February 8, 2021
It’s a shame that the insidiousness of Purity Culture is only just now coming out. It has damaged and traumatized an entire generation with its unhealthy teachings, perspectives, and shaming techniques.
If you aren’t familiar with Purity Culture, it was a movement within churches during the 90’s and early 2000’s that was a faith-based approach to teaching teenagers about sex and convincing them to not have sex until they were married. This was done by enforcing abstinence-only ideals, sheltering young people from any kind of real sex education, and shaming teenagers for their bodies.
Most conversations about Purity Culture focus on how it affected young women—as it should be. The trauma and shame inflicted on millions of women around the world is inexcusable.
However, Purity Culture is also indoctrinated into the Church’s young men. When my church’s middle school youth were separated into boys and girls to go have their sex talk, you can bet the guys got fed a huge amount of damaging crap as well. I’m sad to say that as a former youth leader, there was a time when I was present in these discussions.
Here are 3 ways that Purity Culture harms men:
1. It instills a fear of sex.
As always, fear plays a huge role in everything the Church teaches.
In the context of Purity Culture and young guys, it went beyond the usual warning that sex outside of marriage was a sin and God punished sin by sending you to hell.
In my Church, there was one Sunday a year that was infamous among the youth group guys. They always knew that particular Sunday had come when they saw Dr. Dave (pseudonym) hanging around the youth room.
Dr. Dave was a long-time member of the church and a physician in his day job. Dr. Dave was called in when it was time to instill some good old-fashioned fear into the young and impressionable youth group guys.
Dr. Dave always brought with him a slideshow of the most graphic STD-riddled penises you’ve ever seen. These pictures were accompanied with Dr. Dave’s lies and medical inaccuracies.
He’d say, “This is what happens when you have sex outside of marriage.”
Uh, no.
The conditions he showed these kids were extreme statistical outliers. They were not a fair representation of real life or what actually happens in the rare cases you get an STD, which are more often than not cured by taking an antibiotic for a week.
What Dr. Dave never said was that these conditions—along with more common STDs—could be avoided with a single piece of commonplace advice: wear condoms when having sex with new partners. But since that practical advice doesn’t fall under the umbrella of “abstinence only” it was ignored.
It was unfair and dishonest to show these pictures to these kids. The graphic nature was specifically sought out to make them stick into the kids’ memories. That’s called being scarred.
2. Young men are shamed for normal, natural desires.
Young men under the influence of Purity Culture are routinely shamed for their normal, natural sexual desires:
- Masturbation.
- Being curious about pornography.
- Wanting to have sex.
These desires are normal and healthy for any young man.
Learning to manage and take responsibility for your sex life is a huge part of growing up and being an adult. When you take away avenues for young men to learn about these very important parts of themselves, then you’re paving the way for confusion, trauma, misinformation, and unhealthy outlets.
To make things worse for these young men, their hormones and testosterone are surging, making things much more difficult. If all you do is tell them to “repress it” or “ignore it” or “pray it away” or “that part of you is evil, sinful, and dirty” then you are doing the young man a huge disservice with repercussions that could follow him well into adulthood, and possibly the rest of his life.
Repression does not work. It never has. Your sexuality will come out one way or another. And if the young man never received proper guidance or was given the tools to handle his burgeoning sexuality, then he’s likely have some problems.
3. It teaches that sexually active women are “lesser quality.”
Men in the church just can’t handle it when a woman in the church has a past sexual history.
When it comes to dating or marriage, they’ll actively avoid any woman that has the slightest rumor of being “damaged goods.”
I personally have some Christian friends whose wife was their first sexual partner, but they were not their wife’s first sexual partner. They claim they’ve “forgiven” her and that they “love her how she is” and say other passive aggressive, jealous things, but it’s clear that they still have a huge issue with this. They wish it were different. It still gnaws at them.
This stems directly from what he was taught within Purity Culture. When you spend your entire life believing that people who have sex outside of marriage are dirty and wrong, then it’s no wonder these men feel shortchanged. They feel like they aren’t getting some “reward” they subconsciously felt they deserved because they stifled themselves.
So if you’re a Christian reading this: a woman with a past sexual history does not make her less worthy of your love and attention. She does not need your “forgiveness” or “acceptance.” The fact that you can’t handle this means there’s a problem within you, not her. I’d suggest you sort it out.
I continue this topic in my article 3 MORE Ways Purity Culture Harms Men.
Do any of these things sound familiar about your time in Purity Culture? Maybe your experience was something I didn’t mention here. Let me know in the comments!