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| Book cover for "The Purity Myth" |
I'm something of an ex-purity-culture blogger, so I want to read and have opinions on all the books that criticize purity culture. So I read Jessica Valenti's 2010 book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.
Surprisingly, I didn't like it.
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| Rebekah gives water to Abraham's servant. Image source. |
So I recently shared this link: Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good. And I have another thing to say about it.
One of the bibles mentioned in that article is the "True Images Teen Bible For Girls":
Take a gloss on Genesis 24:15-18, for example, a passage introducing Rebekah, wife of Isaac, one of the most fascinating and complex women in Hebrew Scripture (image below). The verses read “Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder… The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again. The servant hurried to meet her and said “Please give me a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord, she said.”
The marginal note (pictured above) in a Bible explicitly designed for teen girls explains that Rebekah’s virginity is a key element of the passage:
“Okay, so we know that Rebekah was ‘very beautiful.’ But that’s not all we learn about her. The next two words tell us she was a virgin. Obviously this was important, or we wouldn’t have been told that little fact.”Virginity and purity are where Rebekah’s elusive “stunning inner beauty” comes from, because: “after all, good-looking girls are everywhere.” God, like the perfect boyfriend, is looking for something more.
I've been thinking a lot about how marriage and sex are modelled in the bible, and the way misogyny is baked into it, and how completely different it is from how we view those things now, so...
Just now, when I read those verses from Genesis 24, which mention Rebekah being a "virgin", my thoughts were along these lines: Ah, yeah this is coming from a culture which made a big deal about whether or not a woman was a "virgin." It's rooted in the idea that every woman is either a "virgin" or a "whore"- which was really more about whether a woman was viewed by society as properly staying in her place and following gender roles, rather than her choice to have penetrative sex. (For example, it was seen as okay to rape slaves, because they're not part of the class of women who are "good" "pure" "virgins" deserving of men's protection.) This obsession with virginity says more about men's jealousy and possessiveness, the way they viewed women as objects to be owned, than about women's virtues. I don't agree with this view, but I don't really want to get sidetracked into it when reading this bible story about Rebekah. The overall plot of the story is about Abraham's servant going to choose a wife for Abraham's son Isaac, and the role God played in that, and I'm also interested in how Rebekah felt about leaving her home to marry a man she had never met.
(Also, virginity is not even a real thing- by which I mean, the idea that you are a completely different type of person if you've ever had a penis in your vagina, vs if you haven't. Very much not true!)
And then reading the little note that "True Images Teen Bible For Girls" included about this passage, that just takes it at face value- this bible passage portrays Rebekah's "virginity" as a positive thing, therefore it is a positive thing, and *you*, modern teenage girl reading this, also need to be a virgin.
It feels extremely jarring to me, reading this take on this bible verse. It's like... it's like it's coming from a perspective where we believe the bible is just a trustworthy, true source, written to us. That it's just uncomplicatedly True. That it's "God's love letter to you."
I'm reading this bible verse about Rebekah, thinking about the layers of misogyny and how cultural views on sex have changed throughout history and how that is intertwined with the advances in women's rights, and apparently the editors of this teen bible just... aren't.
But this is how the bible is viewed in evangelical culture, isn't it? The bible is good and true, and reading the bible is good, and memorizing the bible is good. And Christians are supposed to read the bible every day. The primary emphasis is on how Christians all need to read the bible, and God speaks to us through the bible.
When I was a teenager, I had an "NIV Study Bible." This means a bible with little boxes of text added here and there, to give some background information about some aspects of the bible which might be hard for modern readers to understand because of cultural differences. And yes, we need that- it's better to have a study bible than to just read the bible without any awareness that it came from an ancient culture completely different than ours. But what strikes me as so bizarre now is the idea that that's enough- that I'm gonna read this ancient document, translated from Hebrew and Greek, but don't worry, occasionally there's a little sidebar next to the text to explain something that might be confusing.
As if overall we can just read it straightforwardly, and the strange things which merit additional explanation are exceptions. No, oh my goodness. The whole thing is weird, the whole bible is weird, you guys.
Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying it- there are plenty of bible stories which come across as good stories, emotionally gripping stories, even if we don't know anything about the background. There are abstract moral principles which continue to inspire people to do good, like "love your neighbor as yourself," without requiring an understanding of the whole cultural context where those bible verses came from. Still, those passages are deeper and richer when we have a better idea of that context.
My point is, evangelical ideology really downplays the weirdness, and views the bible as something nice and spiritually uplifting, that we are able to understand.
It feels really shallow to me, actually. That there is 0 distance between us and the bible because it's just plain true, inerrant, unlike any other text you might read. I don't even know how to interface with a source that's just objectively true, free of any context, because I'm a specific person with my own cultural background and expectations for how to view the world- if someone is trying to communicate with me, and I don't know any of that background where they are coming from, how can we even understand each other? It doesn't make sense to me- now that I'm not evangelical- to read the bible without thinking about "who wrote this, and why?" Evangelicals aren't allowed to ask those questions because if we believe the bible came from somewhere concrete, historical, a product of human decision-making, then how can it be the word of God?
And now I'm interested in reading more about the bible from an academic perspective. Recently I started reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns, and there will be blog posts on that. What's striking to me is how this kind of "academic" take on the bible will often take just 1 verse and write a whole essay on it, explaining the cultural background of something that's just an offhand mention in the bible verse. It's like, the overall aim is to understand the big picture, the cultural context, the ancient Near East, and then to situate a bible verse into that context. This is such a different approach than what Christians usually do, which is to primarily read the bible, and pause for a second to read a little explanation of some cultural aspect, and then keep going. (Similarly, in the book "Womanist Midrash", author Wilda Gafney does her own translations of the bible passages she discusses, and each word is carefully translated, carefully considering the nuances of the language and cultural setting.)
Or I could describe it as, the difference between "we're going to read the bible" and "we're going to understand the big picture of where the bible comes from."
But also... if you read the bible, there's no obvious way to know which parts can just be taken at face value, and which ones are "weird" artifacts of the ancient culture they came from. If you're a teenager immersed in purity culture, everyone has always told you that "God's plan for marriage and sex" all along was that everyone must be a virgin until marriage, which ensures that your married sex life will be amazing and you'll be totally emotionally connected to your spouse, and that this is the timeless ideal which is just obviously how it's supposed to be. (My post The Bible and "Purity" points out that the bible doesn't even teach this.) So if you read the bible verse that says Rebekah was a virgin, and that that's important, why wouldn't you just take it at face value?
