Purity Culture and Commandeering Female Sexuality: the 18th Century and Today
Let's go back to a time when "feminism" as we now know it didn't actually exist. Back when a woman, should she fail to find a marriable man and secure a proposal before her mid-twenties, became useless and a burden. When school and art and sex were curated for male pleasure, and should a woman think to express indulgence and interest in any of them, then she was ghastly. A time that Jane Austen wrote all about in her well-loved novel Pride and Prejudice.
That's right, the lovely Regency era of 18th century England. Full of "Lords" and "Ladies", "Barons" and "Baronesses", "Viscounts" and "Viscountesses", and that oh-so-revered monarchy. Though it's heavily romanticized particularly in modern media, it was a time of restriction and the true start to many ideals now considered foundational for what we know to be feminism. In many ways, much of the culture surrounding the expectations of women do not stray so far from what is seen today in Puritan, evangelical spheres.
But I’ll get to that.
Listen, I love watching Bridgerton and the movie version of Pride and Prejudice as much as the next woman who wants to pretend that the dreamy hypothetical romance and wedding we would have would make up for any misgivings of the time period. But, in actuality, the severe lack of any semblance of essential human autonomy, I think, might just become a small mood-killer (especially–and I’ll say it–when it comes to sex), even if this idealized version of history was a reality... Which it wasn’t.
In reality, truthfully, the “Mr. Darcy”s and “Duke of Hasting”s didn’t really exist, and neither did the “Daphne Bridgerton”s and “Elizabeth Bennet”s, those are figments of the imagination to conjure a falsified, idealized version of an era cornerstone-d by demeaning attitudes and behaviors towards women. Particularly, in codifying women’s worth, and placing it squarely in their ability to be married, conceive children, and maintain the persona of purity and obedience in doing so.
Of course, this was not a rarity presented solely by the 18th century, it absolutely was a prevailing ideology of times past. However, this era stands notable due to it being one of the first times that a push back against these “indesputable” ideologies. A time when men repeated the age-old rhetoric of “well women are ____ because they can’t ____,” and for once, finally, women hit back with, “...but who made it that way?”.
Now, why do I say this wasn’t “feminism”, and that it didn’t actually exist? What women were doing in the 18th century was indeed radical, so it can be confusing what separates it from what we now know as feminism and feminist literature. Answer being: It wasn’t feminism yet.
This point becomes a very integral one to touch on. Women, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, most markedly), Mary Leapor, and Lady Montagu were indeed pushing back against authors such as Rousseau, Gregory, and Swift that wrote that women were ill-equipped for “male-dominated” spheres, such as to do with education, and were inferior to men by being inherently meeker and more fragile.
Yet, even so, they largely were not in fact arguing that women were altogether equal to men. They, simply put, were just not at that point yet. This may be a shocking sentiment, but truly it has to be recognized: women were so socially conditioned to perceive even themselves to be intrinsically below men, that they weren’t even yet at the point of arguing for equality. Rather, they were addressing an integral linchpin to what would eventually BECOME feminism: hypocrisy. Women writers of the 18th century were revolutionists in their direct, unabashed responses to prolific male writers, in calling out the hypocritical nature of what they wrote.
For instance, in Lady Montagu’s “Response to Swift”, wherein she directly contrasts what Jonothan Swift attempts to say in “Lady’s Dressing Room”. In this text, Swift, sardonically, pokes fun and expresses his shock at the state of a lady’s dressing room, citing the smells, the mess, the chamber pot. In her response piece, Lady Montagu essentially hits back and says, “Look at yourself for a moment then, why don’t you,” and “what, are you so surprised that women are humans, too?”.
All of this is obscenely important to understanding and addressing the permeating cultural and societal attitude rooted in misogyny that perpetuated the belief that women were to be pure, pious, and subservient to men, or they were simply unacceptable. Women of the 18th century faced and pushed back against this hypocrisy as well that a man’s sexual expression was valid and acceptable, while a woman doing the same things would entirely diminish her image and ruin not only her’s, but the women around her’s worth in society.
Somebody who hits fantastically on this point is Marlene LeGates in her piece “The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century Thought”. She dives deeper than I can here into the ways in which women began to band together during this time and challenge a myriad of hypocracies thrust upon them by a preceding patriarchal mindset, sexual expression included.
