Purity Culture (Part 2)


It’s been about 9 years since I left Christianity and I’m still unpacking how growing up as a Pentecostal/Baptist Christian has affected (and still affects) my sex life. As I mentioned in a previous post, losing my virginity was terrible. Yet, there are more ways in which I believe purity culture poisoned my sexuality.

Photo by me.


The two metaphors I discussed in my last post are centrally focused on permanent loss of and damage to one’s self. This is the idea I had of sexuality going into adulthood: the act of physical intimacy was an act during which I would permanently give something away. I had better save that something for my husband, otherwise I would be damaged goods on my wedding day – un-sticky and full of rocks instead of water.

Enter, sexual shame. When I lost my virginity, the mood was of overwhelming shame. Shame as a consequence of sin is a prominent theme in the bible. From the story of Adam and Eve:
6The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. 7At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. (Genesis 3:6-7, NLT)
Sexual shame is not easy to overcome, even when you’re married and you’ve done everything right. I was taught that shame was a natural consequence of my sexual depravity – not a result of the way I had been taught to feel about sex, which is much closer to the truth. Overcoming this shame was a long journey for me. Early on in my sex life, there were many times where I would break down crying under the weight of it. By talking about this with others, I have come to realise that this shame is not present amongst my non-religious friends.

Of course, any intimacy you have with a person effects your life; physical intimacy can result in a broken heart, an infection, or even trauma. But, the same can be said about many things that we do. In hindsight, the weight that was placed on sexual purity in my upbringing was unhealthy. My experience with sexual purity leads me to conclude that Christianity can be an extremely damaging ideology.

This is my experience of Christian purity culture as a straight female. I can’t begin to comprehend how much worse it must be for others that don’t fit the heteronormative mould.

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