The Discursive Governance of Chastity: The Removal of the Interpretative Power

This paper crystallizes the functional and relational binary referents within the discursive domain of chastity, through an analysis of heteronormativity and the misogynist discourse in which it was historically and contemporarily implicated. When chastity is reconceived as a mode of governance that implicates the body in its totality (against the body/spirit binary), it functions as a mechanism for the removal of interpretative power: his body becomes the symbolic embodiment of female Chastity in extramarital contexts, while her body embodies male Chastity within marital structures. These dynamics are further explored through discursive analyses of the teen television series Skam, the contemporary novels White Noise and Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, and the ideological trajectories of the 6B4T feminist movement and Redpill masculinity.