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purity culture

Feminism

Purity Culture Itself is the Problem

I got back from my short jaunt to seminary this weekend, and I have my first massive paper of seminary due tomorrow, so that’s been what’s keeping me occupied. I did take Redeeming Love with me and was able to read a little of it, but I was somewhat preoccupied with an article I was writing for Rewire, which went up today!

It’s titled “How We Teaching Purity Culture isn’t the Problem: Purity Culture Itself is the Problem,” and I’m pretty excited about it. As always, if you think this is valuable reading, please share it generously with your social media circles.

This weekend is my big Halloween bash, so after that life should settle back down to something resembling more routine and I hope to return to at least a weekly blogging schedule. For now, enjoy my post over at Rewire and you can always find me on Twitter and Facebook ranting about things.

Photo by Noee

October 24, 2016 by SamanthaField

Feminism

purity culture and the wedding night

I’ve written a lot about purity culture. I plan to write even more on it in the future, considering that I want to write a book on the subject (I have three books planned at the moment, which is the biggest reason why I’m going to seminary. Research is hard and expensive outside of academia, y’all). But, for now, I’m limited to giving snap-shots of what it’s like to grow up in purity culture (and, of course, reviewing I Kissed Dating Goodbye).

I’ve spent most of my time railing against it because I believe that purity culture was the #1 reason why I remained in an abusive relationship and was raped repeatedly. If I hadn’t believed to the very core of myself that my “impurity” made me ineligible to be married to anyone else, then I probably wouldn’t have been so viscerally terrified at the idea of losing him, as awful as the relationship was and as miserable and broken as I was.

But, there were other effects of purity culture. It built up a lot of funny notions over the years, and I’d like to talk about one in particular, mostly because I’m curious to see how wide-spread of a concept it was. I encountered it in lots of Christian romance novels, primarily, and it was a concept fairly widely embraced by my peer groups in high school and college. I’m especially curious to know if there were any men in purity culture who had similar conversations.

For a long time I planned not to have sex on my wedding night.

In retrospect it seems funny (as in both humorous and odd), but I was dead serious back then. I knew that if I had a “godly courtship” we wouldn’t have the time or space for any canoodling, so we would enter our marriage with no sexual experience whatsoever. None. No kissing, no hand holding, no cuddling, no hugs. If the first time we ever kissed was at the altar, leaping from that to full-on coitus was terrifying.

Now that I’m outside of my own particular fundamentalist sub-culture (and there are many flavors. The differences between IFB and Plymouth Brethren are deep), I’ve seen conversations happening about the correctly-criticized ridiculous expectation for women to go from innocent virgin to sex pot in one day with the flick of a switch. I received that message loud and clear from a variety of sources– once I was married, that was it. My husband would have spent all those years fighting off his beastly urges and that, on the wedding night, I was primarily there so that he could unleash himself for the first time. All that pent-up frustration from all those years of never being able to even masturbate was to going to create a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am situation.

Hence why I was horrified, and had every intention of talking to whoever my intended was and convincing him to wait just a little big longer so I could get used to the idea of having a man touch me. Complicated with all of that was a deep-seated fear that I was actually a lesbian and that was why the thought of sex was repulsive. Turns out, no, I’m bisexual and it was just that all the men I’d ever known were repulsive.

Heterosexual vaginal intercourse and everything that went with it just sounded messy and gross and a little scary. Men were scary. So, I fervently hoped that I’d end up courting a sweet and equally innocent boy that thought waiting until we’d gotten used to each other was a good idea. As did every woman I talked with. With no clear idea of what goes into sex besides “Tab A and Slot B”-level knowledge, and the fact that it supposedly hurts, all I knew was that it wasn’t something I was willing to leap into.

But … ultimately I believed it wasn’t my choice. Which was why I hoped that I’d be lucky enough to marry a man “willing to wait.” Who, after he heard me say “I don’t really want to have sex tonight, I just want to cuddle and kiss and maybe see where it goes over our honeymoon,” wouldn’t ignore me, but respect me. In retrospect, that’s the most stomach-churning thing I’ve ever heard.

I thought I’d be lucky not to marry a rapist.

I wasn’t alone. My best friend was just as scared of the wedding night as I was. As was the first roommate that I talked with about it in college. As was a girl I bunked with at camp. It was a fairly consistent pattern with my girlfriends: we were, essentially, convinced that “wedding night” equaled “possible rape.” In the end, purity culture amounts to really nothing more than rape culture taken to an extreme.

The Christian romance novels I read portrayed it as helpfully and optimistically as possible– scared, innocent virgins would marry sweet men who cherished just how precious and adorable their fear was (patronizing much?) and over the course of many nights would gently and lovingly and compassionately draw her out of her shell. It was, in fact, my favorite plot. If the couple got married at the start of the book instead of at the end, I ate it up.

In retrospect, it’s obvious why. Those books helped me believe that not all men were rapists, basically. If all these women authors thought up this situation, they must have experienced something like a compassionate man who respects your boundaries, right? They exist, right?

So … how about you? Was this something you thought about? Again, I’d especially like to get the raised-as-male take on this, because obviously you’d be going into this with different expectations placed on you. If I was afraid of possibly being raped, were you afraid of not being able to be “manly” enough or something similar?

Photo by pillow of winds

April 1, 2016 by SamanthaField

Feminism, Social Issues

bisexuality and purity culture

I’m going to my first-ever Pride event this weekend, so I’ve been paying a little more attention to the things people have been saying about bisexuality recently. Being bi has its own particular struggles, mostly because it seems as though people are just as confused about bisexuality as they used to be about being gay. I feel like our culture has a somewhat decent handle on what being “gay” means; while there are still plenty of ridiculous stereotypes about gay men, I get the feeling that many/most people realize that those things are just stereotypes.

