… Much of the rest is commonly called “Modesty”, and is good for society.
(c) 2019, Davd
Chastity, along with abstinence from erotic actions1, includes abstinence from erotic display — from showing off one’s sexuality by dress, cosmetics, perfumes, postures and talk — which abstinence from erotic display is one definition of modesty2: If sexual actions are not appropriate, sexual display has no good purpose.
Because they were friends with lively intelligent minds, I often refer to two good Roman-Catholic nuns as exemplars of chastity3. Their chastity was expressed in their habitual dress; in their practical and spiritual, but never erotic ways of speaking, and by the absence of flirtation from their postures and facial expressions4.
Their manners of speech and posture, when I think of other women who have behaved similarly with me, remind me of my sister and grandmother. Nuns often go by the title “Sister” for good reason… as do women of some other churches, (as do other women allied in interdependence or common cause [from college “sororities” to militant labour unions].)
In east-central Alberta, I see many women wearing modest but not drab clothing in public. I usually see such women shopping (likely because a good deal of my time in public is spent shopping; and because there are many more people to see when shopping than at the bank or Post Office.) These women, long-time residents tell me, are Mennonites and Hutterites mostly — women of Christian ‘denominations’ with traditional moral doctrines. Muslim women are fewer in this region, and dress at least as modestly — but in ways i would more often call drab.
Women of two Anabaptist Christian ‘churches’ and one or more Muslim sects regularly dress in modest attire which is distinctive enough to be identified with their religious membership. Nuns — members of any of several Roman-Catholic “orders” — do likewise, in differently distinctive garb. I see many other women in the region dressed modestly but not with distinctive cultural attire.
Some women do dress immodestly. I haven’t kept notes on the numbers I see dressed modestly and not; I can safely say many more women are modestly dressed in east-central Alberta, in ordinary public places as well as in religious venues… and that nearly all the men I see are dressed modestly.
Modest dress is more common, it seems — but erotic projection is more conspicuous. My observations do not prove that, merely indicate, especially for east-central Alberta; but indicate they do; and there is some parallel to the Apex Fallacy.
Flirting, another way of erotic projection, is also more conspicuous than it is common [at least, as visible to me]5. Even if done wearing modest clothing, flirting is not modest: It is by definition, distracting… and in the direction of eros. “Chaste conduct” excludes that. Perhaps one of the things I appreciated about my nun friends, was the absence of such distraction.
Modesty definitely has social benefits: If modesty were the norm governing public appearance and behaviour, then sexual harassment would be very rare, “healthcare” would cost less, and people would get more useful work done.
My friends the nuns never reported being sexually harassed; and their chastity gets much of the credit. Seeing them, talking with them, did not distract anyone’s attention toward eros. Likewise for my sister and grandmother.
Modesty is less expensive. Modest clothing and practical skin lotions cost much less than “sexy” clothing [including “sexy” shoes], perfumes and cosmetics. Those, it seems feasible to tax, and any government that needs revenue (what government doesn’t?) ought to be taxing them heavily… at least as surely as taxing gasoline and fossil heating fuel. Some people need to drive, nobody needs to project sexuality.
When it leads to erotic ‘action’, immodesty has huge economic costs, which are often hidden, and often paid by people other than those who indulge themselves. The greatest costs are likely “medical” or “health care”, and paid by Government in Canada and a combination of Government, insurance companies, and the people who suffer, in the US.
Few married women and no sexually abstinent women have abortions6.
The obvious purpose of sexuality display is sexual activity — and reasonably, sexual initiative short of copulation, including immodesty, should mitigate any accusation of harassment. Sexual display logically leads to ‘sexual relations”, and in reality it often does.
The phrase “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” [STDs] means what it says7. The World Health Organization recently reported that one million [new] STD infections occur each day… and treating them is now many times more costly than one or two million shots of generic penicillin.
STD treatment, it seems, was cheap in the short term last century, and has become expensive in the present and future. Gonorrhea strains now exist that are resistant to nearly all the antibiotics that were once “cheap treatment”… and if you read that url, it says gonorrhea may become untreatable. Syphilis treatment has become more difficult because of a “shortage in the specific kind of penicillin needed“, reports the BBC, while they report elsewhere in that article that the disease was, in effect, eradicated in the UK in the mid-80s… and came back. The “eradication” was achieved when more antibiotics could reliably kill the syphilis bacterium.
The modesty aspect of chastity also helps people work more efficiently, by reducing distraction — a point I mentioned in early 2018 and intend to further develop soon, as it applies to office work and apparel.
The BBC reports evidence that young adults and adolescents in the US and UK, support chastity more than do their parents… which is a good, hopeful sign.. and that more young men are choosing chastity than young women. Prudent citizens, as taxpayers, as workers, and as people who do not want to get sick, have ample good reason to support chastity, including modesty.
Notes: follow in most html displays
1. Two qualifications: First, “erotic actions” include [genital coupling], and also erotic stimulation “short of doing that.” What is considered erotic is vague at the margins: Garrison Keillor, a folksy US radio personality famous for the “Prairie Home Companion” show, was fired because his hand accidentally touched a woman’s bare back while he was trying to console her.
Second, there may be some ambiguity in usage, as to whether married [wo]men may be called “chaste”; both men and women monastics often take “vows of chastity” that entail complete abstinence from sexuality. In most usages, it seems, married couples who are sexually active only with one another are called “chaste”; and some writers use “celibate” to refer to nearly anyone who is not cohabiting with a sexual partner.
2. Modesty for working purposes, can be defined as “not distracting.” Most immodesty seems likely to manifest as displays of sexuality (which can include cosmetics as well as clothing, but cosmetics are unlikely to make the user warmer or colder.)
The words modest and to a lesser extent modesty, are also used to refer to levels of ambition [not aiming for the top], and wealth [less than rich but not downright poor]; but those usages won’t appear in this blog.
3. I could name more than two, perhaps more than two dozen Roman-Catholic and Orthodox monks and priests as about equally exemplary — but it is not at me that men who do project their sexuality, would project it.
4. They also wore no cosmetics nor perfumes that I can ever recall …
5. The fact that I am old and “chaste myself” may mean that less flirtation is shown to me than to some other men.
6. The moral cost of abortion is worse than its economic cost. In funding abortions, Governments are subsidizing homicide, and those who they kill are innocent.
7. It seems to have become customary, at least in some news media, to refer to “Sexually Transmitted Infections” [STIs] and some readers may wish to mentally substitute the current media phrase.
