Modest is hottest - and other lies we believed pt 1

Whether you've still got your purity ring tucked in a junk drawer or you threw it in a lake years ago, in this episode we will try to navigate the "purity hangover" with a little humor and a lot of honesty.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hi, and welcome to the Man of the Boy podcast. Once again, I'm your host, Nick. I appreciate you joining me for this episode. Today we're gonna dive into purity culture and try to discuss the role it plays in a lot of people's deconstruction. Let me paint a picture for you. And you insert yourself into whichever gender role you would like to. Your sixteen-year-old guy. Hormones. Hormones. This sixteen year old guy never had an explanation as he was forced to sit out of sex ed in public school and his seventh through sophomore school didn't cover any body science. So he believed with every cell in his body that any of his thoughts, desires, wandering eyes they were a direct temptation by the devil himself. That is how interested the devil is in making sure a sixteen year old goes to hell. He believed that this was a rite of passage, a test by God. Now how important do you think this guy should feel? He is getting one on one attention from God and the devil. That's a lot of concern over his sixteen-year-old's hormones and his decisions, but whatever. If he looks at a girl, let's just say like that, he's sinning for sexualizing someone and sinning by showing God that he doesn't value his creation. The fuck? But it gets better, ladies, if the way you dress causes a man to sin, then it's your sin to confess, not his. There are populations where traditional dress is very modest. Trust me when I tell you that if everything were to fall into place, a guy will still have enough wandering thoughts regardless of the level of modesty. Because it isn't about that. It's about instinct. It's about things that just naturally happen. And once again, here's another natural thing that the church is trying to squash down because it challenges their narrative. Anyway, you're a sixteen-year-old guy, you put on way too much of the only clone you can afford, which obviously smells like kerosene and something else, and then you head out to pick up the girl that you've been seeing for a few months. For the let's make it official date. Easy. Remember, these are brainwashed Catholic kids who are not rebelling yet. Once you finish the pleasantries with mom and dad and you leave her house, the two of you drive directly to a Catholic goods store. Yes, they exist. You walk up to the jewelry counter. Now you're starting to picture it's almost like a Catholic mall, right? They have their own jewelry. Anyway, so you walk up to the jewelry counter and spend every penny you have left after your cologne on wait for it. Purity rings. Now while I would say that this is a perfect date, because it was my date, do you think the average non-indoctrinated 16-year-old girl is gonna drop everything to be with that guy? But that wasn't even a consideration, because the indoctrination was so deep that I didn't even see non-Catholic girls as an option. In fact, they were unclean. They were not an option. And I don't just mean Catholic girls, because there were a lot of Catholic girls that I couldn't pursue because they weren't the far right brand of Catholicism that I was. A phrase that came up a lot in high school with my deeply religious classmates was was the the phrase baby Catholic. That's obviously the past judgment that this person is Catholic by name but not by acts. Anyway, the relationship lasted two years, which in high school is a kind of impressive. I survived purity culture, but that wasn't without committing the thing that I bear the most shame over in my life. I forced this shit mindset onto my partner. Thankfully, she was a much bigger person than me and made it pretty clear that if I didn't get my shit together, then I was not just gonna be an asshole, I was gonna be a lonely one. To this day, I carry more shame about that behavior than anything else I've ever done. And that only increases the more I learn to love and respect my wife. I'm seeing more and more every day just how incredible she is, and to know how I used to treat her and what I expected of her and the picture I had painted in my head only increases the guilt. Here's the thing though. Through some pretty awesome therapy, I've begun working on of coursing. And this, if you're not familiar with it, is basically a way to offer yourself compassion by, ooh, I'm feeling this. And instead of going, what the hell is wrong with me? You say to yourself, Well, of course you are. And as that kind of progresses in your thought, it results in me offering myself a lot more compassion and forgiveness. And so through that lens, of course, I treated my incredible wife this way. It's how I was taught that a man of God treated his wife. A really common conception about the purity culture movement, I guess we'll call it, or the purity culture angle to uh teenagers. Yeah, I think if you were to ask a lot of people to tell you what purity culture is or the teachings were, I think a lot of people would say the importance of waiting for marriage. This was, in my opinion, a centuries in the making mindfuck. Because it tied a person's and specifically woman's moral worth to their sexual wholeness. One of the analogies that I heard in high school, and I know that this exists on the internet, you can find it if you're not super familiar with it. A minister was speaking to a youth group about the importance of remaining pure. So to make his point, he took out a piece of gum and started chewing. After a