SMOKERING SAID:
“Now, it makes sense to me that the more extremely sexual and/or uncomfortable a piece of clothing, the more likely it is (in general) that the woman is wearing it for the purposes of sexual attraction; so a catsuit is more likely to be donned for sexual purposes than simply an attractive skirt. Are we agreed thus far?”
Fine.
“Different families, countries etc have different sexual climates, and these can be hard to infer from simply looking at a woman. Again, would you agree with this?”
To some extent, what constitutes provocative attire is culturally variable. Islam is a case in point.
“Body language, context and so on are therefore useful indicators to a woman's motives. Agreed, again?”
Fine.
“Do you think it's ethically permissible for an unmarried man to look at an umarried woman for the purpose of sexual enjoyment?”
i) That’s an interesting and complicated question. Traditionally, the locus classicus is Mt 5:27-28. However, most readers don’t really exegete this text. Instead, they consciously or unconsciously plug their own experience into the text. So this becomes an exercise in mirror-reading.
ii) Not that personal experience is entirely irrelevant to the interpretation of Scripture. Like communication generally, Scripture takes certain things for granted on the part of the reader. However, experience shouldn’t become a substitute for other exegetical considerations.
iii) This passage has its background in the seventh and tenth commandments. As such, it has specific reference to adulterous covetousness.
Mental adultery would either involve someone's spouse mentally seducing a single person or else a single person mentally seducing someone's spouse. Something along those lines.
Most readers equate Mt 5:27-28, not only with mental adultery, but mental fornication. However, that’s broader than the OT background which informs this text.
In the OT, adultery and fornication were not equivalent. Whether there’s such a thing as mental fornication goes beyond this text.
iv) That leaves us with three possible options:
a) Mental fornication is morally impermissible on the basis of other passages of Scripture, or other Scriptural principles.
b) There’s no such thing as mental fornication.
c) It’s permissible for a single man to fanaticize about a single woman (or vice versa), but we should avoid that on prudential grounds.
d) It’s permissible for a single man to fanaticize about a single woman (or vice versa) as long as certain restrictions are observed.
v) On a related note, while sexual attraction is involuntary, sexual imagination is generally voluntary (an exception would be erotic dreams).
Using our imagination involves an act of the will.
A single man might imagine taking a single woman out for a date, without imagining a sexual encounter.
vi) Apropos (iv)-(v), I’m not, as of yet, taking a position on which hypothetical option is ethically correct. I’m simply drawing attention to the complexity of the issue, since this is often overlooked in Christian discussions.
Generally speaking, I think it’s probably the case that single men and women are allowed freer play of the sexual imagination than are married couples (or couples engaged to be married). Married couples can only fantasize about each other. Single men and women are not quite as limited in this regard, for they have yet to enter into a committed relationship (e.g. marriage).
vii) The Bible also uses a certain amount of sexual imagery. This involves a deliberate appeal to the sexual imagination of the reader. And the reader is not married to, or espoused to, the anonymous sexual object. (I say “anonymous” because Scripture is using generic sexual imagery.)
So we can’t rule out all use of anonymous sexual imagery.
viii) At the same time, when Scripture uses sexual imagery, that’s directed at marriage. It celebrates marriage. Or it editorializes against the extramarital abuse of marriage. Or it uses sexual imagery as a spiritual metaphor, for good or evil.
So this is not meant to be a permanent alternative to conjugal relations.
ix) On the other hand, Scripture also recognizes special cases in which an individual is not at liberty to marry. But that’s exceptional.
I’ll revisit your second question in a separate comment.
SMOKERING SAID:
ReplyDelete“On a related note, how do you view modesty from a Biblical standard? Do you think intent is a factor?”
That can be a factor.
“Obviously, most Christians do not consider it immodest (or at least, not ethically immodest) for a woman to expose herself for the purpose of a pelvic exam, or in order to feed her baby.”
Agreed.
“Body parts are not viewed as sexual in all contexts.”
I wouldn’t put it quite that way. What I’d say, rather, is that the perception of the observer doesn’t always dictate the propriety of the action. Even if, say, public breastfeeding were still perceived as sexually appealing (to a male observer), that’s morally irrelevant in this case.
