Shame, the Church and the Regulation of Female Sexuality

218 Pages·2017·0.872 MB·English

by  Miryam Clough

Shame, the Church and the
Regulation of Female Sexuality
Shame strikes at the heart of human individuals, rupturing relationships,
extinguishing joy and, at times, provoking conflict and violence. This book
explores the idea that shame has historically been, and continues to be, used
by an oftentimes patriarchal Christian church as a mechanism to control
and regulate female sexuality and to displace men’s ambivalence about sex.
Using a study of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries as a historical example,
contemporary feminist theological and theoretical scholarship is utilised
to examine why the church as an institution has routinely colluded with
the shaming of individuals, and moreover why women are consistently and
overtly shamed on account of, and indeed take the blame for, sex. In addi-
tion, the text asks whether the avoidance of shame is in fact functional in
men’s efforts to adhere to patriarchal gender norms and religious ideals, and
whether women end up paying the price for the maintenance of this system.
This book is a fresh take on the issue of shame and gender in the context
of religious belief and practice. As such it will be of significant interest to
academics in the field of religious studies, but also history, psychology and
gender studies.
Miryam Clough received her PhD on shame and sexuality from the Uni-
versity of Bristol, UK, and has written on the topic of shame in a variety of
contexts.
Gender, Theology and Spirituality
Edited by Lisa Isherwood
University of Winchester, UK
www.routledge.com/religion/series/GTS
11 Being the Body of Christ
Towards a Twenty-First Century Homosexual Theology
for the Anglican Church
Chris Mounsey
12 Catholics, Conflicts and Choices
An Exploration of Power Relations in the Catholic Church
Angela Coco
13 Baby, You are My Religion
Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall
Marie Cartier
14 Radical Otherness
Sociological and Theological Approaches
Lisa Isherwood and David Harris
15 Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism
Edited by Anita Monro and Stephen Burns
16 Searching for the Holy Spirit
Feminist Theology and Traditional Doctrine
Anne Claar Thomasson-Rosingh
17 God and Difference
The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude
Linn Marie Tonstad
18 Christian Goddess Spirituality
Enchanting Christianity
Mary Ann Beavis
19 Schooling Indifference
Reimagining RE in Multi-cultural and Gendered Spaces
John I’Anson and Alison Jasper
20 Shame, the Church and the Regulation of Female Sexuality
Miryam Clough
Shame, the Church and
the Regulation of Female
Sexuality
Miryam Clough
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Miryam Clough
The right of Miryam Clough to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-78693-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22656-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Overview 5
2 Towards an understanding of shame 29
3 Shame: affect and emotion 45
4 Shaming the feminine 65
5 Embodied shame 77
6 Sexual ambivalence: why men shame women about sex 101
7 Shame and transgressive female sexuality in Ireland 135
8 Reforming the feminine: the Magdalen laundries 145
Conclusion 179
Bibliography 187
Index 201