few minutes, he spit the gum into his hand, and then he placed another new piece next to it and asked the guys, which piece would you rather have? Obviously, a different way to interpret that from a different audience is that he's telling the girls what the life of a chewed piece of gum will be like. Just as as casually as they would explain the rules of the bunkhouses. Now an examination of conscience is something that I've mentioned a few times here and there throughout previous episodes. I've always wanted to dive into it. I thought that this would be a really good time to explain it. My daily high school had two masses a week that we were required to attend. Tuesdays was a more brief one in the chapel. Fridays was the full hour to an hour and a half, Latin up in the huge church, and and these these were required. I mean, this was like recess or lunch. We also had, and this wasn't as often, but we had mandatory confession. Real quickly, if you're not familiar with the Catholic Church's stance on forgiveness and uh spiritual purity, when you have committed an offense, you have to go tell a priest about it. He's got to tell you what to do, you do it, and then you're good in God's eyes. So this was them forcing us, uh basically saying, Hey, listen, you school full of heathens, it's been a while since we can prove you've been to confession, so here. We're shortening every class in your day today so that you can go to confession. And there were non-Catholics in our school, not many, but a few. They were required to sit in the back pew and pray. They couldn't obviously participate in mass or even confession, but they also got to have their entire high school experience completely disrupted by this. So, the examination of conscience, we had a priest stand in front of us, and he would roll through how to do a confession, he would roll through what you should and should not confess, and that's when he would start this process. And what he would do is he would start at commandment number one and go all the way through the number ten and explain it in a way, typically ending it with a question that gets us to go back into our memories and basically beat ourselves up. Everything that he's bringing up that we've done, well, now we have to confess this. I'm not going one through ten because not every one of the ten pertains to the purity culture aspect that we're that we're talking about today. So we'll jump right to number six. You shall not commit adultery. So the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. They give you a question to ask yourself, and your answer is going to determine whether or not you have to confess it. So the question, have I respected the physical and sexual dignity of others and of myself? So this was always the first time the girls were told to dress as though their souls depended on it. Because it did. At least that's what we were taught, and unfortunately, believed. But like I had said just a few minutes ago, of course we did. Of course that's what we believed. Going back to the girls, simply wearing your skirt too high, or wearing perfume that draws sexual attention to you is sexualizing yourself sin. Have to confess it. Next question have I engaged in any sexual activity outside of marriage? So since this was part of high school, pretty obvious that none of us were married. But instead of just moving on because none of us are married, the priest needed to use this as a chance to browbeat us all even more. Since none of us were married, that would mean that any sexual activity that anybody in that room had done, including masturbation, was a mortal sin. And I mean any. Help ki kissing with tongue was a mortal sin. But now we'll go back to the marriage side of it, uh, just to return to our chat about women and their role. So has each sexual act in my marriage been open to the transmission of new life? And do I control my thoughts and imaginations? So it's obvious that on the surface, this is basically just saying, do I fantasize? But if we go a level deeper, it kind of changes. Do I control my thoughts? That's the that's the question. Do I control my thoughts and imaginations? So who the fuck can control their thoughts? Or can everyone but me? And and I'm the exception. And and holy crap, if if if I am the exception, then I'm changing the name of this podcast, and this is going to become a podcast where I convert people to religion. Um, because this is one of the biggest things that just burrowed into my brain and started saying, hey, hold this space, Nick, because eventually it's gonna be filled with doubts once you get to a point in your life where you're brave enough to ask them. Basically, your only chance of not committing this sin is to become godlike and control your thoughts. So if you can control all of your thoughts and imagination, you can control every single thing that enters your brain, you've got a finding chance. So good luck. And if you're able to do that, um, and again, it's not everybody but me, but if you are able to do that, uh you monetize that and you're gonna be doing well. Next question have I viewed pornography? Okay, so slow down. Obviously, it's not hard to believe that somebody would tell you that pornography is bad. But porn is surface level again. And if you really thought that one of these would stay surface level, well I hate to break it to you, but we were told that it wasn't just porn. Billboards, commercials on TV, websites, printed image. The frickin' bra ad in the Sears catalog, whether nude or not, it was the way that we viewed them. And if we saw them as a thing, just this sexualized thing, that was a mortal sin. But like I said, this one burrowed, this