Episode 10 - Questioning "Biblical" Womanhood: From Modesty to Marriage

Ever felt crushed beneath the weight of unrealistic expectations? Have you been caught up in the dichotomy of being 'sexy' without being 'sexual', of embodying 'feminine features' without flaunting them? Welcome back to All Our Little Messes, where today we're unpacking the burdensome impact of purity culture on women, especially in Christian and Catholic societies. Recounting personal experiences, we shed light on the suffocating standards of modesty and elegance imposed on us, along with the confounding rules set out by the book 'Dressing with Dignity'.

As we venture deeper, we confront the distressing repercussions of enforced gender norms on women's physical and emotional well-being. The expectation for wives to be constantly sexually available, and the pressure of maintaining a balance between seductive yet modest leads to problems like pain during sex and vaginismus. We challenge the distorted representation of 'biblical womanhood', which perpetuates the belief that women should be meek, submissive, and restricted to home-making, further emphasizing the dire need for change.

Our journey doesn't end there. We scrutinize 'biblical manhood' and the warped dynamics it cultivates within marriage. Let's question the belief that women should submit unquestioningly to their husbands, a belief that not only belittles women but also warps the very essence of marriage: mutual submission and sacrificial love. This episode is a call to start essential conversations, to redefine what being a good Christian or Catholic woman means, and to encourage women to embrace their true, authentic selves. Tune in, and together, let's untangle the mess one thread at a time. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome to All Our Little Messes, a podcast focused on healing through intentional conversations about parenting, relationships, religion and more. I am your host, veronica Winrod, and I'm so happy to have you here listening in on my thoughts today. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to All Our Little Messes. This is episode 10 and I can't believe we made it into the double digits. This is crazy. It happened so fast. I kind of wondered if I'd make it this far, to be perfectly honest, but here we are and I am so grateful for all of your guys' support and it really means a lot that I've actually been able to make it this far, and it's because of you guys for sure. I'd also like to give a shout out to the patrons on my Patreon who have also lent their financial support. I really appreciate you guys and it means a lot that you're there.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Today we're going to be talking about how purity culture has twisted the image of what a good or a perfect woman is in Christian and Catholic society. I have actually had personal experience with this kind of mentality, just through little things that people would say about the women around them. Of course, there's also the culture that I was brought up in and how they treated women and how they talked about women and things like that. One of the biggest things that was really harped on when it came to what a good woman was was the fact that you have to present yourself a certain way. You have to be sexy, but you cannot be sexual Meaning. You have to be sexually attractive to the men around you, but you couldn't be so sexually attractive as to tempt them. You always had to dress in a way that made a man wonder if there was something more to discover about you and your body. Essentially, you had to hide it, hide your body, hide the fact that you're female, but you can't hide it too much, because then you fall into the realm of shabby or I'm not. There was this term that I was always told whenever I would pick out an outfit or something like that elegantly dressed.

Speaker 1: 3:19

I actually remember a girls camp that I went on when I was nine years old and they had this little skit that they put on towards the end of the girls camp. It was two weeks long, it was insanely long, and there was this huge number of girls there. There probably must have been like 50 to 60 of us at least, it was absolutely enormous. I remember this skit that they put on and they were basically trying to teach us girls what we should or should not wear. They had the camp counselors dress up as certain types of women.

Speaker 1: 4:04

We had a hippie woman. We had a woman who just put whatever on. We had one woman who didn't know how to dress for her body type. We had one woman who was immodestly dressed and then we had the perfect woman. She came out wearing a shirt that was baggy, but not too baggy. The sleeves were to her elbows. Her skirt sat at her hips, just right where you could tell she had hips, but it didn't hug her hips so that you didn't stare at them. It was the appropriate length of eight inches below your knees. It was definitely pushed that we were supposed to dress this way. If we dressed this way, then we were elegant.

Speaker 1: 4:54

The character was actually called Miss Elegance. That has always stuck in my mind, for whatever reason. I have very few memories of my childhood when I actually stop and think about it, but for whatever reason, that's just one of those memories that has really stuck out to me was Miss Elegance. There was always this stereotype of a woman and how she must be dressed. There was also a book called Dressing with Dignity that was always pushed.

