should men wear short sleeves?
When the gorgeous behinds pass by, we (men) always have a choice. Either a) look away and think nothing else of it, b) appreciate the female form while you sip your half-caf, or c) visualize scenarios that run the prurient gamut. (Biblical Gender Roles)
Biblical Gender Roles has a post discussing whether Christian women should wear leggings or not, given that seeing the form of a female can cause men to want sex, and therefore possibly sin.
He covers helpful areas such as whether the woman in question is married or still under her father’s authority, and if she has submitted to her male master’s decision on her clothing. All very useful, I’m sure.
But where I start to get confused, is that there is no discussion about what clothes men can wear, and what effect their bodies have on women. So I thought it would be useful to discuss a part of men’s bodies that has been bothering me for quite some time, as a woman of average sexual drive in a committed relationship.
Short sleeves. I’ve found that male forearms turn me on and can often make me have sexual thoughts about random men. I’m not a Christian, but I feel uncomfortable that I’m forced into thinking about being unfaithful to my wonderful partner because men aren’t more considerate about what they wear.
I’d like to take the opportunity afforded by BGR’s thought-provoking post to appeal to men to think more carefully about how they present themselves in public. I don’t want men to be ashamed of their bodies and I want them to look nice, but if they want to be treated as more than just a piece of meat for mental masturbation, they should really think twice about revealing so much of naturally sexually arousing bodies.
LOL! Well, I’m with you there, Violet. Men really do need to start being more careful. There are cougars on the prowl.
As to BGR, he’s just part of the red pill cult. I’ve tangled with those guys ad nauseum. Not biblical, not even really human sometimes. Just creepy.
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I know, he’s someone I should unfollow. He’s an awful idiot and he loves the attention. But I couldn’t help myself with this one because I genuinely have a problem with forearms and no-one wants to help me! 🙂
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‘I have made a covenant with my eyes that I shall not look upon a maid’ was my go to as a Christian. It’s a wonder I ever got married at 39
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Wow, that’s got to have ruined your young adulthood!
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Yup. Guilt and self condemnation for what normal guys do naturally
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I wear baggie Carhartt work pants with suspenders and the babes still can’t keep their eyes off my hard well shaped buns as hard as they try.
I am just too handsome for my own good or do the babes have a gender identification problem?
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I suspect you’re just too handsome SOM. It’s evident in every keystroke.
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My goodness, Violet!
I think I’m love…
…again.
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There are not too many advices on clothes in the Bible (unlike the Qur’an), so I guess, people who believe the ultimate standards for social morals come from this one book have to guess what they think their particular god wants. Why not? Their entire belief in this god is one big guess.
As with so many other obscure things in the Bible people could just read between the lines and go with that in this dresscode issue, like they do with so many other issues, like for example wether if marriage is supposed to be ONLY between a man and a woman, wich is never in the book stated in so many words, but yet there seems to be quite a lot of people who are very sure their particular version of a god wanted it exactly like that.
There is a verse in the Old Testament, that says that the altar of the Biblical god should not have stairs to it, because otherwise the private parts of the priests might become visible when he raises those stairs and it being amusing could somehow ruin the ritual. That is at least as much a hint for what is appropriate for men to wear as any point made in the Bible for nobody but male/female pairs to marry. This altar debacle indicates, that it is perfectly OK for men of the priestly class (at least) to wear miniskirts and nothing underneath. As there are no other comments about this dresscode issue in the Bible, it might be the pan-ultimate word of god on how men should garb themselves. A bit cold especially in the winter up here north, but it may also indicate, that Christians should not even live here…
Perhaps, this undeniable reference to miniskirts is a suggestion, that that is exactly what men should wear! Christians wearing pants might henceforth serve as an explanation for why there are so many seemingly random natural catastrophies around the globe and have been for at least the past two millenia. It might even explain why the Chirst character has not returned, despite his alledged promises to be back before some of the dudes he was alledgedly addressing – all those centuries ago – would die. Who knows and more importantly – how?