I guess my view now is... I don't really take anything from the bible "at face value", like it's speaking directly to me, and it just means whatever my first impression is upon reading it. Even the verses that I do think are timeless moral truths, I view as a line running through thousands of years of history, connecting people across different cultures and time periods... Being human, being made in the image of God, means having a conscience, and there have always been people who envisioned a better world, based on principles like love and justice and liberation, even though they and their society didn't live up to that.
Holding the ideas "this was written thousands of years ago" and "this speaks to me." Which feels even more profound than believing that the bible was written directly to us, like it just fell out of heaven onto a shelf at a Christian bookstore, with neatly-typed English words and a pretty pastel cover. Maybe what I'm saying is, I want to be connected to people, to history, to a culture, rather than just connected to an objective, context-free God.
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Related:
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| Silhouette of a man and woman holding hands. Image source. |
[content note: abuse, rape, victim-blaming]
Here's a good post from Sheila Wray Gregoire: Why You Can’t Say: “This Advice Isn’t Meant for Those in Abusive Marriages”. Gregoire has written many blog posts and books criticizing the harmful marriage advice that is constantly being promoted in Christian spaces, pointing out how this advice is often so bad, it will make an abusive relationship even worse. And sometimes people respond by saying this criticism isn't valid because the advice was only intended for normal, healthy relationships, not for abusive relationships.
(Here's a link with a bunch of examples of Christian marriage books with this kind of unhealthy advice.)
In her post, Gregoire says this response doesn't make sense, because statistically, something like 25% of the readers of these books are in abusive relationships. And people in abusive relationships often don't recognize the abuse until years later. They just read these Christian marriage advice books, and try so hard to follow the advice and fix their marriages.
This is a really good point and I'm glad Gregoire is writing about it. I want to add a few of my own thoughts here.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. On “Asexual” as umbrella term (February 22) "Sometimes I hear newbies propose that there should be a separate asexual community that is *not* inclusive of gray/demi/etc. folks. I would go so far as to say that this idea is totally pointless."
2. Eliminating the Impossible (February 20) Very good point from xkcd.
3. Fix Your Hearts or Die (February 22, via) "Meanwhile men are finding out that they'd rather suffer loneliness than learn how to treat women as human beings instead of possessions, because treating a woman as a possession is domination, which means that it is seen as not just masculine, but core to masculinity. Treating a woman as a human being is gay, which is the least masculine thing of all."
4. Gaza death toll for first 16 months of war far higher than reported, says peer-reviewed study (February 18) "'The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,' the authors of the study, a team including an economist, demographer, epidemiologist and survey specialists, wrote in the Lancet Global Health."
5. Does Waiting for Marriage for Sex Increase the Chance for Painful Sex? (February 23) "Because for so many women, the first sexual encounter doesn’t happen because her body wanted it—it happened because 'time’s up.'"
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| Image source. |
Links related to the antichrist:
1. Former top general calls military's removal of trans troops a costly mistake (February 21) "I'm completely qualified to serve. I'm good at my job. The Navy has paid for me to be good at this. If we really are preparing for deployment or combat, why can't we just focus on doing our jobs and doing them to the best of our abilities?"
2. The Battle Of Minneapolis (February 22) "Think about that: You now live in a country where volunteers deliver babies at home, in secret, off the books, because mothers fear that if they go to the hospital, they will be abducted by masked, armed agents of the state while giving birth."
3. In Crackdown On Worst Of Worst Children, ICE Raids Kids Who Wrote Letters, Deports Sick Two-Month-Old (February 20) "Besides, before going on to whatever job she’ll have at a right-wing think tank, or in Hell itself, departing DHS propaganda minister Tricia McLaughlin explained to the Independent that it’s perfectly normal to dump sick infants across the border in the middle of the night, especially if you can do it before an interfering federal judge can stop you."
4. I posted a link about this same story last time, but this one is also worth reading: A Presidents' Day lesson from Philadelphia (February 17) "Instead, she wrote, 'It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves.'"
5. I Love Illinois. I Love America. I Refuse to Stop. (February 19, via) "I am begging my fellow politicians, my fellow Illinoisans, my fellow Americans to realize that right now in this country we are not fighting over policy or political party. We are fighting over whether we are going to be a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness — or one rooted in cruelty and rage." From Governor JB Pritzker.
6. UN experts condemn US executive order imposing fuel blockade on Cuba (February 12) "They expressed deep concern about the foreseeable humanitarian consequences of restricting fuel supplies to Cuba through the coercion of third States. 'Cuba is already experiencing severe energy shortages, due to previous U.S. sanctions, with blackouts lasting up to 20 hours in many areas, affecting refrigeration for food and medication, and contributing to public health crises.'"
7. Maine immigration observers sue over Trump admin "domestic terrorist watchlist" threats (February 24) "Addressing their interactions, the lawsuit put it bluntly, '[T]he message of intimidation was express and clear: Plaintiff Hilton’s lawfully protected First Amendment activity, and that of her fellow observer, would result in them having their personal data captured and being placed on a ‘domestic terrorist watchlist.’'"
8. ICE Whistle Blower (February 24) "'Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,' he said. 'Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.'"
9. We Can Beat Gavin Newsom (February 18) "If you are committed to progressive policy, Newsom is shit. If you want a Democratic leader who will relentlessly fight the right, then Gavin 'I want to praise Charlie Kirk at every opportunity' Newsom is also shit."
10. A U.S. veteran adopted an orphan from Iran. Decades later, ICE is trying to deport her (February 24) "But in the eyes of the U.S. government, the woman, who's now in her 50s and lives in California, is not American. Instead, she's an immigrant who overstayed her visa since she was a toddler and therefore, subject to deportation. She spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because she fears speaking publicly will complicate her immigration case."
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. Draco Malfoy becomes unlikely Lunar New Year mascot in China (February 4) Lol, this is very funny. So the Chinese translation of Malfoy's name is 马尔福 [mǎ ěr fú], where the 马 [mǎ] is the Chinese word for "horse" and the 福 [fú] means happiness and good fortune and is used all the time at Chinese New Year. So now, because it's about to be the Year of the Horse, apparently Malfoy is a Chinese New Year mascot.
Chinese culture is weirdly into puns, so I am not surprised that suddenly Malfoy is a thing for Chinese New Year. I haven't seen any of these decorations myself in the wild, but if I do I will definitely let you all know.
2. This xkcd about Groundhog Day. Also this one about proofs.
3. Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture (September 8, 2025, via Why It Matters that Jeffrey Epstein Recommended James Dobson) [content note: child sexual abuse] This is a blog series about how most child sexual abuse is committed by a father, step-father, relative, or family friend- this is true, we have statistics on this, and James Dobson knows this- but instead of doing something to help protect children from father/daughter incest, Dobson and other purity culture leaders teach an ideology where parents have total control over their children's bodies, where a daughter's virginity belongs to her father until marriage, where the father-daughter relationship is described in borderline-creepy romantic terms. Yikes.
