*Not* me in high school
Anecdotally one of the comical side effects of the Joseph in Egypt story that hormone-driven deacons and teachers are raised with is the subtext that you have to have your commitment to the law of chastity dialed in (“remember who you are and what you stand for”) because you need to be prepared for when attractive, powerful, wealthy women will tear at your clothes and demand that you have sex with them. And then of course on some subconscious level we were probably a little disappointed when we awkwardly came of age and wondered where all of these women who were supposed to be throwing themselves at us were. (In the same way that, contrary to what we learned in D.A.R.E., people don’t actually offer you expensive drugs for free–unless your insurance covers it, they left that part out of the “Just Say No”).
Of course, Potipher’s wife is our own particular manifestation of a broader cross-cultural trope of the sexually aggressive seductress that tempts valiant men–but which also on some level is probably also an object of their prurient interest. This is Odysseus turning away from the sirens–but still wanting to hear them. This pops up enough across time and space as a sort of Jungian archetype that I suspect it’s a natural manifestation of male desire. On my own mission I remember hearing a classic “friend of a friend” folkloric account of a stateside mission where part of the initiation hurdle for the local sorority was to get a missionary name badge through, shall we say, unsavory means. Of course, an account that centers one as the object of college female desire is the exact kind of thing 20-year old celibate heterosexual men would think up, and it’s not hard to see what fueled that particular rumor.
But again it’s not just us. Perhaps the most classic case of this (which I have no reason to think is not true) is Aquinas’ siblings hiring a prostitute to seductively dissuade him from his intentions to enter the priesthood. “According to the official records for his canonization, Thomas drove her away wielding a burning log.” Purportedly St. Benedict, not to be outdone, threw himself naked into a thorn bush to escape temptation. Eastern traditions have their variations too. Buddha had his own “Three Temptations”-type moment when a demon tried to sexually tempt him in order to prevent him from achieving enlightenment. More fantastically there are mermaids, the succubus, Lilith, and the Slavic rusalka.
Of course, with this kind of thing you have to hurry and point out that, sure, you can find some actual cases, it’s not all projection from latent male desire. For example, in a landmark gay-rights case in Germany pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld testified on behalf of a gay army officer married to a woman. His wife’s testimony “was marked by moments of low comedy when it emerged that she had taken to attacking Moltke with a frying pan in vain attempts to make him have sex with her,” and Hirschfeld ironically found himself defending both the gay husband and the abusive repressed wife, arguing that both of them were acting in accordance with their natural impulses, since at the time strong female sexuality was considered aberrant (indeed, many powerful women such as Cleopatra and Catherine the Great were assumed to be abnormally oversexed). But still, gender differences in sociosexuality being as the are, for the most part Potipher’s wife is not a thing (or at least not nearly as much as the gendered converse), much to the chagrin of young men across the Mountain West.
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12 responses to “Joseph in Egypt and the Seductress Archetype”
The Quran gives (in my opinion) a much better (funnier) version of the story. It seems Joseph was so attractive that ALL women wanted him. This was his test in life to see if he would be true to Allah.
At one point, after being publicly shamed by her friends for being “easy”, Potipher’s wife invites a bunch of women to dinner to see for themselves the temptation she had to resist daily. When Joseph walked in, the women were so startled by his beauty, they inadvertently cut themselves with their knives, and apologized to Potiphar’s wife for judging her.
Subsequently, Joseph asked Potiphar to lock him up in jail to protect himself from all the amorous women.
I have seen this myself in real life, regarding a man that was so attractive that women everywhere went nuts whenever I was with him. Old women young women. I have never been so grateful that I was some-what ugly! I dont think I could have handled it the way my good looking friend did. Way too much temptation for me. He was not famous or a well-known person. He was evidently just too good looking for women not to get a look. Modern day Joseph.
A couple of examples;
Every time we went to a ward or fireside, I could see the girls start whispering to their friends to look. You could see a literal wave of girls turning their heads to look at him! It was incredible.
We would be in a car at a stop light and if a girl happen to look over at him they would sometimes scream! This happened all the time!
He was such a nice guy and very humble about his chick magnet attraction. It was a sight to behold!
Yes, I get the sense that, say, rock stars, athletes, movie stars, and really rich types do in fact have a lot of real-life Joseph in Egypt situations. There is actually a lot of research on this, where only the very tip top percentiles of men get high attractiveness scores. So yes, if you are in the top .1% of men of whatever when it comes to some combination of wealth, attractiveness, niceness, power, whatever then you might have to deal with this kind of thing. Maybe the Q’uran is right, and that’s their particular test in life… but the vast majority of men don’t really have that experience besides maybe a strange one off every now and then.
I remember hearing a paper on Buddhism years ago about legends of the pure early Buddhist monks with hoards of women constantly trying to sleep with them. “Clearly written by the men,” the presenter said.
Having lots of women after them is a central male fantasy, and I remember having a mission companion say to me, “I was told all the girls would be after me. Is there just something wrong with me?” I heard those stories too prior to my mission and found that to be completely false as well. As I often said of my mission, “the only missionaries to had problems with girls were the ones who tried really really hard to have problems with girls.” We were in the US and I heard that perhaps in foreign countries the girls might be a little more forward to Americans. In mine, I think the girls liked the missionaries okay, particularly the good-looking ones, but what I said about who had the problems was my observation.
This sometimes happens to me when I wear my nice tie. I’ll be talking to a group of women, see them staring at the tie, and have to say something like “my eyes are up here, ladies.”
LOL–jimbob.
I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that in many cultures, ancient and modern, it’s female sexuality that’s perceived as insatiable and out of control. (That does raise the question of whether it’s insatiable, or simply not being sated.) The Old Testament seems to lean that way.
But my experience matches that of both Stephens. I fully expect to get through mortality without ever committing adultery, and to deserve absolutely no credit for it.
An interesting twist on the trope is found in Tolstoy’s Father Sergius, in which the ascetic monk, when confronted with a woman attempting to seduce him, cuts off his own finger. The woman is transformed by this display of devotion and herself enters a convent.
I recall on my mission, women weren’t throwing themselves at us, but we got kinda sorta propositioned a lot on behalf of young women by grandmothers.
One area was filled with very poor immigrants (and we were stateside missionaries speaking their language), and thus as White Guys in suits and ties (Thus, we must be rich dudes) who also spoke their language, the grandmas were all “here are pictures of all my young attractive granddaughters, are you interested in any of them?”
We usually explained how LDS missions worked, and they generally backed off (though often with a “here’s my contact information, call me when you’re not a missionary and I can set you up!”)
RLD’s comment deserves more love. Is female sexuality insatiable or simply never being satiated, indeed! And I, too, fully expect to get through mortality without ever committing the sin of adultery, and to deserve absolutely no credit for it.
I had a companion that was emergency transferred to my area because a middle aged recent convert propositioned him. I later served in that same area and my new companion had a gorgeous young member fawning all over him, though she never went so far as to try and seduce him. The Branch President’s wife also engaged in some strange behavior in that area with missionaries, including slapping my butt once.
So perhaps there was something in the water there.
It depends on the circumstances. When I became a widower at the age of 50 and reentered the online dating market in the space of a month over 50 women contacted me, by 6 weeks I was engaged to widow, and by 12 weeks we were married. We had 20 blissful years together until her passing earlier this year. I am terrified thinking about dating again and equally terrified of spending my remaining time alone.