Stupid Sexy Flanders
June 24, 2005
The Church has always called its members to two committed, chaste expressions of their sexuality: the connubial and the celibate. For those not yet committed to either or only temporarily committed to the latter–a status whose duration is always in doubt–there is an awkwardness that is difficult, painful, and humorous. The humor of the struggle seems lost on many contemporary Protestant Evangelical youth but not for Jeff Sharlet, who has written about them for Rolling Stone.
If the goal of these young people is to make chastity cool for rock’n’roll youth culture, the result is indeed much humor at their expense as they try to uphold their inherited notion of fornication as just about the worst sin there is while wearing “masturbation bracelets,” “snakeskin tights,” and “muscle shirts” while playing red guitars at parties in renditions of “Like a Virgin” and “I Want Candy.” Good Lord, this reminds me of certain wild Renaissance paintings with not-very-erotic farcical portrayals of sexuality. (And speaking of paintings, one of the most erotically-literate people I know is Sister Wendy, whose explications are often exquisitely and most properly arousing.)
Sharlet also profiles the strumpet of chastity, Anna Broadway, who is my interlocutor in a forthcoming dialogue for tNP on Lauren Winner’s new book, Real Sex.
Winner of the much-heralded cat’s eye glasses scored a real coup, earning praise from The New York Times and WORLD Magazine. Winner reassured the Times that she is not a Creationist, thinks George Bush is the worst president ever, and is “not really persuaded that [she has] any right to legislate against abortion in a pluralistic democracy.” At the same time, back on the chastity wagon, Winner returned to the good graces of WORLD’s Gene Veith.
As yet, no Catholics have mentioned that Winner’s book, purporting to benefit all “Christians,” makes a superficial dismissal of the church’s unpopular stand on artificial contraception and the theology behind it while also failing to really engage the breadth and depth of the whole subject in general. A reviewer for the National Catholic Reporter (“the independent weekly”) signals this benefit precisely by noting that Winner’s book is especially good “for those who are dissatisfied with the inherited teachings of their churches.”
Kathy Shaidle doesn’t mention any of this stuff in her mostly kind review for the National Catholic Register, and of course it wouldn’t come up in this blast that finds Winner far too “conservative.” SOMA isn’t content to kick Winner once but now offers an interesting third perspective “for balance” in “Phyllis Stine’s” effusive “Why I Love Lauren Winner.” Another defense comes from an episcopalian wiener dog owner. Further Winner-related controversy abounds in the Anglican world at titusonenine.org with Andy Crouch weighing in on the side of Real Sex’s brilliance. If all goes well, when the dust clears, there won’t be any remaindered overstock.
This is Stupid Sexy Flanders in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Muddles of Moderation | Next: Animal Planet | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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