#original addition

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Shout out to disabled veilers! Happy disability pride month! Also shout out to those who want to veil/used to veil but your disability made it difficult, or those who want to veil but have yet to start because of their disability. I’m sending you all my love!

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Happy pride month queers! Special shout out to visibly religious/veiling queer people who struggle with anti-queer sentiments in religious circles and anti-religious sentiments in queer circles. Also, special shoutout to all the queers that wished the queer community more widely wasn’t so single issue and embraced more allyship with other marginalized groups/political agendas. Lots of love to everyone!

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Recently I have learned that I am intersex and boy oh boy does this have implications for my conceptualization of modesty. Buckle up y’all, I’ll probably eventually make a post about my thoughts once they’re fully formed.

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For me how much skin and body shape I show is core to what modesty is, but that isn’t the only thing that people incorporate into frameworks of modesty! I’ve seen many people talk about modesty as:

-Privacy/freedom from perception

-Taking back control/autonomy

-Spiritual significance

-Gender/other identity affirmation

-Disability/medical control

-Personal comfort

-Controlling how much of you shows up in the world, modulating your presence/how much attention you draw

-Style

-Relationship with your body

-Occasion appropriateness

-Sacrifice (sacrifice versus theft through force)

-A door to sexiness, or selective sexiness

-Economic/class consciousness

Never mind ideas of modesty as an attitude instead of a physical way of dress. All of these are things I think are good to reflect on even outside the concept of modesty, or even in opposition to a modesty framework (shout out to everyone forced to dress modestly before deconstructing from a religion and reclaimed their body through showing more skin)!

If you want any of my own thoughts/reflections on any of these concepts or how this might look in practice, feel free to send me an ask! I just love all (well…maybe not all…looking at you purity culture) the different ideas people have had around modesty, and ways that people can apply the same ideas in the opposite direction!

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Stop pretending like you know what’s going on in people’s head.

I just watched a YouTube video that pissed me off SO MUCH (and no I’m not linking it) because it just showed so much of people being sucky and awful to each other and speaking so badly about women.

TL;DR If you allow your ideas about modesty — in favor for or against for yourself — to color how you treat people (specifically women or people you perceive to be women), you’re being misogynistic and I need you to capital S Stop.

To those who dress modestly, quit talking about women who don’t dress modestly like they’re “obsessed with corrupting innocence” or “they feel like their only worth is in their bodies appealing to men” or “they’re following the trends of the day and can’t think for themselves”. Knock it off. You don’t know what’s in their head.

To those who don’t dress modestly, quit talking about women who dress modestly like they’re “pick-me’s trying to virtue signal” or “they just want to listen and cater to men” or “they can’t really truly choose for themselves because who in their right mind would want to wear that”. Knock it off. You don’t know what’s in their head.

People seem to be so quick to demonize what they perceive as “the other side” when it’s like. Y’all. It’s all the same thing. Demonizing women who dress modestly is misogynistic, AND SO IS demonizing women who don’t dress modestly. Reacting in either way to being presented with someone’s choice with “certainly she cannot know that what she’s doing is The Wrong Thing and I have a Duty To Correct Her” IS MISOGYNY.

If someone says something gross about modesty or the deprioritization of it (e.g. “I dress modestly because I don’t want to be assaulted” or “Women who dress modestly need to let loose and go to a club”) then absolutely call that out. Bad decisions need to be addressed and cannot be allowed to fester, 100%, but making sweeping judgements about the moral character of women based on how they look is — say it with me — MISOGYNY.

If you’re gonna let the mere presence or lack thereof of an arbitrary amount of fabric color your view of someone so harshly to the point of making content on the internet about said people, you genuinely need to reevaluate what it means to not judge a book by its cover. Maybe instead of going at other women’s throats for perceived slights, you actually attack the ideologies underpinning what makes these distinctions so charged in the first place. Modesty is not the problem, it’s the misogyny — and you’re letting the misogyny win.

And I swear if I see once more reference to being “classy” I’m going to lose it.

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Reminder that if you’re in the northern hemisphere, winter is a good time to start veiling with scarves to stay warm if you want to try it out without too much pushback!

Also I know it’s been freezing temperatures for a while in some places be alas for me it can still be quite warm so. Sorry if this is late for you!

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Me when I remember I’m punk because sometimes I forget due to the fact that I don’t dress like it, and my existence as a punk who doesn’t dress like one pisses off posers to no end: mmm yes delicious good soup!

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“Modest women are public enemy #1”

“If you dress modestly women who don’t will hate you”

“Immodest women are jealous about the attention modest women get”

SHUT UP

Premature post so uh whoops but yeah anyways I’ve literally never experienced this and if you’re using other women’s either hypothetical or real reactions as a way to demonize other women you’re weird. Knock it off. Stop feeding into divides.