Speaker 1: 5:24

It was written by a woman who was part of the religious group I grew up in. Her name was Colleen Hammond and she actually got her start in. I think she was like a weather news anchor I think is what she was but she wore pants, she wore everyday normal clothes, and I think it was through her conversion story that she really changed how she dressed and her book really focused on again. Like the title was dressing with dignity, so dressing in a dignified way. But it went much further than that. Like the message was that you had to dress modestly, but it wasn't just modestly. She was a certain type of clothing to her, so you had to have sleeves of a certain length. You couldn't have your shirt collar, for instance, couldn't be any lower than two fingers below the pit of your throat, skirts had to be a certain length and it even went down to the types of material that a woman could wear.

Speaker 1: 6:47

She had all of these tests that women would have to go through in order to determine if a shirt or a skirt or whatever was appropriate essentially, and so I grew up with that and because of that, there's always this hyper focus and I've mentioned this in a couple of other podcast episodes on purity culture. There's always this hyper focus on dressing a certain way so as we don't draw too much attention to ourselves and don't draw too much attention to our butt, too much attention to my boobs, too much attention to my waist. But at the same time, I was also told that we should accentuate our waist because it was a feminine feature. And looking back on that, it's very ironic to me that they would say something like we should accentuate our waist because it's a feminine feature, because so is our butt and our breasts. They are also a feminine feature. They are what lends us to femininity. That is what indicates to the world around us that we are female, and so the idea that we can only accentuate certain aspects of our female psyche is just insane to me. Certain parts of it are okay for people to see, but other parts are sinful for people to see and looking back, it's just ironic and it makes no sense to me. That was what people really pushed and people really tried to live by, and it was very damaging growing up in that, because you always felt like it was never good enough. Even now, to this day, I will hyperanalyze outfits that I'm wearing if I have to be around a certain group of people or a certain type of person that I know is going to that I know thinks this way. So, yeah, it definitely changes your mindset to grow up like that.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Another aspect of the good woman was the fact that she, when she gets married she, or actually before I should address this. I should actually also address the idea of submission. Actually, a good woman is always submissive, and she's not just submissive to her husband and her dad, she's also submissive to the authority of all men in her life. To a certain extent, I feel like it wasn't necessarily a conscious thing that I was raised with, but through subconscious messaging and things I was taught growing up, I had this subconscious idea that I had to submit to the men in my life simply because of their God-given position of authority and because they had this quote unquote God-given position of authority. They knew better, so I had to submit to them. If they said no, we have to do it a certain way. I had to take a step back. I couldn't voice my opinion because a man had said no, this is the way we're going to do things and so like.

Speaker 1: 10:29

That also was very difficult for me and actually a lot of girls I knew growing up, because when you're given talents and things by God and then told that you're not allowed to use them because it isn't your place, it isn't your place to go to college, it isn't your place to work outside the home, even before marriage, it isn't your place to have any kind of higher education. I was even told that women should never have been given the right to vote. It was messaging like that that basically hammered into my brain this subconscious message that women were almost like a second class citizen. But at the same time, I was also told things like women have a higher dignity than men because men have to go out into the world and conquer it, but women get to stay home and we have a higher relationship with God because we create life. So women have a higher dignity, but you're not allowed to do all these things because men said so, because when it really came down to it, like all of this submissiveness that these people pushed for isn't actually biblical, but they really pushed for it as the gender roles.