“(Now, there's a wide range of views on this. Some people would say swimsuits are modest at the beach because they are appropriate, but not - to use your example - in church, because they are inappropriate. Other people would hold to a stricter standard, saying revealing certain body parts is only permissible in, say, a medical setting). What do you think?”
That’s a bit complicated:
i) We’ve all seen historic pictures of 19C beachgoers. Most of us find these pictures amusing because the beachgoers are absurdly overdressed for the setting.
ii) Even in terms of beachwear, there’s a difference between dressing for comfort and convenience, on the one hand, and, say, donning thong beachwear, where the intent is to be sexually provocative.
iii) I also don’t think it’s inherently wrong for single men and women (say, teenagers at the beach) to enjoy the sight of other single men and women (heterosexually speaking).
iv) Another consideration is that revealing attire is not inherently provocative. Rather, certain body types are more provocative than others. What makes revealing attire provocative or not depends, in no small measure, on the type of body it reveals.
To take a familiar example, when a car dealership uses sex to sell a car by putting a woman in a bikini on the hood of the car, it doesn’t stick just any woman in the add. It doesn’t put a 500 lb. woman in a bikini and carefully position her on the hood of the car. Rather, it uses a woman with a stereotypically sensual figure.
If you put an ugly person (man or woman) in revealing attire, the effect is repellant rather than appealing.
Most people have average looking bodies.
For better or worse, we carry around iconic mental images of physical perfection. If we see someone who approximates that image, it grabs our attention in a way that an ordinary looking individual (which is most of us) does not.
v) And this is why, traditionally, attire can be more provocative if it’s less revealing. Good tailoring can improve on Mother Nature.
“I'm not entirely sure of my own position here... for example, I've recently shifted from thinking of breasts as inherently sexual to culturally sexual, due to some anthropological reading I've been doing. Not 100% committed to that though, and I'm not advocating going around topless in a culture where breasts are sexualised. But would it be a sin for me to live with a tribe who does not view breasts as sexual and walk topless among them (assuming I wasn't doing it for ungodly reasons?). I'm not convinced it would. Are missionaries who drop T-shirts to topless villages bringing the moral standards of Christ, or just oddish Western notions of decency? Thoughts?”
i) Margaret Mead is the classic case of an anthropologist who misread the native culture and imputed a level of sexual innocence to the natives which turned out to be quite illusory.
The fact that it’s normal, in tropical climates, for pre-Christian natives to go around in the nude or seminude doesn’t mean this is sexually neutral. The anthropologist assumes that what is normal is neutral. That’s a fallacious inference.
Permit me a personal anecdote. My Aunt Grace was a missionary to Kenya. Her mother once paid her a visit to Kenya.
Now, we Westerners generally judge a woman’s age by her face. But the natives, living in a topless culture, had a different criterion. They judged a woman’s age by her breasts. And, at that time, they didn’t know anything about bras.
As a result, they figured that my 40ish aunt was in her late teens or early 20s while her 70ish mother was in her 30’s.
Point being: even in a culture where going around topless was the norm, they were very attentive to a woman’s mammary endowment.
ii) Let’s also recall that we’d expect pre-Christian cultures to have lower sexual mores.
iii) This doesn’t answer your question. I’m just drawing attention to potential pitfalls in comparative anthropology.
My inclination would be to evangelize the natives, teach them basic Christian ethics, then let them work out the implications on their own. I don’t have a blueprint for how that would always play out.
Mental adultery would either involve someone's spouse mentally seducing a single person or else a single person mentally seducing someone's spouse. Something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteJesus doesn't condemn "mental adultery" he condemns looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust. This is still an exterior action and it not only betrays one's wife, but it degrades the unwilling woman and it disrespects her husband. Therefore it has victims, as surely as adultery itself has victims.
If you subject a person's private, interior mental life to the "Law" you run into intractible problems with enforcability. And you create problems which don't exist. A teenaged boy has sexual thoughts and he is told by his Pastor its a sin just to think about such things, so the boy runs around carrying a load of guilt that God doesn't want him to carry.
In a parallel argument, Jesus says that lesser signs of anger are equivelent to murder, just as lesser signs of lust are equivalent to adultery. Paul doesn't say anger itself is a sin, but it can lead to sin, especially if it develops into a grudge. That is why he says, Ephesians 4:26: Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:. It is not the mental state of wrath that is sinful, but bringing that wrath out into physical action.
