What is Purity Culture and How Can It Affect Your Sex Life?

Purity culture is an American evangelical Christian ideology that encourages people, especially teenagers, to pledge sexual abstinence before marriage. Its core tenets revolve around abstinence, rigid gender roles, heteronormativity, and the strict regulation of perceived “sinful” behaviors. Purity culture entered the zeitgeist in the late 1990s, manifesting in events like father-daughter purity balls, products like purity pledges and purity rings, and government-funded abstinence education in schools. Purity culture perpetuates messaging that sex is shameful, queerness is wrong and sinful, and that our bodies cannot be trusted because they make us want things we should not want like premarital sex. Under purity culture, young women in particular are burdened with the expectation that they need to police their bodies and behaviors so as not to tempt young men. Though purity culture began as a religious movement, it has had a lasting negative impact on societal attitudes towards sex. The lack of comprehensive sex education paired with strict expectations surrounding sex can result in challenges related to sexual expression, communication, and sexual shame.

Is Purity Culture harmful?

Purity culture imposes strict boundaries on sexual expression, prescribing a narrow view of acceptable behaviors. According to purity culture, sex before marriage is a sin, expressing sexuality makes someone damaged, women must be submissive to men, women are responsible for the behavior of men, and porn is evil. These messages are more than incorrect, they are traumatizing. People raised within this framework may feel conflicted or guilty about exploring their sexuality which limits the ability to have a healthy and autonomous sex life. This ability is further limited by a lack of comprehensive sex education.

How does purity culture affect your sex life as an adult?

Since purity culture emphasizes abstinence-only education, many people lack the tools and knowledge to practice consensual safer sex. This is a disservice to women in particular, especially in conjunction with the messaging that a woman’s body belongs to her father and then her husband. When someone believes that they do not own their body and their sex education is lacking, it leaves them vulnerable to sexual assault. Beyond this though, insufficient sex education is a disservice to people of every gender. In addition to sexual assault, it can lead to heightened rates of STD transmission and accidental pregnancies. Abstinence-only education is both ineffective and actively harmful; everyone deserves the opportunity to make informed decisions about their body and sex life.

The emphasis on abstinence and avoidance of discussions about sex within purity culture creates communication barriers. Communication is a vital part of a healthy sexual dynamic so when people do not have the communication tools to express desires, concerns, and boundaries, it can only lead to trouble. A lack of communication can lead to misunderstandings, boundaries being violated, and unsatisfying sex. Overcoming these barriers involves dismantling ingrained stigmas and beliefs about sex. The resources below can help begin the unlearning and reeducating process required to reclaim your body and sex life.                               

Further reading

• Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein 

• #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing by Emily Joy Allison

• Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms by Matthias Roberts

• You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity by Jamie Lee Finch 

• Unlearning Shame and Healing from Purity Culture by Christina Tesoro 

Further viewing

• How We Get Over: Women, Religion & Shame - a Tedx Talk by Linda Kay Klein

• Purity Culture is Rad-ically Dangerous by Belief It or Not

• Unlearning Purity Culture and Shame | Sermon 5/23/21 by Forefront Church

Learning from others

• Purity Culture Dropout Sex Education Program by Erica Smith

• Sarah @deconstructingpurityculture  

• Linda Kay Klein @lindakayklein

Takeaway

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with voluntarily abstaining from premarital sex, but it should be an intentional choice, not something you are shamed into doing. Unlearning a lifetime of purity culture messaging is no small feat, but it is possible to reclaim your body and sex life. You deserve to trust your body and to feel at home in it. Through self-reflection and re-educating yourself, you can begin liberating yourself. If you need extra help doing so, consider seeking professional help from a sex therapist.

Exploring bi-curiosity: What does bi-curiosity mean and how is it different from bisexuality?

Sexuality is a spectrum and each individual falls somewhere on that spectrum but finding exactly where one fits is easier said than done. There are tons of labels that can be used to describe one’s experience of sexual attraction which are helpful to some people, while others choose to eschew labeling altogether. Sometimes people who are still exploring their sexual identity choose to use a lesser-known label like bi-curiosity.

As the name implies, bi-curiosity is closely related to bisexuality. Bi-curiosity - typically a term used by people who otherwise identify as heterosexual but also sometimes used by homosexual people - expresses an interest in exploring sexual and romantic relationships with multiple genders. This article aims to shed light on the concepts of bi-curiosity and bisexuality, the controversy around the term “bi-curiosity,” and resources for figuring out how you identify.      

How are bi-curiosity and bisexuality different?

