A Modest Proposal: The Modesty Issue

I sure i hope i don't get sued for using part of the title to a popular 16th century satire by Jonathan Swift (You should look it up and read it by the way, it's pretty chill).

Anyway, lately i've witnessed a random resurgence in the whole issue of dressing modestly, which got me to start thinking about that issue once more, and i figured while i was in an inspired mood, i might as well give it a guy's opinion.

First off, in light of my past post regarding poor reasoning and argumentation, i've unfortunately witnessed the same thing going on when this topic is talked about. People often tend to resort to weak, abstract reasoning rather than more practical reasoning when it comes to making their case in this subject.

In particular, i keep seeing people treat it as though the main reason why we must all dress modestly is because our bodies, particularly our reproductive parts, are "sacred" and therefore need to be heavily covered and respected.

The simple problem with this reasoning is that it's being handled completely arbitrarily. If say... the waist of a woman ought to remain covered because it is where the womb is located, and the womb is considered to be a tabernacle of sorts, then why can't this same theme of reasoning be applied to the human head? After all it is where the brain (The most important and arguably the most "sacred" part of the body) is located, so are we obliged to keep are heads covered to veil our sacred brains?

I doubt it.

When they do this, they completely throw aside the real, practical reason for dressing modestly, namely that those regions of the body tend to incite lust in others, which is an evil, and that is why those areas ought to remain covered, not because of some abstract, arbitrary sentiment.

So if you're going to argue that a certain region of the body ought to remain covered, your logic should be based off of the fact that it can easily insight lust in others. That form of reasoning is far more practical and productive.

Another central aspect of the modesty issue is the debate over who carries the burden of responsibility; The women to dress or not dress a certain way, or the men to watch where they're looking and have some self-control.

While it is easily reasonable to conclude that both parties share some degree of responsibility, i have also come to the conclusion that the burden of responsibility ought to be predominately put on the men (and women) to exercise some basic self control when seeing other people out in public.

From my experience as a post-pubescent male, it really is not that difficult to practice self control in the face of immodesty. To be more exact, the only time it's really a problem for me was whenever i had struggled with sexual sin of some form. It was during then that my mind would be more oriented toward searching out those regions of the body. The thing was i would still be prompted to do so even on relatively modestly dressed women.

So while how women dress does have some degree of effect, i've realized that the real game changer is the state of my own mind and soul. In my normal and everyday life when i'm not struggling with any kind of sexual sin, my eyes really aren't much of a problem for me, so long as someone isn't outright scantily clad, such as in a bikini or such. I would glance at someone and would think to myself "well that person is wearing _____ " but then simply move on with my life without any notable effect.

There's plenty more i could say on this general subject, such as the fact that sometimes people make inaccurate choices as to what pieces of clothing are or are not modest, or the fact that it seems like men like myself almost never get consulted to see what it is that actually affects us the most, but i'll end it here.

I realize this issue ends up being rather heating, so this is just my opinion. Deal with it.

Problems With Sexual Issues And How Christians Argue.

A while back i wrote a critique to a short article from Chastity.com about why pornography was wrong. I criticized the article for the abstract and pathetic argumentation it attempted to employ against the use of pornography.

First off, i hope that when people saw the article, they didn't mistakenly think that i think that pornography was morally okay. I certainly agree With the Catholic Church and science that pornography is heavily detrimental to the human mind and character, It's just that that particular article for some reason thought it was perfectly acceptable to settle for a weak, pathetic, abstract argument to try and make that point.

Unfortunately, it has not stopped there. I've come to realize that, a lot of the time, many of us Catholics, even the professional apologists, often settle with weak and abstract arguments when it comes to pretty much any issue regarding sexual morality.

First off, i think it would be best to momentarily bring up a different moral issue that us Catholics are often faced with. From my experience, making a clear, practical and encompassing argument comes pretty easily and naturally to many of us in this issue. I'm talking about the issue of abortion.

Now, lets imagine I'm a pro-lifer and i'm going to have to make only one argument for why abortion is immoral.

So what do i decide to do?

"Abortion is wrong because it upsets the natural flow and process of pregnancy that God gave us. God gave us the whole process of pregnancy, so it would be wrong to tamper with that."

with that, i refrain from mentioning the rather important detail that A human being, the most valuable creature on God's earth, was just brutally killed!

I hope you guys see what I'm getting at.

While the argument against abortion i decided to use wasn't actually wrong, it was rather pathetic and deceptive of me to not prioritize the biggest moral problem with abortion, but instead settle with an abstract side note and behave as though it is in fact the ultimate reason why abortion is wrong, when it certainly is not.

The reason why i brought up this issue and this argument is to present an example as to how many of us sound when we argue against other sexual sins (Fornication, Contraception, Sodomy, etc).

We often tend to be clear and effective when it comes to arguing against abortion. However, for some reason it seems to stop there. Likely because sexual issues, such as the ones i mentioned above, can be very difficult to get our minds around in terms of logic and ethics, many of us sadly seem to settle for weak, peripheral arguments that really only amount the the example argument i used above.

However, many of us don't even seem to realize this. we seem perfectly content with what is in fact a lower standard of logical argumentation when it comes to these issues, and frankly i find that unacceptable.

Here i'll list a few live examples of such weak arguments and explain the problems with them, and hopefully by then you can catch on to the whole idea of what i'm trying to get at.

"Contraception is wrong because the birth control pill, as well as other medical methods of birth control, are potentially very dangerous to your health in multiple ways."

As important as it obviously is to express the rather heavily ignored dangers of pretty much any medical form of birth control, this form of argumentation isn't even accurate!

Just because certain forms of contraception might be very unsafe for the user, doesn't automatically mean that those methods of contraception (much less all forms of contraception) are intrinsically immoral. There is no necessary connection.

In which case, if your goal is to argue why contraception is unethical as opposed to simply unsafe, then don't go this route. You'll only confuse people.

"Homosexual sex is immoral because God designed the organs for male and female intercourse, not male and male or female and female"

While the person making this argument was indeed heading in the right direction, this particular argument is not sufficient!

When making this argument, the person failed to explain why having sexual relations in some other way that is not in line with God's design is necessarily immoral. Instead he just assumed that if something isn't how God originally designed it, then it's automatically bad.

Same-Gender sex is certainly unethical, As the Church has infallibly taught, but it's not simply due to that fact that it is outside God's design, but that it is inevitably a union of lust, and lust destroys the human spirit and character. That is the key reason why it is immoral.

These are just a couple examples of what i believe to be insufficient argumentation that i frequently see employed by our own crowd, and for some reason they seem perfectly fine with settling with it and acting like it's all that's needed to answer the tough questions and settle the issue.

Look, i totally realize that these issues certainly aren't clear and easy, but the least we can do is to be sincere and more critical with ourselves about whether or not we really know why the Church teaches what it does, before we go out into the front lines and run the risk of misleading people.