LeGates touches upon what the thought process at the time was surrounding problems that may arise in marriage. She speaks on the way that most everything was blamed entirely on women. She describes, “What was particularly wrong with marriage was women, and what was wrong with women was their inclination to sexuality and disobedience… The male could control his sexual urges – by wine, herbs, work, study, and sex itself… but only the latter method could satisfy the womb, the ‘animal within an animal’,” (LeGates 22). LeGates discusses how the prevailing ideology was that the only way a woman could “tame” her sexual urges, as she wasn’t allowed to work or school, was through sex itself; and, as such she was inherently a wild, shameful, sexual being, and therefore untrustworthy with her own sexualitity and expression thereof.
For those that have seen Bridgerton, some may remember the scene where Daphne Bridgerton says to Simon, “I believe I now know the reason why every mama of the ton keeps her daughter in total darkness about certain diversions...Should they have told us what [sex] is truly like, however would we get anything else done at all?” (S1E6). Yeah, that was generally the mentality. Women, should they be given free-range, if you will, would simply be uncontrollable, and that, in itself, is entirely shameful.
Therefore, the culture of women’s purity and chastity and obedient fidelity to man, being only one step below God, was further reinforced. While men faced far fewer temptations, they then too faced fewer expectations and limitations.
Not unlike the culture still resonating even today, in society as a whole, to be sure, but most predominantly in evangelical circles, and it becomes especially corrupt when placed in contrast with the way the media portrays female sexuality.
Yes, it’s time to talk about that.
Just as “purity” was not new to the 18th century, neither is it obsolete now. In fact, it’s still largely reiterated within the U.S. and the world throughout. Not only is it a further emphasized expectation that women and young girls hold their worth in their wombs, but it is still, actively, damaging the way that these same women and young girls view said worth, their freedom of sexual expression, and their relationships as a result. Not unlike the way in which women of the 18th century were so conditioned to not even fathom genuine equality, women raised and living under these ideologies are so too dissuaded from believing they’re deserving of and allowed bodily autonomy without its consequential effect on their worth as a person and a woman.
For this point, I want to highlight Breanne Fahs, and her wonderful work, “Daddy’s Little Girls: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence”. In which, she does a fantastic job of really going into the prevalent issue of broad-brush sweeping generalizations made by pushing purity, chastity, and abstinence above all else, and the skewing effect that it can have on women and girls’ identity. Fahs highlights these truths, saying “When looking more carefully at the kinds of messages promoted within chastity organizations, the specific gendered distortions become apparent…abstinence-only education programs present adolescent women as victims of sexuality, interested only in penile-vaginal intercourse, and lacking in ability to negotiate sexual subjectivity and desire” (Fahs 120). These ideologies erase the woman as an individual human with individualistic wants and needs, and further carries on with this age-old mantra that women must be subservient and pure, as they, inherently, are not capable of maintaining their own sexual expression. Not only that, but that the act of female sexual expression is in itself a shameful practice for this reason.
This is such an interesting thing to think about, when held up against the way that modern media then portrays women and their sexuality, as being inherently sexual beings. On one hand, this objectification of women so present in media actually completely follows suit with what misogynistic society has been pushing for centuries: a woman, unchecked, will always be inherently sexual.
However, there’s a key difference. Ownership. Modern media objectifies women under the lens of the male gaze. Saying, “Look at this woman. Look at her body, look at the way she follows her wiles unabashedly, look, look, look at her sexuality. It’s for you”.
I mean, just look at these movie posters for the male members of Disney’s “The Avengers”.
Now, look at Black Widow’s, the singular female hero (at the time), posters for the same movie and the one before it. I wonder: can you spot the difference?
This, largely, is the message that is doled out by mainstream media to women and young girls. They inherently are sexual beings, yet, to express so, they are unpious, unpure, and shameful. They do not have ownership of their bodies, of their sexuality, but rather it lies in the hands of the men around them, and their decisons.
It is put perhaps the most perfectly by Madison Hurd, in her article from Media Report to Women called, "Perceptions of Purity Messaging on Women and Secular Society". Wherein, she argues these very similar points, outlining the brazen disconnect, yet exact alignment with history, of messages being given to girls and women, (particularly in secular communities, but clearly in mainstream culture as well) regarding their sexuality. She tells us, “...media presents conflicting messages about sex and sexuality to purity culture messages. Media show that women should always be sexual while purity culture requires women to never be sexual until they get married, wherein they become sexual for the pleasure of their husbands. However, both media and purity culture seek to control the sexuality of women and ignore the agency and humanity of women because of their capacity to be sexual,” (Hurd 11). Control. Control and shame. Seemingly common trends throughout all of time, that feeds into the seemingly everlasting hypocrisy of patriarchy.