Bisexuality is a sexual orientation for people who experience the potential for romantic and/or sexual attraction to two or more genders. The main distinguishing feature between bi-curiosity and bisexuality is the degree of certainty about one’s sexual orientation. Bisexual people are certain that at that moment, to the best of their knowledge, they are attracted to multiple or all genders, while bicurious people are uncertain about how they identify but believe that they have the potential to be attracted to multiple or all genders. In other words, bisexuality is an established sexual orientation, while bi-curiosity more closely resembles a phase of questioning or uncertainty. This distinction gets muddy when you factor in that sexuality is fluid and changes over time. Generally speaking, however, this is how the associations with each label differ. Not everyone agrees that the two should be distinguished at all, which leads to the controversy around bi-curiosity.       

Why is bi-curiosity controversial?   

Bi-curious is a controversial label within the bisexual community. Here are a few reasons bisexual people might take issue with the label bi-curiosity:

• It implies that you need to have a certain level of sexual experience before being able to “prove” that you are definitively bisexual.

• Bisexuality as an orientation is often undermined and not taken seriously. The existence of bi-curiosity feeds into the narrative that bisexuality means that you are confused and that it is a phase, a stepping stone on the way to “deciding” if you are actually gay or straight. 

• Many queer people have experienced being objectified and used as an experiment by an uncertain person such as a bi-curious person. There is no problem with exploration itself, but rather with using queer people as a means to an end, a tool to help an uncertain person figure themselves out.

• “Bi-curiosity” is a redundant label given that anyone who believes they have the potential for attraction to two or more genders falls under the umbrella of bisexuality. Since sexual orientation is inherently fluid, meaning it could change at any time and so too would one’s identity, a term that specifically highlights the uncertainty of identifying as bisexual is unnecessary since any label can be impermanent. 

If you feel that bi-curious is a productive label for you, it is not up to other people to decide that is not the case. With that being said, it is helpful to be aware of other terms that might serve a similar purpose, such as “questioning,” “queer,” or fully leaning into identifying as “bisexual” with the knowledge that you can change your mind at any time. 

Takeaway

Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide what fits best but try to ensure that in the process you are respectful of the queer community, aware of the nuances of the subject, and are genuinely invested in responsible self-exploration. If you are still feeling lost in your sexual orientation journey, consider reaching out to a therapist and checking out the resources below: 

Bicurious: What Does It Mean? | WebMD 

Bicurious - What does bi-curious mean? | Cosmopolitan 

What is Bisexuality?

What is bicuriosity? | Definition, history, and bicuriosity in pop culture

Is it time to move past bicurious?

Can I Identify as Bisexual? 

What Does It Mean to Be Bi-Curious? 15 Things to Consider           

Why Do We Prioritize Romantic Over Platonic Love?

American society is obsessed with romantic love. From romantic comedies dominating box offices to holidays like Valentine’s Day to societal expectations of marriage as the ultimate goal, there is no shortage of conditioning to make people believe romantic love is more valuable and superior to platonic love. 

The philosopher Elizabeth Brake coined the term “amatonormativity” which, as defined in her book Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law, “refers to “the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types.” The narrative that one is not complete without a lifelong, monogamous, and (ideally, in the eyes of society) heterosexual romantic partnership is enforced around every corner. This leads to people who don’t want that or can’t find that to feel defective.

In reality, there is nothing inherently more valuable about romantic love. When pressed, it’s tough to even put into words the actual distinction between romantic and platonic love. Some people might say it’s the physical intimacy, but what about people who can’t have sex but desire a romantic relationship for a variety of reasons like asexuality or depression or a physical limitation related to having sex? Are those people and their romantic connections any less valid? Of course not. Frankly, there is not a single satisfactory answer for what differentiates romantic relationships from platonic ones because it’s such a personal experience.

The tricky part of defining the differences between types of relationships is the disconnect between the breadth of the English language and the internal experience of emotions, which vary from person to person. How do you universally define a feeling? You can’t really, and when you try, that’s how people end up feeling excluded when their experience doesn’t align with the socially-enforced expectations they’ve internalized.

Contrary to what American society expects and conditions us to think, romantic and platonic love are simply different and neither is better nor worse. Romance does not have to be a part of your social life in order to feel fulfilled and loved.

This conversation is further complicated by feelings that don’t fit into either the traditional “romantic” or “platonic” definitions of relationships. There are queerplatonic relationships, sexual relationships without a romantic or platonic element, and purely aesthetic attraction, to name a few examples outside the romantic/platonic binary. With the nuances and intricacies of human emotion, it makes sense that a simple binary couldn’t possibly encapsulate the realm of possibility for relationship forms. There are more options open to us than societal conditioning has led us to believe. 

The bottom line is that you should navigate your relationships and prioritizing them however feels right to you, your needs, and your loved ones. There is nothing wrong with being happy as a single person or prioritizing fulfillment in other areas of your life over romance, like friendships. Just because society is telling you that in order to feel fulfilled you need a romantic partner does not make it true.