I am sometimes accused of wanting to take modern society back to 1950s America. Yes, I want to take us back to the future, relatively speaking. That’d be wonderful for women and children, families and nations. The 1950s had some clear needs for reformation, but where we are now, thanks to self-congratulatory “progressives”, is strikingly closer to 1920s Bolshevik Russia.
It only took Communists a few decades to realise anti-family values were nation destroying. Rampant rates of youth crime by roving gangs of unloved children and young teens combined with a massively declining birth rate were the result of Communist family policies “liberating” women from the “chains” of their duties as wives, mothers and homemakers, “released” into the joy of working like a man in the factories.
The Bolshevik Revolution “achieved” social reforms like replacing the Church with Government as the regulator of marriage, introducing no fault divorce, promoting gender equality, legitimising children born out of wedlock and eliminating inheritance, legalising and subsidising abortion, making universal childcare free, and decriminalising homosexuality and prostitution.
20 years after the radical policies were implemented, Bolshevik bureaucrats realised the great peril they’d put the nation in and had a change of heart which has been described as “The Great Retreat”.
Ignorant of this modern history, “progressives” are merely apologists for failed Bolshevik policies. No one is more regressive than a self-described “progressive” determined to “advance to the rear”.
Modesty is another domain where feminists have celebrated the “freedom” to turn women into sex objects instead of whole people with a mind and eternal spirit as well as flesh. Feminists will protest that women should be able to display as much of their private parts as they want without being bothered or even lusted after by the men whose gaze has had such spectacles thrust upon them whilst merely shopping with their wives.
Is there even a line at all any more? I’ve ridden escalators behind young “ladies” wearing shorts cut so high that half their buttocks were at my eye level 2 metres behind.
As an aside, how any man could let his daughter, sister, girlfriend or wife disrespect themselves (and him) so by offering herself visually in public is a symptom of men who do not understand chivalry or manners at all. Such men are emasculated, impotent weaklings; dull brutes with no will or capacity to protect the virtue and dignity of the women in their lives.
Society’s incapacity to differentiate between misogynistic policing of apparel like Iranian women beaten to death for not wearing a hijab, and basic standards of public decency and feminine discretion, has logically lead to the erasure of good and beautiful standards of modesty, and the commodification of women.
A recent court ruling in Minnesota has effectively legalised the public exposure of breasts for women, by clarifying that such exposure does not automatically qualify as “lewd” conduct under the state’s indecent exposure laws.
An absurdly incoherent state Supreme Court Justice ruled “private parts” should not be interpreted to include women’s breasts but not men’s, as that would – somehow – “stigmatise” female breasts as inherently sexual and reinforce the objectification of women.
Breasts are inherently sexual!
Far from stigmatising, Christian modesty and discretion is honouring a woman and the gift of female sexuality, reserving it for her husband alone, who loves his wife as a whole person – a triune creature with a spirit, mind and body. It is regressive oppression to argue female sexuality should be equal to (the same as) a man’s.
What should be stigmatised again is immodesty and indiscretion.
Budgie smugglers and bikinis should both be stigmatised and shamed. Seriously! What’s the problem with a pair of board shorts and a rash vest? Most people don’t want to see your junk, so stop imposing it on the general public! So explosive was the expected response to a lady wearing only her underwear in public, the bikini was named after the Pacific atoll where nuclear tests were conducted that week in July 1946. Let’s make such sensibilities common again.
Frenchman Louis Réard worked in his mother’s lingerie shop (creep) in the 1940s and had the idea that if he made undergarments waterproof women might wear lingerie poolside or at the beach. Ooh la la! No self-respecting lady in the 40s would model underwear publicly for him, so Réard employed a Paris stripper and prostitute, Micheline Bernardini, who was quite comfortable commodifying her nakedness to help his mission to normalise immodesty.
Bolshevik “progressives” are so invested in virtue signalling they’ve lost all touch with the reality of authentic virtue, and have turned liberation into licence to tramp.
Let’s let God have the last word on this issue, and although there are more than a few Scriptures about modesty, my favourite would have to be this one from Proverbs 11:22.
“A beautiful woman who lacks discretion
is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.”
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian political educator & writer who gives priority of philosophy to God’s Word. He founded Church And State ministries in 2016, which has grown to include annual teaching conferences in Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart and regional Australia by invitation.
Specialising in what God says about complex ethical and social issues, Dave Pellowe is a sought after guest speaker at churches, Christian schools, TV, radio and podcast interviews and other secular and Christian forums where love of Truth and nonpartisan thinking are valued. [more]
