Abstract
This study seeks to understand the ways in which men who pledge sexual abstinence until marriage negotiate and assert masculine identities before and after marriage. Using longitudinal qualitative data, this work traces the ways in which men who pledge abstinence until marriage manage a tension between both “sacred” and “beastly” discourses surrounding sexuality. The situational and interactional gendered practices of these men highlight their attempts to resolve the incongruity between practices of sexual purity and hegemonic definitions of masculinity. I argue that a decision to pledge sexual abstinence until marriage is an example of hybrid masculinities (Bridges and Pascoe 2014) in that the postmarriage transition to a more hegemonically masculine status suggests that such practices are not challenging current gendered systems of power and inequality. These findings underscore the potential fallacy in using cross-sectional data to illustrate changes in gender relations, and demonstrate the importance of incorporating life course perspectives when theorizing masculinities.
About three years ago I was 20 and she was 17. And she was convinced she was gonna get me in bed. But I told her—I was very blunt and I was a little angry too—I said I’m going to be very clear: I may be a lot of things, and I may be incredibly imperfect, but my virginity is very sacred and I will not get rid of it until I get married. . . . She didn’t get that. Maybe because, you know, maybe she was sexually active at an early age, maybe that’s what she thought love was.
Jason has pledged sexual abstinence until marriage. Jason believes that sex is a gift from God, and, in line with the larger evangelical Christian culture of which he is a part, believes that such a gift is meant exclusively for the marriage bed. As a 23-year-old bachelor, however, Jason is transgressing normative understandings of gender that equate performances of masculinity with sexual activity. This study seeks to answer the following questions: Do young men who pledge sexual abstinence until marriage challenge normative definitions of masculinity in the United States? Second, once these men become sexually active, do their performances of masculinity change?
This article examines how young evangelical men like Jason understand and enact masculinity while maintaining strong commitments to sexual abstinence until marriage. Through interviews with men before and after marriage, the findings complicate relationships between masculinities and sexual purity by highlighting the ways that social structures and interactions shape individuals’ understandings of sexuality and gender. Findings indicate that these men make sense of sex and sexuality through a shifting balance of both sacred and beastly discourses, calling into question static understandings of gender as an identity uninformed by age, relationship status, or life stage. I argue that we should account for life course transitions in our theories of masculinities (Carpenter and DeLamater 2012). Using a framework of hybrid masculinities (Bridges and Pascoe 2014), this longitudinal qualitative approach allows us to better understand both how and why seemingly transgressive, or varied, gendered practices do not always result in decreased inequalities.
Hybrid Masculinities and Heterosexuality
Masculinity is not composed of one set of behaviors, characteristics, or enactments, but rather a multitude of hierarchically organized gender projects (Connell 1987). Hegemonic masculinity rests at the top of this gender hierarchy and is best understood as the currently accepted strategy, or conglomeration of practices, that works to both legitimate patriarchy and ensure hierarchies between men and women and among men (Connell 1995; Messerschmidt 2012). Hegemonic masculinity is temporally specific, relational, and unattainable; it is a form of masculinity that no individual is able to fully embody (Connell 1990, 1995). Wilkins argues that this elusive component of hegemonic masculinity creates “gender dilemmas” for those who are working to create strategies and practices that both reinforce these hierarchies and are socially recognizable (Wilkins 2009).
A key feature of contemporary hegemonic masculinity is its heterosexuality (Connell 1987, 1992; Wilkins 2009). Heterosexuality is understood through a gendered language of desires and drives that are often “uncontrollable” and “relentless” among young men (Wilkins 2009). Hegemonically masculine men are considered highly sexual beings who exert a certain amount of control over women, who are seen as less sexual beings. This link between hegemonic masculinity and sexual practice has been well documented (e.g., Flood 2008; Hinojosa 2010; Pascoe 2007; Renold 2007; Thorne 1993). Pascoe’s ethnographic study of masculinity and sexuality in high school highlights the abundance of sexualized discourse present in interactions between young men, or what Pascoe (2007) calls “compulsive heterosexuality.” Such innuendo and bravado are not indicative of sexual desire, nor just a way to be “one of the guys” (2007, 86). Rather, these interactions serve as a way in which young men symbolically display their power over women in an effort to reinforce their masculinity (Fine et al. 1997; Pascoe 2007; Renold 2007; Rich 1980; Thorne 1993). Not surprisingly, then, those who pledge sexual abstinence until marriage are more likely to be girls and young women (Bersamin et al. 2004). Sexual purity is congruent with cultural understandings of femininity in the United States, but is incongruent with culturally normative understandings and enactments of hegemonic masculinity.
More recent articulations of hegemonic masculinity (e.g., Connell 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Messerschmidt 2012) conceptualize masculinities as influencing each other through micro-level processes, thus incorporating a variety of practices to create the most appropriate strategies for the reproduction of patriarchy (see also Demetriou 2001). As such, ideals of sexual abstinence and hegemonic masculinity need not be thought of as mutually exclusive. Rather, by acknowledging the agency of nonhegemonic masculinities in both their contributions to and contestations of hegemonic masculinity, we might ask how a pledge of sexual abstinence is just one of many strategies used to reinforce and benefit from hegemonic masculinity.
