Letter #267: Body by IKEA, Soul by God
Some assembly required.
Dad,
I found it very interesting to watch as you presented your argument that virginity is a key dimension of womanhood, and one X poster after another replied that sexual self-control is also important for men. It is, of course, but not necessarily with the same urgency, in the same way, or for the same reasons. Certain virtues and vices, though universal to the human species, have different stakes for men than for women.
For much of history those differences were obvious and non-negotiable, because they were hard-coded into the physical world. Chastity in women was a guarantor of paternity in children, for instance. It might once have been a plausible hypothesis that those sorts of material concerns could fully explain the nature of manhood and womanhood. But the whole point of my essay and your response was that even when you reconfigure the material constraints, the spiritual realities behind them linger.
Technology like the birth control pill has prized apart the connection between our bodies and our capabilities, and advanced societies have responded by making it so that men and women can do all the same things legally and economically. If we were just bodies, that should have been the end of the distinctions between men and women romantically, too. Instead, in the wild (i.e., on dating apps), we find that men still place disproportionate weight on virginity and body counts while women fixate on money and status. This should tell us that our physical forms have always been vessels for our spiritual being, which won’t change just because we monkey with our wiring a bit.
So while it may be true that virginity is good for men and women alike, to point that out as an answer to the special significance of female chastity is to betray a profound confusion about our human nature. I find it particularly telling to meet with this confusion in people who are probably much more aggressive hard-liners than either you or I when it comes to sexual ethics. Even those of us who believe devotedly in spirits and virtues have been trained to think of them reflexively as disembodied abstractions, unaffected by the hard realities of the flesh.
And whereas it may be true that goodness and beauty know no limitations in their essence, here on the human plane it just ain’t so. It really has gotten hard to see this now that we’ve been taught to explain the world as a product of parts that can be rearranged. But not everything is like a modular flat-pack sofa from IKEA: you can’t just pick up one soul and swap it out for another. We are each of us distinct, with different callings and responsibilities, sometimes even with different roles and obligations. The unfairness this creates is real—in fact it's one of the costs of living in reality. But living in a fantasy comes with costs as well, and I reckon we’ve been paying those costs long enough.
Love,
Spencer
 | A guest post by
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And whether women like to admit it or not, what they do with their bodies affects them more intimately than men. At least from my personal observations. I think people used to understand this and put heavy emphasis on protecting women, especially young women from both predatory behavior and from themselves. My mother used to harp on not putting myself in potentially compromising situations and not giving guys the wrong idea by my behavior, but I definitely had friends who suffered greatly by doing both these things. (I know that sounds like victim blaming, but it's not. Whereas society used to tell young women such things even if their parents did not, no one told them to exercise caution in certain circumstances, and they were taken advantage of.)
My friends and acquaintances who are most irrational and angry are generally those with histories of disordered relationships, abortions, and assault. I don't actually blame them. I think they know deep down they were not protected as they should have been and now, they are lashing out, particularly against any authority that resembles fatherhood.
Yes, we *have* been paying those costs long enough, dang it!!! 😡 😡 😡 But (to address what imo is the principal toxin that has oozed into the pores of the developed world) how to combat the "artificial birth control is the best thing that ever happened to the human race", "whatever you do, just don't take away my contraception" mindset we dumb-as-rocks Baby Boomers unleashed on ourselves and on succeeding generations? What can succeed in stuffing our most sacred of sacred cows back in the sinister toothpaste tube whence it came (I love that image 🐮)?? It is true that the agonizingly slow process of changing hearts and minds has shuddered into gear, but omg the time it may take to reverse the damage...
End of rant (for now).