Purity Culture and the Politics of White Innocence
In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad is joined by Sarah Moslener, author of After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America and creator of the Pure White podcast. Together, they explore purity culture not as a narrow fixation on teenage abstinence, but as a powerful religious and political system that has long shaped ideas of belonging in the United States. Moslener traces purity culture back to 19th-century slavery, Victorian gender norms, and Protestant theology, showing how it functions to define “good bodies” and “bad bodies,” determine moral worth, and police the boundaries of citizenship. White womanhood, in particular, emerges as a national symbol of innocence and virtue that has been central to sustaining racial hierarchy and social control.
The conversation turns to how these myths are playing out in the present, from the aesthetics and behavior of women aligned with Trump-era politics to the legal and media treatment of women involved in January 6. Brad and Moslener examine how white innocence is protected when it reinforces authority and withdrawn when it challenges power, contrasting the treatment of compliant figures with white women who resist authoritarianism and women of color who face state violence. From ICE raids to the killing of Reneé Nicole Goode, the episode highlights how authoritarian systems rely on fear, spectacle, and constantly shifting lines between “good” and “bad” to enforce obedience. The discussion ultimately underscores the high cost—and the necessity—of defecting from whiteness in moments of moral and political crisis.
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axis mundi welcome to straight white american jesus I'm Brad O'Nishi, author of American Caesar, How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy.
Pre-orders available now.
It's Sunday, and these interviews usually happen on Monday.
Well, as some of you know, we have made a change.
We're going to be doing our swagger interviews on Sundays with a little bit longer of a format.
You'll hear me, but you'll also hear Leah Payne and Annika Brockschmidt alternating weekends and really forming a team effort to bring you interviews with scholars and researchers, experts, journalists, and public figures.
A week from today, you'll hear Annika Brockschmidt, who is a journalist and just absolute expert on all things Christian nationalism and the religious right in the United States, as well as Europe, speaking with Seth Kotler, who is one of the leading researchers in my mind on local right-wing politics and truly scary fascist movements in the United States.
So I've been meaning to have Seth on the show for a long time, and I'm thoroughly excited that Annika will be interviewing him.
Today, though, we have somebody who is so important to this show, and that is Dr. Sarah Mosliner, who has a new book out called After Purity, and it examines the ramifications of purity culture, but also digs into the history of the connections between purity culture and white supremacy.
She is, of course, the creator of Pure White, an Axis Mundi show that we made a couple of years ago that examines these very themes, and also the author of Virgin Nation, Sexual Purity, and American Adolescence.
It was great to welcome Sarah back to the show after a period where we hadn't heard from her in a while.
And our conversation is wide-ranging.
It really does hit on topics related to sexuality in the body, but also race and hierarchy and inclusion in the United States.
One of the things we talk about at length is Mar-a-Lago face and how it represents this patriarchal expectation of how women should act and the ways that their bodies should conform to male expectations.
And we relate that to the killing of René Good and what happens when women don't conform to what men, especially authoritarian and violent men, want from them.
So without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Sarah Mosliner.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
As I just said, I am here today with somebody who is near and dear to this show's history and essence and core, and somebody who I just admire a lot, and that is Dr. Sarah Mosliner.
So, Sarah, thanks for being here.
Hi, Dr. Brad O'Nishi.
Always good to be with you.
I just had to give my students, you know, first week of class, here's what you call me.
Please call me Dr. Mosliner.
But already getting the Miss Mosliner, Mrs. Mossliner.
So, you know, gotta wanna keep respect on your name.
Well, I just appreciated that you know me well enough and are good enough at making fun of me that instead of being the like enthusiastic podcast guest that's like, hey, great to be here.
You're like, hello, Dr. Brad.
Just get on with it.
So it's just, that's what I was enjoying very much.
100% keeping it real to use all the cliches.
Yeah.
Well, we're here to talk about your amazing new book, After Purity, Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America.
It's been out just a few months or maybe less than that.
And it's amazing.
And it really contains ideas and trajectories and histories that you and I have discussed at length and that you, of course, shared on your amazing series, Pure White, which many, many, many, many people have listened to.
But I want to start here for those who are new to this conversation or new to your work or new to this whole idea.
And it's basically this, friends, that evangelical purity culture is about more than teenagers not having sex.
It's about myths of innocence and national greatness and even white supremacy.
And so can we start here, Sarah?
Would you give us the like one minute conception of purity culture so we can use that as a launching point for understanding how teaching young Christian kids not to fool around is actually about building a white Christian nation?
Yeah.
So because I am a historian, I go back to the 19th century, which I think helps us, helps us get grounded in a much more historicized context and one that helps us to also understand sexual purity as a racialized concept and deeply racist concept.
So sexual purity, you know, for people who are coming out of evangelical purity culture is very much about adhering to a particular set of moral standards around one's body.
And in terms of romantic and sexual relationships, it is heteronormative.
It is anti-queer, it's misogynistic.
And as we know now, there's a spectrum of harms associated with this.
But when we look back to the 19th century, we realize that this virtue of sexual purity that resurfaced in, you know, in evangelical purity culture was created in the context of slavery.
And so I would say ultimately, sexual purity is about designating bodies as good or bad.
And in the context of a nation state, that has to do with citizenship and who is a citizen, who has a body that is controlled, that is ordered.
And certainly there are many others who've made this argument about other topics.
But yeah, that I think, you know, sexual purity is about sort of dividing the good bodies from the bad and so that we can identify who the bad citizens are or potential citizens.
One of the arguments you make in this book and in your podcast is that white women have a particular role in this designation of which bodies are good and bad.
And white women are kind of the bellwether for understanding how this regulation of bodies and the construction of purity works.
So would you help us understand briefly just like how do white women become the canvas for all of these myths and ideas and projections?
So white womanhood, and I use the language of the cultural meanings of white womanhood and the way that that was developed in the 19th century during these projects of nation building and how white womanhood rhetorically came to represent so many different things.
Like we have lady justice and lady temperance and lady progress, right?
All represented as white women.
And in popular culture, in religious culture, white women came to embody the promise of the civilization.
And so this got wrapped into Victorian gender ideologies, Protestant belief systems.
And of course, this was a huge shift in Christian theology where women never, you know, didn't really have this role of being pure, being pious, right?
All these things that in the 19th century, you know, became associated with them.
And so, and of course, that was used for particular reasons, specifically as a way to distinguish white women from women of color, as a way to distinguish slave from free, as a way to distinguish citizen from non-citizen, right?
All the things that whiteness does.
And it made it, and then that way, white women were more inclined to follow along with what white men were doing and gave them incentives.
And it still functioned this way, that white women are incentivized to support patriarchs, authoritarians, right?
Whatever it is that leadership looks like in the moment, because they do receive benefits, not because of their gender, but because of their race.
And so sexual purity, one of the things that was assigned to white women, which gave white women a degree of moral authority that they were not previously offered.
And so that became deeply racialized.
And, you know, as decades went along, became justification for significant racial violence, the need to protect white women from all things.
So it puts white women in this really unique position.
And that's what I am really interested in is sort of unwrapping all of those things, right?
And there's so many contradictions and there's so many kind of different ways of thinking about a white womanhood and both the limits and opportunities of being a white woman in the United States, especially one who participates in public discourse or just public life in general.
I'm going to try to sort of link this to the national greatness part and the national purity part and see if you can just fill it in for me.
So based on previous discussions with you and all the work you did on Pure White and bringing in our colleague Dan Miller, my understanding is then that if the white woman is seen as this beacon of purity, that the white woman is the one who upholds femininity and family values by way of her sexual purity,
that the white woman in particular becomes this kind of symbol of the nation that needs to be kept pure and protected, a virgin nation to call on the title of your first book, that needs to be unblemished, not only by sexual impurity, but by contact with the kinds of bodies that are considered bad bodies.
Foreign bodies, bodies of color, bodies that are inherently inferior, according to the 19th, 20th, and 21st century racial hierarchy, meaning black bodies.
Is that a good starting point for linking the kind of symbolism of white womanhood to the national myths that are under discussion here?
Absolutely.
Right.
And certainly more, I mean, that's far more than a starting point, but this idea that white womanhood becomes a proxy for the nation.
And so if white women are assaulted, are threatened, then there is, then there is a threat to the nation, right?
I mean, we've seen this in contemporary political rhetoric.
I mean, it's woven into discourses around anti-blackness, around anti-immigration.
And so women become, so sexually pure white women become weaponized.
And, right, and can participate in that if they so choose to.
And many do, many have.
That is on the record.
If you especially look at someone like Ida B. Wells's research into lynching, she did an incredible amount of research.
And you see the white, the way that white women were complicit in that.
And because all they had to be was silence, right?
And it was assumed that they had done nothing wrong, that a person about to be executed had done wrong because he was a black man, you know, in proximity to a white woman.
And so, yes.
So white womanhood became, you know, a lot of people will use the term put on a pedestal.
And that did significant, you know, nationalistic work, right?
And right, keeping the races separate, keeping, you know, and being able to sort of use the imaginary of white womanhood to reflect something about the nation, and which makes me, and so this is a completely different topic, but this just came up.
I'd be interested to hear what you have to say in it.
And so, because I'm, I'm trying to, you know, because I work more historically in the book, but I also, I wrote a theory to be helpful to us now.
And so I'm trying to be more complete about that.
But one of the things I'm fascinated by when I can, is of course, you know, one of the lesser concerning things that's happening right now, but still concerning, is the phenomenon of the Mar-a-Lago face and the way white women in the Trump administration have been physically altered through plastic surgery.
And like, and there's meaning in that, this willingness to, in many cases, go from being a perfectly lovely woman to being someone with very exaggerated features.
And I think there's a, my hunch is that that signifies compliance.
It signifies compliance to authority.
And it's, because I, I heard a plastic surgeon interviewed and they said, you know, most, when most women get plastic surgery, they don't want it to be obvious that they've written the ideas to look natural.
And none of this is natural plastic surgery.
White Women and Compliance00:05:19
So there's something about white women indicating their malleability in the context of the Trump administration that that is necessary if they're going to have the positions of power that they have.
They need to show their willingness to conform to certain set of expectations.
So that's, so yeah.
So again, this, you know, that white women are sort of always, you know, something is projected on them.
They learn to project it back, especially if they, if they want to achieve power in certain contexts.
And I see that that's, that that's what's happening now in the Trump administration.
I'm really, I'm really glad you brought this up.
I think it's, I think it's important.
It's, it's tricky.
And as a man, I want to be clear.
I have no interest in judging how anyone looks or whether they look good or bad or how they dress.
So that's, I have no interest in that.
So I want everyone to hear me there.
But I do feel like I want to comment on the phenomenon you just brought up, which is a certain group of people willing to significantly change their facial appearance on purpose for the result of gaining power in a regime and in a culture.
And a couple of things come to mind as you say that, Sarah.
One is I actually saw on social media today a kind of grid of people who have adopted Mar-a-Lagoface, so to speak.
The people on the grid were Caroline Levitt, Laura Loomer, Kimberly Gafoil, Lara Trump, the partner of Eric Trump, and Christy Noam.
And a couple of things come to mind when I recall that image.
One, I don't know if there is an example, and there might be out there, and I'm sure somebody might email me, but of a woman of color or a black woman who is a prominent public figure in the Trump administration or elsewhere who's adopted Mar-a-Lagoface.
I don't know of any right now.
And so that's one thing.
I think another is I think there is a phenomenon in this regime where women like Christy Noam are seen as what makes America great because of what you just said.
What's projected onto them, they project right back in perfect fashion.
You are supposed to look a certain way.
You're supposed to have a certain kind of body, a certain kind of aesthetic, a certain kind of beauty.
And if you project that back to us in the most hyperbolic form, you are signaling that you are the kind of woman this country needs for men to be men, women to be women, families to be families, our borders to be secure, and our fight against all those who would attack us.
I have maintained for a long time that Christy Noam is always on the forefront of these ICE raids because she is the symbol of what needs to be protected.
The very slender, Mar-a-Lago-faced, evangelical white lady who ICE is fighting for against all of the invaders and the infidels and the others.
And so that's my take.
I don't know if you want to jump in here on that part, but yeah.
Yeah, it's it is.
And of course, you know, in height of faction, I think, you know, DC is known for, you know, people in sort of, you know, political work wear.
I mean, and I think, and I do think these things are important, right?
And not to, you know, not to just drag people, right?
That's not what we're here to do, but these things are our cultural references.
And so when I see someone like Christy Noam, you know, who has, who has a way of making a show just by the clothing she chooses, certainly by the word she chooses, the kind of top exterior is, but, but also she's doing it in a way, or at least what the, you know,
facial reconstruction does is it points back to the male authoritarian.
And so that the people are always remembered, oh, like she is, she is a mouthpiece.
She is a representative and is, you know, obedient to this other, this other figure.
And like, that's where she gets her authority.