was one of the ones that made me say, just stop. Corinthians one tells us that women were created for men. And so if that's the case, wouldn't it imply that as a weaker vessel, as Peter one calls it, that she really is just a thing? Next question Do I seek to be chaste in my thoughts, words, and actions? This is kinda gonna fall in the same category as the last one, uh so I won't spend much time on it. But remember, we're eventually going to have to acquire the ability of thought control. But we're good once we get that all sorted out. When we talk about women as things, I referenced a few quotes from the Bible. We're gonna revisit those a little further in the episode. Uh so maybe that was just me planting the seed. And then the last question and this was always the one that they spent the most time on. Am I careful to dress modestly? So I've I've previously mentioned that my private high school required uniforms, like like many do. Guys, easy. A button-up blue top on dress pants. Girls, uh, they wore jumpers or skirts with the button up and a vest. Obviously, modesty was required at our school, in the hallways of our school. And the rule was that your hem had to be within three inches of your kneecap, and yes, there were tape measures. Uh ladies also had to wear shorts under their bottoms, whether it was the jump or the skirt. And it was at this point in the examination that the priest made sure to tell the girls as they rolled their skirts so they were shorter, which many of them did, and don't wear shorts underneath, that they are simply jeopardizing their souls and not respecting themselves. They're telling all of the guys that see it that they are just a thing to be acquired. But these are characteristics in a woman that no man would want to marry. So stay chaste and modest to provide the best version of yourself that you can to a potential suitor. But I'm not gonna gonna stop there. I'm gonna shoot us off on another Nick ADHD tangent uh a story, I guess. Then we'll go back on topic. And I promise this is true. The last thing that they covered in the modest address brow beating to the girls was that showing too much skin is drawing men to sin. But by too much sin, that also includes apparently too much of your shoulder or collarbone, and you guessed it, those are a sin. A member of my senior class homecoming court was sent home right before the Grand March because one of the busybody moms thought that her straps on her dress were too narrow. So she grabbed a tape measure and she measured it, and sure enough, it was too narrow. So no questions asked, no chance to grab a sweater or anything, she was told to leave. I and another guy had asked, hey, can we just you know give her our tux jacket? Uh and we were told that her attire was still inappropriate, and that she had that out. Now obviously as a show of solidarity, our group all left. Would you guess that the following Monday, those of us that left were told when we got to school that we had a one-on-one meeting at the rectory with one of the parish priests? After we all got back together, you know, af after the interviews, we, you know, you kind of talk and you know, what were you asked, what was said, blah, blah, blah. And it was the same across the board. Ultimately, what he did was one of these examinations one-on-one with each of us. And now now mind you, they're these weren't rhetorical questions. I was required to answer them to him. And then when this examination was done, he would put on a stole and face-to-face confession at his desk in his office and then leave. Something that I wanted to address, and I know that some of you might be saying to yourself, why didn't Nick just say something to his parents? And would you believe me that if I told you that the shame that I was forced to feel that day in my one-on-one with the priest was less shame than I would feel if I refused, and the school let my parents know what had happened. And the thing was it would have been worse. Because I had the historical data to support the assumption that I would be worse at home. Last side note, the priest that we all had to meet with, you guessed it, he is currently officially listed on his diocese's proven guilty clergy abusers list. However, prior to his being found guilty, he'd been moved to two different churches after hours. Yet interestingly enough, what what got him on the radar, uh, so they were looking a little closer at him, was that he had been arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Minneapolis. But thankfully, my group of friends and I had such a holy man to guide us through this difficult time uh that you know everything worked out okay in the end. Okay. I could continue with this examination for hours, but I won't. I will, however, share uh my therapist and I call them a notice. That question the therapist will often ask, Ooh, Nick, what's coming up right now? You will say something, something charged or something seemingly random. But there will be a reaction on me and sh and she will say, Nick, what came up? Here's a notice that came up as I've been talking to you guys. So I wonder if the fire in me over just how much of a mind fuck all of this is, how predatory, how dangerous, how thoughtless and just cavalier, maybe ignorant, maybe intentional, how cavalier they are with a mental health and how just disgustingly like sharks in the water they are, just waiting for the next opportunity to mess with somebody's development. So if during the podcast I sound like I've kind of switched from the typically constructive and optimistic approach, Nick, to like kind of a pissed off, more anger-fueled one, um th then you're right. I think