4. How to be less awkward (January 7, via) "I learned an important lesson that day: when it comes to being awkward, the coverup is always worse than the crime."
5. How to Teach Textual Criticism To Fifth-Graders (July 23, 2025, via) "If Billy wrote his primary copy in pencil, though, and you feel like messing with them even further, get an eraser and do a fairly sloppy job of erasing everything he wrote."
6. Bad Bunny's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show (February 9) I don't speak any Spanish, so I'm not really able to tell you if this is good or not. But I liked it.
7. They're cured of leprosy. Why do they still live in leprosy colonies? (February 7) "In fact, leprosy — also known as Hansen's disease — is one of the least contagious diseases there is. Ninety-five percent of humans are naturally immune and it's not easily contracted by the other 5%. Today, leprosy is easily cured with antibiotics, especially if detected early."
8. The vegetables on VeggieTales are not Christian (December 10, 2025, via) "Mike Asparagus is not a Christian; he is an actor who occasionally portrays Christian characters. You might compare Mike Asparagus to Mark Williams, who is not a practicing Christian, but still portrays the fictional character of Father Brown on TV[.]" I am so here for this.
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Links related to the antichrist:
1. Pardon the Corruption (December 2, 2025, via) "DOJ lawyers normally apply standard criteria for pardons, these include: post-conviction conduct, character and reputation; seriousness and relative recentness of the offense; acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and atonement; and need for relief. The ideal case was someone who had served significant time, especially for more serious crimes, expressed remorse, and faced real hardship because of their conviction. Now, the ideal case is a wealthy supporter of the President who would prefer never to see the inside of a jail cell for their crimes."
2. Lawyers allege Dept. of Homeland Security is denying legal counsel to Minnesota detainees (January 19, via) "'One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos,' said another attorney who asked not to be named. 'And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did.'"
3. Epstein Files Reveal How Pathetic Richard Dawkins & Other Men Are (February 6, transcript here) The Epstein files give an inside look at some drama that was going on with sexual harassment in the atheist community.
4. Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting (February 1) So... this is strange and I don't know what to make of it. I saw this news a few days ago but decided not to share the link yet, because it was only ProPublica reporting it, so I wanted to wait and see if it would be verified by other big news sites, before I shared the link. In the article here, ProPublica says they found the 2 names by looking at "government records"- but I don't understand what these "government records" are and how they got them.
So I guess let's still be skeptical about this? I'm sharing the link now because this was published a week ago and there still seems to be nothing mentioned on the other mainstream news sites (except The Guardian), and I find that very strange.
5. The unfathomable Minnesota transcript that must be read, as it tells the reality of America today (February 5) "What -- what can the Court expect going forward, because this is obviously not workable, and it's certainly not an example of complying with the Court's order, unless you feel it is?"
6. Trump refuses to apologize after posting racist meme of the Obamas (February 7) "'It's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,' said Scott, who is Black."
7. Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked (February 7) "He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend's car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton."
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| Book cover for "Pride and Prejudice." Image source. |
[content note: spoilers for "Pride and Prejudice"]
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, was first published in 1813. It's a romance story, about how the fancy gentlemen and ladies of 1700's England go about partnering up and getting married.
Those of us who grew up in purity culture in the American church in the 1990's were taught an ideology about "sexual purity" and rules about dating and gender roles. This ideology was presented as timeless, traditional, how God always intended relationships to work. Like everyone has always known that these were the rules, until the sexual revolution of the 1960's- that's when all the problems started. We need to just get back to these traditions, which are straight from the bible. That's how dating is supposed to be.
So, naively, one might imagine that when you encounter writing about romance/relationships/marriage from hundreds of years ago, in a society that was greatly influenced by Christianity, it would basically match what purity culture teaches. That the rules that proper men and women followed back then should be more or less the same as the rules that purity culture is putting on us now. That the way that people in that time period viewed romantic relationships would match what purity culture tells us.
But oh goodness, let me tell you, this is very much not true about "Pride and Prejudice."
Wow, it is very much NOT TRUE that purity culture ideology is just getting back to the way that every proper and respectable person used to approach romantic relationships. Purity culture is a movement that was invented in the US in the 1990's, and its aesthetics give the appearance of being old and traditional, but it's not.
So let me tell you about 4 things in "Pride and Prejudice" that are at odds with the purity-culture perspective on relationships.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. Here’s what’s in the opioid settlement against OxyContin maker Purdue and the Sackler family (November 19) "Most of the money will go to government entities to fight the opioid crisis, which has been linked to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999."
2. textual activism and the ancestral toolbox (October 20) This post is about the bible passage which says parents can claim their son is "rebellious" and have him stoned to death. Apparently there's an ancient Jewish tradition of rules-lawyering and malicious compliance in reading this passage, interpreting it so literally and narrowly that you would actually never end up having a real-life situation where all these requirements would be met. This is how the ancient rabbis turned something horrific into something more just.
I have a few thoughts about this... First of all, for the people who are doing this very narrow interpretation, it's obvious to them that this isn't what the passage was intended to mean, right? There are other bible passages where I've seen people claim "this is actually really progressive for that time period because what God really meant was [whatever]" (and I'm generally not on board with this) but surely in this case they don't *actually* think that what God meant was "you should execute a rebellious son, when all these complicated criteria are met, so actually, in practical terms, never." This reading of this bible passage feels like it's in conflict with the passage, rather than being a good-faith attempt to get at what the actual meaning was.
But if you're going to so strongly disagree with and fight against the actual intended meaning of the passage, why even pretend you're respecting and obeying it? Why not say "this bible passage is just wrong. Let's NOT obey this." I'm wondering what sort of circumstance this kind of interpretation could be useful in. It seems like it could only really work if you *know* the bible passage in question is teaching something abhorrent, and you strongly disagree with it, but there are societal pressures that force you to pretend that you are respecting and obeying it.
I think this also has to do with the differences between Judaism and evangelical Christianity in how we view the bible. From what I've seen, Judaism has a tradition of disagreeing with some parts of the bible, while at the same time taking it very seriously. Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, believe we can't ever disagree with something that God said or did in the bible.
3. Journal Club: Adults’ Perceptions of Sex Ed (November 21) "We noted many potential issues with the survey, including recollection errors (the mean age being 45), and leading questions (there weren’t any response options that allowed people to be negative about sex ed). The questions are asking about a counterfactual that people have no direct experience with."
