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And while we’re at it, this guy Ryan Haecker of Daily Texan Online is more to be pitied than scorned for being so deeply planted head-first in the “no-sex” class paradigm that you can barely see the soles of his feet.

What’s not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the “new woman.” Like all fashions, pants are symbolic of something – in this case masculinity – through their allowance of physical activity. Dresses, the antithesis of pants, symbolize femininity through grace and elegance. Men find elegance in women to be attractive, and dresses are a physical manifestation of femininity. The wearing of pants by women represents the masculinization of the fairer sex, which is not at all attractive.
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The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men). The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture. Dresses are an essential part of any true lady’s attire, and they should be worn.

The poor fellow reveals the depth of his indoctrination here.

Got that? Women should be seen (“ideal form,” “elegance”) but not move (“sexual virility, promiscuity, and immodesty,” pants with their “allowance of physical activity.”) And in any event you should exist exclusively for the pleasure (visual or otherwise) of men. And, presumably, derive their own pleasure only from the pleasure men derive from you.

[Notice also the hideous self-hatred implicit in his embrace of the two-sphere model of gender wherein if men are to be one thing women must be the opposite. In this case since women have virtues men can have only vices. Or, perhaps, because men have only vices women ought to compensate (sacrificing themselves for men once again) by being all virtue. But I digress…. —fl]

So at this point can I just call attention to a gigantic, gaping hole in the logic of modesty and chastity advocates like Wendy Shalit (Girls Gone Mild: Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue), Dawn Eden (The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On), and Laura Sessions Stepp (Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both) and others like them? Just looking at their subtitles it’s clear these movement conservatives decry the active sexuality implied (if not always delivered) by those who can’t “keep their clothes on” as degrading and demeaning. They claim, not without justification, in my opinion, that whatever intentionality or agency women manifest through, say, recreational pole dancing, making out with other women at frat parties, or flashing their boobs for football or NASCAR fans is offset by their partners’ general ignorance and/or willful disregard of that agency.

And yet… and yet… for every thuggish Beavis or Butthead who exploits, and thus negates, the agency of an “empowered” porn star for his own utterly selfish gratification, there’s a Ryan Haecker at the University of Texas who… exploits and thus negates the modesty and virtue of the Wendy Shalits and Dawn Edens, the Laura Sessions Stepss and the Carol Platt Liebaus for his own no less selfish gratification.

At best the Stepps and Shalits of the world get slightly less sticky… at least till marriage… but no less taken for granted in terms of their sexual accommodations. At worst they wind up choking on abuse, philandering, and extraordinary effort in pursuit of the values they originally seek to sell themselves by: their looks, their “grace,” their “elegance,” and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the pleasure of others.

Of others, again, who by virtue of the two-sphere model they and the Ryan Haeckers of the world espouse, who in no way whatsoever deserve it. Because, again, remember that in that in the two-sphere model if women are granted virtue then men are left only with vice. Because, again, remember that just as women must be the “no-sex” class, men must be obliged to pursue sex at every opportunity and at any cost.

And that’s a system were supposed to admire more? I don’t get it.