Posted on 10/19/2014 12:17:41 PM PDT by Morgana
There have been a lot of news stories recently about students in middle school, high school, and even college,protesting dress codes that they say are sexist and discriminate against women.
However, as I read the articles about these incidents I noticed three common fallacies, or errors in reasoning, when it comes to modesty and the need for dress codes.
Either/Or Fallacy
Also called “the fallacy of the false dilemma,” it occurs when only two solutions for a problem are presented while other solutions are neglected or excluded.
When it comes to the distraction caused by immodest dress, this fallacy occurs when one side only supports what they think is the common sense solution – tell the female students to stop dressing immodestly so that no one is distracted. The other side then fires back with their only solution, which I have to admit, is a catchy slogan,
“Don’t tell girls what to wear, teach the boys not to stare!”
These critics say that schools should be teaching young men to not objectify their female classmates regardless of what they are wearing. They say it is sexist to place the burden of keeping men from being distracted solely on women’s uncovered shoulders.
And they’re right.
Schools should be teaching all of their students to not objectify their classmates. “Custody of the eyes” is just as important as dressing modestly. But just because schools should be teaching “custody of the eyes” it does not follow that they should not teach the virtue of modesty as well.
Just as it’s possible to turn a person into an object by staring at them, it’s possible to turn oneself into an object by accentuating the body's sexual features through immodest dress. There's no reason that schools can't teach both respecting oneself through proper dress and respecting others by not leering at them.[1]
Continuum Fallacy
The continuum fallacy occurs when a person claims that because a dividing point along a continuum cannot be exactly located, it follows that there is no dividing point at all. This is also called the fallacy of the beard, or the erroneous idea that because there is no objective dividing point between having stubble and having a beard, it follows that there is no way to tell if anyone has a beard.
So how does this fallacy factor into the dress code debate?
It happens when dress code critics cite stories about overly conservative dress codes in order to make all dress codes look ridiculous. A favorite recent example is a school in Utah that used Photoshop to raise student’s necklines and cover their shoulders in yearbook photos that were fairly tame by our culture's standards.
The critics then say,
“How do we define ‘appropriate dress?’ Do skirts have to be one, two, or three fingers above the knee? How wide is the archetypal ‘finger?’ Is one centimeter of flesh under a collarbone immodest? Since we can’t draw a line we should simply not judge what people choose to wear.”
Certainly, there is no precise dividing line between dress that is immodest and dress that is modest. But just as the lack of a precise difference between stubble and beards does not hinder my ability to say someone has a beard, the lack of a precise difference between modest and immodest does not hinder my ability to identify immodest dress. To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.”
In all the critiques of dress codes I’ve read, I’ve yet to find an alternative solution that appeases the critics without allowing for what is obviously inappropriate dress within the academic environment (or any public place for that matter).
Is admonishing a boy for wearing a speedo or a girl for wearing a bikini top to school a case of “inappropriately sexualizing them” and “shaming their bodies?” Or is it just plain common sense that some displays of the body aren’t appropriate in public because the body has sexual elements?
Just because there may be cases where we disagree on what is or isn’t appropriate attire, it doesn’t follow that there aren’t clear inappropriate cases that justify having dress codes in the first place. Here are some easy examples:
* If your pants are so short that your buttocks are sliding out of them, then you are dressing immodestly. * If your pants are hanging around your thighs, then they have ceased performing their essential function as pants and you are dressing immodestly. * If your clothes are so tight that they can be mistaken for body paint, then you are dressing immodestly. * If your shirt or top is cut in such a way that in the course of normal movement it appears that you are no longer wearing said shirt or top, then you are dressing immodestly.
Fallacy of Consequence
This fallacy occurs when someone says that because a law affects only a certain group of people, then the law must be unjust. Now, the law could be unjust if it only affects a certain group of people (such as laws prohibiting a certain race from voting), but that does not automatically prove the law is unjust.
For example, many critics say that because the vast majority of dress code violations occur among women, it follows that dress codes unfairly target women are therefore sexist and should be repealed.
But that conclusion simply doesn’t follow.
After all, the vast majority of people who commit sexual assault are men, but that fact alone doesn’t prove laws that prohibit sexual assault unfairly target men. It only proves that men are more likely to commit that kind of crime.
Likewise, just because in some schools women are more likely to violate the aspects of dress codes that deal with covering body parts (while boys may be more likely to violate that parts that deal with offensive clothing), it doesn’t prove that those aspects of the dress code are sexist. It would be sexist if the dress code said that boys could wear short-shorts and expose their midriffs and the girls could not.
In fact, the school in Utah I mentioned earlier that edited its student's yearbook photos has been criticized because it allowed boys to appear in the yearbook wearing unbuttoned clothes that exposed their chests.
Conclusions
The responsibility to teach the value and dignity of every person belongs to all men and women. Men and women should not objectify one another or use another person as a means to fulfill their sexual pleasure (even if the pleasure is purely mental). Men and women should also dress modestly so that they don’t unnecessarily arouse sexual feelings in other people.
