{"id":521,"date":"2007-04-03T11:50:55","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T11:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=521"},"modified":"2007-04-03T11:50:55","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T11:50:55","slug":"on-purity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=521","title":{"rendered":"On Purity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there a creepier word in the lexicon than “purity”?
\nNZ Christian outfit Focus on the Family is planning a Purity Camp<\/a> where girls will learn to “stand up for purity”. Meaning, of course, sexual purity. The camp was apparently inspired by Purity Balls<\/a> in the U.S., where Christian fathers pledge to ensure their daughter doesn’t lose her virginity before she is married. It looks like the inspiration was general, not specific, and the camp will do its own thing with the idea.
\nI’m not going to write about the pros and cons of preserving your virginity until marriage, or even of recruiting your father to keep your hymen intact. Today I’m just interested in the word purity. What a horrible, horrible word. Decode it with me for a second.
\nPurity originally referred only to an aspect of the physical world – the amount to which a mineral or a liquid was mixed with other substances. Purity was heavily associated with value; pure substances are valuable; the less pure they are, the less valuable they are. (According to this dictionary<\/a> the word was first applied to morality and moral corruption in the 14th century.)
\n“Purity” in terms of sexuality is a metaphorical construct. This metaphor claims that morality or selfhood or godliness is like a substance that can be diluted by another (bad) substance, namely sexuality. Sexual behaviour makes you impure, like a drop of ink into a glass of water. Sexual behaviour makes you less valuable.
\nAll of this means that the metaphor of “purity”, like in the Purely Girls Camp, implies two unpleasant things.
\n1) As a young girl, your sexuality is not really part of you, but something apart from your pure self that you can and should battle to control and strive to escape. You are less valuable if you don’t.
\n2) As a young girl, your value should be and will be evaluated and judged by an external observer. Purity is not a statement of self-assessment, but an evaluation made from without.
\nI hate the word “purity”. It has little to do with Christian values – a loving and forgiving God could not begin to engage with the condemnatory underpinning of the word. Instead, I think the word is in such common use – particularly in the U.S. – because of its associations with traditional views of women as property. Fathers signing purity pledges aren’t so much worried that God will see their daughters as impure; they’re worried that other fathers will.
\nThe Purely Girls camp is its own thing. It won’t, I hope, be echoing the deeply disturbing aspects of the Purity Balls. Still, the language in use suggests that a troubling ideology will be part of what is conveyed at the camp. Girls won’t just learn how to say no; they’ll learn that their sexuality is their enemy, and that it is right and proper for them to be judged for their purity.
\nThey’ll probably wait a few years longer before having sex, though.<\/a> That makes it all seem worthwhile.
\n==
\n(Further reading: from everyone’s favourite official White House website, Operation Infinite Purity<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there a creepier word in the lexicon than “purity”? NZ Christian outfit Focus on the Family is planning a Purity Camp where girls will learn to “stand up for purity”. Meaning, of course, sexual purity. The camp was apparently inspired by Purity Balls in the U.S., where Christian fathers pledge to ensure their daughter … Continue reading On Purity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-8p","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}