13 Articles of Healthy Chastity
This is the talk I gave at Counterpoint Conference in reference to the question: Why do Mormon women often list “sex” as one of the problem areas in their lives?
As a young woman, I went into my first temple interview (for baptisms) as a complete sexual ignoramus. (I thought ‘french kissing’ meant kissing for long time as opposed to a friendly peck. And that pretty much summed up the entire depth of my knowledge.) My parents never talked to me about sex, and I only had the vaguest notion of what was involved. So when the Bishop asked me if I obeyed the law of chastity, I don’t know if it was the stupefied look on my face, or if he was following standard procedure, but he quickly amended, do you understand the law of Chasity? And I felt I had to admit that I did not think so.
I don’t really remember what he said, but I do remember that I was just as mystified by the end of his explanation as I was prior to it. His words sounded a lot like Charlie Brown’s teacher voice to me. Wha Wha . . . Wha Wha Wha. I think I’d had a vague notion that maybe I’d finally learn something about this big mysterious sex thing, and instead all I got was a long mortifying non-learning “moment” with my friend Melinda’s dad, who also happened to be the bishop. This was a man who I am sure did not want to discuss sex with me (no matter how obliquely), and with whom I did not want to discuss sex.
I guess I did learn something, I learned once again, that talking to adults about sex was extremely uncomfortable and uninformative. I learned not to ask.
And to further complicate the issue, while my mother never talked to me about sex, as such, and made an effort to protect me from any knowledge about sex, and I never asked her anything because it would have been too terribly embarrassing, she did somehow transmit to me in some subtle ways that she rather liked sex. Of the married variety of course. She would make vague favorable remarks or say things like “hubba hubba” and wiggle her eye brows.
Of course I had many lessons on chastity and virtue and modesty from my mother and in Young Women’s, but since I had no interest in boys and they had no interest in me, I kinda thought these lessons didn’t apply to me. I mean who would be tempted to do anything (whatever that mysterious naked something that might involve) with the goofy boys I knew? Sooooo not tempting. So far from being tempted, I didn’t even relate to the temptation at all. Those were temptations that applied to some other kinda girl.
And so somewhere between my lack of interest in boys, my numb-skulled self-righteousness, the thick veil of sex secrecy, some mostly really great Young Women’s leaders, and my mom’s clear signals that sex was something that would be fun and appropriate after I was all hitched and stuff, I sorta missed out on most of the shame and body guilt that afflicts a lot of my Mormon sisters.
Which when I look back at some of the lessons I learned in Young Women’s (they couldn’t all be awesome leaders) seems nothing short of a small miracle. One I remember off the top of my head was the object lesson in which the teacher hammered a nail into a block of wood, and the hole in the wood represented the hole that sex would put in our, um, virtue? You could try to fill it in with putty, but there’d always be this big ol’ nail shaped scar there.
And we probably all remember the lessons involving used chewing gum and licked cupcakes in which we learned that used germy dregs are only good for the trash, and not for marriage to a nice boy.
The atrocity of a those object lessons are an uncorrelated bonus, but the official manuals aren’t any better, oh dear no.
As soon as I read this gem out of the young women’s manual I remembered it immediately:
“[A] camel and his owner … were traveling across the desert sand dunes when a wind storm came up. The traveler quickly set up his tent, closing the flaps to protect himself from the cutting, grinding sands of the raging storm. The camel was of course left outside, and finally begged for entrance into the tent.
“There is room only for myself,’ said the traveler.
“But may I just get my nose in so I can breathe air not filled with sand?’ asked the camel.
And so the story goes with the camel begging himself into the tent one small body part at a time until the camel is fully inside the tent and pushes the man out into the harsh storm to presumably die a shameful lonely sandy death. His life destroyed because he took pity on the greedy nose of an ungrateful camel.
And the next little vignette in that very same lesson is equally awesome, in which “Alice” who knows better goes to one of those kinds of parties, and one small mistake (just like that cursed camel’s nose) leads to inevitable disaster! Because of course she accepts a drink at the party, and of course she then loses control of her body and mind, and of course she is then date raped, and then of course “she had to live with the heartbreaking loss of her chastity.”
Are you scared yet?
Because if the mere thought of holding hands with a camel doesn’t terrify you at this point, then there is always the young woman in the class who has been raped, she just learned that not only was it all her fault, (because she let that camel put his darn nose in the tent) but she also learned that her “chastity was heartbreakingly lost.” So apparently her chastity isn’t about her agency, her choices, or her respect for her body and her love of God, That can’t be what chastity is about, not if some rapist at a party can just take it away like that.
