Ep 41: Modest is Hottest?

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Jan 14, 2024 1h 03m 57s

Description

Brace yourselves, friends, 'cause this week's episode is getting racy!

First, we're uncovering Noah in his tent, and his poor son Ham is going to regret going in there! It seems unfair, but apparently seeing your dad naked is a really big deal in the book of Genesis. Is it big enough to curse an entire lineage forever? Maybe. Hopefully Dr. Dan can help us figure out what's going on there.

Next, we're kicking the Biblical legs out from under the pernicious cultural phenomenon of "modesty culture"! When pastors and preachers and priests (oh my!) get behind the pulpit and talk about how people should dress--and by "people" we obviously mean "women", because they never seem to have much to say about men's clothes--are they in line with the good book? What do all those verses they're quoting really mean?

Well, this week we're going to determine exactly how short a skirt is allowed to be, how much shoulder is too much, and what offended parties should do when they see someone dressing in a way they don't approve of.


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Transcript

00:00I mean, in fairness to ham, there were like seven people left in the whole world.

00:07So like, you know, there's not, there's not many people that can satisfy whatever sexy

00:11feelings you're having, but still your dad or your mom is probably the wrong choice.

00:18Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, and I'm Dan Beecher, and you're listening to the

00:25Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:30Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:36How are things, Dan?

00:38Things are good.

00:39It's finally actually like kind of looking like winter here in Salt Lake City.

00:43There was a little bit of snow this morning and it's coldish.

00:46Yeah.

00:47Well, warming's failing us again.

00:51My dogs are, they don't like the snow.

00:54Oh, really?

00:55Yeah.

00:56Well, the older one is kind of like, don't make me go outside in there, and then the puppy

01:02is just like, no, no, no, no.

01:05But is, you know, kind of confused about what's going on.

01:09The first dog I ever had, the first day that it saw that he saw snow, he bolted like I've

01:17never seen him bolt ran out the door and down the street, like into neighbor's yards.

01:22I've never, he had never done this before.

01:24He was just so excited about snow.

01:26And from then on, like, if we were shoveling, he wanted to be out there and he wanted us

01:31to shovel the snow on to him.

01:33Like he just, anything involving snow, he wanted us to throw it at him.

01:37He wanted, he just always wanted to be loved the snow.

01:41He was a snowman, huh?

01:42He was.

01:43He was indeed.

01:44Well, hey, there's a whole show that we're going to be doing.

01:48We're going to, we're going to do a chapter and verse to start us off.

01:53And then we're going to do a, we're going to dive into a new segment that we're calling

01:58your patriarchy and you.

02:00So that'll be a lot of fun.

02:02Sounds amazing.

02:04And we're going to, we're going to have a great time with it.

02:08So let's, let's launch into chapter and verse.

02:13All right.

02:15And our chapter and verse today comes courtesy of the book of Genesis.

02:20We're in chapter nine and we're talking about verses 18 through 27.

02:24I hear there are a lot of answers in Genesis.

02:26I get that it has all of the answers that we need.

02:31There can be.

02:34This is an interesting story though that I think catches a lot of people off guard.

02:38If they're reading through Genesis and they get through the primeval history, they're like,

02:41what the hell was that?

02:42Yeah.

02:43I will say the first time I encountered this story, you know, this is about Noah.

02:50I thought I knew the Noah story.

02:52I got through the whole floody thing and then I got to this and it's only a few verses.

02:59It's not long.

03:00You could miss it if you're, if you were drowsy.

03:03But I wasn't drowsy and I went, well, like I literally, I, and I reread it and I thought

03:11maybe I had read it wrong and I was utterly baffled by what happened here.

03:17So I'm very glad that we get to talk about this because I think a lot of people could

03:22use some, some Dan guidance on this one and not me, you dare.

03:28Yeah.

03:29Well, I'm going to go ahead and read it and I'm going to read from the new revised standard

03:34version and then talk a little bit about some of the issues that we have and how we go about

03:38interpreting this because there are some oddities here and I'm going to suggest that we're probably

03:45not getting the story as it was originally told.

03:48We've got some theories about how it may have looked originally, but I'll go ahead and read.

03:54Okay.

03:55I might stop you as we, as we go on, just because of that.

03:57Yeah.

03:58Yeah.

03:59Feel free to things.

04:00So verse 18, "The sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

04:06Ham was the father of Canaan."

04:09Which I'm going to stop you right there because that jumps out at you.

04:12Right.

04:13I think about like Shem and Japheth have their own lineages that go on from which we are

04:19all descended theoretically, you know, these are the three from whom we are all descended.

04:25But it just takes a whole little moment to separate out Ham and his lineage.

04:32Yeah.

04:33And then a bit later, we're going to mention Ham again and then we're going to get another

04:37parenthetical remark of the father of Canaan, just so you're aware.

04:41So yeah, we are being, they're leading us.

04:44Right.

04:45There's some foreshadowing going on here, which is indicative that maybe there's some literary

04:51shenanigans going on here.

04:53And we're going to talk about what that might have been.

04:56Yeah.

04:57So you'll need to explain in a minute, we'll pull the pen on Canaan.

05:03Yeah.

05:05These three were the sons of Noah.

05:07And from these, the whole earth was peopled.

05:10Noah, a man of the soil was the first to plant a vineyard.

05:15And I'm going to stop myself here to point out that a lot of scholars think that the

05:20story of Noah before the flood story was put in here was just a story of the etiology

05:29for a viticulture.

05:31Oh, weird.

05:32Okay.

05:33That Noah was just the first viticulturist.

05:36And that's, that was his role in the story.

05:39And then we get, the flood gets introduced later.

05:43So we get this, Noah, man of the soil was the first to plant a vineyard.

05:48It seems kind of.

05:49I am going to jump in here.

05:51Sorry, I had to switch things up on my screen to the KJV because that line that he's a man

05:57of the soil and first to plant a vineyard, the way it's rendered in the KJV is maybe

06:02my favorite for wording in the universe, which is, and Noah began to be an husbandman.

06:08Yes.

06:09And he planted a vineyard.

06:10Yeah.

06:11You began to be an husbandman.

06:13So that turns fast.

06:17I don't think, I don't think husbandry, we don't, first of all, we don't use the word

06:23and husband men.

06:25Yeah.

06:26These days.

06:27And, and for those who are wondering what's going on with the N, the N husband men.

06:31So on an indefinite article, you can have A or an, and usually you have an, if the next

06:37word begins with a vowel.

