The Subjectivity Of Sexual Attraction

Many fallacies are inherently embedded in evangelical ideas about modesty, but there is one that often goes unmentioned even by many opponents of the teachings.  These modesty ideas deny the truths of individualism by default by trivializing or denying female visuality and regarding male sexuality as insatiable and predatory, but they also treat practically every woman as if the exposure of her body will excite all men.  Thus, the errors of evangelical modesty concepts are compounded.

Not every person is attracted to all members of the opposite gender that they perceive to be physically attractive.  Regardless of this, modesty proponents often pretend as if the sight of a single woman in a bikini will somehow excite sexual feelings in all heterosexual men, and the consistent ones often pretend as if the sight of one shirtless man will somehow excite sexual feelings in all heterosexual women.  Even if one completely ignored the sexist gender stereotypes, double standards, victim blaming, metaphysical errors (neither clothing nor the male or female body is itself sexual, regardless of how it is perceived), and legalism that are inescapably bound to modesty teachings, there is always the fact that all people of one gender are not automatically attracted to every body of the opposite gender they find aesthetically pleasing.

Even if someone finds a particular bodily feature or personality trait sexually attractive in a general sense, it does not follow that he or she feels sexually attracted to every person of the opposite gender who possesses the physical or psychological characteristic in question.  Thus, modesty teachings fail not only because of their more commonly criticized elements, but also because they assume that everyone, or almost everyone, harbors sexual feelings for every attractive person of the opposite gender they see, as long as an arbitrary amount of their bodies is exposed.  Sexiness refers only to subjective judgments about the perceived attractiveness of a person, and not everyone considers the same people to be sexually attractive or arousing.

There are many factors that can influence whether or not someone experiences sexual attraction to a given person of the opposite gender.  The variables can include things like relationship history with the person in question and present mood.  For example, if a man and a woman have been platonically intimate for a prolonged period of time, the sight of the other's body might be highly unlikely to evoke sexual feelings, even if both friends possess bodies the other would find arousing outside of the relationship they share.  Even if their minds and bodies experienced sexual reactions, this would not necessarily mean that their sexual excitement is directed towards the other, only that the situational context sexually stimulated them.  Those who embrace the lunacy of modesty teachings consider the exposure of the human body dangerous in almost all contexts, this one included.

Different men and women might consider a wildly varying set of features to be sexy, and modesty proponents either fail to acknowledge this or practice a kind of cognitive dissonance where they admit that this is true but still regard the human body as dangerous to almost all people of the opposite gender.  Regardless, there is nothing dangerous about finding someone to be sexy; it is only ignoring the rest of someone's personhood (objectification) or desiring to commit a sexual sin as defined by Biblical laws that must be avoided, and not all people struggle with such sins at all, even to a minor degree.