[Content Note:  Sexism, Rape Culture, Objectification of Women]

I didn’t get a chance to write a blog post for today as i was having too much fun celebrating my birthday yesterday.  However, I wanted to spotlight Libby Anne’s post from today.  In it, she discusses a preacher who is pro- modesty movement and who recently wrote an article in the Christian Post in which he discovers that (heterosexual and bisexual) women experience sexual desire when they see men.  I love and fully agree with Libby Anne’s response to this discovery:

He had never considered it.He had never considered it. Twenty years of ministry, twenty years of preaching modest, and he’d never thought about the fact that women are also sexual beings. This alone is illustrative of a huge blind spot in the circles that preach modest, if you ask me.

Of course, experience tells me that this isn’t just a problem with people in the modesty movement.  The idea that women are sexual beings seems to escape the notice of a lot of people, especially a lot of men.  There are too many narratives about men being the sex-seekers and women being the gatekeepers of sex.  Those narratives also tend to ignore the idea that women might actually want and seek out sex rather than try to prevent it.  In many ways, the erasure of women as sexual beings with sexual desire is a key component of treating women as sex objects and the proliferation of rape culture¹.

So I’m not entirely surprised that this minister missed the memo that women have pantsfeelings too.  After all, we live in a society that too often ignores a lot of things about women, including the fact that they are fully human and therefore sexual as well.  And it contributes to a lot of problems.

At any rate, be sure to go read the rest of Libby Anne’s post if you haven’t yet.  It’s great.

¹As an aside, Libby Anne’s blog is a great resource for exploring how both the modesty and purity movements influence and reinforce the objectification of women and rape culture as well, despite the fact that their stated intent is to uphold the value of women.