The same is not true of bisexuality, as you can see from the following.

The first is a quote from Andrée Seu Peterson’s “B is for Bogus“:

The LGT guys should be asking themselves about now, “What’s with this ‘B’ guy standing over there in a circle having laughs and a martini at our party? He’s not a real anything! He’s not hard-wired homosexual or a tortured misfit in his own body trying to climb out; he’s just coming along for a free ride. He makes us look bad, because intelligent people will come to their senses and say to themselves, ‘The whole LGBT movement is as phony as a three-dollar bill; look at this “B” thing in the middle that’s just clear-cut straight-up promiscuity.’ This ‘B’ guy blows our cover!”

If there were a book for gays with parables in it like the Bible, the “B” guy would be the one at the wedding feast who gets kicked out when it is noticed by his lack of proper wedding attire that he is an imposter.

The second is from James Dobson’s radio show:

I’ve been thinking about those pastors, those people in the clergy who are compassionate to those who have attractions to same-sex individuals. So their inclination is to be all inclusive and put their arm around them. I would like them to think, just for a moment, about ‘LGBT.’ The ‘B’ stands for bisexual. That’s orgies! Are you really going to support this?

I hear things like that, and all I can do is:

Seriously. Where the hell does this come from? Just because my potential dating pool might, theoretically, be a bit larger than your average straight person’s does not mean I’m running around having sex with every single person I’ve ever been attracted to. All of them. At the same time. Where did they even come up with this?

Granted, hard-right-wing conservative Christians like Andrée or James aren’t the only ones to think this. There’s a heavy cultural link between bisexuality and our supposed inability to keep it in our pants, or maintain a monogamous relationship– a leap I’ve never been able to follow. Yes, bisexual people can cheat on their partners. Just like straight people. And gay people.

Bit, as s.e. smith points out:

In a society that hates women, and hates female sexuality, it would make sense for sexually active and comfortable women to be, naturally, condemned. And that goes double for bisexual women, who can’t just be happy with men like nice young ladies; they have to go around chasing women, too … There’s something people seem to find almost offensive about the idea that bisexual women actually exist, that they have relationships with both men and women, that those relationships may be long-term, committed, and monogamous …

I don’t experience the world as a bi man, but considering that female sexuality has always been strictly and harshly policed while male sexuality just hasn’t, this makes sense to me. Any time a woman steps outside the socially-acceptable constraints we’re going to run into condemnation.

But, a few days ago, it occurred to me that in a specifically Christian context, there’s some other things happening that create this horrified “THAT’S ORGIES!” reaction. I’ve written about this before (in a post about emotional adultery here and another about why purity culture doesn’t teach consent here), but I realized that what I talked about in those two posts come together in an interesting way when it comes to bisexuality.

If every person on the planet exists in a default state of consent– which purity culture subtly and overtly teaches– and if it’s impossible for men and women to “just be friends” (as argued in a recent Relevant article), then of course bi people will be promiscuous. Duh.

According to many Christians, the only real way to ensure that you don’t have an affair is to avoid deep, meaningful connections to people you might be sexually attracted to (which, for them, is always someone of the “opposite sex,” which erases bi people and non-binary people). To them, men can’t be good friends with women and vice versa, and everyone needs to take super-duper-extra-careful precautions to make darn-tootin’ sure you don’t develop pants-feelings for people. Because, as we all know, once you have pants-feelings for someone you will have sex with them, because consent isn’t a thing.

But, for bi people, the “obvious” precautions in this context don’t make sense. What are we supposed to do– have no close friends? Ever? Never be alone with any person? Lock ourselves in our bedroom, Elsa-style? So, they don’t advocate that. Instead, they either a) refuse to acknowledge our existence or b) call us all sluts.

Christian teachings about basically any relationship are horribly flawed, and I believe that a lot of the problems are rooted in this idea that people are incapable of controlling their pants-feelings unless you eliminate any possible way to express them. We’re all so deeply afraid. We don’t have sexual ethics based in consent and love, but in making us all terrified of our sexuality. That’s not healthy, and it should a concept we confront and root out– for all of us, not just bi people.

Photo by Jes

June 12, 2015 by SamanthaField

Feminism, Social Issues

kink 101 for purity culture survivors: consent

[note: links may include NSFW material]

There are many amazing resources out there for people who think they might be kinky or into BDSM, and I’ll link to some at the bottom of this post. However, if you’re anything like me … a lot of what’s out there seems conflicting and confusing, and because I grew up on the rather strict end of purity culture I didn’t have the tools to start sorting any of it out. I didn’t know anything about sex, and many of us don’t. Someone I met in college thought that semen was green because of a joke they’d heard about grass stains, and I thought that “going through the back door” meant doggy.

And that’s just regular sex. If you think you might be into kink, things are going to be exponentially harder, because while “safe, sane, consensual” seems like a spectacular phrase, purity culture survivors may not have a personal baseline for “safe” and “sane” and heaven knows we’re not given any sort of education about what consent actually is.

