Comments About The Book "A Return To Modesty: Discovering The Lost Virtue

The following are comments about a book written by Wendy Shalit called "A Return To Modesty". These comments are useful for many reasons. To understand what the average American lady goes through and what she feels. How important modesty is in society, and the damage it causes to lose it as a whole. Modesty is very Important in Islam. I hope this survey will help Muslim women, and mean understand the blessings Islam has given them. The following is the result of the path we are taking in the Muslim world.

Kathleen from Ohio:

In this book she exposes the cruel lie told to modern young women --namely that they must be "just like men, have many lovers, lose their virginity, give up modesty, and get over it." Loss of innocence has been made into a virtue by our culture with disasterous results. Anorexia, bulimia, self mutiliation are the results of young girls being made to feel they are worthless sex objects. Radical feminism has been no friend to modern woman. Radical feminism's idea of freedom has led to women's unhappiness in a world where she is not respected and made to feel left out and "weird" if she chooses not to take part in the sex roulette game.

Anonymous:

I live in the world Wendy Shalit describes and I can tell you she has hit the nail squarely on the head. In the politics of male/female relationships (or more often, non-relationships) today, women almost always lose, and they lose for precisely the reasons Wendy Shalit outlines, yet we persist in playing this game.

Before you decry Wendy Shalit as some sort of religious freak, ask the young single women you know about their sex lives, about their intimate encounters. Every day, young women all over the U.S. try to play a game they can't win. Yes, there are some women for whom sex is not emotional and who can hook and unhook with various men with ease. But for the VAST majority of young women, this is not the case. And most who claim this is the case are lying. At their core, most young women want commitment, and stability, not the present casual approach to everything. However, when we are told that this is what we are SUPPOSED to want, we will go to any lengths to convince ourselves, often experiencing significant emotional damage in the process. I applaud Wendy Shalit for taking such a bold step in writing this book, in saying what so many of us know deep down inside but are afraid to say.

Carrie from Los Angeles:

reminding girls and women of what we've all really been looking for all our lives ~ to be Made Love To... by someone who feels that way and isn't going to change his mind... reminding girls and women to do the guys a favor and NOT let them devalue us, or cheapen the potential sacredness of sexual life ~ and for girls, women to wonder What The Heck we were thinking when we were sold a bill of goods to reduce sexuality to a biological need or a sport ~ Wendy Shalit went through a punishing book tour on this ~ even oprah challenged her ~ even though oprah has talked about being used by men herself, even through her 20s... Girls and women now need to learn from the experience of us older women who know how it all plays out 10-20-30 years down the road... sexless marriages, regrets that you let yourself be intimate with anyone who'd allow himself to be a cad, and to be a cad To You... this is a thoughtful book, seeking to protect one of the few things in life that promises a glimpse into the Ecstatic...

Williamson, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA:

I wonder if promiscuists realise how they buy into a false dualism which splits body from soul: women who surrender their bodies to uncommitted men surrender also their inner selves (what used to be called the soul). No wonder the feminists are up in arms -- Shalit shows anecdotally how our society is the most misogynist in history as today's men systematically get away with what amounts to consensual rape.

Gail, TX, USA:

She calls for an understanding and recognition of the beauty of sexual modesty, taking issue with intellectuals who support the "myth...that a culture that respected modesty suppressed female desire." In addition, Ms. Shalit views the sexual revolution as having failed "mostly because it ignored the differences between the sexes - specifically, the importance of female modesty."

Included in the third portion is a parallel drawn between modesty and the erotic, noting studies showing that married women are more orgasmic than single women because they feel safer. Ms. Shalit concludes: "Modesty damps down crudeness, it doesn't dampen down Eros. In fact, it is more likely to enkindle it."

Anonymous:

I can't remember how many times in college I watched other women go to a party, get wasted and go to bed with a stranger. I could never figure out what was worse-- that they felt so obliged/compelled/whatever to be sexually active, or that they needed to anesthetize themselves first to go through with it.

Anonymous:

I agree with many of Shalit's common-sense and fresh-insight conclusions - that modern pop culture has both furthered the cause of misogyny and totally villified anything that has ever been traditionally feminine; that there is nothing inherently happy or liberated about the sexual provocateur; that modest behavior and dress are a good way to set boundaries for how you want others to treat you and effectively differentiates you as someone who adheres to more old-fashioned behavioral expectations (any woman can tell you how differently you get treated by men, women and children going out in a modest A-line dress vs. going out in a micro mini and tube top). In short, I AGREE with Wendy Shalit's theses.