Speaker 1: 11:57

This is the way it's supposed to be. This is the way God intended it and it's actually not the way God intended it at all. I mean, if you actually read the Bible and read the book of Ephesians and read the epistles and you read collisions and you read the book of Genesis like, this is not the way God intended the relationship between a man and a woman at all. But these people really pushed for a woman to submit to a man, not just in marriage but in literally all aspects of life, and that also because she's raised and slash trained from a very young age to think that the men in her life have authority over her. That also bleeds over into her marriage and that bleeds over into the sexual relationship. So a good woman is always sexually available to her husband 24, seven and always with a smile. And that is something that you'll see in a lot of traditionalist circles within Catholicism. That's something you're going to see in like fundamentalist Christianity. I've mentioned this before. You know groups like FLDS, the IVLP groups like that.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Within Christianity, within Catholicism, you'll see groups like the SSPX, the CMRI groups like that, and they really push for submission and marriage and then also like a woman always, she cannot deny her husband ever and so being so, the fact that she has to be sexually available 24, seven, with a smile, without the option of ever saying no for any reason whatsoever, in of itself is extremely damaging and extremely wrong. But when you couple that message with the message of modesty and she has to be sexual, but not sexual, she has to be sexy her brand but her brand is sexy can't lead a man into sin, but also has to make a man wonder if there's something more to discover. So that's gonna make her fearful of her own sexuality and constantly in this state of like fight or flight around it essentially, and so that's going to bleed over into her marriage. And so when she gets married, all of a sudden she has to switch like click a switch from hide my sexuality. Sexuality is a sin. I can't be attractive, or I can't be too attractive to being like a sex goddess and being sexually available 24, seven, all the time for this man, and that has to happen within his base of 24 hours when you get married. And that kind of switch has actually led to a lot of physical problems and within, within women, like you actually see, there have been increased rates of, you know, pain and sex and vaginismus. I always, I always forget how to pronounce that. I've heard it pronounced probably 50 times in my life, but I always forget how to pronounce it. But the jinnit, whatever. I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about anyways.

Speaker 1: 15:26

So even if the sexual experience is a painful one, she, she's silent and she just gets through it because she cannot deny her husband, because she has this marital duty to give him sex and she cannot deny him. And so they're, they're the messaging around. It turns into what that. What that does is it turns sex not into a gift of self and this, this beautiful redactment and renewal of our marriage vows, but it turns it into an obligation, like, oh, I have to do this, I don't want to do this, but I have to do it. I have to get through it because if I don't I'm committing a sin.

Speaker 1: 16:12

So you're not actually giving a gift of yourself at all when this happens and it really, it really cheapens, you know, the sexual intimacy between a man and a woman when this happens and so, like that, that idea of always being sexually available to your husband 24-7, it cheapens it, it really cheap. And sexual intimacy because you're not given the choice to give that gift of yourself because you have to give it. You have no choice in the matter. Your choice has been taken away and so it's. It's.

Speaker 1: 16:58

It's sad, it's like it's actually heartbreaking actually when I think about all of the women I I know who have had. I've had conversations with them and actually gone into arguments with them and they're like 100% sold on the idea that they have no choice, that they have when their husband says now they have to and they have no, they. They can't say no if you know they're in pain. They can't say no if they legitimately have a headache. I know everybody laughs, so I have a headache. What if you actually do? What if you actually are sick? What if you actually are exhausted because you've been? You know you have five toddlers and you didn't get to bed until midnight but your husband wants to go, but you've been going since 5 am because your four or five year old got up at 5 am and wouldn't go back to sleep. So you're running off of three hours of sleep because you also have a newborn that was up every two hours all night long. You still don't have a choice. These women have no choice.

Speaker 1: 17:58

They have to give it to their husbands, and so it's very damaging to to be raised with that. You know, sexy, not sexual and you know don't tempt the men. And then you know, have to flip that switch when you get married and all of a sudden be sexually available 24-7, pain or no pain, no matter what. It twists sexuality within marriage and it cheapens it into something really truly ugly. In my mind it's an obligation and that is not what God intended for sexual intimacy with marriage, like God intended sexual intimacy to be unitive and procreative. And this renewal of, like I said before, this renewal of our wedding vows and when we get married, like we freely for most of us at any rate, we freely choose to say I do, I do commit to this person and so when you, you know, when you have sex, it should mirror that, it should the sexual intimacy of you know the marital act should mirror that and you should be freely saying I do every single time and you shouldn't feel like you have to. If you feel like you have to, there's something wrong and you should be able to say to your husband no, this isn't right, I don't like this, something's wrong, we need to stop.