Hybrid masculinity is a theoretical extension of these recent articulations of hegemonic masculinity, focusing on the ways that (mostly) straight, young, white men selectively incorporate performances of masculinity that are historically, structurally, and culturally associated with nonhegemonic masculinities (Bridges 2014; Bridges and Pascoe 2014, 250). Hybrid masculinities acknowledge the relational effects of nonhegemonic masculinities while also highlighting the ways that these incorporations often work to reinforce hegemonic ideals. Through methods of “strategic borrowing” and “discursive distancing,” men create symbolic distance between themselves and hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously aligning themselves with it via more subtle means (Bridges 2014; Bridges and Pascoe 2014). Wilkins’ interviews with men who have pledged abstinence until marriage serve as an example of this concept. Wilkins (2008) finds that in emphasizing that abstinence is a choice, men are able to maintain their authority and credibility as hegemonically masculine. In place of sexual activity, these men enact “collective processes of temptation,” strategically emphasizing the difficulty in abstaining from sexual activity and thus reasserting themselves as highly sexual men. As Wilkins suggests, these men are able to “claim heterosexual desire in the absence of heterosexual practice” (2009, 354). As this body of theory and scholarship attests, while variations exist in the ways in which men benefit from both hegemonic and hybrid masculinities, hierarchies among men and between men and women have been shown to prevail.
Evangelical Men
Work on evangelical men corroborates Wilkins’s more general finding that transgressive practices do little to challenge boundaries and hierarchies. Evangelical men who engage in erotic cross-dressing and “pegging” 1 practices construct an understanding of gender that Burke (2014) calls gender omniscience, whereby men are able to justify nonnormative sexual practices through a discourse that places emphasis on God’s all-knowing certainty in their heterosexuality and masculinity. In ex-gay therapies, the “healing” of homosexual men is done through a “doing” of hegemonically masculine behaviors and interactions (Robinson and Spivey 2007). Evangelical ex-gay ministries employ “queerish” strategies that ground gender essentialism in creation, and thus highlight the ability of gender to change, while also maintaining a commitment to heterosexual normativity through these strategies (Gerber 2008).
Donovan’s (1998) work on the Promise Keepers movement 2 finds evidence of a variety of “strategic possibilities” for men to resolve a perceived tension between an understood “natural” male role and contemporary pressures that challenge the assumed inherent nature of such roles. Donovan argues that these strategies allow for more flexibility and sensitivity within domestic spheres while simultaneously allowing for the persistence of hegemonic masculinity under this same “veneer of sensitivity” (Donovan 1998, 826). Similarly, Heath (2003) argues that the Promise Keepers movement fosters what she calls “soft-boiled masculinity”: a gender strategy that includes embracing egalitarian gender values at the individual level while leaving larger structures that reinforce men’s power unquestioned.
Donovan argues that the Promise Keepers movement might best illustrate what Schwalbe (1996) terms “loose essentialism,” the idea that men can change through redefining feminine traits as masculine. Bridges and Pascoe (2014) posit that evangelical Christian men may be the “quintessential example” of this concept of “loose essentialism.” Additionally, if we consider nonhegemonic traits along with those coded as “feminine”—in line with the framing of hybrid masculinity—we see how the practices of evangelical men occur in ways that often conceal gendered systems of power and inequality.
Sexuality and Masculinities over the Life Course
In framing masculinities as temporal, influential, and agentic, and as a result of myriad and changing practices and strategies in an effort to maintain legitimacy and power, we open the analytic possibility of looking at transformations in gendered identities over time. Carpenter and DeLamater (2012) put forth a model of gendered sexuality over the life course to argue that turning points, such as marriage, can “dramatically alter” one’s gendered and sexual trajectory. Through interviews conducted both before and after marriage, my study seeks to analyze enactments of masculinity around the turning point of marriage. My analyses of the data captured lend insight to the ways in which the hybrid masculinity these young men employ shifts over life course transitions through varying processes of strategic borrowing and discursive distancing (Bridges and Pascoe 2014).
Looking at gender and sexuality around this turning point highlights the ways that such processes become complicit with hegemonic masculinity. Connell (2008, 244) acknowledges that one of the main difficulties with current research on masculinities is that “our descriptions of masculinities tend to be static. Even when the descriptions are formulated in ways that emphasize fluidity . . . we do not usually see the process that has produced the fluidity out of an organizational history.” This longitudinal, qualitative approach to the question of hybrid masculinities captures the fluid and dynamic character of masculinities and helps us to better understand enduring gendered inequalities.
Methods
The data from this study come from participant observation, focus groups, and individual semistructured, in-depth interviews with young men who attended The Message of Truth, 3 a nondenominational mega-church in the Southwest. The Message of Truth cycles about 14,000 individuals through its church doors for Sunday services, and 2,000 individuals every Friday night at The Gathering. The Gathering is a service directed toward “college students and twenty-somethings,” and includes an hour of live music before a sermon on topics ranging from the meanings of Lent to the meanings of lust.
