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

[Gravitycollapse]

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.

[Warpy]

1. I think the dear pastor is projecting.

Your prose was dense but your argument was right on the money.

It also sailed right over his head.

ETA: there's also a component of absolving anything male from the responsibility of controlling his behavior around women. Putting all the responsibility onto the woman's shoulders gives her the double burden of self control while expecting her to be sexual gatekeeper to a male sex which mostly is larger and stronger than she is, unfair to the max.

I might have simply told the man to put his eyeballs back into his head and control his own behavior. No one else's behavior is his problem.

[liberal_at_heart]

2. the pastor wants you to scale back your pornography consumption?

Fundamentalist Christians are some of the largest closeted consumers of pornagraphy around.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. Tell him the Bible says Paradise is being unashamed of your or another's body.

[TlalocW]

4. What the hell is the pastor doing

Watching a video on bikinis to begin with?

TlalocW

[nomorenomore08]

5. "I just think that happens to be the sinful part of me."

Well, didn't Jesus say something about cutting off your hand if it causes you to "sin"? Maybe we can draw an analogy here...

[NuttyFluffers]

6. your tone was too calm and rational

all they heard was Charlie Brown parents.

speak from the gut more. more flame, more firebrand, more bumper sticker. it's the only language they understand.

[Wounded Bear]

7. "I hope someone can help me see what I’m missing."

Methinks what the pastor is 'missing' is the whole forbidden fruit psychosis that is wrapped up in the Puritanical hiding of women's (and for that matter men's) bodies.

If bikinis were worn in more places, if nudity was the 'norm' in society at large, pornography would be redundant and die out.
And your response is spot on. It's not so much about 'morality' than it is about control.

[Skittles]

8. CREEPY

[JoePhilly]

9. Thank him for reminding you that male church leaders

are often the worst offenders of seeking to expand their own personal power by judging and controlling the sexuality of the women in their "flock".

Its also pretty clear (by his last sentence in the first statement he made) that his own attraction to women (lust) bothers him, and he sees it as a sin. And so his plan to stop committing this sin, isn't to change himself, its to have women stop wearing bikinis.