Washington City Paper features Top Five Abstinence Only music videos as well as a music video about the Christian Side Hug.
The potentially most negative video for STD prevention, "Ain't NO safe way" shows a couple in a drive-through. The man says no on the grounds that sex is dangerous. The woman holds up a condom saying vacantly as if hypnotized, "If they give these out in school, it must be safe." Her eyes widen further, unblinking, crazed, as she intones, "Don't worry. It's SAFE." "Safe" echoes in the background. Heavy metal music starts with "Wages of Sin = DEATH" on TV screens blinking in the background. (The boy says no, and gets out of the car, and the girl drives away disappointed.)
All five of these fall into the shaming language of "lose" and "take" virginity, and one girl even telling her friend "you should be ashamed" for having sex, as well as the ethnic stereotypes: many feature black women saying no to black men, and none feature Asians (who are disproportionately represented among virginity pledgers, but the stereotype is that they have no problem saying no.) Nor do they include black men turning down women.
Showing posts with label evangelical hipsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evangelical hipsters. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Evangelical Christianity and self-selection
Evangelical Christians have the goal that everyone within their fold adhere to norms such as abstinence from premarital sex. Clergy and active congregants adhere to the norms most of the time, but many evangelical teens have sex lives only slightly more conservative than the average American or European teenager. I've long wondered whether the reason for this discrepancy is that evangelical Christianity includes many people who, for whatever reason, are unlikely to adhere to all the norms.
Comparing religions can only be done in the spirit of "All models are wrong, but some are useful", so with that in mind I thought about religious self-selection in the context of some youtube videos making their way around some progressive Jewish blogs with enthusiasm and modern Orthodox blogs with hesitant, tepid approval, apparently spurred by an article in the Forward, a US Jewish newspaper.
This is a fantastic video of a secular Israeli girl band called "Woman of Valor" (Prov. 31) singing "Open our eyes to your Torah, cause us to cleave to your commandments, and unite our hearts in love and awe of your name" a line from the liturgy repeated over and over*. They also sing "On the rivers of Babylon" (Psalm 137) and "The angel who saved me" (Genesis 48). In the US, I would guess that this would be fairly standard evangelical Christian popular music, but in Israel it is Tel Aviv secular, performed at the Gay Pride parade, and so extremely exciting and outrageous**.
If the evangelicals are including the equivalent of the Tel Aviv secular who obviously connect to some aspect of the Bible and yet for whatever reason are not interested in some of the religious norms, programs like virginity pledges may reach only the Jerusalem religious who would abstain anyhow.
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(*) It begins "That we shouldn't ever be bashful or ashamed or stumble." There's also a rap segment in the middle that isn't a text also about connecting with the divine.
(**) Comments on the video are outraged. My translation of some of them:
- If they really believed what they sung, they would dress differently and they wouldn't dance like that and they would seem even slightly like daughters of Israel. G-d should have mercy on us, what a desecration of G-d's name.
- When someone sings to open our eyes to your Torah and be caused to cleave to your commandments when she is, pardon me, half naked is really not respectful. It's like going to the synagogue to pray in a bathing suit. Does that seem right? It's like the Maimonides's example of going into a ritual bath holding an impure reptile, doing something good but in an improper manner.
- I don't understand the connection between the meaning of the text and the clothing. They say they want to be open to G-d's commandments and they are not fully dressed.
Comparing religions can only be done in the spirit of "All models are wrong, but some are useful", so with that in mind I thought about religious self-selection in the context of some youtube videos making their way around some progressive Jewish blogs with enthusiasm and modern Orthodox blogs with hesitant, tepid approval, apparently spurred by an article in the Forward, a US Jewish newspaper.
This is a fantastic video of a secular Israeli girl band called "Woman of Valor" (Prov. 31) singing "Open our eyes to your Torah, cause us to cleave to your commandments, and unite our hearts in love and awe of your name" a line from the liturgy repeated over and over*. They also sing "On the rivers of Babylon" (Psalm 137) and "The angel who saved me" (Genesis 48). In the US, I would guess that this would be fairly standard evangelical Christian popular music, but in Israel it is Tel Aviv secular, performed at the Gay Pride parade, and so extremely exciting and outrageous**.
If the evangelicals are including the equivalent of the Tel Aviv secular who obviously connect to some aspect of the Bible and yet for whatever reason are not interested in some of the religious norms, programs like virginity pledges may reach only the Jerusalem religious who would abstain anyhow.
-------
(*) It begins "That we shouldn't ever be bashful or ashamed or stumble." There's also a rap segment in the middle that isn't a text also about connecting with the divine.
(**) Comments on the video are outraged. My translation of some of them:
- If they really believed what they sung, they would dress differently and they wouldn't dance like that and they would seem even slightly like daughters of Israel. G-d should have mercy on us, what a desecration of G-d's name.
