Pigs and Wolves

Last week, someone posted this little gem on Facebook:

Apparently this message caused quite the scandal and outrage. One lady who runs a blog called The Mormon Child Bride was quite disgusted with the message this statement sent. 

In her blog she wrote:

Since last Friday, 1, 366 people "liked" this, and 2,772 people "shared" it with their friends. Of course, there were a few dozen people, myself included, who expressed responses ranging from disagreement to horror. But it seems like a drop in the bucket. A few people who felt strongly enough to say "No. It is not okay to compare a woman wearing a tank-top/bikini/whatever-screams-"immodest"-to you, to a pig rolling around in shit," versus the thousands of people voicing their approval, including many who advised the people dissenting to "calm down," "get a life," and most disturbingly "It's interesting. It's not unlike someone deliberately dangling fresh meat in front of a pack of starving wolves, and then getting mad at them, and condemning any of them that run up to take a bite."

At least in the original post, the women were still alive, acting/being pigs maybe, but alive. However, look how quickly the women were turned into "fresh meat." I'm most angered by the violent undertones of these kinds of comments. If you dress immodestly, you deserve to get attention from "pigs," you deserve to be "bitten" by "starving wolves." You deserve to be sexually assaulted. Many of the women who "liked" the post promised to use this in a future Young Women's lesson.

Pigs. Fresh meat. Pornography. I'm not resorting to hyperbole to say that this breaks my heart. That it makes me want to take Clara and run in the opposite direction of whatever church tells my beautiful baby that she deserves to be mistreated, to be viewed as porn, based on what she wears. If I ever have a son, it breaks my heart to think he will be taught that this is how he treats women. That he himself is a "pig" or a "starving wolf" who cannot control his own thoughts or actions. It kills me that this is the world I am raising my daughter in, and yes, it kills me that many people around me don't understand.

She even took umbrage to a message from 2005 General Conference

Dallin H. Oaks compared immodest women to pornography."And young women, please understand that if you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you." 

Coming from a girl's perspective I see how true this is. While most men are kind and respectful, women not only have a huge influence on men's actions but their thoughts as well. Even Elder Oaks clarified by saying the problem is magnified for SOME men. Just  recently,  I have found I don't understand certain women who complain about the guys they go out with. They want a decent, upstanding man to marry but they wear tight clothes and go around with their chests hanging out for everybody to see.  Your clothes are a big part of presenting who you are. You have to dress and act in a manner that attracts the kind of people you want to spend your time with.

Some say, "It doesn't matter what a woman wears, it matters what's in her heart." But I believe that what a woman wears reflects what's in her heart.

The Bible links a woman's dress with her attitude, mentioning an adulterous wife "with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart" (Proverbs 7:10-20); rich women who wear ostentatious attire and are "haughty" (Isaiah 3:16-23); and Christian women who are to dress "in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety" (1 Timothy 2:8-9, KJV). In all three cases, dress and attitude are obviously intertwined.

 The heart of the issue was articulated very well by Elder M Russel Ballard

"It is, unfortunately, all too easy to illustrate the confusion and distortion of womanhood in contemporary society. Immodest, immoral, intemperate women jam the airwaves, monopolize magazines, and slink across movie screens—all while being celebrated by the world. The Apostle Paul spoke prophetically of “perilous times” that will come in the last days and specifically referenced something that may have seemed particularly perilous to him: “silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts” (2 Timothy 3:1, 6). Popular culture today often makes women look silly, inconsequential, mindless, and powerless. It objectifies them and disrespects them and then suggests that they are able to leave their mark on mankind only by seduction—easily the most pervasively dangerous message the adversary sends to women about themselves."