Speaker 1: 19:42

But for a lot of women raised in this purity culture and this, this culture of submission and, you know, dressing a certain way and modesty and all this, they can't say no and so, like I said it, it cheapens it and like this, the, the idea of you know submission in, in you know their sexual lives, is it bleeds over also into you know taking responsibility for, for the sins of certain types of sins that a man may commit around her. So, outside of marriage, that would look like she's walking down the street and a man sees her and you know she's after her, she's responsible because he saw her and for whatever reason, based off of what she looked like, he was tempted and so that was her fault, even though she has no idea what just happened. She has no idea she could be wearing a nun's habit. He sees her, he's tempted, she did something Is the messaging behind this. And so a lot of girls again grow up with like I and I myself in one of those screw velocity is is huge. Like I said I mentioned earlier, I will take days to plan an outfit If I'm going around certain types of people because that that screw velocity is just hardwired into you, because you have to dress a certain way and you can't. Nothing could be too tight, nothing could be too low, nothing could be too short. Sleeves can't be too short because if you do, then you're going to be accused of tempting men. You know, just on and on and on and on. And if you do attempt a man then you are responsible for his sin. I've literally been told I would be punished in hell for the sin of a man if he was tempted by me. He was not responsible, I was. And so that also, that messaging also please open to marriage. We can actually also apply that marriage, because a woman will be accused of, you know, not being submissive enough, not being obedient enough, not praying for him enough If a man, you know, develops a porn addiction or if he's I've heard of cases of you know, a man being abusive, like physically, verbally, mentally abusive to his wife and his son, to his wife and his family and the wife going to elders in her church or to the priest of her church and begging for help.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Because a lot of times these women have no recourse or they haven't been taught that they do have resources and they do have recourse to the law and things like that. They haven't been taught that. They've been taught to go to their elders. So they go to the elders of the church begging for help and these women are told no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't him, this is you. You're not being submissive enough, you're not being obedient enough, you're undermining his authority. You aren't, you know, submitting to him in the bedroom, you aren't praying hard enough, things like that. And so they're basically taught that every action of the man in their life is their fault.

Speaker 1: 23:17

He has a pornography addiction because I didn't give it to him enough, I was too tired, I didn't give him sex, and so he had no choice but to, you know, watch porn. I wasn't submissive enough, so he had no choice but to become angry with me and slap me, or, you know, slap one of the kids, or whatever may have happened. He had no choice but to you know, verbally berate me in front of my children, things like that. So it was. It's never the man, it's the woman, it's the wife not being submissive enough. And like all of this messaging all comes down to you know how pretty culture twists the image of what a good Christian woman actually actually is. And you know another, another thing that I've noticed being pushed and I've seen it pushed very, very heavily, especially within the last couple of years, like during COVID, and like the last three to four years, and it really got bad during COVID.

Speaker 1: 24:23

But everyone, like these influencers on Instagram and on Twitter, especially more X, as it's called now are always talking about a woman's God given role of keeper at home and how we cannot step outside of those bounds. Because if we step outside of those bounds, then you know we're going to be cursed and and you know we're stepping outside of the umbrella of authority, which apparently I had no idea was even used outside of certain denominations. But, like I can, I started researching, like where the umbrella of authority was. It's everywhere, the idea of the umbrella of authority. But these women, if they you know they step outside of their keeper, you know the role of keeper at home then they're not. They're not fulfilling their role of biblical womanhood, because their idea of biblical womanhood is basically barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen. Like, you cannot be a biblical woman if you do anything else. If you have a calling to me, even be.

Speaker 1: 25:31

I had one woman suggest to me that even if a woman had a calling To be a midwife, which is like one of. I mean and I feel like anybody would say this it is one of the most feminine jobs a woman can possibly hold. I mean, you're literally helping other women bring life into this world, you're helping other women give birth. It is one of the most feminine and intimate jobs you could possibly have. I had a woman suggest to me that if a, you know, a wife went and became trained as a midwife, she was failing in her duty to be a keeper at home. So we can't even be midwives, we can't even be nurses, even if we have no children at home, none.

Speaker 1: 26:27

This woman firmly believed that women had to stay home because that was and I'm quoting her here that was our place. We had no place outside of the home, according to her, because we had to be submissive and meek. What was it? She told me? We had to be submissive. It was in an email, but we have to be submissive, meek, and it was like gentle of tongue or something like that. And so, according to her, in her mind, if you know, we became a midwife. God forbid if we were midwife, apparently, when. Then? We're not going to be meek and mild of tongue anymore, and it just it blew my mind. It blew my mind.