So you sort of see that in her, in her affects.
But it is really, and I, it is really fascinating to kind of think about, you know, this very particular, and it's, and it's, and, and it's so starkly different from what we're used to seeing, you know, in DC.
You know, people, everyone dresses fairly conservative.
I mean, every once in a while you have like a Fetterman, you have, you know, you know, I mean, you have people who talk about like, yeah, I have to, you know, go to Goodwill to get my clothes because I have the money, you know, and so people pulling stuff together, right?
Look, have that respectable look and stuff like that.
And but yeah, so this is a very, it's a very different aesthetic than what we're used to.
It's, it's meant to be eye-catching.
Post-Conservative Aesthetic00:12:56
It's meant, you know, which makes sense given that Donald Trump is first and foremost an entertainer.
One experience I'll share is that I was with Catherine Stewart like, whew, I don't want to admit this.
This is like eight years ago now.
Oh, my, I feel old.
Anyway, so we're in DC.
We're at the old Trump Hotel, which was in the like old post office.
And we were there to cover like New Apostolic Reformation rally.
But after the rally, we went to the Trump Hotel bar just to sort of, you know, anthropological experiment.
And on one side of the bar, there were like white supremacists, Richard Spencer types.
Another side of the bar was bikers for Trump.
There was a whole group of Jewish rabbis and other Jewish folks who were gathered.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's like rabbi was there.
And then one corner, though, was this group of people who I can only describe in my mind as like seven or eight men who looked like Rudy Giuliani.
Like that age, that look, that kind of suit, that kind of hair.
Okay.
And then like every one of them with a woman who looked like Kayleigh McInenney, the Fox News personality and former Trump spokesperson who, you know, platinum blonde, very slender.
And that image really is what comes to mind when we talk about Mara Lagoface because it was clear that these very, these much older, in my view, skeezy men who were like in their 60s all partnered with like a 20-something young blonde woman.
And those blonde women all looked exactly the same.
They look like Fox News presenters.
And it's just the same idea of like projecting onto a woman what you're supposed to look like.
And if you project it back, you will be rewarded within that system.
And I think I, you know, I hope that's part of what you're gesturing toward here with, you know, with what you're analyzing in the book.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I, yeah, and Mar-a-Lagoface is something that, you know, that just sort of, I think, came into the ether last spring.
And so it's not in the book, but I do talk about, you know, the women of January 6th and the way that those women were, those who were arrested for participating and how they were able to main, how they attempted to maintain their innocence, even though there was, you know, actual video footage of them doing the things they were accused of doing.
And it was interesting.
You have had responses, you know, by the, you know, the one woman who, who said like, you know, I'm white, I'm blonde.
I'm not going to prison, you know, sorry, haters or whatever.
Jenna, trying to remember her name, but anyway, I write about her in the book, but, but like those sorts of things and other women who, you know, just their response was like, well, I did something wrong.
What?
What?
You know, I didn't even realize.
And just sort of this, you know, that they could, you know, that they could dip into that, you know, that that would be their response.
And then even when they went to court, they were represented, you know, according to, you know, as caregivers, right?
if they were mothers, that was if they were caring for parents, right?
So that, so these sort of trappings of stereotypical femininity were used to represent them as a way to highlight their innocence.
And so this is certainly something we see, the way that, you know, white women can, again, weaponize the myths of innocence around themselves.
And I just, I found that so fascinating and illuminating in terms of thinking about the different cultural meanings of white womanhood and the way they contribute to our nationalistic discourses and make and sort of make authoritarianism feel inevitable.
On that note, I was, you know, I saw yesterday footage of what's happening in Minneapolis and ICE raids.
And one of the things that happened was a woman was violently pulled from her car.
She's a Latinx woman.
And she's saying, I'm on my way to the doctor.
And if you watch the video, which is brutal and terrifying and heart-wrenching, they don't care.
They don't care at all.
There could have been any emergency and they would not have cared.
They pull her from the car.
They detain her.
It's really, really, really violent.
And I guess I bring that up, Sarah, because it's the exact opposite.
Like she was not able to say in that moment, I'm a caregiver.
I'm a mother.
I'm a wife.
You know, there was none of that.
And there was just simply, and when there was Congresspeople ask about that particular case, which did outrage many people, there was a Congresswoman, a Congresswoman who's a white woman who said, look, if you break the law, you can expect to be detained by ICE and it may be kind of rough.
