Normal Modesty may then be a survival of the fear which the primitive men and women experienced of being surprised and overpowered by hostile animals or tribesmen during an embrace or when unprotected by garments or armor.
In fact, modesty seems to disappear as soon as safety reigns or when no hostile element may be suspected of lurking in the environment.
A woman strips without shame to undergo a medical examination, men and women appear naked in public baths where only one sex is admitted at a time, etc.
Then also normal modesty must be considered as an offgrowth of the unavoidable repressions of modern, civilised life. Like the incest taboo, it has been cultivated for reasons of convenience.
Modern community life having placed a thousand restrictions upon the age at which we can marry and the conditions under which we should marry, in other words, having delayed considerably our normal sexual gratification, an effort has been made to "repress" erotism by concealing "suggestive" parts of the human body.
This is, of course, an abortive attempt, for habit is a more potent protector against temptation than veils. The races which live practically naked are not more erotic than the fully clothed, civilised races or the Arabs who not only cover their entire body and heads but conceal even the shape of their bodies in the loose folds of their ample garments. A husband, no longer erotically aroused by his wife's naked body, may be attracted violently by the partly draped body of another woman.
Suggestive Draperies. One of the results of the policy of body-concealment has been to transform certain draperies into sexual symbols of great aphrodisiac power. Certain garments lend to the human body an appeal which it might not have if fully exposed. In other words, the obstacles which are meant to hold back erotism may be used neurotically as a morbid expression of erotism.
At the present day, however, that form of protection against temptation serves its purpose to some extent and cannot be discarded until mankind has been reeducated. Custom and the law uphold official modesty. The mere fact, however, that modesty has to be enforced legally is one of the best arguments against the sentimental, unscientific view that modesty is an "innate," "natural" feeling of "delicacy" based upon some "higher," "spiritual" values, etc.
Modern, official modesty is merely a compromise with sexual reality. It has been, like all inhibitory feelings, greatly overestimated and forced upon the weaker sex by egotistical men to prevent a display of their female's charms, likely to attract other women-hunters. Weak males with a sense of inferiority have called modesty the typically feminine virtue.
Excessive Modesty, in men as well as in women, is an abnormal phenomenon, a mask for unconscious lewdness and obscenity. It is a neurotic means of protection against uncontrollable desires, or at times an expression of one's "sour grapes" attitude to others.