MODESTY, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
Modesty is not easy to define, for it varies with races, epochs and
climes. As I said in the preceding chapter, in some parts of Japan
and in one Arab tribe, it is almost shameful for a young woman to be
married without having had sexual experience. A woman of the Western
races on the other hand, regardless of her age and past, must in order
to show a ladylike breeding, pretend a certain ignorance of things
sexual when in the company of men, even in the company of her fifth or
sixth husband.
=In Turkey=, a woman may show her eyes but must veil her mouth; in the
Southern Sahara, men of the Tuareg tribes go about veiled like Turkish
ladies. Certain African tribes cover their backs carefully while
exposing the rest of their bodies. In other tribes, men, instead of
concealing their genitals, wear sheaths which exaggerate the size of
their organs. In most parts of the earth, women keep the fact of their
menstruation a secret. In others, they wear a cloth of a special color
proclaiming that condition when present.
=On the Modern Stage=, modesty seems satisfied if the nipples and the
genitals are duly covered. In some parts of Europe entirely naked
dancers have been seen in public. Until recently, an unwritten law made
it more or less necessary for the male performers to wear more clothing
than female ones did. The wave of homosexualism which has followed
the war is probably responsible for the growing numbers of naked male
actors and dancers who disport themselves nowadays on the French stage
and elsewhere.
There is a normal form of modesty, however, and there are many abnormal
aspects of that elusive feeling.
Many animals seek safety and seclusion when performing certain
important functions of their life, nutrition, reproduction and
defecation, which naturally place them at a disadvantage in emergencies
requiring flight or fight. Even the boldest among the carnivorous
animals, lions and tigers, drag their prey to a cave or into the depths
of the bush before devouring it.
Naked and otherwise shameless and "indelicate" savages will often walk
a considerable distance from their village to satisfy their natural
needs, and then hide behind bushes or trees.
Many birds and animals pair off and isolate themselves at mating time.
Races and nations differ greatly in their degree of modesty in relation
to nutrition, reproduction and defecation. European races dine in
the open, are more or less "shameless" in their love making, they
talk freely on sexual topics and erect urinals and comfort stations,
designated by their exact name, in many public places. Anglo-Saxons
hide themselves while eating, are very silent about the processes of
reproduction, seldom indulge in public kissing and designate urinals
and toilets, which are very scarce in their lands, by cover names such
as lavatories, smoking rooms, etc.
=Normal Modesty= may then be a survival of the fear which the
primitive men and women experienced of being surprised and overpowered
by hostile animals or tribesmen during an embrace or when unprotected
by garments or armor.
In fact, modesty seems to disappear as soon as safety reigns or when no
hostile element may be suspected of lurking in the environment.
A woman strips without shame to undergo a medical examination, men and
women appear naked in public baths where only one sex is admitted at a
time, etc.
Then also normal modesty must be considered as an offgrowth of the
unavoidable repressions of modern, civilised life. Like the incest
taboo, it has been cultivated for reasons of convenience.
Modern community life having placed a thousand restrictions upon the
age at which we can marry and the conditions under which we should
marry, in other words, having delayed considerably our normal sexual
gratification, an effort has been made to "repress" erotism by
concealing "suggestive" parts of the human body.
This is, of course, an abortive attempt, for habit is a more potent
protector against temptation than veils. The races which live
practically naked are not more erotic than the fully clothed, civilised
races or the Arabs who not only cover their entire body and heads but
conceal even the shape of their bodies in the loose folds of their
ample garments. A husband, no longer erotically aroused by his wife's
naked body, may be attracted violently by the partly draped body of
another woman.
=Suggestive Draperies.= One of the results of the policy of
body-concealment has been to transform certain draperies into sexual
symbols of great aphrodisiac power. Certain garments lend to the human
body an appeal which it might not have if fully exposed. In other
words, the obstacles which are meant to hold back erotism may be used
neurotically as a morbid expression of erotism.
At the present day, however, that form of protection against temptation
serves its purpose to some extent and cannot be discarded until mankind
has been reeducated. Custom and the law uphold official modesty. The
mere fact, however, that modesty has to be enforced legally is one of
the best arguments against the sentimental, unscientific view that
modesty is an "innate," "natural" feeling of "delicacy" based upon some
"higher," "spiritual" values, etc.
Modern, official modesty is merely a compromise with sexual reality.
It has been, like all inhibitory feelings, greatly overestimated and
forced upon the weaker sex by egotistical men to prevent a display of
their female's charms, likely to attract other women-hunters. Weak
males with a sense of inferiority have called modesty the typically
feminine virtue.
=Excessive Modesty=, in men as well as in women, is an abnormal
phenomenon, a mask for unconscious lewdness and obscenity. It is a
neurotic means of protection against uncontrollable desires, or at
times an expression of one's "sour grapes" attitude to others.
It is always the shapeless and unattractive woman who is the most
vociferous champion of highneck gowns and long skirts. A sense of
bodily inferiority obsesses the woman who does not allow any caresses
unless the room is darkened. Her modesty yields rapidly, however, to
the praise of her attractions which she hears from the mouth of her
lover.