Speaker 1: 27:09

She suggested that, you know, we shouldn't do that because there were other women that were going to reject God's teachings and that we should just leave the rebellion of women to them and try to teach them biblical womanhood. And when I asked her, who was, you know, going to be midwife? Because also this woman, also this woman also told me that we shouldn't be going to the doctors, we should learn, like herbal remedies and stuff like that. But then she turns around and says, you know, so women shouldn't go to the doctor, but we can't be midwives. And if women can't be midwives, then who are we to go to to give birth? Because then our only option is go to the doctor, but we can't go to the doctor either, according to her. So it was like they talked themselves in circles.

Speaker 1: 28:04

They don't know what they want. Honestly, when you actually went in, really blows down to it. But yeah, that's like that's the, that's the image of the good woman, you know, sexy, not sexual. She has to be sexually available to her husband 24, seven. She has to submit to, you know, men in all areas of her life and she has to submit to all men in her life. We're talking like older brothers, fathers, husbands, you know, church elders, the random man on the street who thinks his opinion is more important than hers. She takes responsibility for their sin if they claim to have been tempted by her. She's, you know, the keeper at home, without question, even if she has no responsibilities at home, she's not allowed to step outside of that role. She submits to her husband and all things. When it comes to submitting to her husband and all things, this is where it gets funny, she. So there's certain, there's certain types of submission.

Speaker 1: 29:00

I've, I've noticed. So you have the, you have the marriages that are called complementary and marriages. So those marriages are the stereotypical aphesians I think it's aphesians 22, 24, 5, 24 through 25, where it says why submit to your husband as unto the Lord and all things? And those, those women, are the complementary and marriages. They're, they're part of the complementary and thing where, you know, they're sometimes allowed to have an opinion and voice that opinion to their husbands, but ultimately, he has, he has the final say in the household. And I, I know a lot of women who talk about this. They talk about how, yeah, my husband has the final say. And it was only a couple years ago that I was talking to my husband about that and I was like, you know, it's never made sense to me because, like, if you're allowed to have an opinion, but then he can turn around and, you know, make a decision completely contrary to your opinion, does your opinion even matter? And if your opinion doesn't matter, then why bother having it in the first place? What's the point? What's the point of having an opinion if you know there's such a power imbalance that he can turn around and just negate that, that opinion or what you think should happen, you know, just at the drop of a pat, just because he thinks he knows better, because he knows better. And so that was. That was just. It seemed very odd to me.

Speaker 1: 30:46

And then you have the egalitarian marriages where it's more, it's modeled more after the entire chapter, ephesians 22, where it talks about mutual submission. It talks about wife submitting to your husbands and it also talks about husbands loving your wives, as Christ loved and died for the church, giving himself up for her, basically commanding both men and women to sacrificially submit and love each other. And what I found really beautiful was like in this collection of verses it starts off with submit one to another. And then St Paul goes into the details of how we are to submit to each other, and so he basically is giving men and women both like this mission in in marriage and how to basically he just gave us a blueprint on a gold platter of how to have a successful Christian, biblical marriage. And I've heard a lot of people describe that as an egalitarian marriage or like a partnership where you know you make mutual decisions. I've heard people practice this by basically whoever has the most experience in whatever they're trying to decide makes the you know decision.

Speaker 1: 32:19

But I mean, I do feel like there's definitely still a place for, like you know, biblical, biblical manhood. Like, for example, like I'm Catholic, so we pray the rosary a lot and I like my husband to lead the rosary Like I don't mind leading it if he doesn't want to lead it, but I honestly like prefer to defer to him in those areas. Like you know you lead the rosary. Or for, you know, driving somewhere you drive, I like him, you know taking the lead in like religious things. You know where we're going to go to mass, things like that. Now, like if I had a real problem with you know where we were going to church, we obviously wouldn't go there, because he would never put me in a position where I felt so uncomfortable, especially in an area of, like my faith, things like that.

Speaker 1: 33:21

And that ties right back into mutual submission and sacrificial love, where I sacrifice. I am sacrificing my pride for him and letting him lead in areas where I feel like I want to lead, but I feel like it would be better for the family if he did, and he does the same to me, he does the same for me, he will defer and submit. If you want to say that, he will submit to me in areas where I might have more expertise, such as you know potty training or child rearing, or you know cooking or just you know things like that, things where I obviously have more talents or areas of expertise. Money management, like I'm better at budgeting than he does, than he is, so I actually manage the family budget, things like that.

