My shoes. About the only part of a woman’s body, her feet, that Christian men do not judge!
Written by Suzanne Titkemeyer and published at No Longer Quivering Patheos on January 11, 2014
Editor’s note: This was written about a long defunct website isthismodest.com owned and operated by a man who used photos of teenage girls in the skimpiest attire to illustrate what he personally found sinful. Think about that one for a moment, underage girls.
Yesterday afternoon I was doing a ramble around the interwebs when I ran across this article by Jezebel.com. It was titled “Batshit Ridiculous Modesty Website Reminds You Women Just Can’t Win” and was about a modesty website.
After I read it I started thinking I’d seen the site they referenced Is This Modest? and the name of the site owner Minthegap here and realized that Minthegap had been one of the commenters saying that No Longer Quivering founder Vyckie Garrison had an urban legend in her article posted here “Taking Her Myself” A New Trend in Quiverfull Courtship/Betrothal. Which I personally find very hard to believe, knowing Vyckie over the course of years and having her stay in my home and hang out with in the DC area. She’s very determined to portray Quiverfull in an honest and reflective manner as she recovers from the spiritual abuse she suffered and many of the readers here have suffered.
This is what Jezebel had to say about Is This Modest? –
“Is This Modest” is a website that claims to promote an open and practical dialog about modesty, but it’s actually a male-gazey compendium of creepshots of high schoolers and misogynist rants about too-tight t-shirts. Is it possible to have a sane discussion about modesty? Not if modesty means, as it does on this site, that it’s a woman’s responsibility to prevent men from thinking impure thoughts.
Their description jogged my memory of seeing Is This Modest and dismissing it as Christian Man Porn under the guise of ‘tuu-tuu’, sort of an ecclesiastical slut-shaming combined with masturbatory materials. Very not helpful to the dialogue on modesty and how it affects both men and women.
This type of mindset that men are beasts that cannot control their sexual urges therefore it is every women’s responsibility to keep men from lusting is insulting and belittling to both men and women. It takes any sense of responsibility from men and, per usual in fundamentalism, makes the woman always the guilty party. It reduces men to less than human, to no better than a fancy animal.
There are others who’ve written on this subject with much more passion, intellect and discernment than I possess so I’m going to simply going to say nothing more. Letting them sounds off on the problems.
One good thing the Jezebel article did besides pointing out that it’s creepy for a grown man to have all those photos of high school aged girls posted. Shortly after they published his web address the site went down. Now it’s listed as ‘under construction’.
So what do you think? Is it really possible to have a sane and rational discussion about modesty or is it too contentious of an issue to ever be discussed?