My response to a family friend who is a pastor and lectures about the immorality

[Freeper]

Gravitycollapse (2,941 posts)

My response to a family friend who is a pastor and lectures about the immorality of bikinis...


 
Last edited Tue Aug 27, 2013, 03:18 AM USA/ET - Edit history (4)

Here is his blog and the relevant post: http://ryanvisconti.com/all-gods-daughters-wear-bikinis/

His wife posts his blogs on her Facebook.

All God's Daughters Wear Bikinis?

Let me ask a question to all the God-fearing, Jesus-loving, Christian women out there: Would you post a picture of yourself on facebook of yourself in just your bra and panties? Would you let your daughter?

A question to the God-fearing, Jesus-loving, Christian men: What would you think and feel if a woman walked up to you in the mall and took off her shirt and shorts and started talking to you in her underwear? Would you tell her to stop? Would you feel the need to avert your eyes? Would you struggle with lustful thoughts?

Ever since I saw the video, The Evolution of the Bikini, I’ve been wrestling with some questions. At this point, I’m just really confused. I can’t help but feel like this is one of the biggest moral blind-spots in the church today. How is it that posting pictures of yourself in underwear would be considered sinful and scandalous, but posting pictures of yourself in a bikini next to a body of water is completely acceptable? (Especially when underwear often covers more of the body!)

Does your daughter have pictures of herself in a bikini on facebook? Do you realize the difference between that picture and pornography is about 10 square inches of skin-tight fabric? But you’re okay with that?

I’m not a legalistic guy. In fact, I usually go out of my way to scold legalistic Christians as being self-righteous. I don’t go around looking for sin in people’s lives, so I’ve really wrestled with this issue. Why does it just seem so wrong to me? I remember as a young boy, that bikinis were considered inappropriate swimwear for Christians and were not allowed at church events or camps. I remember thinking, “that makes sense” even as a (honestly somewhat disappointed) 12 year old. I remember as a young teenager, seeing women in bikinis at the public pool in Paola, Kansas and just feeling like, “I shouldn’t be allowed to see this, right? This doesn’t seem right. Is this a test? I want to look at what I’m seeing here, but it doesn’t seem like it would be right for me to do so.” Was this the mental conditioning of my religious upbringing? I don’t think so. I think it was an imputed sense of right and wrong.

Fathers: how would you feel if a guy was peeking in your daughter’s window as she just wore underwear? You’d try to kill that guy and hope the police got there before you got your hands around his throat. But you send your daughter to the beach or the pool in less fabric and don’t care? I can’t wrap my mind around that.swimsuits

As the mentioned video states, when the bikini was invented, its creator had to hire prostitutes and strippers to model it because regular models refused…and that was in France, people! We’ve seen a pretty swift change in the culture. Now that change has permeated into our Church culture and nobody seems to think it’s wrong. Can someone just explain this to me so I can relax? I mean I don’t want to place condemnation or guilt on anyone, but this feels like the emperor has new clothes, only the emperor is your daughter and your wife.

Husbands, how does it feel to know that the creepy guy with the lusty eyes at the pool has seen about as much of your wife’s body as you see in your bedroom? Ponder that thought for a second.

I’m just going to go out on a limb here (as I usually do, and hey…you can disagree…but this is my blog), I don’t think bikinis are appropriate for any Christian woman who has reached physical maturity. I know the bible doesn’t say, “Don’t wear bikinis.” (Maybe because they would have just stoned a woman who did, and it was inferred?) The bible does say this: “A beautiful woman who lacks discretion
 is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.” (Proverbs 11:22)

If we’re going to teach young Christian boys to pursue sexual purity and that they should wait till marriage to have sex, and if we’re going to teach Christian men to avoid lust and stop viewing pornography, maybe we, as the Church, shouldn’t be sending our own women out into the world practically buck-naked, eh? It just seems a little bit cruel. Would you serve whiskey at an AA meeting?

Maybe it is okay! Maybe we should just let girls wear their bikinis when they get baptized, too! I know more people would come to church if we did!