Sorry.
And like, that's the exact opposite response to the women of J6 that you're talking about.
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, and I mean, I have been sort of grinding my gears over the last week and trying to, you know, kind of think about, you know, what, what these myths of innocence, how they help us think about what it is ICE is doing.
And I think, and yeah, and I think it, sorry, still grinding, still grinding away.
But, but yeah, I mean, now there's, you know, one thing authoritarianism does, and this is certainly, you know, the way white womanhood was constructed is you want to have a clear distinction between good and bad.
And certainly, right, so we started by talking about good bodies and bad bodies.
You know, we talk about, you know, the sort of race line that people talked about in the 19th and early 20th century between black and white and sort of in the United States, we've always had these needs for division, right?
Who is good, who is bad, who is a citizen, who is not.
And that line has moved significantly because now more people are being perceived as being problems.
And one way to think about that, and I say this tentatively, is that, you know, these are showing up.
I think we see that especially with ICE, the way that neighborhoods in Chicago and the Twin Cities have been organizing is just phenomenal.
And so when you do that, I mean, in that, those are the laws of authoritarianism, right?
It's George Bush's, you're for us or against us.
And so that puts you in.
So, but this idea of having a very clear demarcation, that comes from the need for national purity, right?
For national security, for this assurance that we know how to keep ourselves safe.
We can identify, right, who is unsafe and who deserves to be killed, who deserves to be dragged out of their car.
Because that's what we end up fighting about when we see these things.
Oh, did they deserve it?
What were they doing?
You know, did they overstep their bounds when it's so evident that what we've previously considered laws are no longer relevant.
And it's, and there's sort of, and, and that's really kind of hard.
So there's on the one hand, you have right, these, the authoritarians and, right, and their minions, you know, trying to maintain this distinction between the good and bad, but they're also then trying to move that line so that more people are in the bad category so that they can do the, and also I think, you know, there is an intentionality, right?
This is, it's a propaganda campaign to see this violence, to see like, yep, no one's safe, right?
They want people to be afraid.
And so, yeah, and I think, you know, the argument I'm working on, and I can't articulate it here, is the ways that innocence myths have really paved the way for our post-truth world and our and sort of the increasing lawlessness that we are experiencing by people who work for the federal government and the same bodies that create our laws.
And so, so yeah, so that's what I'm, you know, I'm trying to sort of articulate that more clearly, but I'm not quite there yet.
One thing that flashes in my mind as you say that, and I'm excited to kind of hear that, that theory and here's a response that may or may not be helpful.
You know, there's no sense here of what is right.
I don't think that when Renee Nicole Good was killed, the government had any sense that it wanted to reflect to the American people, we are going to make sure that we understand what happened so that we can do what is right in this situation, whether that's punishing the police officer, punishing the ICE officer who perpetrated the killing, whether that's whatever.
The only sense was who was the good person and who was the bad person.
And I guess what I'm getting at here is there's no more sense of right or wrong.
There's simply a sense of who is good, who has a good body and who has a bad body.
And this leads to something I've been thinking over the last couple of days that I think might pertain to what you're talking about and definitely pertains to your book, which is there have been a spate of articles from right-wing outlets, New York Post, others that have basically castigated Renee Nicole Good and the quote-unquote wine moms who are on the front lines of ICE resistance and community engagement as women who are a couple of things,
unattractive and in a Freudian way, wanting big, strong heterosexual men to engage with them and have some sort of strange, violent sexual interface with them.
So to my, you know, after somebody who's read your book and is familiar with your work for a long time, and given the tools of all of your great interjections into this conversation, my thought was, well, these are white women who are doing the exact opposite of Mar-a-Lagoface.
They're not living up to expectations.
They're not projecting back to the authoritarians what the authoritarians want to see in women.
They're not playing their role as the white feminine symbols of innocence and national greatness.
They are on the side of the quote-unquote bad people.
And so now they are people with bad bodies.
They are ugly bodies.
They are sexually repressed bodies.
They are sexually deviant bodies.
And they can be considered as dispensable and disposable as the people with the bad bodies, i.e. the immigrant, the undocumented person, the refugee, the black person, and so on.
You know, wondering if you have any thoughts there.
If you don't, you can just say, Brad, you didn't tell me you were going to talk about that.
So you just, you know, screw you.
That's fine too.
No, I think, yeah, I think you're definitely onto something.
