If young women abstain and
remain "pure", young men will sow their
wild oats at brothels and with so-called bad girls.
The cherry on the cake will be on the wedding night
when the groom presents his "pure" bride
with an STD for a wedding gift, after all condoms do
not prevent disease - according to chastity
campaigners - so why should he bother using one! My first
overtly rebellious act in the church came
about because of a lecture on chastity given
the young women in the Logan First Ward in
the early 1950s when I was about fifteen.
Chastity night was held once a year and, as I
recall, was invariably dreadful. Later, as an
adult and president of the young women's
organization, I remembered my own youth and
did what little I could to make chastity
nights, times of useful discussion. But this
particular night took the all-time atrocity
award. Recommended Viewing The Magdalene Sisters
Warning graphic
image!
"If
no proof of
the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be
brought to the door of her father's house and there
the men of her town shall stone her to death."
DEUTERONOMY 22:13-30 NIV
Little is known of the sexual habits of prehistoric
humans. Some scholars argue that female chastity
became an issue when men realized their role in
reproduction. Others believe that the transition from
hunting and gathering to agriculture worked out to
women's disadvantage.
Patriarchal societies depend on lineage and
inheritance passing through the male. Women were
always certain that the child they bore carried their
genes. Men on the other hand could never be certain
if they were the fathers of their partner's children
- today paternity can be established beyond doubt by
a simple test. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are
patriarchal religions - no surprises here!
In order to ensure paternity, draconian and punitive
measures were put in place to curb and control female
sexuality. Virginity became mandatory for single
women and married women were expected to remain
faithful to their husbands, needless to say that
these restrictions did not apply to men. This is
still the norm today in some countries, particularly
Islamic ones.
In Judaism, Christianity and Islam patriarchy was and
still is the social order mandated by God. Sex became
a sin and women were defined by their
virginity/chastity. The "good" women were
chaste and obedient, the "bad" women were
disobedient, defiled whores.
"They must not marry women defiled by
prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because
priests are holy to their God." Leviticus
21:7
" If a priest's daughter defiles herself by
becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she
must be burned in the fire." Leviticus 21:9
"The woman he marries must be a virgin. He
must not marry a widow, a divorced woman or a woman
defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his
own people, so he will not defile his offspring among
his people." Leviticus 22:13-15
The sexual revolution of the 1960s, the second wave
of feminism and the availability of the pill ushered
in a new era of sexual freedom for women, although
men had always enjoyed sexual freedom with the
so-called bad women. For the first time in history
women had access to reliable birth control and safe
abortion. This did not sit well with religious
conservatives who began denouncing the new era as
immoral, decadent and permissive - the word
permissive usually applies to societies that grant
sexual freedom to both sexes; societies that uphold
the sexual double standard are known as traditional
and conservative.
At a glance, the phrase "true love waits"
sounds romantic and idealistic. The virginity crusade
goes under the banner "True Love Waits" -
after all most people - including myself - see
nothing wrong with love and romance. However, if you
peel off the "True Love Waits" sticker you
will find a hotchpotch of anti-abortion propaganda,
misinformation on safe sex and mouldy religious
morality based on the activity of one's genitals.
TLW targets young people, especially young women. The
objective is to instil the notion that sex before
marriage is a sin, abortion and contraception are
morally wrong, IUDs and the pill are abortifacients
and that condoms do not protect against AIDS because
they have tiny holes which allow the virus to pass
through - see www.lovematters.com
There is a problem when the word pure is applied to
anything other that olive oil or honey. When young
women are exhorted to remain pure until marriage, it
is implied that the alternative of being in a state
of purity is defilement, contamination, filthiness
and depreciation of value. In other words, if a
substance has been tampered with, it is no longer
pure. Just like the spaghetti sauce jars on
supermarket shelves that have a plastic seal around
the lid, in order to ensure that the product has not
been contaminated or tampered with. Any young woman
who deviates from the path of purity will be made to
feel guilty, dirty and unworthy in other words she
would be called a whore. The notion of sexual purity
promotes the idea that sex is dirty and reinforces
sexual double standards. A young convert of TLW had
this to say: " I just want to wait until I meet
the right person, the world is so messed up as it is.
Society wants you to be a whore basically."
(source: Prevention News Digest, 08/SEP/03) "Pearls of
Wisdom" from www.lovematters.com
"There is nothing redemptive in two
unmarried people engaging in premarital
kissing".
"We don't allow what we refer to as
"bathroom talk" among the children.
Bathroom talk means any private part, or the
various bodily function, or noises of those
parts."
"Avoid sexual fantasies."
"Avoid petting and necking".
"Virginity until marriage is God's plan.
Since God is your manufacturer, He has the
authority to stipulate how your body should
operate."
"STAY CLEAN".
"Our children should know from an early age
who owns them".
"Our daughters are taught that there is
one man designed by God for them to give their
heart to and that they are never to give their
heart to anyone else. Our daughters are to always
be a one man women; first to their father, then
to their husband. Nothing in between."
