A Matter of Modesty and Male Responsibility

               I recently reposted a video of Jessica Rey (of Rey Swimwear) giving a nine minute talk on why women should dress more modestly (YouTube link is below).  About 4 minutes and 20 seconds into this video she mentions a Princeton University study indicating that men’s brains may be the cause of their animalistic reactions when viewing bikini-clad women.  A red flag immediately went up in my brain.  While trying to sell her line of modest beachwear, was she suggesting that women have a responsibility not to trigger natural reactions from men?  Or, was she suggesting that women are actually at fault when men behave badly after viewing a scantily clad woman?

                I decided to repost the video and see what kinds of comments my Facebook friends would make.  Being one who enjoys a good discussion and even an occasional argument, I was quite disappointed in at least four of my friends.  Nobody made any comments at all.  That, in itself, leads me to think it was not well-received by them.  I suspect they, as I often do, refrained from making critical comments out of deference to me, thinking I would be offended.

                I did some internet searching to determine whether or not this study even existed, and if so, what the findings actually were.  Too many people quickly accept whatever they hear or read without asking the most basic questions.  For example, this week I heard a news reporter (he doesn’t rate the title of journalist) report that there is national crime wave involving drug addicts stealing liquid Tide detergent.  A simple look at Snopes.com indicates this assertion is questionable at best.  Yet, it got reported as fact right along with the death of James Gandolfini and the firing of George Zimmer (who another reported referred to as George Zimmerman).  I am a self-proclaimed skeptic.  Some have accused me of being a cynic.  Maybe occasionally.  So, I found several articles from trustworthy sources that shed a little more light on this study of men’s brains.

                The most complete report I found was in The Daily Princetonian, February 17, 2009 (the link is below).  The very first sentence offered a slightly different perspective than the one Ms. Rey gave in the video, “Some men may view scantily clad women as objects rather than as people, a recent study found.”  Some men may…  That is quite different than, “When men are shown pictures…”  The Princetonian article further states that one of the researchers, Susan Fiske, “said the results indicated that some men may objectify or dehumanize partially clothed women, though further research is needed to confirm these findings” (emphasis added).  These types of words should always warn the reader not to jump to any conclusions the researchers haven’t reached.  This was the part of the study that discovered brain activity in the area associated with tools when the men viewed the pictures of scantily clad women.

                A part of the research not mentioned in the Rey video concerns the fact that the participants were given a survey prior to the experiment.  The men were asked questions designed to determine “how sexist they [were]” (Interesting that these female researchers assumed they would all register someplace on the sexist scale).  The men considered the most sexist not only registered heightened activity in the tool portion of their brains, they also were “least likely to activate a part of the brain associated with thinking about people’s minds and thoughts…”  In other words, they further objectify the scantily clad women, not seeing them as humans with thoughts and intentions.  This lack of activity in this part of the brain has been noted by scientists before when people were shown pictures of homeless people and drug addicts.

                There are at least two ways of interpreting these findings.  One would be to conclude that scantily clad women are responsible for provoking men’s demeaning thoughts and actions.  Researcher Fiske gives some credence to this view, “I think [the study] does relate to the effects of having pornography and sexualized images of women around and in the media because they spill over into how people treat women in general…You have to be aware of the effect of these images on people.  They’re not neutral.  They do have an effect on how people think about other women.”  Fair enough.  She’s drawing a conclusion from her research that is difficult to dispute.  Men are wired in such a way that certain images may, in some of them, necessarily stimulate a particular part of the brain, which results in objectification of the women being viewed.

                Another way of interpreting these findings is to conclude that men may have to work harder at overcoming certain innate urges.  Nowhere in this article are men let off the hook for their behavior.  Society’s emphasis on sexualized female imagery is identified as the cause of the brain activity, but it was not determined that as a result men had no choice but to dwell on the images, continue to objectify and fantasize, and behave in an inappropriate manner.  Remember, only “some” men “may” view scantily clad women as objects.  And only those already deemed “most sexist” experienced the additional phenomenon of the lack of brain activity area associated with thinking about people’s minds and thoughts.  This indicates to me that the men’s brain responses may have been initiated by their predisposition to thinking about women as sex objects, not necessarily the other way around.

                An important observation is necessary here.  While certainly related, there is a huge difference between being hardwired for sexual activity and making a choice to treat women as sex objects.  Of course men’s brains are stimulated by observing scantily clad women.  That should come as no surprise to anyone.  But this is not license to demean, degrade, misuse or abuse women.  We humans are hardwired for all sorts of actions that most of us believe need to be subordinated to our codes of morals, ethics, and spiritual imperatives.  If a specific area of my brain informs me I am hungry, I don’t just grab whatever food is handy and stuff it down my throat.  Stealing someone else’s food has legal, social, moral, ethical and spiritual consequences that must be weighed before taking any action.  So does attacking someone when I feel threatened, or lying in order to get ahead at work.  Recognizing the sexual urge, then, does not require fulfilling that urge through means unacceptable to those norms by which we live.  The Princeton study does not give us men a free pass due to our biological and chemical wiring.  We still have the capacity to think, reason, and love.  Call it a spirit or a soul or just a conscience.  It can and should be more powerful than any basic instincts imbedded in our brains.

                Here’s another part of the study Ms. Rey doesn’t mention.  One of the researchers, Mina Cikara, stated, “This research can certainly help to further our understanding of the effect of sexualized women, whether in adverstizing or in the office…men can totally override this response.”  She notes that men don’t look at all women the way they look at those they have objectified.  They don’t look at their wives or sisters, for instance, in the same way as they do the centerfold.

                I am certain there are those who would like very much to somehow invalidate this study and any implication that men and women are different, or that men are constructed in such a way that sexualizing women comes naturally.  I honestly thought some of my Facebook friends would express those thoughts and feelings.  The truth, however, is that this study validates what many have been saying for quite some time.  The male human nature encourages some basic instincts that are different from those that women experience.  It is, therefore, more difficult for men to conquer certain urges.  But difficult is not impossible.  Difficult is not an excuse for being lazy and flowing with the urges. 

                Women who want men to view them as individual, thinking, feeling human beings worthy of respect and compassion should carefully consider how they dress before leaving their houses.  They should understand how the male brain works, and have some compassion on their male counterparts.  In fact, it is in their best interests to do what they can to de-sexualize our society’s view of women.  Women who disarm that tool section of a man’s brain and stimulate that part that views them as thoughtful, will find a man who may actually exhibit some fine qualities.  But regardless of women’s behaviors, men must recognize they are more than the sum of the chemical reactions in various parts of their brains.  They are not only physical, but social, intellectual and spiritual beings capable of and having a responsibility to answer to a much higher calling.

                By the way, the Princeton researchers also pondered how women’s brains might have responded in a similar study.  They agreed the findings would probably be close to what they found with men.  The only difference would be that those same parts of their brains would likely light up if the pictures of scantily clad men included status symbols like expensive cars. 

               

Major portions of this article quoted from The Daily Princetonian http://dailyprincetonian.com/2009/02/17/22773/

The Youtube video of Jessica Rey, The Evolution of the Swimsuit can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVHRJbgLz8