Srsly, Theres A Thing Called Going Too Far With A Concept, Especially To The Point Where It's Taking

Srsly, theres a thing called going too far with a concept, especially to the point where it's taking away from the real discussion

why purity culture applies to antis

I would be vastly more sympathetic to the “the term purity culture should refer only to a specific religious system of misogyny and using it to talk about antis elides its origins, thereby devaluing a serious issue” argument if anti culture wasn’t functionally defined by using the word “pedophilia” to mean “what happens when anyone of any age writes stories where a character younger than eighteen kisses someone or is otherwise sexual.”

Like. I’m just. I’m sorry, but you cannot grossly misuse such serious terms as pedophilia or incest by arguing repeatedly that depiction is always endorsement, that there’s no difference between fictional people and real people, and that any sexual fantasy a person enjoys precisely because it isn’t real is indistinguishable from a fantasy they want to see enacted IRL, then get mad when someone points out that you’re morally policing the sexuality of strangers using strikingly similar arguments to the purity culture people.

When someone writes gory, gruesome murder stories, even if they’re written from the POV of a psychopathic killer, our first thought is not, “oh shit, that person is either an aspiring serial killer or they have bodies in their basement,” because we understand the distinction between fiction and reality. But if someone writes about dark sexual themes and suddenly you’re freaking out about their sexuality IRL? That is because you’ve absorbed puritan views about sex, ie, the idea that your sexual imagination and your sexual desires are one and the same, such that, if you indulge in “sinful” fantasies, it’s as bad as doing those things.

The reason religious purity culture is so obsessed with female chastity to the point of demonising masturbation or premarital anything is due to the belief that female sexuality exists solely for male pleasure, and therefore male approval. A father ‘owns’ his daughter’s chastity until he ‘gives’ her to a husband; therefore, she must stay ‘pure’ for their sake, because any indulgence on her part will ‘taint’ that purity. Crucially, the belief is also that one woman is potentially representative of all women: one ‘loose’ woman can make all women loose in the eyes of men, and therefore you aren’t just protecting yourself and your chastity by acting modestly, but the reputation of other women you’ve never even met. You’re simultaneously responsible for the virtue of women as a category while also being the keeper of such specific chaste value as, through you, belongs to your father and future husband. This is also why ‘pure’ women are encouraged to shun ‘impure’ women - impurity is transitive by association, such that if you, a ‘pure’ woman, are seen to associate with an ‘impure’ woman, well; that must only be because you, too, are secretly impure. This being so, it’s likewise expected that men, being more sexual creatures, will be lustful and sexually desirous, such that women are expected to curtail the presentation of their own sexuality in all forms to avoid ‘tempting’ them to sin, both against themselves and, potentially, other women; this is both deeply misogynistic and a way to blame victims for ‘leading on’ their assailants.

It’s also the exact same logic that antis use - not because antis are misogynistic patriarchs, but because they, too, argue that an individual’s sexuality must be curtailed in order to prevent hypothetical strangers from being ‘tempted’ towards their worst inclinations or, if they didn’t have those inclinations beforehand, made to ‘stray from the path’.

“You can’t ship those two underage characters - someone might use that fic to prey on a minor!” Such a thing, if it happened, would inarguably be the fault of the predator, who did not magically spring into existence the second the fic was written, even if the fic in question was actual darkfic and not just two 16yos consensually getting to second base; nonetheless, anti logic - like purity culture - will blame the ficwriter for ‘inciting’ the predation.

Bottom line: when you tell someone, “your sexual fantasies are bad and wrong, if you’ve EVER found X concept arousing in the privacy of your mind or in a fictional context, that means you want it exactly the same way IRL and are therefore either a predator or the willing inspiration of predators,” YOU ARE ENGAGING IN A LITERAL FORM OF PURITY CULTURE. The underlying dogma you use to shore up your claims is less important than the logic you use to enforce them: and that logic is, “you must strive to meet my specific moral definition of sexual purity, because if you don’t, you’ll provoke sexual malfeasance towards yourself and others, and when that happens, it’ll be your fault.”           

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Are you trapped on tumblr right now?

Is there something you planned to do before you got trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Are you yelling at yourself to get up and do the thing, but you can’t, because you’re trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Consider this your save point.

Put tumblr down, stand up, stretch, and go do the thing you planned to do. Future you will be incredibly grateful.

it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.

which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.

it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.