Michelle said:
ReplyDelete---
Jesus doesn't condemn "mental adultery" he condemns looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust.
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Since the rest of your example assumes this woman is married, I'll respond that way too.
Your objection reads to me like saying: "Jesus doesn't say stealing a car is wrong, he says you shouldn't take other people's property." In other words, he is saying stealing a car is wrong...
You said:
---
If you subject a person's private, interior mental life to the "Law" you run into intractible problems with enforcability.
---
But we're not the one's enforcing it. That's God's job. Remember the context. It's a question of whether it is sin or not, not whether it's enforcable by the state or not.
You said:
---
A teenaged boy has sexual thoughts and he is told by his Pastor its a sin just to think about such things, so the boy runs around carrying a load of guilt that God doesn't want him to carry.
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A) If he's truly guilty, then he OUGHT to carry that load of guilt. There's nothing wrong with guilty people feeling guilty. That is, in fact, what they are supposed to feel.
B) That said, I don't think you read much of what Steve's written, which happens to be that in this case guilt may not be warranted.
C) Finally, this seems to contradict your view earlier that it "not only betrays one's wife, but it degrades the unwilling woman and it disrespects her husband" to which I respond, shouldn't someone who does those actions feel guilty for having done them?
You said:
---
It is not the mental state of wrath that is sinful, but bringing that wrath out into physical action.
---
That's inaccurate. Wrath as wrath is not sinful, but wrath never comes as just wrath. Wrath has an object.
Suppose, for instance, that you were angry at God for sparing the lives of people you despised. Is such wrath toward God sinful? Bear in mind that there is absolutely nothing you can do to hurt God--you are incapable of acting out against Him.
You can read Jonah to figure out the answer.
Your objection reads to me like saying: "Jesus doesn't say stealing a car is wrong, he says you shouldn't take other people's property."
ReplyDeleteJesus does say stealing a car is wrong. He said (Mark 10:19) Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother." And he said thinking about stealing a car is wrong (Luke 12:15) Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And in the case of a married man looking with lust opon a woman who is not his wife, Jesus says he essentially commits adultery against his own wife by dishonoring his own marriage, and if the woman is married, he also commits adultery with the woman by dishonoring her marriage. But if an unmarried man is not allowed to express or even have physical desire for an unmarried woman, then you're saying all Christian marriages should be loveless, and arranged for the kids.
But we're not the one's enforcing it. That's God's job. Remember the context. It's a question of whether it is sin or not, not whether it's enforcable by the state or not.
And when the question is answered whether it is a sin or not, what do you do with that knowledge. Sit on it? No, you proceed to teach this to others. Have a care. Scripture says teachers are held to a higher standard. James 3:1 My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. You may stand before the throne and say, "But if I erred, I erred on the side of caution," but Christ will say, "You doubted me, and did not take into account my love and mercy, and this led your disciples to be burdened with a heavy yoke."
Finally, this seems to contradict your view earlier that it "not only betrays one's wife, but it degrades the unwilling woman and it disrespects her husband" to which I respond, shouldn't someone who does those actions feel guilty for having done them?
The case I presented was a teenaged boy having sexual thoughts, and I'm assuming the boy isn't thinking about his teacher but maybe a girl who sits next to him in class. Neither she nor he are married. If you hold as his sin something that rolls out from his nature as a boy going through puberty you make a mockery of human nature.
Suppose, for instance, that you were angry at God for sparing the lives of people you despised. Is such wrath toward God sinful?
No, but despising your neighbors is sinful, and this sin leads to anger against God. If one died while still angry toward God, I suspect it would be an existence filled with anger, because after death there is only God.
Thanks for your response, Steve.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of it being prudential for a single man to look at a single woman for the purpose of sexual enjoyment, what do you think about the fact that he may not know whether she is in fact single? (We're talking girl-on-the-street here, not close-family-friend, obviously). Should a man endeavour to restrain his imagination at least until he knows the woman is single--which in the case of the girl on the street, he would likely not determine in the time she walked past--in order to avoid lusting after someone else's wife? Or would you call it an innocent-until-proven-guilty situation, as it were?