Because of the large constituency of The Message of Truth, special needs of the parish are met in small groups (Erzen 2006). These special interest groups focus on a variety of topics, from “Adult Worship Dance” to “Police Officer Law Enforcement Fellowship” to “The River”—a small group of men supporting each other in their decisions to remain abstinent until marriage. The River is dedicated to “applying biblical principles of love and respect into every portion of our lives as men of God.” 4 The group meets once a week for pizza and conversation about “difficult and hard-hitting topics.”
I found The River through one of the church’s pamphlets on small groups. The group’s description included a Facebook URL. I sent a message to the moderator of the site, explaining my research interests, and he invited me to the group meeting the following Wednesday. About half of the 15 members of The River attended each week, but it was never the same seven or eight individuals each week, except for Aidan, who attended all weekly meetings. Aidan was the informal leader of The River, and helped me set up individual interviews, but did not attend them.
In 2008, I conducted three focus groups with the men of The River, interviewed all fifteen members individually, and conducted participant observation at The Gathering services and the Sunday Worship services at The Message of Truth. Between 2008 and 2011, all but one of the members of The River got married. I conducted one focus group and follow-up interviews with all members of The River in 2011. The unit of analysis for this work is the individual men, although the shifting group dynamic of The River provides insight into the situational components of construction of gendered identities. I focus on interactions from the focus group in 2011 in the data on married life to highlight this shifting group dynamic. Internal Review Board (IRB) for human subjects approval was obtained in both 2008 and 2011, and in 2011 IRB approval included the potential to interview the wives of the 2008 respondents. The research presented here focuses on these 40 interviews and four focus groups.
Data were coded initially for general themes, which were then used to develop analytic categories that were used to recode the data, with a focus on sacred and beastly discourses (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Sacred discourses are defined as the understanding of sex and sexual practices as the gifts from God meant for the marriage bed; beastly discourses are defined as the understanding of sex and sexual practices that detract from the sacred, such as masturbation, lust, pornography, and extramarital affairs. While I use the term discourse to refer to the bifurcated understandings from which these men draw, the analysis presented here is thematic, not one that involved an analysis of language use and the constitutive nature of said language use. I use the term discourse in line with Farvid and Braun, who state, “Discourses about sex are the means by which people come to understand sexuality and to produce/experience their sexual behavior” (2006, 297).
I began each focus group with a question. During the first focus group, I asked the men present to describe when and how they took a pledge of sexual abstinence. Individuals took turns responding to my question in detail before delving into a larger group conversation. The men of The River would often engage in both debates and supportive dialogue in my presence about their views and understandings of sex and sexuality as sacred and beastly. My emerging analysis of the sacred and beastly discourses these men employed informed the questions I used at the beginning of each subsequent focus group, as I would often follow up on themes and questions from previous focus groups (Charmaz 2001). While I often asked questions of clarification during these conversations, the group was so used to these weekly debates that they would quickly engage in them after I asked initial questions. However, when I would ask clarifying questions, the men of The River were explaining their answers to me as a secular woman, which clearly differentiated the focus groups from their usual weekly meetings, and contributed to their length. Each focus group lasted between two and four hours.
As a white, nonreligious, college-educated woman in my mid-20s at the time of this research, I entered The River as an outsider. My identities as both a woman and nonreligious were the most salient during these focus group meetings. However, I quickly found that my secular identity trumped my gender identity. While I was the only woman in these “men only” spaces, this group of men was excited to share its message with the secular world. Because these men understand the secular and religious worlds as separate, they viewed my presence as a type of bridge through which they could communicate their message. As Aidan stated to Brian, an avid 22-year-old outdoorsman who arrived late to our first focus group, “Sarah is . . . in a very secular world writing a secular paper. I want to be able to use our Christian views and get it out into the secular world. I think this is a unique opportunity.”
All participants identify as white, and range in age from 19 to 25. They were all pursuing higher education or had already attended a two- or four-year undergraduate program at the start of interviews in 2008. Participants all report happily married parents, and 14 out of 15 have at least one sibling. These young men report a variety of job experiences, from deli servers to biology lab assistants to interns at large, religiously based political organizations. They enjoy a variety of activities, including, but not limited to, playing the guitar, engaging in outdoor activities and sports, hanging out with friends, playing video games, and going to the movies.
Premarried Life: Controlling a Dangerous Sexuality
The young men of The River understand sex as both sacred and beastly. While sex within marriage is “sacred,” sex before marriage is a “beast” that must be controlled. To control sex and sexuality, the men of The River rely on both small groups and “accountability partners” to maintain their pledges of abstinence. This bifurcated understanding of sex and sexuality dictates these men’s understandings and enactments of their masculine selves both before and after marriage.
