability to gather immense quantities of data comparatively easily. We are now in a better position to determine whether something is sexually appealing than the past two thousands years of humans.

The correct term would be imperfect. The standards of modesty handed down through traditional values are ever refining based on the collective experience.

Which may not be correct or may be misguided. Slavery being an instituted part of society for over 3000 years does not make it okay. I see no reason to accept the collective experience of past societies on modesty because I have not been shown any reason to believe that they thought about this issue methodically. Do we have treatises from 1500 about how bare shoulders are sexually tempting for X% of men?

That is a most excellent idea. But what you have to realize is that your suggested experiment was exactly what was carried out for centuries that resulted in the traditional values, and if it had not been stopped, would have carried on to this day.

I must have missed this experiment. Could you point to it? Is it concrete, or your assertion? How do I know that past societies have approached modesty in the correct and rational way, even if they did make it a priority in their society? It was as empirical then as it is now, and you still have not provided a compelling reason to believe that they actually knew what they were doing.

If you think about the practicality of your experiment and holding it as a strict experiment, you will find several problems.
[redacted]
So in this sense, your experiment is something that cannot ever be conducted without the participation of everyone over a long period time living as they live their lives naturally. The longer you can run the experiment, and more people you can account for, the more successful it will be as well. So what better way to conduct this experiment than have the whole community participate?

This thread is not meant to be a statistics discussion, so I will refrain from making it such. Nevertheless, all five points are resolved by picking a large enough sample size.

Second, and what I have been asking this entire time is on what basis you are making the claim that historical societies approached modesty in the way that it should be approached. Ancient Romans wore togas, but were sexually depraved (sources upon request).

Third, and most importantly, the basis upon which I am operating for what is modest and what is immodest (as put forth by others) is what is sexually attractive. There remains a total lack of evidence that historical societies were actually basing their decisions on modesty on an empirically sound approach to this issue.

The rest of your post relates directly to this unaddressed issue, so I am unable to respond.

 

[nickiwool]

Please stop talking about advertising as if you’ve actually worked even close with the industry. Let me let you in on a little secret: I’ve become part of my company’s recent efforts to connect with ad groups. Sex doesn’t always sell. Not every product is Axe cologne or a sports car.

And heck, last time I saw a car commercial, it showed just that: THE CAR.

You know this reminds me of the time I first watched a trailer for an upcoming video game Lollipop Chainsaw. In it, you’d probably see a lot of things that might prove you right. Sexual appeal seemed to have been the focus of it.

You want to know my reaction to it though? A raised eyebrow and absolutely diminished desire to play the game. Hyper-sexualized games aren’t as popular in the community as you might think.

Now fast forward a year after and I saw a second trailer of the game, this time featuring more of the gameplay and better yet, the bosses. Today that game is now officially on my PS3 wishlist. Why? Why when I couldn’t care less about a skimpy cheerleader slicing zombies with a chainsaw? It’s because the bosses were THAT awesome. “Bosses of Zombie Rock”? Yes please! I wasn’t sold by the prospect of seeing a skimpy girl. I was sold by the concept of fighting rock-themed zombie lords.

If something as meager as more substantial focus on the product instead of hormones is enough to shift focus, then I don’t see why people like you insist on making excuses.

Assuming if there’s really any point in discussing a person’s clothes in the first place.

This is true but not entirely true. I am a huge gamer. and have known gamers since the late 90s. Out of these gamers I know more guys then girls. The guys love seeing hot girls in games, that’s why guys always choose to roll(pick) a girl character versus a guy. They have ALL told me this themselves. Final fantasy and WoW(world of warcraft) both have a ton of guys and girls running around in the MMO(massive multiplayer online game) however mostly all the girls are guys. You cannot tell me this isn’t true because I have been playing WoW, and played warhammer, and AOC(age of conan) since they all first came out. I am not saying that the girls in those games are very provacative, they have to much gear on to see them. But I know that they do show cleavage and my friends told me they would stare at them. Maybe not everyone sees things as you do, I am glad to hear your not turned on by them. But the gaming industry adds some sexiness to them always. Because they know it will add a great touch for some men. Some men love action but also like to see the sexiness in them too.
Japanese anime in games are very provacative. The woman are always showing cleavage and do wear less clothing then the other games. I’ve played tons of those games. Gia, Eden eternal ect. And please do not take this as a racial comment. I love Japanese anime but I also know a lot of shows or games are done for sexual purposes and win the audiance that way. One of my guy friends who loves it showed me how on youtube people had redone my fav show, Dragon ballz, cause people loved seeing vulma half naked in skimpy clothes, and most anime is regarded toward sexual attire and scenes. I know you did not say they don’t do it in games, I just wanted to clear up how I know some games are done to grab those like commercials do. So yes mostly highely sexualized games do sell. But I will admit that Tera online is having a problem being to highely sexualized and some protests are going out, although all my guys friends seem to love it. They are people out there like you, but I know a LOT that aren’t . If I took your comment incorrectly then please tell me and allow me to correct myself.