And bless you for, you know, reading right-wing media and hearing those things.
But it is, you know, because I have been hearing, you know, a lot of people, you know, talking about misogyny in the context of these things.
And I think there's, and there's, yes, I think that's important, but I think there's, you know, there are other layers of analysis to do.
But it does the first thing I thought of, though, when you were describing that, I thought of like the childless cat lady memes and this like, you know, it's a single woman.
She's got like her vodka.
She's got her pets and, you know, and no kids and just sort of the irresponsibility, self-indulgent life, right?
Defecting And Visibility00:09:15
So wine moms is, and was that from, was that from a Trump post?
That sounds like something he would say.
It's sort of become like a label that they're using.
Yeah, yeah.
I've seen people now self-define as a wine mom.
And I'm pretty sure many of my friends are wine moms in the same right, but and they'll use it.
I mean, that's, that is, that is the great thing about some of this stuff is it's so easily, I mean, well, and there's even the organization Red Wine in Blue.
So they are probably, they're all wine moms, but it's, it's code for white suburban women.
Yes.
And so sort of seeing, and so now that white suburban women are becoming visible to the Trump administration as being on the front lines of resistance, right?
They need to move, right?
They're like, okay, well, now you're no, you are now sort of on the enemies list.
And so, and so then it's hard.
And then, you know, it's hard then to think to be, to be able to make the argument of like, well, what does what does this tell us about race?
If, and, and, and I think that, you know, one of the things, you know, that makes movement happen.
And I, and I'm happy to get pushback on this is that, and maybe in a place like, like the Twin Cities, it's different.
But certainly where I live in a very white, small Michigan town, like if you can't get white allies to step up, right?
There's going to be no movements.
And fortunately, not only are we seeing that now, but hopefully in a way, people of color who've been on the front lines can be like, yeah, we're going to sit down.
Like, we're not going to show up to the protest in February in Minnesota.
Although, I mean, but you saw like there was a beautiful ceremony for Renee Good by the Indigenous community in the Twin Cities.
I mean, so there are some incredible things that are happening.
But, but yeah, it is, you know, anyone, you know, in the same way that we see immigrants, people of color supporting the MAGA movement, right?
You are welcome in the movement as long as you embrace, right, the white supremacist hierarchy, as long as you embrace sort of, you know, the expansion of powers and all of those things.
And yes, those people are there, right?
In the same way, you know, white women can defect.
And I know for many of us, it's, it's defecting, I think defecting when you're white, right?
If we think about it as defecting from whiteness, right?
And a lot of people use the language of like giving up your white privilege or using your privilege.
I don't, I, but there is something about like defecting in a way that makes you visible as a defector.
And I think that's what we're seeing in more and more.
And of course, then seeing that, yes, white, white women who are defectors are very much under threats in the way that anyone is who is out in the streets kind of participating and confronting ICE, right?
That's just kind of the lawlessness of our rules right now.
One last comment on this, and then, you know, I'll see what you think and we I'll let you go.
I don't want to take up your whole day.
One of the Newsmax commentators or Fox News, it's all a blur at this moment, basically said, commenting on the wine moms, said, it's almost like these white liberal women have a kind of smugness about them when it comes to authority.
And he was basically saying like when an ICE officer approaches the white suburban woman who is on the front lines of the resistance here or the community response, that their attitude towards the DHS personnel, the ICE officer is one of defiance, is one of resistance, is one of mockery.
And it was clear in what the Newsmax or Fox News person was saying was that, huh, I just would not expect that from a nice white lady like you.
You know, I would expect that like when a big, tough police officer approaches you, you would have a kind of different attitude.
I would expect this from the bad people, but now I'm starting to suspect you might be one of the bad people or you might be on their side.
And it's like this thing that is so clear is that if you are enchanted by white supremacy, whether as a white woman, as a person of color, anyone else, you can be categorically changed from the good side to the bad side like that.
I mean, and all it takes is for you to look at the police officer the wrong way, for you to go from a symbol of national innocence and greatness to a smug white, white liberal who probably is just as bad as the people ICE is trying to get rid of.
And anyway, that's my last thought on that.
And not sure if that sort of, you know, makes sense in terms of some of the, you know, your approach to these things and what you write about in the book, but I could not get that comment out of my head the other night.
And, you know, it reminds me of, I mean, I think one of the things that we see, you know, the smugness, what I think they're noting is moral authority of people who know, like, who also understand the distinction between people who are doing the work of authoritarianism and people who have a commitment to democracy.
