Rage Against Modesty Salesmen...Rape Culture for the Laymen Evangelical

"By saying "avert your eyes lest ye stumble", they taught me to fear the female body and in fear objectify it. I reduced women to nothing but a sexual trap. This is a reality, but it is a LEARNED REALITY and something that should be unlearned NOT ACCOMMODATED."  Micah J. Murray

And now it gets interesting...  Awesome chain of blogs here I want to walk through and talk about some of the comments.  As a person once said "proof that 'rape culture' exists is made evident not in what feminists write but what the comments reply."  So skim through these and we'll use them for references.

• So to keep up this guy posted this really nutty post about women being modest:  http://ryanvisconti.com/whose-body-is-it-anyway/
• Perhaps you've read stuff like this before so it doesn't seem like that big a deal?  Here's what one woman adds that kinda breaks down a few really harmful thoughts implied in the blog. http://www.emilyjoyallison.com/2013/08/on-bodies-as-belongings.html?showComment=1377711590711#c2499235770820413837
• And finally keep this comment in your back pocket.  This is the first writer replying to the second. http://www.emilyjoyallison.com/2013/08/on-bodies-as-belongings.html?showComment=1377733918607#c8340324235058210217

Rape Culture 101:

So the major theme through the comment thread is, "how is this rape culture?"  Much to my dismay, most of the people who know what they're talking about don't explain the phrase.  The term is a short hand for several pervasive thoughts that can be identified in the original blog post and in our culture.  The short hand term "rape culture" does not encapsulate the argument it refers to the writings and understandings a lot of people have put tons of time into.  Let me sum it up.  Rape culture is the idea women a responsibility to not get raped.  i.e. the court cases were people have argued that, "she was asking for it," based on how she was dressed or because she was in a sketchy part of town.  Here's a MAJOR problem. This SHOULD disturb you.  

Some people say well, she's increasing her statistical likeliness.  

Statistically  most rape occurs between people who know each other.  Not the "stranger in the bushes" scenario movies sensationalize.  Further more it's not a 'class thing.' Rich or poor rape and sexual harassment actually transcend social classes. So being on the street at night or born in red-neck-land is not increasing your statistical likeliness of getting raped by much.  At any rate people don't get to pick what class they're born into so how was she "asking for it" by having no control over her statistical placement?

Some people say, "she was dressed provocatively," 

This is also a little slippery.  What's provocative at church isn't at a club.  Further more if she didn't want to have sex, indicated by not saying that she wanted sex, there was no communication of her wanting sex.  The dress code is a terrible indicator because there are so many variables.  What if her shirt looks fine, but then it rained and looks sexy?  What if her skirt rips?  What if she's borrowing a friends clothes and they're too tight?  All of these things have nothing to do with sex or the desire of the woman to have sex.

BOTH of these arguments are often made to blame a woman for why she was raped instead of the rapist who violated another person's free will.  It is the belief that men can't control themselves and women are endangering themselves by being looked at by another person.  In other words, "boys will be boys."  As another blogger put it, "the underlying message of modesty culture is, Women’s bodies are sexual and must be hidden from men, or it will make the men have sex thoughts and that is bad. The message is, If a woman is showing skin/bedroom/evidence of her own embodiment or (gasp!) sexuality, she is being sexy AT men." This is were the male-egocentric comes into why I have a problem with "modesty" as the church calls it.  It really isn't about women.  Women are always sexy 100% of the time and must hide it with their clothes.  They're like the minor characters in a book that only shows a  glimpse of the person to the reader because they're not as important as the main characters.  Like the bad guys in cartoons, we don't usually hear about the villain's family, emotional state, love life, hobbies, or personal feelings of any kind.  The only time they are on screen is when they are talking about, thinking about, or acting with, the main character.  In the same way women's bodies are just sexy and made for men.  They're always sexy and have to be covered and made less visible *for a future husband and the other men who might stumble*.  Men act as main characters in this line of thought which means that they exist with a sex drive, an ability to have sex, sexual preferences, be sexy to women, and have a personal sexual identity but also have bodies that can used their strength for sports, building things, and playing.  But a woman's body is only one thing, sexy for men. I.e. "sexy tennis player--fierce" "sexy pose on a ladder building something--tough girl." Men can be shirtless for fun, the weather, or sports, but it is assumed that women wear bikinis to be sexy for men (not the nasty sand that gets in a one-piece--yuck!).

Don't believe me.  Here's a prominent church leader in Portland telling wives, "not to let themselves go," and stay pretty for their husbands.  But encouraging women to "see yourself through his eyes."  Why?  because he's the multidimensional character that we have built our theology around.  Women play the supporting role in providing someone beautiful.  Because of this Ryan, the first blogger, assumes that women are the property of their multifaceted future husband, completely ignoring the people who stay single.  In this we see how little assumptions that don't seem like a big deal are like angles in geometry that are only hairs away when they start out but are revealed as time goes on.  45 degrees in a one inch square, sounds like "what will your future spouse think of you if you do X," but further down the line that thought is a mile away from anything Christian with Ryan's very twisted sense of spousal ownership.  There is no submission to a person who owns you.  There's no glory in being enslaved, that's why we have Jesus and choices, and all the free will Christianity has been singing about for centuries.

