Words by: Carmen Farrell (she/her)
Women must know that how “pure” they are deemed by a heteropatriarchal society means nothing.
The “impure” woman is a tale as old as Adam and Eve. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge – subsequently gaining sexual knowledge – she took Adam down with her. The temptress who doomed humanity to sin. In many translations of the Bible the sole blame of the original sin falls to Eve, failing to acknowledge that her husband was not only present but ate from the tree willingly. The very first woman to live is immortalised in Christianity as the reason for corruption, sin, lustfulness, and disobedience. With the powerful vessel of the Church behind this movement, the belief that women are meant to lead a life of submission to man has completely shaped culture. Manon Garcia puts this eloquently in her novel We Are Not Born Submissive, when she says ‘colloquial uses, classical culture, popular culture, and media representation suggest that there is something feminine in submission or submissive in femininity’. Adam ate the apple, so why is it when sexual knowledge is presented to women, they are demonised for it? The answer feels fairly simple, men cannot stand women having control over anything, especially in sexual expression.
The scary thing is that “purity” and “trad wife” culture seems to be on the rise. Seemingly every other girl I went to school with has posted their engagement pictures or pregnancy announcements with the same boy they dated in school. The idea of even being “pure” sexually is something that derives from the social construct of virginity. There is no difference between a woman who is a virgin and a woman who is not. The whole ordeal reflects our phallocentric society where the losing of one’s virginity is believed to be the first time having penetrative sex. So, a woman’s personhood is defined by if she has had a penis in her vagina or not, instead of anything to do with herself. Men have seized this unspoken violent control over women’s sexuality like a right they’ve inherited from all of the men before, and they don’t seem keen to let go of it anytime soon.
Of course the scrutiny does not end there. On the other side of the spectrum we have the criticism that women face if they do not express any sexual interest in men. Shamed as prudish and boring, society ensures that discomfort is felt no matter the circumstance. However, there is another category altogether. Lesbians. With no cis-men involved, what is the role of purity in queer sexuality?
Lesbians constantly subvert gender roles and opt out of a malecentric society as much as possible, gaining them an invisible target above their heads. Combined with sexual independence from men that a patriarchal society detests so much, lesbians are seen as “impure”, even though they are not engaging in heteronormative sexual intercourse. This is because fundamentally the issues of “purity” and “virginity” are just social constructs created to control women, even in their own sexuality, something that is so inherently natural to express in a way that is personal to one’s self. So why is it that men are so invested in women’s relationships with other women? When men are able to fetishise female sexual relations their own corrupted thoughts are what makes them regard lesbian sexuality as something that they perceive as so impure and sexually deviant. Men are not able to grasp the existence of women without them, instead they treat them as sub-humans.
So do all of these issues get enforced by the straight, cis-men themselves? Even within the queer community there is still this nod to gender essentialism where women or gender non-conforming lesbians who are outspoken about their sexual desires get this negative conflation to men. Lesbians who present as butch get questioned on their desire to be “masculine” or “copy” men. Not to mention the amount of people who ask ‘who is the man in the relationship?’ when what we know they are really asking is who is the one who performs penetration. Not everything revolves around the male penis. There is so much centraling of cis-male sexuality even when it comes to lesbian spaces, is it escapable?
As a lesbian it often feels like I am having to constantly battle against what society has fed the masses. In surrounding myself with other likeminded and educated queer people I have built a village that reflects and supports our community. With the decentralisation of men comes freedom from purity culture. Education is the most viable saviour at this point. Women must know that how “pure” they are deemed by a heteropatriarchal society means nothing.