=Immodest Modesty.= A woman took her daughter to a specialist's
office for an examination. The girl, asked to strip, complied at once
with the doctor's request and stood naked before him without any
display of shame.
When they left, the mother made the very unwise remark that her
daughter must have lacked modesty entirely to have stood the ordeal
without any embarrassment. In this case, it was the mother who lacked
"true modesty" and the daughter whose mind was "pure." The girl knew
she was in the presence of a physician, but to the more highly sexed
mother, the physician was above everything a "man."
This sort of prurient modesty which, very often, exerts a baneful
influence on the love-life of the individual, is usually due to
repressed childhood memories and complexes.
=Fear of Love.= Stekel, of Vienna, cites the case of a girl who evinced
on every occasion a morbid fear of everything connected with love. She
avoided men, she protected herself zealously against every "suggestive"
influence, she decried love and marriage and was constantly trying to
"spiritualise" the things of the flesh which she considered "bestial."
Analysis showed that until the age of thirteen she had been perfectly
normal in her behavior, considering love and marriage as natural human
goals.
One day, however, she chanced upon a collection of pornographic
photographs belonging to her father. Instead of "corrupting" her mind,
the incident disgusted her and caused her to renounce all the things of
the flesh and to become unusually, negatively modest.
A patient of mine declared on the occasion of her first call at my
office that all men were "beasts." Whenever she associated with a
man, at dinner, theater or dancing parties, she suffered from choking
sensations, nausea, etc. Analysis revealed that at the age of six she
had been subjected to an attempt at seduction.
Another woman patient who went thru a mental crisis in the course of
which she gave up all worldly pleasures and decided never to marry,
merging into hysterical states very soon afterward, had bow legs and
a tendency to skin eruptions which had, on many occasions, proved
humiliating to her egotism. Her decision never to marry meant: "I shall
not risk showing my deformed legs and my skin blemishes to a man."
Also, at the age of ten, she had witnessed a scene of brutality in
which a man had dragged his wife on the street by her hair.
She was morbidly modest and wept bitterly once when a man whom she knew
only slightly, pressed a kiss upon her lips. Withal her dreams revealed
a violently erotic temperament.
Like all exaggerated feelings morbid modesty is the mask for the
opposite feelings, passionate sexual cravings. The woman who allows
every one to kiss her is aroused but little by such caresses. The woman
who never kisses any one and pretends she does not like being kissed,
is usually the one who knows that a kiss might cause her to lose her
self-control and to abandon all modesty.
The puritanical male, paragon of modesty among his sex, is either an
inflammable type who is afraid of his own sensuality or an impotent
individual who protects himself against being put to any sexual test.
That exaggerated modesty is only one of the components of the neurotic
temperament has been well demonstrated by Adler: "The morbid modesty
of neurotics," he writes, "who cannot visit a public toilet, who are
unable to urinate in the presence of others, who avoid the society of
women on account of blushing or anxiety or heart palpitations, reveals
to us the strained manly ambition which supports itself against the
original feeling of inferiority.
"=The Masculine Protest= (craving for virility) of those patients,
insecure to the core, forces them into this arrangement whose
boundaries encroach upon those of bashfulness and awkwardness. Often,
in neurotics of either sex, one observes an inability to go to a toilet
in cases of great necessity if some one is looking at them. The greater
modesty of women, especially of neurotic women, in all relations of
life, originates from the fear which is implanted in them from the
earliest childhood that attention might be directed to their sex.
"I have often convinced myself that the behavior of girls and of women
is considerably influenced by this more or less unconscious factor,
indeed that the progress of their sexual development, like that of male
patients who feel unmanly, the formation of social and professional
relations and love relations, are immediately checked as soon as the
patient is allowed to play a real 'feminine' or subordinate part or
presupposes this expectation from others.
"This fact is in no way affected when repressed sexual stimuli come
to light as the present source of the checks of aggression. They are
similarly arranged and have the purpose of enhancing the fear of the
partner and of permitting the retreat decided upon in the plan of
life, to be entered upon with certainty; they are therefore acts of
foresight. The neurotic had already in childhood laid the foundation
of this foresight and in it is reflected the feeling of shame as the
guiding line of reassuring modesty and the prudery of civilisation.
"The previous history of the patient reveals an exaggerated modesty
and this is true at times of those who in other respects show a boyish
nature; the anxiety of nervous children on being exposed may be
observed in their conduct. They exclude every one from the room and
lock the door when they are going to undress. This conduct is also
observable in boys who have grown up among girls. In the prognosis
of neurosis, this expedient of cowardice is a bad symptom. It is the
equivalent of later castration thoughts and neurotic wishes, the wish
to be a woman, for instance, which expresses itself as soon as the fear
of the life mate becomes actual or a decision has to be avoided."
=Lack of Modesty=, when it assumes a morbid form, has, according
to Adler, the same meaning as prurient modesty.
"The very shameless, obscene talker," Adler writes, "is trying to
demonstrate to his listeners the fact of his great manliness of
which he is not very sure himself, the very immodest woman merely
demonstrates her inability to adapt herself to her feminine role.... In
the analysis of such women, at times only in their dreams, is observed
the childish expectation of a metamorphosis into a male, an attempted
substitute for the will-to-power, the will-to-be-above."