This isn’t a condemnation of the body (either female or male), but recognition that the human form is beautiful and instills powerful feelings within other people --- feelings that students shouldn’t have to unnecessarily struggle with while trying to figure out what the quadratic equation is.
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Trent Horn is a dynamic and experienced public speaker who has given hundreds of presentations, from high school assemblies to keynote conference talks. He is a regular guest on Catholic Answers Live and is also the author of Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity published by Catholic Answers Press.
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[1] At this point some dress code critics fire back with an extremely warped post-modern view of the human person. Essentially, they say that a person can only be sexualized in the eyes of others and how we dress has nothing to do with our sexuality. But the human body is not a bland “neutral” object. It is a wonderful expression of the human person.
One of the things it expresses is our sexuality, which is not just an attitude we “attach” to our daily choices, but a part of our very being. The human body is not “neutral” but has sexual elements that are acceptable to display in some contexts (such as the bedroom) and not acceptable in other contexts (such as the boardroom or the classroom).
Granted, some of what is and isn’t sexual may vary based on culture (e.g. in some African and Pacific Island tribes openly displaying breasts is not considered immodest). But just as the fact that etiquette varies between cultures does not justify being rude in any culture, the fact that standards of modesty vary between cultures does not justify dressing immodestly in any culture.
"* If your pants are hanging around your thighs, then they have ceased performing their essential function as pants and you are dressing immodestly."
Dare I say why we can't enforce that form of modesty?
females should quit wearing men’s clothes.
If a female wears provocative clothing, I will stare every time.
Liberal Oakland instituted uniform Dress Codes several years ago, under Mayor Jerry Brown, believe it or not. And it turned out that the parents loved it! The biggest selling point was that they no longer had spend big bucks keeping up with the latest fashions. Everyone now wears khaki pants or a khaki skirt with a green top. Simple and inexpensive.
And the kids look a lot better too ;-)
Every third world country we've been in, we have seen very poor children in uniforms and they look darling! Plus it makes them look BETTER and WEALTHIER.
As a college professor, no disagreement about slacks and a shirt or turtleneck. But a tie and jacket, difficult for me.
I move around a lot and start at one end of the whiteboard
and go to the other by the end of the 50 minute lecture.
But the SCHOOL bureaucrats DEMAND iron-clad, explicit, specific, by-the-1/4 inch rules so THEY do have to use THEIR judgement in front of parents who refuse to use THEIR judgement. (Or never had it in the first place.)
And the liberal socialist “thought police” use every one of those arguments to get ALL rules thrown out. Except what the liberal socialists demand in their policies!
At the local high school just down the block from me what passes for ‘’school dress’’ looks like try-outs for an MTV video. All it says to me is a kid saying “I dare you to educate me’’.
The author uses logic to make multiple good points about joint responsibility for making modest choices. The main point he overlooks are the basic facts of human biology and sexual drive. These facts have been in play even back when showing a little ankle could cause a major scandal. The human male is easily visually enticed and the human female knows this. Also, the largest human sexual organ is the brain which can launch off into fantasy and imagination even if everybody were wearing sackcloth robes from neck to floor. Modesty is good and so is a sense of perspective that’s linked to biological reality.
We stayed at a villa on the north coast of Jamaica, east of Ocho Rios, circa 1979. Did a lot of walking. Very poor villages, neighborhoods.
However, each school day we could see waves of kids in different color uniforms, by level of school. Walking to and from school.
Very nice and something to see in the middle of a city or town.
At my prep school, it was sport coats and ties. Of course they didn’t expect me to wear red plaid pants with a green madras sport coat, purple shirt and electric blue tie, and yellow socks!
School Uniforms. Every public school in the US should be requiring a school uniform. Studies have proven that for one thing it improves discipline. It also takes away the gang colors problem and the status issue of poor kids trying to wear the expensive clothes and shoes. If everyone looks the same they can concentrate on their studies and not who’s wearing what.
ah, yes we wore madras shorts, very cool 61-64
Catholic boys schools. Shirts with collars, no jeans, no tennis shoes except in PE. Hair off the collar. and strictly enforced
We can't help it. Females are awesome.
take hormones out of the equation by having single sex schools.
We just got off a cruise and even though the Dining Rooms don't allow SHORTS and COLLARLESS shirts at dinner, MANY, MANY Sloppy men came in like that, and the Doorkeeper said NOTHING to them!! I said plenty to her and her boss though. Brings down the whole atmosphere when some pig is dressed like the pig he is.
A society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error.
They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct.
Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society.
This failure to fully transmit value norms to subsequent generations represents another failing of the greatest generation.
- Walter E. Williams, Nov. 21, 2007
By the time the students are my age, they could walk around in a bikini without being an occasion of sin for any man who hasn’t spent the last year deployed on a submarine.
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