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ABSTRACT
Purity Culture’s rhetorical positioning of those socialized as young, White women of good and innocent sexual objects created somatic experiences of traumatic shame and dissociation for those inhabiting this location. This experience is inextricably linked to the affective responses that produced compulsive international aid involvement as attempts to maintain the role of young, White womanhood within Christian Nationalism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 On the situation of White womanhood, see Stoler, Race and the Education and Jackson et al., White Women. On intersections of race, gender, theology, and sexuality, see Valenti, The Purity Myth; Moslener, Virgin Nation; Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; Moultrie, Passionate and Pious; and Natarajan et al., “Decolonizing Purity Culture.”
2 On gendered performances of women in international work see Heron, Desire for Development; see Malkki, The Need to Help; see Finnegan, “The White Girl’s Burden.” On the transnationalizing of Christianity see Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity; see McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders.
3 See Immerwahr, How To Hide an Empire.
4 McGrath, I’ll Save You.
5 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 54.
6 See Bailey, Poole, and Russel, Invisible Children:Discover the Unseen; see Finnegan, “The White Girl’s Burden.”
7 Hill Collins Black Sexual Politics, 95–8.
8 Ibid., 95.
9 Valenti, The Purity Myth, 14. What is absent in this troublingly graphic description is all of the other reasons one may need access to safe, legal abortions aside from assault.
10 First stated in McGrath, “Purity Culture.”
11 See DeYoung, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame, 44–5. DeYoung articulates how a subject experiencing themselves as an object interpersonally will internalize that objectification as shame. This shame is often self-managed through dissociation and/or rage.
12 See Greenblatt, “The Improvisation of Power.” I use empathy in the same way Greenblatt describes it as an exercise of Western power. See this articulated by Asad in Berkley Center, “Reflections on the Origins of Human Rights (Talal Asad Lecture),” YouTube, 1:30:15, July 17, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd7P6bUKAWs.
13 See Houser, “Altared Bodies.”
14 See Sawyer, “I Stumbled.”
15 See Hamad, White Tears/ Brown Scars.
16 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 6.
17 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 5. While Du Bois coined this term in reference to the experience of Black Americans, I use it to illuminate the “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” that is true for White women in purity culture.
18 Phrase from Shultz, Evangelical Capital. Purity balls began in the 1990’s and are marriage-like ceremonies between young (often White) girls and their fathers. During these rituals young girls pledge their virginity until their wedding night and are given a token of their promise, such as a locket necklace or ring on their finger.
19 See Foucault, The History of Sexuality; see Stoler, Race and the Education.
20 See Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic.”
21 See Griffith, Moral Combat; see Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come; see Sara Moslener, Virgin Nation; see Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; See Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne; see Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Fallwell.
22 See Valenti, The Purity Myth.
23 Moslener, Virgin Nation 8.
24 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 283.
25 The presumption within the heteronormative binary of purity culture is that it was always a man, and never a differing gender.
26 Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl.
27 *NSYNC, Digital Get Down.
28 See Wilkerson, Caste.
29 See Bjork-James, The Divine Institution.
30 For “fractal” see Brown, Emergent Strategy, 16. Whitehead et al., “[Christian Nationalism is] used to defend against shifts in culture toward equality for groups that have historically lacked access to the levers of power- women, sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities” Taking America Back for God, 154).
31 Jackson, Lord of the Rings.
32 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 157.
33 Dissociation is our bodies’ natural response to trauma, stress, and shame that are inescapable. If our body does not feel safe to be present – it won’t be. See Walker, Complex PTSD; See Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score; See Levine, In an Unspoken Voice; See DeYoung, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame.
34 See Schermer Sellers, Sex God and the Conservative Church; See Houser, “Altered Bodies.”
35 See Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score; See DeYoung, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame.
36 McGrath, “Purity Culture.”
37 See Roberts, Beyond Shame; see Rodgers, Outlove.
38 See Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness.
39 Ibid., 11.
40 See Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged; see Moslener, Virgin Nation; see Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; see Valenti, The Purity Myth.
41 A cocktail made with cranberry juice, cherry vodka, and peach schnapps.
42 See Houser, “Altared Bodies.”
43 See Orenstein, Girls and Sex.
44 See Walker, Complex PTSD; see Porges, The Polyvagal Theory. Walker expands on polyvagal theory by highlighting that fawning is part of the freeze stress response cycle. This cycle is controlled by the Vagus Nerve and is part of the Dorsal Vagal Complex according to Porges’ polyvagal theory. The body automatically moves into this energy consumption stage when it cannot fight or flee.
