#ikdg

When someone reduces all the harm, damage, and trauma of purity culture down to something “weird” or calls our responses “melodramatic,” they are erasing us and dismissing our legitimate grievances.

An excellent response from Samantha Field to this foolishness:

I was an "IKDG" rockstar: a virgin who had only ever kissed the virgin I married, but sex hurt like hell.

For the first five years of my marriage I experienced excruciating pain during sex until I was diagnosed and treated for dyspareunia. Dyspareunia is a disorder where genital muscle tissue has developed a pain response to contact, either from physical or psychological triggers. In my case, sex was heartbreakingly terrible. I tried to fight through the pain, but every attempt only dissolved into tears and disappointment. Doctors couldn't find anything physically wrong with me. Finally, a physical therapist asked me about my non-physical history with sex.

I was homeschooled and I owned a shelf full of purity culture literature that I had devoured with adamant devotion. The transactional equation between purity and a good marriage could not have been more clear to me, and with equal clarity I knew my body was a problem for pure men. The first boy I liked as a teenager also had strong purity convictions, but the attraction was electric. These feelings drove us to want to be around each other but even though we never acted on them, there wasn't an appropriate category for our feelings in the Land of Purity Culture, except 'bad.' Once his parents caught wind of it, they had both of us read "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and his mother became a kind of human-shield, complete with negative, critical remarks about me. She saw me as the albatross in her son's purity quest. Very quickly the friendship between our families disintegrated and I never saw him again. This experience and the book I read in the midst of it had one message to me: "Those feelings are bad if you are not married."

In college I had no trouble keeping very strict purity boundaries, but I found myself doing absurd things like asking men to wear shirts while swimming and telling men who wanted to go on a coffee date that they would have to ask my father first. After he had gained permission to court me from my father, I issued my first boyfriend  a set of charts and rules; where we could touch each other and what days we could see one another. I was weird and controlling, and the relationship lasted one month. During the years that I finally met and married my husband I underwent a major theology upgrade through my more Jesus-focused church, but I was still expecting a big gold star on my wedding night. I got dyspareunia instead.

John had read IKDG and, guided by our pastor, wrote up a list of rules at the beginning of our relationship, with the stated purpose of “having no regrets” in our courtship—to guard that ever-sacred “emotional purity.” No alone time together except on weekends. One phone conversation a week. Only hugs. No holding hands. No friends of the opposite sex. And of course, no kissing, never ever, because thus sayeth Josh Harris. We courted for three years, and he never kissed me (but had a grand ol’ time groping me whenever he could, because it was a loophole, I guess?). There were so horrible things that happened in that relationship, but IKDG had taught me that because I’d given so much of my heart to this guy, marriage was the only option. So I persevered. For three damn years in which my self-worth and identity were stripped away piece by piece. Finally, the day he declared he wouldn’t propose to me until I was more submissive and teachable (kid you not—exact words), I somehow found the strength to end it.

For years after, I thought I was too broken. I thought I’d always be broken. I’m thankful I was wrong, but healing took a long, long time.

It’s been almost fifteen years now. I’m married to an amazing man who loves and respects me as a human being. (I kissed him before we went on our first date. And I didn’t fall to pieces from shame. Progress!) I have a thriving career. I’m happy.

But I still have times when I regress back into the trauma of that horrible time. I feel like I’ve had to fight to reclaim my identity, my wholeness piece by piece. My therapist finally helped me accept that I was emotionally abused. My husband, gentle, kind, full of love, sits with me as I cry when the trauma overwhelms me—when I run into someone from that terrible church or stumble over a diary entry from that time. It’s not too often anymore, but it’s still there, under the surface. The panic. The overwhelming pain. I don’t blame IKDG for all of it by any means—there was a whole culture that the book simply gave voice to. But it did give it a voice. Its popularity validated an oppressive movement.