The slippery slope.
These three words provide the principle for exploring sexuality under the purview of Purity Culture.
The slippery slope asks unmarried daters the question, “How far is too far?”
How much physical contact and pleasure can I have before God gets pissed at me, and I have to apologize for being an abysmal human being?
Is it making out? Necking? (Still not entirely sure what that means.) Is it hands on the butts, breasts, and/or genitals? Mouths on butts/breasts/genitals?
While Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex is theoretically about chastity, a word that Jeremiah describes as a “fancy, hyper-intellectual term for purity”, she spends much of the book wrestling with the above questions. Jeremiah says, “You want to know what the rules are so I can go as far against the slippery slope, have a pleasurable experience, but also be in good standings in the eyes of an angry and bitter God.”
In our newest episode of Bedtime Stories, Jeremiah and Julia talk about the psychological and relational challenges that emerge from Real Sex, including:
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The distinction between values and practices (30:00): Winner takes the ethical approach that sexual practices lead to a series of values, so that if you commit to and succeed at not having premarital sexual intercourse, you’ve met your value as a righteous human being and favorable in God’s eyes. Julia takes the opposite approach:
“It’s interesting how I sometimes can align with the values that Christianity holds, like sacredness—I also believe that sacredness is a part of sexuality, but I sure as hell don’t have the same interpretation as Christians do. Christianity fuses value and practice, and anyone with a different operationalization somehow doesn’t hold onto the value. If you think that sacred sex fits outside of these specific confines, you dob’t believe that sex is sacred. Actually, yes I do! Values are different from practices, and I get to determine the practices that fit within the values.”
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Confession (47:00): Winner describes the value of the spiritual practice of confession. While Jeremiah and Julia hold a high value toward accountability, they also muse about the purpose of confessing when it comes to sexual behaviors. Julia surmises, “Sexuality in the Evangelical Church is rooted in the context of doing it wrong, so then, I need to pray harder and confess harder so that I can do it right.” This sets up the conundrum: What does it mean to do sex “right”? Jeremiah notes that the values of healthy sexuality as seen by the sexual health world—consent, non-harm, shared values, avoidance of STIs, honesty, mutual pleasure—are not the values of healthy sexuality in the church.
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Spontaneous sexuality (1:02:00): One of the most common false messages about sexuality is that it’s supposed to be spontaneous. Julia observes:
“If you’re to go out and buy a condom or another type of contraception, that’s a premeditated sin. So having a premarital sexual experience is still sinful, but less sinful because you didn’t plan it in advance. It’s less wrong if something happens that was unpredictable. If one were in a purity culture community and got caught up in the moment, that absolves the couple from reflecting on sexuality, because they can pin the “sexual sin” on feelings. That’s how purity culture sets people up to fail: The only way they can engage in a sexual situation is getting caught up in the moment.”
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An ethical framework (1:06:00): Winner’s goal in Real Sex is to discuss a sexual ethic around sexuality, and specifically, chastity. Jeremiah and Julia explain, “Ethics is a decision making process, but if ethics and behaviors are linked, there’s no decision making process, because you just do the behaviors that are given to you.” Jeremiah notes a flaw in Winner’s approach:
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a common ethical decision making process used by theologians, and it says that wisdom is taken from scripture, experience, tradition, and reason—what does science, sociology say about this? Winner values experience, scripture, and tradition, but actually leaves out reason, which is what educational platforms strengthen. It’s a tragic move. If you’re not willing to talk about the science of sexuality, your perspective on ethics is limited, and not particularly relevant.
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The panopticon (1:21:00): Jeremiah and Julia discuss a scene in Real Sex where Winner explores the slippery slope by encouraging readers to ask how comfortable they would be with other people watching them engaging in levels of sexual activity at, say, the Washington Monument, knowing that if the viewers were church members, there would be severe judgment. Jeremiah is reminded of Foucault’s panopticon analogy—the panopticon being the watchful tower that stood in the middle of 19th and early 20th century prisons, where guards could watch the behavior of prisoners and punish those who misbehaved. Jeremiah explains:
The church’s job and responsibility is to hold people accountability so that people don’t “stumble into sin”. It becomes my job to say something to whip people into shape. So, if I’m dating, I have to set my expectations around someone’s discomfort, knowing they might chastise and punish me. Not only then am I unable to make my own decisions that work for our relationship, we have to consider that people around us may punish us for moving into a sexual situation that moves outside of the normal realm of purity culture.
The implications of the Washington Monument metaphor, where the community will do whatever they can, including fear mongering tactics, to keep folks on the straight and narrow. It moves the conversations into a series of What ifs? That doesn’t allow for exploration, flourishing, or to figure out what works for you on your own terms. You’re always pushing back against the church, the panopticon.
Jeremiah and Julia conclude that Real Sex “sets up a way to figure out how to make sense for someone to work sexually, but it’s shrouded under the fear of the watchful eye: an angry God who coincides with an angry community.” What were other messages, helpful or unhelpful, that you remember from reading Real Sex?
