Mild at Heart: Love, Sex, and Masculinity After Purity Culture: Ep 8
Brad uses recent comments by Josh Hawley to talk about what people mean when they say that the country (and the church) needs to return to masculinity. Brad argues that this is a common trope in Christian nationalism and the theme opens the door for seeing how Christian nationalism is the original purity culture.
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What's up y'all?
Welcome to Mild at Heart.
Masculinity, love, and sex after purity culture.
My name is Brad Onishi and this is our series that we've been doing for the last two months and I want to continue today and continue talking about masculinity, We have been talking about love for a few weeks, took a break last week and talked about parenting with the wonderful Cindy Wong-Brandt, but I want to return to masculinity for a number of reasons.
One, because it's in the news at the moment, but also because I think it allows us to transition to a kind of a lens or a way of analysis that is maybe beyond the individual experience and more on the kind of cultural and historical dimensions of purity culture.
And so let me start with some things that Senator Josh Hawley said this week.
It's November 2021, if you're wondering, and he was interviewed by Axios and asked about why he is making masculinity His sort of main campaign priority, and one of the things he thinks is a real foundational issue for the country.
And so the interviewer asks him, why masculinity?
And he responds with a very telling answer.
He says, masculinity because we believe the left is attacking America, right?
So when he's asked about masculinity, the first thing he says is, the left is attacking America, The left thinks that America is systematically corrupt, and he's referencing there systematic racism and a host of other issues, and thus that men are corrupt and men are culpable in that corruption, right?
And so what he's saying is when you talk about—I'm going to decode this, right?
When you talk about systematic racism, institutions and schools and processes and policies that were built and constructed and designed in ways that are unfair to certain Americans, to racial minorities, to religious minorities, to women, to gender to racial minorities, to religious minorities, to women, to gender and sex minorities, to the LGBT community writ large.
Holly is saying you're attacking America and you're attacking men and And if you sort of read between the lines here, he's saying men are responsible for America.
And thus, when you attack America, you attack men.
And so we have to make masculinity Something that is acceptable and flourishing again.
In essence, he wants to make masculinity great again, right?
Or make America masculine again.
And so, Senator Hawley, if you're listening, I'm not a supporter of yours, and I actually think that you're a traitor who seditiously supported the insurrectionists on January 6th.
Nonetheless, if you're listening, I'm going to give this away for free.
You could use the acronym MAMA, Make American Masculine Again, just to get your message across.
So maybe, you know, the rallying cry would be MAMA.
I don't know.
You just, you can decide.
Anyway, with that sidebar out of the way, let's talk about what this has to do with purity culture.
Okay, you may be thinking, all right, good to hear about Holly and masculinity, but what does this have to do with purity culture?
And In my mind, everything.
Okay, and so let me just sort of try to unpack this.
Purity culture is obsessed with bodies.
Okay, we know that.
As a teenager, I've talked about this.
I disciplined my mind and my flesh and I tried to remain pure in any way possible.
Any lustful thoughts, any second glances at somebody, a sexual urge, an extended hug, all of this was seen as, right, temptation to impurity.
I tried to get rid of all the sexually explicit images in our house, all of the bikini ads in my surf magazines, all of that stuff.
And, you know, as in many youth groups across the nation, the girls in our youth group were taught to wear Clothing that would not make them a stumbling block, right, to other people.
Now, one way to view purity culture is as a projection of all the racial, gendered, and societal fears Christian nationalists harbor in themselves onto the canvas of teenage flesh.
And you might be saying, like, what?
How does that work?
Okay, well, let me unpack this.
Christian nationalists believe in a country that is built for and by Christians, and most often it is built for and by white Christians.
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