In individual interviews, both Derek and Jason stated that sex is a “beautiful gift.” Kevin referred to sex as a “precious gift,” and during our first focus group Derek added that such a gift is “meant for the marriage bed.” To keep it there, sex is also something that requires boundaries. These same men who celebrate sex also acknowledge its darker sides. For Jason, sex is something that can cause “hurt, torments, guilt, and pain.” During our first focus group, Aidan referred to sex as a “beast”—a temptation that can cause issues with salvation and morality if it is not controlled. Further, premarital sex is understood in gendered and biological terms. Derek stated, “Girls are responsible and courteous as far as what goes on with their bodies. . . . For guys it can be hard because of hormone levels.”
These men lament the church dictate that sex is bad without telling them why. The River is a space in which participants can talk through and better understand these “beastly” threats to their pledges of abstinence. The importance of this small group echoes Donovan’s (1998) work on the Promise Keepers movement, where the necessity of confessing sexual sins to fellow members is heavily stressed. Specifically, topics relating to pornography, masturbation, and lust were recurring themes in our conversations, and central to the ways in which these men understand their pledges of abstinence, sexuality, and gender.
Pornography, Masturbation, and Lust: Small Group Discussions
The members of The River believe that the use of pornography is prevalent within the Christian community. While these men attest that the problem is not growing as quickly within the church as in “secular society,” many of them admit to struggles with pornography use. In the first focus group, respondents describe pornography as something “destructive” and “bad for individual or mutual use.” Anything from “two clicks away” on a computer to a “JCPenney’s catalog,” pornography fits a wide-ranging definition and is thus a constant threat. Similarly, Donovan (1998) describes an exercise in the Promise Keepers movement in which men are given a hypothetical “what if” scenario in which a man buys a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue at the airport. While perhaps more sexually suggestive than a JCPenney’s catalog, both scenarios highlight the importance of confessing relatively innocent transgressions.
The men of The River understand masturbation and pornography to be heavily related. Pornography helps men, who Aidan calls “visual animals,” with masturbation. For Aidan, masturbation before marriage is fine, with certain boundaries in place: “Simply pleasuring yourself without porn is fine, as long as you’re not always relying on it or scheduling time around it.” In our second focus group, the following interaction occurred:
I personally disagree. . . .
Like I said, there are pastors who agree with me and pastors who disagree with me.
See, that’s the thing, even about stuff you disagree, you still have to talk about it.
I’ve gotten into almost full-blown shouting matches with people over it, and, you know, I don’t think it’s a salvation issue by any means, but it is a hot topic issue, and I think that is really why Christianity in general has avoided the topic, because there is no solid answer.
During individual interviews, Levi stated his belief that any form of masturbation before marriage is bad, and Chase discussed his worries that masturbation could substitute for sex with his (future and imagined) wife. As both marriage and the act of sex within marriage are sacred, anything that could hinder that act remains a sin that must be controlled.
For Jason, masturbation is heavily related to lust, a feeling these young men consider very dangerous. The men of The River believe that even lusting after their girlfriends is inappropriate. Jason, however, believes that one can “masturbate not just because of lust—you can do it to deal with stress, to help you fall asleep—to give you that high just before you go to bed.” Disputes play a central role in the small group. In discussing masturbation, lust, and pornography, sexually abstinent men work with others to define appropriate boundaries between the sacred and beastly to maintain their pledges. These conversations oppose reports from some American boys who receive encouragement, especially from their fathers, to pursue their sexual interests (Schalet 2011), but do support Schalet’s conceptualization of the sex lives of young Americans as dramatized. Men of The River appear to challenge dominant understandings of masculinity and its relationship to sexuality by indicating that sex is something that requires premarital abstinence, constant negotiation, and control.
While these young men are not actively exploring sexual behaviors or interests, they are able to refrain in a way that does not disrupt their power over women. Tolman (2005) builds on Fine’s (1988) conceptualization of “the missing discourse of desire” among teenage girls and argues that young women experience “dilemmas of desire.” While the men of The River have their own dilemmas of desire, such dilemmas do not eliminate desire; rather, as beneficiaries of compulsive heterosexuality (Pascoe 2007), these men are able to tackle desire head on, and do so in ways that leave them in control of their future sexual desire. The discourse of sexual behavior and lust as a “beast” can be understood as a “discursive distancing” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014) that works to draw symbolic boundaries between these men and elements of hegemonic masculinity from which they seek distance. Simultaneously, the “sacred” discourse resituates them as beneficiaries of their future sexual lives. This hybrid masculine strategy engages with a “loose essentialism” (Schwalbe 1996) that does little to challenge long-term gendered power relations.
“Accountability Partners”
While the men of The River take part in non-normative conversations about sexual activity, the ways in which these men control and monitor theirs and others’ behaviors hint at much more “socially acceptable” masculinity practices. The River, as both a small group and a mechanism for maintaining control, sets the scene for the formation of an intricate network of “accountability partners.” The second focus group collectively described accountability partners as close friends that “you can be completely honest with.” Accountability partners hold an individual to his promise of abstinence until marriage. The members of The River have accountability partners for pornography, masturbation, and sexual activity with girlfriends or fiancées, and they were a common topic in focus groups and individual interviews.