Here's the thing no one is going to like, I don't think we should continue teaching "modesty" or "purity," at all.  I think we should tell youth group kids what marriage could look like.  How monogamy is awesome.  How God is glorified in life long partnership in marriage.  I think kids should be taught about how anti-gospel it is for Christians to engage in the American rape culture we live in.  That women are not always trying to look sexy because they're not just Sexy covered up with clothes or Sexy who needs to put more clothes on.  I think sex should be treated as sacred not scary.  

We've got to bury the 1980's d-day mentality.  The hysteria that started with shunning Disney movies and democrats and ended with purity balls and bad christian pop music.  This is not an example of "not being of this world," this is theological suicide.  Why don't we worry about why our kids don't know that the book of Amos exists, or that most church members can't answer to why we don't follow the rules of Leviticus.

Hiking out of the Dark Valley.

I realized gender in the church was a bum deal.

When people started asking my if I liked being a girl.  I was in a ministry school, which advocated women in leadership, but everything I did seemed to indicate that I wanted to be a boy.  The questions always came out of the blue.  I wasn't trying to 'be a boy.'  I liked being me.  I also liked talking to men because it happened that the people around me interested in theology and capable of debating with out getting their feelings hurt  were (mostly) men.  I didn't mind watching people play video games in exchange for the lighthearted company I wasn't finding with the women I was around.  I liked that I wasn't competing to be pretty and affirming. I didn't feel like I needed to be anyone in the circle of men I became friends with.

Then there were was the gay question.  Realize this was like asking if I were The Satan in my church, but every once in a while it would happen.

"Weren't you and so-and-so-female like 'a thing'"

Um, no, we were like, friends, 

and she wore dresses and I liked pants.

And then there were men.  Men who made it clear it was my fault that they liked me. My fault that they wanted to be with me when "God said they couldn't."  Perhaps the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever heard/read was a facebook chat a stalker had with my friend about me.  Line by line dissecting my person, explaining thoughts that left me numb and scared.  Simpler, was the man who explained that I should take the passengers seat rather than stuff in the back of the compact car myself and 5 other guys were cramming into "so that it wouldn't be awkward."  How was rubbing elbows awkward? Did the 6' 7" guy need the leg room more than me?

Last the woman who spoke with tears in her eyes at our ministry schools "dating week," who asked why anyone would want to marry or be in a relationship in which men and women traded sex for love and intimacy for respect.  I wasn't the only one who thought the "great mystery of marriage" and becoming one flesh ought not resemble pilgrims trading with native Americans.

That was gender, that was the church.

Then there was the internet.

Yep...you didn't expect that turn.  Spend any amount of time with people who use the meem "the internets" and you realize a lot of things.  There are far more bad words than you imagined.  There are way more techy people in the world than the US government would like.  And, lust.  It was weird meeting people (men) who existed in the gap of the sexual-predatory-monster of what Christians expect of men and the friends and companions these people became in my life.  In a weird way I've witnessed every wretched thing an evangelical ever told me about the mind of a man, and "these people" became my best friends.

When faced with a similar dichotomy many Evangelical women simply shrugged and agreed as if to say, "they're horny, scary, monsters, but we love them, that's our lot in life."  The more I asked questions the weirder the responses. "It isn't too bad." "You'll love him any way."  "It's the way they're wired."

 It was all a little spooky.

Ok, no, it scared the pants off of me.

I mean, I obviously wasn't like everyone else, but I wasn't going to marry a rapist....

This is rape culture.  Or at least the significantly deep cultural beliefs about sexuality that feminists call "rape culture."  This is the culture of allowing men to believe in remarkably violent urges in a way that makes women responsible for being on a constant defensive.  Because, I might get raped in the dark on a side walk, turns to, I can't sit in the back of a full car, to "its your fault that I like you," to "this is what I want to do with you."

This, as Christians, is unacceptable.  It denies the existence of God's kingdom--but more so, it partners with sin to further the bondage it has on women. We can all readily agree on this.  

The question we need to be asking is how then should we live? 

In a world when female sexuality is feed into our cultural water like shark chum---- 

how do we paint a picture of a fuller female person and a balanced male person?

In a church without female sexual ethics---- 

can we surrender the false power of purity and sexual moral superiority to admit that lust is a road both sexes walk down?

In a culture written about men, by men, for men,----

 can we react without becoming apart of the reactionary gender war?

Modesty becomes a none issue when we realize the valley of darkness in which we exists.  We need not repair the fences of modesty and legalism when what we desperately need is to hike out of this place.  To leave the binaries and stigma behind.  To become co-hires we must leave behind the battle lines of old.  To move beyond the purity movement is lay our pride and control down to pick up a cross that we left everything for.  We must hike out of this place and begin a sexual ethic that doesn't look like it did in the valley.