The Problem with Orthodox Tradition on Female Virginity

St. Pelagia of Antioch, Virgin-Martyr

 
The Orthodox Church grants special honor to saints, particularly female saints, who remain virgins throughout their lives. I used to explain this tradition to myself by reasoning that virgins, whether men or women, eschew worldly pleasures and the blessings of family life in order to devote themselves more fully to God. It makes perfect sense for the Church to honor people who were especially devoted to God, right?

However, I have come to realize that this explanation doesn't fully account for Orthodox Tradition on virginity. There is a dark side to Orthodox teachings on virginity which undermines the dignity and spiritual worth of women in the Church.

If the Orthodox elevation of virginity were all about honoring devotion to God, one would expect equal emphasis on male and female virginity. But this is clearly not the case. Only female saints are given the official title of "Virgin." Often this title is combined with the title of "martyr," as in "St. Daria the Virgin-Martyr." Many unmarried male saints presumably died as virgins, but their virginity is not usually specifically noted in stories of their lives, nor is there a title specifically for male virgin saints. What is going on here?

Another clue lies in a peculiar pattern in the lives of female saints: although many suffered torture and martyrdom, there are NO well-known female saints who were victims of rape. How can this be? Is it plausible, given the prevalence of sexual violence, that two millenia of Church history has not produced a single noteworthy woman saint who was a victim of sexual assault?

There are numerous examples of virgin saints who were threatened with rape, but who were saved from the loss of their virginity by divine intervention. St. Agnes of Rome was forced into a brothel, but when she was stripped, long hair miraculously grew from from her head and covered her nakedness. St. Juliana was also sent to a brothel, but God blinded anyone who tried to touch her. St. Daria was guarded by a lion. St. Markella of Chios was sealed in a rock up to her waist so that her father could not rape her (although he still could still behead her). There are many more examples.

Some female saints even chose death over the loss of their virginity. St. Pelagia jumped off a roof to avoid being defiled by Roman soldiers. St. Euphrasia of Nicodemia tricked her would-be rapist into beheading her. St. Domnina drowned not only herself but also her two daughters to protect them from rape (according to St. John Chrysostom's version of the story). Although the Church usually considers suicide to be a serious sin, Church Fathers such as St. Ambrose and St. John Chrysostom affirmed the virtue of women committing suicide (and apparently, in St. Domnina's case, murder) to preserve their chastity. These Fathers of the Church did not extend their acceptance of suicide to men in the same situation.

What conclusion are we to draw from these patterns? Why would God allow His saints to suffer all manner of torments for His name, but never rape? One begins to wonder whether being a victim of sexual violence disqualifies a woman for sainthood.

Clearly, this preoccupation with female virginity is about more that just honoring women for their devotion to God. No one is less devoted to God for having been raped, any more than one is less devoted to God for having endured torture. This isn't about honoring the purity of virginal women's souls, but about fetishizing their unpenetrated bodies. It was the physical state of virginity that St. Pelagia killed herself in order to preserve; her purity of soul was not under threat. God (supposedly) intervened to protect the virginity of St. Markella, St. Agnes, St. Juliana, and others because losing that physical state would have meant losing their glory in heaven, even if it were against their will. It was a woman's physical state of virginity, the state of never having been penetrated by a man, that St. John Chrysostom and St. Ambrose valued even more than her life.

What this means is that while both men and women are judged for the state of their souls, women are additionally judged for the state of their bodies. Virginity, the imaginary (not medically verifiable) physical state of never having been penetrated, is not something that can be restored by any amount of repentance. Thus, the loss of virginity (even by rape) becomes the one unforgivable sin. This perverse tradition of fetishizing female virginity directly contradicts core Church teachings about salvation and the dignity of all human beings.

The Church is supposed to be a “hospital for souls,” but it has failed to heal one of my deepest wounds because it is unable to unequivocally affirm my worth as a woman— specifically, my worth as a woman who is not physically “pure,” and as a woman who has experienced sexual trauma.

I am saddened to find myself drifting away from the Orthodox Church, which I have loved so much. I still see so much goodness and beauty in it. But until I can figure out how to disentangle the poisonous snake of misogyny that is entwined in Church Tradition, I will be standing out in the narthex during Communion.

Stay-At-Home Sisyphus

Some moms have hypothesized a Law of the Universe stating that you can never get to the bottom of the laundry hamper. I would like to offer my experience today as evidence in support of this theory.

This morning, I took all of our dirty laundry to the laundromat. I was trying out a new strategy: instead of trying to wash and fold 2 loads every weekday, a goal which I have continually failed to meet, I would spend one epic day sorting, spot-treating, washing, drying, folding, hanging, and putting away ALL of our mountains of dirty laundry. We have a baby inclined to spitting up and a partially potty-trained toddler, so that is a LOT of laundry. To accomplish this Herculean task, I took our laundry to the laundromat where I could wash all of it simultaneously.

I filled up 5 washers with less than a week’s worth of our laundry, not including sheets (I didn't have time to strip the beds). I spent most of this afternoon folding and putting away the clean laundry.

When I finally completed my task, I triumphantly surveyed the empty laundry hampers. I had done the impossible! I was a Titan among moms! (I'm on a roll here with the classical mythology references.) Then I remembered that in order to truly complete my task, I needed to unpack the clean clothes from our suitcases that we had used for our trip last weekend.

I opened my suitcase to discover that the cat had peed all over my and the kids’ clothes.

