Barefoot, Pregnant, and Oppressed
How Fundamentalist Christian Patriarchy Silences Women Into Submission
There are times when reality is stranger than fiction.
At first glance, The Transformed Wife’s Twitter looks like a satire page. Her tweets coercing women to be 1950s-esque homemakers, fully submit to their husbands and forgo any type of higher education read straight out of Gilead instead of America in 2021.
Shockingly enough, The Transformed Wife is real. Her online ministry, deceptively advertised as a forum to mentor younger women, spreads dangerous lies that advocate for the abuse of women. The abuse may be as blatant as marital rape or subtle as emotional abuse, but the truth is that it is nowhere to be found in the Bible.
Throughout her thousands of vitriolic rants on Twitter and Facebook, she maintains one consistent message: women are naturally inferior to men, so they must “know their place” by living in total submission to the will of (abusive) men. What does total submission mean for The Transformed Wife? It means that women must stay home to take care of the home and children. According to her, women who enter traditionally male-dominated jobs, like firefighting, are forgoing their so-called “female nature.” Forget about saving lives; The Transformed Wife wants you to know that female firefighters are terrible because they “don’t look like women.” It means that women should remain chaste until marriage, and if they “fornicate,” they have as much value as used gum.
The total submission also means tuning out to “worldly” pursuits, such as a real education, and tuning in to nonsensical conspiracy theories with a generous dash of racism on the side. Most insidiously, total submission means treating your body not as your own but as a tool for your husband to use sexually however he pleases. (Note: Twitter has taken no action on this tweet, which espouses pro-rape ideals.)
In short, The Transformed Wife views women as subhuman. They are not independent human beings but rather babymaking factories and cleaning maids for men who delight in absolute power.
The Transformed Wife assumes women are “evil Jezebels” who need to be trained (indoctrinated) into “godly submission.” Worldly things like education, career, and enjoyment of one’s life lead one away from “God’s path.” She then proceeds to say that such “godly submission” is natural for women. However, her thinking falls apart like a cut mille-feuille cake: if “traditional gender roles” are so natural, then why do people need to be indoctrinated into believing them?
Though she may warn about “false teachers” on Twitter, The Transformed Wife has proven to be a false teacher herself. She encourages women to take care of their children full-time, yet she had a crew of nannies and maids and beat their children into submission for not opening Christmas presents on time. She tells women not to work, yet she profits off her books sold on Amazon. She tells other women to “not be offended,” yet she shut down her Twitter comments when well-meaning individuals tried to reasonably point out the flaws in her ideas.
The Transformed Wife is just one person within a larger fundamentalist Christian ecosystem that has enabled abuse for decades. The beliefs she espouses come straight from the fundamentalist Christian patriarchy movement. In recent years, the Vision Forum became the largest advocate for so-called “Biblical” patriarchy. Members of this Evangelical organization believe that men are the sole heads of both the household and the church; women are to be submissive helpmeets that stay at home. Incredibly large families are encouraged, and women are to homeschool their children in very useful topics, such as creationism, despite having little to no education themselves. Double standards regarding modesty are preached: women must follow strict rules regarding clothing to not “defraud men,” but there are not nearly as many rules for men. The Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP) is another Evangelical organization that works to shield young women from the “pernicious influences of American culture.” Through their seminars and homeschooling programs, young women learn to “shield their virginity” and develop “unwavering obedience” towards their husbands. Skirts are to be worn below the knee, and modern music, even Christian rock, is satanic. The consequence of these teachings is an imbalanced power structure that grants men authoritarian rule over women. Under this system, women have no voice: they are not allowed to question the views of or express their opinions to their husbands. The imbalanced power structure present in many fundamentalist circles has allowed them to become breeding grounds for abuse against women and children. The IBLP is a notorious example: Steve Gothard, the brother of Bill Gothard, resigned after his affairs with secretaries were exposed, and Bill Gothard himself resigned as IBLP president after reports of child sexual abuse and sexual harassment against 34 women. Since women are not allowed to have any autonomy under Christian fundamentalism’s strict rules, abusive men exploit that to their advantage. They know that because these women have been groomed to be submissive towards male authority, they will not speak up if they are abused. Women, in their eyes, are seen as no better than sex slaves. Because of the poor quality of education and the sheltered upbringing they receive, very few women are able to escape the oppression of these cults.
Fundamentalist Christian purity culture has also damaged the self-esteem of women by teaching them that their worth lies in being sexually pure. Sex is reserved for heterosexual marriages only; if a person even has sexual thoughts before then, he or she is said to be morally corrupted.
Purity culture started in the 1990s largely as a reaction to the growing sexual permissiveness in American culture. The Southern Baptist organization True Love Waits organized hundreds of conferences across America preaching abstinence to teenagers. At these conferences, teenagers signed purity pledges and received purity rings as symbols of their pledges to avoid the temptation of premarital sex. Evangelical churches also held father-daughter purity balls, where the father would pledge to protect his daughter’s virginity.
Today, purity culture has evolved into social media pages: influencers such as Girl Defined and Mrs. Midwest preach about the importance of staying sexually pure on YouTube and Instagram. Purity culture may have changed its form throughout the years, but one thing has not changed: its ability to drive young women to shame for having perfectly normal feelings. Instead of teaching young women about safe sex, purity culture teaches women that premarital sex is to be feared. The shame that purity culture instils can cause lifelong trauma, resulting in the inability to form healthy sexual relationships in adulthood. Purity culture leads to increased rates of teen pregnancy and STDs due to a lack of knowledge about contraception. The states that have the highest teen pregnancy rates are states with abstinence-only sex education in schools. Purity culture also causes trauma in LGBTQ youth, as they are told that they are evil for simply having a different sexuality.
Though sexist fundamentalists can rage on all day that women are powerless, they will never succeed in silencing us. Women have worth and value in every sphere, whether it be at home, the workplace, or both. It is up to us to use the power of our voices to speak up against the oppression that occurs in fundamentalist communities. The abuse and shame prevalent in fundamentalist communities prevent women from reaching their fullest potential.
Vote for laws that support comprehensive, scientifically sound sex education. Speak out against organizations that support sexual abuse. Do whatever it takes to stand in solidarity with women who have been abused.
To learn more about the harmful effects of purity culture…
Check out talkpuritytome on Instagram! The author of the page has plenty of personal anecdotes, research, and insights into the dangers of purity culture.
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