To make mention of a term like modesty in this milieu is to invite the wrath of a social consensus that derides prior norms as atavistic. But one cannot seriously speak to the modern world without facing the proliferation of immodesty squarely in the eyes. As I have written elsewhere, pornography is simply too ubiquitous and consequential to regard as private indiscretion. There are material effects that diminish the moral worth of women, normalize sexual violence against women, and reduce women to little more than sexual objects for personal enjoyment. Liberal feminist Naomi Wolf discusses the tragic outcome of a sexual regime presided over by nakedness in an article entitled “The Porn Myth.” She writes:

The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

Despite this ever-present reality, and in spite of growing evidence that neoegalitarian and hypersexualized norms leave women at a deficit in the sexual marketplace, the “women’s rights” movement presses forward undeterred. At the much-lauded Women’s March, reproductive rights sat center stage, with multiple speakers expressing their unqualified support for abortion at any stage without obstruction. Kierra Johnson, who leads the pro-choice organization URGE, spoke on stage wearing a shirt plastered with the word “abortion” all over it. Johnson proclaimed that she was “unapologetically abortion positive” to loud cheers from the crowd.

Meanwhile, leading feminists like Judith Butler defend pornography, objecting to anti-porn actors as having accorded pornography quasi-divine authority while simultaneously undermining female sexual agency. In keeping with the need to preserve female agency, British feminist Victoria Bateman warns against what she terms the “cult of female modesty.” Bateman describes this cult as “extremely dangerous,” arguing that it engenders in women “a lot of anxieties in our everyday life about this feeling that if we have a loose button on our blouse or if our skirt blows up — we have a constant worry about what you are or are not revealing about your body.”

Recently, various “specialists” chimed in with proposals for reducing sexual exploitation and aggression in light of #metoo. These proposals ranged from ill-defined and procedurally implausible “affirmative consent” measures to the granting of women management level positions in corporations and intensifying the call-out culture as a form of public accountability. Of course, one cannot be blind to the many occasions of men coercing women into sexual submission, nor can we ignore our duty to hold those who have been guilty of such transgressions accountable. But the solution is not frontier justice and dismissal of due process, amalgamating all transgressions and acts of sexual impropriety, no matter how minor, into a capital offense, and treating men — as a category — as de facto monsters in need of castigation and public reprimand.

Additionally, attempting to furnish dignity through corporate promotions is explicitly belied by repeated studies on the matter. To offer but one treatment of the subject, a 2012 study entitled “Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power” concludes as follows:

“The vulnerable victims perspective suggests that authority acts as a protective factor, exempting women from the suggestive gaze or unwelcome touch of co-workers, but we find that supervisory status actually increases women’s harassment, in keeping with the power threat perspective…

… we find that female supervisors are more, rather than less, likely to be harassed, supporting the notion that interactions between workers are not driven strictly by organizational rank. Instead, co-workers’ relative power is also shaped by gender. Although women supervisors’ authority is legitimated by their employer, sexual harassment functions, in part, as a tool to enforce gender-appropriate behavior.”

These studies all suggest what many of us otherwise know: so long as gender-appropriate behavior is governed exclusively by a desire to maintain “sexual liberation,” occasions of sexual exploitation, harassment, and violence directed towards women will not meaningfully subside.

It is my prediction that the gender wars we are witnessing will only get worse. The acrimonious attacks against “men” in general, and “white men” in particular, will metastasize in a society suffuse with identity politics while indignation against male privilege will remain the leitmotif for those feminists dissatisfied with their social standing. Women, on the other hand, will find their lot increasingly empty. Fewer men will commit to marriage, instead opting for the comfort of pornographic pleasure and consent-sanctioned philandering. They will resist category denunciation, express hostile derision toward women, and treat with extreme skepticism even those who have been genuinely wronged. When it is all said and done, there will be no winners, and we will sit around wondering how we could never figure out a thing so trivial as coexistence.