What is Purity Culture?

Purity Culture is hard to define as it is a very broad culture with several aspects that fall under the umbrella term.

Purity Culture, in as best terms as I can explain, is the movement that promotes abstinence among young, unmarried people. This movement is very prevalent in the church and has had a lot of discussion both in and out of the church regarding its effectiveness and what it teaches.

There are some that argue that the teachings of purity culture are essential to growing Christian to keep them pure and holy and in the right path. There are others (myself included) who believe that while the intention might be good, the actuality of the it is not good, especially how they teach about it and what the underlying suggestions are based on the teachings.

For example, the main topic of purity culture is no sex before marriage, which in and of itself is not a bad thing to promote (so long as it is accompanied with a comprehensive sex education because, let's be honest, not everyone will wait). The problems arise when they start saying, ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY, to girls and young women that if they do have sex before marriage that they are broken, impure, unholy, dirty, not whole, immoral, damaged goods, etc. The teaching equates a woman's virginity with her value telling women and men that a woman who has sex before marriage has no value. While for men they do say not to have sex before marriage, they don't take it as seriously or demonize him nearly as much as a woman. It's so much so that if a woman ends up being sexually assaulted, she is blamed. They will give reasons regarding her appearance saying she wasn't dressed appropriately or she looked at him a certain way and that she was asking for it and other excuses along those lines. My absolute least favorite excuse however is saying that the man couldn't control himself (which if you ask me is a load of crap).

Men do tend to be visual creatures but that never gives them the pass to sexually assault ANYONE for ay reason. I dislike this excuse the most because it says that women must hav self-control not only for themselves but for the men around them as well (which last time I checked, it doesn't work that way). This excuse is also a blatant disregard for one of the fruit of the spirit, which is self-control. If the man cannot control himself, then he is going against the fruit of the spirit which are things that are essential to not only being a Godly person, but just being a good person. Any decent human being has a level of self-control high enough that they don't go around acting on every impulse or on a negative impulse. insinuating that men can't control themselves in that way not only undermines men and their abilities for self-control, kindness, empathy and other traits, but it also insinuates that they cannot be held responsible for things they do. If such is the case, then why should they be trusted?

I say all that to say, purity culture heads down a very slippery slope and once you head down, its extremely difficult to come back up.

This is just the beginning of purity culture. Over my next few podcasts and blog posts, I will talk more in depth about different aspects of purity culture.

Peace and Blessings,

Rogue