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There are those who will maintain that modesty is innate, whilst
others consider it a virtue. It cannot, evidently, be both, yet some
for all that attempt to drive two horses plainly bound in totally
divergent directions.
Well, modesty is not natural. It is conventional and particular.
Children do not know it until it is induced. Certain cultures consider
modesty about breasts or genitals to be incomprehensible, yet guard
the soles of their feet from the gaze of all but intimates. Sex is
often considered a private act, but privacy has been a rare and expensive
luxury for most human beings throughout human history, and many of
our ancestors were conceived in the warmth of the communal dung-heap,
just as they are still conceived in rooms shared by the whole family.
This is not to say that we do not ‘discover’ modesty,
apparently spontaneously, at puberty. I am no stranger to it.
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In
common with most girls, I have pointlessly clamped a hand over my
pussy and wrapped an arm around my breasts when a man has entered
a bedroom or bathroom unbidden. I am entirely aware, however, that
this response was due to fear and ignorance, and virtue cannot be
born of the two most iniquitous parents known to man.
We are afraid because we do not know how, save in theory, these parts of us are
meant to function or to look. We fear appraisal and being found wanting. Boys,
evidently, suffer this affliction more than we, because the erect penis remains
taboo and because its least stirring is perceptible. I am told, too, that boys
are tricked by perspective into thinking their cocks small in relation to others.
Once both sexes have become accustomed to cavorting naked in changing-rooms together
and have recognised that they are, for want of a better word, normal, modesty
is rapidly and naturally forgotten. It is, or should be, a pubescent aberration.
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