So, I’m going to do my best to give people like me the baseline they need to move on and explore BDSM/kink if they’d like to. I only really have my experience to draw upon, so please keep that in mind. I’m coming at this from the perspective of being a sub/bottom, but hopefully what I share here is applicable to both bottoms and tops.

~~~~~~~~~

The Most Very Important Number One Thing You Absolutely Need to Understand is consent. For all forms of sex, I strongly encourage everyone to rely on the idea of enthusiastic consent for a variety of reasons: first of all, the absence of a “no” does not make a “yes,” which is why I disagree with the “no means no” approach to educating people about consent. Second, making sure that your sex partner definitely wants to have sex with you instead of trying to manipulate them into bed means that you’re not a creep. Lastly, when everyone involved enthusiastically wants sex, it just makes it better all around, and I am very much in favor of people having the best sex possible.

However, if you’re going to explore BDSM with someone, you need more than enthusiastic consent– you need informed consent. If you don’t explicitly lay out everything that you’re interested in and what it all means and what all your expectations are, you’re inevitably going to run into something like this:

Person 1: (thinking about spanking) “Hey do you want to have kinky sex with me?”
Person 2: (thinks “kinky” means “oral”) “That sounds like fun. Sure!”

Me and Handsome have this lay-it-out-there conversation all of the time. He’s actually much more interested in the research side of things, so he’ll come to me with an idea, explain everything it would include, and I, especially since I’m almost always the bottom, get to say yay or nay.

A little bit ago, we were talking about a bunch of different equipment we could experiment with, and possibly using a collar came up. Me, knowing myself and that I’ve been freaked out by high-collared shirts, turtle necks, and choker necklaces since I was a child, didn’t like the idea. Handsome also wasn’t enthused with the visual of me looking like I could be on a leash, so we decided that collars weren’t for us.

But, in that particular situation, I had to know beforehand that I wasn’t going to be ok with collars, and Handsome knows that he’s not interested in the domination aspect that some play with. For other things I’m open to the idea, but I’m not sure how I’ll react to it while we’re in the midst of things, which leads me to …

Very Important Idea Number Two: boundaries and safewords.

Most boundaries should be set before you enter the “scene.” For example, Handsome and I are not, and will never be, ok with using a belt to spank me. However, let’s say for the moment that Handsome is actually really into spanking someone with a belt. If I say “no, I am not comfortable with that,” it should never even come up during a scene. Ever. For any reason. Period. End of story. This could be what us kinksters refer to as a “hard” or “soft limit,” or it could just be “meh, I’m not into that today.” Subs/bottoms aren’t the only one with limits, either, and all boundaries should be respected. If I said “I don’t want to be spanked with a belt,” or “I don’t want to be spanked with a belt today,” Handsome is not allowed to bring it up during the scene. It is not acceptable for anyone to try to manipulate, pressure, or coerce someone– and while that applies to pretty much any human interaction, it especially applies to kinky sex.

Other things can be negotiated during a scene. For example, I knew I was open to the idea of a riding crop, but I wasn’t entirely sure where he could use it, or where I would like it to be used. In this particular case, I consented to exploring it, and was open to it used almost anywhere. When we began using it, I relied on my safe words– which for us, since we don’t usually do any role play, is “ouch,” “no,” and “stop.” Some people use “yellow” and “red,” but there are a variety of things to use safe words for: such as “I like being hit that hard and this often, I just want you to use that thing somewhere else for a while.”

The most amazing thing about BDSM in my opinion is how communication works. It relies upon complete and total honesty at all times, and if you feel as though you cannot be explicitly honest with your partner, you are not with a good partner. If you feel that you’ll be ignored, you are not with a good partner.

This whole “set and respect boundaries” idea isn’t something that conservative Christians are real good about teaching and modeling. In fact, people who come from a purity culture background were probably taught the exact opposite. You have the right to have boundaries, and you have the right to have those boundaries respected. When people cross your boundaries, you absolutely have the right to tell them so and to enforce those boundaries. If you say “you crossed my boundary, don’t do that again,” you are not being mean. You are not being “unkind” or “uncharitable” or “ungracious” or whatever word was the one that got tossed around in your Sunday school room.

I also want to make it very clear that you don’t have to have a “good reason” to say “no” to something, whether it be equipment, an act, or a scenario. Feeling “eh, not really interested or turned on by that” for no particular reason is the only reason you need. I’ve found that women who were brought up in purity culture tend to believe that we have to justify and rationalize every decision we make, and I’ve found that’s actually really sort of ridiculous. “I don’t want to” is the only reason anyone needs. If that’s not a good enough reason for your partner … get a new partner.

And lastly, Very Important Idea Number Three: know thyself.

This is probably going to be the hardest one for purity culture survivors to get used to, because it goes against everything we’ve been taught. The only thing most of us know about sex is “just say no,” until we get married and then we’re supposed to Instant Sex Monkeys/Porn Goddesses.

The reality that we struggle to understand every single day of our lives is that being a person means having to come to terms with our sexuality, and that sexuality is a part of our identity in a way that “SEX OUTSIDE OF CISHET MARRIAGE IS A SIN” doesn’t quite cover. There’s no room for gay people, or bi people, or asexual people in this narrative, firstly, and there’s barely any room for straight people, either.

But, if you want to explore kink, it’s important that you explore yourself first of all, and that doesn’t just mean masturbation. It also means embracing your fantasies, whatever they are and however weird you think they might be. Thanks to the teachings I got about “fantasizing about any person living, dead, or fictional is a sin,” I ended up resorting to … well. Google The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife when you get a chance and … yup. There’s a whole wide world out there full of people thinking up interesting things, and I think you should go out there and find them. Honestly, most of my sex education came from a website dedicated to Star Wars and Star Gate fan fiction– and through writing a ton of my own.

Fantasy, thankfully, is a safe way to figure out what you think you might like, and the sky is the limit.

