The discussion over at the Exponent about the Utah woman who had her bishop and stake president refuse to renew her temple recommend because she refused to follow their counsel to cover herself while breastfeeding in church reminded me of a concept I remember discussing in psychology classes. That concept is locus of control. Here’s the first line of the Wikipedia article on the subject:
In personality psychology, locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control.
People are thought to fall along a continuum from having an internal locus of control–those who think that what happens to them is primarily caused by decisions they make–to an external locus of control–those who think that what happens to them is primarily caused by other people or other things outside themselves. You can read the full Wikipedia article or look up any of a big pile of academic papers talking about locus of control, but the level I’m thinking about it is as simple as this brief description.
I think it’s clear that Church teachings are heavily focused on pushing us to have an internal locus of control. For example, Lehi tells Jacob in 2 Nephi 2:27:
men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil
And Jesus says in D&C 58:27-28:
men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.
I think For the Strength of Youth is also a good example, because it seems like it frequently tells teens that doing good is up to them, and they shouldn’t just go along with what people around them do or say or think. For example, in the “Friends” section, it says:
As you seek to be a friend to others, do not compromise your standards. If your friends urge you to do things that are wrong, be the one to stand for the right, even if you stand alone.
This is all probably uncontroversial. You could just restate everything I said about the Church encouraging an internal locus of control and replace “internal locus of control” with “personal responsibility” or “choice and accountability.” In fact, I think if anything, Church teachings might lean a little too far toward an internal locus of control focus. I think of my missionary experience, where I was told repeatedly that the only thing stopping me from baptizing X number of people in some time period was clearly my lack of faith or worthiness. Or then there are the helpful well-off people who come out of the woodwork when any lesson mentions self-reliance, patting themselves on the back for their position, and reminding us that poor people need to just practice better self-reliance and they can be rich too.
What’s interesting about thinking about the locus of control concept, though, is that it gives us a label for what happens when Church teachings flip around and encourage the opposite. It looks to me like this happens a lot when we start talking about modesty in dress. The best illustration for this, of course, is then-Elder Oaks’s caution to young women in 2005:
please understand that if you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you.
In other words, he’s telling young women that men have an external locus of control when it comes to seeing them as pornography. The young women’s dress is taking the choice out of men’s hands.
Or here’s a Relief Society manual from 2000:
We are responsible for the effect our dress standards have on others. Anything that causes improper thoughts or sets a bad example before others is not modest.
It doesn’t get much more bald than that.
To be fair, there are lots of teachings on modesty that don’t suffer from this problem. At least from what I’ve looked at, the majority of the stuff on lds.org talks about the importance of dressing modestly because of the effect it has on the wearer of the clothes, not the viewer.
Ultimately, though, my sense that men are taught at church to have an external locus of control when it comes to how they view women’s dress doesn’t come primarily from examples I can find in Church teachings like the ones above. Rather, it comes from the decisions some men in authority make and arguments that some men make when topics like women breastfeeding in church come up. Suddenly, all the Mormon preference for internal locus of control goes out the window, and some men (and some women too) argue that women who expose their breasts to breastfeed are forcing wicked thoughts on men around them. They are “contributing to the pornography problem.” The men’s agency is gone. Locus of control has moved entirely to being external.
Couldn’t we do so much better? I think we could. I think we should borrow from all our teachings that focus on internal locus of control for pretty much any other topic you can think of, and teach men and boys something more like the following: Sometimes you will see women1 you are attracted to, even sexually aroused by. Attraction and sexual arousal are not sins, but it is up to you to decide how to manage these feelings. This does not change even if the women you are attracted to are dressed in ways you consider immodest. Jesus taught that if one person lusted after another, the fault is with the person who lusts, not the one who is lusted after. Do not attempt to punish the women around you for your feelings. Do not attempt to regulate their clothing choices. Do not harass them (e.g., do not engage in catcalling or making unwanted comments on women’s appearance). Absolutely do not assault them. The idea that men are controlled by their arousal is a pernicious falsehood. You can learn to manage your feelings of attraction and arousal without doing any of these things, just as you can learn to manage your feelings of anger without resorting to harsh words or violence.