I will largely leave you with that sentiment to ruminate upon, with only one additional commentary. Women in the 18th century did not have feminism. It didn’t exist. No underlying line of support from brazen, unabashed women (that they knew of) to lie upon or jump off of. Yet, they pushed forward nonetheless, creating moves and waves in a time when it was entirely unheard of to do so. So I have to wonder, even though we are not in the 18th century, but because those ideologies persist, what does that mean for what is to come? What moves and waves will come next from brave young women and girls everywhere pushing back against ideologies that are ingrained, denied, and maliciously sideswept in our society? What still doesn’t exist... but will?
That's right, the lovely Regency era of 18th century England. Full of "Lords" and "Ladies", "Barons" and "Baronesses", "Viscounts" and "Viscountesses", and that oh-so-revered monarchy. Though it's heavily romanticized particularly in modern media, it was a time of restriction and the true start to many ideals now considered foundational for what we know to be feminism. In many ways, much of the culture surrounding the expectations of women do not stray so far from what is seen today in Puritan, evangelical spheres.
But I’ll get to that.
Listen, I love watching Bridgerton and the movie version of Pride and Prejudice as much as the next woman who wants to pretend that the dreamy hypothetical romance and wedding we would have would make up for any misgivings of the time period. But, in actuality, the severe lack of any semblance of essential human autonomy, I think, might just become a small mood-killer (especially–and I’ll say it–when it comes to sex), even if this idealized version of history was a reality... Which it wasn’t.
In reality, truthfully, the “Mr. Darcy”s and “Duke of Hasting”s didn’t really exist, and neither did the “Daphne Bridgerton”s and “Elizabeth Bennet”s, those are figments of the imagination to conjure a falsified, idealized version of an era cornerstone-d by demeaning attitudes and behaviors towards women. Particularly, in codifying women’s worth, and placing it squarely in their ability to be married, conceive children, and maintain the persona of purity and obedience in doing so.
Of course, this was not a rarity presented solely by the 18th century, it absolutely was a prevailing ideology of times past. However, this era stands notable due to it being one of the first times that a push back against these “indesputable” ideologies. A time when men repeated the age-old rhetoric of “well women are ____ because they can’t ____,” and for once, finally, women hit back with, “...but who made it that way?”.
Now, why do I say this wasn’t “feminism”, and that it didn’t actually exist? What women were doing in the 18th century was indeed radical, so it can be confusing what separates it from what we now know as feminism and feminist literature. Answer being: It wasn’t feminism yet.
This point becomes a very integral one to touch on. Women, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, most markedly), Mary Leapor, and Lady Montagu were indeed pushing back against authors such as Rousseau, Gregory, and Swift that wrote that women were ill-equipped for “male-dominated” spheres, such as to do with education, and were inferior to men by being inherently meeker and more fragile.
Yet, even so, they largely were not in fact arguing that women were altogether equal to men. They, simply put, were just not at that point yet. This may be a shocking sentiment, but truly it has to be recognized: women were so socially conditioned to perceive even themselves to be intrinsically below men, that they weren’t even yet at the point of arguing for equality. Rather, they were addressing an integral linchpin to what would eventually BECOME feminism: hypocrisy. Women writers of the 18th century were revolutionists in their direct, unabashed responses to prolific male writers, in calling out the hypocritical nature of what they wrote.
For instance, in Lady Montagu’s “Response to Swift”, wherein she directly contrasts what Jonothan Swift attempts to say in “Lady’s Dressing Room”. In this text, Swift, sardonically, pokes fun and expresses his shock at the state of a lady’s dressing room, citing the smells, the mess, the chamber pot. In her response piece, Lady Montagu essentially hits back and says, “Look at yourself for a moment then, why don’t you,” and “what, are you so surprised that women are humans, too?”.
All of this is obscenely important to understanding and addressing the permeating cultural and societal attitude rooted in misogyny that perpetuated the belief that women were to be pure, pious, and subservient to men, or they were simply unacceptable. Women of the 18th century faced and pushed back against this hypocrisy as well that a man’s sexual expression was valid and acceptable, while a woman doing the same things would entirely diminish her image and ruin not only her’s, but the women around her’s worth in society.
Somebody who hits fantastically on this point is Marlene LeGates in her piece “The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century Thought”. She dives deeper than I can here into the ways in which women began to band together during this time and challenge a myriad of hypocracies thrust upon them by a preceding patriarchal mindset, sexual expression included.
LeGates touches upon what the thought process at the time was surrounding problems that may arise in marriage. She speaks on the way that most everything was blamed entirely on women. She describes, “What was particularly wrong with marriage was women, and what was wrong with women was their inclination to sexuality and disobedience… The male could control his sexual urges – by wine, herbs, work, study, and sex itself… but only the latter method could satisfy the womb, the ‘animal within an animal’,” (LeGates 22). LeGates discusses how the prevailing ideology was that the only way a woman could “tame” her sexual urges, as she wasn’t allowed to work or school, was through sex itself; and, as such she was inherently a wild, shameful, sexual being, and therefore untrustworthy with her own sexualitity and expression thereof.