NOTE: I had left the thread because I did not want anyone to wish anything bad on me. A bit ago I read how you had told Johnnyjones how you hold back from praying to God to wish deception on im or some sort. Please do not wish anything bad on me, as I am not on you. I care about everyone here regardless if they agree with me or not. But, I do not want to keep myself from debating when I am in fear of someone wishing me hard. Again If I read your comment to johnnyjones incorrectly please let me know.

Many Blessings,
-Nicki

 

[johnnyjones]

Also, it has been my observation that the same guys that want to lecture women on modesty have little sense of what modesty is for a guy. In addition, the idea that men can be eye candy and objects of lust to women is completely ignored.

So, in the spirit of equal representation, I would like to issue some guidelines to the men:

1. No highlights in your hair. Those only encourage women to look at your face and gaze deeply into your eyes, which brings me to:
2. Do not, under any circumstances, show your eyes. They are the windows of the soul, are deeply sensual to women, and you should value yourself enough to reserve such intimacy only for your wife.
3. No visible piercings or tattoos. That will show women that you are rugged and tough and can handle pain, which signals that you can handle the rough patches of life. Incredibly sexy; don’t go there, lest you unleash the beast.
4. Don’t work out. Not too much, anyway. Even if you don’t wear tight shirts (or pants), the way that conventional shirts rest on your shoulder, biceps, and pectorals (and gluteals, below the belt), leaves little to a woman’s imagination and encourages her to picture you without said clothing.
5. Related to #4 - make sure that you wear underwear that keeps your man bits in check. If you don’t, the effect of seeing your bulge is similar to the effect described in #4.
6. Don’t wear nice shoes, or frankly anything fashionable. If you are heterosexual yet observant enough to successfully navigate the intricacies of fashion and color coordination, that is a trait that is highly desirable and sexy to women. Don’t tempt us. In the interests of modesty, of course. Just show a little Christian charity.
7. Most importantly, don’t wear deodorant, don’t use body wash, and don’t wear cologne. I can’t go into what that does to a woman without earning an infraction.

Anyway, since many men are so concerned about modesty (and rightly so!) I thought it was only the Christian sisterly thing to do to provide the above guidelines.

P.S. Hopefully some of you have enough of a sense of humor to laugh at the above while simultaneously understanding my point.

I got a few laughs. If I asked you a straight out question-- If a woman has the intent to tempt a man based on what she is wearing, is that wrong?

 

[johnnyjones]

This is true but not entirely true. I am a huge gamer. and have known gamers since the late 90s. Out of these gamers I know more guys then girls. The guys love seeing hot girls in games, that’s why guys always choose to roll(pick) a girl character versus a guy. They have ALL told me this themselves. Final fantasy and WoW(world of warcraft) both have a ton of guys and girls running around in the MMO(massive multiplayer online game) however mostly all the girls are guys. You cannot tell me this isn’t true because I have been playing WoW, and played warhammer, and AOC(age of conan) since they all first came out. I am not saying that the girls in those games are very provacative, they have to much gear on to see them. But I know that they do show cleavage and my friends told me they would stare at them. Maybe not everyone sees things as you do, I am glad to hear your not turned on by them. But the gaming industry adds them because they know more men play the games and know just like action, men like sex too.
Japanese anime in games are very provacative. The woman are always showing cleavage and do wear less clothing then the other games. I’ve played tons of those games. Gia, Eden eternal ect. And please do not take this as a racial comment. I love Japanese anime but I also know a lot of shows or games are done for sexual purposes and win the audiance that way. One of my guy friends who loves it showed me how on youtube people had redone my fav show, Dragon ballz, cause people loved seeing vulma half naked in skimpy clothes, and most anime is regarded toward sexual attire and scenes. I know you did not say they don’t do it in games, I just wanted to clear up how I know some games are done to grab those like commercials do. So yes mostly highely sexualized games do sell. But I will admit that Tera online is having a problem being to highely sexualized and some protests are going out, although all my guys friends seem to love it. They are people out there like you, but I know a LOT that aren’t . If I took your comment incorrectly then please tell me and allow me to correct myself.