4. Down the Toilet: Shanghai Bids Farewell to Chamber Pots (November 21) "The dense, labyrinthine layout of Shanghai’s shikumen or “stone-framed doorway” neighborhoods, as well as concern for preserving cultural sites, often meant that officials had to devise highly individualized solutions for each household."
I live in Shanghai but I had no idea there were homes here without actual flush toilets.
5. This post about how to turn off AI features in Gmail. (November 21)
6. The Trans Vibe of Lilo & Stitch (November 20, 33-minute video) "It might not be on the planet 'trans' or 'gay', but it's certainly orbiting the same solar system as those two."
7. Other people might just not have your problems (November 22) "I find this thought comforting. It’s not that I have failed to learn some trivially easy skill that everyone else managed to learn in kindergarten, and it’s not that everyone else has some cool lifehack that they’re hiding from me out of spite."
8. The female crash test dummy has been a long time coming — but she isn't here yet (November 21) "In the early 2000s, regulators added a small "female" dummy to tests — but it was just a scaled-down version of the male dummy, with breasts attached. That doesn't reflect the real anatomical differences between male and female bodies."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1. Slavery Was Defined by Sexual Violence (September 1) [content note: rape]
2. Trump Honors the Man Who Had Jamal Khashoggi Killed (November 19)
3. Lawrence: Humiliated Trump's dictatorship over Republicans is coming apart with the Epstein vote (November 19) 8-minute video
4. Some Democratic Congresspeople made a video to tell the military they should refuse illegal orders:
We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.
— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025
The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.
Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r
Yes, just stating the unremarkable fact that the military is supposed to serve the Constitution and follow the law. Oh but it turns out I was wrong about this being an "unremarkable fact" because the MAGAs are treating it like it's extremely controversial and inflammatory.
Apparently that felon is out here posting on social media that these Congress members are guilty of "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"
Outrage after Trump accuses Democrats of ‘seditious behavior, punishable by death’ (November 20)
5. These families' health care costs will balloon if Congress doesn't act on the ACA (November 20) "Bixon says he knew he'd have to pay for health care out of pocket after retiring from his career as a small business owner. 'But,' he says, 'in my wildest dreams, I never thought a number close to $70,000 a year would be the cost that I'd be facing.'"
6. Baby, teenagers allegedly caught in San Antonio immigration raid (November 21)
7. A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness (October 29, via) "But don’t tell me that excusing that tattoo is good politics. It is the exact same politics that the right is selling, in a different outfit."
8. To Those Familiar with Purity Culture, Megyn Kelly’s Comments About Epstein and 15-Year-Old Girls isn’t Such a Surprise (November 18, via)
9. After unprecedented autism-vaccine messaging change, scientists, advocates say CDC no longer trustworthy (November 21, via) "Instead of a global leader in science, the CDC has devolved into 'a propaganda machine for RFK Jr.'s fixed, immutable, science-resistant theories,' said Paul Offit, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. 'The CDC is being weaponized to promote RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine point of view. So why should you trust it?'"
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| In 2022, after the Club Q shooting, Focus on the Family Colorado was vandalized with graffiti that says "Their blood is on your hands. Five lives taken." Image source and news article here: Influential evangelical group that opposes LGBT+ rights vandalised after Colorado Springs mass shooting |
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has died.
When I think about Focus on the Family, I have a lot of anger and sadness. I grew up reading books written by Dobson, reading Brio magazine (Focus on the Family's magazine for teen girls), reading fundraising newsletters from Dobson. It was all about how, as Christians, we know the correct way to live, we know God's way to live, we know that if people don't follow God's rules, there will be bad results, and so we have to fight to make sure our culture doesn't normalize breaking God's rules.
I really believed all of it.
And there's a lot I could say, but the areas where this has affected me the most are purity culture and queer acceptance. Yeah, the main source that taught me purity culture was Brio magazine. I totally believed it, totally believed all of it. Totally believed that "losing your virginity" would turn you into a completely different kind of person, unworthy of love, unable to ever have a good marriage. Totally believed that the best-case scenario was to never have physical contact with a guy, until marriage. Totally believed that it was an emergency every time I had a crush- I had to "guard my heart." Totally believed that all of this came straight from God's mouth.
Purity culture has been such a huge thing in my life. I've blogged about it a lot... I don't really want to say too much in this blog post because it is such a huge thing.
What I really want to talk about is queerness.
Long ago, when I was a teenager, before I had ever met any queer people, I was reading Focus on the Family's propaganda about them. It was about how being gay is so wrong, so disgusting, and isn't it just horrible that society is beginning to accept them? If there was ever a gay character on TV, Focus on the Family would raise the alarm about it, get all the conservative Christians outraged- how dare this TV show portray a gay person as a regular person that we can empathize with! Pushing the message that gay people exist and that's just fine- NO! The horror! It's not fine, it's against God's law, and everyone who is living "the gay lifestyle" is secretly miserable, and it's an outrage that the media is pushing this dangerous, false message that it's okay to be gay.
There were books that Focus on the Family promoted- which I read- "Marriage Under Fire" (by Dobson) and "The Homosexual Agenda", if you really want to know- which were about how we CANNOT legalize same-sex marriage. That would destroy society. People may ask "how, exactly, would it destroy society...? Seems like if you're not gay, it doesn't affect you?" Well, these books had an answer for that. You see, if same-sex marriage is legal, then people will think it's okay to marry a same-sex partner, which will totally change people's understanding of what marriage is, which will lead to polygamy and people marrying their dogs and pedophilia.
I believed all that.
And... well, it's a long story, but I wanted to learn more about how to help those pathetic gay people who were trapped in "the gay lifestyle" and needed to know God's love and God's rules and how their lives would be so much better if they just try to stop doing gay things. As I learned more and more- specifically, reading blog posts from gay Christians- I realized that everything that Focus on the Family had said was bullshit.
The bullshit. The mind-boggling expansiveness of the bullshit. Day in and day out, writing about how those bad gay people are going to DESTROY MARRIAGE- and it was all lies. It's really quite astounding, when you recognize the full scope of it... What would cause someone to go out in public, again and again and again, and say nasty, dehumanizing, completely false things about a group of people? How are people doing that and claiming to be Christians, claiming to follow the bible? The bible says "do not bear false witness against your neighbor."
And claiming that we know the correct way to live because God told us, and if you disagree, you're disagreeing with God- the bible says "do not take the Lord's name in vain."
