Wearing Immodest Clothing is Sexual Aggression

[SpeakNow]

This idea that women display aggression by their choice of revealing clothing is foreign and preposterous to most Western women, who believe that clothing expresses merely personal taste and that male psychology can be molded – and should be molded. If they dress like a whore that does not mean for heaven’s sake that they are a whore.

Their denial that the most basic sex differences exist grants them a sort of innocence about the effects of revealing clothing, and in many cases this innocence is entirely genuine. At the same time, they acknowledge their acute awareness of sex differences by drawing attention to their bodily attributes. Since they have been taught endlessly that there is no such thing as an aggressive woman and that men can turn on and off at will their reactions to female flesh, they are ignorant of their own aggressive instincts and the effects these instincts have on others, creating an environment that is hyper-sexualized and, paradoxically, emasculating.

Obviously I wear mini-skirts to harass the boys :roll:

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/05/why-immodest-dress-is-a-form-of-aggression/

[uber frau]

***Facepalm***

Their right to not be offended is being impinged.

[RR88]

At a certain point, things stop being about modesty and start being about blaming women for every damned thing that ever goes wrong.

[DarkAnts]

Obviously I wear mini-skirts to harass the boys :roll:

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/201 ... ggression/

Someone is once again trying to blame their faults on women. :naughty: When will they learn that and individual is responsible for their thoughts and actions?

[guidedbybobafett]

I remain convinced that thinkinghousewife is satire.

[pixydust]

At a certain point, things stop being about modesty and start being about blaming women for every damned thing that ever goes wrong.

QFT!

[margiebargie]

I remain convinced that thinkinghousewife is satire.

Gawd, I hope you're right.

[debrand]

that men can turn on and off at will their reactions to female flesh

No one is asking men to turn off their sexual attraction. They can discreetly notice anyone they want and their fantasies are their own. However, they are required to be polite, discreet and respectful. A person's clothing does not give anyone the right to harass or attack them. If a scantily dressed woman emasculates a man because he can not act on his desires then that man should be locked away for public safety. The Thinking Housewife makes it sound as if all men are lunatics who are on the edge of loosing control. And what about societies in which women go topless? The men in those societies act in ways appropriate to their culture.

Sometimes I notice joggers. Just because a man runs in shorts and no tops, I don't have the right to act on my desire. Despite his clothing, I have to treat him with basic human decency and not leer or catcall. Nor would it be anything more then shallow, for me to judge him as a whore based on his lack of clothing.

[alba]

No one is asking men to turn off their sexual attraction. They can discreetly notice anyone they want and their fantasies are their own. However, they are required to be polite, discreet and respectful. A person's clothing does not give anyone the right to harass or attack them. If a scantily dressed woman emasculates a man because he can not act on his desires then that man should be locked away for public safety. The Thinking Housewife makes it sound as if all men are lunatics who are on the edge of loosing control. And what about societies in which women go topless? The men in those societies act in ways appropriate to their culture.

Sometimes I notice joggers. Just because a man runs in shorts and no tops, I don't have the right to act on my desire. Despite his clothing, I have to treat him with basic human decency and not leer or catcall. Nor would it be anything more then shallow, for me to judge him as a whore based on his lack of clothing.

This is pretty much what I was going to say. There's a difference between desires and actions; we don't expect men not to have their desires, we expect them not to act on them.

Edited to change "thoughts" to "desires" because, as debrand said, it's not OK to brand someone as a slut because of how they're dressed.

[debrand]

From the comments

Immodest dress by a woman is a form of sexual harassment. It’s interesting how feminists bitterly resent being regarded as “sex objects,†while vehemently defending their right to dress as sex objects. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Being a sexual object means that you view the other person as only a tool for your desire. You don't care about their thoughts, feelings or desire. Demanding that women dress modestly to protect men IS viewing women as sexual objects. How can Laura and her minion not undertand that?

[latraviata]

QFT!

What's new. Here in the democratic, secular kingdom of the Netherlands:

My son (neuro-radiologist) told me that a female resident had an affaire with one of the radiologists, he is married and has three children. Guess who is fired and is unable to finish her ​​education/residency???

