Swarming the Pub(l)ic Square:

A continuing survey of the farce; or, where the folks are given the last word; or, a pointed laugh

by Gassalasca Jape, S. J.

The Cult of Chastity: Lauren Winner and the Purity Brigade

he Church has always called its members to two committed, chaste expressions of their sexuality: the connubial and the celibate. For those not yet committed to either or only temporarily committed to the latter—a status whose duration is always in doubt—there is an awkwardness that is difficult, painful, and humorous. The humor of the struggle seems lost on many contemporary protestant evangelical youths, but not on Jeff Sharlet, who has written about them for Rolling Stone.

The goal of these young people is apparently to make chastity cool for rock’n’roll youth culture, and the result is much humor at their expense as they try to uphold their inherited notion of fornication as just about the worst sin there is while wearing “masturbation bracelets,” “snakeskin tights,” and “muscle shirts” while playing red guitars at parties in renditions of “Like a Virgin” and “I Want Candy.” (Mercy me, red guitars!) Sweet Jesu, this reminds me of certain wild Renaissance paintings with not-very-erotic farcical portrayals of sexuality. (And speaking of paintings, one of the most erotically-literate people I know is Sister Wendy, whose explications are often exquisitely and most properly arousing.)

Sharlet further profiles young writers like Anna Broadway, “part of an intellectual avant-garde of the purity brigades,” a group, Sharlet notes, “mostly of women.” Broadway currently has a contract with Random House for a book project arising out of her blog “Sexless in the City,” which chronicles her attempts to remain chaste in all sorts of compromising situations. Sharlet also points to Dawn Eden who is working on a book about “becoming newly chaste.” (What a remarkable euphemism!) Then there is the grand-dame of the once and future chaste, Lauren Winner and her latest book Real Sex, which completes her cycle from evangelical freewheeling fornicator to church lady.

Winner of the much-heralded cat’s eye glasses scored a real coup this summer, earning praise from both The New York Times and WORLD Magazine. Winner reassured the Times that she is not a Creationist, thinks George Bush is the worst president ever, and is “not really persuaded that [she has] any right to legislate against abortion in a pluralistic democracy.” At the same time, she’s back on the chastity wagon. Evangelicals from Andy Crouch to Gene Veith (and Catholics too) are falling over themselves to praise Winner’s book and glom onto the newfound chic of chastity as recognized by cultural barometers like the Times.

Hollywood has caught the bug as well. Perhaps this is the much awaited salutary effect of evangelical inroads into that din of evil. More likely both groups exist largely as the spawn of cultural fads. The Hollywood virgin kick has culminated in the recent box office hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, a comedy that portrays its protagonist as a loveable, if somewhat nerdy man who, to the surprise of his decidedly not-virgin friends, is strangely attractive to the fairer sex. Discussing the rise of the celibate in Hollywood, Elayne Rapping, professor of pop culture and media studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says “all of this has become a new way to sell sex when sex has become commonplace and fairly uninteresting. It’s come full circle. There’s more intrigue when people identify themselves as virgins or celibate or whatever. People have gotten bored with the endless display of graphic sex.” But then she adds the key kicker, “but they pretty much have sex, anyway.”

The decisive impression I have from reading the Rolling Stone piece and from crashing several evangelical youth group meetings is that Rapping’s assessment pretty much holds true for the wanna-be-hot-virgin-Christian-crowd as well. Yet still the guardian of Christian virtue—the “Christian” (read: Evangelical) publishing industry—trumpets the Winnerizing of chastity as a boon for pure wedding nights everywhere. The relief that virgins finally have access to the universal coin of the American realm—“cool”—is palpable. I have read Winner’s Real Sex, and to be fair, her defense of chastity is real and I do not believe it to be an affectation or fad so far as she is concerned. But after a great deal of conversation with those like Anna Broadway who follow in her wake, it is increasingly apparent to me that Winner, as an artifact of her “community,” such as it is, personifies the deep sicknesses in the American Christian scene when it come to a proper understanding of “real sex.”

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