I recently read a book called something like "The Public Undressing of America." It was about how women's bathing suits have gotten skimpier as the years have passed. And that brought up in my mind my mom's mentality about this subject: bikinis are immoral because they attract the wrong kind of attention from men. Well, that could very well be true. But I don't really want to talk about women tempting men today. I want to talk about men and how people often portray them.
Men are often portrayed as idiots who are ruled by their passions. I'm not sure where this portrayal came from, perhaps Hollywood, but I really don't know. Men are victims of seductive women. They don't have the power to reject a seductive woman. But the thing is, men can refuse to lust after or have sex with women. The act of letting your mind think about those things or your body do those things is a choice.
The portrayal of men as drooling idiots functions to justify men's actions which are driven by their baser instincts. And justifying sin tends to perpetuate and amplify it.
Even Christian men try to justify their misdeeds or evil thoughts by putting the blame on women. They say things to the effect that women should dress in order to make sure they aren't seducing men. Well, that effectually moves the blame from the man who lusts to the women. Sound familiar? It should. Adam blamed his wife Eve for making him sin by giving him the forbidden fruit. So I guess in that respect not much has changed since the beginning of the world.
But the big thing to remember is this: in the situation of a man lusting after a woman, that man's lusting is his fault. The woman may be at fault as well, but she didn't cause him to lust; he chose to.
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