I'm assuming that in ANE culture it would have also been considered sinful to lust after a man's betrothed. How would you apply that to today? Presumably you'd consider live-in couples common-law marriages and thus off-limits; but what about engagements, dating couples and so on, which in theory are much more fragile in Western society than in ANE? (This isn't just about modesty, but a wider issue of Christian sexual ethics, I suppose. Is it OK for a Christian man to try to win the affections of a woman who's dating another man, as long as he's honest and above-board? Is it OK for her to think of her in a sexual or even romantic way, as long as she is not irrevocably committed to someone else (or perhaps more sensibly, as long as he feels he might have a chance?)?)
"Even if, say, public breastfeeding were still perceived as sexually appealing (to a male observer), that’s morally irrelevant in this case."
Hear, hear. I'd pretty much say that viewing breasts as sexual in a breastfeeding context is a perversion, and that women should no more have to behave in order to accommodate a minority fetish then they should have to walk around town in combat boots to protect a foot-fetishist from being turned on. But that's another issue. :p
Re tribal cultures: yes, I certainly don't want to espouse a kind of Noble Savage mentality that says that isolated tribes have the truth about modesty by virtue of being isolated tribes. But as I say, since Scripture's unclear on it I'm not sure giving such a tribe Christian ethics and letting them work it out for themselves would necessarily result in a culture-wide realisation that they should cover up their breasts. It seems the arguments are similar to those you make regarding masturbation--that we shouldn't impose a non-Scriptural standard based on cultural hangups. It's also interesting to note how little is actually said in the Bible about the specifics of modesty. Maybe God foreknew the ruckus the head coverings thing was going to cause and decided not to further complicate matters by talking about elbows. :p
Michelle said:
ReplyDelete---
Jesus does say stealing a car is wrong.
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Don't take this the wrong way, but you have seriously GOT to take a reading comprehension class. You spent an entire paragraph responding to an analogy without touching what the analogy refered to. That wastes your time and then it wastes my time too.
Remember, I started by saying: "Your objection reads to me like saying..." etc. "Like" or "as" are used to denote similes, which are figures used to represent something else. In other words, I was not saying "Jesus says it's okay to steal cars" in the least. I used this obvious example that I figured we'd both agree on (and which your response shows we do agree on) to demonstrate how your original objection was a misreading of Steve's post.
Since you misread Steve's original comment, I am not surprised that you misread mine too. And further, I would not be surprised if you misread this comment too. Still, it makes trying to discuss things with you impossible and overly frustrating and I have better things to do with my time. As, I am sure, do you.
SMOKERING SAID:
ReplyDelete“In terms of it being prudential for a single man to look at a single woman for the purpose of sexual enjoyment, what do you think about the fact that he may not know whether she is in fact single? (We're talking girl-on-the-street here, not close-family-friend, obviously). Should a man endeavour to restrain his imagination at least until he knows the woman is single--which in the case of the girl on the street, he would likely not determine in the time she walked past--in order to avoid lusting after someone else's wife? Or would you call it an innocent-until-proven-guilty situation, as it were?”
i) The short answer is that various cultures (I can’t speak for all of them) have visual codes for signaling whether a member of the opposite sex is single or married. In ours, that takes the form of a wedding ring.
If a married man or woman refrains from wearing a wedding ring, he/she is signaling eligibility or sexual availability (whether intentionally or not). So, in that respect, I think the burden of proof is on the married man or woman.
ii) On the other hand, a sexual fantasy is a voluntary act, so it’s obviously within the power of a man or women to refrain from indulging in a sexual fantasy. There’s no psychological compulsion to do so.
iii) Finally, by “prudential considerations, I mean an action which is licit in its own right, but may lead to an illicit consequence, such as a potentially addictive behavior. In that case, one most weigh the cost/benefit ratio. Does the benefit outweigh the potential risk?
“I'm assuming that in ANE culture it would have also been considered sinful to lust after a man's betrothed.”
i) In Jewish culture, that would be a sin.
ii) Apart from Israel, I expect that ANE cultures thought of sex in economic rather than ethical terms. A matter of property rights and legitimate lines of inheritance.
In OT culture, sex has both an ethical and economic component.
“How would you apply that to today? Presumably you'd consider live-in couples common-law marriages and thus off-limits.”
i) Fornication (e.g. “live-in couples”) is a sin.
ii) Common law marriages are a bit more complicated.
a) All things being equal, a couple should exchange vows, and—in the nature of the case—a vow needs to be a public vow, involving eyewitnesses. A private vow isn’t a real vow since it’s inactionable. There’s no third-party to hold you to it.
b) All things considered, there are situations in which a common law marriage would be licit. Unless someone happens to be unsuitable for marriage, people have a natural right to marry.