Anonymous:

This book was not only very well-written, but superbly researched and non-biased. What I find truly saddening is the level of myopia and hatred so prevalent in the reviews penned by those who do not subscribe to Ms. Shalit's views. Like Ms. Shalit, I too attended a well-respected private liberal arts college--one with living accommodations, faculty and campus politics that mirror that of Williams(the guest speaker at my commencement was poet and self-described "black feminist lesbian warrior"(her words-not mine)Audre Lord). However, what struck me was that in spite of being on such a "pro-woman, equal rights" campus, I had never seen a group that was, collectively, as miserable as my fellow female classmates. The "hooking-up" that Ms. Shalit describes in her book was dead on target(even down to the very term "hooking-up"). My friends found themselves in the constantly revolving door of our clinic--with a host of various and sundry STDs. Here, they had all of the sexual freedom that they could ever want, and so many of these beautiful, brilliant, and talented women suffered from such a low self-esteem that they found themselves distracted and unable to concentrate on their schoolwork--too depressed to even attend classes. Some even dropped-out of college altogether.

Let me drop a bombshell on some of you self-anointed "enlightened thinkers"--- what the feminists don't want you to know is this: staying celibate until marriage is the ULTIMATE in LIBERATION and POWER, and let me explain why--- if you refrain from sexual activity as a single woman, you are liberated from having to play the ridiculous and manipulative little cat-and-mouse games(don't know what I'm talking about? Pick up an issue of Cosmo or Mademoiselle) that so many women feel compelled to play with men. You are liberated from wasting time during your busy day, analyzing and reanalyzing your last encounter with your current love interest(not knowing if he is with you because of all of your wonderful qualities, or because you're good in bed)-- rather than using that bright mind of yours to leave your mark on this earth in some great and special way. Celibacy is POWER--power over your own destiny, a command over your own body and personal space(as Ms. Shalit points out, so many young women are crying out for such power but are looking for it in terrible and self-destructive ways-- eating disorders and self-mutilation--which I witnessed in many of my colleagues), and the power to think more clearly on an intellectual and spiritual(rather than an inappropriately emotional) level. We may have the vote, we may have career opportunities, we may have access to legalized abortion, but women have lost big-time. We have lost the respect of our men-- and that respect was an integral basis of our rules of civilized behavior for CENTURIES. We are paying for the arrogance of a generation whose members thought that they were too smart to respect or gain a greater understanding of the mores and codes of conduct embraced by their parents. Instead, they bastardized them, turned the Western world upside down, and now the women of my generation are paying dearly for it.

I, too, took the road less traveled (of pre-marital abstinence), so as a single woman I also was made to feel like a pariah at times. I wish to encourage young women to hold true to their personal convictions--in making the decision to abstain from pre-marital sex, you fly in the face of "modern-day convention," but trust your instincts. As a happy, successful and fulfilled 31 year-old married woman who has "walked the walk and talked the talk," I can tell you that once I made the conscious choice to abstain, I never looked back(and have NEVER regretted it). For those of you who so nastily and angrily attack Ms. Shalit's book--- why are you so hostile and completely opposed to granting her discussion any credibility? Perhaps the truth of her words hits home a bit too hard, forcing you to rethink the notion that the late 20th century radical feminist movement has done women greater harm than good.....

Benjamin, MO, USA:

A Return to Modesty takes a close look at human nature and uncovers what most of us have taken for granted for so long, to the point that we have essentially forgotten what it is we take for granted - that the essential principles of virtue, among which modesty figures highly in this analysis, are there, deep down inside us. These essential values - the prerequisites for the development of virtue - are able to be overlooked, but never quelled. To overlook them is to deny the very essence of what makes us human - a view that stands in refreshing contrast to Nietzche's statement that morals are only the convenient by-product of evolution.

Over Greer:

living in a post-feminist era, highlighted last year by TIME magazine's cover story, "Is Feminism Dead?"

Shalit is able to do what Greer could not: break the male stereotype Philosopher King. She is a Philosopher Queen! Rarely has a writer so intellectually stimulated me: she has already broken one stereotype. My respect for women is higher than ever.

Beyond that, reading this book, you can miss the forest from the trees. Despite its advances on various fronts, the great failure of the feminist movement was teaching women what to think, as in the books of Greer, and other self-proclaimed "feminist" authors.

Shalit goes further: she teaches you how to think. That makes her the best feminist in the country. That is true liberation. The fact that her writing is not poisoned by bitterness, so typical in feminism, makes this writer a breath of fresh air and fresh ideas.

The other huge difference between Shalit and the other feminist writers is they demand respect, but do not get it. Shalit does not demand respect. She does not have to but she gets it anyway. When you write a strong message with a brilliant mind and a good spirit, how easy it is to be taken seriously.