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.

Facing East

The windows of our temporary apartment in downtown Milwaukee face west. When I look out, I see the east face of another high-rise apartment building a block away. The bedrooms in that building all have enormous bay windows. They are so large that it seems like the occupants are sleeping in glass pods protruding from the side of the building.

In the morning, I can see the light of dawn creeping down the side of that building, pouring in the windows. The people who live on the upper levels must be early risers, or else they have to sleep with the shades drawn. It must be quite a view, and I imagine that the people who live there pay a premium for it. I bet they can see dawn breaking over Lake Michigan. As for me, I can only see the sunrise indirectly, reflected in those windows.

This morning, I watched that indirect sunrise while nursing Peter and musing. I was thinking about the significance of having a sense of one's orientation in space. Some people, like my husband, have a clear sense of their spatial orientation at all times. I think such people must be continually tracking their location on a mental map. I, on the other had, am usually unaware of whether I am facing north, south, east, or west. My focus is small-scale: what is happening right in front of me, in this room. I don't think about my wider spatial context unless a view of some major point of reference, such as the sunrise or Lake Michigan, suddenly makes me aware of it. If I lived on the east side that other apartment building, I think it would be easier for me to maintain a constant sense of my location because the dawn would vividly remind me every morning.

Spatial orientation is important in Orthodox Christianity. Orthodox Christians all over the globe face in the same direction during Divine Liturgy and when saying their morning and evening prayers: East, towards the rising sun. The rising sun is a natural icon of Christ. St. John of Damascus argued, "Since [. . .] God is spiritual light, and Christ is called in the Scriptures Sun of Righteousness and Dayspring, the East is the direction that must be assigned to His worship." There are also many Biblical references to the East. When Christ returns, we will see him coming from the East: "For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:27). In our churches, the altar is to the East, and in our homes we (ideally) set up our icon corners on an Eastern wall or corner of the house. This is a very ancient tradition.

Orthodoxy emphasizes the physical aspect of worship as very important and inseparable from the spiritual aspect. Matter matters: spatial orientation, body posture, icons, incense, prayer ropes, and of course the Bread and Wine that become the Body and Blood of Christ. Human beings are both physical and spiritual, so if we are to worship God with our whole being, our physical bodies must be involved. The practice of physically facing East during prayer ought to reinforce the spiritual practice of orienting our souls and our lives towards Christ.

Sometimes, it is not practical to set up an icon corner on an Eastern wall. In our temporary apartment, I have broken with tradition and propped up our icons on the sill of the west-facing windows, simply because that is the only convenient place for them. But today, after indirectly watching the sunrise, glorious even when seen reflected in other people's windows, I decided to face East again to say my morning prayers: East towards the beautiful sunrise hidden from my view, towards the beautiful God I cannot see directly but Whose Light is reflected all around me.

Pentecost

Pentecost 2015, the day we became Orthodox

My husband and I became members of the Orthodox Church through the sacrament of Chrismation last year at Pentecost. Today, I came full-circle through the liturgical year for the first time as an Orthodox Christian.

Last Pentecost, I woke up early in the morning with a feeling of great anticipation. I was so excited to finally become Orthodox after several years as an inquirer. I was also nervous about the ceremony of Chrismation itself and making sure that I "did everything right"- something I tend to worry too much about. It was similar to how I felt on my wedding day.

By the time our Chrismation ceremony started, I was already starving and slightly dizzy because I had been awake for several hours and was unused to the Eucharistic fast. I was also 3 months pregnant, a fact I had not yet announced to our church friends, and I'm sure that contributed to my dizziness. Our priest would surely have exempted me from the fast if I had asked, but I was proudly determined to DO IT RIGHT!

So I struggled to make it through the Mass, intent on not missing my opportunity to receive Holy Communion for the first time. Nathan and I were first in line for Communion, since we had just been Chrismated, and as we approached the rail I saw gray spots around the periphery of my vision. I managed to hang on just long enough to receive Communion before collapsing against the rail. Our priest later told me that he had to lean down and whisper to Nathan, "Catch Keela!" Nathan was too engrossed in the experience of receiving Holy Communion for the first time to notice that I was falling over (not that I can blame him for that).

This year was different. I was not nervous or about to pass out, so I was able to pay more attention to what was going on in the Mass and all of the special festive details: the gorgeous, bright red vestments; the colorful floral arrangements on the altar; the special music performed by our choir; the extra servers at the altar who had come to help celebrate this great feast day. Peter, who is now 6 and a half months old, was even considerate enough to sleep through most of the Mass, so I didn't miss anything.

Today was also bittersweet, since we will be moving and leaving our parish in just a couple of weeks. We may never experience another great feast day at this parish, unless we come back to visit at the right time. We are not only leaving this parish, but also the Western rite, since all of the parishes near Milwaukee (our soon-to-be home) are Eastern rite. This next turn through the Church year, we will be like newbies all over again, learning how things are done in the Byzantine style. So I am grateful that I had the chance today to soak in everything that I love about this parish and the Western rite before I have to say goodbye.

Reflections on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Today is Good Friday for us Orthodox. Easter is almost here, but before we get to the Empty Tomb, we must first follow our Lord to the Cross and even descend with Him into Hell. So even though we will be feasting in less than two days' time, it feels like we still have a long way to go.

It reminds me a bit of when I was a student and the end of the semester was approaching. I could never get excited about the winter or summer break that came after the end of semester because I knew I had to get through final exams first. I was always a procrastinator, yet also excessively worried about maintaining a perfect GPA, so final exam week was a very stressful time for me. I couldn't enjoy fantasizing about the upcoming vacation time because part of me wasn't sure I would actually survive finals! Then, when I eventually did make it through finals, the sudden relief of being done with the semester always came as a pleasant shock.

So, I'm not getting excited about Easter... yet.

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Last night was the Great Watch in the Garden, when we commemorate and mystically re-live the night Jesus spent praying in the garden of Gethsemane before His Crucifixion. I was grateful to have the opportunity to pray for about an hour at the Altar of Repose after Mass. My 5-month-old was very cooperative and slept in my arms for most of that time.

The hour I spent at the Altar of Repose was from about 8:45 to 9:45 pm. It was a still, solemn, beautiful hour. On the Altar, the golden Tabernacle containing the Eucharist sat surrounded by flickering candles, which provided the only light to the little chapel. There was darkness beyond the stained glass windows, and I could hear the night noises of the city-- traffic, the occasional siren, voices of pedestrians passing by. All around me in the city, people were going to sleep, or starting the night shift, or having a drink in a bar, as if it were any other night and not the eve of something awful and wondrous. It is lonely to be awake and watchful at night, when it seems that everyone else is asleep or revelling or going about their work. (You can't blame most people for being ignorant of the Orthodox liturgical calendar, but still.)

I thought about Jesus praying in the darkness in Gethsemane, the night noises He must have heard around Him, and His dreadful anticipation of what was about to happen. Only He fully knew what was about to happen, even though he had forewarned His disciples. What a night that must have been.