Sexual abstinence amongst young people in the United States has, over the past two decades, cohered into a popular, well-resourced, and institutionally
supported social movement in a way that the celibate and sexual abstinence practices discussed in earlier sections have not. Emerging from evangelical Christian organisations in the 1990s (and still rooted within and resourced by these), sexual purity groups aimed at teenagers and young adults such as Silver
Ring Thing, True Love Waits, and Pure Freedom have been active in the public
sphere in promoting their message of sexual abstinence until marriage. Young people are recruited to sign and make public virginity pledges, buy and wear jewellery proclaiming their pledges, attend meetings and events ranging from weekend retreats to rallies to stadium-size live shows, and participate in prom- like purity balls (Gardner, 2011). The amount of young people involved in the abstinence movement is difficult to gauge, but according to self-reporting in the National Survey of Family Growth (2006-2010), 7% of males and 12% of females in the US under the age of 25 pledged to remain abstinent until marriage – although most also go on to break these pledges (Paik et al., 2016). The growth of this movement is also tied in to the spread of abstinence-only sex education in the United States. Driven by the moral panics around teenage pregnancy, the Reagan Presidency made the first steps towards federal funding of abstinence education in 1981, which was significantly increased and solidified in 1996 under Clinton’s welfare reform acts, and then later by the Bush administration. Between 2000 and 2009, abstinence-only sex education programs in the US received more than $200 million dollars in federal funds (Williams, 2011). Abstinence-only sex
education was somewhat displaced as a priority under Obama’s presidency (Paik et al., 2016) but has again been resurrected by the Trump administration (Klein, 2017).
Whilst most academic research focuses on the efficacy of abstinence pledges and abstinence-only education (e.g. Bersamin et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2014) or the motivations young people have for being abstinent (e.g. Abbott and Dalla,
2008; Long-Middleton et al., 2013), a small number of scholars have examined the gender politics of this movement (Valenti, 2009; Browning, 2010; Fahs, 2010b; Gardner, 2011; Gish, 2016; Miller, 2017). Unlike celibacy which has
historically been conceptualised as liberating for women, but also representing a gendered transgression (in that women who are celibate have been
masculinised, or forced to adopt the social role of men) abstinence in the contemporary youth movement in the US is ‘being used as a tool to reinforce gender norms and heteronormative assumptions about relationality’ (Browning, 2010: 159). Indeed, some have argued that the abstinence movement is really about the return to traditional gender roles based on ideals of feminine passivity and modesty, and masculine honour and responsibility (Valenti, 2009: 24; Gish, 2016: 12). Abstinence until marriage is framed as proper behaviour for both young men and young women, but also as a way of reinforcing the polarity of masculinity and femininity. Behavioural standards are thus set for both young men and young women - but as feminist writers have pointed out, how gender is understood within the movement is fundamentally patriarchal, and thus
constitutes a special kind of harm to young women (Valenti, 2009; Fahs, 2010b). For example, Fahs (2010b) points out that purity balls which young girls attend with their fathers as their ‘dates’ operate in the most literal of patriarchal terms: after a daughters makes an abstinence pledge, the father also pledges to ‘cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity’ (p132). Fathers become moral guardians of their daughters’ bodies, and this is often symbolised by the daughter giving a key to her father with the intention that he will pass it along to her future husband on her wedding day. In this way, ‘the culture of chastity encourages women to construct themselves as sexual property, becoming, in the most literal sense, the sexual property of their fathers and their husbands’ (Fahs, 2010: 137). Moreover, the sexual abstinence being advocated is only acceptable within certain parameters. It is about
abstaining from sex before marriage (rather than within marriage), and there is a normative expectation that young people will marry. Thus sexual abstinence has a time limit; it is not intended to be a life-long choice and is acceptable only if there is an end goal of heterosexual union, again pointing to the fact that sexual abstinence in this context is less about sexual abstinence, and more about cultivating the right kind of gendered relationships.
