The Moral Majority

Last week I did a lactation consult at a home where the mother left the TV on.  Usually I am able to completely tune out this kind of thing, but the subject matter of the TV program kept distracting me. (And by the way, how rude is it to leave your TV on during an appointment with someone?)

It was Anderson Cooper's new daytime program, and the subject was "Purity Balls."  Cooper's primary guest was Randy Wilson, "founder" of the "purity ball" concept and obvious Quiverfulling patriarch:


For those not in the know, "Purity Balls" are wedding-like events where pre-teen girls, paraded around in white dresses, pledge to their fathers that they will remain "pure" until marriage.  I'm not kidding, they actually pledge their virginities to their dads.  Perhaps most laughable is their insistance that these events allow women (led by a male hand, of course) to be "empowered" enough to refuse the pressures of risky sexual activity. Incestuous overtones aside, this phenomenon has become just another way for the Religious Right to lay further claim to the female body.  Reaffirming the antiquated notion that a woman's only worth comes from refusal of her own sexuality, Purity Balls not only assume that a woman ought to stay "virginal" until marriage, but that her sexuality must only exist within the confines of heteronormative, monogamous ownership by her husband thereafter. 

Fortunately, the always quick-witted Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com and author of The Purity Myth, was there to make a counter-argument:


The remainder of the episode, from what I caught, was a monotonous argument between audience members.  One group reiterated the obvious sexism that assumes women can't make their own decisions without a male guide, the other defended the idea by citing vague statistics on STIs and unintended pregnancies.  When able, Valenti offered some critique of what was missing from the discussion: one side railed against the repression of sexuality, the other against the dangers of sexual activity as perpetuated by damaging media images, but why aren't we talking more about the commodification of sexuality and offering young girls ways to make truly autonomous decisions about their sexual lives?

Valenti's points didn't resonate all that well, but not because she herself isn't one of the most articulate advocates of positive sexuality.  The problem was the context of the discussion: it was a daytime talk show where complex topics with many gray areas don't exactly get a comprehensive view. 

I will often rail against the concept of "virginity," as I see it as little more than a well-perpetuated social construct.  Pregnancy and STI infection notwithstanding, there are no permanent physiological changes that occur when a person, male- or female-bodied, engages in any kind of sex act with another person, at least none that couldn't be inflicted upon oneself through masturbation.  The other problem is that people identify "virginity" in many different ways: there are folks who have given or received oral sex that will still refer to themselves as "virgins," though they aren't much less likely than a person who has had vaginal intercourse to have contracted an STI.  The presence of a "hymen" (now more accurately called the corona) is still thought of as a litmus test for a woman's supposed "virginity," though in actuality the thing itself rests somewhere between anatomical reality and social myth. 

Wilson and his crew likely identify with the "Moral Majority," a politically-active group of fundamentalist Christians who lobby for their conservative leanings to be made into law.  They want to see not just abortion but also contraception outlawed or severely restricted, they rail against any family or relationship dynamic that does not fit into a "one man one woman" mold, they want to force their religious beliefs into public spaces, and they most certainly do not want to see positive sexuality taught in schools.  And after all this judgment-passing and alienation, they still call themselves the "majority." 

I cringe at the word "morality" for just that reason: I've been socialized to associate it with the above principles.  But the word itself, "morality."  All it means is that a person is aware of their personal values and that they hold themselves to them without compromise.  And in that sense, I'm a highly moral person.  I don't have the kinds of morals that are put upon me by some overarching system of oppression, and in that sense I'm more likely to remain moral without compromise.  Because I truly value what I value.  If I, for example, wanted to have sex with a similar-sexed person, I'd do it consensually and with total ownership of my actions.  I wouldn't do it by toe-tapping in an airport restroom after a full day of crying fire-and-brimstone at the very people I'm trying to sleep with.  Which is, in actuality, how the real majority lives: we set our boundaries, we try to follow them, and when we don't we accept the consequences.  Sometimes our values are dictated by a religious or spiritual belief system, but when that's the case, it's because we've chosen - not been forced - to draw from those systems.  Like it or not, the "Moral Majority" isn't any kind of majority at all.

When I teach middle schoolers about sexual consent within a healthy relationship, I ask the following series of questions:

• Should anyone ever force you to do anything you don't want to do?
• If you only say "yes" to something after being pressured, is it really consensual?
• If you've consented to something in the past, does that mean you've consented to it at any point in the future?
• Do you have the right to revoke consent in the middle of a sexual encounter? 

That last one is the one that trips them up.  The previous three they know the answers to, and they answer them vociferously, "No!  NO!  NO!!!" We tend to forget that kids are smart like that.  But that last one, they have to think about.  Then finally, one kid, usually a female, will shout, "Wait, YES!!!"  The moment where I affirm her answer is an empowering one.  It's empowering for the rest of the group as well, the knowledge that you can test a boundary without committing to it, that you have the full right to stop it when you want to.  That's real sexual autonomy, and I somehow doubt all this is being taught in the supposedly "empowering" Purity Ball classes.

What I'm trying to get at here is this: if the "Purity Ball" crew was really out to empower young women with the tools needed to hold themselves to values that they feel good about, they'd teach them to first explore their own values, then own them for their own sake.  And they certainly wouldn't just target young women. But of course this simply cannot come from the group that calls itself the "Moral Majority."  Such a group exists to force someone else's rules upon large groups of people, rules that keep the female-bodied in a place of subservience and the male-bodied in positions of unrealistic authority, a responsibility which is in its own way oppressive as well.  A truly empowering model would involve imparting upon every young person that they - not their fathers or husbands or whoever else - are in control over their bodies and their sexual lives.