Restored - Ending Violence Against Women

Natalie Collins / 14:38 / 11 Aug 11

In this guest blog, Kat Brealey considers the implicit messages about gender found in popular Christian relationship books for teenagers...

If there was one youth meeting at church that was guaranteed to get a full house when I was growing up, it was the annual ‘sex talk’. There was a palpable sense of anticipation as the girls trooped upstairs to one room, while the boys stayed downstairs in another. Much of the content of these talks was based on the wisdom of books which came out of the American abstinence movement in the 1990’s – titles like Josh Harris’ ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’, and Stephen Arterburn’s ‘Every Young Man’s Battle’, copies of which grace many a teenagers’ bedside table. Their message is simple; sex is to be saved for marriage, and prior relationships should avoid intimate physical contact. This is in itself fairly uncontroversial, and indeed something which many Christian parents would like to see their children adhere too. However a closer look at the implicit messages about gender found in these books suggests that parents should exercise caution in endorsing them wholeheartedly.

The abstinence movement subscribes to a long established cultural conception of female sexuality as passive, but presents this as God-ordained. Young women are not expected to desire or enjoy sex. Male sexuality, in contrast, is perpetually in pursuit of satisfaction. The implications of this for relations between the two cannot be ignored. Although books may claim that both parties must be the ‘moral cop’, in reality the model of gendered sexuality advanced by the authors renders this unrealistic. Of course young men should do their best to retain appropriate sexual boundaries, but when they have been taught that the potency of their sex drive renders this an almost impossible task, is it likely that they will, or that the burden will fall to the young women they are in relationships with? Sociologist Susan Rose carried out a study which supports this, finding that American teenagers who had been through a programme of abstinence education spoke in strongly gendered terms about sexual responsibility, in contrast with Swedish adolescents who had not been exposed to the abstinence message and whose patterns of speech reflected more equal expectations of women and men when it came to taking responsibility for one’s sexual behaviour.

The implications of this are illustrated when these books come to the question of modesty. Young women are encouraged to follow guidelines which regulate what they wear, to ensure they do not act as a ‘stumbling block’ for young men. Such rhetoric depicts women as unaware of their sexuality and the fact that they may be attractive to men. This places the responsibility for men’s behaviour on women, as the intensity of male sexual urges apparently renders men incapable of controlling them. This is insulting to men who do clearly choose to exercise self-control over their sexual behaviour. Moreover, women are taught to accept that they are always potential temptresses and that they are in some way to blame for the way men act towards them, even if this is sexually inappropriate. What message does this give regarding rape and sexual violence, if women are depicted as continuously alluring beings, whose failure to censor their attractiveness can provoke an uncontrollable sexual reaction? Statements found in these books such as “You teach people how to treat you. The way you dress sends others a message” veer dangerously close to the prevalent notion that women who are raped were ‘asking for it’, by what they wore or the fact they walked alone at night - when in fact full responsibility lies with the rapist for their choice to brutalise and degrade a woman. In this way, abstinence books perpetuate the notion that rape is a male biological urge.

Coalescing to this popular reading of rape reveals an ignorance of sexual politics. Rape is not an isolated instance of lustful uncontrollable desire; it is part of a wider structure of power in which sex plays a key role in asserting male dominance. To reveal this fact, we must dismantle the apparatus which acts to preserve the myth of uncontrollable male sexuality, by identifying elements of our culture which promote these attitudes. Abstinence is concerned with guarding against sexual activity in the present, but in doing so introduces young people to harmful sexual patterns in which men are released from any culpability for their behaviour and women are held responsible, whether or not sex is consensual. Denis Gamache’s work on dating violence among teenagers recognises that dating situations serve as a rehearsal for young men and women’s adult roles, and thus an expectation as to who will be passive and aggressive in this context – whether enacted sexually or not - cannot help but play a part in the formation of adult behaviour. We must be aware of the implicit messages about gender found in the books we give to our own children and those in our youth groups. Abstinence books paint a picture of male sexuality which has potentially dangerous implications for women. Therefore whilst many will not wish to reject the abstinence message outright, it is one which should be approached with caution and discernment.

Kat Brealey has recently graduated in Religions and Theology from the University of Manchester, where her final dissertation was on the literature of American sexual abstinence movement.

TOPICS: Churches, For corporate members, Men, Peer groups, Women, Youth
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