Excellent article!
http://thebrunettesblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/the-purity-movement-birth-of-sex-positivity/
We all have our hot-button issues, and one of mine is the movement —
usually linked to conservative religious groups — advocating feminine
“modesty” and “purity.” (They usually stand for male “purity” as well,
but the bulk of the talk is directed at women.) It’s hard for me to
engage this issue directly, because aside from my philosophical problems
with it, I have a very visceral response to its rhetoric: the same kind
of response a former alcoholic sometimes has to scenes of people
drinking. The modesty/purity movement once owned me, and it damaged me,
and I hate it for reasons that have nothing to do with its philosophical
or political merit. When I try to write about it, I can’t decide
whether to write about my personal experiences, and the anger I feel
about them and the fear I feel for people I love who still buy into it,
or to try to put that aside and write objectively about the problems it
has.
My anger comes mainly from this: there is a huge lie embedded in the
conservative Christian culture I grew up in (though by no means
exclusive to that culture.) The lie is that there is one context —
lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual commitment — where sex is healthy and
creative and life-bringing, and that in any other context sex is
unhealthy and damaging. The lie is that sexuality outside of marriage is
a dangerous, destructive force that needs to be controlled and
subverted, but marriage transforms it into a beautiful affirmation of
life and love and joy.
This lie was taught to me by people who loved me very much and
genuinely wanted the best for my life. They taught it to me because they
believed it, and their sincere belief and sincere caring for me made it
almost impossible for me to question their teaching. So I spent the
first twelve years of my sexual maturity fearing and avoiding sexuality,
distrusting my body and my heart, feeling both resentful and guilty
toward male sexual desire, and casting my own desires into ludicrous
forms of romanticism instead of acknowledging them for what they were. I
avoided making myself sexually attractive, because that’s what I was
supposed to do, and I waited patiently for God to reward my obedience
with a husband with whom I could live happily ever after.
Now, on the other side of my sexual renaissance, I see the world so
differently that I can hardly articulate it. I know so much now that I
didn’t see then. I know that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is not for
everybody. I know that sexuality is not a pollutant of art, but probably
its point of origin. I know that the sexual undercurrents that run
beneath even “platonic” relationships are better acknowledged and
enjoyed than denied. But foundationally, I know this: that the
difference between destructive and life-giving sexuality is not made by
what kind of relationship it occurs in. It is made by the presence or
absence of joy and caring.
Whether there are one, or two, or several participants, a sex act is
healthy if it is characterized by joy in the giving and receiving of
pleasure, and by caring for the physical and emotional health of each
person involved. That’s all. It’s not any more complicated than that.
All other rules are created because somebody somewhere found a
particular sexual relation damaging, and blamed the social circumstances
rather than the individual ones. (Example: a woman who at 16 consented
to sex she didn’t want because she craved closeness and affirmation, and
concludes that teenage sex is always unhealthy.)
On a broader, systemic level, sex-negativity is based on fear and
distrust of the body and human nature. But I’ve always been a staunch
humanist, so the rhetoric of dirt and cleanliness never made a lot of
sense to me. I never believed my sexuality was dirty or impure, just
that it was dangerous.
Now, I don’t know how my life would have developed if I’d grown up
without believing those lies. Plenty of people have sexual experiences,
or even whole phases of life, that they regret, and I might have been
one of those people. We can’t know how an alternative life path would
have turned out. But I know for damn sure that I regret the twelve years
of sexual repression that I subjected myself to, with the approval and
encouragement of adults I trusted. I regret the experiences and
relationships I missed out on, I regret relationships that were stunted
or aborted because of my fear of sexuality, and I especially regret the
disconnection with my own sexuality that my denial created, a
disconnection I am still trying to repair.
In case anybody’s in doubt, it’s these experiences that make me
passionate about becoming a sex educator. The abstinence-only message is
founded on a false understanding of sex, its consequences, and its
appropriate role in human life. Young people do need to be taught —
indiscriminate sexual activity is often unhealthy too, and making smart,
healthy sexual decisions in our culture does not come naturally. But
they need to be taught about joy and caring, they need to be taught to
discern their own needs and wants, they need to be taught communication
and respect, they need to be taught what sex does and what it doesn’t
do. They need to be taught about the varieties of sexual experience
(apologies to William James) and given tools for creating a fulfilling
sexual life, whatever that means for them. I’m grateful that I learned
these things eventually; I want to help others learn them sooner.
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