However, some countries unjustly restrict the right to marry. For example, in Catholic countries governed by Catholic law, a spouse cannot obtain a divorce. Therefore, a spouse cannot remarry.
Say a woman marries a man. The man is unfaithful to her. She has scriptural grounds to divorce him and remarry. But the law of the land denies her the right to do so. In a situation like that, I think she has a right to leave her philandering husband and contract (if you will) a common law marriage with another man.
Ultimately, marriage vows are not an end in themselves. It is possible to honor the substance of the marriage vow (lifelong monogamous commitment) without a formal vow.
That’s a special situation, but, unfortunately, a widespread situation in time and place.
“Is it OK for a Christian man to try to win the affections of a woman who's dating another man, as long as he's honest and above-board?”
It’s okay to try and win over someone’s boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s not okay to try and win over someone’s fiancé or fiancée.
“Is it OK for her to think of her in a sexual or even romantic way, as long as she is not irrevocably committed to someone else (or perhaps more sensibly, as long as he feels he might have a chance?)?)”
Probably. It ranges along a continuum:
Dating>engagement>betrothal>marriage
Ethics is full of borderline cases which are, in the nature of the case, morally ambiguous.
SMOKERING SAID:
ReplyDelete“I was recently reading about some ethnographers who visited a tribe in Africa, in which the women were topless. When the ethnographers brought up the fact that Western men found women's breasts sexually attractive, the women of the tribe found it at once hilarious and perverse. To them, treating breasts as sexual objects had a similar stigma we might attribute to foot fetishism--after all, breasts are for feeding babies, right?”
This wasn’t directed at me, but since Sarah has been asking me similar questions, I’ll jump in.
i) An initial and rather obvious problem with this example is the fact that the ethnographers only interviewed the tribal women, not the tribal men. In the nature of the case, we wouldn’t expect heterosexual women to find breasts sexually attractive. But that’s wholly irrelevant to whether or not the tribal men find breasts sexually attractive.
ii) The obvious reason that men find breasts sexually attractive is that breast development, along with round hips and (in both sexes) pubic hair, are visual cues of sexual maturity, i.e. that a man is old enough to father children or a woman is old enough to bear children.
So I’d expect that to be transcultural rather than culturebound.
iii) This also goes to an indirect relationship between sexuality and functionality. A man isn’t hardwired to think to himself that breasts are necessary for nursing his children. Rather, he’s hardwired to think of them as visual cues of sexual maturity. But, logically speaking, if not psychologically speaking, these two things go together.
iv) Finally, from what I’ve read, women tend to find a mastectomy emotionally devastating. It takes them some time to recover from the emotional trauma of that operation. You could try to explain this as simply due to a socially conditioned sense that they’ve lost their sex appeal. But I wonder if it doesn’t go to a deeper sense of feminine self-identity. If so, then even women don’t view their breasts in purely functional terms.
I'm not sure I agree with you about the wedding rings, simply because I know so many women (and men) who don't wear them for various reasons--swollen fingers in early pregnancy, working at a job in which rings are forbidden, developing allergies to the metal, or simply not being able to afford a wedding ring. Add to that the custom of wearing rings on the 'wrong' hand in Europe (I believe cellists and EO Christians wear the ring on the right hand too), the modern tendency to wear non-plain wedding rings that look like dress rings, and the women who wear their rings on chains around their necks for convenience, and it's not a particularly clear-cut system! I often take both of my rings off when kneading bread dough to avoid getting dough in the crevices of my engagement ring, and forget to put them back on; certainly the intent is not to signify sexual availability. So if it is considered ethical for a single man to fantasise about a single woman, but not a married woman, I'm not sure the lack of a wedding ring is a good enough indication (although the presence of one is probably good enough for erring on the side of caution, or so hope the waitresses who wear them in order to avoid being hit on!). Then again, some might take the line that a single man should only fantasise about women whom he has a reasonable chance at marrying, that would eliminate non-Christian women for the Christian man (one would hope), as well as fictional and fantasy women. I don't believe you do take that line, though... just thinking it through. I certainly don't like the idea that men are free to fantasise about women outside marriage (or at least a committed relationship, and then to be very wary on prudential grounds). It seems somehow predatory and invasive, and (in a girl-on-the-street sense, at least) as if they are objectifying the woman by responding to only a small facet of her person, her looks. But on the other hand, your arguments are compelling and I'm not sure I can see a flaw in them, so darn. :p Of course, if a man treats a woman with sexual disrespect because of his fantasies, or uses her dress (whether sexually provocative or otherwise) as a means to insult her or comment inappropriately on her appearance, I absolutely do have a problem with it. But that's just a matter of politeness.