And if you are not that poor girl, then you could be the girl who went to a party and took that drink, and maybe even kissed a boy passionately, and somehow came out the other end with your chastity intact and without so much as a speck of desert sand in your eye. Did this lesson just empower that choice, the choice to step away and live a life of virtue, or did it instead perhaps imply it is only a lucky break that you aren’t even now buried in the cutting sands of sex and sin by evil camels spiraling out of your control the moment you took that first sip of beer?
Or perhaps you’re just the girl sitting back in the corner rolling your eyes, and tuning out teacher because the story of Alice is ridiculously overwrought and utterly lacks believable nuance .
I’m having a hard time envisioning the girl who truly learned something positive and empowering about Chastity from this lesson. Something that wasn’t about fear, shame, guilt, or disdain. It seems to me that chastity deserves better than that.
And while were on the subject of lack of nuance: here is another quote from the Young Women’s manual:
Immorality does not begin in adultery or perversion. It begins with little indiscretions like sex thoughts, sex discussions, passionate kissing, and such.
The problem with this particular lack of nuance is that every one of us has sex thoughts, it literally can not be helped. Asking young people to label every single sex thought as immoral simply does not help anything or anyone to live a more moral life.
An article in Psychology Today, about controlling unwanted or problematic sexual thoughts, states:
Here is the recipe. Take an urge or an odd thought; mix thoroughly with negative emotions, sensations, or images; then fold in a heaping helping of suppression and avoidance (pushing out of mind; engaging in ritualistic undoing, [singing hymns]). Voila. Obsessive stew.
Every time you check to see if your suppression worked – well, it didn’t. You just thought of it. Again.
This is from an article about recently published study of problematic viewing of internet pornography. And it turns out our discussions of Pornography also lack helpful nuance.
It is the current reality that nearly every one of our young women are going to see a certain amount of porn. And it turns out that suppression, avoidance, self-loathing and criticism are actually part of the obsessive stew that make this problem worse.
Also from that article:
As participants learned to accept the urge (to view porn), to watch it rise and fall mindfully, to embrace themselves in a kinder and less judgmental way, and to pivot toward valued actions, something remarkable happened. Viewing became far less frequent, but what was remarkable was how that happened. People softened. Religious obsessions went down but positive commitments went up. Obsessive thinking was relieved and with it worry that unbidden thoughts alone cause harm. They were more able to act in accord with their own values.
It is literally impossible to teach our youth not to think about sex, but if we teach them to accept themselves, and forgive their slip-ups, they will make more positive choices. Isn’t this our goal?
The young women’s manual doesn’t actually address porn specifically, neither does it ever acknowledge female sexual desire, girls are cautioned to avoid arousing men, are urged to “resist pressure” from boys, but their own libidos are entirely dismissed. Granted most of the younger young women are not having sex because they really want to have sex. But the reasons they do are rarely acknowledged.
There are occasional discussions of loneliness and wanting love. But that heady feeling of power that comes from being sexually desirable, the rush of attention, the status and control? The temptation of sexual power is simply ignored. It is an empty power to be sure, because it is not a power that comes from within ourselves, but a power that derives from the perceptions of men, from being wanted by men, but how are we to address this with young women if we never even acknowledge that girls also feel temptation.
Girls are charged to be guardians of male behaviors, even made to feel responsible for male behavior, and men are again and again depicted as weak and out of control.
fMh commenter Motions de Smiths relates this story:
The YW leaders brought in a head of cabbage. They said “This is a teenage boy’s brain.” They took off half a leaf and said “This part is devoted to thinking about school.” They took off another leaf and said “This part is devoted to thinking about sports. But the rest of it–THINKS ABOUT SEX!” I guess the message was that all boys want is sex. And you girls want intimacy for lovey dovey warm validation reasons. And yes, that may have been part of it. But I was also horny for horny reasons too.”
This myth of male weakness is a pernicious lie that we have to eradicate from our culture. It manages to be both anti-male and anti-female. Anti-male because it teaches that men are wild beasts instead of noble agents of their own destinies. I do not mean to imply that it is a myth that teenaged boys think about sex, a lot. But it is a harmful lie to say sex is the only thing boys want. Boys are just as complex and moral and strong as girls are. And No girl can make a boy think or do anything. Boys make their own choices and are exclusively responsible for those choices.
The myth of male weakness is anti-female because it blames girls for boys thoughts and choices. And that is wrong. Period.
Most especially wrong because the girl who is molested and abused and raped by her uncle and brother, father, and family friend is told that she was just so tempting that he could not help himself. And because she has been fed a steady diet of the myth of male weakness, more often than not, she believes it, and further, when she goes into the bishop to confess this sin that isn’t a sin at all. Bishops who do not understand, have never been trained, put these girls on the path to repentance, when the sin is not hers.