Right! The radiologist can just live on and has his way, nothing happened, no problem move on people.

[CynicMom]

I was not aware that feminists believed there was no such things as an aggressive woman. This seems contradictory to their other views about feminists.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Sadly, s/he is not the only one with such views.

Branding girls/women as being "aggressive" for merely existing in public, unrestrained by every single dictate of someone else's idea of modesty, seems to be increasingly common. It opens the door to viewing men who harass, assault or arrest these women, who have engaged in no violence, as acting in self-defense.

[desertvixen]

At a certain point, things stop being about modesty and start being about blaming women for every damned thing that ever goes wrong.

This. So much.

[Talitha Cumi]

This is pretty much what I was going to say. There's a difference between desires and actions; we don't expect men not to have their desires, we expect them not to act on them.

Edited to change "thoughts" to "desires" because, as debrand said, it's not OK to brand someone as a slut because of how they're dressed.

Except Jeebus objects to even having the desire. If you lust after a woman, it's as if you've committed adultery! They are forcing the menz to sin with their non-shapeless wear!

[genericJname]

I'm leaving in a minute to go to my son's preschool field day. I'm trying to decide which immodest tank top to wear. There may be some kids' dads there that I can attack.

[emmiedahl]

She fails to make an argument for her point of view. Seriously, she needs to get herself to college if she is going to consider herself an academic. At the most, she argues that a miniskirt is analogous to crushing cans with one's hands, which is not aggression. And not the same thing.

Her writing is so fantasy-based that it is hilarious.

[Norseman]

I remain convinced that thinkinghousewife is satire.

I keep thinking so too, mostly because Thinking Housewife has such crazy views about *everything*. I mean its one thing to have a website that is convinced women are to blame for everything, but one who thinks that pizza is a trojan horse to destroy western civilization, or how woot, there it is is a clever plot to force whites to pay atetntion to blacks, or, or, or... It's just... There are so many crazy views on absolutely every subject under the sun! I can't stop reading Thinking Housewife because it's just so much craziness!

[sassycupcake]

Sadly, s/he is not the only one with such views.

Branding girls/women as being "aggressive" for merely existing in public, unrestrained by every single dictate of someone else's idea of modesty, seems to be increasingly common. It opens the door to viewing men who harass, assault or arrest these women, who have engaged in no violence, as acting in self-defense.

That's just it: if we as women fight against our patriarchal, misogynist culture (which fundies like the "Thinking" Housewife epitomize), we are branded as aggressive.

Sadly, Lousewife isn't as crazy as she appears at first glance. She takes sexist ideals already found in our culture and takes them to an all-new, incredibly crazy level. We see the aggressive label slapped around in sexist double standards like "He's assertive, she's a bitch" or "He's a playa, she's a slut." Women in control of themselves, their lives, their educations, their futures, their families, their sexualities, and/or their bodies are labeled as aggressive in our society. Lousewife just uses her crazy to throw that label around when women exercise control over the little choices (like clothing) instead of just the big ones.

Anyway, Lousewife and the rest of the patriarchy can kiss my ass. It takes a dedicated, confident, and dare I say it, AGGRESSIVE woman to fight against this bullshit. And I'm proud to say that I'm aggressive against misogyny.

[holothuroidea]

"Aggressive" is really the wrong word, and she's using it to be inflammatory.

I think it's rude to act sexual in public, for both men and women. Modesty just means acting in a way that is considerate other people's boundaries, and that is something I agree with. Boundaries are highly individual, so generally cultures adopt unwritten rules about what is and isn't acceptable, and I also agree with this. There are some "rules" that exist in our culture that I think have a negative impact on us and should change (namely, taboos about bare breasts), but that doesn't mean that the fact that there are constructs to begin with is wrong.

I don't think modesty has anything to do with the hem of your skirt or the cut of your blouse. It's about your behavior and your demeanor, and it's about being respectful to others. And men are equally responsible.

Lousewife is not talking about modesty at all, she's talking about the demonization of the female body and the reduction of men to victims of their own sexuality. She's just using "modesty" as a rationalization for it.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Except Jeebus objects to even having the desire. If you lust after a woman, it's as if you've committed adultery! They are forcing the menz to sin with their non-shapeless wear!