06:39And so in the period when the King James version was translated, you didn't pronounce the H.

06:44Yeah.

06:45It was an husband men.

06:47So it just was more natural that way.

06:50So yeah, there we go.

06:52Okay.

06:53Sorry.

06:54We're up to again.

06:55No worries.

06:56I promise I'll, I'll, I'll try to let you get through this thing.

06:57So we're getting reintroduced to Noah as someone who is significant only because he makes wine.

07:05And though we've had, um, two and a half chapters of discussion about Noah so far, he drank

07:10some of the wine and became drunk and he lay uncovered in his tent as, you know, as you

07:16like to do sometimes, you know, what everybody's done it.

07:19It's a fun day, uh, you know, you got a warm day and you're, you're drinking your wine.

07:24There's nobody else on the planet except for your children, your family.

07:29Yeah.

07:30And ham father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.

07:38Then Shem and J.

07:395th took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness

07:44of their father.

07:45Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father's nakedness when Noah

07:51awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.

07:56He said, cursed be Canaan.

07:59The lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.

08:02He also said, blessed by the Lord, my God, be Shem and let Canaan be his slave.

08:09May God make space for J. 5th and let him live in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be

08:14his slave and that that is so harsh.

08:21I mean, look, I, I don't know how to interpret that other than what it actually says, which

08:27is, correct me if I'm wrong, ham accidentally walked in on his dad naked and his dad was

08:36like, okay, all of your descendants for the rest of forever are slaves now because you

08:43did something so bad.

08:46That is, that is a good surface reading of this, but I'm going to raise some questions

08:50here.

08:51Thank God.

08:52Because I, the surface reading is a, gives me no comfort.

08:57So yes, raise some questions.

08:59It's not going to get appreciably better, but we're going to, we're going to raise some

09:03questions here.

09:04Okay.

09:05So he says, it says when Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done

09:08to him.

09:09Now, when they mentioned the children, it's sham, sham, ham and J. 5th in the Hebrew Bible,

09:15when they list children, they list them oldest to youngest.

09:19Okay.

09:20This is not the youngest according to, according to the way they list them, sham, ham and

09:26J. 5th.

09:27According to that convention, J. 5th would be the youngest, right?

09:32Ham would be the middle child, but here it says his youngest son had done to him.

09:36Okay.

09:37Now here's another issue.

09:38If Canaan is Ham's son, Lois of slave shall be, he be to his brothers.

09:47Unless it be the Lord, my God, by the Lord, my God, be sham, let Canaan be his slave.

09:51May God make space for J. 5th and let him live in the tents of sham and let Canaan be his

09:55slave.

09:56Those are his uncles.

09:57Yeah.

09:58Not his brothers.

09:59Right.

10:00So we got something funky going on here.

10:01Yeah.

10:02If we're cursing Canaan, then yeah, that's, that's weird.

10:06There is a way to resolve this.

10:08Oh, and the resolution is that Canaan was the youngest son of Noah and ham was not even

10:16in this story originally.

10:18If you have sham, J. 5th and Canaan as his three sons, cursed be Canaan, Lois of the slave

10:24shall he be to his brothers, namely, sham and J. 5th, his two older brothers, making

10:29him the youngest.

10:31So a lot of scholars think originally this story was probably about sham, J. 5th and

10:38Canaan, and so our little curse that Noah levels against the youngest son was probably

10:48just leveled at Canaan.

10:50And so this raises the question, well, what's ham doing in here?

10:54And one theory is that ham would, according to Genesis 10, and the other genealogies ham

11:01would be the eponymous ancestor of the Egyptians and other Africans, Ethiopians and things

11:08like that.

11:09And so it may be that in order to ensure that as it says in Genesis 9, 19, from these, the

11:17whole earth was peopled, they're like, we need somebody to cover Africa.

11:22Let's get this guy ham and we need to stick him into the Noah story.

11:27Well we got Canaan in there right now.

11:28Okay, well, we'll make Canaan the son of ham.

11:32Now this leaves these kind of narrative incongruities, got continuity problems here.

11:40And so that's what what scholars suggest is probably going on here.

11:44What makes ham eponymous for the Africans, for if you, you've talked about, and this

11:51is not a word that is used a lot, but hemitic people.

11:55Oh, okay, and also in the 18th and 19th century, when European and American Christians were

12:02trying to authorize and validate the enslavement of Africans, then this curse became their proof

12:12text.

12:13Yeah.

12:14The hemitic curse, the curse of the offspring of ham to be slaves.

12:18Well, right there.

12:20There you go.

12:21I heard that used, like I remember that being a thing that people talked about.

12:26Yeah.

12:27And, and there are a couple of good books that talk about this, this concept of the, the

12:36curse of ham by a, an author, I think it's gold, yeah, Goldenberg in 2003 published a

12:45book called the curse of ham race and slavery and early Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

12:51That is a wonderful book.

12:53And then there's another one that is even more recent that is from 2017, David M. Goldenberg,

13:02black and slave, the origins and history of the curse of ham goes over how this idea kind

13:10of sprang from the Bible and then became the proof text for enslaving Africans for the

13:18modern European world.

13:20So that's how it's been deployed.

13:25But yeah, initially it was probably just covering the ground saying, okay, now we got somebody

13:30to cover Africa.

13:31We got somebody to cover the semites.

13:32We got somebody to cover the other people out there.

13:37And so we can say that the whole earth was people now that we've got ham in place.

13:42And it, and it caused them, you know, a little hiccup in the narrative, but they're not too

13:46upset about that.

13:47Now, the Israelite people, the people who would be deploying this who would be reading this

13:54believe that they come from, from which, from sham, from sham, from sham.

13:59Yeah, this is where we get the word Semitic.

14:01Oh, oh, there you go.

14:04Yeah.

14:05Okay.

14:06Great.

14:07And then frequently in the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the Canaanites are their enemies.

14:13Yes.

14:14So this is, this is sort of an, an etiology for the beginning of that.

14:21Yeah.

14:22And in it, in that time period, the idea here was we don't like the Canaanites.

14:26We want to dominate the Canaanites.

14:28We want to enslave the Canaanites.

14:29And here's our authorization.

14:31So in the ancient world, it was, well, this authorizes our enslavement of the Canaanites.

14:38And then in the 18th and 19th century, well, this authorizes our enslavement of the, the

14:43Hamitic peoples.

14:44So it's being deployed to structure power and values in the service of their own identity

14:52politics.