45 See Nagoski, Come As You Are, 193. Arousal non-concordance is the experience of physiological arousal that is absent of desire or pleasure. All pleasure is arousing, but not all arousal is pleasurable.
46 See Chen, “How To Negotiate Better Consent.” Unwilling consent occurs when someone fears the consequences of saying “no” more than the consequences of saying “yes,” and when they believe that by saying yes the person asking will stop bothering them. This is a framework that was created by Emily Nagoski then adapted and referenced by Chen.
47 Houser, “Altared Bodies,’ 186.
48 McBride, “Concrete Angel.”
49 A dance in which one foot brushes up into the other air and the other leg follows in a leap-like movement to the side.
50 See Schultz, “Coming under Disembodied Conviction”; see Schultz, “Welcome to the Greatest Place on Earth.”
51 See Ross, “The Invisible Christians”; see Bailey, Poole, and Russel, Invisible Children:Discover the Unseen.
52 Term coined by Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors, 56. First read in Finnigan, “The White Girl’s Burden”; Quote from Asad, “Reflections on the Origins of Human Rights.”
53 Acholi People are an ethnolinguistic group in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.
54 Salami, Sensuous Knowledge.
55 See Bailey, Poole, and Russel, Invisible Children:Discover the Unseen.
56 See Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic.”
57 See Malkki, The Need To Help.
58 As of 11 October 2023 can be seen on the Wellspring Project youtube video I share a variation of this statement.
59 “Empathy, as the German Einfürhlung suggests, may be a feeling of oneself into an object, but that object may have to be drained of its own substance before it will serve as an appropriate vessel” (Greenblatt, “The Improvisation of Power,” 236).
60 See Khoja-Moolji, “Death by Benevolence”; See Hartman, Scenes of Subjection.
61 Malkki, The Need to Help, 79.
62 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 75.
63 See Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 354.
64 See Dubal, Against Humanity; see Finnegan, “Beyond Victimhood.”
65 For Ugandan State violence see Dubal, Against Humanity; see Finnegan, “Beyond Victimhood.” For US relations see Sharlet, The Family; see Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; see McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders.
66 Mallki, The Need To Help, 8.
67 Valenti, The Purity Myth, 44.
68 See Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic.”
69 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 75.
70 McGrath, I’ll Save You.
71 See Levine, In an Unspoken Voice, 17, 89; see Levine, Healing Trauma, 20; see Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score, 34. Both Levin and Van Der Kolk describe the immense amount of survival/survivor’s energy that exists in a body after a traumatic event.
72 See Bluhm, Prey Tell; See Allison, #Churchtoo.
73 See Schermer Sellers, Sex God and the Conservative; see Winell, Leaving the Fold.
74 “[E]mpathy must be carefully calibrated between the extremes of self-loss and self-absorption” (quoted in Malkki, The Need to Help: Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015], 11).
75 Sorentino, “Mistresses as Masters,” 32.
76 See Yokum, “Call for Psycho-Affective Change.” This is a question I have been engaged in with interlocutors and mental health counselors who have informed my thinking around this, including Rebekah Vickery, Abby Wong-Heffter, and Danielle Castillejo.
77 See Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; see McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders.
78 See Finnegan, “The White Girl’s Burden.”
79 Biddle, Ours to Explore, 85.
80 Ibid., 76.
81 A common refrain among international missionaries.
82 A few, albeit significant, examples of young, White women who have played significant roles in Uganda are Katie Davis, who adopted 13 Ugandan girls by the time she was 23; Renee Bach, who performed medical procedures in a feeding clinic she started where over 100 children died; and Kelsey Nielson who started the organization “No White Saviors” from which she was later called out by her Ugandan staff for her alleged violent behavior towards them and appropriation of funds. While, to my knowledge, these women did not decide to go to Uganda because of Invisible Children, and they did not work specifically in Gulu, I name them as individuals whose stories have gained traction in the media in the past few years.
83 Heron, Desire for Development, 36.
84 Ibid., 15.
85 See Shotwell, Against Purity.
86 I must acknowledge that much of my thought around this is informed by the practice and theory of “Somatic Extimacy” developed by Kesha Fikes, forthcoming.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jennifer McGrath
Jennifer McGrath is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor living in Seattle, Washington (Duwamish Land). Her private practice focuses on religious trauma and sexual abuse, and she has spent eight years seeing primarily White women who grew up in purity culture. Jenny is also a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner who specializes in trauma’s impact on the body. Jenny is an independent researcher and member of the Purity Culture Research Collective. She situates her work at the intersections of embodiment and social consciousness.