There’s also an element of just being comfortable in your own skin. “I want to be tied up and spanked” is something that takes some confidence to say, and of knowing who you are and what you want. Purity culture is dedicated to the idea of abstinence, of denial, of building our lives and our ethics around refusing to do what we want. Because of that, it can be difficult for us to admit that we might want something. BDSM is the opposite of that– it’s built at least partly on knowing and doing exactly what you want exactly the way you want to do it. That can take some getting used to.

~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, this has gotten long, so I want to stop here. I wish it wasn’t so necessary to talk about such fundamentally basic things, but it is, and we all need the occasional reminder. Feel free to ask me anything you’d like in the comments, or send me an e-mail (my contact information is at the top).

Photo by Savara

February 20, 2015 by SamanthaField

Feminism

how purity culture and raunch culture objectify women

I have another guest post up today at Convergent Books! I’d love to know what you all think of the argument I make here.

As a teenager and young woman I avoided looking in the mirror because I didn’t want to see my breasts, or my thighs, or my butt. I was ashamed of them. In the church culture of my childhood, those parts of my body were sexual, so I had to make sure no one could see them. My sexuality was to be hidden and feared.

Now I am learning to love my body and my sexuality, and I’m beginning to understand all the damage done to me by the shame I inherited for simply being a woman with a woman’s body.

So I get it. I understand the urge to throw off the shame and celebrate our sexuality. I can see why some women get a thrill from stuffing dollar bills into a stripper’s G-string, or the attraction of competing in a wet T-shirt contest. I can understand why women flash onlookers in the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, why it’s “liberating” to be a Bunny, why more and more women read Maxim and Playboy.

But is this “raunch culture” that Ariel Levy describes really liberating? Is Miley Cyrus “embracing her sexuality” when she straddles an eight-foot inflatable penis? Does any of this truly empower women?

You can read the rest here.

June 12, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

why purity culture doesn't teach consent, part two

I occasionally subject my partner to readings of my posts– when I first started, it was nearly every day, but now it’s only when I feel that I’ve been particularly brilliant. Yesterday was just such a post, but, thankfully, I’m married to someone equally brilliant, and he had a few ideas that I didn’t talk about yesterday but need to be said.

There isn’t any one single reason why those who advocate for purity/virginity ignore consent. I think it’s important to talk about the underpinning ideas, the assumptions and presuppositions that drive purity culture, but it’s just as important to talk about the things that purity advocates would openly admit if you asked them about it.

My partner suggested that if you asked someone who wants everyone to stay a virgin until they’re married why they don’t teach consent, one of the possible answers you might get is because it doesn’t matter.

That … struck me. I sat there and stared at him with my jaw hanging open because it took me a second to wrap my brain around it. What do you mean it DOESN’T MATTER?! This is the matter-ing-est idea of ALL TIME! But then I realized he was right, because for the people who are teaching that everyone must save their virginity for their, of course, heterosexual marriage– consent is for people who aren’t married.

Der.

I obviously disagree with that sentiment– violently disagree, in fact– but it is quite common for Christians to talk about sex in marriage as a guarantee, or a requirement. There’s a whole gamut of views on this. There’s Debi Pearl telling women that it is our duty to have sex whenever he wants it, and if we don’t he’s going to watch porn or cheat on you, and no, there isn’t a legitimate reason to refuse. Then there’s Mark Driscoll who explicitly says that women are biblically required to perform any and all sex acts, no matter if we find it personally degrading or uncomfortable. In fact, we should “repent” of our lack of interest and get down to the business of servicing him.

The middle ground view is probably that getting married means you’re consenting to have sex with that person– and, no, you don’t have to have sex just because the other person wants it and you can say no sometimes, but you should be extremely careful about how and when you say no. So careful, in fact, that it’s probably better just to never say no. Just to be safe. Because who knows what could happen if you say no! Sex is an essential part of any healthy marriage, and it’s just something the husband needs. Women, you may not need sex the way he does, but, really, it’s the only real way he knows how to say “I love you.” Men are going to feel emasculated and unloved if you don’t have sex with them.

So, while the “middle of the road” people would probably say of course you can say no! it comes with so many ~~threats~~cautions that it makes it almost impossible for anyone to say no and feel ok about it. This, friends, is a huge problem because it contributes to something called coercion. If you are allowing someone to have sex with you not because you want to have sex because yay sex is fantastic! and instead because if I don’t then I’m responsible for my husband’s sin or what if he leaves me or this is my obligation then what’s happening isn’t enthusiastic consent, it’s coercion.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that every single time someone has sex with their partner even though they’re not enthusiastic it’s rape. I’m not arguing that. However, the standard we should be pursuing is enthusiastic consent, and accepting anything less should make you uncomfortable. Why have sex with someone who doesn’t really want it, but is willing to tolerate it because of X reason?

And for anyone who isn’t married . . . well, you’re not supposed to have sex. Period. End of story. No consent for you. You are a sex-crazed beast, but you’re not supposed to be having sex with anyone and talking about consent is just going to muddy the whole thing up. Why bother teaching an idea that’s not necessary?

To me, the biggest reason why it’s important to teach consent and sexual agency is so that people of all genders can recognize the difference between consensual sex acts and sexual assault or rape. I had no clue for almost three years that I had been raped because I believed in the myths that purity culture had taught me– that “men will only go as far as you let them” and that men are tempted by women being impure– dressing immodestly, behaving sensually . . . that I must have done something to tell him that I was willing to have sex with him, or he wouldn’t have done it, even though I was begging him to stop and telling him that he was hurting me the entire time.

