Return to Modesty: Sex, Feminism and the Domesticity Debate

I picked up a book of G.K. Chesterton's for the first time the other day because I am writing a term paper on rebellion against traditional forms of domesticity in the the inter-war period. I know: gripping. Chesterton was an outspoken advocate for the traditional family at a time when the Victorian ideal was under attack. The First World War left an entire generation shattered not only physically (through war wounds), but psychologically, politically, and socially. Chesterton felt that the attack on family values exacerbated the fractured psychological state of many Europeans and was detrimental politically as well. National identity was beginning to replace social identity and the casualties were both men and women, but most importantly children. Born into a world in which the home has no boundaries to separate them from the assault of capitalism, socialism, feminism, materialism, and atheism, children were given a more than daunting, perhaps even impossible, task of making sense of their world-- a job women were leaving for the State to manage.

This topic greatly interests me at the moment because I am currently trying to figure out precisely how to reconcile my responsibilities as a mother with my ambition to do more in my life than parent and keep a house. On the one hand, I do not think that mothers should abandon their children to "the State" for the sake of having a "fulfilling" career. Children need their mothers as much as possible, and while I understand perfectly how difficult it is to spend all day, every day even with one's own children, I do not think one's career ambitions should be a higher priority. If they are, maybe think twice about having kids. The procreation of children isn't a right and while some mothers have no choice but to put their kids in full-time daycare, it is not ideal and we should not behave as though parenthood should come without any sacrifices of our time and energy.

On the other hand, I think that many women of my generation have be raised in a world where they are expected and encouraged to pursue careers before having children. I think this is a good thing. Women have varied intellectual needs, the same as men, and not all women can feel satisfied with with a purely domestic life. God gave us other faculties that we ought to be able to use if we can. And I firmly believe that it does children a lot of good to know that Mummy's life isn't all about them all the time. Otherwise they will never appreciate the sacrifices she makes for them, however glad she may be to make them anyway.

These issues were becoming quite serious during the inter-war period and they remain pertinent today and especially for me at the moment as I try to juggle school, a possible forthcoming career, my marriage, my current two children, and my hopes for more children down the road. Feminism vs. Christian ideals are suddenly of interest to me again.

When I first began my Arts degree in 2000 I quickly discovered that most studies in the Humanities were really about two topics: Sex and Feminism. No matter what great poetry or works of literature we read, the only issues pertinent to our class lectures were these two. And I found myself severely outnumbered and up against some pretty tricky stuff that I hadn't had to deal with in high school. In high school, topics on the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and drug or alcohol use floated around the school among the students. I was a well brought up Christian whose parents never ever refused to engage me in discussion about these issues or treated me condescendingly if I happened to express a less than Christian view-point. They merely asked me to think very carefully about why I was saying what I was saying and pointed out respectfully why they thought I was wrong. I remember these discussions as early at 10 years old. But I'd never seen anything like the attack on my long-held Christian principles than what I got in first year university. It was good for me, but it was a struggle.

The biggest struggle by far was the issue of sex. All kinds-- for there are many you see, and even pedophilia was raised as something that our culture ought to think about accepting, because of course sex, is the true expression of who we are (to these people) and so should therefore be as free as possible. We were reading Nabokov's Lolita, which tells the story of pedophile Humbert Humbert and his sexual exploitation of Lolita--12 years old. The first half of the book was pretty hard to get through and I was appalled by Vanity Fair's quibble on the front that the book was "The most convincing love story of our time." Sadly, I think Vanity Fair may have been right, but I think that was ultimately Nabokov's point-- to criticise or at least openly display the selfish, exploitive nature or modern relationships in a world where the social constructs, which used to divide children from adults, men from women, mothers from fathers, have all been torn down. Moral duty is almost meaningless without them. Whether Vanity Fair meant "romantic" and "ideal" is not certain, but the post-modernists tend to prefer and idealise "convincing" stuff rather than that which is truly uplifting, beautiful, or traditionally ideal. We pretend it's beautiful because it makes it easier for us to be ugly people.

