Moral Codes and Alpha Bros

Photo by van Duinen / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The sequel is never as good as the original.

I came into my adolescence during the purity era culture in evangelical circles. For those who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it was a time when Christian leaders challenged young people to stay virgins until marriage. With True Love Waits conferences, moral codes, and attempting to change ideas about dating, its teaching focused on the sacredness of sex within a culture of casual hookups. The church realized that its youth were sleeping around and wanted to encourage a healthy respect for one’s body and promote a Biblical view of sexuality.

The ideas of purity culture were implemented in varying degrees, and honestly, not always well. The core principle could still be respected: purity isn’t just a physical thing. It encompasses heart, mind, and body. In fact, physical purity is the outcome, not the cause. It’s a lifestyle of self-discipline, not just a behavior.

Even for those who “fell,” there was still redemption. The downfall of the Purity Culture era was in its prosperity gospel undercurrents. Prosperity gospel says, “Plant this seed of faith [read: money] and blessings will come to you.” In Purity Culture terms, “Keep your body pure and God will bring you a pure spouse and your marriage will be blessed.” Sometimes, the implication was that your life wouldn’t be as wonderful as those who “stayed pure.” My generation is now in our late 30s and 40s and we have seen marriages between virgins fall apart and marriages between non-virgins flourish. A reminder that the blessing is always in obedience, regardless of outcome.

That was then; now, it’s time for a redux. Purity Culture 2: Electric Gigolo.

If you’re not on social media much, you may not be surrounded by the “alpha male” influencers and their followers and their various ideas on masculinity. The buzzwords recently have been about being a “high value man.” Some of their suggestions are lifting/fitness, not consuming seed-oils, stoic practices, etc.

I understand why some of these influencers have large followings. Many social influencers (of both sexes) see the rot in our society and the denigration of the family — the core institution in society — and share their ideas to protect it. They’re frustrated with the idea that men and women are interchangeable. They know instinctively that men and women are different and want to go back to what they think is a time when those differences were supposedly valued. Consequently, they latch onto the external attributes they most closely associate with those times.

But some of these teachings border on the toxic.

On Twitter (now called officially X), I saw a list which, if a girlfriend matched even one of those items, the man should dump her. The list was stupid. I’m all for having high standards, but not impossible ones. Finding any woman who would not be disqualified by that list would be well-nigh impossible. The sheer number of innocuous items earned it an eye-roll.

One of the reasons on that list to dump your girlfriend was having a “high body count (i.e. a non-virgin).”

(I’ve seen similar statements make their way around that corner of social media: “Don’t marry a woman with a high body count.” Or “not staying a virgin until you’re married is cheating on your spouse.”)

This list, specifically that one item, crystalized for me the difference between the body count movement and purity culture.

In purity culture, with all its flaws, the idea was to challenge women and men to a life of purity. It recognized the differences of sexual attraction and arousal in men and women and wanted to help them combat the struggles they faced.

Saying “stay away from women with a high body count” is not calling men and women into purity of mind and heart. It’s focused only on numbers. It’s also self-defeating. It does not articulate why humans should respect their bodies and sex. It condemns women who have had a lot of lovers without explaining why that might be a problem. But it cannot do that because it would condemn men too. It vaguely tries to draw a straight line between a woman’s body count and her character, with little willingness to apply that same exact standard to men.

Men’s value, to these influencers, is in their status, and women’s value is in their sexual past…or lack of one. It reads like insecure men who want inexperienced women so the men can’t be compared to previous lovers. This reduces women to a singular function — sex. These men will surround themselves with sexy vixens as proof of their alpha male status, taking advantage of her willingness, but unwilling to commit to her because of it at the same time.

Ergo, it’s not about encouraging or challenging both sexes to value their bodies and themselves and each other as human beings and recognize their worth to the world beyond their genitals. So they repeat these trite phrases that mean nothing.

What does “high-value” even mean? People value you more than they value others? You bring more value to the world? How do you even measure that? Is this supposed to equal success?

Also, what would a high body count even be? 500? 100? 50? 10? One? How do you encourage society not to be casual about sex and to respect your body if having one lover before you’re married is as bad as 500?

And what about the men? Should women silently accept men with pasts filled with women? Does being a high-value man mean keeping your body clean from women as it does from seed oils? Men having self-discipline is not foundational to the anti-high body count movement as it was to purity culture.

I have a theory why. I’ve heard someone ask the humorous question, “why do price and worth mean the same thing, but priceless and worthless mean the opposite?”

But that’s not true. Price and worth do not mean the same thing connotatively. Price is the external cost put upon an object based on supply or demand. It’s a transactional value. Worth is the inherent value of an object beyond any transaction.

Many men are trying to push against the anti-male culture they’ve grown up in. They’ve been turned into transactional beings. For many, their youth is lost to wars. They’ve been pushed to the outsides of society as education, business, and STEM fields cater to women in even more greater numbers at the expense of men. In TV shows and movies, fathers are laughed at, denigrated, or non-existent. Fathers can’t even have Father’s Day without single mothers getting accolades too. Fathers are just a paycheck.

And unfortunately, they’ve bought into that lie that their value is in a transactional price, and to keep their transactional price high, to “become high-value,” they must lower the price of the enemy, the woman. Every lover, every number in her body count from her past must lower her transactional value, and the individual behind this number is lost.

We saw this downfall with the purity culture “if you do this, you will get this,” and promising a certain kind of life because of certain kinds of behaviors without taking into account the spectrum of humanity…or of grace and forgiveness. It ends up devolving into a movement perpetuated by snake oil (or maybe seed oil!) salesmen. They’re selling rotten seeds, so expect rotten fruit as well.

As with most movements, this too will end. Influencers will find other trite phrases to lubricate their grift. They’ll move on from seed oils to some other thing being bad for you. Some of them will find other reasons to condemn women, showing that their motivation is not a respect for marriage and family and society, but a bitterness toward women. So be it. There will also be women who are bitter toward men. The world has many platforms for us to amplify our grievances with each other, God forgive us.

Until it ends, may we continue to find value in the human being, whether despite their past or because of it, and seek a more gracious life with those around us.

I think that’s a moral code we can all truly count on.