ReplyDeleteI think I'd also place the level of acceptability in trying to woo someone's girlfriend earlier than engagement, for the simple reason that engagement and commitment tend not to be chronologically similar these days (ie, a couple may fully intend to marry but refrain from getting the ring until they've saved enough money for the wedding). As you say, it's a continuum; anyway, meh, minor point.
i) An initial and rather obvious problem with this example is the fact that the ethnographers only interviewed the tribal women, not the tribal men.
I believe they did interview the men too. I can try to dredge up the article if you're curious.
ii) The obvious reason that men find breasts sexually attractive is that breast development, along with round hips and (in both sexes) pubic hair, are visual cues of sexual maturity, i.e. that a man is old enough to father children or a woman is old enough to bear children.
Hrmm. Do men or women find pubic hair sexually attractive? Do women find men's Adam's apples attractive? I don't think being a visual indicator of sexual maturity is in and of itself enough to make something considered normatively attractive.
But I wonder if it doesn’t go to a deeper sense of feminine self-identity. If so, then even women don’t view their breasts in purely functional terms.
Well, yes; women usually do have breasts, so it's obviously a part of one's identity as a female. But I think you have to be careful about attributing that to the sexual appeal of breasts necessarily. Women who've had a hysterectomy often feel similarly emotionally traumatised, and it's not like the loss of those female sexual organs is visible to a man. So it's possible the issue is sexual identity rather than sexual attractiveness. (I wouldn't be blase about the thought of having my breasts removed even if there weren't men around to see them, for instance). It's indisputable that breasts are necessarily 'sexual' insofar as they're involved with the general reproductive process by allowing babies to survive; but that doesn't really address the issue. I'd want to talk with some women who've had mastectomies before speculating much further, though.
SMOKERING SAID:
ReplyDelete“I'm not sure I agree with you about the wedding rings, simply because I know so many women (and men) who don't wear them for various reasons…”
This gets us into a murky burden-of-proof issue. On the one hand, spouses have no obligation to visually signal their marital status. On the other hand, if they refrain from doing so, then does a third-party have an obligation to default to the assumption that everyone is married absent specific evidence that they are unmarried? That would not be a reasonable assumption in high school or college—which is the most pertinent age bracket.
“I don't believe you do take that line, though... just thinking it through. I certainly don't like the idea that men are free to fantasise about women outside marriage (or at least a committed relationship, and then to be very wary on prudential grounds). It seems somehow predatory and invasive, and (in a girl-on-the-street sense, at least) as if they are objectifying the woman by responding to only a small facet of her person, her looks.”
i) There’s nothing predatory or invasive about one’s private thoughts concerning another person—especially when the basis of those thoughts is the way in which the other person chooses to appear in public.
What would be invasive or predatory is the Peeping Tom with his binoculars or hidden camera.
ii) This may also go to a stereotypical difference between men and women. In general, I don’t think men mind the idea of being sexually objectified, although I suppose that also depends on whether the objectification is favorable or unfavorable.
At the moment I’m not offering a value-judgment on (i)-(ii), just a factual clarification.
“Hrmm. Do men or women find pubic hair sexually attractive? Do women find men's Adam's apples attractive? I don't think being a visual indicator of sexual maturity is in and of itself enough to make something considered normatively attractive.”
Perhaps. One would need a lot of cross-cultural data to even begin to answer a question like that. And culture can sometime suppress natural criteria while creating artificial criteria (e.g. Chinese foot-binding).
Also keep in mind that while a sexual marker like pubic hair is invisible under clothing, a woman’s body shape is not (unless she’s wearing a Burqa). So, if that’s all we have to go by…
Then there’s the related question of whether women find hairy-chested men attractive.
They might not find the Adam’s apple attractive, but what about a deep speaking voice (in contrast to a preadolescent boy’s voice or effeminate man’s voice).
