“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”

Virginia Woolf – Orlando

    On January 25th, I am reminded of my favorite author’s birthday. On this day, a woman was born who would write and experiment and live as fully as she could. Her death always makes me sorrowful, but today is not about that. Today is about her words, her life, and what she has brought into the world because of her strength of mind.

    Woolf has a few recorded interviews that have survived through the years. One such one is posted on her Wiki page, which I have listened to a few times. The way in which she speaks, the firmness of her words, the creativity of her mind spilling upon her lips always strikes me into a state of awe. Perhaps it is foolish to adore a creator so much, especially one who has already left this life, but perhaps not. There is a simpleness in loving someone who is not part of current discourse, who does not share opinions which may contradict your own morals. Woolf can sit perfectly in my mind as someone I admire, as someone I love, and her voice can sing out whenever I open one of her books.

    When looking up quotes to share by her for today, I was reminded of the one above. “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” She has other greats, which I highly recommend looking up, but today, this one in particular stuck out to me. 

    I speak often about the deconstruction of the way I was raised, the beliefs that were passed down to me that no longer apply, and the way in which toxic religion has affected me. Today will be no different, as today, I wish to speak on purity culture, with the above quote as my frame.

    There has always been the assumption that a woman dresses “scandalously” because she desires the attention of a man. This assumption was passed onto my shoulders as I grew, that short shorts, crop tops, tight clothing, and all the like are for the consumption of men.

    I believed this for years, for much longer than I wished I had. In my private schools, dress codes were emphasized, and sex education classes resided on not tempting the gaze of our brothers in Christ. If we wore something that accented our breasts, our butts, wore too much makeup or showed too much shoulder, we were doing it to make the other men around us fall to sin and lust. 

    It was not until I reached adulthood that I purchased and wore my first crop top. It was not until late into my college career did I start to step away from that mindset, slip on a shirt that exposed my stomach, that I realized none of this was true.

    Woven from soft, grey fabric, with short sleeves striped black, this shirt rested over my shoulders in a way no other shirt had. It was taboo in so many circles I grew up in, wicked and lustful, and yet wearing it, looking at myself in the mirror, I was struck with such self-love that I had not experienced before. Certainly I loved myself, I liked my body, and I enjoyed what I wore, but this was different. It made me feel good. I placed my hands on my stomach and smiled in the mirror. It made me feel really good.

    I liked how I looked in it. I threw a red plaid jacket on, black shorts, and was set. I looked great. I felt even better. I cannot remember if I thought about how men would look at me. I do not recall considering it long enough for it to even be cemented into my mind. It is the feeling of freedom, of happiness that sits with me. The feeling of being able to exist as myself. 

    I am aware of the assumption by the group of extremist religious people in my local town. I know what they think, what they believe because I present myself in a certain way. To them, my only thoughts are about the men around me, about showing off my body to cis guys who might be lustful over what they see. 

    What a woman thinks is of no consequence when it is about a man. But when it is about herself, about feeling good, then those issues arise. 

    As I stepped away from purity culture, stepped away from the idea that my life revolves around men, I was greeted with multiple responses. One I often cite is being told that by denying marriage and childbirth as my goals or future in life, that I am denying god’s plan for my life. (I use here the lowercase, because a god who does not allow me to live as I am created is no god of mine.) Because my future did not include a man, I was wrong. I was incorrect. I was broken.

    The head of this extremist church of my local city told me, with the same emphasis, that I needed to reconsider never getting married. That women are created to be partners for men, that our greatest blessing is that to give birth, and that we find greater happiness in the home, raising the next generation and being a mate to a man. I was not in my crop top at the time, it being middle of winter and freezing outside, and my own body struggling to keep any sort of body heat, but I smiled and leaned back in my chair as he uttered those words, as the room of protestors I sat within burst into anger and frustration. He lives off the hatred, we are all aware of that, but I enjoyed the way he could not answer questions in a way that was remotely based off a god of love and kindness, as he claimed. 

    Without a man on the mind, a woman is untamed. Wild. Dangerous. The church believes this. Believes that the power of sin rests upon our bodies, and that displaying our bodies is a way in which was intentionally draw the focus of men. When we wake in the morning, when we dress ourselves, put on clothes, do our hair or tie it into a bun–it is all for the sake of cis men to consume and enjoy. When that cycle is broken, when women step out of that, it unravels the foundation of which these extremists stand. When women take back our own bodies, are able to dress ourselves in the way we enjoy or, god-forbid, dress ourselves to attract those not of a different gender, attract other women instead, it is then that all are concerned with what we are thinking. With what our demon possession is. With what vile wrong happened to us to make us not want the lust from men who stand around us. When we are not thinking about men, and about their desires, it is then the concern of many. 

    Let them be concerned.    

“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own