14:55So here's an interesting question.

14:59What on earth does it mean that Ham saw the nakedness of his father?

15:04Yeah.

15:05I mean, that's the big, big glaring problem of the story, right?

15:09Because a, the story doesn't indicate at all that anything, like it was an accident.

15:16He just happened to walk in and bought a big dad.

15:20Have you seen my PS foot?

15:21Whoa.

15:22Yeah.

15:23Exactly.

15:24And then he immediately like take steps.

15:25Hey brothers, don't, you know, he goes and like gives them warning and like, well, there's

15:31and that that's one way to interpret it.

15:34I think most people have, have interpreted it to be like he went outside and was like,

15:38it's what I just saw.

15:40And then the brothers were like, how dare you?

15:43And they, they're the ones who, who carefully backed their way in.

15:48But, but one of the reasons, there are two reasons that a lot of very early in the history

15:54of the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, we're talking early, rabbinic literature.

15:58They're like something else is going on here.

16:00Yeah.

16:01And one of the reasons is that the, the curse of a Ham or Canaan seems to be a bit of an

16:09over-correction.

16:10Maybe a little tiny, tiny bit disproportional.

16:13Yeah.

16:14Um, and the other thing is it says he, he woke up and knew what his youngest son had done

16:20to him and people are like, well, what if he just walked in and was like, Oh crap.

16:26And then walked out, how would Noah have known what his son did to him?

16:32Right.

16:33And so in the, uh, in the early rabbinic period, you have this reading that he castrated him

16:40and the idea.

16:41Yeah.

16:43And the idea being this accounts for the curse.

16:46He ended Noah's line, so now Noah is going to curse his line, not Ham, but Canaan.

16:52So everybody who comes from his line is now cursed.

16:57So that was an early rabbinic interpretation.

16:59We have another interpretation in other rabbinic literature that reads it as a case of paternal

17:04incest that's, uh, Ham sexually assaulted his unconscious, uh, drunk naked father.

17:15Which is, uh, yeah, let that marry like, but all of that is pretty intense.

17:22Uh, uh, both of those are very, uh, like you get the curse more, but what, what's baffling

17:31to me is, uh, how, how completely unspoken, either of those things are.

17:38Yeah.

17:39In the text, no, there's, there is a, a datum, a piece of data that's, uh, folks have appealed

17:47to, to, um, to reinforce the sexual interpretation of Ham's sin.

17:56And that is the fact that Ham sees his father's nakedness.

17:59Now this is something that this is a phrase that occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

18:04Now there is one occurrence in Leviticus 20 verse 17 that has to do with, uh, an act of

18:13sexual intercourse.

18:15And this is in, in a piece of legislation that talks about not, um, a man not marrying

18:21his sister.

18:23And the issue though with, with understanding seeing nakedness to mean a sexual act is that

18:30seeing nakedness in no other passage has to do with a sexual act, uncovering somebody's

18:36nakedness refers to a sexual act dozens of times.

18:40Okay.

18:41So this, the, the idiom is uncovering one's nakedness.

18:45In fact, in that passage in Leviticus where it says, um, if a man marry his sister and

18:52then he has seen her nakedness, she has seen his nakedness, he has uncovered her nakedness

18:59and then, you know, um, that it's a trouble.

19:04So that being a different act than seeing the nakedness.

19:07Right.

19:08Right.

19:09The uncovering the nakedness is, um, is still kind of covering the, the act of, of sexual

19:12Congress there.

19:13And everywhere else in Leviticus where it talks about not, you know, a man not sleeping with

19:18his father, sleeping with his sister, sleeping with his, I was going to say wife's sister,

19:22but I'm not sure if they really cared, um, but there were, there were a bunch of places

19:28where uncovering one's nakedness is a reference to a sexual act seeing nakedness usually is

19:32a reference to the exposure of vulnerability or shame.

19:37Because when, when Adam and Eve first gained knowledge of good and evil, what's the first

19:42thing they realized?

19:43They saw that they were naked.

19:44They were shamed and they felt shame and they covered themselves up.

19:48And then you have like Joseph when, uh, when he's pretending to be Pharaoh and his brother

19:53show up, he says, ah, you've come to see the nakedness of the land referring to the vulnerability

20:00of Egypt during the famine.

20:02And this, and this happens throughout the Hebrew Bible.

20:05This idea of seeing someone's nakedness is seeing their shame or their vulnerability.

20:12And this was, this was a serious thing, anciently and still in, um, in that part of the world,

20:18the idea of, uh, nakedness is considered very shameful.

20:22And this was one of the reasons that, um, during the, um, the Gulf war, one of the things

20:28that, uh, sometimes soldiers did in an awful and criminal act was strip their prisoners

20:35naked and then take photographs of them and, um, you know, make them engage in all kinds

20:41of acts while they were naked.

20:43And this was considered just supremely, uh, shameful.

20:48And so seeing someone seeing your father's nakedness, seeing your father's vulnerability

20:54and shame and not protecting it, but actually going and telling other people about it would

20:59have been considered a pretty serious indiscretion at the time.

21:03Uh, and so I, I think that is the most likely reading that.

21:07Yeah, it may not make much sense to, to most readers today, but yeah, the idea is just that

21:13Ham walked in and instead of covering up his father, protecting his honor, he went and

21:20spread his shame and then his brothers had to go in and cover him up.

21:25And then the story about the brothers covering him up also makes the other readings nonsensical.

21:32So if seeing his nakedness refers to castrating him or sexually assaulting him or sexually

21:38assaulting his wife, how does this fit where they walk in backwards with garments?

21:45And they're very careful not to accidentally sexually assault him, right?

21:49Very careful not to accidentally castrate him.

21:51They made sure not to, not to, not to cut his balls off again.

21:55Yeah, we got to walk in backwards, um, avert your eyes.

21:59Let's drop this garment over him so that we will offer no medical attention.

22:03Uh, but we will make, we'll put a nice blanket on you.

22:07Yeah.

22:08Um, and that'll soak up most of the blood.

22:10So, um, I, I think it's very clearly, um, needs to be read as a reference to just seeing

22:18his father's, uh, shame.

22:20Yeah.

22:21And, and I think there's a, um, oh, and I don't know if I mentioned it, but one of the

22:27other readings that has been promoted more recently is that it was, um, maternal incest

22:33that this was not a reference to sexually assaulting Noah, but Noah's wife.

