Like Augustine, Puritans were not against sex, per se. The history and theology are more complex than this derogatory stereotype suggests. While the American reserve and squeamishness about sex speak to the influence of the early Puritans, it's not entirely fair that we use their name to mean prudish and anti-sex.
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The root of this complicated American attitude toward sex is the puritan versus the free love view of sexuality and sin, a dynamic itself rooted deep in Christian theology. America talks about sex through two contrasting scripts that function as the legacy of two warring impulses, two different master narratives twisted together in the country's history. That's why the culture often feels puritanical and porn-saturated, both at the same time: a nation shaped by a Puritan founding history, inhabiting a pop culture landscape saturated with sex. What is the sexual script in American culture? It's actually twofold-and contradictory. The script gains its authority, however, precisely through the claim that these norms are not a product of the culture but a fact of the natural order or divine will.
Social script theory thus argues that norms about sexuality and gender are not purely natural or God-given but are shaped by societal expectation and interaction.
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Sexual scripts interact with gender scripts-stories about what it means to be a man or a woman, cultural codes that teach you how to perform your gender role "properly," in accordance with the dominant norms-that, again, people either enact or push back against, particularly when the role doesn't make for a good fit. The culture tells us how to live out our sexuality, but people also craft their own stories that either fall in line with the dominant discourse or tell a counternarrative. The heritage of the Puritans lives on in the United States they helped found through an enduring leeriness toward sex.Īccording to Gagnon and Simon, these sexual scripts train people in what counts as proper conduct or allowable sexual behavior in any given time and place. We see the persistence of this puritan impulse in what's sometimes referred to as "pearl clutching": a shocked, wide-eyed, disapproving stance of Oh, my! Do people really do that? and That must stop at once! (Cue visual of an older lady, hand to throat, catching hold of her proverbial string of pearls, but note also the misogyny of that stereotype, as if only women are stodgy reactionaries.)
The heritage of the Puritans lives on in the United States they helped found through an enduring leeriness toward sex.
Puritanical, as a pejorative term, now conjures visions of austere religion, a censorious attitude, and strict demands for adherence to behavioral rules. As a loose political and theological movement, their name derives from members' desire to purify the Church of England as well as their emphasis on moral purity. They fled England, seeking freedom to practice their particular form of Christianity. Reprinted with permission.Īmerica as "puritanical." We hear this often, but what does it mean? The term harkens back to a group of the country's earliest European immigrants - the Puritans - who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century. Excerpted from " Good Sex: Transforming America Through the New Gender and Cultural Revolution" by Catherine M.
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