- When someone sings to open our eyes to your Torah and be caused to cleave to your commandments when she is, pardon me, half naked is really not respectful. It's like going to the synagogue to pray in a bathing suit. Does that seem right? It's like the Maimonides's example of going into a ritual bath holding an impure reptile, doing something good but in an improper manner.
- I don't understand the connection between the meaning of the text and the clothing. They say they want to be open to G-d's commandments and they are not fully dressed.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Do virginity pledgers feel hip?
Somehow the financial markets are stealing attention from sex education, so the only article on abstinence today is from the Marietta College newspaper. The editorialist begins by combatting some stereotypes about pledgers:
"Virginity pledgers: they're smarter than you think"? (Never mind smart is not the opposite of fun. The stupid and boring are so unfortunate, but they do exist.) She also mentions the Silver Ring Thing as if it is new, when it's had hundreds of thousands of participants over several years. And a (successful) ACLU lawsuit against its receipt of federal funds.
The virginity pledge movement was designed to give a hip new face to virginity. The new chic for virginity has had fantastic mainstream media exposure, including a front page article in the NY Times's Sunday Style section in 1994, a year after the first virginity pledges. Evangelical music is now taken seriously by music journalists, and there are evangelical Christian rock music festivals and hipster magazines. A secular journalist who explored evangelical youth culture found it reasonably compelling, as she wrote in her book, which is an evangelical version of the chassidic Boychiks in the Hood. There are even reasonably sex-positive, non-sexist dating books for evangelical young adults that make the realistic assumption that many of them are having sex, reviewed in this blog a few months ago. And parody rap songs, like my personal favorite Baby Got Book.
Evangelical youth culture seems vibrant and fun even to skeptical on-lookers, so it is surprising to me that would someone who (I'm guessing) favors virginity pledges feel the need to defend pledgers, and defend them so faintly. This editorial may be exceptional, but I wonder if it's an indication that evangelical youth culture isn't well-disseminated, or if it doesn't reach its goal of instilling confidence in evangelicals that their culture is fun and viable. As large as the evangelical youth population is, the creative class which creates the culture is obviously much smaller than the mainstream media and I'm sure many have day jobs, so they just can't be even close to as prolific in producing quality films, music, and TV shows. (Are there any hip evangelical TV shows?) Baby Got Book is 4 years old (according to the copyright on the official youtube version), and as one commenter says, their camp plays it constantly, so they almost have it memorized.
Evangelical youth culture won't lure adolescents simply on hipness and some adolescents will be religious even if they do feel stodgy, but those on the border may need to be convinced that they aren't missing out on fun. The editorial indicates that --- questions of adolescent libido aside --- virginity pledgers have a stodgy (but smart) image in the view of the editorialist.
Is this view more widespread?
[P]eople who choose to remain abstinent aren't always considered the most fun. Sure, they're great to take home to meet Mom and Dad, but they're probably not the people you'd want to go out with on Saturday night... But maybe, just maybe, the people choosing to wait for sex are actually smarter than they're given credit for.
"Virginity pledgers: they're smarter than you think"? (Never mind smart is not the opposite of fun. The stupid and boring are so unfortunate, but they do exist.) She also mentions the Silver Ring Thing as if it is new, when it's had hundreds of thousands of participants over several years. And a (successful) ACLU lawsuit against its receipt of federal funds.
The virginity pledge movement was designed to give a hip new face to virginity. The new chic for virginity has had fantastic mainstream media exposure, including a front page article in the NY Times's Sunday Style section in 1994, a year after the first virginity pledges. Evangelical music is now taken seriously by music journalists, and there are evangelical Christian rock music festivals and hipster magazines. A secular journalist who explored evangelical youth culture found it reasonably compelling, as she wrote in her book, which is an evangelical version of the chassidic Boychiks in the Hood. There are even reasonably sex-positive, non-sexist dating books for evangelical young adults that make the realistic assumption that many of them are having sex, reviewed in this blog a few months ago. And parody rap songs, like my personal favorite Baby Got Book.
Evangelical youth culture seems vibrant and fun even to skeptical on-lookers, so it is surprising to me that would someone who (I'm guessing) favors virginity pledges feel the need to defend pledgers, and defend them so faintly. This editorial may be exceptional, but I wonder if it's an indication that evangelical youth culture isn't well-disseminated, or if it doesn't reach its goal of instilling confidence in evangelicals that their culture is fun and viable. As large as the evangelical youth population is, the creative class which creates the culture is obviously much smaller than the mainstream media and I'm sure many have day jobs, so they just can't be even close to as prolific in producing quality films, music, and TV shows. (Are there any hip evangelical TV shows?) Baby Got Book is 4 years old (according to the copyright on the official youtube version), and as one commenter says, their camp plays it constantly, so they almost have it memorized.
Evangelical youth culture won't lure adolescents simply on hipness and some adolescents will be religious even if they do feel stodgy, but those on the border may need to be convinced that they aren't missing out on fun. The editorial indicates that --- questions of adolescent libido aside --- virginity pledgers have a stodgy (but smart) image in the view of the editorialist.
Is this view more widespread?
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