MICHELLE RENEE SAID:
ReplyDelete“Jesus doesn't condemn ‘mental adultery’ he condemns looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust.”
Since “looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust” would be synonymous with mental adultery, your disjunction is nonsensical.
“This is still an exterior action.”
No, that would be a paradigmatically interior action. Mental states are internal to the subject. The exterior action, if there were one, would be to actually commit adultery.
“And it not only betrays one's wife…”
True.
“But it degrades the unwilling woman and it disrespects her husband. Therefore it has victims, as surely as adultery itself has victims.”
This is feminist hooey.
i) They can’t be victimized by something they’re not even aware of. Someone’s private thoughts, which have no discernible impact on their lives.
ii) You are trivializing genuine crimes against women when you attempt this equation.
iii) Let’s also keep in mind that some married men and women have extramarital affairs. They want other people to fantasize about them. In that case, they are hardly victims.
iv) You make women sound terribly weak when you act as if they’re injured by someone’s private thoughts.
Something can be morally wrong without victimizing a second party.
“If you subject a person's private, interior mental life to the "Law" you run into intractible problems with enforcability.”
Since I don’t plan to pass a law against adulterous fantasies, enforceability is irrelevant.
“And you create problems which don't exist. A teenaged boy has sexual thoughts and he is told by his Pastor its a sin just to think about such things, so the boy runs around carrying a load of guilt that God doesn't want him to carry.”
i) Now you’re contradicting yourself. Is the boy “victimizing” someone or not? Before, you were very judgmental about sexual fantasies because they supposedly victimize the object of one’s fantasies. Now, however, you seem to be reversing yourself and adopting a nonjudgmental policy.
ii) Since, as I’ve explained on more than one occasion now, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with a teenage boy having sexual thoughts, your objection is misdirected.
iii) That said, sometimes people ought to feely guilty. And if you don’t think that people should ever feel guilty, then why should they feel guilty about “victimizing” a woman by treating her as a sexual object?
iv) The fact that you don’t like the consequences of something doesn’t falsify the position in question. Unless you’re a solipsist, reality doesn’t conform to your whims. And if you are a solipsist, then don’t bother attacking my position since you’d be attacking yourself.
“In a parallel argument, Jesus says that lesser signs of anger are equivelent to murder, just as lesser signs of lust are equivalent to adultery.”
i) Two things can both be wrong without being equally wrong. Actual murder does harm to the victim in a way that murderous hatred does not. Hence, even though both are wrong, one is worse than the other.
ii) Anger is not inherently wrong. It depends on the provocation.
“Paul doesn't say anger itself is a sin, but it can lead to sin.”
Now you’re contradicting yourself (again!). If anger is equivalent to murder, then anger itself is sinful.
“It is not the mental state of wrath that is sinful, but bringing that wrath out into physical action.”
i) Same problem. If you say that anger is equivalent to murder, then the mental state is already sinful. Gravely sinful.
ii) Just as scripture doesn’t treat angry feelings as inherently sinful, it doesn’t treat angry actions as inherently sinful.
Your entire rant is incoherent from start of finish. You simply react and emote, like a stimulus-response organism.
Mental states are internal to the subject. The exterior action, if there were one, would be to actually commit adultery.
ReplyDeleteSuppose you found your neighbor scoping out your house at night with binoculars in one hand and you realized he was doing it only when your wife was getting undressed for bed. Would you shrug because there is no exterior action such as actual adultery?
“But it degrades the unwilling woman and it disrespects her husband. Therefore it has victims, as surely as adultery itself has victims.”
This is feminist hooey.
The neighbor looking at your wife with binoculars for the purpose of arousing himself is not victimless sin. It is a sin because even if you were okay with it, your wife would feel violated if she became aware it was happening.
Steve: what do you think about 1 Timothy 5:2, which exhorts Christian young men to '[treat] younger women like sisters, in all purity'? Do you think this could reasonably be exegeted to condemn sexual fantasising, on the grounds that one does not fantasise about one's sister? Or do you think the Jewish context (ie, a society in which most young men were already betrothed--although, was Timothy's church 100% Jewish, and if not did the other cultures have a similar concept of betrothal?) makes the verse inapplicable today?
