OOC: App Who: Chastity Pantheon: Christianity, Seven Heavenly Virtues Alias: Chastity Jones Profession: Nun
Personality: Chastity is all about fidelity and honesty. She will always tell the truth, and she will always keep her promises. She holds a special disdain for traitors, adulterers, and people who go back on their word. She holds herself to a very high standard of behavior and breaking from that causes her extreme distress.
Despite her rather strict standards of moral behavior, Chastity tries to be kind even to those who fall short. After all, everyone is a sinner. That's sort of the point. But her commitment to being honest also means she won't hesitate to tell someone if she thinks they're being sinful, especially if they're being lustful. Honestly, people, you aren't animals. Control yourselves. Put your pants back on.
Chastity herself is asexual; she normally does not feel any sexual attraction or desire. She sometimes wishes that she did, if only to be able to give better advice to people who are trying to remain chaste, but its not as though she had a choice in the matter. She will usually ask for the help of her fellow nuns if someone's questions about sex are something she really can't answer.
She is capable of shutting down the sexual desires of people who are around her, but she prefers not to. In her opinion, chastity is worth less if its forced onto people. Still, the no-sex forcefield (as she calls it, for lack of a better term) has come in handy in the past.
History: Chastity is an old concept, one that's had dozens of different specific definitions that often tied into religious worship. Specific rules on masturbation and the actual 'definition' of sex vary from religion to religion (and obviously person to person).
In Western civilization, chastity has generally come to mean abstaining from sexual contact before marriage, and staying sexually faithful to your spouse once you are married. However, the older definition of chastity generally meant following "correct" sexual behavior; for example, an ancient Roman man having sex with another man might still be considered chaste so long as he did not allow himself to be penetrated. This kind of chastity was considered a social and moral obligation, rather than a religious one, although plenty of religious orders still enforced chastity and celibacy. A famous example is the Vestal Virgins, whose chastity was thought to be directly tied to the health of Rome. Any Vestal Virgin found guilty of breaking her vows was buried alive (to prevent spilling her blood, which was also forbidden).
As Christianity rose to dominance, chastity became increasingly tied to religious responsibility, helped along by the many injunctions in the Bible against unchaste behavior. This definition of chastity combined the idea of sexual restraint/faithfulness and having 'the right kind' of sex (hence no masturbation, sex with a menstruating woman, or anal sex) and topped it with a bow of religious responsibility and the threat of damnation.
Members of the Christian monastic orders and priests were expected to be chaste, but not necessarily celibate. There are many historical references to "the bishop's wife" or similar marital arrangements that are made without comment. It was not until the middle of the medieval period that vows of celibacy were actually expected and enforced (for the male clergy, anyway. Nuns were pretty much always supposed to be chaste). Chastity takes religious vows of celibacy very seriously, and has a special fury reserved for the clergy who break it to sleep with the very people they are supposed to be guiding.
While the rules of chastity have been applied very unequally to men and women, Chastity considers both sexes to have a responsibility to be chaste. She has softened her stance on the evils of masturbation and homosexuality over the years, since public opinion also shifted and she is a creature of belief. (Also, she is rather pleased at the push for gay marriage. Hooray! Sex within the confines of marriage!) However, she is still very firm on no sexual conduct before marriage, and is somewhat aghast that so many of her fellow Christians are having unwed sex. Such loose sexual morals! (For the record, Chastity finds purity rings to be rather cute and sweet. She finds purity balls, on the otherhand, to be profoundly creepy and incestuous.)
Chastity has been a nun for centuries, and sometimes a priest, when the mood struck. She find it comforting to be among like-minded religious people.