22:39And that was a reading that was promoted, um, in a journal of biblical literature article

22:43from 2005 by John Bergman, Scott Hahn called Noah's nakedness and the curse on Canaan where

22:48they argued this was maternal incest.

22:50So that, that has kind of become in vogue recently because of, uh, of that article.

22:56But these, these readings are more salacious.

22:59And so people find them more interesting because, I mean, in, in fairness.

23:03To him, there were like seven people left in the whole world.

23:08So like, you know, there's not, there's not many people that can satisfy whatever sexy

23:12feelings you're having, um, but still your dad or your mom is probably the wrong choice.

23:18Yeah.

23:21And when it comes to Noah waking up and knowing what his youngest son had done to him, that's

23:28kind of a McGuffin.

23:29Yeah.

23:30And Noah has to find out for this curse to happen.

23:35And so if you're, you're, you're not going to go through this lengthy discussion of, of

23:40here's how Noah found out, you're just going to say, and look, Noah found out, okay, don't

23:45worry about why, but, or how Noah found out.

23:48And so I, I don't think that creates any, any problems for a straightforward reading.

23:52So I think we need to understand this on a literary level and not on a historical level.

23:56We're way too often people are trying to imagine what's going on behind the scenes.

24:00What's going on in the minds of the actors and, and it's like, that's not helping you

24:04make sense of a story that somebody wrote.

24:08Right.

24:09What's going to help you make sense of a story that somebody wrote is how do authors think

24:12about this?

24:13How do authors utilize characters?

24:16What literary conventions might be influencing how they're telling the story, their way they're

24:20telling the story.

24:21Well, and, and as we've talked about, it's not just, you know, first you have to think

24:27about the author.

24:28And then you have to think about how this has been transmitted through time because it

24:33seems to me that the ham, the father of Canaan, you know, that father of Canaan being inserted

24:39a bunch of times, that seems likely to be an afterthought that somebody else jammed in

24:46there.

24:47Right.

24:48They're like, Hey, man, you left Canaan as the, as the one who's getting cursed.

24:53And you're telling this story about him and it's like, Oh, don't worry about it.

24:56We'll just say, Ham was a father of Canaan.

24:58And then that will prime the pump and everybody will be like, Oh, I got you.

25:01That's why because he's, he's his father.

25:03So, yeah, I think we can see the, the, um, authorial seams in here as the story is coming

25:12together.

25:13So it's not as salacious a reading to say, yeah, Ham saw Noah naked and rather than protect

25:20his father's honor, he went and spread his shame as brothers, um, protected his father,

25:27their father's honor.

25:28And so Noah, um, said die curse you and, um, initially the story was about Canaan and later

25:35on they wrote Ham into the story because they needed, they needed somebody to be the eponymous

25:40ancestor to the Africans and was their guy.

25:45So, so we got, it's both, it's both more complex and more simple.

25:50Yeah.

25:51The readings that have been ginned up to try to account for this.

25:54I got to tell you, you have not convinced me that this is a good passage that this is

26:00that like anything positive has occurred here or that I should like it at all.

26:05No, uh, certainly, uh, that's not the goal of me trying to clarify what's going on here.

26:13I had something I've noticed recently as, um, as on, on Twitter, I've gotten a lot more

26:19attention from, uh, uh, from Christian nationalists and others.

26:25There seems to be an uptick in people who will see a video or a tweet of mine where I

26:29say something along the lines of the Bible support slavery from beginning to end.

26:35And they're like, Oh, you're saying slavery is good?

26:38No, no, I'm telling you what was in the Bible.

26:43I'm not saying I endorse biblical morality or, or biblical ethics.

26:48I'm saying this is what the Bible says.

26:50And so now some friends of mine are like, you should probably put a disclaimer on there

26:54just to kind of cut off those, those claims.

26:57And I think it's the most ludicrous thing in the world that I would need to let people

27:02know.

27:03That's cause I'm saying the Bible says this does not mean I'm saying this is the word

27:08of God and everybody should be doing it.

27:10Um, yeah, that will, but I will make it explicit that, uh, the, the, it is the official position

27:18of the data over dogma podcast that slavery is bad.

27:22Okay.

27:23Uh, and as, as is cursing someone's line, uh, forever period, really.

27:31I just don't think that that's okay.

27:33I don't think that that's a great, uh, thing to do.

27:35Yeah.

27:36And, and even the, in the Bible, you know, you got, you got some people who say, uh, well,

27:41God will, um, curse your, uh, your offspring, uh, to the fourth generation or water.

27:47And then you got other ones who say they will not visit the iniquity of the fathers upon

27:50the children.

27:51So whichever God of the Bible you endorse, let's hope it's the one that does not, um,

27:59visit the iniquities of the father on the, on the children until the fourth generation.

28:02Yeah.

28:03Especially if those iniquities are like, just like snickering a little bit at soon.

28:07Yeah.

28:08Yeah.

28:09Yeah.

28:10Yeah.

28:11Walk in on, on your dad naked.

28:12Um, I mean, who, uh, you know, let he who has not done that cast the first stones.

28:16Um, what is the, what are the in like, there are cartoons and things like that where you

28:23have, uh, oh, like flash and what's the, what is it?

28:27Evil flash or something like, who's got the yellow costume?

28:30Like there's you got son, I'm out of my depth on this one.

28:34Yeah.

28:35They usually have like an anti character for some folks.

28:38So says the guy who's wearing a bizarro Superman shirt as well.

28:44Yeah.

28:45At, uh, when we first hopped on Dan was like, is your video backwards?

28:49No, it's not.

28:50What's going on?

28:51Um, is the S on your shirt is backward.

28:54Um, yeah, but, uh, and so the Bible has your, your God and your, and your yellow God or

29:00your anti God or your, um, your, whatever, uh, however you want to qualify the hero with

29:07their anti counterpart, um, but yeah, I'm going to have to start doing a bizarro God, uh, segment

29:16on the show.

29:17Yeah, the one that, uh, yeah, when we, uh, we talked about that in revelation a little

29:23bit.

29:24That's true.

29:25The Zorro God of revelation.

29:26That's true.

29:27So yeah, um, uh, spay and new to your pets, everybody, and, and, and I think that's a

29:34great way to leave it off, uh, because it's going to lead us, you know, just this talk

29:40of nakedness and shame.

29:43I think is a great lead in to our next segment, your patriarchy and you.