ReplyDeleteThat would not be a reasonable assumption in high school or college—which is the most pertinent age bracket.
Well yes, in high school one could probably safely assume one's classmates weren't married! I was thinking more along the lines of the girl-on-the-street scenario, regardless of age.
Michelle Renee said:
ReplyDeleteSuppose you found your neighbor scoping out your house at night with binoculars in one hand and you realized he was doing it only when your wife was getting undressed for bed. Would you shrug because there is no exterior action such as actual adultery?
You originally said, "Jesus doesn't condemn 'mental adultery' he condemns looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust." But as both Peter and Steve have already pointed out, "mental adultery" is "looking at a woman who is not one's wife for the purpose of feeding one's lust."
More to the point, your example is an example of someone committing mental adultery (as well as a couple of other things) -- which Steve has already clearly objected to in his original post.
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteObviously I'm not Steve but I just had a quick comment or two if that's okay. Actually, they're more like observations.
"Steve: what do you think about 1 Timothy 5:2, which exhorts Christian young men to '[treat] younger women like sisters, in all purity'? Do you think this could reasonably be exegeted to condemn sexual fantasising, on the grounds that one does not fantasise about one's sister? Or do you think the Jewish context (ie, a society in which most young men were already betrothed--although, was Timothy's church 100% Jewish, and if not did the other cultures have a similar concept of betrothal?) makes the verse inapplicable today?"
1. Maybe I'm wrong but the immediate context seems to be that Paul is advising Timothy, who is serving the church as a pastor, how to treat members of his congregation including the young women -- "in all purity." Of course, not that this doesn't necessarily also apply to all Christians, but the immediate context does seem to be primarily pastorally focused. How should Timothy pastor the flock? How should a pastor like Timothy treat older men, younger men, older women, and younger women, etc.?
2. To whom does "in all purity" refer? Is it simply (or primarily) to the young women, or is it to all those which precede the phrase -- the older men, younger men, older women, and the younger women? I don't know Greek and so couldn't say one way or the other.
3. While it's true the NT does call Christians "brothers" and "sisters," since that is what we are in Christ, it doesn't then follow that we're also now to be considered physical or biological brothers and sisters. So, fantasizing about one's sister in Christ would not be precisely the same as fantasizing about one's biological sister (well, unless one's biological sister is also a Christian!).
4. As far as I understand, both first century Jews and Gentiles in the Roman Empire did tend to marry a lot younger than we do today.
5. Hence, it's possible some if not most of these "young women" were already married, not single. It would be wrong for any man to fantasize about a married woman, if by "fantasize" you're referring to "adulterous covetousness" or the "mental adultery" Steve brought up in his original post.
6. Related to this, although Timothy is seen as a young man (1 Tim. 4:12), I wonder just how young he was? I remember a preacher once saying that Jewish men were considered "young men" sometimes up till as late as their 30s or 40s. I don't know where the preacher got this info from though, and more importantly, if it's a fact. I wonder if Timothy was married at this point? I don't know but maybe others do.
Anyway, just a couple of observations or considerations that came to my mind, not a response by any means, unfortunately.
Oh yeah, one last thing. Not to be rude, Sarah, but you have gotta stop trying to corrupt our blog with your $#@! kiwi spelling (e.g. fantasise vs. fantasize), use of single quotation marks instead of double quotation marks, and who knows what else! Just kidding. It's all "shiny," as Whedon might say.
SMOKERING SAID:
ReplyDelete"Steve: what do you think about 1 Timothy 5:2, which exhorts Christian young men to '[treat] younger women like sisters, in all purity'? Do you think this could reasonably be exegeted to condemn sexual fantasising, on the grounds that one does not fantasise about one's sister?"
That either proves too much or too little. In that case, a Christian man shouldn't marry a Christian woman, for he would be committing incest to if he married his "sister in Christ"—unless you conceive of Christian marriage as a platonic relationship.
In that case, he should either marry an unbeliever or visit the local brothel.
You need to limit the intended range of the metaphor.
Michelle Renee said...
ReplyDelete"Suppose you found your neighbor scoping out your house at night with binoculars in one hand and you realized he was doing it only when your wife was getting undressed for bed. Would you shrug because there is no exterior action such as actual adultery?"
I already addressed the case of the Peeping Tom in response to Sarah.
You fail to distinguish between the public sphere and the private sphere.