Witches Mag, Issue #5: Time

Fuck Turning the Other Cheek.

I was very young when I learned that I was not only a woman, but a piece of gum. It was when I was given my first sexual purity talk, at 11 or 12 years old. I remember my youth leader, in faded jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt, chewing a huge wad of Juicy Fruit. He pulled it out to show us that the gum was irrevocably changed. “Show of hands— how many of you want this chewed up, used piece of gum now?” It was the first time I really remember feeling a hard pit of anger in my stomach. I sat on my hands until they went numb.

Purity culture loves a metaphor. They love to compare a woman’s body to an inanimate object, a thing to be had, a possession to be given, or taken, something that can be broken or damaged.

The metaphors didn’t stop that night. I’ve been compared to a basket of eggs, a crumpled up dollar bill, a chocolate bar. But I am and always have been a woman. And nothing, certainly not a penis, can chew me up or take my chocolate or break my eggs.

But at 11 I didn’t know that. So I bought it. I read my pink Bible and sang in the youth band and hid my body under Bermuda shorts and baggy t-shirts. I learned quickly that my anger wasn’t godly and didn’t have a place in a “clean heart.”

Instead, I learned to turn the other cheek.

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