A female parishioner recently introduced me to a friend of hers, “Jess.” Jess is a graphic design artist who works for a parachurch ministry. She invited me to her office to test a new website design. Later I invited her to lunch. Jess is sweet and somewhat adorkable, and I enjoyed getting to know her. She attends a conservative Presbyterian church, reads Max Lucado, and doesn’t watch R-rated movies. I find both her shyness and the way the bangs of her brown hair frame her face winsome. The following Sunday she attended my church and sat in on my adult Sunday school class. (She even gave me some resources to help me with my preparation for my class on Galatians.) We started seeing each other regularly after that.
Last Sunday our late afternoon coffee date was hindered by the shop’s closing early, so we walked a few blocks to the ice cream parlor. Over milkshakes, she invited me to travel with her to Virginia to visit her family. Our interactions have been entirely chaste, of course.
Jess is pretty, feminine, sweet. I’m attracted to this type of woman. My previous girlfriends have fit this type. They exhibit a certain purity. (When I attended her young adults group at her church, Jessica made a point of decrying explicit sex in contemporary films.) I find Jess physically attractive, yet I struggle to translate that into sexual arousal….
She may as well be wearing a chastity belt.
Even the prospect of “corrupting” her (taking her virginity and initiating her into the realm of carnal delights) doesn’t arouse me. (And it’s safe to say that I have a corruption kink.) Jess’s chastity repels my lust.
Meanwhile I’ve continued to furtively visit escorts and indulge in hookups.
Nineteenth century art, literary critic Bram Dijkstra contends, depicted women as either Madonna or Whore. Freud in “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love” said that a man can only get sexual gratification from a degraded woman (a mistress or a whore). Freud argued, “The whole sphere of love in such persons remains divided in the two directions personified in art as sacred and profane (or animal) love.” There are two archetypal ways that I view women: either as the saintly Madonna or the lascivious whore. Jess obviously falls into the first archetype. She does not produce, to again quote Freud, “any sensual excitation but in affection which has no erotic effect.” I can’t imagine virginal Jess succumbing to bestial lust. I’m romantically drawn to the “girl next door.”
But it’s the slut who excites me. So I seek out that Proverbs 7 woman, “dressed as a harlot,” when that primal sexual instinct erupts within me.
The sexually liberated woman both arouses and unsettles me. Positioned against the chaste vestal, she challenges the conventional notions of femininity with which I was raised. One of the messages I received in the purity culture was that women are divinely ordained, through their inherent virtue, to quell the tempestuousness of male sexuality. In The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti writes, “Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can’t help themselves not only drives home the point that women’s sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men’s sexual behavior.” The tempting “daughter of Eve” — alluring, sexually potent — corrupts my attempts at sexual virtue.
“Eve. The original bad girl of the Bible, Eve is cast as weak and susceptible to Satan, ravenous for forbidden knowledge….” That’s what Kristen Sollee writes in Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive. Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden set the template for femininity. “Prevailing archetypes of womanhood in the Bible become virgin, obedient wife or deviant whore.” Luther wrote, “The word and works of God are quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.” When I was seduced by Jezebel into committing fornication (cf. Rev 2:20), temptation proved irresistible.
Much contemporary popular culture (as exemplified by the erotic adventurousness of the protagonists on Sex and the City) posits that uninhibited sexual expression is empowering to the modern woman. Samantha is the lustiest of the quartet, seeking to “have sex like a man.” The antithesis of my romantic ideal of the “good girl,” she won’t let anything stand between her and her next orgasm. “Girl power” has become synonymous with sexual assertiveness. I recall the unreserved sluttiness of the sorority girls at the nearby public university when I was in college. They were nothing like the modestly attired girls from my Christian college. They unnerved me. And aroused me.
But, unlike Jess, I find the slut so fuckable.
Lutheran Guilt 