Concepts like bodily autonomy are important for a whole host of reasons, and they are absent in many areas of Christian culture. Children are forced to hug or kiss people even though they do not want to; they’re taught that nearly all of their wants and needs are subject to the whims of “authority.” They don’t have the basic rights to think for themselves, to hold opinions on their own in contradiction to their community, to have things that they want to do for no other reason than they want to do it. Young adults struggle to find themselves, and are forced into the cookie-cutter molds of their church’s or parent’s expectations for their morals and beliefs. This isn’t universal, of course, but it’s common. Common enough, at least.

Consent should not only be the cornerstone of how we have sex, but how we engage with our children, our parents, our communities, and our churches.

April 4, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

why purity culture doesn't teach consent

[This is part one of a two-part series. You can find part two here.]

I’m a Star Trek fan, and yes– it’s related. I grew up watching Star Trek loyally, and I’m pretty sure Captain Kathryn Janeway is one of the few reasons why I managed to be somewhat normal. So, when Enterprise began airing, I watched every single episode, and Phlox, a Denobulan doctor, quickly became one of my favorites. “The Breach” is one of the few episodes dedicated to his character, and it explores an ethical dilemma: he has been ordered by the captain to treat a patient even though this patient has repeatedly refused to be treated. To the human captain, it’s a simple matter of saving a life, but to Phlox, it was far more complicated.

As I was watching the episode, I realized there was something rather awesome about Denobulan culture: it is based entirely on consent. To treat a patient without his or her consent would violate everything Phlox believed about ethics and morality. I turned to my partner and announced that we were moving to Denobula, physics and reality be damned.

If there is a single idea that I desperately want to communicate to every single last person on the planet, it’s this one: Consent.

Western culture understands consent inside a few limited contexts– but even in most of those contexts, consent can be overruled if the circumstances are right. One of the areas where consent seems to completely fly out the window is when we’re talking about The Sex, although that is very, very slowly improving. However, in environments that encourage Purity in the form of Virginity, consent . . . just doesn’t show up. The only time I’ve heard consent mentioned has been to mock the very idea– “the world says that sex is fine as long as it’s “consensual”– but we know better than that, don’t we?” complete with obligatory scare quotes around “consensual.”

I’ve been struggling, trying to figure out why it seems so difficult for evangelical purity advocates to talk about consent, why the idea is mocked when it’s presented, and why no one seems to care about consent when it seems, at least to me, absolutely foundational when it comes to sexual interactions. Why does it seem to be more typical for those who teach purity to advocate for the opposite of consent? Why do some of them actively pursue the idea that marital rape is impossible– that being married is automatic consent? Or, if they’re not intentionally teaching against consent, why does it never seem to get mentioned?

Well, and I’m positive I’m not the first person to think of this, but I had an epiphany this morning.

They don’t teach consent because teaching consent would undermine one of their basic assumptions about people. Namely, the assumption that every single last person– most especially men, but also women– are basically nymphos who are straining at their leashes every single second of every single day and if you let that sex-crazed beast out for even just a moment then BAM it’s all over and you’re not a virgin anymore and that’s horrible because now you’re a half-eaten candybar or a cup full of spit.

This is why the “how far is too far?” question is almost unanimously answered with “you can’t do anything that might get your motor going, because the second you’re aroused– at all– there’s virtually nothing you’ll be able to do to stop yourself from having sex.”

To them, consent is always guaranteed. There’s no such thing as a person who would say no to an opportunity to have sex. Ever. The only thing you have to do to give consent is be alive.

If you start walking around teaching the idea that some people may not want to have sex with you and you need to ask first, it completely undoes everything they’re teaching about human sexuality. If you remove the ominous boogeyman of your inner sexual demons, then suddenly it might be ok to start exploring your pants-feelings. Because you can decide whether or not you want to do . . . well, whatever you want to do. Or not.

And it’s the “or not” part that would render most of what they teach almost completely useless. If people are capable of saying no, I don’t want to have sex with you, then teaching people that they cannot ever be alone with someone is sort of pointless. So are all the ridiculous conversations about hand holding and kissing and (God forbid) “heavy petting.”

Purity culture actually strips away empowerment, and agency, and autonomy. And the most horrifying thing about this understanding of human sexuality is that it makes rape non-existent. No one can be raped because we all want it all of the time.

Continue on to part two.

April 3, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

how purity culture taught me to be abused

[warning: I am going to be talking about sensitive, sex-related issues today, including rape and sexual assault. ]

First, let me share my rationale for talking about this. When I started this blog, my intention was to leave a lot of what I’m about to say unsaid. I wanted to discuss, mainly, more of the philosophies and ideologies entrenched in the IFB movement and conservative evangelicalism at large, instead of some of my personal hang-ups.

But, I’ve been doing an incredible amount of reading recently, and her.menutics at Christianity Today has announced they’re going to be talking about some of these things, and they have been under heavy discussion by many writers, including Dianna Anderson and Sarah Moon. However, there is one area of this discussion that I’ve noticed is missing, and that’s what I’m going to be contributing today.

Essentially, I will be arguing that the modesty/purity/virginity culture, especially in more conservative areas, is one of the main reasons why Christian young women stay in abusive relationships.

Many writers have already made the connection between the purity culture and the rape culture, and they have done a much better job establishing that than I ever could. I encourage you to read their arguments. You can find more links on my “other dragon fighters” page. What these men and woman are arguing for is incredibly valuable, and they’re establishing a healthy, productive rhetoric; what I’m offering here is merely a subset to that discussion.

