Quotes from Wendy Shalit

Modesty answers not the crude how of femininity, but the beautiful why.

The best protection against rape, stalking, and domestic violence is to raise men who both understand that women are different, and would never dare take advantage of this difference.

If you are not sensitive to rejection, doesn't that also mean you're indifferent to love?

A society which sees her modesty or her "hang-ups" as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit. Conversely, a society which respected modesty, or what now goes by "hang-ups", was one in which men were obligated.

After all, the more women are developed internally, the more this is threatening to a society that insists on seeing them merely externally.

Encouraged to act immodestly, a woman exposes her vulnerability and she then becomes, in fact, the weaker sex. A woman can argue that she is exactly the same as a man, she may deny having any special vulnerability, and act accordingly, but I cannot help noticing that she usually ends up exhibiting her feminine nature anyway, only this time in victimhood, not in strength.

These images point to a very real and important truth: what women will and will not permit does have a profound way of influencing the behavior of an entire society.

A woman's sexual modesty puts her, significantly, in a position to be the ultimate worldly arbiter of a man's worth—"Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine," as the temperance movement's slogan had it. Since respect for her modesty gave her the freedom to withhold affection, so to speak, until a virtuous man came around, men were in turn inspired to become worthy of her. Whether the cause was liquor or

This is becoming our great modern divide, his commitment problem and her hang-up problem. These two problems have emerged together for a reason. A society which sees her modesty or her "hang-ups" as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit.

I want conservatives really to listen to these women, to stop saying boys will be boys, and to take what these women are saying seriously. As for the feminists, I want to invite them to consider whether the cause of all this unhappiness might be something other than the patriarchy.

Failure to sleep with someone is now an act of hostility, whereas it was once understood to be part of the natural process of searching for one's mate.

The best protection against rape, stalking, and domestic violence is to raise men who both understand that women are different, and would never dare take advantage of this difference.

If you are not sensitive to rejection, doesn't that also mean you're indifferent to love?

After all, the more women are developed internally, the more this is threatening to a society that insists on seeing them merely externally.