Toward a More Humble Modesty
Kerry Howley | June 26, 2007, 1:11pm
Why is Wendy Shalit, author of Girls Gone Mild, “in a good position” to talk about the dire state of American modesty? Well, explains Pia Catton at The Wall Street Journal, “as an undergraduate at Williams College, she caused an uproar by objecting to the school's coed bathrooms.” This would seem to be Shalit’s modus operandi: Choose an unusually sexually progressive pocket of American culture, declare it indicative rather than exceptional, and launch a heroically irrelevant crusade for change.
And the most modest among us, apparently, will rope in others. It is not enough to not fornicate in your dorm room; Shalit offers strategies for frustrating the lustful intentions of your roommates. (Wouldn't the modest thing to do be to feign ignorance and gracefully leave the room?) Thus, the massively ineffectual missionaries of modesty attempt cultural rollback. Imposing your bathroom preferences on others doesn't strike me as modest, exactly, but here's an idea that should please libertines and good girls alike:
A box called "A Recipe for Pleasing With Integrity" asks: "Is there a way for a young woman to impress others, without having to be mean or compromise her value system?" Why, yes: Bake an apple pie!
I would almost certainly be more impressed with scolds if they stuck to baking pies.
lysanderspoonerjr | June 27, 2007, 7:51pm | #
The e-mail below was sent to the Reason webmaster. Apparently it was heard.
Hi,
Apparently my mentally retarded younger brother has succeeded in getting
everyone in our household who uses the computer banned from posting comments on
Hit and Run by posting certain comments under the moniker "scofflaw." I'm not
sure what specific comment caused him and the IP address we use to be banned.
He said in one comment that Kerry Howley came across as a slut on Fox's Red Eye.
The intemperateness of his terminology was no doubt in part due to his mental
disability. But aside from that, he only said that she came across as one, not
that she is one. Any reader of the comment would understand the distinction, as
he of course has no personal knowledge of her personal habits. In using such a
colorful term he doesn't deny that he was trying to get a rise out of people, in
much the same way as Howley was trying to put her views "out there" in people's
faces by joking on Red Eye about performing abortions in the back seat of a
moving car while violating many other moral law
s blah blah blah. Is what's good for the goose not good for the gander? My brother is as much of
a libertarian as anybody at Reason, is in fact a full-blooded, tax-protesting
mentally-retarded anarchist, and does not believe that prostitution, drugs, or
acting like a slut should be outlawed or regulated. On the other hand, he does
believe that people should govern themselves (to reduce the perceived need for
government by force and to make the resulting free society better, more
peaceful, and more viable and self-sustaining) and that culture has a role in
encouraging free people to govern themselves, in order that by acting in accord
with their natures and truest desires they may be truly free. My brother
doesn't appreciate the project of gratuitously mixing up in people's minds on
national television the principles of libertinism with the honorable principles
of libertarianism. People may understandably be turned off by what they
incorrectly perceive to be libertarianism as a
result. My brother tried with his own puny comments to counter Reason's grand efforts in this direction by putting the
shame back in shamelessness. Granted, he recognizes that sometimes society has
and does attach shame where it does not belong, but this is something that each
individual must inevitably sort out for himself or herself, usually by absorbing
whatever influences from society ring truest for him or her. Surely Reason is
big enough to withstand competing views about what is and what is not shameful.
The above-mentioned comment by my brother was removed but he was not banned
until later, so it's still not clear which subsequent comment was the cause of
his banishment. Subsequent comments were largely in response to the comments of
others. E.g., one commenter assumed that my brother was unable to bed pretty
women, so my brother playfully counter-assumed that the commenter was an ugly
woman, for which he later apologized when confronted with proof that she was not
in fact ugly.
Also, note that while some commenters on the post were offended by my brother's remarks, others recognized in them the effort to say
something significant and substantial and even "smart" (assed?), albeit in a
politically incorrect and irreverent and not especially respectful way.
I'm not gonna beg you to lift the ban. This is your privately-owned place, and
we'll live without being able to comment on Hit & Run, particularly if it turns
out against all expectations that Reason is prissy and sensitive enough to
maintain the ban on the above facts. I will say though that my brother is not
in the habit of openly suggesting that women are sluts, and we do try to monitor
his computer usage, so it's very unlikely that it would happen again. Something
just must have gotten into him.
Lysander Spooner Jr.
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