Capracus said:
Josh was conditioned by his life experience to elevate fulfillment of his sexual desires above adherence to his religious indoctrination, hopefully Anna’s experience with Josh’s behavior will condition her to question the value of aspects of that indoctrination that are counter to her best interests.
In the first place, that's not how the conditioning is set up to work. Well, okay, the part about men elevating fulfillment of sexual desires is indeed the underlying taboo, but few in purity culture ever acknowledge the point. But the grooming of sexual behavior that starts before some of these girls are out of diapers really does have its effect.
Indeed, it even magnifies certain concerns that I would at this time, beseech you to recall. And here I will offer you a contrast, for illustration. The clickbait at the top is a song called
"D City Rock"↱, and is marked as the "TeddyLoid Live Remix"; I like how this one sounds, and whether or not the word is actually in the studio mix, this one sounds better in part for not being bleeped. And for the lack of autotuning. And it's just flat out a better mix.
Still, though:
My name is Panty the Crazy. Sexy Panty, and I'm not done breaking the news, now, Boys, us Girls, we're full-time horny, too.
There is a crude ritual in one of my social circles; it doesn't come up as much, anymore as, well, we're not as young as we once were, and, you know, any joke gets old after a while. But every once in a while women meeting certain aesthetic standards will, by their behavior, make themselves unavoidably noticeable in certain crowds. And where others used to mutter something contemptuously about bitches or dumb hos or, you know,
sluts, someone in this circle might―there is no guarantee that anybody would, these days―say, in a particularly
hopeful voice, "Oh, hey, sluts!" And the ritual answer is that someone else should just nod and say as sagely as possible, "Sluts are good." And I swear unto you, this idiotic innovation on juvenilia, derived from I don't know where, predates any of our conception of SlutWalk by well over a decade. And well it should; while not derived specifically from the notion, the
sluts are good line is inextricably linked to the old joke about the difference between a bitch and a slut; it still denigrates women to a certain degree brought into question only by the presence of an idea of women's liberation, and that's because it hopes to exploit the slut reputation. It is also a ritual and therefore largely useless self-denigration:
Sluts are good because my chances of getting something just notched up a little bit. And that's actually the meaning of the joke.
It would, in fact, be a good thing, in certain ways, if Anarchy Panty―played, on this occasion, by Debra Zeer―preaches the truth. Or so says me. Still, though, compared to the history of how society views women's sexuality, it's a hell of a contrast. I might try to pick through my memory in order to account the clues suggesting truth or falsehood, but in the end I am not a woman, nor should women be regarded so monolithically. As with the men, we might expect some women would disdain being thought of as perpetually horny.
The contrast, the older, other way of looking at women's sexuality is much more familiar to me; Mark Steel might be British, but there isn't much about his 1998 explanation of the
"Sexual Revolution"↱ (that's also the title, which is why it's in quotes) for BBC Radio that isn't familiar. And in the context of gendertyping, the 1996
Solution° for
"Sexuality"↱ is also worth the time.
What I remember from being young is that whether or not the girls were just as horny as us, they fretted mightily about specific potential consequences. And it is perplexing to me, given that most STD transmission statistically favors delivery unto a receiving partner, and the simple fact of pregnancy itself, that we might overlook this in the question of any woman's sexual behavior, be it an assertion of a wife's right to adultuery, or the questions of whether she was horny and what she was wearing. Or anything else. The closest I can get, as a receiving homosexual, is that the spectre of disease is terrifying. But even on this count, it's not the same. True, it is sufficient to prevent me from seeking a roomful of men to suck off without invoking any observable neurotic response; that seems practical enough, and probably to the best. But it's also likely interfering with the endeavor to find a regular, trusted partner, because let's face it, in the moment, with a couple of drinks in me, I'm puttin' out. In that context, it's certainly capable of neurotic backlash. But I'm also male, and in addition to the lack of pregnancy concerns, as well as general cultural empowerment, I encounter this consideration at a different time in my life. And in this context, the difference is powerfully significant.
I think back to the gravity of these concerns for my female age peers; part of what I never learned until fatherhood is what a person's
brain is doing during these years, and that is essentially paring down pathways in order to prioritize, organize, and regulate function. This is a fundamental component in how significant behaviors from this period of development become living habits in adulthood.
And whatever context
any of my female age peers might have individually engaged these spectres, in addition to other burdens you're well accustomed to seeing me denounce, were being reiterated and habitualized at the same time I was reiterating and habitualizing my full-time horny. I'm approaching the STD aspect from a completely different context; I have no idea what any one woman feels, but the behavioral evidence of this gravity is evident throughout the catalog of my memory from the time I started waking up to it. And, well, yeah, I'm not a morning person, so it took me a while. In fact, if we hunt the Sciforums archive closely enough, we can probably witness the last couple transitions in real time. That's how long it took. And it's almost, but not quite zen:
The only thing I get is that I have no fucking clue. I can see it happening, and it looks bad enough; I do not, and by nature itself
cannot actually know how it feels.
But in addition to the history describing purity culture as a system of exploitative masculine privilege, and the grooming of women toward subservience, there are also the inherent, natural,
"Congratulations, you're a woman, so worry about this!" burdens that society so discouragingly awards the female human condition.
Double-X is not a disability; it is our human baseline. The Y chromosome exists specifically to serve the perpetuation of that baseline. Yet somehow, we've turned this into something of a curse.
Every once in a while, I get into a row with atheists here or there about the question of a moral linchpin. If one converts away from faith, say, Christianity, a basic psychological function is thrown into disarray. God, and one's understanding thereof, previously constituted the linchpin of moral prioritization and organization. How does one engage and comprehend fundamental questions of right and wrong? 'Tis true, the answers are myriad; for me the canon is damn near silly, ranging from Albert Camus to Zeno's Paradox, with doses significant and otherwise pulled from various manners of art and philosophy. But the world is full of clues, and for anyone who tries, it really is a difficult explanation in part because it is so individual, and unlike religious faith, such moral constructions are not specifically confined to a template. And perhaps this complexity is part of the problem; the reason it becomes a row is that the primary answer, when forthcoming at all, is to simply disclaim atheism itself. And I would agree it doesn't really matter in that isolated context, but in a more evangelical advocacy, it's a question worth giving some thought.
I raise the point now in order to wonder at how other people see the prospect of moral reorganization. In this case, you; it just seems that―
I'm thoughtless and insensitive because I suggest the she abandon aspects of an ideology that don’t best suit her needs, or those of her children?
―your suggestion seems nearly blithe compared to the general human behavioral condition in our society.
____________________
Notes:
° There are three radio series: The Mark Steel Solution, The Mark Steel Revolution, and the Mark Steel Lectures; the latter was recycled into a television series, and, you know, the list of peripherally relevant episodes ... is ... well, let me think: Sylvia Pankhurst↱, obviously; Mary Shelley↱, Lord Byron↱, and Sigmund Freud↱ leap to mind. Actually, there's a fourth series, but the latest, Mark Steel's in Town↱ is a bit more obscure.