29:51So, uh, here, here's the thing, uh, recently you got into some, some Twitter dustups, uh,

29:59as you are known to do as my won't as your won't, uh, you, you occasionally will disagree

30:06with some people on, on Twitter or, um, or X if, uh, if you care what Elon Musk thinks.

30:16I will.

30:17I don't think I'll ever call it that.

30:18I don't think I'm willing by the, the book I'm working on a trade book right now.

30:22And there's a, there's a chapter where I start off with an anecdote and I talk about Twitter

30:26and it's like so and so wrote on Twitter and then parenthetically I had just have or whatever.

30:31Um, yeah, exactly.

30:34Whatever it is.

30:35It's going to die soon.

30:36Anyway, it's already lost billions of dollars.

30:38Anyway, uh, here's the thing.

30:42One of the things that you were talking about, uh, was a concept that is near and dear to

30:48many Christian and Jewish and, uh, Muslim people's heart, which is the dressing modestly

30:59of women.

31:00Yes.

31:01The modest dressing of women, um, it's a phrase that all started.

31:06Uh, no, I don't.

31:08Okay.

31:09Uh, um, there's a beer company called conservative dad.

31:15Oh God.

31:17And um, the full name is conservative dad, I think it's a ultra right beer or something

31:24like that.

31:25Um, and they released a 2024 real women of America calendar.

31:33So a pinup calendar with conservative women, like Dana Loash and, and other folks like

31:40that who are well known in the conservative world in various states of dress and undress.

31:47So it is intended to be, uh, titillating and a lot of the, um, blue checks on Twitter just

31:58went ballistic, uh, called it satanic, called this, um, yeah, said that this was, uh, soft

32:07porn, um, said it was, quote, not conservative in perhaps the most vicious cut of all, um,

32:16and, uh, and you had a lot of Christians who just loudly braying about how upset they

32:23were that these women would appear in this calendar and they would purport to be conservatives.

32:29And, and so that then caused all of these Christians to find their, let's say, find

32:35their relief in, um, spewing scripture all over Twitter, well, about, uh, I mean, this

32:44is a tradition that goes back a long way.

32:47And, uh, and there are a whole bunch, you know, I, I went and did a bunch of, uh, poking

32:52around to find who was saying what about how the ladies should dress.

32:58Interestingly, so many of the places that I found, and we'll, we'll talk about this

33:03a little while later, but so many of them said that, that men should also dressed modestly,

33:10but no time was spent on like what that looked like, but a lot of time was spent on what

33:19women dressing modestly looks like. Right. Uh, and they did. They, they, uh, should I

33:25just, uh, rattle off a few of the, uh, the scriptures that we've, uh, that have been

33:31given to support the idea that, uh, that women need to dress modestly and we'll get to what

33:38modesty might mean. Yeah. Well, as the, as the mediocre poet once said, all right, let's

33:44see it. Indeed. Uh, I'm going to start with first Timothy chapter two, which I, which

33:51I saw a lot of, uh, and that starts on, on verse nine. It says also that the women should

33:59dress themselves in moderate clothing with reverence and self control, not with their

34:06hair braided or with gold pearls or expensive clothes, but with good works as as proper for

34:13women who profess reverence for God. Yes. Now I've never seen anyone berate a woman,

34:22a Christian woman for wearing gold or pearls or for braiding her hair or for braiding her

34:27hair. There's a lot of braided Christians out there. That's the word of God. Um, it's

34:33right there. Yeah. Timothy. So, um, we've talked about Timothy before, um, which is not, uh,

34:42Pauline comes from later on written by somebody who was pretending to be Paul,

34:46but they're reflecting pretty standard, uh, Greco-Roman ideologies regarding the household,

34:52the Oikonamia of, of the standard house, which where everyone had a specific role and a place

34:59and everything stayed in its place. And the woman's role was to be respectable to bring honor rather

35:07than shame to her household and to her husband and to basically be seen and not heard. And the word

35:14here that is, uh, translated modest is, um, co-smills. Uh, and I'll read from a lexicon here,

35:24one sense, which is probably not the sense we're talking about is having characteristics or

35:28qualities that evoke admiration or delight and expression of high regard for a person

35:33respectable, honorable. Uh, the sense that we're probably dealing here with is related, uh,

35:39being appropriate for winning approval or appropriate. So it's just saying wearing appropriate

35:47clothing. And then we have the explanation of what that means, not braided hair or gold

35:55or pearls or expensive clothing. So appropriate here very clearly means not ostentatious displays

36:04of wealth. Yeah, that very clearly seems to be about showing off. Yeah. It's about, I mean, so like,

36:11I would imagine that a modern equivalent would be not with like Louis Vuitton labels and like,

36:20you know, Gucci all over everything. Yeah. Well, and in this time period, um, early Christians,

36:25Greco-Roman period, Jewish folks, pretty conservative socially, probably dressing pretty

36:30conservative as well. There wouldn't have been too much of a, uh, there wouldn't have been a, uh,

36:34a very large, uh, standard deviation from how, um, most folks were dressing. And so, yeah,

36:41braiding your hair, wearing gold, wearing, um, you know, fancy stuff probably would have been

36:47considered, um, you know, trying to stand out. Right. And the idea here is don't stand out. Don't

36:54show people up, uh, do good things, look respectable, bring honor to the, to the household. Um, and so

37:02yeah, the, the admonition here is very clearly to not try to display wealth or status.

37:08Are you saying that showing that a woman showing her shoulders is not what second or what first

37:16Timothy is all about? Nobody is saying anything about shoulders at all. Nobody mentioned skin.

37:21No, there's, there's no part of, there's only one part of the entire Bible that has anything to do

37:28with identifying a body part that a woman must cover. And that's in first Corinthians 11. And

37:34that's where Paul says, when you're praying or prophesying, please for the sake of all that is

37:40good and holy, put a cover on your head. And, and this is, this is a temporary thing. This isn't,

37:48you know, men are going to be driven crazy with lust. If they see your forehead or your hair,

37:53it's just, it has to do with, with probably, um, kind of ritual conventions of the, of the time,

37:59period. And Paul's just rationalizing it. He probably doesn't want to overturn the apple cart,

38:04and this was a convention. And so he's coming up with a rationalization.

