What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

star-anise:

Foz has been hosting a really great discussion lately on fanpolice and why it’s appropriate to call their mindset “purity culture” and see it as consistent with sex-negative Christian patriarchal views, even if the fancops in question aren’t Christian, or are LGBTQ+. I thought I’d add some perspective, as a Christian who hears perspectives from a lot of different denominations, about just where these attitudes are coming from.

Because Foz is right and I can provide details: the trends of thought we see in fandom about how shipping the wrong thing is dangerous and destructive almost precisely echo what is taught about sexuality in many Christian churches.

Largely, conservative Christians have been clinging to an old interpretation of Scripture that says sexual desire is destructive and bad, and ignoring all the research that’s come out that says, no, it’s a lot more complicated than that. They frequently try to use scientific studies to prove their point and disguise their Christianity to appeal to a secular audience, but they’re still trying to quell a wealth of research that says:

(An example of religious influence with a scientific mask: Fight the New Drug actively markets itself as science-led and not religiously affiliated, but its founders all belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the attitudes of which the site consistently supports, and its message and interpretations of data, while nuanced, are still tilted in ways experts in the field find counterfactual)

You see, a lot of Christians reject the research on sex because it goes against their religion as they understand it. In Matthew 5:28, Jesus says, “[A]nyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Traditionally, most Christians have interpreted this to mean that entertaining sexual fantasies and viewing pornography is fundamentally harmful and bad. The Christian view of lust and sexual desire is largely that they are, except in the very particular setting of a monogamous marriage, injurious to the self and to others. This is an attitude that many Christian groups have backed away from, but by no means all.

This means that many Christians view all pornography as fundamentally morally evil, not because of how it is produced, but because it causes its viewers to be lustful in a way that is morally wrong… but they still seek out and view porn anyway; they just feel guilt and self-loathing about it.

One of the Christian efforts I’ve seen gain traction is Protect Young Minds. Its explicitly stated purpose is to teach children to “reject pornography”, because it views sexually explicit media as fundamentally harmful and bad. Its emphasis is on teaching children to close their eyes and turn off the screen if they see any sexually explicit images, ever. There is no plan, anywhere, for when kids become old enough to want to seek out sexual content–because they think that adults should never view porn either–but they don’t emphasize that bit, instead focusing on protecting the children.

For the past 30 years, many Christian groups have been really focusing on teaching their children and teenagers the concept of “emotional purity,” which means not only abstaining from sex outside marriage, but also abstaining from attraction, sexual desire, or romantic feelings. (The only exception: If this is your One True Destined Soulmate You Will Spend The Rest of Your Life With.)  Failure to do this, they teach, will damage and “tarnish” you, and ruin your chances of ever having a successful marriage.

Despite massive evidence that it is these attitudes, and the shame and guilt about sexuality they promote, which damage people and their happiness in relationships, they are still being taught in many, many churches.

So when everything a person is saying lines up with these attitudes, except with the tiny proviso that your One True Destined Soulmate You Will Spend The Rest of Your Life With is now allowed to be the same gender as you if you want?

Yeah. That’s conservative Christian purity culture in a gay hat.

(New rule: Anyone who expects me to seriously engage with their disagreements and provide research and analysis in my reply has to send me $20 first. And anyone accusing me or anyone else of being a sexual predator without proof can fuck off into the sun. I’ll just block you)

Seconding all of this and adding: you do not have to support the type of Christian dogma mentioned above to perpetuate a similar pattern of thought. The comparison lies in the subject matter and the way the arguments function, not in the big emotional/spiritual Why of how you come by those arguments in the first place. It’s disingenuous to say “one of these things is about controlling women for the church while the other is about saying darkfic is bad, how can they possibly be similar?” while pointedly ignoring the parallel chains of reasoning used to support both causes.

It’s not a competition as to which group has caused more damage globally or historically, nor about which has the bigger reach. It’s simply a matter of saying, “counter to what we provably know about human sexuality and psychology, both these groups insist that specific types of sexual fantasies, which they deem Morally Bad, are inherently linked to your real-world desires, such that failing to suppress those fantasies makes you a Bad Person whose indulgence in them will cause Bad Things to happen to you and/or others, because there is no moral difference between fantasy and reality.” That you also get antis unironically echoing right-wing religious talking points about how all fiction should be moral and educational lest it corrupt the youth, to the point where certain books or ideas should be banned from schools or libraries, only adds an extra dimension of irony to the comparison.    

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    I love this post!My own input is that in twenty years, I have never seen shipping a thing hurt a person. Not the...
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