I hope someone can help me see what I’m missing. I’d love to realize I’m overreacting and that this is completely fine. Hey, there’s a part of me that enjoys seeing a beautiful woman in a bikini! I just think that happens to be the sinful part of me.



My response on her Facebook post, which will almost certainly be deleted:

This argument lends itself to the father-daughter incest fantasy. That is, for as long as women have been made out to be innocent, powerless sex objects (a relatively new phenomena actually), the power dichotomy has always been between a man of authority and the women he controls. Thus, we have the father who keeps a watchful eye over his daughter not simply because he wants her to be safe ( after all he does not keep such a watchful eye over his son), but also because he wants her sexuality to remain within the confines of his own control and his own lust. Whereas a woman staring at his son might be a sort of celebration, a man staring at his daughter needs to be physically beaten to death. The same can be said about the jealous boyfriend or husband. He has to retain a sort of monopoly over the sexualization of his girlfriend or wife. The only one allowed to sexualize the woman is the male who possesses control.

Within that context, we can begin to see why the prudish argument against bikinis is actually more warped than the men who ogle women in bikinis. Because at the root of this story's protest is not a desire to see women safe, although that thought might exist briefly, but instead is an attempt to justify the retention of a monopoly over a woman's sexuality by the appropriate male. The APPROPRIATE male. The woman's sexuality still exists, regardless of the clothing she wears, but it is only allowed to be expressed freely around the appropriate male. The appropriate male is always either a family member, thus the incestuous nature of these arguments, or a male partner. All of these forms of sexual repression are violent. They are violent against the woman as well as any man who wishes to ponder the woman's sexuality and ends up being assaulted by the jealous, appropriate male.

Sexual purity again falls back upon the confining of female sexuality to the appropriate male. The daughters sexuality is repressed until the father passes on the status of appropriate male to the boyfriend or husband.

All of this perpetuates two really terrible ideas. The first idea is that a woman's sexuality exists only relative to the appropriate male. Which continues to support the falsehood of female purity. It represses female sexuality to a point where the public female, a woman at a beach for instance, is judged as a prostitute or a "proper," pure woman based on the kind of rags she has covering her body. That is the second terrible idea, that any woman who is scantily clad is a prostitute or, at the very least, misguided and wrong. "Where is her man?" "I hope your father doesn't see you like that."

Of course, there is this inescapable double standard. A bikini in public is outrageous. Panties in the bedroom, at least around an appropriate male, is acceptable. The appropriate male retains control.



Pastor's response:

{Gravitycollapse}, you've got some really screwed up thinking, man. You lost me, and probably every other rational person, with your first sentence. I recommend you scale back your pornography consumption.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023540816

I love the pastor's response to this moonbat. 

[USA4ME]

Yeah, this Gravitycollapse primitive has some major issues. My guess is he's maybe in his early 20's physically and, like most primitives, in his single digits mentally.

.

[98ZJUSMC]

{Gravitycollapse}, you've got some really screwed up thinking, man. You lost me, and probably every other rational person, with your first sentence. I recommend you scale back your pornography consumption.

Heh......show of hands:  Who wasn't?

Yeah, this Gravitycollapse primitive has some major issues. My guess is he's maybe in his early 20's physically and, like most primitives, in his single digits mentally.

Sounds about right.

[Karin]

I absolutely agree with the pastor; he lost me at the first sentence and I read no further.  He was trying awfully hard to be pseudo-intellectual, and I can't tolerate that.  What a weirdo.

[hillneck]

Yeah, this Gravitycollapse primitive has some major issues. My guess is he's maybe in his early 20's physically and, like most primitives, in his single digits mentally.

Then he will fit right in with the rest of the idiots on Skin's Island.

[GOBUCKS]

TL/DR

[Bad Dog]

The rev. simply and succinctly bitchslapped him and, the black hole was stupid enough to include it in his post.

[Wineslob]

I see wymns studies really paid off.   

