What People are Saying About This
Wendy Shalit
From a barnesandnoble.com e-nnouncement
Should girls rush to lose their virginity? Do you have
to be sexually promiscuous to be fully liberated? Does
equality mean that men and women must behave the same?
If you don't sleep with a guy by the third date, does
that mean you have "hang-ups" about sex? Wendy Shalit
answers all of these questions with a resounding no.
Disappointed that so many young women are put on the
defensive for their sexual shyness and romantic hopes,
Shalit argues in her new book, A RETURN TO MODESTY:
DISCOVERING THE LOST VIRTUE, that reticence is a virtue,
something women should be proud of. Given Shalit's
interest in the history and consequences of women's
sexuality, we asked the author to discuss her ideas in
the context of women's history month. She shares
her views in this exclusive essay for barnesandnoble.com.
Women's History Month
by Wendy Shalit
To me Women's History Month is about the richness and
variety of women's voices, about the right to speak your
mind even when you disagree with the conventional wisdom
on things. I think true diversity offers up a diversity
of ideas.
When I began researching the history of sexual modesty,
for example, I was struck by how many women had different
and surprising views on it. I expected radical Simone de
Beauvoir to be against modesty, advocating as she does in
THE SECOND SEX that women should liberate themselves from
the roles of wife and mother, but in fact she thought that
modesty was natural and valuable. According to de Beauvoir,
modesty is one of the few feminine traits that really does
have a biological basis, and it is one that protects women.
As she put it in THE SECOND SEX, "There will always be
certain differences between man and woman; her eroticism,
and therefore her sexual world, have a special form of
their own and therefore cannot fail to engender a
sensuality, a sensitivity, of a special nature." Modesty's
natural basis, according to de Beauvoir, is not the risk
of pregnancy (that's what David Hume thought) but more a
specifically feminine vulnerability that is inherent in
the sex act itself: "Her modesty has deep roots.... One
of the reasons why modesty paralyzes young men much less
than women [is] because of their aggressive role, they
are less exposed to being gazed at." Therefore it is
most preferable, wrote de Beauvoir, that "the young girl
slowly learns to overcome her modesty, to know her partner."
She also predicted that in a society that trivializes this
need, sex will be violent and young women will be left
without recourse.
It was Mary Wollstonecraft who was opposed to sexual
modesty. Before de Beauvoir praised it, Wollstonecraft
criticized modesty on surprising grounds: that it was
too erotic. Today we associate modesty with prudery, but
in her time, the more mystery, the more exciting sex was.
But that's what made it dangerous, in Wollstonecraft's
view. In her VINDICATION she called modesty a
"lascivious" philosophy of "refined licentiousness," one
that "inflame[d]" children's "imaginations" and
"prolong[ed]... ardor" in adults.
So who was right? In a way, I think both of them were.
Modesty is an erotic virtue, but that's exactly why I
think it's such a good thing to reconsider. Today men
and women seem to be competing at how vulgar they can
be, instead of how civilized they can be. If modesty
inflames the imagination, so much the better. I think
more could be left to the imagination these days. We
live in tell-all, let-it-all-hang-out times, but without
privacy, we are learning, we can't have real intimacy and
trust either.
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