Derek has one accountability partner for pornography use, and is also the accountability partner for another individual for excessive masturbation. Eric has one accountability partner for masturbation, and serves as an accountability partner for a few men he has known since high school. Levi does not currently have an accountability partner, but relies on the small group for support. Aidan has two different accountability partners. One receives a report from Aidan’s laptop every week with a list of every website Aidan has visited. If Aidan visits a pornographic website, his accountability partner will call him and talk through ways in which Aidan can avoid viewing pornography the following week. Aidan’s girlfriend also receives a copy of the weekly report, but they are directly archived in her e-mail account, and Aidan believes that she does not look at the weekly reports. While this is described by Aidan as a symbolic act of trust, and understood by the second focus group in this way, this may also further indicate the views these young men hold toward women as less sexual beings. Aidan presumes his girlfriend would not have the desire to look as such reports, nor be tempted by their content. Aidan receives a text message every night at 9:00 from a second accountability partner with the simple question: “Are you behaving?” This text holds Aidan accountable for issues relating to masturbation and sexual activity with his girlfriend.
Accountability partners are not randomly chosen. Chase, a soft-spoken, determined 23-year-old, emphasizes that
it’s not the same as just confessing to your friends. One of the big things . . . is that when you confess, you should know who you confess to, because it has to be someone that you can trust, and two, they have to be spiritually stable and also because you can’t just pick a random Joe and reveal to them, or your group of friends.
Accountability partners become extremely important in these men’s lives, not just because of the tension they relieve between both sacred and beastly discourses, but because of the emotions they release, which one could assume might be related to this tension. Jason states, “Yeah . . . I get really angry. Not reporting to my AC [accountability partner] results in lying, cover-ups, and anger.”
During our third focus group Chase adds to the explanation of accountability partners: “One of the mistakes I made is I thought, well, I’ll be accountable to my girlfriend. I’ll tell her the things that I’ve done in the past, and that doesn’t help. It needs to be someone you know and trust in the same sex.” Aidan interjects: “Yeah, it’s a very dangerous thing, especially for couples who are dating or engaged, I would not ever ask my fiancée to be my sole accountability partner. It has to be somebody of the same sex as you are.”
Accountability partners are a strategy through which these men can display and reinforce temptation. By insisting that accountability partners must be of the same sex, men hint at the possibility of “slipping” if they are talking openly about issues of sex and sexuality with their girlfriends/fiancées. In this sense, we can think of accountability partners and small group interactions as both the mechanisms for collective processes of temptation (Wilkins 2008) and the mechanisms through which these collective processes of temptation are encouraged and even heightened. Donovan argues that the act of confessing sexual temptation and sin produces possibilities for “new forms of heterosexuality” (1998, 832), and Kimmel’s interviews with age-20-something men in Guyland leads him to suggest that “the actual experience of sex pales in comparison to the experience of talking about sex” (2008, 206). While the members of The River are an anomaly in the world of Guyland, their conversations about sex serve a similar function as for Kimmel’s respondents. In talking about sex as something that needs to be controlled, the men of The River discursively distance themselves from their less exalted and “secular” hegemonically masculine peers through a hybrid masculinity. These confessions, however, also enable these men to demonstrate a connection with hegemonic masculinity through claims of desire for future heterosexual practices.
While the maintenance of networks of accountability are time consuming and require commitment, Derek stated at the end of our individual interview, “It will all be worth it in the end.” Through accountability partners and small group conversations about the beastly, these young men provide an example of masculinity best understood through the framework of hybrid masculinities. Before marriage, their understandings of masculinity are tied to somewhat “unmasculine” understandings of sex as something that needs to be controlled, while the mechanisms for enforcing control work to reinforce gendered hierarchies. Interviews after the “turning point” of marriage (Carpenter and DeLamater 2012) highlight why these amalgamations of practices do little to challenge existing inequalities associated with gender and sexuality when the tension between sacred and beastly discourses shifts.
Married Life: Embracing a Sacred Sexuality
In the late summer of 2011, I reconnected with the members of The River. We agreed to meet at Aidan’s home. Just a few minutes into the fourth focus group, it was clear these men no longer communicated about issues related to sex and sexuality. After I asked them about The River, the following interaction occurred:
I have no desire to ask my guy friends, “How’s your sex life?” I just have no desire to ask that. And I feel like I would be . . . [pause] . . . overstepping my bounds if I did.
Well, you would be.
Because I want to respect their wives too, right?
Yeah.
These men, who, four years prior, engaged in an open discourse about sex and sexuality, now find discussing it both inappropriate and awkward. There is a new, gendered component to these conversations, as men are now talking about themselves and their wives when discussing sex.
