Can we stop telling boys that girls are their gatekeepers?
I put a question out on Facebook to a group I’m a part of asking them for the toxic phrases they heard that were directed at girls. The first post was this one
“Modest is the hottest”.
She heard it at church camp. This is a new one I had never heard. How had I missed it? At first, I just laughed out loud. This is at the same time ridiculous, sad - and completely untrue of course.
When a girl hears phrases like this, she might think it’s about modesty. If she’s young, she might believe it and aspire to dressing “modestly”
whatever that is
But isn’t the message within the modesty message that first and foremost it’s her job to be hot? Desirable? Wantable? I heard Glennon Doyle speak on the Deconstructionists podcast talking about baggage that resulted from church messages that were given to her. She said something very powerful about how she was told so frequently that it was so important to BE wanted that she never thought about what SHE wanted. That is a powerful statement and is just SO true for so many of us. But in “modest is the hottest”, that is the message. Be desireable, be want-able. Be hot. Oh, and by the way, the path to hotness is modesty so cover UP!
Second, it’s about competition. Not only should you aspire to being hot, but you should aspire to being the hottest.
Third – define modesty. One of the women on the Facebook group told a story about wearing a T-shirt that when she raised her hand, exposed part of her midriff. She was told it was immodest. The next day she put on an over-sized, baggy T-shirt and her breasts were groped by a stranger. Was the baggy t-shirt modest? Did it make any difference? I’ve heard women tell stories about how they were coached not to wear anything that was snug enough to allow anyone to see if their breasts jiggled. Some say the problem is the length of shorts, which button on the shirt is unbuttoned or not, V-necks, spaghetti straps, tight skirts, short skirts, and holes in jeans. Modesty is a moving target and a game no one can win. The logical conclusion to all of this is the burka. If modest is the hottest, then women in burkas win.
My husband and I had a laugh last night about “modest is the hottest”. He pointed out that actually, burkas probably ARE the hottest , those women are probably burning UP in there! Then this morning, just for a laugh, he brought me this little gem with my breakfast.
He’s funny and he teaches me to laugh.
Sometimes you just have to laugh.
Or you’ll cry.
What is the goal of sayings like this?
Some would say that teaching girls to dress modestly helps protect them from sexual assault. But there are no facts to support that what a person wears has any bearing whatsoever on whether or not they are assaulted. Take my friend in the baggy T-shirt I spoke of above. According to womanstats.org, Saudi Arabia, has laws that require women to wear a hijab, a head scarf, as well as dress in loose, long garments that do not show the shape of the woman’s body, and yet on the “rape scale” which is a scale from 1-5 (5 being the worst), Saudi Arabia scores a 4. There is a powerful art exhibit that has been displayed in various cities in recent years around the question, “what were you wearing”. These are powerful exhibits and are aimed at doing away with victim-blaming and an implication that, maybe, the survivor could’ve prevented their assault if they had worn something less revealing, more modest.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/powerful-art-exhibit-powerfully-answers-the-question-what-were-you-wearing_us_59baddd2e4b02da0e1405d2a
Jen Brockman is one of the creators of the installation and director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center at the University of Kansas states, “Most times, this question is not asked from a place of malice. It's asked from a place of fear, by those who love and care about us. That if they can figure out, what was the item of clothes that somehow left us vulnerable, that all they have to do is avoid that item and they will never be in this place that we are sitting in now. So it comes from that place of fear, but the results of it for survivors can be devastating."
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/04/26/sexual-assault-art-exhibit-clothing
If you agree that modesty is not a protection against assault, you might be in the camp that feels that girls are somehow responsible for the thought-life of boys. This gets into the whole “causing your brother to stumble” thing, which I will blog about later. Can we stop doing this? Can we stop telling girls that they are responsible for what boys think and feel? Can we stop telling boys that sexual thoughts and impulses are wrong? Can we stop telling boys that they have no control over the actions they choose in response to their sexual thoughts and impulses? Can we stop telling boys that girls are their gatekeepers? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where I was responsible for me, and you were responsible for you and we both felt comfortable around one another? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where I felt empowered enough to deal with my thoughts and emotions and so did you?
Wouldn’t that be nice?
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