And nowhere, not anywhere in all the young women’s manuals are the issues of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse discussed. There isn’t even so much as a lesson where a caring YW’s leader (with initiative) might shoehorn abuse through the side door. Nowhere is there a lesson on how to spot unrighteous dominion or on relying on personal revelation and personal stewardship.
And the need is so great. I was at a conference where a distressed mother told us the story of her daughter who was taken aside by her seminary teacher told he had received a revelation that she was to be his plural wife in the celestial kingdom. This poor girl felt she that if she had a strong testimony of the gospel, she had to believe him, she didn’t tell her parents, and because of this distressing news, she put her own life and desires for her future on hold, she was an emotional hostage to this man. To her mother’s great distress, she did end up losing her testimony and feeling very bitter toward the church. Our daughters deserve the unassailable knowledge of their right to personal revelation.
There are other serious problems with the manuals, of course. One is that the references to sex are almost all incredibly negative, and while many of these messages are softened by leaders and parents who may emphasize that sex can be a beautiful and pleasurable experience within a marriage, there is no acknowledgment that sex can be fun and empowering and a true expression of love, and so if these caveats are not added by leaders all that remains is fear and ignorance and shame.
Here is a quote from President Kimball from a lesson on Dating Decisions:
“Among the most common sexual sins our young people commit are necking and petting. Not only do these improper relations often lead to fornication, pregnancy, and abortions—all ugly sins—but in and of themselves they are pernicious evils”.
As no one under the age of 50 even knows what necking and petting are, exactly, it seems the average Mormon girl must agonize that any small slip constitutes not just a mistake, but indeed a pernicious evil.
And what is the girl to think who has had sex, who did have an abortion, who has returned to church looking for help, for Christ’s love? This lesson talks about sin a lot, but not once is the Atonement mentioned.
A recent comment from Jess at feminist mormon housewives said:
I recently read parts of my journal from my YSA years. It’s amazing how much agony I went through beating myself up about going a little too far with my boyfriend, worrying about repenting and feeling like garbage. And crikey, i never even did anything that bad! I feel sad about how much anxiety I went through during a time when it was pretty natural.
And this guilt and fear and shame and worry doesn’t just disappear magically on our wedding nights. Many, possibly most, Mormon women continue to worry even after marriage that certain things are evil.
Jess’s comment continues:
It’s still hard for me to assert or even really enjoy my sexuality (with my husband), and i really think it’s because of all the negative messages i received growing up.
I was just tying humanitarian quilts with a friend she recounted her bishop’s council that french kissing was verboten even after marriage, (I hear versions of this all the time on the blog, including council about oral sex or lingerie or whatever, so it must be fairly common) and she says even after a decade of marriage she finds herself getting tense in the middle of sex, worried that she’s doing something wrong even when she doesn’t truly believe that.
I just have to include this kinda funny, but also really sad quote from fMhStephanie:
One of my friends who got married within a week of me got rid of all her lingerie because her husband told her what it “makes men think”. I’m kind of hoping it makes DearHusband think, “I want to sleep with you”. That’s what I’m going for anyway.
We can not really mean to prevent husbands from thinking about their wives in a sexual way, how can that possibly be healthy?
An fMh reader who calls herself AMA says:
I am studying psychotherapy at BYU, and we see a lot of cases of young newlyweds who have never had sex (married more than a year sometimes), or tried once and failed, and haven’t tried since. It is very sad — this is not God’s intent for marriage. Untrained laymen (bishops, yw/ym leaders, seminary teachers, etc) have put so much shame and fear around the topic of sex, that it creates truly dysfunctional thinking. I don’t know if the church could change their approach, I doubt they would.
I too sometimes get discouraged, with these outdated manuals, and the harmful messages we’re giving our Young Women. But there are glimmers of hope, a recent update of the personal progress program show many admittedly small but significant improvements. And I have it on good authority that the manuals are slated for a much needed overhaul in the near future.
I would like to end with a list of Thirteen suggestions for helping Mormon women have more sex-positive experiences:
1. Overhaul the YW manuals, specifically emphasize chastity, virtue, and modesty as positive powerful choices, affirm the sacred nature of our bodies and our respect for God.
2. Remove the defensive fear-based vignettes, change emphasis from ‘camel-nose-rape-one-slip-n-you’re-toast to the healing power of the Atonement.
3. Ask Youth leaders/teachers specifically to avoid object lessons that demean our divine nature or compare young women to objects (wilted flowers, tainted food, chewed up gum, battered wood, cabbages or licked cake).
4. Stop talking about modestly as anything other than a sign of self respect. Make boys guardians of their own virtue, girls have no stewardship over boys thoughts or actions.