One thing that we can entirely set aside here is the question of whether breastfeeding is a modesty issue or a sexual act. I think it clearly isn’t either, but we could teach something like the above regardless of whether people believe it is or not. Because how other people dress and what we think of it are totally irrelevant if we teach men and boys to have an internal locus of control in this area. They, or rather we, since I’m a man myself, can learn to manage our feelings no matter what women around us wear. I was just thinking of the breastfeeding debate as a jumping-off point.
In any case, although I think this would be an easy change to make, given, like I said, that there’s already so much internal-locus-of-control-focused teaching in the Church, I would be surprised if the change were made. The primary obstacle, as it is with so many other issues, is an all-male leadership. Church leaders clearly have little difficulty imagining being boys or men who see attractive women and find themselves aroused, so it’s easy for them to think of this as a problem caused by women. They seem to have little interest in or ability to imagine what it might feel like to be a woman, and to be unfairly blamed for men’s arousal, or for that matter, whether women might not also lust after men (particularly when men wear ties). So it makes sense to them to frame this as something more in women’s control than in men’s, or at least as much in women’s control as men’s, and that’s what gets taught, rather than just a nice strong dose of personal responsibility for men that’s needed.
On a related note, it’s also clear from things like For the Strength of Youth that Church leaders consider sexual arousal itself to be evil in itself (unless it’s within marriage), so it’s not likely they’ll ever teach something like my suggested paragraph above. I think this is horribly misguided, and it just leads people–teens especially, for whom it’s all new–to feel needlessly guilty for what is a natural physical response. So I’m also not holding my breath for that to change.
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1.I realize that not all men are straight, or even sexually oriented at all, but I’m not sure if Church teachings will accept these realities yet.
This was obviously not written by a man.
Yes, men have the power to decide, but their bodies are *hard-coded* to stare and become aroused by the sight of females, especially their skin, and especially nubile ones. Their frontal cortex is inhibited when they see it. And so, mens’ *massive* challenge in life is to become strong enough to overpower that nature. Some men’s nature is less powerful and easier to overcome, others have put more energy and effort into strengthening themselves. But it’s insanely hard, it takes years, and we’re all at different places in the process. Yes you know this, but you don’t understand it.
Teenage boys have it the worst — they’re more hormonal, surrounded by beautiful young women who flaunt their bodies, and they haven’t had time to develop that strength that older men have. Many aren’t even sure they want to.
And women *want* to be looked at — look how much teen girls spend on makeup and worry about their hair. They wear revealing clothes for a reason and it’s not comfort — otherwise they’d wear sweats to school.
You say it’s the same for women, but it’s not. Yes, men are attractive to you, but not the same way. The better analogy is food. Put a plate of chocolates on a teenage girl’s desk at school, then tell her they’re not for her and that she can *never* have any and that she needs to leave them there all semester and to ignore the smell. Except, for the boys, even *looking* is flirting with sin.
By your logic women should be able to walk around fully naked and not have to worry about the effects on others…
Breastfeeding should not specifically be part of this, but it depends on how it’s done. On my mission in Ecuador there was a family we visited twice a week where the mom was breastfeeding and would just leave her breast exposed when the baby was done eating, like for minutes at a time. That was very distracting… if someone is doing that in sacrament meeting I could see why someone would say something. But if the woman is using a baby blanket I agree it should be fine, and even encouraged!
Yes, men should be better, which is in part why we are here — to learn how, and to grow. Extra points for the women who don’t make it way harder for us out in public.
B Harris, please. Women aren’t like food for you to consume. That’s an incredibly offensive comparison. Take some responsibility for your own actions. Don’t throw up your hands and say “my inhibited frontal cortex made me do it.” Like I said in the post, that’s totally out of line with all the other internal-locus-of-control-focused stuff the Church teaches.