When I think about James Dobson, when I think about Focus on the Family, I think of the verse where Jesus said:
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Because of the bullshit propaganda promoted by Focus on the Family and other nice Christian groups, people believe that an important part of being Christian is discriminating against queer people. Really. Seriously. So many Christians who, upon hearing about the some aspect of queer people's lives, have a knee-jerk reaction "that's bad, that's against God" rather than wanting to learn about it in order to care about people and "love your neighbor as yourself." So many non-Christians believe that Christianity is anti-LGBTQ. So many news articles with headlines about the fight between Christianity and queer rights, as if something that's good news for queer people is obviously bad news for Christians.
Dobson played a big role in this. Because of Dobson, people believe Christianity is about judging and excluding queer people. Because of Dobson, people believe that "morality" means making rules for other people's sex lives, rather than anything related to helping people. Because of Dobson, news articles say things like "people are voting based on their values" and we all understand it means being cruel to queer people.
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This article from Wonkette has about the right amount of respect towards Dobson: James Dobson Meets His Maker. (It Is The Devil.)
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See also, the Focus on the Family tag on my blog
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| Clip art image of a balance scale with a female symbol on one side and male symbol on the other side. Image source. |
[content note: it's about Christians teaching that men are supposed to sexually dominate women]
This is something that flitters through my mind every now and then, and I think to myself "I should blog about that" but also "maybe no one cares because it happened in 2012." Well, Doug Wilson is in the news now, for being a pastor who is super conservative and sexist, like so over-the-top sexist, you didn't even know there *were* people this sexist... so the moment has finally come when I can blog about this.
Gather 'round, it's story time.
In 2012, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" was very popular, and the evangelical Christian blogosphere was all up in arms about it. The evangelical Christian position was, this book is BAD because it's about a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it's being portrayed as positive and exciting. (No, for the most part, evangelical Christians did not notice that it was about an *abusive* relationship being portrayed as positive and exciting. In Christian "purity" ideology, the one and only indicator of whether a relationship is good or bad is "are they having sex outside of marriage?") And also, women being interested in this book is basically the same as watching porn, which is basically the same as cheating on your husband. (Or your future husband, if you're not married.)
Anyway, in the midst of all this pearl-clutching, Jared Wilson published an article on The Gospel Coalition's website, called The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, etc. That's the original link, but the article was taken down due to the backlash. I couldn't find an archive link, but many bloggers wrote articles in response to it, and quoted big chunks from it, so you can get a good idea of what it said. I'm looking at Rachel Held Evans's post, The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination.
Here's a summary of Jared Wilson's article: Hmm, why is it that women are so interested in "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Ah, it's because women have a natural, God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. Our society has lost sight of this- feminism teaches that men and women are equal, and that sex should be based on equality and mutual pleasure. So, women don't have any proper outlet for their God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. They have this need that's not being met. And then "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes along, this low-quality sinful erotica that has all sorts of bad sinful sex, and so many women are into it. Well, this is the reason why.
To support his argument, Jared Wilson included quotes from Doug Wilson's 1999 book, "Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man." Sorry there are 2 different people named Wilson. Makes it kinda hard to follow. They are not related. Anyway. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson:
Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.
In other words, Doug Wilson believes the correct, natural, God-intended way for sex to go is that the man dominates and the woman submits. And because our society has rejected that and says you should do what feels good instead of following gender roles, well now people are all screwed up and confused and that's why they are drawn to bad versions of sexual dominance and submission.
Another quote from Doug Wilson:
When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
So yeah, Doug Wilson says it just doesn't work, if you try to have sex in an equal, mutual way. It just can't work, that's not what sex is. It needs to be "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." (Eww.) (Also, are the straights okay?)
People are trying to go against God's design for sex, but in the long run you can't. You try to escape God's design, and then you end up with all these "Fifty Shades" fans.
Okay so that was what Jared Wilson's article said. The feminist Christian blogosphere read it and was outraged. In particular, I saw people saying "yeah I knew that conservatives teach that men have to be the leaders, and a wife has to submit to her husband, but I'm shocked at the idea that these authority/submission roles would even apply to sex. Is this really what complementarians believe? Really? Even in sex, the husband has authority over the wife? Really?"
And my thoughts at the time... well, this was 2012. I had no sexual experience at all, because why would I have any sexual experience, I was a good pure girl. (Also I was in grad school, that's too young to be thinking about sex, right? ... This post is about how I'm asexual...) But everything I'd heard from purity culture said that sex was easy and self-explanatory. That if you don't do a good enough job controlling your desires, you'll just automatically start having sex, without thinking or making decisions. It "just happens," if you're in a situation with "temptation."
Yeah, according to the mythology I believed back then, sex is so AMAZING, but also shrouded in mystery- good, pure, unmarried people aren't allowed to know any concrete details about it. That would be "temptation." But don't worry, once you're in the proper God-approved situation where you are allowed to have sex, ie, on your wedding night, it will be great and you don't need to think or know anything beforehand, it just happens and it will be great.
It didn't really make sense to me, but I believed it. Yeah, it didn't make sense, because... if you think about it... in order to have sex, wouldn't you have to take off your clothes, in front of another person? Wouldn't you have to, uh, interact with a penis? All of that sounds so unpleasant. Hard to imagine any set of circumstances that could entice me to do that. But, purity culture assured me, when you're in that situation, you *will* want it. You'll lose control of yourself and you'll have sex without really thinking about it, and it will FEEL SO AMAZING but it's WRONG, it's BAD and WRONG, and will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER.
Didn't seem to make sense, but I believed it. Once you're in that situation, your body will just know what to do, and if you're married it will be the best thing ever, and if you're not married then it will feel good in the moment but will RUIN YOUR LIFE.
So in 2012, reading this article where the Wilsons perhaps inadvertently announced their own kinks to the world... I thought, what do I know, maybe sex is like that. Maybe when you're in that situation and your body just takes over and does what's natural and it feels amazing, maybe it will naturally be a woman-being-dominated-by-a-man roleplay. My whole life, everything I had heard from Christians about sex was in the genre of "this makes no intuitive sense at all, but on some level you *do* have these desires, and when you're in that situation, you *will* act this way." This felt no different. On some level, you *do* have a desire to be "conquered" and "colonized" by a man during sex. Hey what do I know, maybe that's true?
And then the bloggers that pushed back and had some very strong responses to this- many of them were married Christian women, like Rachel Held Evans. They had sexual experience, unlike me in 2012. There was something kind of surprising about it... about reasoning about sex based on one's actual experience. Normally in Christian culture, we talked about sex in terms of these big general principles, about "God's design" and "how God made women" and "how God made men" and "the biblical definition of marriage" and so on. It was like arguing over fan theories about a fictional world. Like hypothetical thought experiments. To have people say "I know Doug Wilson is wrong about sex because my own marriage is not like that"- that was a new and different thing for me.