However, Gardner (2011) complicates this reading of sexual abstinence being used to uphold gender and sexual normativity. She argues that a big part of the evangelical abstinence movement’s success has been its ability to appeal to the secular, whether that be through using sex to sell abstinence (the reward for abstinence is touted as amazing sex within marriage), emphasising the health benefits of abstinence (and de-emphasising the religious argument), or tapping into the rhetoric of ‘choice’, which chimes with dominant discourses of liberal individualism as well as with feminism. The refrain of ‘my body, my choice’ - long associated with pro-choice activists - is frequently invoked by young women making the choice to control their own bodies by remaining abstinent (Gardner, 2011: 82). Thus, whilst the abstinence movement tends to be vehemently anti- feminist, it successfully uses the rhetorical strategies of feminism.29 Modesty in
dress, demeanour, and behaviour is also reframed as a kind of power that
women have over men in that they can protect men from being overcome by the sexual desire that is thought to be constantly besieging their (men’s) bodies and minds (Gardner, 2011: 84). In this way, young men are positioned as embattled and constantly in danger of succumbing to temptation, whilst young women themselves become moral guardians. The conservatism of the sexual abstinence movement is also complicated by the way in which those within perceive
themselves to be ‘subalterns under attack by an oversexualised secular culture’ (Miller, 2017: 4). Miller argues that those in the sexual abstinence movement see themselves as ‘rebels refusing heteronorms’, since in their eyes, normative dominant heterosexuality today is characterised by non-monogamy, casual sex, sex outside of marriage, non-reproductive sex, and the mixing up of gender roles – against which they craft an oppositional identity. They see themselves as
definitively on the ‘outside’, and their struggle has high stakes: no less than the moral and civilisational fortunes of the (American) nation (Moslener, 2015). Whilst most feminists would characterise the gender and sexual relationships promoted by those in the abstinence movement as normative given their
traditionally conservative nature, Miller (2017: 12) argues that ‘the evangelical virgin…[is] a sexual subject position that embraces anti-normativity’. Gardner (2011: 86) too suggests that ‘what may appear to be a re-inscription of
traditional gender roles is understood as a powerful act of agential liberation
29 Parallels may be seen with the European Far Right’s use of feminist discourse, and even indeed,
from a repressive regime of liberalism’ (Gardner, 2011: 86). Therefore, the contemporary sexual abstinence youth movement in the US can be seen as simultaneously representing order and tradition, as well as subversion with regards to gender and sexuality (depending on one’s perspective). In this way, then, this reflects some of the themes discussed earlier in the chapter: celibacy and sexual abstinence as both representing a potential social disruption but also shoring up certain gendered and sexual norms.
3.5. Conclusion
In this chapter, I clarified how I am using the term abstinence in this thesis, and outlined the parameters of this term. Whilst my thesis focuses on abstinence that is experienced as voluntary, I argued that this distinction between voluntary and involuntary is less clear-cut than some of the literature assumes, and it may be better to envisage a continuum or spectrum of abstinence.
Through examining the literature on abstinence, I showed how rather than being ‘additive’ to abstinence, gender is often central to both the meaning and
practice of abstinence. Abstinence can be seen to occupy a complex and perhaps contradictory space within patriarchy: in the sense of regulating women’s
behaviour it can be seen as central to women’s subordination, but it can also be adopted by some women who wish to find ways of resisting or circumventing gender inequalities (as well as by some women who do not see it in these terms at all). But I have also discussed how abstinence is also often constructed as ‘masculine’ (at least with regards to abstinence as a choice). Whilst abstinence can be empowering for women, precisely because of this association with masculinity, it may be at the cost of gendered opprobrium or reneging part of their socially-recognised identities as women.
This association with masculinity is the reason why I suggested that despite how we might think of celibacy as the antithesis of hegemonic masculinity in Western contexts, abstinence can be mobilised as a resource in service of the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. I outlined some recent empirical examples where this seems to be the case. I also discussed how the sexual abstinence youth
movement in the US can be seen as being fundamentally about the gendering of relationships (and, in particular, controlling young women’s bodies) and this can be seen as either conservative or subversive, depending on one’s viewpoint. Overall, whilst abstinence is thoroughly and inescapably gendered, there is no straightforward story of liberation or oppression (and for some, it is a matter of neither liberation nor oppression).
This chapter also illustrated that whilst there has been a small amount of empirical research on sexual abstinence, it has been focused on either men or women (e.g. Cline, 1994; Terry, 2012), and has tended to be located within particular religious and subcultural groups in which sexual abstinence is practised (e.g. Wilkins, 2009; Diefendorf, 2015; Browning, 2010). My research thus adds to and expands upon understandings of how sexual abstinence is
gendered by involving people of a variety of genders, as well as from a variety of contexts (i.e. not limited to one particular subculture). In addition, by bringing sexual abstinence into conversation with asexuality, I attempt to explore more deeply the ways in which sexuality, sex and desire are constituted through gender.