Also, you could stand to read a little more carefully. You say this obviously wasn’t written by a man. From the post: “They, or rather we, since I’m a man myself, can learn to manage our feelings no matter what women around us wear.”
Great post Ziff.
At some point we, as a people, will figure out that the sin of lust lies with the luster and not the lustee. Until then we have to hold our nose through “not even once,” “rotten fruit,” and “poop in the brownies” analogies.
I’ve never understood why chastity lessons didn’t just focus on impulse control. Sure, it can be hard to manage your behavior when you’re sexually aroused. Same thing when you are any of the other kinds of “aroused” — angry, hungry, on an adrenaline high, etc. There are several states a person can get into where their sensory response tries to override their executive function. Why do we act like sex is some special category there? It really isn’t. It’s just that Mormons think of extramarital sexual activity as a particularly severe sin, while yelling at someone (for example) is regrettable but easy to move on from. So it puts this weird emphasis on it that doesn’t need to be there.
I’m not sure how to go about destigmatizing it in a way that would be both effective AND acceptable to most Mormons, but maybe exploring the many different contexts in which one can experience a “lizard brain” response and drawing some parallels would be a good start.
Yes! Great thoughts, Rexicorn! I really like your point about sexual arousal being just one of many kinds of arousal, and how we nevertheless treat it totally differently.
Look, Romans 14 answers this. Paul is talking about disputations among the Church as to whether or not something is right or wrong (eating meat, in this case). Paul determines that if you believe it is wrong, it is wrong. If you believe it is not wrong, it is not wrong. Good so far, right?
But then he talks about when our decisions impact others. He talks about when our decisions may otherwise be right, but they act as a stumbling block for those around us. He condemns this sort of behavior — not because the behavior itself is wrong, but because willfully acting as a stumbling block for those around us is uncharitable.
He doesn’t say, “go ahead and eat meat in front of your weakened brother — he should have an internal locus of control and it isn’t your fault if he is lost.” No, he is quite clear that “no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.” Romans 14:13.
That’s the thing about the bizarre modesty discussions online. It ignores a very key distinction — men can be responsible for their own thoughts and actions (they are) and women can likewise be responsible for whether they are helping or hurting the men around them (they are). We are ALL accountable for our actions to lift those around us, and we are ALL accountable for our actions which place stumbling blocks in the path of those around us. We recognize this in so many aspects of our lives, but for some reason it is sometimes willfully ignored in regards to modesty with no convincing explanation as to why it should account for a special pleading.
Look, I doubt this will be received well — I can only conclude that Ziff was deliberately misreading of B Harris’s post (his post was not comparing women to a consumable food, but attempting to communicate by analogy the nature of the male appetite, and it was disingenuous to interpret it in any other way) so I shouldn’t expect anything different. So instead I will just paraphrase Paul:
“I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing [immodest] of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be [immodest], to him it is [immodest]. But if thy brother be grieved with thy [exposure], now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy [exposure], for whom Christ died.”
Modesty is not about chastity, for Pete’s sake. It’s about charity.
Interesting take, Jonathan. I still don’t like your whole framing, because it presumes that what’s important about women’s dress isn’t what it means to them, but what it means to the men around them. This still makes the world (or the Church) a male-subject/women-object place. And wouldn’t it be so much better if women could be thought of as subjects in their own lives, and not just be preached at for what meaning they have in men’s lives?
Note that there’s really no other topic in church where we hear the importance of not being a stumbling block to others around us, even if our ideas aren’t actually wrong. People who want to spout Fox News talking points in church, all the way up to the GA level? Perfectly okay. Actual failures of modesty where people flaunt their wealth with vehicles or clothes or stories they tell? Not a word of condemnation. But a woman shows a shoulder? It’s the end of the freaking world! The men’s lives are ruined! Why doesn’t she care for those around her? You see the inconsistency?
Also, I’m aware that comparing women to food is an analogy. It’s still deeply offensive.