5. Ask teachers not to have activities emphasizing outward appearance (like make overs and fashion shows) because teaching girls they must always be “modestly hot” in order to attract a husband is still teaching the false illusory power of attracting male attention with our bodies.
6. Root out references to the myth of male weakness. Emphasize that men can control themselves.
7. Include nuance in discussions about sex thoughts, sex discussions, sexual desire, and porn. Our Young Women will think about sex, they will see porn, they will feel desire, they need to talk about sex with reliable adults, they need tools, not blanket prohibitions and condemnation.
8. Include lessons on physical sexual and emotional abuse, and unrighteous dominion.
9. Empower girls to listen to personal revelation.
10. Emphasize that girls who are raped and abused are not responsible for their abuse. That there is no loss of chastity or virtue.
11. Train bishops on what date/acquaintance rape looks like. On my small blog alone, I can think of dozens of women who were called to repentance after being raped.
12. Encourage parents to have ongoing explicit age-appropriate discussions with their children about sex. It is vital that we lift the veil of silence and discomfort. Many Mormon parents are naively worried that they will give their children ideas, or somehow corrupt them with facts. The fact is that children are surrounded by sex, lots of bad information, and tons of sexually explicit materials. But it is a proven fact that the more reliable factual knowledge kids have about sex, the more they talk to their parents about sex, the less likely they are to engage in it. It may be too much to ask, but I dream of a day when the church provides parents with age appropriate manuals for a comprehensive factual approach to sex-education that uses words like penis and vagina and sex.
13. I am going to introduce my final and perhaps most pressing suggestion with another comment from fMh by AJ:
Sexual abuse in my childhood had spurred in me an odd fascination with sex, leading to experimentation with masturbation and pornography. These issues were never addressed directly in YW. Everything I knew about the church’s stance on these issues came from reading the priesthood session talks in the conference ensigns. I felt such deep shame–not only was I a sinner, I was sinning in a way only boys were supposed to sin.
Talking to bishops was awkward at best, harmful at worst. I was asked such inappropriate questions as “did you orgasm?” and was even manipulated and seduced into a physical relationship with one of my bishops. More often the issues I faced when trying to confess these transgressions was embarrassment–more on the part of the bishop than myself.
These men intended to help me would turn bright red and stutter that I should just stop these behaviors. They were too embarrassed to provide real support.
Now–I think bishops are in general very good men trying hard to do God’s work. But I was very, very deeply hurt by the actions of some of the bishops I worked with as a teen.
The amount of pain and confusion caused by the bishop who developed a physically romantic relationship with me is immeasurable and ongoing. I believe he was essentially a good man who just made some very, very bad mistakes. He’s received his punishment and forgiveness and he continues to takes steps to ensure that he never hurts anyone that way again.
But after what I endured at his hands I feel it is absolutely 100% inappropriate for YW to be taught that they must discuss sexual transgressions with an untrained older man in order to obtain the Lord’s forgiveness. I won’t pass on that teaching to my daughters, and you can bet I’ll never be turning to a priesthood leader for counsel regarding my sexuality again.
AJ’s life unfortunately encapsulates all the problems that exist in the current system of women confessing to men. Even in the best case scenario, it is deeply inorganic, brutally awkward, and let’s be frank, it’s just plain old’ creepy. Young women should not be locked in a small office with a middle aged man who has not been trained in any way to counsel young people about sex, and then asked explicit questions about her sex life. Even if he is the most spiritual kindly man in the world, the situation is just wrong. And when he is not that man, when he is a weaker man, the situation is ripe for abuse, and it is abused, far too frequently.
I can see two possible solutions to this problem, the first is to require that young women have a parent or YW leader present in her interviews with the bishop. I still see this as an imperfect solution, because while it does protect her, it also intrudes further on a her privacy.
My preferred solution would be to turn the stewardship of women’s sexuality over to women. Just as in the temple there are certain settings where it is inappropriate for a man to interact with women, and in those situations women are given stewardship. So too is it inappropriate for men to be taking sexual confessions from women and to be asking sexually explicit questions of women. Relief Society presidents and Young Women’s presidents could be given this stewardship as part of their calling, to exercise those keys in a limited way, just as matrons do in the temple.
We Mormon’s have a well-deserved reputation as some of the most innocent/uptight people on the planet. Which is ironic considering our beliefs about sex and marriage. unlike many other faiths we believe that sex should be enjoyed and even celebrated between a wife and her husband. And given that Mormonism is a religion of embodied parent Gods, and we believe our bodies are a sacred gift and that sex may just be an eternal part of our celestial existence (rather than a Catholic-style sin encrusted burden to be cast off with this mortal coil), I think we need to look at this problem with profound seriousness. And make the changes necessary for Mormon women to feel empowered by their positive sex choices and celebrate their bodies as divine sexual beings.