For those that have seen Bridgerton, some may remember the scene where Daphne Bridgerton says to Simon, “I believe I now know the reason why every mama of the ton keeps her daughter in total darkness about certain diversions...Should they have told us what [sex] is truly like, however would we get anything else done at all?” (S1E6). Yeah, that was generally the mentality. Women, should they be given free-range, if you will, would simply be uncontrollable, and that, in itself, is entirely shameful.
Therefore, the culture of women’s purity and chastity and obedient fidelity to man, being only one step below God, was further reinforced. While men faced far fewer temptations, they then too faced fewer expectations and limitations.
Not unlike the culture still resonating even today, in society as a whole, to be sure, but most predominantly in evangelical circles, and it becomes especially corrupt when placed in contrast with the way the media portrays female sexuality.
Yes, it’s time to talk about that.
Just as “purity” was not new to the 18th century, neither is it obsolete now. In fact, it’s still largely reiterated within the U.S. and the world throughout. Not only is it a further emphasized expectation that women and young girls hold their worth in their wombs, but it is still, actively, damaging the way that these same women and young girls view said worth, their freedom of sexual expression, and their relationships as a result. Not unlike the way in which women of the 18th century were so conditioned to not even fathom genuine equality, women raised and living under these ideologies are so too dissuaded from believing they’re deserving of and allowed bodily autonomy without its consequential effect on their worth as a person and a woman.
For this point, I want to highlight Breanne Fahs, and her wonderful work, “Daddy’s Little Girls: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence”. In which, she does a fantastic job of really going into the prevalent issue of broad-brush sweeping generalizations made by pushing purity, chastity, and abstinence above all else, and the skewing effect that it can have on women and girls’ identity. Fahs highlights these truths, saying “When looking more carefully at the kinds of messages promoted within chastity organizations, the specific gendered distortions become apparent…abstinence-only education programs present adolescent women as victims of sexuality, interested only in penile-vaginal intercourse, and lacking in ability to negotiate sexual subjectivity and desire” (Fahs 120). These ideologies erase the woman as an individual human with individualistic wants and needs, and further carries on with this age-old mantra that women must be subservient and pure, as they, inherently, are not capable of maintaining their own sexual expression. Not only that, but that the act of female sexual expression is in itself a shameful practice for this reason.
This is such an interesting thing to think about, when held up against the way that modern media then portrays women and their sexuality, as being inherently sexual beings. On one hand, this objectification of women so present in media actually completely follows suit with what misogynistic society has been pushing for centuries: a woman, unchecked, will always be inherently sexual.
However, there’s a key difference. Ownership. Modern media objectifies women under the lens of the male gaze. Saying, “Look at this woman. Look at her body, look at the way she follows her wiles unabashedly, look, look, look at her sexuality. It’s for you”.
I mean, just look at these movie posters for the male members of Disney’s “The Avengers”.
It is put perhaps the most perfectly by Madison Hurd, in her article from Media Report to Women called, "Perceptions of Purity Messaging on Women and Secular Society". Wherein, she argues these very similar points, outlining the brazen disconnect, yet exact alignment with history, of messages being given to girls and women, (particularly in secular communities, but clearly in mainstream culture as well) regarding their sexuality. She tells us, “...media presents conflicting messages about sex and sexuality to purity culture messages. Media show that women should always be sexual while purity culture requires women to never be sexual until they get married, wherein they become sexual for the pleasure of their husbands. However, both media and purity culture seek to control the sexuality of women and ignore the agency and humanity of women because of their capacity to be sexual,” (Hurd 11). Control. Control and shame. Seemingly common trends throughout all of time, that feeds into the seemingly everlasting hypocrisy of patriarchy.
I will largely leave you with that sentiment to ruminate upon, with only one additional commentary. Women in the 18th century did not have feminism. It didn’t exist. No underlying line of support from brazen, unabashed women (that they knew of) to lie upon or jump off of. Yet, they pushed forward nonetheless, creating moves and waves in a time when it was entirely unheard of to do so. So I have to wonder, even though we are not in the 18th century, but because those ideologies persist, what does that mean for what is to come? What moves and waves will come next from brave young women and girls everywhere pushing back against ideologies that are ingrained, denied, and maliciously sideswept in our society? What still doesn’t exist... but will?
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