My Opinion on Purity Culture
Purity culture refers to the term most evangelical Christians use to promote the biblical view of purity. Purity culture mainly affects young Christian women, who grow up in strict Christian families. These girls are taught from a young age to wait to have sex until marriage or you go to hell. Not all families word it that way but in the mind of a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl thats what it sounds like. For me as a young girl, I was never interested in sex, I had my fair share of crushes but I never thought of boys romantically at the time, frankly, I’m not even sure if I knew what a boyfriend really was. When I got older I noticed the subject of purity being brought up in church, by my mom, and through Christian youtube channels and TV shows, I watched at the time.
A lot of these channels and TV shows are actually pretty predatory and use language that subconsciously brainwashes young girls into believing purity culture. When I was in eighth grade and fell into the rabbit hole of Christian youtube, I was immersed in a language that sounded welcoming but actually wasn’t. It was common for me to hear stuff like “If you don’t want to thats fine, but this is what God wants” or the youth pastor favorite of comparing a teenage girl to an inanimate object that loses its worth if its “used.” The reason why this is problematic is that it teaches young girls that if they do make this “mistake” they’ll be useless to Christian society and won’t be able to find a partner.
About six months ago I still had the same beliefs, these thoughts misconstrued my views daily about myself, men, and the world. It wasn’t until I started to read about the history of purity culture and understand what it actually is that I started to realize how for the past two years of my life I was trying to live up to some unnatural notion that only applies to women. Men can be victims of purity culture of course and in most Christian families they are encouraged to wait till marriage but there’s a different level of obsession when it comes to preventing young girls from having sex.
It’s common for girls to receive purity rings (I still wear mine), special talks, have Hymen checks or “purity tests”, some are even asked to go to purity balls with their fathers. Those all play into controlling women and, it’s obvious no matter how hard Christians try to explain their way out of it. We all know that most teenagers aren’t going to follow the rule of waiting until marriage but instead of actually talking to their kids they decide to use shame as their form of birth control which actually creates more confusion and “destruction” as they call it.
Now I’m not saying we should allow kids to just run around having sex, even as a sixteen-year-old girl I understand thats not logical. But it’s important to talk to kids in a respectful matter that doesn’t condemn them to hell. All teenagers have an underdeveloped brain that won’t be done growing for most until their twenty-five. So it’s illogical to put so much pressure on them during their adolescents, especially when it comes to hell, marrying at such early ages like eighteen and nineteen, purity tests, purity balls, and everything else that comes with being a teenager in America. It’s common for these young girls to get married at such young ages because they feel like they have no other option. It makes sense for these Christian relationships to turn to marriage once they turn eighteen because they’ve basically been groomed their whole life to think thats the way life works.
Purity culture has always been about men controlling women. From fathers taking their daughters to purity balls, marrying girls off at a young age, and checking hymens, when we know scientifically speaking you can’t really check for virginity. It’s an inherently misogynistic ideology that perpetuates the idea of women being weak and fragile and that they need to basically bow down to their partners sexually. Especially when you look at the same men preaching purity ignoring any science and biblical text that disagrees with them, don’t forget how this only applies to young girls. Virginity itself is a social construct with everyone having their own interpretation of it, it also was used by men to continue their weird fetish of young, sometimes even prepubescent, girls’ innocence. That’s still seen today with grown men wanting young virgin wives that are twenty plus years younger than them, or high school seniors wanting an inexperienced freshman.
It’s important for these young girls to not feel ashamed for their choice and to be taught how to have sex in a safe way. It’s also important we as a society talk about sex in an open and healthy way, and destigmatize a healthy sex life for women. It’s important for women to know they have options whether they want to have sex or not before marriage is their choice and they shouldn’t be ridiculed for it. It’s important whether you’re a Christian or an atheist to move on from this man created ideology that has no value to human life.