"With regards to dress, we teach our boys
that there is a way for a girl to dress that will
defile his heart, and to walk away from girls
dressed defilingly whether in person or on the
magazine rack or billboard, etc."
"We assist our children during the time that
their heart is being trained by teaching our
children that they are never to use a word or
phrase, read a book or magazine, participate in a
conversation or be involved in any other activity
that they have not heard or seen mom or dad say
or participate in. To violate this rule is
automatic corporal punishment."
Sonia Johnson a Mormon woman who was excommunicated
from the Mormon church for actively supporting
women's rights, lucidly wrote about the chastity
lectures and double standard morality in her book "From
Housewife to Heretic":
About twenty girls, some with their mothers,
were gathered to listen to a woman we had
heard marvellous things about for the
preceding few weeks. In front of her on the
table, in a white bud vase stood a single
white rose, a pure, virgin rose. As she spoke
about the evils of necking and petting and
referred vaguely to other acts of physical
intimacy between males and females, she tore
off the rose petals one by one, crushing them
between her thumb and forefinger and dropping
them bruised and wrinkled, onto the table.
Hypnotised I watched those ruined petals
fall, one by one, each striking shame to my
soul as I remembered the kisses and embraces
and occasional hot fumblings at bodices and
crotches I had indulged in at one time or
another (and felt certain many of the other
girls in the room had as well).
Then, by way of finale, she staged a major
performance by trying to pick up the brown
petals and fit them back onto the stem.
Impossible of course. Triumphantly she
announced, "You are just like this rose.
If you sully your body by allowing boys to
touch it in forbidden ways, you can never be
whole or beautiful or pure again, just as the
petal of this rose can never be pure and
white again. No good man will ever want to
marry you."
This declaration shocked me out of my stance
of self-hatred and self-condemnation.
Another incident happened at about this time
in my life that completed my evolution into a
lifelong foe of the double standard. I
remember hearing Elder Mark E. Peterson, one
of the most revered of the church's twelve
apostles, speak about chastity. One example
he gave has not lost its putrescent lustre
over the thirty intervening years:
"Girls, every time you let a boy kiss
you, its like having someone licking butter
off a piece of bread. What man is going to
want a piece of bread with all the butter
licked off?"
The implications behind this are legion and
obvious, and I must get on with my story. But
briefly, I felt, though I could not
understand it clearly then, that this denied
female sexuality entirely. It denied that
girls kiss boys, too. It said that they were
sexually passive - objects that males act
upon. The buttered bread theory also implied
that boys never had their butter licked off,
no matter how many females they kissed. They
can kiss and neck and pet their heads off and
still have their butter intact, but are well
within their self-righteous rights to go
around checking suspiciously for girls'
butter. But most of all, what this said to me
was that men are not roses, they are not
pieces of buttered bread. They are not
objects, they are human beings. Only women
are things - roses and bread. Never in the
church do we hear men referred to by
analogies that make them objects or anything
less than fully human. Women, like objects,
are presumed to have been created for men's
use.
The double standard is the basis of the
patriarchal order: men have privileges that
women do not have, only one of which is that
they never lose their chastity - never get
their butter licked off. Chastity is not a
concept that relates to men. No woman would
refuse to marry a man who was no longer a
virgin. It is a concept men impose upon
women, not upon each other.
Several years ago, in a sacrament meeting in
the Sterling Park Ward in Virginia, a young
woman who attended Brigham Young University
and was home for the summer was speaking. She
told about going out with a young man at BYU
whom she came to like very much, and
apparently the feeling was mutual. One night
after he had taken her to visit his family,
which seemed a hopeful sign, he drove to the
local parking spot and parked. She was
dismayed and panicky, because she knew she
had two options. On the one hand, she could
allow some lovemaking, which might make him
think she was "easy" and therefore
not a nice girl, not the sort of girl he
would want to marry. On the other hand, she
could insist that they leave, and risk
humiliating him and therefore losing him. The
classic double bind. I believe she said an
urgent silent prayer at this point- I
certainly would have if I'd been of her mind
- and then said to him, quietly and oh so
gently so as not to offend, "Do you
think Jesus Christ would approve of
this?"
Silently he started up the car and took her
home. For the next few days she lived in a
state of agonized apprehension. Then, thank
God, he called, and as they drove around town
he told her how much he respected her for
doing what she had done, and confided that if
she had "let" him, he never would
have gone out with her again.
She ended her speech in church by saying how
thankful she was that the church had made her
the kind of girl who could keep the
affections of this kind of boy.
I was appalled at her recital. And even more
appalled at her blindness to what she was
actually saying. How could she still think
highly of a boy who would park and neck with
her but despise her for necking with him? If
she had not totally accepted the double
standard entrenched in the church, she would
have sent that clod scampering for his life,
instead of being humbly grateful that he
still liked her. I hope that she never
settles for any man who does not take equal
responsibility for the decency and goodness
of their relationship. Because any man who is
willing to let the woman he claims to love
bear the terrible weight of responsibility
and guilt for any sexual misdemeanours loves
a suspiciously unloving love.