NOTE: I had left the thread because I did not want anyone to wish anything bad on me. A bit ago I read how you had told Johnnyjones how you hold back from praying to God to wish deception on im or some sort. Please do not wish anything bad on me, as I am not on you. I care about everyone here regardless if they agree with me or not. But, I do not want to keep myself from debating when I am in fear of someone wishing me hard. Again If I read your comment to johnnyjones incorrectly please let me know.

Many Blessings,
-Nicki

Thank you for your continually wise words. Although I was surrised and dismayed by that comment I must be careful as well because at times in passion I may have been kurt in some responses. I appreciate the awareness.

 

[AthenaC]

I got a few laughs. If I asked you a straight out question-- If a woman has the intent to tempt a man based on what she is wearing, is that wrong?

I’m glad you thought it was funny, but please consider that, as a female, my thoughts on male modesty did not come out of the blue …

To answer your question, if a person (male or female) has the intent to tempt a member of the opposite sex (or same sex, if it applies), then that is wrong. However, if they just want to make sure they get noticed (which is what I think the intent is for most women), then it’s a completely different ball game. After all, you’re not going to meet anybody if you are dressed to blend into the background, are you?

Also, if you are in a situation (like prom, for example) where literally every woman there is showing cleavage, I would argue that you are being modest in showing less cleavage than the average woman. After all, if you are dressed in a similar manner to everyone else, you are not drawing undue attention to yourself, your clothes, and your body parts.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

Dearly beloved friends,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

Reading some of the posts in this current thread reveals what is fundamentally amiss within contemporary Catholicism, namely an obstinate refusal to see as normative the function of tradition in providing guidance on divers issues, including the one currently under review. This is actually typical of liberalism which always feels that it has come of age and no longer has need of the collective wisdom of yesteryear. As a matter of fact it is prejudiced by default against anything that preceded the day before yesterday and herein lies its chief error. However, it has unworthy reasons for wishing to commence new again with a fresh clean slate, and that is to render acceptable and normal all that was considered unacceptable and deviant in previous generations. It is the arrogance that insists that modern man always knows best and that his insights and values are more enlightened, more intellectually respectable,and more rational. Multitudes have bought into this, including, I am sorry to say, many contemporary Catholics. Indeed, this is why we are having the present debate about modest attire and why people are rejecting the moral sense of the faithful from former generations as unhelpful.

Men today are seriously wanting a reliable and sound criterion with which to judge what is modest and immodest and so it is hardly surprising that catastrophic errors of prudential judgment are being made with respect to the matter of modest vesture. The truth is that many within the Church, especially youth, are all at sea and have no plumblines and thus they invariably take their cue from the prevailing decadent culture and let it decide as to what is seemly or unseemly in the matter of clothing. Moreover, their deep seated antipathy towards tradition prevents them from drawing on the collective wisdom of the ages to aid them in developing a well-formed conscience, which would assist them greatly in making the correct choices, not only with respect to dress, but on a whole range of other matters. When this is coupled with Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the Church then I would make bold to say that will never be led astray and will make the correct choices, as many will testify.

Modern man prides himself on living in an age of enlightenment which has cast off burdensome Victorian inhibitions, enabling him to be ‘healthly frank’ in presenting and appreciating the beauty of human beings in the natural state of nudity. Well, the good God designed our bodies male and female. However, the sad fact is that sin has entered our race and man is now subject to concupiscence or evil desire and must contend daily with the reality of his sad predicament. It is no accident that historically our genitalia have been termed our ‘private parts’. Some time ago I recall hearing about a lady reader writing a forceful protest to the editor of a women’s journal which was making its first venture into pictorial representation of semi-nudity. She did not say, ‘This is disgusting’. She did not even say, ‘I am outraged’. She simply remarked, ‘Leave something for my bedroom’. The point was surely a jolly good one. In this sphere we have lost the distinction in our sexualised Western society between the public and the private. Alas, it is just one more of those ironings out of distinctions which mark our degenerate post-Christian mentality. Catholics in the last 50 years have not remained impervious to this outlook and to some extent have become imbued with it because they lack a solid grounding in the collective wisdom of tradition. This is turn has resulted in radically defective consciences that are unable to know what is modest or immodest in the matter of dress - hence the errors of prudential judgment of which I spoke earlier. This is a monumental tragedy and as I said previously in the thread, parents must take a large share of the blame as must also poor catechesis. The need of the hour in these Laodicean times in which our lot is cast is a bold return to the ancient paths and that means allowing the tradition of the past to again be normative in our decision making. For this is to think with an authentically Catholic mind and not a secular mind that is blown about with every opinion; a world in which everybody is right and nobody is wrong; a world in which put up our hands in despair and cry with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”.

