A Return to Modesty Quotes

“Modesty answers not the crude how of femininity, but the beautiful why.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“The best protection against rape, stalking, and domestic violence is to raise men who both understand that women are different, and would never dare take advantage of this difference.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“If you are not sensitive to rejection, doesn't that also mean you're indifferent to love?”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Modesty is a reflex, arising naturally to help a woman protect her hopes and guide their fulfillment -specifically, this hope for one man. (...) Along with this hope comes a certain vulnerability, because every time a man fails to stick by us, our hopes are, in a sense, dashed. This is where modesty fits in. For modesty armed this special vulnerability -not to oppress women, but with the aim of putting them on an equal footing with men. The delay modesty created not only made it more likely that women could select men who would stick by them, but in turning lust into love, it changed men from uncivilized males who ran after as many sexual partners as they can get to men who really wanted to stick by one woman.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“A society which sees her modesty or her "hang-ups" as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit. Conversely, a society which respected modesty, or what now goes by "hang-ups", was one in which men were obligated.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Encouraged to act immodestly, a woman exposes her vulnerability and she then becomes, in fact, the weaker sex. A woman can argue that she is exactly the same as a man, she may deny having any special vulnerability, and act accordingly, but I cannot help noticing that she usually ends up exhibiting her feminine nature anyway, only this time in victimhood, not in strength.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“These images point to a very real and important truth: what women will and will not permit does have a profound way of influencing the behavior of an entire society.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Who told women that they couldn’t be round, that they had to cut themselves off from their bodies? Who told women that even if they wanted to stay home with their children, they shouldn’t be allowed to? It wasn’t the patriarchy. If you flip open to any page of The Second Sex or The Feminine Mystique, you are bound to find more misogyny than in the writings of Aristotle and Norman Mailer combined—sexist as they might have been, at least these men never called women “parasites.” Simone de Beauvoir: “What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites.” Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: “Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“This is becoming our great modern divide, his commitment problem and her hang-up problem. These two problems have emerged together for a reason. A society which sees her modesty or her “hang-ups” as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“A woman’s sexual modesty puts her, significantly, in a position to be the ultimate worldly arbiter of a man’s worth—“Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine,” as the temperance movement’s slogan had it. Since respect for her modesty gave her the freedom to withhold affection, so to speak, until a virtuous man came around, men were in turn inspired to become worthy of her. Whether the cause was liquor or”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“There are really two types of modesty: one's own and that of others . . . The first type of modesty is essentially developing an internal definition of self. When you know who you are, you don't generally feel a need to brag, to show your naked body to strangers, or to be involved physically with people who don't care about you. The second type of modesty entails recognizing the vulnerability of others and protecting it - as with a boy who receives a compromising photo of a girl and ignores orders to pass it on.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“I want conservatives really to listen to these women, to stop saying boys will be boys, and to take what these women are saying seriously.

As for the feminists, I want to invite them to consider whether the cause of all this unhappiness might be something other than the patriarchy.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Failure to sleep with someone is now an act of hostility, whereas it was once understood to be part of the natural process of searching for one’s mate.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

“Parents always have the best of intentions when they wish not to impose too much on their children, but in the absence of a normative standard, something else always fills the vacuum. Today, for instance, we flatter ourselves that we are morally neutral, that we can’t comment on a girl’s behavior for fear of crushing her “sexuality,” and yet we are constantly negatively judging a girl’s body rather than praising her internal qualities. The reality is that we haven’t moved away from judgment at all; it’s just that we judge girls now for their superficial “deficiencies.” Think of the alarming increase in the number of parents who buy their thirteen-to-eighteen-year-old daughters breast implants despite the high risk of surgical complications, or consider eleven-year-old Lilly Grasso, an athletic girl of normal weight who came home from school toting a so-called “fat letter” warning her mother that her BMI put her at risk. (Twenty-one out of fifty states now mandate BMI testing in schools, with dubious results.) Then there is the large number of boys who report that they are “revolted” by girls whose privates do not resemble those of the porn stars they view online, and in 2013, a student body president at the University of Texas–Austin even felt free to share his views about how to judge a woman’s private parts, and whether they will prove to be “gross,” based on her general appearance. Is encountering such negative judgments directed against a young woman’s body and most private areas empowering? Is such an attitude enlightened for either party? Or is it more empowering to praise a young woman for her internal qualities of character? I personally feel that it is the latter.”
― Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue