Chastity Research Articles

Socio-sexual norms and young people's sexual health in urban Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan: A qualitative scoping review.

In South Asia, young people face myriad challenges and opportunities regarding their sexual lives relating to varied experiences of norms and restrictions; gender norms and socio-sexual taboos limit communication around sexual health which in turn can affect sexual health outcomes. In this article we focus on norms affecting young people's sexual health experiences in urban settings in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. We conducted a scoping review of peer reviewed empirical studies based on qualitative data pertaining to young people's experiences of sexuality and sexual health in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. We searched four electronic databases for articles published (2010-2022), using terms relating to sexual health, young people, and South Asia. Sixteen articles met the inclusion criteria with sample size ranging from 9 to 180. The authors followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines for the design and analysis of this study. We synthesised the included articles using thematic analysis. The studies covered topics such as sexual health services and contraceptive use; sexuality education and communication; and gender and sexual violence. Recurring findings included: parental and societal expectations around premarital 'sexual purity' through abstinence; limited communication around sexuality between young people and parents/adults; gender norms limiting young women's sexual and reproductive decision making; and an absence of research on experiences of sexual and gender minorities. We identified common themes as well as prominent gaps which must be addressed if we are to capture diverse experiences and build a better evidence base to improve sexual health services for young people in the region. The body of research fails to include experiences of young people with diverse gender, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics.

A New Sex Education: The Title IX Defense Against "Don't Say Gay"

Sex education in American public schools has long been the subject of controversy. Although debates overthe inclusion of sex education in schools now focus on students’ access to comprehensive curricula that includes the experiences of queer and transgender students, sex education in the United States has long maintained its roots in the institutional promotion of “sexual purity.” Through an exploration of the latest attacks on comprehensive sex education, particularly in the context of reinvigorated “Don’t Say Gay and Trans” legislation, this Article postulates that a novel interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is needed that requires education policymakers to incorporate the experiences and needs of queer and transgender students insex education curricula. This Article examines the application of the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision to Title IX and argues that the prohibition against discrimination in education on the basis ofsexual orientation and gender identity raises a plausible Title IX challenge to non-inclusive sex education curricula.
 By first offering a brief historical overview of public sex education curricula in the United States, this Article contextualizes the present need for comprehensive sex education as an impactfulresource forstudents, as well as the unique sexual health challenges faced by queer and trans adolescents. This Article then outlines the important changes to Title IX in the wake of the Bostock decision, President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order implementing Bostock, and subsequent appellate case law. Most importantly, this Article will highlight the potential for Title IX claims to be brought against public schools, districts, and states that offer non-comprehensive sex education curricula that excludes content relating to the unique needs of queer and trans students. This Article concludes by addressing potential challenges to such an interpretation of Title IX in the context of sex education curricula and will underscore the important policyramifications of incorporating the experiences and needs of queer and trans students in educational dialogues surrounding sexual health.

Teaching Danger and Silencing Desire: Gender, Culture and Sexuality Education in Zimbabwe

In sub-Saharan Africa, the effective implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) remains challenging especially for teachers who fail to meet young people’s sexual health needs. In this study, we examine rural Zimbabwean teachers’ perspectives on, and their approach to sexuality education provided through Guidance and Counseling (G&C). Employing a new feminist materialist framework and by drawing from in-depth semi-structured interviews, we illustrate the assemblage of human and more-than-human elements that come together to reinforce sexual silencing and danger by elucidating three prevailing material forces that shape teachers’ approach to G&C. First, teachers place sexuality within the domain of danger and emphasize sexual risk to create healthy sexualities. Second, religious and cultural norms aggregate to place sexual pleasures under erasure while reinforcing female sexual purity. Third, in the context of sexual regulation, discussions about safe sex practices are difficult. While teachers’ capacity to engage with young sexuality is constrained by the entanglement of socio-material, religious, cultural and gender norms, the paper concludes with some reflection on possibilities for working with teachers to expand their capacities to effect change and improve sexual health outcomes for young people.

Exploring Women’s Lived Experiences of Early Marriage in Rural Indonesia

Early marriage is still a global concern, and Indonesia ranks second behind Cambodia in the number of early marriages within the ASEAN region. Despite the spread of technology and the influence of Western media, some Indonesian families, especially those who live in rural areas, continue to practice early marriage. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the reasons behind early marriage based on the perspective of Indonesian women who were married before the age of 18. Based on a phenomenological approach, thirty women, ages 18-45, from the Madurese community in Situbondo, East Java participated in the study. Results showed that young Madurese women decided to get married for love and companionship, as well as for economic benefits and protecting the family’s honor. Participants also believed that cultural norms and values related to marriage, sexual purity, and gender expectations play a role in early marriage. Suggestions for future studies and community interventions are discussed.

Ideological Mate-guarding: Sexual Jealousy and Mating Strategy Predict Support for Female Honor.

Feminine honor dictates that women should cultivate a reputation for sexual purity via behaviors such as dressing modestly and maintaining virginity before marriage. The dominant explanation for people's support for feminine honor is that female infidelity threatens male partners' honor. Beyond this, the literature affords little understanding of the evolutionary and psychological origins of feminine honor. We propose that feminine honor functions as an ideological form of mate guarding that is shaped by sexual jealousy and mating strategy. Two correlational studies (N = 892) revealed support for predictions derived from this ideological mate-guarding account. In Study 1, dispositional jealousy and mating strategy (more monogamous orientation) predicted male participants' support for a mate's (especially a long-term mate's) feminine honor. Moving beyond mate preferences, in Study 2 male and female participants' dispositional jealousy and mating strategy predicted support for feminine honor of women in general. Results applied beyond masculine honor norms, religiosity, political conservativism, and age. These findings enhance the understanding of the origins and maintenance of feminine honor and related norms and ideologies that enable control over women's socio-sexual behavior.

When purity cannot save us: on matter out of place and democratic hope

ABSTRACT This study contextualizes U.S. evangelical Christian sexual purity rhetoric in a long tradition of purity frameworks that attempt to properly order the world, manage “dirt,” and prevent “matter out of place.” Purity rhetoric is dependent on the idea that there is a proper way that communities and the world should be ordered, and that people should play specific roles and embody specific subjectivities within this order. This fixation on keeping a particular order can serve as bulwark against fear, chaos, and perceived or actual threats, yet this ordering often has an antidemocratic hierarchy. This study shows how rhetorics of bodily, racial, hygienic, and sexual purity are mutually co-constructing and cannot be understood apart from each other, and how many purity frameworks contribute to antidemocratic structures. Theologians are well-positioned to imagine more just and loving forms of subjectivity, community, and salvation that are not predicated on fantasies of impossible purity ideals.

Rendition of σώφρων and σωφροσύνη in Ukrainian translations of the New Testament

Summary The article focuses on the rendition of the key words of the Christian ethical vocabulary σώφρων and σωφροσύνη in Ukrainian translations of the New Testament in comparison with other East Slavic translations in synchronic and diachronic dimensions. The σώφρων word group covers a range of “intellectual” and “moral” meanings in Ancient Greek, which continue to evolve in Hellenistic Greek to denote ‘soundness of mind’, ‘prudence’, ‘discretion’, ‘good sense’, on the one hand, and ‘moderation’, ‘self-control’, ‘temperance’, ‘restraint’, ‘decency’, ‘modesty’, on the other. Retaining such polysemy in the New Testament, the σώφρων word group also displays various connotations depending on gender, age and social status. The Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic calques of the σώφρων word group mostly accentuate its “moral” meanings, especially the meanings of ‘chastity’ and ‘purity’, which evolve in Christian ascetic literature after the New Testament, although in some cases they retain their primary “intellectual” meanings. The article also explores the use of semantic equivalents of the σώφρων word group in Old Ukrainian, Old Russian and Old Belarusian based on corpora data and historical written monuments. We came to the conclusion that Ukrainian biblical translations of the 19th to early 21st century, as well as some Russian and Belarusian translations, generally take into consideration the polysemy of the σώφρων word group in the New Testament, though a great extent of variability of equivalents and a lack of consistent reproduction of gender and age connotations are observed. We argue that the use of certain moral equivalents of the σώφρων word group in modern East Slavic translations (in particular, Ukrainian цнотливий, цнотливість, цнота, Russian целомудренный and Belarusian цнатлівий) is inappropriate due to the resulting narrowing of their meanings to ‘innocence’, ‘virginity’ and ‘sexual purity’.

Girls under surveillance: Engaging Zimbabwean parents on young people’s sexual health

Background: Parents play an important role in shaping young people’s sexual lives and behaviours with implications for their current and future sexual and reproductive health. This study examined the perspectives of rural Zimbabwean parents on young people’s sexual health. Design: Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 19 (6 men and 13 women) participants. Setting: Interviews were conducted in a rural district in Zimbabwe. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Community Field Officers who were the parents or caregivers of teenage learners in two rural secondary schools. Transcripts were coded and thematic analysis conducted by reading, re-reading, interpretation and reflection on the coded texts. Results: Parents approached the question of young people’s sexual health by placing young women’s sexuality under surveillance and regulation. Puberty and female bodily changes triggered concern about heterosexual relationships informed by protectionist and moralising discourses. Abstinence and self-control were promoted as expectations for female sexuality based on cultural norms concerning purity and female virginity. Female sexual purity provided a claim to status, was differentiated from other forms of femininity and was an important cultural and economic resource. In a context of economic precarity, the institutions of marriage and bride wealth, whereby female virginity status is valued, provide opportunities for future economic security and reinforce cultural norms concerning respectability. Conclusion: Working with parents to address the ways in which gender and cultural norms operate within the local social and economic context is vital to understand the enduring processes by which young female sexuality is placed under surveillance while reinforcing gender inequalities.

Of tradwives and TradCaths

Building on Borba’s theorisation of the anti-genderism register, the articles in this special issue explore anti-genderism as a political tool for the global right in four cases: online ‘tradwives’ or traditional wives defending national and sexual purity (Tebaldi), homonationalism in the Islamophobic forum r/thedonald (Brotherton), the natalist chronopolitics of Bolsonaro in Brazil (Silva and Dziuba) and the invocation of the spectre of gender to place Poland at the centre of the white West (Baran). Together, they highlight new discursive elements in the nationalist far-right use of the anti-genderism register and the construction of morally marked figures through nationalist discourses of tradition, sexuality, temporality and place. Anti-genderism is not just a call for ‘traditional’ gender or marriage, but the evocation of a gendered nation, an idealised past and a strong future populated with warriors and mothers.

The Nightmare Island: Representations of St. Barthélemy in Swedish Novels

The Nightmare Island: Representations of St. Barthélemy in Swedish Novels

Trad nationalist a/effects

Trad nationalist a/effects

The effectiveness of a religiously framed HPV vaccination message among Christian parents of unvaccinated adolescents in the United States

ABSTRACT Background: The uptake of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines has been controversial among religious parents due to beliefs that their children are expected to practice sexual purity and so do not need protection from a sex-related infection. Also, if at all they get infected in the future, God can protect them from sickness without a vaccine. Yet, most HPV vaccination messages are secular, lacking spiritual themes. This study compared the effectiveness of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) on HPV with our intervention message- a scripture-embedded HPV vaccination message (using a randomized controlled trial design) on vaccination intention. Methods: The study was conducted online. Participants were 342 Christian parents (from any denomination) of unvaccinated adolescents aged 11-17 years. The intervention message used the Cognitive Metaphor Theory to map the constructs of the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark to HPV vaccination. We framed Noah as the parents, the flood as HPV, and the ark as the vaccination. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the changes in vaccination intention before and after the intervention. Results: Our findings showed that parents who received the scripture-embedded message reported a higher intention to vaccinate their children than those who received the CDC VIS (β= 0.31, 95% confidence interval [95%CI] = 0.11-0.52; p=0.003). Conclusion: Our findings support the need for equitable messaging regarding HPV vaccination. Faith-based messaging interventions that seek to increase HPV vaccination should be framed to address religious anti-vaccination beliefs.

Désaffiliation chez les évangéliques de deuxième génération au Québec : le rôle de l’inatteignable conversion et de l’insoutenable pureté sexuelle

Canadian evangelicals are known for their high religious retention, meaning that a good proportion of the children from these communities preserve the same religious faith as their parents once they become adults. For this reason, Canadian evangelical communities have not received much attention in recent years regarding disaffiliation, even though this phenomenon exists throughout Canada and most notably in the Quebec province. Canadian statistics reveal a certain religious resilience over the past two decades, but they conceal a significant proportion of those who have disaffiliated at the same time. This article examines this disaffiliation movement from a socio-anthropological and qualitative perspective and highlights the role of two key dimensions in the disaffiliation process among young evangelicals socialized in this context. On the one hand, he argues that the dominant model of conversion transmitted by the first generation, namely a rupture-conversion model, contributes to disaffiliation. Subjected to strong pressures, the disaffiliated claim to have inherited a conversion model that is difficult, if not impossible, to adopt. In addition, the ideal of sexual purity and marriage that can be linked to American purity culture has a strong impact on the issues of identity and belonging to these religious communities. Young adults disengage in significant proportions from their church communities when they cease to observe this ideal, which is built around a social “all or nothing” logic.

The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender

The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender

Hegemonic childhood in the Polish community of West Prussia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries

In this article, I present the hegemonic concept of childhood in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries among the Polish community of West Prussia. The subject of the analyses was the content of articles dealing with children’s issues, published in the local Polish press. The essential feature of the hegemonic discourse of childhood for the Polish community in the analysed region was that it was clearly based on the Catholic religion and national ideas, as well as on a strong relationship with the conservative and post-feudal image of family relations. The conducted research made possible the identification of seven basic categories of the hegemonic understanding of childhood in the Polish environment of West Prussia, which are: Polish and Catholic childhood, childhood sensitive to the needs of others, heroic childhood, tidy and pupil childhood, neat and orderly childhood, childhood based on obedience and subordination, sexual purity childhood.

Stereoscopic London: Plays of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Arthur Wing Pinero in the 1890s, by Gül Kurtulu?

Reviewed by: Stereoscopic London: Plays of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Arthur Wing Pinero in the 1890s by Gül Kurtuluş Mary Christian (bio) Stereoscopic London: Plays of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Arthur Wing Pinero in the 1890s, by Gül Kurtuluş; pp. 182. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020, $48.95. In Stereoscopic London: Plays of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Arthur Wing Pinero in the 1890s, Gül Kurtuluş examines late-Victorian theatrical depictions of metropolitan life in the works of three prominent turn-of-the-century dramatists, paying special attention to "the idea of community as formulated by the needs and requirements of its members" (14). Each of the three main chapters focuses on one well-known play: Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), and George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1912). The chapters also give secondary attention to other works by the respective dramatists. Along with detailed close readings of the dramatic texts themselves, Kurtuluş draws attention to the London locations portrayed or mentioned in the plays. Some of the neighborhood information she provides is unsurprising—the average reader will probably already know that Mayfair is a posh London district and that Hoxton is not. However, some of these location notes will likely be new to many readers and might suggest new ideas regarding the subtexts of certain scenes. For example, Kurtuluş points out that Clerkenwell, the district inhabited by the troupe of actors in Trelawny of the "Wells" (1898), was an area with centuries of theatrical history, dating back to performances of mystery plays in the Middle Ages—a fact that might well enhance one's enjoyment of Pinero's play, with its themes of nostalgia and theatrical evolution. The book's introduction declares an interest in "the rules imposed by urban society" and the ways in which these rules are dramatized in the selected plays (14). The rules that receive the most attention throughout the book are the demands for women's sexual purity (or at least the appearance of purity), the adherence to prescribed gender roles, and the distinctions between different levels in the social class hierarchy. The author notes numerous details of plot, dialogue, and character that reflect the plays' preoccupation with these social requirements. These analyses, however, might lead readers to ask: If Londoners of this period were made to follow strict expectations regarding gender, sex, and class, then to what extent were these rules and hypocrisies unique to London? In what ways were demands for female chastity in London, and the way such demands were enforced, distinct from the conditions of smaller towns and rural areas? Kurtuluş acknowledges the need to address this question, or nearly acknowledges it, in the analysis of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. She suggests that the Tanquerays' unhappy migration from London to Surrey illustrates that "a shift in setting . . . does not provide a remedy for the Victorian social diseases of class division and repressive morality that infect all the city's inhabitants" (95). The chapter's conclusion adds that "nineteenthcentury London and Victorian Britain in general evinced a quite hypocritical sense of morality and justice" (96). Many scholars of nineteenth-century literature would easily agree with this statement. The book, however, offers no clear response to the obvious follow-up question: If this hypocrisy is characteristic of Britain in this period, what sets London apart? Readers are left to wonder if Kurtuluş is writing a book about theatrical depictions of London or about theatrical depictions of Victorian class hierarchy and sexual mores more generally. [End Page 482] If the title's emphasis on "London" seems incompletely explained by the book as a whole, the Shaw chapter raises questions regarding the time period designated as the book's focus, "the 1890s." Shaw was active as a theater critic and dramatist during the 1890s, but this activity is scarcely mentioned. Instead the chapter focuses on Pygmalion and a handful of other plays—Man and Superman (1903), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), and Heartbreak House (1919)—all of which were written and set in the twentieth century. These plays offer valuable insights on London, and certainly comment more explicitly on...

No longer green: Female characters of African descent as sex workers in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995)

This article explores the potentialities of diaspora as conveniently structured to demonstrate the emancipatory potential of migration for women in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995). Sex and sexual intercourse between men and women in the African societies that are fictionalised in these texts are not only an issue about morality, but also about how morality is governed and policed within these societies. While the societies in these texts hope to derive their integrity through women’s sexual purity, conflict arises when such communal integrity fails to recognise the individual circumstances of the female individuals upon whom such notions of purity rest. The question of what role sex and sexual practices play in upholding the honour of communities is a vexed one. While the societies that the texts explore here show less scrutiny on marital sex, regardless of whether it is consensual or forced, these societies occupy a judgmental pedestal on pre-marital and extra-marital sex. Harsher judgement, however, is reserved for individuals who engage in these practices for monetary gain. This textual analysis is informed by the postcolonial theory, as articulated by Homi Bhabha and his postulations on identity and ‘othering’.

Review: Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism, by Taylor G. Petrey