But pedophilia was not the only or major issue. Homosexuality was also a big one. Or even boring old adultery and sexual promiscuity were exciting topics of choice. Now I was

single and modest and all this talk about sex made me very uncomfortable, particularly because we never ever talked about normal marital sex: ie the kind almost everybody is having. One would almost think that normal domestic life was as gone as Pompeii: nothing but tragic plaster-cast statues of emptiness signifying destruction. All that was left was depravity. Let's pretend it's great.

This was certainly the attitude many took to traditional values after the First World War. In a way, time stopped for a whole generation and those who survived lived in an obliterated social landscape, no rank, no role in society, nothing but empty holes in the shape of a dying race. And yet they were free to do whatever they wanted with their dearly bought freedom. Instead of rebuild and repair, a great many of them tore down all the last remaining fragments of the old world and did their very best to build up everything in utter mockery of it, as though the old world were to blame for the destruction in the first place.

What I was trying to figure out that year was why the old world was worth preserving. I knew it should be preserved. I was Orthodox. We go in for tradition, and good thing too because it is very silly to tear down something when you don't actually know what it's for-- as Chesterton would say. That is when I discovered Wendy Shalit's Return to Modesty.

Return to Modesty was Shalit's final thesis for her philosophy degree (I believe) though probably heavily revised for publication I imagine. It is a very methodical, and yet humorous and readable argument for the virtue of sexual modesty-- incredibly well researched too. She was Jewish, which in many ways can be much closer to Orthodoxy, when it comes to lifestyle, than other Christian denominations. And the real selling point: she was basically a feminist. Her argument was (in a nutshell) that women are worth everything that the feminists say they are, which is why sex before marriage is an affront to their dignity and honour as equal members of the human race. We risk almost everything when we say yes to sex. Men ought to do us the courtesy of offering us everything before they ask us for it. It had never occurred to me that feminist ideals (which I was tempted to in many ways) were also justifiable Christian ideals: that Christianity was, in a sense, a great feminist religion. Except for God Himself, our greatest saint is a female, and a mother.

This idea has carried me through a lot of rubbish I had to deal with in university and led me to understand that much of what we do as Christians (particularly Orthodox Christians) is a transfiguration and enlightenment of a lot of originally good modern concepts. We do not say black is white or evil is good. But we are not what we seem either. While appearing (to the modern) to be sexist with our male-only clergy and our masculine god, we actually honour women more highly than men by our saints and our lifestyles. While appearing to be prudish and oppressive with our fasting and our sexual ethics that forbid extra-marital and gay sex, we actually nurture a healthful freedom that allows things to grow and flourish in good soil, not be choked by the thorns of lust and appetite. We could be feminists, real feminists, and we could be free -lovers too-- real lovers.

I had always assumed that Christianity was right about it's various rules and religious laws as being the best thing to strive for. I had also assumed everyone else who argued otherwise was just stupid. What had never occurred to me was that I could speak to non-Christians on their own grounds as equals. I could speak as one feminist to another and not be accused of narrow-mindedness and ignorance at the hands of my religion. I could engage in discussion with homosexuals and not be accused of hatred and homophobia. I didn't have to say they were all right, but I could say that I understood them. That I wasn't shutting my eyes to them or standing above them, superior.

This was a huge leap for me, for I confess I spent a good portion of my high school years in complete confidence of my superiority to all my silly little school mates who believed everything the telly fed them. When I got to university I had to stop being a snob and actually use my brain because there were far more intelligent people, far better educated, and far nicer than I was, who were going to accuse me of bigotry if I couldn't come up with anything to justify myself to them through my lifestyle.

The old ways, the traditional social constructs (and I will acknowledge them as constructs while arguing that this does not indicate they ought to be torn down or that they reflect anything false in them) needed to be justified to me in a language that I could then use to engage others without condescension. Wendy Shalit opened that door for me. What has since occurred to me is that what I was always missing, what might have brought me to this without her help, was what Lewis called "Charity" in his book The Four Loves. This will make up the review in my next post.