And there is a clarity there.
And though I think we're still having lots of conversations about what do we do across that divide, right?
Do we try and bring people over?
Do we try and just, you know, or not?
And so.
So, yeah, so it is very much so, you know, here's someone who's not willing, you know, to demure to authority, which is what is, you know, which is what is being demanded right now.
And so.
you know, to sort of hear, you know, the way that she interacted with that one.
And I've heard some pretty interesting, Kate Mann is someone who I read and she writes, she's a philosopher at Cornell and she specializes in writing about misogyny.
And so she, you know, kind of went through the exchange that they had and that and made the argument that she was shot because she wasn't willing to, you know, bend to misogyny.
She wasn't willing to play, to play that game.
And of course, he, you know, he became livid because he was being treated that way by a woman who was, of course, supposed to do what he, you know, was telling her to do.
And so, and I think that, you know, and I think that's a helpful frame to use.
And I, and I also always admit in these situations, it's, it's, you know, there are many different ways to look at it, all sort of give us important pieces.
But yeah, and it's, I mean, when we're talking about authoritarianism, we're talking about obedience.
And, and when you see, you know, white women who are supposed to be obedient or at least represent their willingness to be so, which I think a lot of women do, right?
A lot of women know how to play the parts in some cases to keep themselves safe, right?
Because it's necessary to do so.
But yeah.
So, I mean, that just sort of, you know, was very kind of this head on collision of this tension we have around what authority is, around gender, and around the role of the citizen in terms of resisting, you know, the right that citizens have.
You know, and this administration has made clear that citizens do not have the right to protest.
And so every form of protest is going to be, is going to be clouded in there in their particular, yeah, as a form of disobedience.
There's a whole two-hour discussion here to have about what you just said about authority and the ideas of submission, wives submitting to your husbands in church and wives submitting to the male headship theology.
That's, of course, a big part of purity culture.
It's a big part of the way that purity culture forms families and, you know, what are supposed to be well-functioning families.
I know we're out of time.
If you want to jump in on that, go for it.
Big Part Of Purity Culture00:03:32
If not, just, you know, I'll say, I, I, Sarah, it's, it's, it, it's, it's a, it's an otter and a great, you know, for me, joy to get to talk to you anytime.
And that includes about your book and all of these other awful things happening in our country.
Appreciate your book so much and the, the richness of it and the way that it, it is so bold and honest.
And if you're somebody who lived through purity culture and are wondering how you can place your body in space and time, this is a book that will definitely help you understand so much more than just, hey, don't have sex and control your sexual urges.
There's, there's about 50 more dimensions to it.
And Sarah's the one that for years has been unpacking that.
So any last comments, Sarah?
And then where can we find you and all of the stuff you're up to?
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Again, you know, I've been sorting through these things.
I mean, there's just so much to take in right now.
And I do hope, you know, when I, because I started this book during the first Trump administration and there was some intention in trying to develop an argument that would help people make sense of living in an increasingly authoritarian nation.
And I think there are some things in there and there are some things I'm working to clarify for myself, especially around this notion of myths of innocence.
And yeah, so yeah, I think there's there's some more work to do.
So we'll see if that happens.
But yeah, thank you so much, Brad.
As always, it's great to talk to you and just reconnect.
And you're, I think your work is as important as ever.
So is, you know, getting a good night's sleep.
Thank you.
And especially.
Tell us the name of your sub stack.
Oh, yes.
Sorry.
I do have a sub stack.
The After Purity Project is the name of my sub stack.
That's probably the best place.
You can also find me on Instagram at Sarah Mossliner.
If you're as obsessed with hot dogs as I am, I'd also recommend my other Insta account, Hot Takes on Hot Bogs.
Thanks, Brad.
I don't know anyone who's more of a Renaissance person than you because, like I, just when you go to bed at night Sarah, I hope you just think to yourself.
You know, I'm a scholar, I'm a teacher, I write books like After Purity for Great Presses, I'm a public intellectual and I have the probably the premier hot dog Instagram showcase in the world and it's just a lot.
I mean, you really, you really it's a lot, and I just I hope when you go to bed at night, you don't lose track of that amidst life's stresses and concerns.
Well, thank you very much.
Yeah, usually when I go to bed at night, I'm thinking about the other life I'm leading in my head, which is living, living in another country.
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