this gets me so angry because I mean look, it's not even about me. I have a wife and two daughters who I have mentioned, and to think that somebody could be forcing them to sit in front of them and pray while being reprogrammed into shame and worthlessness just pisses me off. So that's our examination of conscience. Purity culture wasn't it wasn't just an ideology, it was a I mean tr truly a movement. It originally popped up in the early 90s and then just kind of spread. Uh obviously in the Bible belt, uh, I guess we wouldn't expect this to start anywhere else. But back then it was called the Silver Ring Thing. And I wasn't terribly familiar with it called the Silver Ring Thing. I knew it is the wait for marriage. Silver Ring Thing was American evangelical purity movement. Basically, what you do is in front of people, you make a pledge to keep your virgin status until marriage. Then, right after you make this vow, you put on stainless steel rings, and that's silver ring. Inscribed with Thessalonians four, three through four. And I don't sit here typically and just read the Bible to you because everybody listening is capable of doing so. But this one's integral, so I'm gonna read it so that you don't have to remember to kind of go back and then hear this. So here it is. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. It is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans who do not know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who Those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before, for God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit. So they both pledged to wear their ring until their wedding night, at which point they are meant to give the ring to their spouse. Kind of a I don't know, a show of, hey, look what I did for you. I find myself looking back a lot and starting to realize just how ignorant to mental health my religious upbringing was. I won't go down the road today, though I imagine if you listen to my podcast long enough, you'll likely hear tidbits here and there. That will certainly cover a bit more thoroughly how I feel. Another part of the silver ring thing, a way to kind of I guess a way to continue fortifying how how important it is to remain pure, the body's a temple. And when we've heard this and I jokingly say this all the time. Typically when I'm wolfing down a strawberry shake or something unhealthy for me, they all look at my wife and jokingly say, you know, my body is my temple. So your body is a temple. That's what the guys are told. The girls, on the other hand, you're told your body's a gift for your future spouse, which the which, if you think about it, just this completely removes any sense of being an individual. You've now just been put in the category of everything you are right now isn't you. It's a gift. You don't know who it's a gift to yet, but it doesn't matter because it was a gift to you from God. I did witness this being taught, but it wasn't a concept geared towards the guys. So as I mentioned earlier, puberty culture had a large effect on me and on men. But I think it's obvious that the effect it had on women is, I mean, unimaginable. We we can never look at tangible uh data, but oh. In the future we'll we'll cover the patriarchal aspects of religion a little bit. And we have touched on it previously too, but for now we're just gonna say that purity, like many things in religion, is something that both men and women are called to preserve. But we men obviously get to play by much easier rules than the women do. I recall so after our examination of conscience, uh the the priest would open it up for a Q ⁇ A. So now consider we've all been shamed in front of all of our peers, silently sitting there taking this brow beating, but now we're encouraged to ask questions in front of all of our peers as we're trying to determine whether or not something we've done is a sin. I mean where where do you begin in discussing how bad that is? There was one Q ⁇ A session where one of the students that was in the chapel asked about tattoos. Is getting a tattoo a sin? It was explained to us that since our body is a gift from God, that we have to take as good a care as possible of it. Piercings, tattoos, the example that the priests use is that this is no different than graffiti on a building. Side note, my upper body is currently about 50% covered in tattoos. That really sunk in with me. Consider, however, this priest's morbidly obese and smoke like a chimney. Bodies a temple. While we're on the topic of tending to our temple, there are a few things that just jump right out at me, and I think I would be letting myself down if not all of you, if I glossed over and didn't at least stop momentarily to address them. Now remember, one of the goals of the podcast is to find cracks. Well I think, maybe you do too, that these aren't just cracks, I mean these are these are absolute chasms in ology of of any religion, right? The theology. So we're looking for a crack at a minimum, and this is an easy one, uh, because I believe we've just showcased countless cracks. When we're asking these questions and looking back at memories that we have, when we're asking ourselves these questions, there's still that that part that feels guilty, there's still that voice in you that is saying we can't that's not something that we can ask. Remember that the burden of proof falls on the person or the church, the organization that's making a claim, not on the person, you and I, who's curious or questioning or doubtful. I like to share quotes that that play into what we're talking about. Uh one of the ones that immediately popped into my mind, it's uh it's a really famous