I don’t think that Ziff misread much. BHarris did conclude Ziff was a woman and that he is a proponent of public nudity. I hope he is, and I demand pictorial proof. Preferably on Facebook. =)
I don’t think Jonathan and BHarris think that much differently than Ziff. People are responsible for their actions, and men are genetically predisposed to stare. What is Ziff’s problem is that advice in this area has assigned an unreasonable amount of responsibility to women in this case.
When women dress, the church and its members should give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not trying to seduce the men into carnal thoughts. We should not judge them based on our impression of the intension of their dress. We have a beam in our eye.
Great thoughts, gibbyg. I particularly like your concluding point. The mote-and-beam analogy is spot on here.
Also, on further reflection on Jonathan’s comment, I think the problem with Paul’s admonition to not be a stumbling block to your fellow church members is that whose stumbling blocks we worry about depends on who has the power. So you, and many men, feel like women not dressing to your standards is a stumbling block to you. Well perhaps they feel like your constant harping on their appearance is a stumbling block to them. I can report from numerous women friends of mine that they find the endless discussion of modesty and women’s appearance at church to be extremely off-putting. It can be a huge blow to your sense of God to hear repeatedly that what he cares most about is your appearance. (You can split hairs and say that what’s being taught at church is that modesty is important for people around them, but it’s pretty hard to get away from the message that modesty is important to God if it’s talked a lot about at church.)
So who wins? Well, you and the other men do, of course, because of our all-male leadership. They can quite easily imagine the stumbling block you’re describing. They have little experience with (or apparent interest in) the stumbling block they’re putting in front of women by harping on modesty so much. But the fact that the stumbling block you’re placing with all your modesty focus doesn’t get much (any) play at church doesn’t mean it isn’t real or influential. It is.
The big thing that Jonathan seems to be missing is context. Yes, devoid of all cultural/social context, teaching people that the way they dress can introduce temptation is fine. But we live in a culture that consistently blames women for men’s sexual behavior. So when you tell me “The way you dress can entice men to have impure thoughts,” I can’t help but connect that to the other cultural message, “Men are incapable of controlling their sexual impulses and rely on women to gate-keep them” and hold myself responsible for every instance of sexual misbehavior that’s directed my way. And in a context where men, as Ziff pointed out, are quite definitely in charge of my religious life, suddenly my choice of clothing can compromise both my physical and spiritual safety — based on how it affects a man whose desires and areas of temptation are not necessarily known to me.
In that context, teaching that modesty is about policing how men perceive me is a stumbling block. It introduces stress into every moment of my life, as I suddenly have to walk around wondering, constantly, what men are thinking of me and what I should do about it. It’s hard to express the cumulative effect that has on self-esteem and one’s ability to focus on her own goals, and that’s if she’s lucky enough to never experience sexual harassment or assault (which is also so common as to inform the context here). There are girls and women in this world who essentially feel guilty just for having bodies, because sometimes men are attracted to those bodies. It’s disingenuous and uncharitable to hand-wave that away.
But even aside from that, I’ve never understood why men are OK with being portrayed as victims of their own feelings? Again, I get that it’s difficult, but it’s also difficult to control one’s temper or overcome fear. Those aren’t actually all that different, psychologically.
Wonderful comment, Rexicorn.
Ziff said, “perhaps they feel like your constant harping on their appearance is a stumbling block to them.” >>>Yes, they do, I can attest. It has been a stumbling block to my teen daughter, who feels alienated by these church teachings because her body shape naturally makes her clothes disobey some basic church modesty standards (she has a large bosom, tiny arms and shoulders, super tiny waist, and very large bottom/legs). Almost NOTHING fits without looking “immodest” or riding up to short lengths on this child, unless we buy oversized clothes with big flappy sleeves or giant waistlines that fall off of her. Her stick-straight-bodied sisters don’t have this problem, but she does–everything she wears ends up short and/or tight; she absolutely can’t help it. We can neither afford a tailor nor custom-made clothing.