38:07In fairness, he gets, he goes pretty hard on it. Like he does go hard on it. Yeah. He's, he says,

38:13if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair. But if it is shameful for a

38:19woman to have her hair cut or off or be shaved, she should wear a veil. Yeah. So, um, and Paul

38:26elsewhere says nature itself testifies that long hair on a man is shameful. Yes. So, you know,

38:33he's a biologist. He knows what he's talking about. Um, he knows nature has agency. So, um,

38:40and, and not only is it shameful, uh, if a man has long hair, but it's glorious if a woman has

38:46long hair. Yeah. If a woman has long hair, it is her glory. Yeah. For her hair is given for her,

38:52a covering. Yeah. It's given to her for a covering. Yeah. But, but you still got to cover the covering,

38:58you got to cover the covering, which is a weird, okay, fine for the sake of the angels. Right. And,

39:05and scholars really don't know what on earth, uh, is going on here. There are, there are ideas

39:10that maybe there was a, uh, cultic practice where, where women, uh, were not covering their head and

39:17these, these practices were seen as, as unseemly. And so they didn't want to be associated with

39:22these other cultic practices or a, we don't know exactly what's going on. But one thing we can

39:27say for sure is this has nothing to do with ensuring that nobody's getting wood from watching you

39:34pray. Yeah. That, that seems to be very true because it's only when she's praying that she's, uh,

39:41that she's doing this. Yeah. And I mean, not to kink shame, but, uh, if that's your thing,

39:47maybe leave the ladies alone at church. Um, so, uh, what, what else do we got? Uh, I think, you know,

39:56oh, so there's, you know, Deuteronomy has a whole thing about a woman shall not wear a man's apparel,

40:01or shall a man put on a tournament five. Yeah. Yeah. That's that, that, you know, I,

40:07what is a woman or a man's apparel changes dramatically over time? Yes. I mean, depending on,

40:14we can all sort of look back at any costume drama and see that like, what is a woman's clothing

40:22has been different. And what is a man's clothing has been different forever. And a lot of the things

40:27that women wear, you know, wore, wear men's clothing first, high heels, wear men's first,

40:33you know, makeup was invented for men first, all of that sort of thing. So that seems situational

40:41and is not at all specific. It doesn't say here are the specific garments that men wear that women

40:48wouldn't. Yeah. And, and there's also not a parody. Like, uh, if it said, don't, a woman should not

40:56wear a man's clothes and a man should not wear a woman's clothes. Like that would be, that would be

41:02some parody, but they actually use different words to describe each thing. And so this is confused

41:07a lot of people. There are some folks that think this has to do with like armor, like women should

41:12not put on the work clothes of warrior men, um, and things like that. So women need to, um, you know,

41:20be in the domestic sphere. They should not go out and, and fight battles. That's reading a lot of

41:28extra stuff into it. That's, that's not there. Uh, but yeah, this is, I, I, I personally don't know

41:37that I would be able to distinguish the apparel of a man from the apparel of a woman, uh, in the time

41:44period of the composition of Deuteronomy 22. Yeah. If I were just thrown back in time and some,

41:51uh, somebody, I saw somebody from behind and they were wearing clothes, I wouldn't,

41:55probably wouldn't be able to tell if it was a man or a woman. Yeah. To a, to a, a modern eye. It's like,

42:01Oh, look at that robe that that person is wearing. Yeah. And this has, this has something to do with,

42:06there's a passage in, Oh, shoot, I forget where it is. Uh, you may have run across it, but there's a

42:14part where they talk about somebody, um, dressed in, uh, the clothes of a sex worker. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

42:22I, I, I did bump across that, but I didn't actually, I didn't pull it. Okay. So the, and, and here's a

42:29passage where some people think, Oh, that must be similar to what we talk about when we talk about

42:35somebody dressing like, uh, you know, a lady of the night. She's dressed like a hooker. Yeah. It's like,

42:42I, they probably didn't do the same thing with, um, their dress to signal their profession. Um,

42:49right. And recently it was, there was probably some kind of way that they used, uh, their clothing

42:55to indicate what they did. And it probably didn't have to do with showing more skin. Yeah. It was a

43:01junky hat. Yeah. You put a feather in your hat and then everybody knows, um, yeah. Um,

43:09so there was probably some kind of coded, uh, apparel that allowed people to identify, uh,

43:15like I do have Zephaniah one, which I thought was confusing. Okay. Zephaniah one verse eight says,

43:20and on the day of the Lord's sacrifice, I will punish the officials and the king's sons and all

43:26who dress themselves in foreign attire. Uh huh. That's the, uh, the NRSV. Yeah. Yes. Go ahead. So,

43:35so again, you know, it's a prohibition of about how we dress, but clearly, like, obviously,

43:42that has nothing to do with modesty in any sense that we think of it. It's yeah. Yeah. It's about

43:48signaling your tribe or whatever. Yeah. And, and some of the three, like most essential features of

43:57an ethnic identity, a, a people's identity, language, food, dress. And so there are many

44:06different ways that people signal belonging through dress. And it does not have to be the

44:11percentage of skin that is covered or uncovered. It can be so many different ways. Uh, and so,

44:16yeah, here it's, uh, you know, maybe they, um, you know, point the bill of their cap the other

44:22direction and the other, and the other country. Maybe they butter the other side of their bread.

44:27Maybe they open their soft boiled egg from the other end. Uh, there are just so many different

44:33ways that you can create, uh, the schismogenesis. You can create these identity markers by doing

44:40little changes. They wear blue and they wear red. Um, you know, you could do a bunch of different

44:45things. And so when, when you were in the UK, did you, uh, did you pick up the habit of turning your

44:50fork upside down and smushing all the food onto the back of the fork? I think that's, that's one

44:57where, where we could rumble with, uh, with the grits on how to use a fork. Uh, I, I did not do

45:05that. I'm sure that I horrified a number of the locals when I, um, when I was there, let's see,

45:10two October's ago, I was, uh, I was in the UK for work and I swung by Oxford and a friend of mine

45:17was doing a, uh, a fellowship at modeling college. And so he invited me to come have lunch at the

45:23college with him, which is like a fancy affair. Um, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, it was fun.

