Purity culture and its impure offspring: the Atlanta murders, Part 2
Purity culture isn't helping end violence against women.
Purity culture isn’t to blame for the murders in Atlanta last week. The man who pulled the trigger is. But, as discussed in the previous issue, sexism certainly helped turn him into a murderer. And sexism wasn’t the only factor. Racism, gun access, glorified violence, purity culture and our attitude to sex workers all played a part. And they are all problems for the Church. In this issue I want to talk about purity culture.
Purity culture isn’t helping
If the Atlanta shooter’s view of women was a factor, his view of sexuality was as well. Sexism and purity culture are linked.
Mostly when we talk about purity culture, we mention its fetishization of female virginity and the demeaning reduction of women to hymeneal ‘gifts’ for their future husbands. Increasingly, we are talking about the ridiculously formal and high-pressure situation that constitutes dating in a culture that sees any courtship as either a soft commitment to marriage or a waste of time. This dualism particularly harsh on women, who are told they must only marry a Christian and who know they outnumber men by 3-1 (or more) in most western church contexts. Add to this the all-too-popular message that a woman’s highest calling is to bear children and serve a husband (and the fact that western churches seem, inexplicably, to venerate the nuclear family unit Jesus likely never enjoyed), and you get a cocktail of misery specifically served to women.
But the worship of the nuclear family and the culture of shame around sexuality that asks young people to pledge sexual purity as a central tenet of their Christian life affects both men and women. In this culture, masturbation is not just sin, it is the sin. Not a natural, arguably necessary source of both release and endorphins but an act whose resistance is the KPI for Christian performance. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself what else preachers are talking about 70% of the time when referring to ‘our secret sins’. Gluttony? Greed? Selfishness? Are these really the things that have 20somethings in tears at the altar rededicating their lives to Christ? I find that hard to believe. But hey – perhaps it’s just me.
The fact is, purity culture does a number on boys as well as girls when it comes to instilling guilt and self-loathing for feelings they cannot control, and instead of helping to build healthy boundaries, tends to encourage a kind of genital legalism that makes the crassness of ‘third base’ metaphors seem romantic.
Purity culture tells men to hate their desires and then misogyny teaches them to blame women, not themselves, for what they see as sin. If they have been taught male privilege and importance from birth it should not surprise us that they twist Jesus’ rhetorical suggestion to ‘pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin’. At the intersection of these cultures, some men prefer to protect their eyes by punishing the bodies they look at lustfully. Instead of cutting off their own hands, they put guns in them.
Whether or not we think the Atlanta shooter was telling the truth about wanting to rid the world of ‘temptations’, the fact is that the intersection of misogynist and purity culture goes beyond victim blaming and justifying violence against women after the fact – it makes villains out of women for merely being attractive.
Obviously, painting all of a movement, philosophy or culture with the same damning brush is unfair. This isn’t all purity culture’s fault. It’s perfectly legit to read Scripture and think that all sexuality outside married, pene-and-vagene sex is bad. It begs many questions and is, I think, pretty damaging to those who buy into it, but different (non-onanistic) strokes for different folks, I guess.
But a culture that tells young women it is their responsibility to cover up rather than men’s responsibility to control themselves is not just problematic, it violates its own internal logic. If we can’t blame hormones or natural urges for our desires, if we must all show self-discipline (and hey, there’s some useful truth in that), then how are we suddenly also victims? How did this go from being our problem to women’s fault? Sure, it may be kinder to make it easier on the horndog boys, but shaming people for not going the extra mile is applied in literally no other cases I can think of. In its casual form it manifests as control over women’s dress, speech and movement. In its extreme form it results in the worst kind of victim blaming.
Nobody forces a young man to kill any more than what someone was wearing forces him to rape. But pretending that the culture in our churches and society at large does not have an influence is wilful blindness.
