Chastity

Chastity is Ben Franklin’s twelfth virtue I shall be considering this week. Chastity was Ben’s final virtue to practise for many years before an Amish friend insisted he was missing Humility, whereby Ben inserted Humility making thirteen virtues to practise and threw his mathematically complimentary practise into a nose dive. Adding Humility to an already humiliating process reminds me of how we often attempt to fix or better someone else’s perfectly fine anything, without knowing better. I know for certain the man who suggested to Ben that he was missing Humility as a virtue, had not attempted this practise Ben set out, as the entire act, is one steeped in humility.


So, next week, I return to Temperance, skipping the lately inserted Humility (methinks she resists too much you may think) and start all over again. But, first, the tricky subject of Chastity. And, the interesting way in which Ben wrote its guideline:

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

Now, that’s what I call a tightly packed sandwich. And, I think it important to point out that there are two definitions of ‘venery’, of which, one comes from the Old French and means ‘to chase or hunt’ (for food) and one from Latin and means ‘to seek sexual intercourse’. You might ask in our time, so what’s the difference, and, I might have to agree that most of us live in a world wherein we do not go out and hunt our own food, but seem ‘to hunt’ for that ‘other’ to perform sex with, and thereby is a marriage of these different meanings of 'venery' into a common ceremony that Ben might not have been as privy to, but I believe he definitely alluded to in his choice of words.

So, how often is rarely?

But, that is not really the issue for the main event; the point is what do we do with our common need for sexual expression, and what do we teach our children?

As a child, I can remember the first time I heard the word ‘chastity’, it was in a book and combined with the word ‘belt’. I did not understand the reason to put such a contraption upon a woman, and, I can remember holding that vision in my head without a conversation with anyone. So as I grew into adulthood and still without fail, when I hear or read the word, there is a visual I get that is very distasteful. The things mankind has dreamed up to protect their ideas behind a word are definitively injurious. I’ve had a scratch I could not itch since I first read about a ‘chastity belt’...

And now, now that I have run the course of contemplating my own health, my offspring, and what dull, weak and injurious propositions have I brought to another’s peace or reputation, or my own, by the choices of venery I have made...this act of contemplation is humbling enough for a lifetime, much less a week, and I find myself wondering where could I get a ‘chastity belt’?!

Rarely ain’t ‘Good Enough’, my friend Ben.