Marry, Bury, Fuck: How the internet enforces, liberates, and transforms religious sexual norms

It is 1978, and a religious Jewish Orthodox 13 years old boy in Chicago, begins experiencing puberty. He is too embarrassed to talk about it with his friends, parents, teachers or his rabbi. What is he to do? He could go to the library, but that is a public space. There he can go to the sexuality section, hoping that no one will see him. He could then check out some general book about adolescence and sexuality (For example, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male), under the staring glare of the librarian. At home, he must hide this book in his room, painfully fearing that his parents or his siblings will find out. Life, and even the intimate aspects of life such as sexuality, occur in public. Forty years later, in 2018, the same scenario is much different – due to the fact that this teenage can simply search for information online. His parents might, like many other religious Jews, have allowed computers and access to the internet, but added an internet filter as advocated by rabbis. The boy may not be able to access pornography websites, but he can go to Kipa.co.il or Aish.com and read articles about masturbation, participate in forums of same-minded people struggling with puberty or directly ask a rabbi under the cloak of anonymity. This hypothetical example is, in a way, at the heart of the current research on digital religion and sexuality: it highlights the question of how access to digital media might be changing the practices and concepts of gender and sexuality in religious communities.

The internet has changed our life in many ways, and that’s true for religious people too. Religion and digital media is an especially potent area of study, as it contrasts two systems: one that is built on innovation, multiplicity and openness, and the other built on tradition, hierarchy and a certain amount of restraint (both on the individual level and as a culture). When issues of sexuality and gender are involved, this becomes even more complicated, as the internet makes certain things that are prohibited in most religious traditions – like looking for pornography, for example – easily accessible for anybody. In this post, I briefly examine the ways in which internet enforce, liberate and transform religious norms regarding sexuality.

From Adam and Eve’s nudity all the way to #ChurchToo, the intersection of religion and sexuality was always a ‘hot’ topic. In many ways, religions all over the world still shape the way that humans – even secular ones – think about their bodies. Issues of shame, body-image, lust, homosexuality and the meaning of sexuality are all framed (at times, subconsciously) to a certain degree through religious terminology and worldview, especially in the West. But of course, religions do not operate in a vacuum, but rather react to- and shape current trends. When it comes to digital media, religions have a lot to react to.

Guarding your eyes and protecting your soul: battling online pornography
The number one issue most Abrahamic religions have regarding digital media and sexuality, is the massive access to pornography online, since  pornography encourages sexual lust and masturbation. Therefore, it is considered  dangerous and as a form of adultery. To “combat” online access to pornography, religious communities offer internet filters, support groups, and online campaigns against pornography. These efforts sometime turn not just against pornography but against general access to digital media. For example, the religious Jewish website Guard Your Eyes is solely dedicated to helping people “battle online pornography addiction” through a 12 steps program, and tips such as monitoring your internet access.  Similarly, one can find a flora of Muslim sources helping people who struggle with this, including this video-prayer:

Christianity too offers many sources against pornography, and Christians lobbyists in the USA even went to congress to try and move for a restriction of online pornography. One striking example of how this attitude toward pornography also shapes attitudes towards the digital can be seen in the Mormon video campaign (2014). The video clearly equate actual war with consuming pornography, and those who are ‘wounded’ should not be ‘left in the battlefield’ – that is, left to their own devices (pun intended). In these ways, interaction with the digital is tinted with suspicion. The digital media itself is seen as potentially dangerous: either explicitly, as can be seen in the below comic posted in the streets of Jerusalem where the innocent religious boy turns into a monster because of his computer usage (read from right to left), or implicitly as can be seen in the Mormon video.