The Beastly Remains, Support Disappears
While sex postmarriage is presumed sacred, “wonderful,” and a “gift from God,” these married men still think of sex in beastly terms. In focusing solely on the goal of abstinence until marriage, conversations concerning healthy sexuality within marriage were never part of the discussion for these young men. Seth states,
Before you get married, the biggest thing you struggle with, usually, is premarital sex, but once you are married, you can’t be tempted by that anymore, so you get attacked by completely different things . . . like pornography or having sex outside of marriage. And that was kind of striking to me. . . . Essentially, Satan has to find a new angle to attack on, and I was like, oh, hadn’t really thought about that.
Like Seth, Chase admitted during an individual interview to worrying about the temptation to cheat on his wife. Aidan adds,
It’s a myth that I think is kind of perpetuated by the lack of communication, is that once you get married, suddenly all those desires are fulfilled in your spouse. It’s not true. Guys are so visually driven. The desire for porn, especially if you struggled with that in the past, is still there. It doesn’t go away once the ring slips on!
The beastly elements surrounding sex do not disappear with the transition to married life. Rather, they still exist, and still tempt, but these men no longer have support in the form of small groups or accountability partners to navigate these issues.
The church teaches men to keep struggles of sex and sexuality “in the light” of premarriage. Through membership in The River and the support of accountability partners, these men create space in which they can be open about their struggles. Peter reiterates, however, that the church teaches “once you are married, everything should be kept behind closed doors.” Upon transition to marriage, it is assumed that couples become each other’s support regardless of the issue at hand. The church’s expectation that spouses should talk to each other instead of their community about issues of sexuality is not unusual. These men also face structural barriers to communication; because of a married man’s presumed role as provider, small groups for married men (although not related to sexual issues) are scheduled as early as 5:00
A Gendered, “Sacred” Sexuality
When I first asked respondents if they were discussing their sex lives postmarriage, the following exchange occurred:
I guess, you know, you hear locker room talk, not that I find myself in many locker rooms, but I can’t think of really any opportunity that I would have with my quote–unquote guy friends, to have those conversations, and frankly, it is none of their business, and I don’t want to know about theirs either. And most of the friends that we run with are other couples, so unless all of us are sitting around sipping coffee, talking about sex—
That would be so awkward!
I don’t think it would happen, maybe only in a situation like this [referring to the interview].
It’s definitely not a social lubricator.
No, no, it’s not something you just casually talk about.
At least in our circles.
Maybe a swinger circle! [Everyone laughs.]
Because these men understand sex to be a gift for the marriage bed, it is unthinkable to discuss sexual activity anywhere outside of their married relationships. Positive conversations around sex do not occur, and these men assume that conversations regarding sexual practices would occur only in what they think of as promiscuous, risqué, secular scenarios (such as a swinger party). A joking reference to a swinger party also allows these men to discursively distance themselves from what is assumed to be a salacious form of sexuality that does not align with the sacred aspects of sexuality they are now supposed to enjoy.
Both the awkwardness and inappropriate nature of these potential conversations is framed in relation to their wives. Their collective performances of temptation (Wilkins 2008) have changed to individual proclamations of protection for their wives. For example, when talking, very vaguely, in the fourth focus group about their current struggles with sex, Peter says, with a sigh, “Certainly there wouldn’t be any groups where couples sit down and talk about it.”
Never, ever.
Because if you’re struggling with something you wouldn’t even tell your spouse.
Yeah, it’s a gender thing for one, but you know, it’s not only a gender thing, but now you’re . . . it’s hard enough to open up in front of the guys, “I’m struggling with porn,” but now you’ve got their spouses’ judging eyes staring back at you and you can hear their thoughts, it’s like they’re screaming, “You dirty creep!”
But the guys wouldn’t scream that—it is just women?
Yeah, at least from men’s perspective, that is what I would be most fearful of, if I sat down in a mixed group, and had to admit to something like that, I would fear judgment from the women more than I would fear judgment from the men.
Why’s that?
I think in the Christian world . . . from the men’s perspective, the women are so vehemently anti-pornography, um, that you know, instantly, this judgment would be cast against you, so I think it would be the fear of judgment in a group setting more than anything else. And, you know, the social embarrassment too, because now you’ve opened up to both people.
Absolutely. And I mean anything you admit to, you are saying, “My wife isn’t enough to entertain me visually or sexually.”
So you are actually admitting to several failings.
These discussions are no longer appropriate because of the ways these married men assert their masculinity. Premarriage, masculinity and heterosexuality were discussed, asserted, and maintained through discourses of temptation in the small group setting. Their sense of masculinity, however, now relates directly to their wives. These men have been promised a sacred, sexually active marriage. Their wives, as Seth says, have a job of entertaining them “both visually and sexually.” If these men are not satisfied with their sexual lives, as evident through a continued tension between the sacred and beastly, these men are admitting not only to sexual transgressions, but to failures in their goals as hegemonically masculine, Christian men.
Control of Sexuality: Wives as Accountability Partners, and Practices That Endure
The men of The River frequently referred to their wives as their new accountability partners. However, these men espouse a very different definition of accountability partners postmarriage, as they are no longer an outlet for confession and discussion to mitigate tension between sacred and beastly discourses of sexuality. Instead, postmarriage, accountability partners provide a threatening reminder of understandings of proper forms of masculinity and femininity.