It’s really not the cat’s fault, you see. I tempted the Universe by trying to break one of its fundamental laws. The cat was just restoring the Cosmos to its proper state.

Being a stay-at-home mom is often a Sisyphean existence. But instead of rolling a boulder up a hill, I am eternally carrying a basket of clean laundry up the stairs, only to discover that there is a basket of dirty laundry waiting for me at the top.

8 Goals I’ve Abandoned Since Having Baby #2

Who doesn’t love a Buzzfeed-style list article? Here are 8 standards that are now hopelessly unattainable... because it’s important to know when to give up.

1. Arriving on time to anything

I’m proud if I manage to get out of the house at all. If we get to church before the Gospel reading, I believe it still counts as “Orthodox On-Time.”

2. Saying morning prayers in the morning

Morning prayers happen after we have all gotten dressed and ready for the day, which usually isn’t before noon. That’s if they happen at all, and I’m afraid I’ve been skipping them a lot lately. When I do say them, it might not be the prayers in the prayer book. It might just be a “Lord, have mercy!” muttered under my breath as I survey the chaos that has overrun my life.

3. Eating out with both children

If a restaurant doesn’t have a playground inside it, I don’t want to eat there.

4. Cloth diapering

Sorry, Earth. I can’t keep up with the laundry as it is, and I certainly don’t have time to add on a load of dirty diapers every day. Those Heavy Duty loads take like 2 hours on HE machines! The irony is that if I had a washer that was less “green,” I might be able to keep using cloth diapers. Hmmmm.

5. Strictly limiting screen time for the older child

Mommy needs you watch Daniel Tiger now.

6. Closely supervising the older child at all times

Sometimes my toddler runs off to another room while I am nursing the baby. Do I try to chase him down while the baby is still latched on? No. I figure he’ll be OK by himself for a few minutes. Probably.

7. Staying until the end of an event

This goes along with #1. Our strategy is arrive late, leave early. There is a vanishingly small window of time during which it is possible to keep a baby quiet and a toddler contained.

8. Maintaining respectable standards of personal grooming

It’s hard to find time to shower when you have two young kids. You could wait until both are asleep at the same time, but that’s like waiting for a planetary alignment. No, your best bet is to wait until the toddler is asleep (or watching Daniel Tiger in a toddler-proof space... see #5 and #6), and just bring the baby into the bathroom with you.

How long can you count on a baby to stay content in her baby rocker chair? Maybe 5 minutes? And what would you rather do with those 5 minutes: wash out the dried spit-up encrusting your hair, or shave your legs? That’s what I thought.

The Agony of Dirty Dishes

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. In fact, I forgot I still had this blog. When I rediscovered it just now, I almost deleted it out of sheer disgust with the title. The Joy of Dirty Dishes. Ugh! Someone please slap the saccharine faux-humility out of 2016 me!

Actually, I think 2017 did a pretty good job of doing just that. Not that it was entirely a bad year. My son grew from a baby into a toddler. We got to know some wonderful people at our new church in Wisconsin, although my husband and I still missed our Western rite parish in Denver and struggled to adjust to the Byzantine style of liturgy and fasting. We gradually worked to turn our townhouse, the first place we owned, into a comfortable home that reflected our tastes. I started to find my place in a community of other moms with young children.

Then everything changed abruptly. Our lives pivoted around the trivial circumstances of a single moment. We moved, again. But we tried (with partial success) to see the hand of God in the midst of apparent disaster, and the forced change gave us the opportunity to move back South and live with family. I was six and a half months pregnant. Then came another totally unexpected upheaval: I had an episode of preterm labor, which resulted in three weeks of mandated bed rest. I could only lie back and watch as others performed duties that were supposed to be mine, including caring for my son. Yeah, 2017 taught me a lot about relinquishing control and accepting imperfection, and it was not always a pleasant learning experience.

My daughter was born on November 29th, just a day before her due date. Everything about her was a surprise: her gender, the timing of her birth, her head of dark hair. She has immediately shown herself to be a distinct individual, different from her big brother in both appearance and temperament.

I feel again, as I did after my son’s birth, that my old self has shattered under the pressure of new responsibilities. In order to survive, I must adapt. Last time, I had to give up a lot of self-indulgent habits and learn to work harder than I ever had before.

I’m not sure yet who I am becoming this time, but I think my new self will have to be a LOT more tolerant of imperfection. I am running up against the absolute limits of what I can accomplish in a day and still falling far short of my own standards of Minimum Acceptability. Last time, I had to become more disciplined; this time, I think I need to become more forgiving, of others and especially of myself.

When I named this blog, I had in my mind an idealized image of myself as a diligent homemaker who could find joy even in the humblest household duties. I imagined that the challenge would be the task of washing dishes in itself, learning somehow to enjoy it. No, no. The challenge is looking at a stack of dirty dishes and longing to wash them, but choosing instead to leave them there because there is something more important you must do. The challenge is taking a hit to your pride in yourself as a Good Homemaker by neglecting the very visible stack of dirty dishes, in order to perform some invisible duty that will make a greater difference to your family’s wellbeing. Sometimes the less selfish choice is to leave the dirty dishes and take a rest, because if you don’t you will be exhausted and irritable with your family later. That is the agony of dirty dishes.

What is the Joy of Dirty Dishes? I will let you know if I find it. I hope that I can, because I’m sure there are a lot of dirty dishes ahead of me in 2018.