Young men being told their ‘impure’ thoughts about the women they find attractive (told, btw, not just by conservative churches but also by the new puritans who see all male desire as objectifying and wrong) will sometimes try to do something about it. If they’ve been told by sexist theology or norms that women are to blame (and if they aren’t intellectually capable of seeing through this bullshit), hostility will ensue. If they are taught that women are less than them, if they are raised in a culture that glorifies war and violence as problem solving techniques and if they are churched with the view that God and guns are compatible, how can we be surprised when killings like those in Atlanta happen?
People have called those deaths a tragedy. But a tragedy is a devastating event that was unavoidable. Character dictating destiny. These killings were avoidable. The shooter didn’t have to turn his anger into violence. And his anger did not need to be stoked by a confluence of cultures that promote a toxic view of gender.
Christians don’t have to change our theology every time someone who does something terrible was motivated by them. But neither can we keep thinking of these events as aberrations or anomalies if they keep on happening. And if we truly care about the truth and not conforming to the way of this world, we should be willing to examine whether we have unconsciously conformed our teachings and our ways to things we didn’t realise were worldly, sinful and wrong.
We don’t have to throw out holiness with the purity rings. We just need to conform it to love and recognise the way it can be twisted under a righteous-looking cloak.
Why am I still talking about this?
Partly because these things pass in and out of our attention faster than fashion trends and that seems to minimise the gravity of mass killings.
And I know we can’t dissect every one. But the Atlanta murders seem to sum up a great number of trends at work in our society, and I think those issues need thinking about.
I don’t want to draw out the coverage and unnecessarily lengthen the secondary trauma — but this newsletter isn’t big enough to do that.
Also, real talk: I have too many words. I started off wanting to write one piece on all the issues this news story brought up, but it was WAY too long. I still want to talk about racism and our attitude to sex work and the reality of sex addiction. So I’m going to write about those things (or, in the case of sex addiction, get someone with experience to write). But I don’t want to feel like I’m capitalising on a killing. I won’t be talking about Atlanta forever. But I will for a little longer. Hope that’s okay!
Thank you, gems!
<3 <3 <3
Okay wow. Some absolute GEMS among the readers of this newsletter deserve a special shout out for buying me a beer (or 5!) and sending me some amazingly lovely messages over the last while.
Not to sound profoundly insecure or pathologically needy [if the shoe fits, Langley], but this made me so happy each time. It’s so affirming and so encouraging, particularly after a season of self-doubt, just to think people are liking what I’m doing.
So thank you, Stuart, Lina, Sare S, Sarah P, Andre and Fingers. You made me smile and you made me feel appreciated and inspired to keep writing.
*Cue anxiety attack over immediately disappointing you with this issue and making you question your support*
Thank you also to you for reading at all! It’s an honour to put thoughts directly into your brain via light bouncing into your eyes. Thanks especially if you’re commenting and sharing this thing. It means a lot. Mwah!
Okay enough love and earnestness. I called you gems. Do you know gems are a kind of squash in South Africa that you boil (or bake or roast) and serve with butter (or cheese or gravy) and are among the things I miss most about the country? Now you do.
You’re welcome.
Related: someone suggested I do recipes. I’m dubious. But look at this. Damn, son.
These may kill you but, like I said. Damn.
Follow, engage with and support Beer Christianity
Follow/message Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and Instagram. Listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Stitcher.
Leave us a question or comment to be included in the podcast at: speakpipe.com/beerchristianity.
I do this for free and for the love of getting to talk to you. If, however, you’d like to help out or show your support even more than by reading, there are two options:
1. Tell your friends about the newsletter and the podcast, share them on social media, leave reviews, all that kind of stuff. It is so encouraging. And makes it more worthwhile.
2. Buy me a beer. That is to say, you can make a donation to help support me doing this stuff. You really don’t have to, but it really does really help. And if you’re doing it specifically to support the podcast, I promise to buy drinks for Laura and Malky too if you like! Please leave a message if you do! But also no pressure! Good Lord this is awkward.
Anyway
Thank yooooooou for reading. If you made it this far, kudos. Go now though.