Beloved, my plea is that you prayerfully ponder what OurBeloved especially has written in his responses on these boards, for what he has said is not novelty but is fully in accord with Catholic moral teaching and has the ring of truth.

God bless and goodbye for now.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

Portrait- You are a trip. I wish sometimes I had the kind of time you must have to write so well. OK…back to work.

 

[nickiwool]

Thank you for your continually wise words. Although I was surrised and dismayed by that comment I must be careful as well because at times in passion I may have been kurt in some responses. I appreciate the awareness.

You are very welcome. Debates sometimes can get us fustrated but the important thing is to always remember we all believe in the same father almighty and the number one rule is love. Debating and being fustrated is ok. But we must all remember to also care about each other and not wish harm on anyone no madder what. :grouphug:

Many Blessings,
-Nicki

 

[OurBeloved]

But the difference is that the scientific community operates on an empirical basis of hypothesis, observation, and revision. It is not clear to me how societies are following this process in determining what is modest and what is not. It is not a scientific experiment in the same sense unless the previous societies have conducted experiments of their own on what is modest and what is not.

You are perhaps imagining in your mind a lab where participants come in and out.

Otherwise, if you consider just the important elements, i.e. goal, observation, revision, all these are what naturally took place in a culture. So yes, previous societies did conduct things that qualify as experiments. Unlike any conventional scientific experiment, this one was a continuous one which unfortunately ended with our abandonment of modesty as a core value.

Another thing that might be throwing you off is that the experiment in this case is that the takes place throughout the life of a person and then in the next and so on.

What values do society pass down that the Church does not discuss specifically?

Well, take even the basic idea of not going topless. That is not something you experimented with but something that was passed down to you as a standard.

The church doesn’t have a dogma or doctrine anywhere that you should cover your breasts.

I think what you have to keep in mind is that it is one thing to know the sin, in this case, immodesty. It is another thing to practically avoid the sin. The church, in cultures, did give good advice on how to avoid immodesty by tapping on to the traditional values. So if you are interested, you could read some old homilies from that time which do go into these issues in details and elaborate on the traditional values.

But the debate here doesn’t seem to be on where you can find these values. It seems to be on whether we should accept them. I have given reason to accept them based on the fact that it is the result of experience and wisdom of many over centuries in trying to uphold modesty.

You have presented an alternative to perhaps redo a similar experiment by yourself. I have shown why such an enterprise is unlikely to succeed and why we would not be reasonable in thinking your conclusions are valid over those that were made over centuries by an entire community.

So in the absence of any real alternative, why are you hesitant to go with traditional values?

And I have been clear about the judgment of competency of historical clothing. You still have not presented any reason why one should accept that historical societies have correctly determined what is modest and what is not.

Because given the possibilities, turning to traditional values seems the most reasonable.

The alternatives you have presented are infeasible and less likely to be true given your finite life span.

To return to my hypothetical, my daughter is still left wondering whether bare shoulders are immodest or not. She is precocious, and critical. An answer of, “Oh, well, our forebears thought so,” would simply be met with, “How do we know they were right?”

The problem here seems to be rather than the question posing any threat, your assumption that this question cannot be answered.

The answer is simple, we don’t know if they got it 100% right. But it is what we know so far from centuries of day to day living by many before us as they did their best to uphold modesty. So we go with that.

You could also point out to your daughter, as I have done to you, that she cannot figure this out for herself because she hasn’t lived even half of the time that the wisdom was accumulated in.

But yes, this takes humility and a real recognition and thought on how knowledge is gathered and how any standards can be made that are not of divine origin. We simply have to accept from the knowledge of others before us, refine it as we live our lives, and then pass it on.

And if you consider this question, it does not apply to morality in general – we have the Summa, we have Church teaching, we have philosophical discourse on a wide range of issues.