[movie buff]

Whether or not you agree with the pastor's position, he made his case well, expressing it with humility and sincere concern for the well- being of everyone.
The DUmmy then vomited up a bunch of asinine, rambling, pseudo- intellectual drivel that didn't go anywhere or prove any point or address any of the pastor's arguments in a remotely lucid manner.
The pastor gave a reply which was simple, but hilarious and dead- on, and the DUmmy was stupid enough to actually include the response in his own DU post about the whole thing.
Pastor- 2, DUmmy- 0.

[Elspeth.]

Whether or not you agree with the pastor's position, he made his case well, expressing it with humility and sincere concern for the well- being of everyone.
The DUmmy then vomited up a bunch of asinine, rambling, pseudo- intellectual drivel that didn't go anywhere or prove any point or address any of the pastor's arguments in a remotely lucid manner.
The pastor gave a reply which was simple, but hilarious and dead- on, and the DUmmy was stupid enough to actually include the response in his own DU post about the whole thing.
Pastor- 2, DUmmy- 0.

The DUmmy was actually trying to be (1) Freudian and (2) feminist (in that order), two systems of ideas that should actually be at odds.

What the DUmmy did NOT do was actually watch the video the pastor mentions at the website:

[youtube=425,350]YDUlDXBgLH0[/youtube]


This video, drawing from neuroscience research, makes it clear that when males see a woman scantily clad the part of their brain that is relational (seeing thoughts and feelings of others) shuts off while the part of the brain that governs tool use remains lit.  This is the neurological underpinnings for males viewing scantily clothed women as "objects" (tools) to be used. 

All the Freud in the world and all of the loopy feminist theory in the world cannot change the neuroscience.  Someone's mole over there needs to tell the Dummy this.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Whether or not you agree with the pastor's position, he made his case well, expressing it with humility and sincere concern for the well- being of everyone.
The DUmmy then vomited up a bunch of asinine, rambling, pseudo- intellectual drivel that didn't go anywhere or prove any point or address any of the pastor's arguments in a remotely lucid manner.
The pastor gave a reply which was simple, but hilarious and dead- on, and the DUmmy was stupid enough to actually include the response in his own DU post about the whole thing.
Pastor- 2, DUmmy- 0.

Well said, H5!

[MrsSmith]

Thus, we have the father who keeps a watchful eye over his daughter not simply because he wants her to be safe ( after all he does not keep such a watchful eye over his son)

Um, yeah...I didn't let my sons pose with their sex organs on display, either.  It has nothing to do with controlling the woman, but everything to do with raising children that understand that modesty is far more attractive than, for example, Miley Cyrus...

[BlueStateSaint]

Um, yeah...I didn't let my sons pose with their sex organs on display, either.  It has nothing to do with controlling the woman, but everything to do with raising children that understand that modesty is far more attractive than, for example, Miley Cyrus...

IMO, it's all about self-respect.  Obviously, MC doesn't respect herself.

[GOBUCKS]

IMO, it's all about self-respect.  Obviously, MC doesn't respect herself.

Well, I sure can't blame her for  that.

[freedumb2003b]

The DUmmy was actually trying to be (1) Freudian and (2) feminist (in that order), two systems of ideas that should actually be at odds.

What the DUmmy did NOT do was actually watch the video the pastor mentions at the website:

[youtube=425,350]YDUlDXBgLH0[/youtube]


This video, drawing from neuroscience research, makes it clear that when males see a woman scantily clad the part of their brain that is relational (seeing thoughts and feelings of others) shuts off while the part of the brain that governs tool use remains lit.  This is the neurological underpinnings for males viewing scantily clothed women as "objects" (tools) to be used. 

All the Freud in the world and all of the loopy feminist theory in the world cannot change the neuroscience.  Someone's mole over there needs to tell the Dummy this.

Soo.... this is a commercial.  To suggest that the sluts of today need to appear to be less slutty.  Because men can't tell the difference between a woman and a reciprical saw.  Or something.

Of course, the fact the "spokesmodel" is homely as hell has nothing to do with anything.

Bitch, get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!