For example, Seth says,
I never want to have to tell Angela something. So it’s like, okay, I should not be doing this, and if I’m in a situation where it’s like, okay, I need to walk away from this. There is a part of me that’s like, I want to do this, because I am selfish, but it’s like, no, it’s not worth having her cry and ask me why.
Peter told me,
Fortunately, I think having a wife acts as its own accountability. Not . . . because you’re going to openly talk about the things you struggle with—hypothetically, if I look at porn and then tell my wife, she would be devastated. I mean, that would wreck her. I mean completely. She would feel so much abandonment, and she would feel so empty inside, and I don’t think . . . I mean, it’s one thing to sin against God, but to sin against someone you love so much, and to see the consequences in such a tangible way, I think that would drive her to depression, you know.
If these men are not able to uphold their duties as righteous men, why should their wives, who are presumed to abhor any and all sexual transgressions, turn to them as their leader? This is what Jackson meant when he described the importance, as a new husband, of his “masculine, God-fearing attitude” at the conclusion of his interview.
I had only one interaction with Aidan’s wife, Rebecca, during my multiple trips to their home. She had agreed to a couple’s interview. When I arrived, Rebecca was in the kitchen, the first time she had come downstairs during my visits. While I was hopeful that her physical presence meant a chance to talk, during the two-hour discussion she sat next to us with earphones on, typing on her laptop. Although I tried to bring her into the conversation, she refused to talk, and I didn’t push it. When I asked Aidan if he thought his wife, and women in the church, spoke of issues of sex and sexuality, he responded,
I would be kind of shocked if they were. Um, I think that it stems from the culture that the church has created. Even amongst themselves—and I could be wrong, I could be totally blown away by this—but I think the answer is no, they don’t. Unless there is a huge problem, and then I think there is a conversation that happens.
Jason provides a similar summary when asked if he thinks his wife discusses sex and sexuality with her friends: “Our sex life is off-limits and she knows this.”
Later that evening, I received an email message from Aidan:
My wife wants me to correct something I said. She said that women, both secular and Christian, discuss sex “all the time . . . in fact its [sic] something that is discussed more than any other topic.” I stand corrected. She also noted that Christian women tend to discuss only with their trusted peers or leaders, never in mixed company.
Aidan’s words reflect a particular understanding of women’s sexuality that complements respondents’ overall understandings of men’s sexuality. If Aidan thinks of Christian women as “prudish” (as he described in an individual interview), he assumes they are not talking about sex. During our interview, Rebecca sat next to him while he spoke at length about the reasons Christian women do not talk about sex, and did not correct him once. Rather, she “kept it in the dark,” upholding the rules of a married couple within the church, and waited until I left to correct him. Rebecca’s actions are compliant and accommodating to the transition her husband has made. She is enacting what Connell refers to as “emphasized femininity” (Connell 1987). Rebecca’s actions legitimate Aidan’s hegemonically masculine identity postmarriage through a ritual demonstration of her own subordinate position. Although the gendered views of sexuality held by the men of The River transform accountability partners postmarriage, it appears that their wives may also play an active role in dissuading beastly discourses in married life.
When I asked participants about conversations of sexuality, it was assumed that I was talking about the beastly elements of sexuality. While the church promises sex as a wonderful gift within the marriage bed, there is little indication as to what this “wonderful gift” is supposed to entail. In an individual interview, Seth stated,
There is no example being set once you’re married. . . . You have to figure it out yourself and there is no example to look at and say . . . here is how to do it that way, to go in and talk to your wife about something that we do hold in such high regard, and value that aspect of a marriage. Because I’ve honestly never heard anybody talk about it like that. It’s like, how do you talk about it like that when nobody has set that example?
These men are left alone to navigate sexuality in married life. Instead of engaging in conversations with their partners or perusing self-help literature,
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they fall back on the model they know: temptation and accountability. However, there are no longer outlets in place for this temptation. During individual interviews, Michael states,
I certainly haven’t sat down with her after pre-marital counseling, after the first few months, to say hey, and ask all the questions from pre-marital counseling: “Hey, are we having enough sex? Do you like the sex we have?,” etc., etc. I mean, I would just think, yeah, it’s fine.
Aidan stated that if he and his wife were going to talk about sex, it would be a very serious conversation: “It’s not like I can casually come home and say, ‘Hey, I just thought about this today.” Peter adds, “You have to be really intentional about it [conversations about sex] because conversations don’t just occur about sex. . . . For me to come home from work and say, ‘Hey, did you like it last time?’ I mean, that would be . . . that would be such a weird question for me to ask.”