Preface
The impetus to write this book arose simultaneously from my own experi-
ence of shame and my indignation at the shaming treatment of the Magda-
len women, as the survivors of the Magdalen laundries are known. It is to
these women – those who have passed on with their stories untold and those
who are alive today, many still struggling to come to terms with their incar-
ceration in these punitive church-run institutions in Ireland and in other
countries – I dedicate this book.
As I prepared this text for publication, footballer Ched Evans was cleared
of rape on the basis of the sexual history of his alleged victim, arguably set-
ting back by decades progress in the way sexual crimes against women are
tried (Laville 2016). Women around the globe felt violated by the broad-
casting of Donald Trump’s creepy, misogynist ‘locker-room talk’, which
became a focus of the American election campaign. That it did not stop that
country inaugurating a ‘pussy-grabbing’ president is a worrying reflection of
the understanding and performance of gender in the West. Louis Theroux’s
documentary Savile aired on BBC 2, along with the drama National Trea-
sure on Channel 4. What struck me in these attempts to understand historic
sexual abuse and how it came to be so grossly overlooked were the follow-
ing themes, which are relevant to the discussion in this book.
• The past and present have different standards. What is now regarded as
abuse was viewed as ‘normal’ at the time. This does not excuse it.
• Western society has legitimised predatory, hypersexualised and abu-
sive behaviour in men – particularly in men with celebrity status or
other forms of power – to the point that such behaviour is ignored or
even facilitated by others, while children and women are objectified as
playthings.
• Some people (often those close to, or who idolised the abuser) are un-
able to believe the evidence; it is too destabilising – of world views, of
personal attachments, of social or material or maternal interests.
• Victims of historic abuse did not come forward at the time because they
knew they would not be believed and would more likely be blamed,
because sexual abuse was commonplace (‘normal’) or they had suffered
worse already.
viii Preface
As Jessica Leeds, who was allegedly sexually assaulted by Trump in the early
1980s, observes,
During the late 60s, 70s and into the 80s, culture had instilled in us that
somehow it was our fault, the attention that we received from men.
That we were responsible for their behaviour. You didn’t complain to
the authorities, you didn’t complain to your boss. If something hap-
pened to you, you just bucked up and you went on.
(His Hands Were All Over Me 2016).
This was also the case in New Zealand, where I grew up, in those decades.
There, mainstream parenting advice and praxis, when I was a young child
in the early 1960s, created a degree of emotional aridity and, along with
sexist and repressive attitudes to sex and to unmarried mothers, combined
to produce an environment that seems to me resonant with aspects of life in
Ireland described in this volume. However, while I watch my own daugh-
ters grow up with greater emotional literacy, greater intellectual and sexual
freedom and more control over their lives and their bodies than I and many
women of my generation had, I also fear for their safety in a world that
remains alarmingly misogynist.
In October 2016, the BBC released its Shame series on the dramatic rise –
and devastating effects – of the online sexual shaming and blackmail of
young people, mainly girls and women, in some of the world’s most con-
servative communities. We live in a global society in which the prevalence
and nature of pornography and film, television and online violence against
women is skewing the sexual development and behaviour of young peo-
ple from an early age so that objectification, violence, violation and online
shaming are becoming normative, and university campuses and television
channels are now needing to educate people about the meaning of consent.
While rape victims are no longer incarcerated in Magdalen laundries, the
alleged victim in the Evans case has had to change her identity five times to
protect herself (Press Association 2014). Shame, and more tangible dangers,
continue to force women into hiding.
Many people – friends, colleagues, acquaintances – have responded to the
idea of this project, which began as a doctoral thesis, with an enthusiasm
that has been particularly encouraging. I am grateful to all of them for their
support, and for conversations which often helped me clarify my thinking or
gave me new avenues to explore. This text is founded on the work of many
others – I am indebted to all of them. Antony Thomas, Linda Pinto, Rich-
ard Sipe and William Davage each gave me permission to cite their work.
Their communications were heartening. In particular I must thank Alison
Jasper, who supervised my PhD with both a welcome light touch and suf-
ficient enthusiasm to keep me on track, and who encouraged me to publish.
St Matthias Trust generously funded a period of research. I am grateful to
my editors, Lisa Isherwood and Joshua Wells, for encouraging this project;
to Jack Boothroyd and to the production team at Routledge for seeing it
Preface ix
through; and to Routledge’s external reviewers for their incisive comments.
My sister, Robyn Clough, cast an informed eye over the manuscript. I am
indebted to her for her perceptive comments and corrections. Naturally, any
errors or inaccuracies are down to me.
Jess Clough-MacRae and Annie Clough-Hillman have supported and
encouraged me in this project from its inception. Michael Farley has pro-
vided a good deal of support, not least by reading the manuscript through
at various points in its development. It is they who motivate me to work
with shame and who never fail to pick me up when it gets the better of me.
I am grateful to University College Dublin Press for permission to use
extracts from Tom Inglis’ insightful books Moral Monoply (Inglis 1998)
and Truth, Power and Lies (Inglis 2003); to Justice for Magdalenes (JFM)
Research for permission to quote from Smith et al., ‘State involvement
in the Magdalene Laundries: JFM’s principal submissions to the Inter-
Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the
Magdalene Laundries’ (JFM 2012), ‘JFM Research welcomes UN Report
on the Holy See; calls for immediate State action on Magdalene Laundries
restorative justice scheme’ (JFM 2014) and ‘NGO Submission to the UN
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in respect
of Ireland LOIPR 2015’; and to Cork University Press for permission to
quote from A Woman to Blame (Nell McCafferty 2010).
Quotations from Greenberg et al. 1990, ‘Evidence for Terror Manage-
ment Theory: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who
threaten or bolster the cultural worldview’, Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 58 and Landau et al. 2006, ‘The siren’s call: Terror management
and the threat of men’s sexual attraction to women’, Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 90 are reprinted by permission of the American Psy-
chological Association. Quotations from Ward, G., 2012. ‘Adam and Eve’s
Shame (and Ours)’, Literature and Theology 26, 305–322 are reprinted by
permission of Oxford University Press. Some original material in this vol-
ume was first published in ‘Shame in Organisations’, International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services 6:1, February 2010 by Pier Professional,
and ‘Atoning Shame’, Feminist Theology 23:1, September 2014 by Sage
Publications Ltd.