The Contradiction Of Modesty Teachings

Psychological traits are rooted purely in either individuality or cultural conditioning, not in whether one is born with one manner of genitalia or another.  If God had created humans otherwise, dividing their traits into male and female characteristics, he would have created humans in a way that intrinsically promotes conflict between men and women.  A key area that this would affect is sexuality.  According to the evangelical world, men are helplessly subjected to near-constant sexual impulses due to being "visual," while women are asexual or demisexual beings who can make men lust after them by not wearing an arbitrary amount of clothing.

Let's ignore the fact that one cannot even lust after an unmarried or unengaged person, since all the Bible means by lust is wanting to take a married/engaged person away from their spouse for oneself.  Let's ignore the Biblical examples of men and women who falsify these stereotypes.  Let's ignore the fact that it does not follow at all from a person being a man or a woman that they will be visual to any particular extent.  Instead, let's examine the foundational contradiction that run deep through evangelical modesty teachings.

If God had made men to be the hypervisual creatures conservative Christians pretend them to be, then there would be nothing problematic about men expressing this hypervisuality, since it, as a part of God's creation, would be good (Genesis 1:31).  Thus, it would be immoral to treat it as a negative thing--and it is quite ironic that many evangelicals treat their own gender constructs about male visuality, which they view as reflecting God's alleged design, as if they are indeed negative.  However, since lust is Biblically defined as sinful, and since the popular complementarian idea of male sexuality is one that naturally overlaps with lust, the idea that God made men to be hypervisual cannot possibly be correct from a Biblical standpoint.  The internal contradictions would be massive.

Evangelicals conflate exaggerated male visuality with lust and try to separate them at the same time, failing to grasp that God would have made an enormous and stupid oversight if he (basically) programmed men to lust.  God's own design would be to blame for this sin, were evangelical myths about sexuality correct!  Complementarians can be astonishingly inept at realizing the inherent contradictions in their worldview.  What conservative Christians claim about modesty is not only unbiblical and entirely invalid [1], but also does not even follow from their other (false) claims about psychological gender differences.  Conservative modesty teachings would be invalid even if the gender-specific mental traits they claim exist actually did.

If the complementarian myths about male visuality were true, would there still be no standard of modesty?  It would still be the case that no standard, and therefore no obligation for women to cover their bodies, exists!  Could one person be responsible for the sin of another person?  No, for victim blaming would remain a despicable offense against morality!  Would the female body be sexual?  No!  Would sexual attraction be lust?  Not at all!  Absolutely nothing about morality or metaphysics would change in this area.  Thus, proponents of modesty teachings are not only gravely mistaken about their conclusions, but their conclusions wouldn't follow from their premises, even if the premises were actually true.

Only when people are treated as individuals can there be sincere social and personal peace.  Complementarian ideology hurts many people, in this area and in others.  If men express visuality, they are often treated as if they are predatory or seen as eager to sexually objectify women by other complementarians--and if they don't express visuality, they are regarded as bizarre.  If women express visuality, it is often trivialized or dismissed--or they are viewed as freaks.  If they don't and are married, they risk being viewed as frigid.  When it comes to how the complementarian evangelical world reacts to sexual expression, neither men nor women can win.


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