Taylor G. Petrey’s book, Tabernacles of Clay, makes an original contribution to Mormon Studies and the study of sexuality and gender. His theoretical and interpretive framework, along with his meticulous movement through fundamental historical moments, doctrines, practices, and responses of the Church of Latter-day Saints to social movements impacting sexuality, race, and gender will be influential for years to come. He places Mormon attitudes, practices, and teaching about sexuality and race in historical context both in Mormonism and national politics and social life. Notably, he helps us see the consequences of the Mormon belief in continuous revelation.I salute Petrey's use of queer theory, which is unusual in Mormon Studies. I was intrigued as soon as he laid out his course of action and was pleased that rather than being an add-on, the theme of fluidity and malleability is woven deeply into the narrative he creates. He is deft in the way he pulls this off, pulling us along gently with a particularly effective reiteration of what he has accomplished at the end of each chapter.Tabernacles of Clay traces the series of national movements that impacted women’s rights, racial categories, gay individuals, and the Mormon response to them. Petrey’s thesis is that “church leaders pitted themselves against these movements by offering competing theories of the nature of sexuality and sexual difference” (1). Their response, which became embedded in official rhetoric communicated from the stand as well as through church publications, dictated and interpreted “sexual purity, gender roles, and marriage; the deployment of psychological approaches to ‘cure’ homosexuality; and political activism against equal rights for women and same-sex marriage” (1).As Petrey states, the value of this book is that it is “a profoundly useful example of a conservative religious response to shifting cultural values that can provide larger insight about religious engagement with change and the history of sexuality” (2). His principal goal is “to provide an explanation for Mormon accounts of the nature of gender, sexuality, and race” (15), relying on concepts that queer theory captures best. “Mormon leaders have often taught that the differences between male and female are malleable and contingent, and so they must be guarded with strict social, ecclesiastical, and legal norms and sanctions” (2).The example of the LDS fight against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and feminism more broadly, highlights the importance of this book. My own volume, Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority & Equal Rights (2016), argues that the church leadership’s opposition reflected internal debate over the meaning of the difference between men and women as preached in General Conference addresses, local meetings, and in official church directives. Petrey’s original twist points to a belief within the church that meaning and inherent differences were fluid, suggesting that this was at the heart of the opposition to the ERA, feminism, and the women’s movement. The belief that these movements could change the God-created difference and that they were fluid enough to be changed by opposing rhetoric was of great concern. A conviction that differences were not absolute, but rather somewhat fluid or changeable—even though God-given—justified mobilizing the church’s human power to wage war against the ERA.Petrey effectively, subtly, and impressively finds his way back to queer theory’s emphasis on fluidity, taking us through the history of the LDS Church’s response to social movements that have affected the understanding of sexuality and gender. He focuses on the body of ecclesiastical teachings and practices, the new institutions and the forces that inspired them, and the church’s “sociopolitical interventions,” including the fight against the ERA and the efforts to ban same-sex marriage. I found the section on the LDS Church’s efforts to strengthen patriarchal leadership particularly insightful and convincing, having observed firsthand the actions of a generation of women attempting to set things right in their own lives.Those who pay attention to historiography will remember what we considered breakout books—the first serious book to take on polygamy, or the ones that asked difficult questions about sacred doctrines or persons. Tabernacles of Clay is a breakout book, a very modern book in its attention to theory and to sociological approaches to the study of gender, race, and sexuality. But it also has subtle insider knowledge that brings life to the interpretation. More importantly, this book will undoubtedly encourage others to tackle the thorny issues it raises. Petrey models how to do it.

‘With Foolish Optimism We Thought It Was Just a Miss’: Marriage, Sexuality, and Unwanted Pregnancies in Twentieth-Century Ireland

Much of the scholarly focus of Irish sexuality in the twentieth century has been on ‘sexual non-conformity’: sex outside of marriage, rape and coercion, and abuse. While these are essential topics, particularly given the historical incarceration and containment of sexual ‘others’, they are only part of the story. This article analyses married couples’ sexual lives in Ireland from 1900 to 1950. Utilising criminal abortion trial records, it sheds light on marital sexual practices and reproductive decision-making. Abortions were not only accessed by those who broke sexual norms but also by those whose sexual practices were more conformist: heterosexual committed couples, most of whom already had other children. While the criminal courts depicted abortion-seeking women as docile, women were far from passive in abortion decision-making. Committed couples worked together to manage unwanted pregnancies. This reality rejects the notion of a uniquely Irish sexual purity and complicates representations of married women as oppressed and even sexually naïve. Most couples actively collaborated in managing their sexual lives, receiving support from friends and families. Early twentieth-century popular views of sexuality, then, could be flexible and permissive.
 
 Keywords: Abortion; Sexuality; Fertility, Family Planning; Reproductive Decision-making; Marriage

Doubt and Desire

Doubt and Desire