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When I was fourteen, I went to a month-long summer camp at the college I would later attend. Like most Christian summer camps, this one involved going to a chapel service twice a day. Most of the time they were fun, lighthearted– until one evening they split up the girls and the boys. Great, I remember thinking, because I knew exactly what was coming. Segregation can only mean one thing– they were going to talk about sex. I sighed when they made the announcement. Again? I thought wearily.

That evening, when the camp counselors had shooed all the men and boys out of the building, the speaker got up to the podium. She didn’t even beat around the bush, but launched right into her object lesson. Holding up a king-size Snickers bar, she asked if anyone in the audience wanted it. It’s a room full of girls– who doesn’t want chocolate? A hundred hands shot up. She picked a girl close to the front that wouldn’t have to climb over too many people and brought her up to the stage. Very slowly, she unwrapped the Snickers bar, splitting the package like a banana peel. She handed it to the young woman, and asked her, very clearly, to lick the chocolate bar all over. Just lick it.

Giggling, the young lady started licking the chocolate bar, making a little bit of a show of it. At fourteen, I had no idea what a blow job was, so I missed the connection that had a lot of girls in the room snorting and hooting. The young lady finished and handed it back to the speaker. As she was sitting down, the speaker very carefully wrapped the package around the candy bar, making it look like the unopened package as possible.

Then she asked if anyone else in the room wanted a go.

No one raised her hand.

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My sophomore year in college, another speaker shared a similar object lesson– ironically, in the exact same room, also filled exclusively with women. She got up to the podium carrying a single rose bud. At this point I was more familiar with sexual imagery, and I knew that the rose had frequently been treated as a symbol for the vagina in literature and poetry– so, again, I knew what was coming.

This speaker asked us to pass the rose around the room, and encouraged us to enjoy touching it. “Caress the petals,” she told us. “Feel the velvet.” By the time the rose came to me, it was destroyed. Most of the petals were gone, the ones that were still feebly clinging to the stem were bruised and torn. The leaves were missing, and someone had ripped away the thorns, leaving gash marks down the side.

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I could go on. I imagine many of you have heard similar object lessons. These “object lessons” aren’t isolated to evangelical culture, either– Ariel Levy writes about one she saw involving packing tape in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs.

However, all of these object lessons contribute to one message: your identity and value as a woman is tied to your sexual purity. If you surrender your virginity, you are worthless. Disgusting. Repulsive. Broken. Unwanted.

My generation has gotten that message loud and clear. Our virginity is the “greatest gift a woman can give her husband.” My own father, who was a virgin when he met my mother, on repeated occasions has told me that my mother having sex when she was in highschool bothers him — to this day, and they’ve been married twenty-six years. Mark Driscoll, in his new marriage-advice book, tells his readers that if he had known of a single sexual encounter his wife had at nineteen, he would not have married her. Finding out about it, over a dozen years into their marriage, sent him into a self-admitted emotional tailspin (however, we’re supposed to completely ignore the fact that he had sex, too).

There are so many other examples I could cite, both factual and fictional. The ultimate message is that if we give up our virginity, or even our “emotional purity,” which I’ll get to in a minute, makes us completely repulsive to “good Christian boys.”

I know a young man who told me, point-blank, that finding out his ex-girlfriend had sex made her unattractive to him, and that he would no longer consider “getting back” with her, even though until that point he had been relentlessly pursuing her.

He is not a virgin.

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But what if your sexual purity, or your virginity, is stolen? What if you are sexually abused, or raped?

The answer, terrifyingly, is the same.

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I met “John” at the tail-end of my sophomore year. He was handsome, charismatic, an excellent musician, talented, popular, and respected. He was running for student council president, was a part of the “in,” crowd, and… I was not. That had never particularly bothered me. Growing up IFB kinda means you get used to being a weird outsider. But, I could still appreciate those qualities. The night we met, he basically ignored me, which, I assume you can imagine, felt pretty typical.

My junior year, though, we were both percussionists in my college’s symphony orchestra, and the conductor asked us to be a part of the school’s major production that semester– The Pirates of Penzance. Rehearsals were four nights a week, from 6 pm to 1 or 2 am. As percussionists, we didn’t have a whole lot to do, except occasionally whack the cassa bass or the triangle. That left a lot of time for bonding… and, by the end, we were “talking,” the evangelical intermediary between “acquaintance” and “monogamous relationship.” We were official by February, and he proposed in August.

For my own emotional stability, I will be brief. The relationship was emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually abusive. Like countless other stories, the abuse slowly escalated– I had no idea what was happening until it was too late.

Women in, or who have recently escaped from, violent relationships typically get asked “why do/did you stay?” Very frequently, they don’t have a solid answer to that question. There are a host of common reasons– daddy issues, economic stability, shame.

I know exactly why I stayed. I was crippled, paralyzed, and overwhelmed by fear. Fear that he would abandon me. Fear that, if he left, I would no longer have any value. John had literally ruined me, in my mind, for anyone else.

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Long story short: he did leave me, breaking our engagement two months before the wedding. His reasoning: I was not “submissive” enough. One month before he broke it off, I had cut off anything sexual. I would no longer participate in the degrading phone sex where he referred to me exclusively as “bitch” and “whore.” I shied away from his touch. And I had the audacity to tell him that he couldn’t call me a “God damn fucking bitch” anymore. Yup. Definitely not submissive-wife material. I was certainly not Created to be his Helpmeet.

It’s been three years since then, and I’m now married to the most amazing, loving, gentle, tender man I couldn’t have even dreamed to ask for. But, I’m still healing from a lot of the abuse, and there are a few things I still violently struggle with, mainly that:

my internalized “purity” narrative tells me that what John did was not rape.