Using Social Media to be Gay and Religious
Another issue where digital media, religion and sexuality intersect is in regards to homosexuality. It is no secret that most religious tradition are explicitly or implicitly against homosexuality. However, with the advent of digital media, religious members can anonymously and with ease learn about various sexualities, join online communities, and even express concerns and opinions within their own religious communities anonymously. For example, in 1997, Justin Lee began writing online about his experiences as a Christian gay man. His writing touched others and in 2001 he opened the Gay Christian Network (GCN) - an online community and forum where various users could express their feelings, raise questions, and share their struggles and joys. The Gay Christian Network, now Q Christian, even began holding offline meetings to support one another. Similar online spaces can be found for Muslims and religious Jews. In these ways, the internet opened a space for sexual minorities to hold both their faith and their sexuality, and to create online communities which would otherwise be impossible.

The internet is not only changing individual religious people’s sexual and gender norms, it is also, I argue, slowly allowing for change within the religious community itself. An example that I researched in depth is the case of the Jewish Orthodox Israeli online community Kipa.co.il. In this website for the religious community, which has established as early as 2001, there are forums and articles that expand the conversation about sexuality beyond the grasp of only male religious authority. More specifically, in 2016, the website in collaboration with Yahel Center released a video series on “kosher intimacy” that was meant to foster an open yet religiously oriented conversation on sexuality. Eight videos were released in total, each featuring a different female expert or leader (already a brave move in the male structured tradition). These women talked about the first night, safe intimacy, and even on how to make sex into a pleasurable game – all in a ‘clean’ language. Issues of homosexuality, masturbation or pornography were not discussed. The sexuality that was discussed was marital, heterosexual relationship. And yet, in these videos these women (and men) bravely tried to reframe sexual norms within the boundaries of their community, by calling for a female-focused religious attitude towards intimacy.   

Other examples of reframing or even resisting sexual norms can be seen in social media movements such as #EmptythePews and #ChurchToo. These two movement represent people who are from inside the community who are calling for gender equality and sexual safety. They do so by taking advantage of the ‘democratic’, participatory, and anonymous aspects of the internet to amplify their voices and carve a space for their experiences, feelings, and worldviews. In return, religious leaders and lay people have the opportunity to understand their own religion as one that includes these diverse voices.

Not just surfing: negotiating, resisting, enforcing, and changing religious sexual norms
But how often is this opportunity taken? Often, these negotiation of norms are slammed down by the religious leadership, and, more importantly, other users. For example, in reacting to the videos posted on Kipa, 61% of the total comments to all the videos loudly objected this series, and by the end of August 2016 no more videos were posted. Online, we find Christian inspired sources and communities that call for female submission and against gay rights (see for example the masterful use of YouTube testimonials that state Love is Love but try to convince users against gay love). It is clear than, that rule 43 (you can find anything online) is true in this case too: the internet serve both to liberate and to enforce religious sexual norms. However, I suggest that it is not simply that the internet is a ‘neutral’ tool here and can be used for ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Rather, we have to consider the characteristics of the internet.  More and more, the internet informs our worldview simply because that is how we gather information and interact with one another. If you recall the 13 year-old boy from the post’s introduction, the fact that he can easily learn about masturbation online is crucial to how he will then relate to it. Would the boy be better today than he was in 1978? Perhaps. But the online world is complicated, and one website does not represent all of the internet. The important thing to note – one of the “pros” of internet access – is that the internet gives access to a variety of opinions. And so our boy could find information that is less tinted with concepts of sin or shame. However, if the boy stays with the digital enclave of ultra-Orthodoxy online, in his community’s “online bubble” he could easily be only exposed to fundamental religious ideas, and in large volumes. Another potential “pro” of online communication is that it allows for anonymity, and thus people can explore and express ideas without the risk of being punished by their religious group. At the same time, religious groups – traditional, liberal, or fundamental ones – can and do use online media to spread their own ideas about sexual norms. And those ideas are indeed traditional or fundamental, usually against sexual liberation or don’t recognize female sexuality, as some of the examples from this post highlight. But regardless of the liberating or enforcing uses of the internet, what is clear is that digital communication is slowly changing religious understandings of sexuality, one post at a time.