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I remember finding out about the looking up priestly skirts passage a while back – that’s a classic! To think that their god is seething about their clothes …
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I feel everyone is entitled to a bit of mental masturbation- no more than three times an hour, say, you would not want to overindulge- so the less people wear, the better. Hooray for global warming!
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We’re doomed in a cold country. It’s funny how immune you become to flesh in hot countries.
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*Rushes off to put on a long-sleeve shirt.
And it’s damn hot down here today, I’ll have you know!
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Thanks for respecting my wishes. It’s worse online than in person.
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I imagine it is. But you do have a notoriously vivid imagination, I hear.
Should wear a Burka and wellington boots just in case?
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Did you post this before? Either that or it’s the one sketch on that show I happened to see on TV a couple of weeks ago. Very good anyway.
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I was sent it just a few days ago, so no, this is the first airing. It’s quite good, though.
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Totally drives the point home. Hope you’ve got your long sleeves on.
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Naturally. The last thing I need is a rabid ginger chasing me up fruit trees 😉
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I’m too close for comfort … just a 24 hour bus journey away. 😀
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Ah, but the Paraíba Valley is huge, and there are many fruit trees.
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We’re part of the animal kingdom and follow our biological programming. Males are hardwired to spread their genes and females try to seek the best dad for their young. Monogamy from an evolutionary standpoint is costly because it requires an individual to place their entire reproductive investment on the fitness of their mate. Putting all their eggs in one basket means there’s a lot of pressure on each animal to pick the perfect mate, which, as you humans know, can be tricky. [Divorce is 40-50% now, so every other pairing will fail.] What remains is choice for those who are “enlightened” beyond biological constraint.
Monogamy and marriage are vastly overrated in my opinion. Experiencing attraction is perfectly natural. If you choose to be monogamous, channel it to your mate would be the practical suggestion. Or have some “wild sex”. [https://goo.gl/CZHruj] 🙂
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Experiencing attraction is of course perfectly natural. But I think monogamy is underrated. Romantic, exciting love falls from all relationships and can be found constantly in new ones, but security and routine make life easiest.
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Ah, the joys of gender role teaching. You see, men are sexual, women are not (at least, not as much in the same way or to the same degree because men and women are different.) So when a woman walks by revealing her shoulders, he automatically thinks about the part of the body they’re connected to .. and lust. Women on the other hand they don’t lust like men do, (God didn’t make them that way) and so men don’t have to not wear things for the sake of women; but women must not wear things for the sake of men. These rules should just about cover it: https://kateschell.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/ip-rules/
The problem is that, like so many other things, the original text of the Bible has been stitched together from random passages, taken out of context, and warped to fit our culture without regard for the culture it was written in – it’s just a form of men controlling women, men blaming women, and men shaming women. My cousin and her friend once went to church wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals because of the heat-wave that had been going on that week; she was lectured by a church elder and he apparently didn’t have a problem with the guys who walked in dressed likewise.
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That’s a shocking story! There’s so much sexual repression in the world. It’s fun to be turned on by forearms or shoulders. I guess for some Christians who are trying to stop thinking about things, rather than going with the flow, it can become a bit of a battle in the brain.
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Here’s the interesting twist – looking at Christian thought in the Middle Ages, it was the women who were creatures of lust and men who weren’t; today, it’s the other way around. So if the Bible hasn’t changed, that just leaves humanity. Somehow, humanity thought the Bible could be interpreted to say that women are sinful, lustful, easily deceived, easily tempted sexual creatures and today the Bible can be interpreted to say that men are lustful, easily tempted, sexual creatures who can’t help themselves when women wear the wrong things. Either way, it’s still the whole gender roles teaching, men are this, not that. Women are this, not that. Whichever way it goes, it’s wrong.
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Great post by the way, thanks for the link.
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