The first “sexual” thing John ever did was to put his hand, facing palm-up, on my percussionist’s stool. I was standing to turn the page, and when I sat down, he grabbed my ass. I found this titillating, exciting. I didn’t protest, I didn’t correct him. I coyly asked him what he was doing, and he said “oops.”

I wore v-neck sweaters that just barely showed off my cleavage, because he liked it. I wore a skirt that showed off my ass– because he liked it.

By the time he had become fully abusive, these behaviors continued, largely because I was terrified of what he would do if I didn’t. At one point our relationship was long distance, and he bought me a webcam. The first time he told me to take my shirt off, I told him no. I even shut my laptop. He spent the next two hours screaming obscenities at me, and he was violent the next time he saw me in person. The first time he raped me, I fought him– for one brief second, until he dug the band of his watch into my knee– leaving a cut so deep I have a long, puffy scar. It was a warning.

I have to constantly fight against the oppressive lie that an outsider looking in would think that I had consented. Geez, just because you never had an orgasm doesn’t mean he violated you. C’mon. You’re just frigid.

I have to constantly fight that lie that because I didn’t “fight enough,” because I didn’t choose to immediately leave the relationship, that it meant that I deserved what happened to me.

I have to constantly fight against the lie that says because I wasn’t pure enough, that because I had “dressed provocatively,” because I had allowed myself to be alone with him, that I invited it. That I had allowed it to happen.

I have to fight the lie that says that maybe I’m making all of this “rape” stuff up to make myself feel better about allowing it to happen.

He didn’t actually rape you, you’re just saying that because you’re blaming him. You didn’t keep yourself pure, that’s all. You just know that if you really allowed yourself to face the facts, you’d see the truth. You’re a disgusting piece of shit. You’re worthless.

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That last one is why the modesty/purity culture can be so incredibly damaging. Many girls and women I’ve talked to have it so deeply ingrained into them that it’s virtually inescapable. When it comes between choosing what’s worse– staying in abusive relationship, or facing the “reality” that you’ve “surrendered your purity,” guess which one we choose?

Photo by Al Tassano

January 31, 2013 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

despising our youth: ageism in fundamentalist culture

In the fundamentalist cult I spent the bulk of my childhood in, encouraging the young people toward being an active part of the church community was one of the supposedly important goals. At one point, we moved toward a more “family integrated” model, and the “pastor” eliminated any separate activity for the teenagers. We no longer had our own Sunday school, and “youth group”-type events were basically outlawed. The idea was that too many teenagers were disconnecting from church once they reached adulthood, that they expected “youth group” to continue all their life. Welp, that wasn’t going to happen in our church, no sirrey.

At around the same time we started having “Youth Night” one Sunday evening a month. For that service, the kids and teenagers would do everything– lead the music, make the music, usher, pray, and preach. In theory I still think it was a solid idea. If only the adults in our church treated the teenagers with anything approaching respect.

I’ve talked about my experience as a teenager in fundamentalism before, about how I was given the nickname “sub-adult” after a game of cards. That label was humiliating, especially since it was used by the various adults at church to humiliate me. They used it against me any time I did something to make my presence known– like have an opinion, or assert my own wants or needs, or make a suggestion.

A little while ago I was having a conversation with my mother about that “sub-adult” moniker, and she said “well, you were doing something immature,” and what came erupting out of me shocked me with the truth of it:

“Yeah, maybe I was being immature. But so was she. Calling someone names isn’t exactly a mark of maturity. I was a teenager– some immaturity is normal, and should be a teaching moment, but no one ever called her on the fact that she was being cruel and petty. No, she was the ‘adult,’ so whatever she did I had to accept.”

That’s when it struck me that as much as being tortured with a humiliating nickname hurt me growing up, I’d never really questioned the authority of the adults to do that. All that time, while I inwardly seethed, it was mostly internal: I was largely angry with myself for failing to be the flawless young person they demanded. It never really occurred to me to that I question their behavior, or call it what it was: they were worse than bullies– adults using playground tactics to attack a child.

It never occurred to me because it would never in a million years have occurred to them that they could be wrong about how they treated their children and teenagers. Being the adult was what made them right. I’d been forced to accepted ageism as just a fact of life.

The worst thing is that this attitude hasn’t even remotely changed, regardless of how old I become. In interactions I have with older fundamentalists (and, frequently, more moderate Christians), the fact that I’m twenty-eight, married, with multiple degrees and plenty of life experience in things they’ll never understand (like being an abuse victim and queer) … none of it matters. They were an adult when I was a child and that’s it for them.

Recently, Slate published an article by Jessica Huseman on the ways the Homeschool Legal Defense Association has made it almost impossible to protect homeschool children from abuse. When Huseman questioned Farris (the founder of HSLDA) about people like me who are advocating for more oversight and protection for homeschool children, this is what he had to say:

He dismissed both organizations outright, calling them “a group of bitter young people” who are “fighting against home schooling … to work out their own issues with their parents.”

He’s talking about HARO and CRHE, organizations that were both founded by fully-grown adults, men and women in their 30s, who are married, who have children. For comparison, Michael Farris was 32 when he founded HSLDA. And yet we’re the “bitter young people.”

I was told all my life to “let no man despise thy youth,” but if there’s been something made perfectly clear to me over the last few years is that there are always limits to what “The Adults” are willing to tolerate. They think we’re fantastic when we’re bashing each other, writing think pieces on just how entitled millennials are. Write a post on how young people these days are just so willing to abandon orthodoxy and they will share the shit out of that.

But disagree? State a strong opinion? Assert that your views and experience matter and … nope. End of all civil discourse with them. The second we’re not bobbleheads, we’re “bitter young people.”

