Clothing Is Irrelevant To Moral Character

The insanity of complementarians never ceases to entertain me!  When cornered on the multitude of their errors concerning gender stereotypes and modesty teachings, they might resort to citing personal "preferences" as a basis for dressing a certain way.  Ironically, these allegedly personal reasons can still contain severe worldview flaws, meaning that complementarians are just disguising logical and theological errors as individual preferences, even if they don't realize it.  An example is the idea that clothing can somehow inform potential marriage partners of one's moral character.  Even when the very concept of modesty is refuted in full, someone might say that they still prefer to dress "modestly" to communicate purity to others.

Suppose a woman who visits a beach wears a bikini for the duration of her trip.  Does this choice signify that she is willing to sleep around?  Does her willingness to wear minimal clothing have anything to do with her commitment to morality, particularly sexual morality?  Of course not!  There are many reasons why she might have chosen to wear a bikini, and even if attracting male attention was one of them, this does not indict her.  It is those who condemn her that are in error: both intellectual and moral error.

Not only is there nothing sinful about what she is wearing [1], but there is no connection whatsoever between how much of her body she covers and how righteous she is!  It is a travesty that women have this idea used against them in ways that it is not socially popular to use them against men.  Combating these mistakes is a very simple matter, since the truths to be demonstrated are basic.  A promiscuous man or woman might cover a large amount of their body.  A chaste man or woman--by chaste I do not mean a person who refrains from all sexual expression, but someone who only expresses sexuality in nonsinful ways--might expose a large amount of their body in certain contexts.

Neither men nor women, who are more often the
victims of modesty teachings, are promiscuous for
not covering their bodies.  The human body is not
an evil thing.

The idea that any style of clothing in any way serves as an indicator of one's moral status is an asinine myth used to convince complementarian women into submitting to the horrendously sexist modesty ideas of conservative Christians.  Arrogantly, these conservative Christian women might dress in a manner distinct from whatever they subjectively, arbitrarily consider "immodest" in order to secure the attention of men they think will consider them morally superior because of their clothing choices.  As they childishly think that women who do not dress "modestly" only want male attention, they seek exactly what they think they are avoiding.

Wearing allegedly "modest" clothes, which is impossible when there is no standard of modesty and no obligation to even wear clothing to begin with, can easily become about trying to signal that one is of greater moral character than those who do not cover their bodies to some arbitrary extent.  Of course, as mentioned, it does not follow logically that clothing has anything to do with morality, since there is no logical connection between clothing and moral uprightness and since revealing clothing is not Biblically sinful.  The motivations for "modesty" reduce down to irrational fear or arrogance, and the legalists who claim otherwise are merely using non sequiturs since they have nothing else to appeal to in order to argue for their delusions.

No man or woman has to dress a certain way to have value and deserve to be treated like a being that bears God's image.  Similarly, no man or woman commits a sin by wearing minimal or no clothing.  Contrary ideas are utterly antithetical to reason and the Bible.  It is often the mistaken idea that the human body is inherently sexual--in present Western culture, mostly the female body--that inspires many aspects of modesty teachings.  There is nothing sexual about the male body, just like there is nothing sexual about the female body.

Some women will find some male bodies sexually arousing, and some men will find some female bodies sexually arousing.  The perception that a body part or type of clothing is sexy has nothing to do with whether that thing actually is sexual, with sexiness referring to nothing more than a someone's subjective judgment that a person/thing is sexually attractive or arousing.  Many things that people find sexually exciting or arousing have nothing to do with sex in themselves [2].  Despite the obviousness of this from a rationalistic standpoint, people who believe that there is such a thing as modesty confuse sexual reactions of the mind or body for proof that a thing is itself sexual.  Ultimately, this confusion is twisted into the idea that clothing conveys sexual purity.

How people view their bodies can affect extensive areas of their worldviews and daily activities.  Thus, it is of high importance that people understand that their clothing does not communicate either their metaphysical value or their sexual purity.  Since many Christians have ascetic, legalistic ideas about the human body taught to them from a young age, it can take a great deal of effort to renounce these fallacies.  But, with that effort, comes a vital freedom to accept one's physicality--and that of others.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/bikinis-are-not-sinful.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/08/lingerie-is-not-sexual.html