45:31And I'm sure that, uh, there were people looking at me like you silly yank. They, they forgave your

45:37evil American fork usage. Yeah. Well, I think I might have actually been wearing my, uh, my

45:43bizarro t-shirt. Now that I think about it, it's like I'm almost positive. I was aware to a, uh,

45:49a graphic T and it might have been this one. So, um, to, uh, to return to, uh, modesty,

46:00I think we've got something in first Peter three, which is basically the same thing that we've got

46:05in first Timothy two. Right. Um, do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair and by

46:10wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing. Literally the exact same three things. Right. That is, uh,

46:16that are mentioned in first Timothy two, rather let your adornment be the inner self with the

46:21lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God's sight. Aw. And, and

46:26it's just saying the same thing that this modesty here is about avoiding ostentatious displays of

46:31wealth. And so I, I said something on Twitter that a lot of people, um, immediately wanted to try to,

46:36um, refute me on, but there's not a single passage anywhere in the Bible that tells women they have

46:43to cover up their bodies so that men are not driven to lust after them or sexually assault them or,

46:51uh, just get upset with them for, um, you know, whatever that is the, uh, the thing that you see

46:59all the time, that is the, uh, the excuse that all of these, and you know, it's, it's not, and it's not

47:06just men making this argument. Women make this argument to other women as well. Yeah. That somehow,

47:11if they dress sexily or in a way that, uh, that could encourage men's lust, they are then, uh,

47:23responsible for, for causing their brothers in Christ to stumble. You know, there's a reference to

47:30in, in Romans 14, uh, verse 13 that says, let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another,

47:38but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother or sister,

47:43uh, which, yeah, that, I mean, you could interpret it that way, but that's not what

47:52that doesn't seem to be what that, uh, passage actually says. It's not

47:56about women dressing at one, one way or another. Yeah. Yeah. This has, this has nothing to do with,

48:01uh, with governing how, how women are dressing. I mean, it's just, it just doesn't say anything

48:06about that. Ironically, it says don't pass judgment on somebody else, which, uh, it seems like

48:13everyone who comments on how a woman dresses in a negative way like this is, is, is very much

48:21passing judgment on that woman. Yeah. And, and what is appropriate or inappropriate is, is subjective,

48:27is relative, uh, they're, they're, they're, it's going to horrify a lot of people who have never

48:33left the country or never learned another language, but there are many parts of the world where, um,

48:39degrees of nudity that would make us uncomfortable are just part of everyday life, where that is

48:47just the way it is. And nobody bats an eye at it. Um, and so if a guy, uh, so there's this guy, um,

48:54Joshua Haymes on, on Twitter, uh, who is, uh, a, you know, a mustache and cigar, uh, enjoyer, uh,

49:03who was, says, um, and I, this was one of the tweets that I responded to. He says, I was once

49:09put into the position of having to address a woman for regularly, not wearing a bra to church on Sunday.

49:15Horrific. Um, that that was my editorializing. Uh, Joshua continues. I was accused of body shaming

49:22pause for gasps. Right. The truth is it is incredibly unloving to allow a fellow sister in Christ to

49:30continue causing brothers to stumble without addressing it. So here we're not even talking

49:35about covering your body. We're talking about restraining covered parts of your body. Right.

49:41So that somebody else doesn't catch wood, which is asinine. And that is certainly not in the Bible.

49:50No, absolutely not. The other thing is the thing that's really interesting

49:54is that when you delve into this conversation, when you start to look at how this conversation

50:00happens, I mentioned earlier how there's, uh, there's frequently a, uh, a sort of compulsory,

50:06but half hearted nod to, yes, gentlemen should also men should also, you know, dress modest or

50:12whatever. Yeah. But one thing that has never mentioned in talking about how men dress is their

50:18bodies. Yeah. Nobody ever says, never, nobody ever says the word body when they talk about a man's

50:25dress, but man, a woman's body is cut, you know, oh, you have to wear enough to cover your body.

50:33Oh, you shouldn't, the contours of her body. Oh, the this and that. And it's just like,

50:37uh, that, and in all of the scripture that I see cited for this, there's never a mention

50:44of the woman's body. The scripture is, is completely devoid of that. That is just imposed upon it.

50:52Yeah. And, um, this is today, obviously the, the, this discourse is largely

50:58governed by the male gaze. This is about what is of concern and what is of interest to men. Um,

51:05and for the most part, you know, they're not, they're not worried about it. This is something

51:09that, um, there are some comic book artists that I used to be fans of. I, a fan of, I'm no longer

51:15a fan of them because when a debate erupted about the way women are portrayed in comic books,

51:22they were ones who went out of their way to sexualize, uh, women. And a lot of them would be like,

51:28we do the same for men. And it's a power fantasy when you do it for men. Right. It is something

51:35entirely different when you do it for women. Uh, and, and that's part of the, how the male gaze,

51:42uh, governs comic books as well. Uh, a very disappointing feature of something that's, uh, I really enjoy.

51:50Yeah. I, I think that one of the, the eye opening moment for me was when someone decided to use

51:59Matthew five versus 28 and 29 to say that, uh, women should dress X or Y like there's a way that

52:09women should dress because that, and that verse came up a number of times as I was talking about

52:15renegotiating the Bible. Right. Exactly. Because litter, because if you've just read verse 28,

52:21it says, but I say to you, and usually it's just verse 28, I should be clear that only verse 28

52:28is mentioned. It says, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already

52:33committed adultery with her in his heart. And what should they do? We tell the woman to cover up.

52:41Obviously, oh wait. No, that's not what Matthew says. What Matthew says is verse 29,

52:48if your right eye causes you to sin, aka lust after the woman, tear it out and throw it away.

52:57It is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

53:04Which very clearly to me says, the responsibility for the man's lust has nothing to do with her.

53:12Yeah. And everything like if you want to remedy it, it's your eye. That's the problem. It is your.

53:20And you had you read you read a translation that said, uh, if your right eye causes you to sin,

53:26yeah, the word there in Greek is scandalizo, which means cause to stumble. So when this guy says,

53:36women are causing men to stumble. Well, the scripture says it's your own eye that is

53:45causing you to stumble. So it blames someone for lusting after a woman. And it is the man's eye.

53:53So it is, it is pretty clear in the scriptures, you will not find a passage that says women

54:01are responsible for this, or that's women have to cover up so that they don't cause this.

54:06It is entirely on the men. And this is not to say that the Bible is, you know, it's not the

54:16yes, queenification of the Bible. The Bible is, is very misogynistic in, in many, many places.

54:23And patriarchal and, and sort of, uh, yeah, it is to say, however, that what we have decided is going

54:31to be a battleground for us was not a battleground. Anciently, and when we try to reach back into the

54:38ancient world for a proof text in order to leverage the authority of the Bible for our own identity

54:45politics and our own identity markers, we have to read it into the text because it's not there.