It took me a long time to realize that I can look at the words, actions, and beliefs of other adults and interact with them as another adult. No, I don’t have 50-60 years of being alive on this planet, but I do have experiences with something many adults will never have. I was raised in a cult. I grew up as a bisexual woman in Christian culture. I experienced a modern incarnation of purity culture that they didn’t have to live through. I came of age in a completely different economic reality. I’ve been through the process of completely re-evaluating every single last thing I believe.

I am the authority on my life, and I am a person, and that makes me equal. It means that my point of view and perspective matters just as much as anyone else.

Photo by Ciokka

September 18, 2015 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Nightline Prime and Purity Balls

I’ve seen a few documentaries about “Purity Balls” (which, every time I say that, my partner sniggers and I glare at him), and some are better than others. ABC’s Nightline Prime 20-minute documentary of the Wilson’s “14th Annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball” is not one of the better ones. The interviewer seemed to be either amused or baffled, and the only questions featured during the program seem to indicate a lack of awareness of what the underlying culture is– although she seemed to be catching on toward the end.

Because the program is so brief, it’s difficult to get a real grasp on what was actually said– the editing focused on a few ideas or phrases, so I’m left feeling that I don’t really understand Caroline Johnson or her father, Ron. However, I am familiar with the Wilsons, since they’ve shown up in a lot of the documentaries about Purity Balls, and the family, at this point, is obviously comfortable with the cameras and the questions posed by the interviewer.

The program drew attention to a few ideas presented by the Johnsons and the Wilsons– gender hierarchy, male strength and covering, and that women exist to be beautiful. The phrases they tended to concentrate on, however, were the ones designed to repulse the viewer. I don’t know how many times Johnson said something along the lines of “I’m my daughter’s boyfriend,” but it was more than just uncomfortable, and our discomfort was something that Johnson obviously found hilarious.

It was clear that both Johnson and Wilson are more than aware that what they are doing and saying is downright odd and creepy to most people in America, but it is also clear that they are proud of that. Considering that evangelical culture tends to over-emphasize concepts like the culture war, that Christianity is somehow “counter-cultural,” and that Christians are “Jesus Freaks,” this is unsurprising.

One of the interesting things to me about this documentary, however, was that it showed how these families view adolescence. When the interviewer asked Johnson about how the teenage years are supposed to be about separating from parents (a concept known as individuation), Johnson completely dismissed the entire question and its premise.

In this culture, men are encouraged to become independent adults, although only along gendered lines; boys can grow into strong, protective, warrior-like men. However, women are not given the same opportunities. They are to remain under the protective covering of their fathers– and later, their husbands. This concept appears in the language of almost every girl or woman interviewed in this program. Women are to be “on the arm of our men,” to be supporters, helpers, completers. Women are not to have their own independent identities separate from other people– our identities are centered on men.

This also shows up in how Johnson describes his role in his relationship with his daughter when it comes to her purity. He frames it in terms of “The Princess and the Frog,” and states that fathers are good at separating princes and frogs (which ignores that the frog is the prince in the original story, but ok). This is an idea that I am more than familiar with.

When I went away to graduate school, my parents were living in the mid-west and I moved to Virginia. One of the concerns I had about moving away from my family had to do with my dating life– how in the world would I be able to date someone, since I was nowhere near my parents and it would be next to impossible to get their approval? Over the two years I was away, however, I slowly came to understand that I didn’t actually need my parents to approve of the men I dated. I did date some “frogs,” that’s for sure, but it also wasn’t the horrific, disastrous train-wreck I’d always been taught it would be.

So by the time I met Handsome, I felt independent and individualized enough to start dating him without consulting my parents. I called and told my mother, of course, and she was happy and excited for me. However, when it became clear that our relationship was serious and I was falling in love with him, I told my father, and his reaction was . . . well, it was based on this idea that fathers are the ones who separate the princes from the frogs. During that conversation he told me that I was not capable of making this decision on my own.

To be clear: my father, like myself, still has a few left-over ideas from fundamentalism that crops up in interesting and usually surprising ways, and we don’t always know how they’re going to show up, or what ideas are simmering under the surface before something happens to expose them. This was one of those times.

But, it speaks to just how deeply women are viewed as incapable in this culture. Men are strong; women are weak. Men are the decision-makers; women are followers. Men are active; women are passive. Without our fathers and the “covering” they offer, we would inevitably fall away, be ripped apart by American culture, and make disastrous decisions that ruin our lives. The message is: women need men just to survive.

That idea is also reflected in how everyone in this program talks about men– the young men are taught that they need to be the “noble protectors” of women, that they are the “high priests” of their homes, that they are warriors and kings (no, really. The male version of the purity ring has four symbols on it, one of them a crown to symbolize how “men are the king”).

How men and women are viewed in this culture is extremely narrow and limited. Men and women have the God-ordained, biblically-based roles they are supposed to play, and stepping outside of those roles, they are taught, will result in unmitigated disaster. As a result, men and women who exist outside of these boundaries are severely punished by their culture– the harsh gender binary is one of the reasons why Christians can be intensely homophobic.

This culture damages both men and women, but it does so in different ways. Men are to shoulder the impossible responsibility of being the leader, protector, provider, and king of another human being– a human being they are supposedly quite capable of ruining in a single moment. Women, on the other hand, are not allowed to become a complete, independent, actualized person. We are trapped inside our supposed fragility and constantly controlled by our fear.

When men and women are constrained by these roles, these essentialist definitions of who we are allowed to be, nobody wins.

March 25, 2014 by SamanthaField

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