In a chastity-focused church, there’s plenty of sexual shame to go around. Where does most of it fall?
[poll id=”323″]
Discuss.
Agency, Anti-Mormon, Apostasy, Education, Faith, Morality, Mormon, Mormon Belief, Mormon Culture, Uncategorized, weekend poll
Shame on You! (Weekend Poll)
Wheat & Tares 
There is a video that is shown in YW fill of women ‘confessing’ to their sins and discussing how broken they are until they repented and though feel different, are better. I don’t remember the name, but the styles were definitely from my mother’s generation.
When are men harassed about wanting sex more than their wives and why would we be shamed for that?
Visit the newborn nursery at your hospital, take a look at the babies an decide which ones are deserving of shame. I’ve actually done this exercise and as you might expect they all looked innocent and undeserving of being shamed yet many of them will be shamed by their parents and others with healthyer parents will acquire shame by misunderstanding. We all have some and many of us have a lot of it. Shaming for social control is common and effective but for many people it is brutal and way overdone.
The church’s war on modesty and chasitity violations is hard on both genders but hardest on compliant young women many will later learn that their otherwise healthy sexuality has been suppressed to the point of being unable to enjoy the sexual side of marriage.
For me the order of shame from greatest to least is: Female youth, Female adult, Male youth, Female child, Male adult, Male child. (I included children due to those Friend articles).
The definition of guilt is: I *made*a mistake. Shame: I *am* a mistake. The church imparts a lot of shame to it’s members by representing the natural man as a fallen sinful mistake. In other words we are all mistakes! Really? God made us this way but he screwed up and it’s up to us to correct that for him? We are not mistakes, natural man an all we are not mistakes and we should not be shamed for being what God created. It would be much healthier if the church changed it’s tone but that is highly unlikely because they would have less control over us.
I said it in my Mormon Jargon post. We are taught we are “craven perverts in the image of God.”
I picked men, but I confess that I think it is impossible for men and women to be able to truly compare. All I hear is “men, quit using porn.” I’ve never been to a YW meeting, so I have no frame of reference for them. I’d be curious if answers to the poll question differ by gender. I suspect men pick men, and women pick women, and I wonder if more women are answering the poll question than men.
In GC when that sister started talking porn, I just tuned out and started transcribing the Oaks talk. I am sooooo sick of that topic in GC.
I think we will all learn to use shame less to control each other as we learn how to honour agency better. I think the youngest kids in our family are subject to less shame than their elder siblings. I think that’s partly less shaming at church, partly less social change in society as a whole, and partly a growth of skills in us as parents. We’ve worked hard to make ours a sex positive household. It seems to me that no situation is improved by shame.
Howard, look out yon window for airborne swine, b/c we agree re: female sexuality and the perhaps unintended but nevertheless real problem that perfectly chaste married women are made to feel like whores for wanting to enjoy sex.
Hawk, snarky but on point.
I’m also sick of the “men, lay off the porn, you pre-verts”. Next I expect to be lectured by Elder Col. “Bat” Guano (U.S. Army, Ret.), about avoiding a conspriacy of “pre-verts”
I don’t feel like I can vote because I think it’s equal – shame and fear and blame, plenty to go around for both sides
I’ve been very particular about raising my daughter in sexuality and modesty, and who at age 8 has more knowledge of anatomy and sexuality than I did at 17 — but I know many, many of my peers who refuse to even address the topic.
A differing perspective…
I’ve never felt shame in the church, and I tend to believe there are others who haven’t, either. I’ve felt the church to be a place of safety and strengthening.
God through Moses prepared an eye for an eye idol worshiping people to receive Christianity. It wasn’t an easy task, they were stiff necked requiring 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to temper them. The 10 commandments were offered as a set of classroom rules to reduce criminal activity and provide an environment condusive to learning. The 10Cs weren’t meant to be the final law, they aren’t even Christian! Christ brought the beatitudes and they superceed the 10Cs. Enforcing the beatitudes is difficult to do because they aren’t bright line rules, rather they are philosophy based in love and empathy they weren’t meant to be enforced they were meant to be taught and lived as a result they impart little guilt. The LDS church is far more Mosaic and pharsical than it is Christian beatitude. Christ isn’t nearly as worried about your chastity, modest dress, or what you choose to drink as your Bishop is! Who did Christ shame besides Pharisees? So why does our church resort to phsarsical bright line rule shaming? Clue it’s more about controlling you than it is about getting you to the Celestial Kingdom. How do I know? The Celestial Kingdom isn’t for Old Testament people, is it?
Interesting article over at Dovese and Serpants on the affects of this shame within our culture.
http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2014/03/heber-j-grant-beer-and-sexual-morality/
Elder Col. “Bat” Guano (U.S. Army, Ret.), about avoiding a conspriacy of “pre-verts”
Wasn’t he the one that gave that talk in PH a few years back on conserving our precious bodily fluids? Or was that someone else? 🙂