interview with Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan, it's called The Dragon in My Garage. It gets a lot of heat for being so comical. Uh i it's seen as an attack on religion, of course, but due to the perceived mockery, you guessed it, it's also a war on religion. Because those of us that have deconstructed, or God forbid, make a podcast that that spreads the the evil uh temptation of free thinking that I spew onto the internet War on Religion. Carl Sagan's Dragon in my garage. Carl says a fire breathing dragon lives in my garage. Carl says suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. So what an opportunity? This is already sharing a lot of parallels, but Carl knew what he was doing. Well show me. So I take you over to my garage, you look inside, you see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle, but no dragon. So you ask, hey, where's the dragon? Oh she she's right here, I reply, waving. I neglected to mention though that she's an invisible dragon. So you propose spreading flour on the floor. This is a great idea, because it's gonna capture any footprints left by my invisible dragon. Great idea, Carl says, but this dragon floats in the air. Well, then you say that you're gonna use an infrared sensor to detect the fire. Well good idea. But this invisible fire is also heatless. Well, okay. Then you say you'll spray paint the dragon and make her visible. That's a great idea, Carl says, but the paint's not gonna stick to this dragon. And so on. Carl says I counter every physical test you propose with a super special explanation of why it won't work. The dragon in my garage. If I were to tell a devout Christian, and I'll let you have fun with this, pick one. Well, first one that comes to mind mom, dad, aunt, brother, you get it. Put them in front of me, and I tell them that I have a dragon in my garage. They're not gonna say, wow, that's cool. Since I haven't seen it, Nick, I'm just gonna simply have faith in you that you're being honest about this dragon. I am now gonna live out my days sharing the good news of your garage dragon. Though I think they're gonna doubt the story, Nick. Oh wait, what's that? You're a prophet? Why don't you say so? Well that's a just stupid over the top example. But how's it any different? I'd mentioned the parallels. Here we go. My dragon has only been seen by me. Now, say I've convinced my wife and kids that there is a dragon in the garage, and via the power of suggestion, or more of a parallel, via the mindfuckery, which of course is almost required in converting someone to religion. So when I show them the garage, they see strong evidence of a dragon, but they see me as infallible. Well, now I have disciples, so it's Prophet Nick and his three disciples. So my disciples and the prophet, me, evangelize about our dragon. The prophet, again, me, who has finally proven to God that he's worthy of seeing this gift, but the problem is the eternal, the omni dad dragon. Only you revealed my garage dragon to me. And as a test of my faith. Now, if people don't believe in my dragon, then omni dad dragon's gonna kill 'em. So they must pledge lifelong devotion to my garage dragon, whom they've never seen, and if they don't, omni dad dragon's gonna kill me, and then I'll come back and I'll save you from myself and dad. Do you think I'd convert many people? I'll say what you just thought. Um yes, I would. I mean there are people that I would convince uh and they would convert. They say every culture is led by a very charismatic person, correct? But if I stood in front of a congregation, uh, you picked a denomination, a congregation, and I shared this with them, I'd be kicked out of the building for making such a crazy story on a good day. My old church, I'd be chased with pitchforks and torches. Because there is so much to get to, and and I wanted I want to dedicate the time necessary to this topic, we're gonna pick this up in the next episode. I have recorded my entire episode, uh, so it's just a matter of editing the the second half of this. I'll edit the first half here today and then and then release it. So there will be a release next week. So that we can set aside the time that I think is necessary to discuss all of this at least in depth enough to to show the respect, uh, at least thoroughly enough that the uh that the seed's planted. And and and once once we've heard it, once it's there, once we've accepted that it's something worth revisiting, then we can apply the the curiosity and the questions and the uh expectation that somebody else uh cover that burn of proof and and not just look at me and say, you can't ask that, you have to believe. So in that vein, we're gonna wrap this episode up. Uh we're gonna continue and finish Purity Culture in episode two. So keep an eye out for that. I appreciate you joining me on this one. This is a really interesting one for me. This is a really unique one for me because I feel, and and I haven't listened to a single episode that I've released. I listened to them about seven times, I guess, in total when I'm editing, but I've never sat down and listened to one start to finish. This is one that I'm going to because I feel as I'm speaking that I find myself pinging between anger and sarcasm, back to anger, and then back to a level of mature acceptance of what's happened and the absurdity of it. And I think I'm actually gonna tell my therapist that of coursing is starting to work. Here I am, of courseing it. Thanks for coming along with me on this one. I really hope you appreciate how we're gonna wrap this topic up in the next episode. So we will see you at the next episode. And until then, do not forget, stay careful.