When sex is understood as sacred, it is difficult to approach it casually. This is not due to a lack of desire for more casual conversations about sex. Many of the men called for church leadership to begin conversations about sexuality in marriage. Six of the former members of The River reported that they had checked out small groups at another local evangelical church in search of support groups for married men. Yet, these same men also said that when it comes down to it, one should not need to talk about sex with one’s wife “as a strong man,” because, as Peter says, “It is a confidence issue. I like to believe things are going great . . . no news is good news.” As a member of the IT workforce, Aidan uses a computer analogy to demonstrate this same idea: “I’ve never heard, ‘Hey, my computer is working today!’ If I heard that I might die.”
Through interviews with men before and after marriage, we see that such situational constructions and understandings of gender identity shift, while aspects of collective processes of temptation (Wilkins 2008) seem to endure. These men, in heterosexual, married, sexually active relationships, attempt to focus on a sacred discourse of sexuality in married life. However, the ways in which their masculine identities were negotiated before marriage appear to linger in ways that may be destabilizing. As Aidan laments, the beastly does not disappear “once the ring slips on”; issues of sex and sexuality are constantly negotiated, albeit now with less room and little support. The River, as a support group, was not narrowly about abstinence, but rather a place where men developed a way of orienting to sex that complicated desire on a variety of fronts that included pornography, masturbation, and lust. These conversations suggest an evangelical system of orienting one’s body, desires, and family through a cultivated sense of managed, unmanaged, and gendered temptations that have theoretical implications for our understandings of masculinities.
Conclusion
The Message of Truth, as a religious institution, and academics who study the abstinence movement, have paid little attention to the many conversations that surround a pledge of sexual abstinence, perhaps because such facets of an abstinence pledge, such as the management of temptations of pornography, masturbation, and lust, do not threaten to undermine men’s claims to hegemonic masculinity. Yet, these facets of evangelical sexuality and the ways in which those who pledge abstinence until marriage transition to married life have implications. When the church sanctions pre- and postmarriage interactions, and removes support for small groups like The River, men struggle in isolation with how to best manage their desires. Men are encouraged to have space to talk about sex and sexuality premarriage, but these conversations (and the religious institution in which they are generated) leave them with an understanding of sex as an urge that needs to be controlled, and masculinity as being dependent on their wives as simultaneously protected, nonsexual beings and their sexual partners. These wives have a fairly impossible and contradictory role, with seemingly few resources to navigate such responsibilities. This highly gendered, highly contextualized understanding of sexuality as beastly, wonderful, promised, and unfulfilled requires years of premarriage conversation, and although not offered, seems to require the same after marriage. While the tensions between both sacred and beastly discourses require a constant and open dialogue about sex before marriage, the inability to balance the tension between these discourses in married life leave these men unprepared for the sexual lives for which they have spent so much time preparing. The men of The River, however, may not be alone in lacking the skills to navigate a healthy sexual relationship. Schalet (2011) argues that U.S. teenagers have limited support from institutions outside of the family in navigating both sex and relationships, and Kimmel (2008) finds that even those who are engaging in robust sexual activity are ill-equipped to enter adulthood.
Second, these findings suggest that existing models that imply a relatively static or episodic model of gender identity are lacking. Before marriage, respondents articulate and understand their masculine identities through sacred and beastly discourses of temptation, showing the potential for both transgression and reinforcement of hegemonic understandings of masculinity. After marriage, respondents understand and assert their masculine identities in relation to their wives in ways that indicate less discursive distancing from hegemonic masculinity. This longitudinal study allows us to see that, while behaviors and decisions, such as a pledge of sexual abstinence, may indicate a departure from hegemonic performances of masculinity, what appear to be transgressive practices do not always endure, nor do they result in challenges to inequalities based on gender (Bridges and Pascoe 2014). These data lend support to Bridges and Pascoe’s argument that such hybrid masculinities “fortify existing social and symbolic boundaries” (2014, 246). While these findings indicate that such a shift is not clear-cut, the shift itself has further implications for theories of masculinities. For instance, while Demetriou (2001) argues that masculinities change, expand, and adapt to historical junctures, this work indicates that gender practices shift during an individual’s life course as well.
Third, the data indicate that a close coupling with religious institutions complicates life course transitions and the ways in which masculinities are organized around these transitions. We need to conceptualize life course transitions as an important component of our theoretical understandings of masculinities. Carpenter and DeLamater (2012) posit that those who venerate virginity and have fewer opportunities to learn about relationships and negotiate with partners may experience repercussions in later life relationships (ibid., 28). These findings indicate that a life course analysis of gender and sexuality are important for this same reason. While it may not be a lack of experience that produces difficulties for these men in married life, but rather a tension between the dueling discourses around sexuality available to them, we do see that the shifts in these discourses alter men’s conversations about sexuality that inform their gender identities. When we study the construction of masculinities, we should account for the ways in which a variety of processes at life course transitions work together to create, re-create, and change the ways in which masculinities are understood, produced, and transformed.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank CJ Pascoe, Tristan Bridges, Sarah Quinn, Julie Brines, Becky Pettit, Pepper Schwartz, Gail Murphy-Geiss, and the editors and anonymous reviewers at Gender & Society for comments on earlier drafts of this work.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
Sarah Diefendorf is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, evangelical culture, and sex education.