I appreciate the amount of thought you put into your posts.
Thanks. I really appreciate that.
For now, I just want to hear your thoughts on the OP's mention of learning respect from the women who dressed modestly.
Will do... I'll get to that below.
Even if the lustful desire is a condition response (which I will agree with), this manner of dressing still seems to help you undo such a response, as the OP stated from his own experience.
Actually, "still seems to" is an incorrect conclusion. Actually, the opposite is true...
This manner of dressing (ensuring OVER-coverage) may suppress the lustful response, but it actually strengthens and affirms the lustful response rather than "undoing" it.
Here's why...
For any conditioned response, the way it is "conditioned" is to ensure that one thing is always associated with something unrelated in someone's experience. Thus, the conditioning is created by the experience of "when this, always that."
Pavlov and his dogs, remember? He rang the bell
every time he was ready to feed them. Pretty soon, they started salivating when the bell rang... even when there was no food.
So it is with the sexualized response to the sight of a woman's body. We have relegated that sight to sexual contexts only. The only time the normal male in Western culture ever sees it is when he's with a woman getting ready to have sex, seeing women dressed to entice a male's sexual interest and attention, or when he's looking at inappropriate contentography with the express intent to become sexually aroused. That's THE recipe for a conditioned response.
So... the judicious covering up does
not "undo" such a response... it just frustrates the expression of it. No visible skin means no conditioned sexual response. No bell ringing means no salivating for food. By extension, that only confirms that the next time the skin is visible,
there will be as sexual response. And the next time the bell is rung,
there will be salivation.
The
ONLY way to "undo" the response is exactly the same way you'd have to do it with the dogs... ring the bell a LOT when there's no food ever coming. More and consistent exposure to the visible female form when it is
not a sexual context and no sexual response is expected or desired...
that will "undo" the response...
nothing else will!
One more point on that... In western culture, we can see a woman's face without even a shred of a sexual response... even though that's absolutely the most beautiful part of her body. Why? Because we see it
all the time with no expectation or experience of sexual arousal. But in orthodox Muslim countries, they
DO consider the face to be sexual, and therefore they require it to be covered! Guess what happens when such a Muslim man sees a woman reveal her face to him? Yep. A sexual response.
Now let me comment line by line to the OP's statements.
I remember when I was a teenager, going to a Christian camp where there was a river and swimming. I wasn't a Christian, I just wanted to have some fun at the camp with people I knew. As a young boy, I looked forward to the ladies in swimsuits.
It's clear here that this young man had already very much been conditioned to derive sexual responses in the sight of women's bodies... such that the anticipation of seeing them was an exciting prospect for him.
And I remember being particularly disappointed when I saw a few of the more lovely ladies come out wearing full-body suits and shorts - covering up all their lovely assets.
Again, his sexual response to the sight of a woman's "lovely assets" was not eliminated by their cover-up, it was just suppressed. It was actually strengthened. If one of those girls had surprised everyone shown up the next day in a mini bikini, imagine how powerful his sexual response would have been! So by hiding their bodies, they literally made the young man
more tuned into their bodies!
And yet this difference in their swimming dress struck me rather profoundly - I knew that these women had something special to show and they were NOT doing it despite that fact.
Is a beautiful body really "
something special to show"?? Is he not sexually objectifying these women's body parts even while he says he respects them for it?
Are a woman's breasts really more "special" than her face? Seriously? The ONLY way we could even think that or act as if it were true is if we
are actively sexualizing the breasts in our hearts!
So... this man is saying that it's OK (expected/normal) for him to sexualize the woman's breasts in his own heart, but he appreciates and respects a woman who decides not to indulge him with the titillation of glimpses of her "assets."
Instead, they were dressing modestly. And though I was a bit disappointed, I found deep respect for those women - respect that I never had for the ones that showed me what I wanted to see.
These women do reserve his respect for not purposefully seeking male sexual attention. But they have done nothing to change the young man's view of women's bodies.
Had they (and the rest of the kids) been completely naked—and in that context also committed to treating each other just as respectfully and in a chaste manner as any Christian camp would expect of their campers—THEN the "automatic" response
would have been dealt a huge blow. The "imaginations" of what a body looks like are gone. The "disappointment" in not seeing a "little more" of someone's body is irrelevant. The sexual response to the sight of a woman's form is deactivated. The anticipation of a "sexual event" because bodies are more visible is blown to bits.
And then... that young man would and could have the same level of respect for
all women... not just those who cover up.
Now I am a Christian and the entire lack of modesty in our culture is loathsome to me. And I find a video that expresses a truth that I learned from Christians before I was one - more clothing is less - modesty and decency are best.
Check out this
wonderful video.
I have not seen the video yet (can't open it on this computer) so I have no comment about it.