This.

The whole argument rests on the fact that men are expected to refrain from not just actual rape and fornication, but from ever getting a hard-on in any context other than procreative sex.

So, you have a boys who are raised to believe that merely having sexual thoughts is bad, and that whacking off is beyond evil. Not surprisingly, 99% of them find these rules nearly impossible to follow. They get frustrated and angry at their failure. Now, since nobody likes to be considered an evil sinner, it's human nature to blame others for our failings. The blame then gets displaced onto the women, who are blamed for causing them to stumble into sin by causing them to be horny.

[samithemage]

I must make an admission of guilt now. Clearly, the reason that I have chosen every article of clothing in my wardrobe is to tempt good christian men into sin, because I know that good christian men are less able than other men to treat a scantily clad woman like a person. Clearly christian men will just want to rape my for dressing like a whore ie:skirts slightly above my knees and a bit of cleavage showing. Since men are unable to control themselves, that makes me a skanky whore. Of course, if I were a proper young lady, I'd under the authority of a christian man (husband, father, etc) ...who can't control himself...so I'm not sure how that works

[PokaDot]

I've never heard this argument before. It sort of cracks me up.

And that bit about that celibate whining about how hard it is? Guess what buddy.....IF you get married, you still gotta restrain yourself. Just because you're married doesn't mean you can rape your spouse.

His whining reminds me of something that the Mormon church once tried to teach me (before I got pissed off and pretty much left it), which was that immodestly dressed women are porn to men....and that if we become porn then it's sort of our fault if something bad happens..

[jenny_islander]

Except Jeebus objects to even having the desire. If you lust after a woman, it's as if you've committed adultery! They are forcing the menz to sin with their non-shapeless wear!

But that isn't what lust means, and I wish more people knew this. "To lust after" means "to dwell on and fondle one's desire for." There's a passage in the KJV about somebody lusting after some grain growing in the fields. He wasn't phytosexual; he was very hungry and that was all he had on his mind. A lusty person thinks only about his immediate physical desires and the satisfaction of same, so in medieval English, a "lusty babe" is a perfectly normal infant or toddler.

So a better vernacular translation of that verse is "If you're perving on a woman with whom you should not have sex, you are just as guilty as if you had actually gone to bed wih her." The preventive is not for women to try to hide every secondary sexual characteristic. The preventive is for people not to perv over other people--not to turn other people into toys, even in their own minds.

Okay: "Wow, she's sexy. I do indeed have a libido, and it's in fine form this afternoon! Okay, back to what I was thinking about before I saw her."

Not okay: "Wow, she's sexy. I want to . . . and then I bet she would . . . Oh, yeah, we could . . . "

[holothuroidea]

But that isn't what lust means, and I wish more people knew this. "To lust after" means "to dwell on and fondle one's desire for." There's a passage in the KJV about somebody lusting after some grain growing in the fields. He wasn't phytosexual; he was very hungry and that was all he had on his mind. A lusty person thinks only about his immediate physical desires and the satisfaction of same, so in medieval English, a "lusty babe" is a perfectly normal infant or toddler.

So a better vernacular translation of that verse is "If you're perving on a woman with whom you should not have sex, you are just as guilty as if you had actually gone to bed wih her." The preventive is not for women to try to hide every secondary sexual characteristic. The preventive is for people not to perv over other people--not to turn other people into toys, even in their own minds.

Okay: "Wow, she's sexy. I do indeed have a libido, and it's in fine form this afternoon! Okay, back to what I was thinking about before I saw her."

Not okay: "Wow, she's sexy. I want to . . . and then I bet she would . . . Oh, yeah, we could . . . "

This is all true.

Fundamentalists loose the distinction between desire and lust in their extremism.

And I'll reiterate that modesty has nothing to do with what you are wearing. The complete covering up of women has nothing to do with being kind to the men of your community. It is simply a rule that men imposed on women in an effort to control their possession of them. I have never seen an argument to convince me otherwise, no matter how hard fundie ladies try to justify it in an effort to romanticize the good old days.