Yes we do.

If modesty is meant to prevent temptation into lust, I think it reasonable to ask how we know that a particular garment is problematic or not. The fact that a past society thought X, or that all societies did, is not an actual justification unless we also assert the infallibility of such societies, and at the same time provide a reason for how they arrived at their decisions.

See, I think you have been mislead to work with absolutes only I think. But when it comes to actions, there are no absolutes, just best decisions.

For an example, lets say one wants to prevent people from stealing. We know stealing is wrong with absolute certainty. But what we don’t know is how to best accomplish it. One can make a best decision based on what they know but their decision might not turn out to be the actual best (considering the possible options, probably God only knows the truth of all those possible counterfactuals anyway).

But what matters is one makes the best decision according to what they know. If it doesn’t work, refine it and pass it down to others.

This simple fact is all there is in this issue that we have been discussing the past couple of days.

(continued…)

 

[OurBeloved]

(continued…)

And why is this? We now have the ability to gather immense quantities of data comparatively easily. We are now in a better position to determine whether something is sexually appealing than the past two thousands years of humans.

We can gather lots of data, but we can’t speed up time or overcome the effect that we would have in artificially observing the system.

Your data would be rather of limited use as well because you would be hard pressed to find many persons who have the same goal as you i.e. uphold modesty in your society.

Then there is the greater issue of what you suggest people do and you yourself do until your experiment is complete. If the answer is “do the best you can”, the best you can is present in the knowledge of traditional values.

So I don’t think there is a way out for you anyway. Why exactly are you so hesitant to turn to traditional values? Shouldn’t it be, that given salvation of yourself and others is the most important, and given that there are no standards available for you today, you would rather turn to the only thing you have?

Which may not be correct or may be misguided. Slavery being an instituted part of society for over 3000 years does not make it okay. I see no reason to accept the collective experience of past societies on modesty because I have not been shown any reason to believe that they thought about this issue methodically. Do we have treatises from 1500 about how bare shoulders are sexually tempting for X% of men?

But you are comparing Apples to Oranges here. Society advocating slavery is just as bad as a society advocating immodesty. So the values pertaining to slavery in a culture for an example can be gotten rid of because we know the core value it-self was wrong.

The traditional values surrounding the core value of modesty in a culture should always be upheld because modesty is something good.

You are confusing things a bit here.

I must have missed this experiment. Could you point to it? Is it concrete, or your assertion? How do I know that past societies have approached modesty in the correct and rational way, even if they did make it a priority in their society? It was as empirical then as it is now, and you still have not provided a compelling reason to believe that they actually knew what they were doing.

If I may suggest something at this point, I think you have not put much thought in to how cultural values originate. This is perhaps why you seem to struggle so much with the idea and see it as novel.

Quiet ironically you do the same thing everyday and follow the traditional values of our new culture but you don’t seem to realize it. You don’t question it.

Another problem might be your tendency to lean toward the absolutes in actions. This can be dangerous for some in that they tend to be overly scrupulous in figuring out whats the best course of action that they never act anyway. For others, I think like in your case, it might lead you to think you shouldn’t act at all or be stuck with hypothetical experiments you could conduct to figure out whats best but never conduct anyway.

As far as practicality goes, for the average person, they cannot conduct strict experiments like the ones you suggested when it comes to social issues of this sort. I even gave you reasons why your strict experimental results would be doubtful as well.

So if an average person is interested in some standards to best uphold modesty, he/she has to turn to traditional values. All the alternatives you suggest either lead to inaction till some hypothetical experiment is completed or produce doubtful results even if the experiment is conducted (for reasons I highlighted in my previous reply).

This thread is not meant to be a statistics discussion, so I will refrain from making it such. Nevertheless, all five points are resolved by picking a large enough sample size.

That is quiet the interesting claim. Just to give you a background about my-self, I am an Engineer and I can assure you that I have a good grasp of statistics. The fact that people don’t reveal the truth under a certain condition cannot definitely be eliminated by a large enough sample size so I am really not sure what you are trying to say.

In fact, these are prior things that are considered prior to even designing an experiment, especially ones that have a psychological nature like the one we are discussing.

But EVEN IF we grant you that such an experiment can be conducted, how would you even gather your sample size? Who will perform such a large experiment? More importantly, what are YOU going to do till the experiment is conducted and results are analyzed and conclusions are made? What standard will you adhere to till the results come out?

(continued…)