In response to Stephen Bair’s letter on Thursday:
I tried out your attitude in an “imagination experiment” that an unexposed woman subscribing to the conservative traditions of modesty is no longer a commodity or object (at least I think that’s what your attitude was). I imagined a society like a Puritan colony where women were completely covered with long black dresses and high starched collars so as not to show their seductive necks. The men in this highly patriarchal society deemed the ladies the most desirable who had the tightest fitting garment or lowest collar or who flaunted their ankles. The porn mags were like that in the Amish paradise video with the girl’s calf exposed. I came to the perhaps presumtuous conclusion that it doesn’t matter how much or how little flesh is exposed on a women–they are still treated as sex commodities. (A similar “thought experiment” could be conducted using the completely naked people of the Amazon as the society).
I am somewhat perverted but I found the onion article “Woman busted in sex for security scandal” (or something like that) very funny because it was true. (The article was about a woman refusing to have sex until the man married her so she could have financial security, who was then finally busted for this blatant prostitution). Males seek sex relentlessly for some reason–it has been explained to me we are “programmed” this way. The hormonal need for sex seems to overide an emotional need for companionship and getting to know who a woman is inside (at least initially until the male gets tired of sex).
Because of the above perhaps wrongly arrived at conclusions, I disagree with your attitude that wearing more modest clothes will cease to make a woman a commidity in the views of males (or at least young males, since I don’t know what it’s like to be older).
In mormon terms, this world is a “telestial” world where as the million dollar man Ted Dibiase (I think) said, “Everyone has a price” (or the attitude that everything is a mere commodity to be bought and sold and traded and used and abused for your personal pleasure). Women are viewed as objects by men not because of the lack of clothes they wear but presumably because men are programmed that way. Therefore, in a predictably university programmed liberal attitude fashion, I conclude that it is unfair to women and especially to femenist women to say a woman deserves to be shamed because she dresses stylishly. To be honest, women are commodities as are men, in my perverted and telestial way of thinking which I am nonetheless convinced of due to the many evidences I have seen and experienced. But to be a commodity and to compete for the best male by dressing a certain way is no shame (at least to me). As a side note an emotional companion who will get to know who you are inside is also a commidity to be competed and qualified for. Some people refuse to acknowledge this because they think it cruel. These are the same people who say things like “that rich person’s not better than me”, even though the rich person is probably more desirable and therefore better than them. Or “I love you all exactly the same”, “No one is better than anyone else” and the like (I can’t think of anymore right now).
Therefore I find your statement that you find women attractive because of “who they are inside” (which I speculate could mean their soul or more superficially their personality) improbable. Of course I am somewhat a robot concerning social affairs since I don’t participate much in them. I wonder if in a matriarchy things would be somehow different?