Very interesting how Doug Wilson said, "however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party" and then a bunch of people popped up to say that yes, they had done that very thing. Sounds like it's a *you* problem!
Anyway, looking back on it now, the biggest misconception I had back in 2012, the thing that blocked me from understanding in so many ways, was the idea that people don't think or make choices during sex. Like, it "just happens," you "can't control yourself," etc. Like you're just strapped into a roller coaster car and you have no control over where it goes. When I eventually did start having sex, I was so surprised at how we needed to actually take actions to make things happen. And I was just as mentally-present as any time in my normal life, and it's just as weird as you would imagine from reading a description.
So you can choose. If you're into this BDSM roleplay stuff, you can discuss it with your partner and make a choice together about it. If you want to have an "egalitarian pleasure party", great, there are all sorts of sex acts you can choose from, so you and your partner are free to pick which ones you like, and do those- they don't happen automatically, you think about it and make a choice and then take action.
I'm kind of glossing over the role of desire and arousal here... yeah, those do affect one's thinking and one's choices. I conceptualize this in terms of how you weigh your various reasons to do or not do something- ie, you *want* to do something, for certain reasons, but also you think you shouldn't, for certain reasons- and the desire/arousal/attraction can make you weigh some of those reasons much more highly, so that in that moment it feels like a good idea. I'm probably not describing this well? But my point is, if you imagine that people don't really think or make choices during sex, because it all just happens automatically and naturally and your body just takes over- well, no, that's not how it works.
(Kind of curious about whether "people don't think or make choices during sex" is a common belief for people who grew up in purity culture, or if I just thought that because I'm asexual and couldn't imagine people would do that if they had a choice.)
I have a few things to say in conclusion. First of all, why shouldn't sex be "an egalitarian pleasure party"? Like, why would it not be what both partners want it to be, with equality between them? If it's something other than that, where they have to play certain roles and don't have a choice, isn't that obviously worse??? Second, I wish I could have told my younger self not to believe it, when Christian role models confidently announce "*these* are the desires you have, because these are the desires that everyone has"- how messed up that I believed that rather than my own feelings. And third, when someone is trying to tell you sex *is* a certain way, and it just *cannot possibly be* some other way, they're actually talking about themself, rather than big abstract overarching concepts like "God's design" for sex.
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A few links on Doug Wilson. For years, people have been sounding the alarm about how racist and sexist and Christian-supremacist his ideology is.
From Libby Anne:
It Is Long Past Time for Evangelical Leaders to Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views on Slavery and the South
Doug Wilson: Women who reject patriarchy are tacitly accepting “the propriety of rape”
Shades of Sexual Deviance: Doug Wilson and the Tale of Two Boxes
From the Slacktivist:
Evangelical gatekeepers and conservative holiness
For evangelicals, racism isn’t a dealbreaker, but feminism is
From me:
Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead
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Related
I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense
"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men
This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. These evangelical men saved sex for marriage – they weren’t well prepared (June 17) "The experience has shaped how the couple are raising their six-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son. 'I want my daughter to have full information about her body – I don’t want her to go through what I did,' said Katy. As for their son, 'I just want him to understand that women are people,' said Nate."
2. This abortion method doesn't involve doctors — and many of them consider it safe (June 22) "Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the hotline has only grown. It now has dozens of volunteers, including clinicians as well as people who provide logistical support. The hotline gets thousands of calls and texts every month."
3. A cancer center in Jordan treats kids from Gaza, but only a few dozen have arrived (June 20) "All of Gaza's hospitals have been either damaged or destroyed in Israeli airstrikes."
4. Do You Want to Build a Snowman - 10 YEARS, SAME ANNA! (2024) OH MY GOODNESS this is amazing.
5. What’s the Right Way to Translate Chinese Dish Names? (June 20) "Semantic translation, on the other hand, conveys meaning rather than form. Traditionally, it prioritizes fluency and naturalness in the target language, even if that means departing from the original wording — rendering the Chinese shizitou as 'meatball,' for example. However, semantic translation can also mean literal translation, even if the result seems foreign or puzzling — such as translating shizitou as 'lion’s head.'"
Hmm. Yeah I would describe shizitou [狮子头] as a meatball, but 丸子 are also meatballs, but they are different. I guess then you have no choice but to translate 狮子头 as a lion head meatball? It's pork, though, okay.
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| Protest sign that says "No kings / Yas queens!" Image source. |
Links related to the antichrist:
1. Relief and a raised fist as Mahmoud Khalil goes free – but release ‘very long overdue’ (June 20, via) I'm glad to hear this. But it's not over- his immigration case is still ongoing.
Mahmoud Khalil emerges from airport security with his wife Noor and newborn, legal team and Rep. AOC.
— Gwynne Hogan (@gwynnefitz.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 1:37 AM
[image or embed]
'They wanted to separate me from my family': Mahmoud Khalil speaks after ICE release (June 23) "They absolutely showed me nothing. They had over 100 days to do that, and I dare Trump, [Marco] Rubio, and their administration to substantiate these claims with anything, because they did not refer to anything."
2. One daughter's search for a father detained by ICE (June 21) "Urizar had no idea where her father was being held or how to reach him."
3. The Antisemites In and Around the Trump Administration (June 17) "I mean the kind who proudly performs a Roman salute or two on a national stage, like Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, sure, but you already knew about those. There are many, many more."
4. U.S. Supreme Court allows — for now — third-country deportations (June 23) "In a searing dissent, the court's three liberals accused the conservative majority of 'rewarding lawlessness.' Writing for the three, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said 'The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone, anywhere without notice or an opportunity be heard.'"
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| Lego scene of Leah telling Jacob to have sex with her slave Zilpah. From the Brick Testament. |
[content note: In the world where the bible was written, there wasn't really a concept that women should have a choice over whom they married and/or had sex with. A lot of what is discussed in this blog post is not really consensual- or rather, it's hard to say, because they didn't have the concept of consent.]
In my post The Bible and "Purity", I presented the idea that, contrary to what I had been taught in purity culture, it is *not* true that the bible teaches it's a sin to have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage and that this rule is the same for both men and women. Instead, what we see in the Old Testament can be better explained like so:
Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc.
So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman."
If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.
But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.
In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.
Here's the follow-up post about polygamy.
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There's a lot of polygamy in the bible. A lot of male bible heroes who have multiple wives and "concubines."
