Modesty Culture Part 5: The Faulty Definition of “Lust”
I might start with (admitted adulterer and alleged sexual assaulter) Douglas Phillips. His “Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy” starts with the idea that men were created superior to women. That God is masculine, not feminine. That, and I quote, “The man is also the image and glory of God in terms of authority, while the woman is the glory of man.”
It goes on, rather logically, from this premise. Woman was created to obey and serve man.
Let me repeat that again, because I believe it is the central premise in Christian Patriarchy.
.. Doug Phillips took down his entire website after the scandal, so I can’t link it, but he has stressed that the genders must be kept separate in their activities, social spheres, and so forth. The point is that boys and girls do NOT mix. They are NOT to be friends. They are NOT to interact as equals.
.. Thus, the only connection between male and female is to be sexual, within the bounds of marriage.
SEXUAL.
Between a husband and a wife, within marriage. Other than that, separate.
If you combine this with the teaching that women are to serve men, sexually and in every other way, what do you come up with?
A complete objectification of women. They exist as sexual parts for the gratification of men. They are property, to be used by men for their own purposes. (Again, I think I need a whole post for this.)
.. St. Augustine: “Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders,” and “I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.”
.. Fundamentalism – particularly gendered fundamentalism – looks largely the same, regardless of the name used for the god and the prophet. (The Hindu Code of Manu, quoted above, is closer to Phillips’ teachings than anything in the Bible, a fact I found interesting.)
.. Where in the world are sexual assault rates the highest?
If you believe the “Modesty Culture” proponents, you would believe that they are far higher in secular cultures where women wear less clothing. After all, women’s bodies cause lust, and lust leads to uncontrolled seeking of sex.
So where are the rates the highest?
Say, France, where women go nude or topless on the beaches of the Riviera. Perhaps?
Maybe in the United States, home to Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian?
I already mentioned that my own experience was that there was a problem in ultra-conservative circles with assault and consent. Obviously, the plural of anecdote isn’t data, so it isn’t fair to extrapolate. Fortunately, we have a pretty large sample size to work with.
Let’s actually look at the facts.
Sexual Assault is actually highest in countries that have a patriarchal view of women.
Countries like Egypt. Somalia. India. Iran. Yes. Many countries that force their women to cover up. Also, countries that treat women as inferior... Because sexual assault (like lust) isn’t about the woman’s attire.
It is about the man’s willingness to control his own behavior and society’s willingness to condemn and punish sexual assault.
.. This basic belief is vital to the teachings of the Patriarchists, and thus they insist on “shamefacedness.” For women, of course.
This belief, by the way, is nothing new. Early church father St. Clement expressed the views of many of his and later ages when he said, “Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman.”