Speaker 1: 34:24

And so, like you know, this idea of a woman having to submit to her husband in all things is in my mind and, like I have done, I've done years of research on this and I know there's going to be a lot of people that listen to this and have a huge problem with this last part of this episode, but I firmly, 100% believe that this idea that a woman must submit to her husband in all things, without question, and that man has to, you know, be a priest, and priest and something else it's this weird term that people use but priest of his household is such a twisting of scripture because it basically lowers women to property, in my mind, to children, because you're supposed to guide and discipline your wife. I mean, once you start down that road, where do you stop? She was also given talents and a mind by God and she is every bit as worthy as you are. Why would you treat her any less? And so, yeah, I'm a huge believer in, you know, mutual submission and marriage and, like, my husband and I have had hours and hours and hours and hours of discussion over this, talking about St Paul's letters and because, when we first got married, we both came from families where they pushed, you know, wives submit to your husbands.

Speaker 1: 36:07

It was a thing, and we both struggled with the concept, but at the same time, like we thought that was how marriage was supposed to be wives had to submit to their husbands, and so, because of that, our marriage was very, very rocky in the beginning because, like I wanted to live that but it felt so wrong to me. Like I just it felt wrong and he wanted to live that as well, but at the same time he didn't believe in it and it felt wrong to him. And so like, yeah, it caused a lot of problems and so we had to like really look into and like read all the marriage books and like really dig into the Bible and like try to figure out and like talk to priests and talk to people and try to figure out, like what God actually intended for marriage. Because, like what we had been taught was just it was so wrong and like the image again of you know, a perfect, the good and perfect submissive woman and wife that we had been taught just felt wrong. And so, like it was mainly me he'd done a huge journey when it comes to like purity, culture and everything. He kind of already like figured out what he believed and what he thought was right.

Speaker 1: 37:26

But I had to like really disentangle myself from that idea because I'd already kind of started to but at the same time I still really struggled with like guilt and shame and scrupulosity and overthinking everything. Like I was scared of everything and like what if I'm wrong? What if I'm stepping outside of the bounds of what God wants? And what if I really am tempting every man around me? What if I am responsible? What if, you know, by putting on this shirt or this pair of jeans, I'm being too sexy, or whatever the thing was like. What if I'm showing off too much, or maybe I should be?

Speaker 1: 38:09

I remember the beginning. I was like, oh shoot, maybe I shouldn't be wearing these. I was wearing a set of rain gear and then anybody who's ever seen like rain pants, rain coats, nose help, big ugly and baggy they are, they're just the most hideous things. You look like you're wearing like tarps, they're horrible. And I remember thinking maybe I should wear a skirt over this, and then like stopping and being like wait a minute, what, why would I wear a skirt? This is ridiculous, what am I thinking? And so it was like that kind of, that kind of upbringing, that kind of thinking like just seeps into your mind. But that was the image of a good woman, christian woman, that was perpetuated in periodical. So that's the image that is presented to you and it's incredibly damaging and it's extremely hard to move away from, but I feel like it needs to be talked about more. People need to talk about this, people need to write about it, they need to read about it, they need to study it, they need to understand that this is not what God wants for women at all.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Thank you guys very much for listening to this episode of All Our Little Messes. Before I close up, I wanted to remind you all I do have a blog. I write two to three times a week on different aspects of Christianity, catholicism, life, politics, all kinds of things. Right now I've got a short series on purity culture and like sex education with children within purity culture going on. So I will include a link in the podcast description. So to the mailing list.

Speaker 1: 40:01

So if anybody would like to get those automatically delivered to their inbox every week, they can just sign up for that underneath. So please feel free. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please leave me a review and any comments and thank you guys very much. I'll see you guys next week. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of All Our Little Messes. Please let us know how much you enjoyed it below and add any questions you have about this episode. Also, don't forget to follow us on Patreon for amazing exclusive perks, including early access to podcast episodes and bonus episodes every month. We've also recently added a support group for all of our paid patrons. You can check us out on Facebook and Instagram for daily updates and insights that mirror podcast topics. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.