The way I've always heard Christians talk about polygamy in the bible was like this: Yes, there is a lot of polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing. The bible always shows that it leads to problems, like a man unfairly favoring one wife over the others, the rival wives being jealous, all kinds of family drama. Yes, there is polygamy in the bible, but it's OBVIOUS that the bible is teaching us that God doesn't want it to be that way. In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve- marriage is supposed to be 1 man and 1 woman. Even though many many people in the bible did not follow God's plan for marriage, it's clear that the bible portrays that as a bad thing. It's clear that the bible is teaching that polygamy is a sin.
I disagree with this. I do NOT interpret the bible as consistently portraying polygamy as a bad thing. In ancient times, people viewed it as a positive thing for a man to have multiple wives- it was a sign that he was rich and successful. And some of the biblical writers also thought this way- there are bible passages about a man having multiple wives which make a lot more sense if you read them with the assumption that this was a sign of success rather than a sin.
There are many many bible stories that show problems caused by polygamy. Even so, I don't read these as meaning that the biblical writers believed the entire concept of polygamy was always bad, and no one should ever do it. In some cases, the bible portrays the problems as not necessarily being caused by polygamy itself, but by other issues. And in other cases, there are aspects of the situation which are portrayed positively- I read this as saying that even though there are some common pitfalls you have to watch out for, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad and wrong.
And, when the bible gives rules related to polygamy, it never comes right out and says "polygamy is a sin, don't do it." It gives rules for how a man should treat his wives fairly if he has multiple wives. And there are certain circumstances where the bible commands that a man should not have many wives- but this only applies to men in those circumstances, not all men.
Buckle up, I have receipts. We're going to look at polygamy in the bible, and we're going to see that it's NOT consistently portrayed as a bad thing.
I hope you woke up this morning and said, "I want to read 10,000 words about polygamy in the bible."
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| Book cover for "Pure" by Linda Kay Klein. |
The book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, by Linda Kay Klein, is about adult women who grew up in purity culture. It's about the aftermath of purity culture, how people try to move on from it as adults, how it continues to affect them. The book contains stories from the author's personal life, and interviews with many people who grew up in purity culture.
I have a few quotes and observations I want to share here:
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Ignorance about sex (p 77)
We weren't allowed to know anything about what sex actually was, but at the same time, we had to make sure we strictly followed the rules about what we weren't allowed to do. Kind of difficult to know what the rules are, though, when you're not allowed to know what sex is.
The cornerstone of the purity myth is the expectation that girls and women, in particular, will be utterly and absolutely nonsexual until the day they marry a man, at which point they will naturally and easily become his sexual satisfier, ensuring the couple will have children and never divorce: one man, one woman, in marriage, forever.
For this formula to work, my girlfriends and I knew we had to follow a slew of rules. Unfortunately, none of us knew what they were. Sex was such a shameful topic that we never got real talk on what we were and were not allowed to do. It was assumed that if no one ever talked to us about sex, it would just sort of go away until we needed it. So our "sex talks" were all generic metaphors and warnings about what would happen to us if we crossed a line, which was defined differently by so many people that we were left guessing all the same. Meanwhile, we knew we would be shamed if we asked sexual questions; shamed if we discussed sexual decisions; shamed if we shared our confusing sexual feelings and thoughts; and shamed worst of all if we admitted we had already done anything sexual. So each of us guessed at what the rules might be, hoped we were right, and didn't tell anyone about our sexual lives just in case we weren't.
This is SPOT ON.
Also, purity culture makes people so ashamed of completely normal things, it causes people to hide what they're doing rather than having healthy conversations with friends about what a healthy relationship looks like. If something is wrong in your relationship, you won't be able to get useful advice from your friends about it, because you're ashamed of the fact that you're dating someone in the first place.
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The couple who couldn't figure out how to have sex (p 135-137)
Klein interviews a woman named Muriel:
Desperate to have sex, Muriel and Dmitri's engagement was short.
"We got married at 9:30 in the morning so that we could have sex early. No lie, that's why we got married early! I was excited about sex! I thought, 'I don't want to wait all day,' because sex was this huge thing! It was what everybody talked about, in the negative. But then supposedly once it was in marriage it was supposed to be this amazing celebration. This was the flip side, right? Supposedly. But during the ceremony up there, the pastor says 'you may kiss the bride,' and we kiss. Our teeth clanked. I was like, 'What is going on?' We, like, sort of used tongue. It was the weirdest thing in the world. [Note: they 'saved their first kiss for the wedding.']
"There had been this whole promise: If you wait, then this kiss will be magical and divine. But oh my gosh, total opposite. I whispered in Dmitri's ear, 'Let's not do that again until we're alone.'
"There was a small reception and by noon we're in a hotel room. So we start stripping off. I see a naked man for the first time. I hadn't even seen naked pictures. I'd never seen any pornography or anything. So, naked man. And then I got to strip off. And now we're naked and this is weird and we start kissing or whatever and then I just bust up crying because this has all been way too much and I hadn't slept much the night before.
"So I take a nap. We take a nap. Then we wake up and we start trying it again. And I have no idea what hole or where anything is. We try that and Dmitri tries touching and he doesn't know. At this point I've read about the clitoris in The Act of Marriage. I know it exists, but I have no idea where it is, neither does Dmitri, and so he's, 'Does this feel good?' I have no idea. I've never let anything down there try to feel good before. So he keeps trying and I'm like, 'Is that an orgasm? I don't know.' So then he starts trying to stick it in. Again, I have no idea where. He's trying to direct. We don't get it in and then he's like, 'Well I'm kind of moved all the way here. Can you help me out?' So I start to do that, and then I'm just, like, left there. Not having done 'the sex.'
"We don't figure out sex for four months. We don't actually get it in. We keep trying. I mean, we're discouraged, but he does keep trying. Sometimes it hurts. We didn't get the idea about wetness or lubrication or any of that. I eventually figured out I had to stretch out beforehand, manually. I figured out where the hole was and I would stretch it out manually and then he would go in. It never felt sexy. Sex was never sexy. I never got off while he was in there, and even on his end, it was more like, if we did it, good, that's something we're supposed to do. But it was never 'this is so sexy, I want you.' It was just a check mark for us. I'm not sure when he gave up on trying as often."
"Did you ever talk about what you were experiencing with anybody?"
"No! Because it's embarrassing! I mean, that's just something you just don't talk about. We're married now. It's supposed to be a slippery, slippery, easy-to-fall-off-of slope. 'Where's the easiness? How's anybody accidentally having sex? How are teenagers accidentally getting pregnant? I don't know. How are they even getting it in?!'"