54:51Yeah. Yeah. I, which is funny to me. I, I'll be honest with you, like I knew where we were going

54:59with this conversation when I was, when I started researching this, but I honestly did think that

55:04I would find some, some scriptures that would say that would support the argument in some way.

55:11Yeah. I'm shocked to find literally nothing. Literally nothing. Um, there was, there was one,

55:19another, uh, another guy on Twitter, uh, quoted one of the proverbs, Proverbs 11, 22. And, and he

55:26was like, I got you this one's crystal clear. And it says, um, like a gold ring and a pig's snout

55:33is a beautiful woman without discretion. And he, and he was commenting that all these conservative

55:39women who pose for this calendar, he, he called, he said they were covered in swine snot. Oh, which

55:46was, yes, he was trying to be as vulgar as he could while still maintaining plausible, the plausible

55:52deniability of a Christian man. Yeah. But he doesn't know his Hebrew because that word for

55:58discretion does not refer to modesty and dress. The word is Tom in Hebrew. And this refers to good

56:05sense or judgment. Um, and it's used elsewhere. Uh, Abigail gives David some, some advice and David

56:13considers it and then goes, blessed be your, um, your judgment, not your dressing modestly. So, yeah,

56:21you go ahead, tear the Bible apart, try and find a place where it explicitly tells women they need

56:26to cover up so that they don't cause men to lust after them. You will be looking for an awfully long

56:30time. That is so crazy to me. I, uh, because it has become such a whipping boy, uh, for the,

56:39the Christian right in this country, it is such an important thing to them that, that the fact that

56:45it's just not there, uh, yeah, it actually did take me by surprise. Oh, I do want to bring up one

56:52passage. Um, first, first Corinthians 12, uh, 23. Okay. Let me pull this up. So this is right. So

57:01here we have, um, uh, Paul is talking about, uh, the body of Christ as in the, the congregation,

57:08the membership, how we all have different roles and we make up different parts of the body.

57:12And in 1223 says, and this is the, uh, the NRSV and those members of the body that we think less

57:19honorable, we clove with greater honor and our less respectable members are treated with greater

57:26respect. And this word that the NRSV translates greater respect, uh, is S. Kimosini. Uh, and this

57:34word refers to the state of being appropriate for display, propriety decorum presentability.

57:43They have a word that refers to what we could plausibly argue means modest in dress, covering up what

57:53is considered shameful or private. Um, and it is only ever used to talk about everybody who is a

58:01Christian as a member of the body of Christ. It is not used and are actually, let me verify that. I,

58:07I don't think I found anything. Yeah. This is the only passage in all the New Testament where this

58:11word occurs. So they have the means to refer to women dressing in a way that is modest in dress

58:19covering up and they never use it to refer. Do we have any sense of where the word modest when,

58:25like how the word, the English word modest, which has the meaning, like, you know, the meaning from

58:31Timothy and from, uh, from Peter of being modest about your wealth, of being modest, meaning,

58:40like not showing off, not being, like that makes sense to me as a, as a, as a way of using the

58:47word modest. So I like to go to, um, the online, etymological dictionary to find out when, when words,

58:55um, started being used to mean certain things. If you have a subscription to the online Oxford

59:01English dictionary, great. Most people don't. Um, online, etymological dictionary is free.

59:06Adam online, E-T-Y-M online.com. You can look up any words you want modest, adjective 1560s,

59:14having moderate self regard, restrained by a sense of propriety or humility. Uh, so this is

59:22the sense that we see in the Bible. Yeah. From Latin modestus moderate, keeping do

59:26measure sober, gentle, temperate from modus, measure manner from proto into European root,

59:32med to take appropriate measures. None of that so far has anything to do with like cleavage.

59:39Right. Of women, not improper or lewd, pure in thought and context. So we're, we're moving

59:47that direction. That usage starts in the 1590s. Oh, okay. Of female attire, not gaudy or showy,

59:54that is the 1610s. Okay. So we've got a few different senses of this word. Right. Um,

60:01and today, yeah, when, um, you would use the word modest, most people would tie it immediately to

60:07unless the context indicates otherwise, most people would tie it to women covering up an

60:14appropriate amount of their body. Yeah. Like growing up, the only time I heard

60:19the word modest and, you know, in the context of women's dress, again, never men's dress,

60:27but it was always about, oh, you're showing too much leg. Oh, you're showing too much

60:32boob. Oh, you're showing too much shoulder, whatever. But it was literally about how much

60:37skin is being revealed by whatever clothing this person chose to wear.

60:43Yeah. Um, and an interesting thing, this, uh, this gentleman from Twitter, Joshua,

60:50who was put in the uncomfortable position of having to try and police a woman's nipples

60:55at church. Uh, he had a, he, he's a blue check. So he writes novels and posts on Twitter to be

61:03clear. For those of you who haven't kept up with how Twitter goes now, it used a blue check used to

61:09mean that you're a, a person, uh, like a famous person, a public figure, a public figure who has

61:17been, and your account has been verified to be actually you. Now it just means you paid Elon

61:24$8 a month or whatever. And, uh, and you get to, to, you know, blather more than 240 characters or

61:32whatever. Yeah. And many of them far more than 240 characters, but, um, this rant ended with him

61:39saying, remember modest is hottest, which two comments I would add one brings it all back around

61:47to say, remember women, you still only have value in public, um, as a sexual object. Right. And two,

61:56if modest is hottest, isn't that going to drive more men to lust after? Right. Yeah. Exactly. Isn't

62:04this kind of self-defeating modesty? Oh darn. Because if somebody's going to get extra aroused

62:11by modesty, then, you know, they're stumbling. And that's all your fault for dressing, dressing

62:17modestly. There is literally no good reason to every other than the pleasant rhyme of the thing.

62:23Yeah. That's a, that's a terrible phrase to use. Yeah. It's, uh, thoughtless, thoughtless rhetoric

62:31from, uh, uh, from the male gays. Right. Yep. All right. Well, uh, I, that, I'm, I'm again,

62:40mystified and, uh, and, but pleasantly relieved to find out that, uh, all of this, you have to cover

62:48up stuff. They're just making up. It's not biblical. Uh, so, so ladies, get out there and, and

62:56horrify some, some fragile men if you want to. That's, that's, that's, that's their problem if

63:02they have an issue with it. Yeah. Well, if you would like to, uh, write into us and tell us

63:09how wrong we are about all of this, please feel free to do so contact at data over dogma pod.com

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63:37Uh, other than that, thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye everybody.

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