Soon after I was excommunicated, I received a
letter from a Mormon woman that said:
"My awakening occurred twenty years ago
at the end of a pristine (in my view) date
with a young Mormon man who brought me to my
door, called me a Jezebel, and castigated me
for the lustful thoughts I had aroused in
him. He ordered me in his best patriarchal
voice to enter my home, fall on my knees, and
pray for forgiveness for the sins I had made
him long to commit. A few days later when the
shock wore off, I began a long process of
analysing the church's attitude toward
women
"
· Sonia Johnson's book is available
from www.ffrf.org
Growing up in the
Greek/Cypriot culture as a young woman during the
seventies, I too had to contend with rigid tradition
and the sexual double standard morality, in Sonia's
case girls were programmed to police themselves in my
case we were policed by our families. Fortunately the
old traditions are dying out although some diehards
still cling to them. Girls were expected to remain
virgins till marriage. After the wedding night the
bride's mother would present the bloodstained sheet
to the groom's mother as proof of the bride's
virginity.
If a girl succumbed to temptation and lost her
virginity before marriage she could always have a
hymen reconstruction operation. The most important
thing was for a girl's hymen to be intact. There are
anecdotal tales of a chicken being slaughtered and
its blood used to provide the much esteemed evidence
of the bride's virginity. In some other countries the
double standard morality is downright deadly. Parts
of the world such as the Middle East, North Africa
and Pakistan, women and girls can be killed by their
male relatives if they are found to be non virgins on
the wedding night, these killings are known as honour
killings and are sanctioned by conservative Muslim
clerics. It is a known fact that a torn hymen is not
necessarily a sign that a woman is not a virgin. In
some Muslim countries women and girls can be stoned
to death for having sex outside of marriage. Women
can also be killed by their male relatives for
disobedience or mere suspicion of adultery. At this
moment, in Nigeria, Amina Lawal is awaiting execution
by stoning to death for having a baby out of wedlock,
she will be buried in the ground up to her neck and
the men will gather around her throwing stones at her
till she dies. Look up Amnesty International's -
Honour killings in Pakistan article.
The euphemism "female circumcision" is used
to describe the gruesome procedure inflicted upon
millions
of women and girls in Africa, parts of the Middle East,
Indonesia and Malaysia. Female Genital Mutilation
-FGM- predates Islam and Christianity. It is
practised by Muslims some Christian groups and among
animists in Africa. In countries such as Somalia and
Ethiopia FGM is encouraged by some religious leaders
in order to guarantee chastity for women and girls
although there have been a few clerics who condemned
the mutilation, much to their credit. The most widely
practiced form of the mutilation is the removal of
the clitoris and labia minora.
In some parts of Africa women undergo what is known
as infibulation. Infibulation is the most horrific
type of genital mutilation. The victim is held down
by four women and her legs are spread wide. The
mutilator uses a sharp object such as razor blades,
scissors, knives and broken glass. All the external
genitals are sliced off and the. remaining skin
stitched together over the wound. Only a small
opening remains to permit the passage of urine and
menstrual blood. The victim suffers excruciating pain
and haemorrhage. It's not uncommon for victims to die
from blood loss and infection. The effects of FGM are
many, infection, difficulty in passing urine and
menstrual blood, painful sexual intercourse,
agonizing childbirth - women have to be cut open in
order to deliver the baby.
According to Christian Right
ideology, AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality
and sex outside of marriage. Why is it then that
lesbians have the lowest incidents of infection and
that some people have been infected via contaminated
blood transfusion? Why is it that babies born from
women who have AIDS also carry the disease. Isn't God
being unfair?
In some parts of Africa up to 30% of the population
is infected with the AIDS virus. Quite often both
parents succumb to the disease and the children are
left to fend for themselves. Campaigns to promote the
use of condoms and safe sex practises have been met
with opposition from religious organizations,
particularly the Catholic Church, which has made the
crusade against condom use its number one priority -
after that of legal abortion. African society is
polygynous. Men are allowed to have more that one
wife plus extramarital liaisons. Women are expected
to remain virgins until marriage and faithful to
their husbands after marriage. In many cultures women
have no right to question their husbands whereabouts
or demand that their husband wear a condom.
Furthermore, they are not allowed to refuse the
sexual demands of their husbands. For these women
ABSTINENCE is not an option.
The implications of the religious fundamentalists'
abstinence/ignorance campaign are clear. We re going
to have a generation of young people growing up
ignorant, misinformed and with a poisoned view
against sexuality. They would be the ones less likely
to use condoms and or birth control when they do have
sex and therefore be more vulnerable to disease and
unwanted pregnancy.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging young people
in their early teens to wait until they are older.
Young people need to be told that it is okay to say
no and okay to say yes. That's what personal choice
and autonomy is all about. Honest, down to earth sex
education with emphasis on contraception and disease
prevention cannot be overrated.
Depriving young people of the means to protect their
health is not only life threatening, it is also
unethical. For the fundamentalists who are always at
odds with reality, ignorance is a virtue and
knowledge a vice - especially knowledge in sexual
matters!