!!!!!! This! Oh my goodness, this. This is SO MUCH like my experience trying to have sex for the first time. I totally bought into this ideology that once you are no longer constantly holding yourself back from having sex, once you step over the purity guardrails and allow yourself to do whatever you want, you'll just naturally fall into this powerful vortex of the amazingness of sex, it will feel so good, it will change your whole life, you don't even have to think or do anything, it just happens and it's so amazing (but ill-advised if you're not married, because it is so powerful and life-changing).
And then... what actually happens, if you're like me and you're asexual af, is you decide "okay we are gonna have sex" and then you think, well in the movies the first step seems to be kissing, so let's do that, and then you do that and then you're not sure what's supposed to happen next, should be something about putting our genitals together, but... that's so weird...? And everything slows to a stop and you're just extremely confused instead of having this mind-blowing, life-changing experience.
Like Muriel, I also was genuinely confused about how teenagers get pregnant. Just could not make heads or tails of anything- how my experience of sex was in a different universe from the way everybody else talked about sex. I even asked doctors for help but they were useless. When I discovered asexuality, that was the first time I found people talking about sex in a way that actually felt real. Same for when I heard about vaginismus- finally people talking about what sex is really like, how difficult and confusing it is. (Based on what Muriel said, it sounds like she had vaginismus.)
I'm lucky- I did not have that experience on my wedding night, I had that experience long before we got married. I'm so glad we didn't wait till marriage. And I'm so glad I slowly broke the purity rules little-by-little, rather than trying to go from zero to PIV [penis in vagina] sex immediately, like Muriel did.
The thing about manually stretching the vagina, to prepare for PIV sex, yeah I also discovered that. That was the method I used, when I had vaginismus. (I no longer have vaginismus- let me tell you, wow it makes a world of difference not having vaginismus. It *actually is* easy to have sex now that I don't have vaginismus. Unbelievable.)
What really strikes me about this excerpt from the book is, Muriel and Dmitri had this mindset like there's some specific thing they're supposed to do, as a married couple, and they're trying as hard as they can to figure out how to do it, and feeling ashamed for having trouble with it. They weren't viewing sex as something that was for them, that they could figure out in their own way, based on what felt good for them.
Like it was a specific series of steps, which no one explains to you because it's supposedly "natural", and then when you're confused about what the steps are supposed to be, you feel like something is wrong with you.
I'm queer now- which means I view sex as something that people can choose for themselves. People can make an informed choice about which parts of it they want or don't want. Make it something that makes sense for you.
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"Freaking out" when attempting to have sex
Klein talks about how, when she tried to have sex with her boyfriend Sebastian, she would panic and "freak out." For people who are trying to leave purity culture, the psychological effects are so strong- the fear is engrained so deep- if you have sex, horrible things will happen. (I also experienced that fear- I eventually decided that I no longer believed it was a sin to have unmarried sex... but actually doing it was an entirely different thing- I was still terrified. Eventually I decided to "face my fear"- after we finally had PIV sex, and it didn't ruin my life, and didn't change me into a completely different kind of person, wow I felt so much better. No fear any more.)
Here's a quote from p 198:
Sebastian and I did eventually have sex, though it was, in his words, "a brief and bungling affair." Both virgins, neither of us wanted to call this our sexual debut. In time, Sebastian and I broke up. In the years that followed, he got a new girlfriend and says he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious. ("Thanks man," I rolled my eyes at him.)
OH my goodness, this is so real. He "was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious."
SO REAL.
People who date people who grew up in purity culture are taking on a very hard task. I have "freaked out" many times about extremely mundane aspects of dating, and how I was so terrified that I was "bad" and "impure" because of what I had done. As an example, 17 years ago, I was dating a guy, and one time I called him "my wonderful dear" and then I had a whole emotional crisis about that because I didn't think I was going to marry him, and then what would my "future husband" think about the fact that I had actually said out loud that a guy who wasn't him was "wonderful"? What would my future husband think about me having expressed my feelings for another guy? Was I going to regret this forever?
(Please note, that was 17 years ago, and it has no effect on my life now. I am married, and my husband cares 0% about what I did or did not do with some other guy 17 years ago. Purity culture really had me believing that whatever silly misadventures I had in dating in college were going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I cannot express strongly enough how NOT TRUE that is.)
And on and on. Every guy I have dated, I have burdened with this emotional baggage about how I fear I'm being so bad and impure and sinful.
"he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious." I feel that so much.
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People who want casual sex
Here's something I learned from this book: There are people who genuinely want to have casual sex without a relationship. This can include men, women, people of whatever gender. They actually legitimately want that. They look at their current life situation and think about what they want out of sex/relationships, and they feel that what they really want is to have casual sex.
I really never thought about that before.
I knew that many people are having casual sex, but I never knew that could be, like... like an intentional choice. I thought it was like, "I wish I could be in a real relationship, but I have to settle for casual sex instead" or "I met this very hot person and I don't know what came over me, everything moved so fast and we had sex." I really never knew it could be a clear-eyed rational choice that made sense with one's current priorities and life circumstances.
Some of the people interviewed in this book talk about how their vision for their sex life is to have casual sex, but they have such a hard time getting there because of all the psychological hangups they have from purity culture.
Fascinating!
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Respecting everyone's journey
Klein interviews a huge range of people, who all have difference experiences in terms of what happened to them after growing up in purity culture. Some of them got married, some didn't. Some had unmarried sex, some didn't. Some are still Christian, some aren't. Some are queer. One interviewee said something about "sometimes I wonder if I'm a lesbian." One interviewee is a trans man.
And the book never makes any judgments about if their choices and identities are right or wrong. The book simply respects everyone and lets them tell their own stories. (Klein even says she tried to include some people who benefitted from purity ideology, but she couldn't find any who were willing to be included in the book, so MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.)
Let me tell you, it was SO REFRESHING to read this after reading "The Great Sex Rescue." Oh MY GOODNESS. The way that "Pure" simply acknowledges the existence of queer people, because it makes sense to mention queer people in a book about the effects of purity culture- just talking about being queer like it's a normal part of the range of human experience. SO DIFFERENT from "The Great Sex Rescue", which so glaringly refused to mention anything about queer people existing. The way that "Pure" is totally fine with people being Christian or not. So different from "The Great Sex Rescue", whose main point was "conservative Christians teach that God wants us to do sex and marriage in this way, but actually, that's wrong and harmful, actually God wants us to do sex and marriage in this other way."
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Conclusion
"Pure" is a book about the practical effects of purity culture on people's adult lives. Klein interviews many people who grew up in purity culture, and they talk about how they felt about it, the choices they made since then, and the ways that purity culture still affects them.
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