I’m meeting “Colleen” for coffee tomorrow evening. Mrs. Swan from the adult Sunday school class I teach set us up. “She’s such a nice girl!” Mrs. Swan enthused. As a single young man in ministry, this isn’t the first time a parishioner has arranged a date for me.
Colleen and I have communicated with each other via e-mail and text. She really does seem like a nice girl. She graduated from a local Christian college and is a child counselor. She’s active in her church. She adores coffee and the works of Tim Keller. She’s, um, not unattractive. Her online blog evidences a genuine spirituality. One of her recurrent themes is a desire to be a “Proverbs 31 woman.”
Most of the young women I’ve dated fall into this mold. I’m genuinely attracted to that type.
But I can’t seem to resist a “Proverbs 7 woman”:
And behold, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot….
“I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.
Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with caresses.” (10, 17-18).
In my experience, dating and sex have generally been separated. Growing up, I somehow was conditioned to distinguish between “good girls” and “bad girls.” Good girls were the ones you accompanied to Bible study, innocently held hands with, and chastely kissed on the cheek at the end of the night. Of course, good girls don’t think about sex. They’re pure and untainted. Bad girls were literally soiled. “Damaged goods.” There’s an OKCupid question that asks: “Could you respect someone you slept with on the first date?” At a certain level, I honestly have to answer, “No.”
But I’d still gladly sleep with her.
In The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti critiques the cultural shibboleth that a young woman’s moral worth is dependent upon whether or not she is sexually active. “Women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs.” “Dirty girls” demonstrate a lack of character by their inability to abstain from sex. “Unable to live up to the ideal of purity…many young women are choosing the hypersexualized alternative that’s offered to them everywhere else as the safer–and more attractive–option.” If you can’t be a virgin, you might as well be a slut.
I couldn’t imagine committing myself to a young woman who wasn’t saving herself for marriage. But good girls seriously devoted to preserving their chastity aren’t fuckable. Since good girls were off limits, I subconsciously channeled my erotic energies toward women who advertised their sexual availability, divorcing sexual expression from romantic affection. Sex was dirty, so dirty girls were the ones you went to for sex.
Prostitute use is exciting not simply because it involves sexual contact with a…‘whore’, but also because this contact represents an act of vengeance against ‘good’ women’s demands for monogamy and sexual restraint.
– Julia O’Connell-Davidson
Mine is a classic case of the Madonna-whore complex. Love and sex are not equivalent. Ideally I’d find a nice girl who loves sex. Yet I can’t seem to even conceptualize that. I date Proverbs 31 women. I fuck the woman from Proverbs 7.
Lutheran Guilt 