Dominator culture and modesty

As many thoughts as I have been having about modesty, I kept remembering things I had already written about it.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-would-we-ever-promote-hottest.html 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2014/06/modesty.html 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2015/09/false-modesty.html 

None of them are particularly recent, but the issues haven't changed that much. The big change is that when I wrote these I was not familiar with the concept of dominator culture. I still grasped the sexism and the devaluation of women inherent in it, but not how it fit into the larger system.

It doesn't change too much about what I would say about modesty.

I do think it makes more sense to see how much it is women enforcing it against women. Because dominator culture gives women less power, the opportunity to exert power against other women tracks. 

It also makes sense that they can do so without contemplating on how they are upholding a system that devalues them. Probably they accept the devaluation, but when you don't stop and think about it, who knows?

Instead of spending a lot of time on this, I am going to bring up three only vaguely connected things, and how they fit in.

First, I recently remembered something from way back, when I would have been about twelve, but the older young women were talking about prom. 

This was back when it was still common for a lot of them to sew their own dresses or to have their dresses sewn by their mother. One was telling us that the pattern she picked had a sweetheart neckline and her mother asked her if she was sure she could hold it up.

I mention that because forty years later there would be such criticism of something that would in fact have been strapless and sleeveless, but the only thing notable about it then was the mother's question about whether her daughter wasn't a bit flat-chested to pull it off. 

(There's tape for that, right?)

In fact, strapless dresses were pretty common. Maybe that was fashion, but since so many people were sewing their own and sleeves are hard, that could have played a role. 

There did seem to be less interest in policing women, but perhaps it related to that time period, where the results of feminism were still growing pretty slowly. That generation of mothers would only recently have been able to... 

• Have their own bank accounts (technically earlier but not generally allowed until 1974 with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act)
• Sue against discrimination in education (Title IX, passed in 1972)
• Specific to our church, make temple covenants without being married to an active member (This seems to have happened in the mid-80s, but stories of women being denied persisted)

One fun thing about that list is finding multiple examples of things where technically it was allowed but you couldn't get it to happen because the people with traditional power still placed barriers. Tradition would have made that easier.

I suspect that plays a role with the second thing, where women get reduced to their bodies. That seems to happen more and more now. 

I think the amount of women who have successful careers and advanced degrees and investment portfolios and homes that they own, and a general lack of desperation over not being married pushes that. There is more resentment over women owning things instead of being owned.

No one should want that for their daughters or for themselves or for anyone. Maybe if you are a man who is very unsatisfied with his life and has nothing but dominator culture to cling to, that is a logical line of thought but it sucks! It will not make you or anyone else happy. 

Then the woman becomes just a tool for sex, she is seen that way even when young, and everything about her becomes inherently sexualized.

Because really, what is so alluring about knees or shoulders that they become a danger? We get to something that was I hope a joke in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis but I am afraid is not, where women have to keep their heads covered because their hair releases pheromones!

You cannot reduce our bodies in that way without also reducing us as people, which is the ultimate goal.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to throw in also sounds like a joke, but apparently is not. People were discussing modesty culture and one woman mentioned at church (Southern Baptist, not us) being told as a girl that a seat belt could be dangerous because of how it accentuated the breasts. This could be a temptation to male passengers in the car, and it could injure them eternally whereas the worst that could happen to you by not wearing your seat belt is death. But hey, you are dying righteously, saving your brother.

I wish that was an exaggeration, but I have seen video of a Muslim cleric criticizing women under chadors wearing backpacks, because it pulls back the shoulders. However, wearing the backpack under the chador would be okay, because then it is all a shapeless mass.

I will acknowledge that spiritual death is more serious than physical death. That does not change two things:

1. Physical death still matters, ending some opportunities and causing grief for those left behind.
2. IF MEN REALLY NEED ALL OF THIS THEY ARE HOPELESS AND WE SHOULD REDIRECT OUR EFFORTS TO SOMETHING USEFUL!

(Um, happy Father's Day, to those who celebrate.)

At some point we have to admit that it's really about control.

Maybe the next discussion should be on reproductive health, but that's enough for one day.

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