#purityculture

[nakedpastor]

Do You Love Too Much?

Lisa and I met at a Pentecostal Bible College. We fell madly in love. I was 20 and she was 18. Within a couple of weeks we knew we’d get married.

We found our soul mate. I don’t know if there is such a thing or if it’s necessary. My ideas of romantic relationships and marriage has opened up a lot. So I want to tell you this is my story. Our story.

But we fell hard for each other. It was magical. Is magical. And the love is very deep and very strong.

I believe romantic love is a part of the big “true love”. Not something separate. But I also believe romantic love is a fascinating and complex mix of this true love, but also psychology, projection, fantasy, desire, lust, eroticism, sexuality, intimacy, passion, friendship and polarity, and so much more.

I believe that when I found Lisa, I had found the perfect embodiment of my deepest desire, my anima… my female aspect… in real life. And the opposite is true for Lisa with me.

How often does this happen? Not very, I don’t think.

But how did the Purity Culture we found ourselves in react to it?

Yes, I received warnings that I shouldn’t love her more than I loved God. That God is a jealous God and will not be displaced by anyone! I needed to be careful not to allow my love for Lisa dissuade or distract me from my love for Jesus. I needed to make sure I spent at least as much time with the Lord as I did with Lisa. I need to beg God to help me tame my passion and carnality around Lisa. We needed to repent because we love each other too hard.

And so on.

I didn’t obey.

Because, somehow, our passionate love for each other felt a part of the whole of love. It didn’t feel separate or wrong, but part and parcel of the union of all things.

We felt that we were, and still are, participating in the bigger picture of universal love, or, as some call it, divine love.

Because with love there is no competition or domination.

All belongs.

[alandemoss]

Embracing Vulnerability: My Journey from Shame to Strength

🤍 My Story: Growing up autistic in a strict Calvinistic environment, I always felt like an outsider. My highly logical nature made it difficult to accept the supernatural experiences others spoke of. I felt deep shame and guilt because I couldn’t attribute any experiences to something beyond physiological effects. I kept searching for that moment of divine connection, feeling like a failure for…

[marymusexoxo]

A little rant about "purity."

For context; I create a mixture of softcore & hardcore porn.

I find it interesting when some subscribers praise me for the softer content, saying "it's not vulgar like xyz."

Do we realize that this kind of comment is (likely) rooted in shame?

Is a creator less "respectable" because they show you their pussy? Is there a line we cross when we include penetration in our videos that just suddenly makes us "vulgar?" Or are these just the purity standards that we've been taught to uphold? What does purity actually PROVIDE?

Purity is like a shield- it protects us from shame & the judgmental eyes of others. They tell us it keeps us "safe" from the "wrong kind of attention," & yet, women are assaulted in their sweatpants. Purity is a scare tactic to keep us away from our sexual power & sovereignty.

"I love that you're not vulgar" feels like a "you're not like the other girls." Which is not the compliment you think it is! I will always be on the side of "other girls." Your comment shows me that you lose respect for women as soon as they are too "slutty" for your tastes.

If you're subscribing to an adult model, chances are- you're gonna see some adult content. Some of it will be explicit- & maybe that makes you uncomfortable. It's your job to recognize that in yourself- & your responsibility to figure out what to do with your own inner shame.

I've been on a very intentional journey for the last 5 years to release the shame I have around sexuality. I felt so much intense shame about my body that I would wear multiple sports bras to work & wanted nothing more than to get a breast reduction to be freed from judgement.

Now, I use the body I've been given in order to support myself & my family. I still have the shame, I experience it daily- but now I know that it isn't something that comes from within me. It is a result of years of conditioning that I now get to slowly undo for myself.

So please- don't push your standards of "purity" on to the creators you subscribe to. This isn't the case for everyone- but my porn is a way for me to let go of the shame I was socialized to have. And it's my intention for it to serve that purpose for my subscribers as well.

[salmonandfox]

Google back on their bullshit

SO YEAH that's... fun. I cannot IMAGINE just loosing so much work all at once and I don't know who else is going to get hit but be careful out there folks.

[drkevinjenson]

The Dangerous Fallacy of Waiting Until Marriage

I grew up with the assumption that sexual ethics meant waiting until marriage to unleash the dragon of desire. Once I wore a wedding ring, sex was approved by God without any stipulations about how I approached it or how my partner felt about it. The only thing that mattered was that I never gave my “gift” to anyone but her. Chapter 15 of my book “Love & Lust” dives into this fallacy and how it…

[engagemachine]

I’m scared people will judge me for reading your story, “Burn”. I already shared it with a few people and they said I was “Romanticizing” abuse. Im not ashamed of it at all and you’re so talented and I know the truth that I’m not romanticizing abuse and you’re not either, but it’s still hurtful to hear. What should I do? My fanfic account is public so people can see it. Ugh I’m confused.

Hi anon,

I'm really sorry to hear that you feel the way you do. I am sorry that people are telling you that you are romanticizing abuse. Burn is a fictional story, with fictional people, and fictionalized events.

Please see this post regarding my response to the backlash that Burn has received, and also this post, this post, and this post on media illiteracy for more elaboration. Or you can search my tag #purityculture which has a lot of excellent points. I hope that helps.

I couldn't possibly begin to coach you on "what to do." Honestly, that's a decision that only you can make, and only you know what you're capable of tolerating. I've received a lot of bullying/hateful comments over the years for the things I've written, so you either have to develop a thick skin or keep those things hidden. If you feel more comfortable with it, maybe make your favorite fics private if you're afraid of receiving hateful comments or backlash. I'm sorry this is happening to you and I wish I could offer better advice. I also hope in the future you can surround yourself with a community of friends who support the things you enjoy and don't criticize you for liking the things that they don't like/don't understand.

[bewitchingbaker]

This stitch has Chris energy. Really him and Jess would probably reply like this to an alpha dude at a party.

[aropride]

"hahaha tiktok teenagers are so easily triggered #purityculture" sounds near identical to "hahaha tumblrinas and their trigger warnings #nosafespaces" to me. just cus u slap a rainbow on it doesn't mean i don't want to strangle you too. christ.

soooo glad we're doing "content warnings bad" in a blue hair and pronouns way now /sarcastic. content warnings aren't "sanitizing" things, they literally exist so the content can exist without triggering people or dropping something on them unprepared. "your safe little room" do you not see how this is the exact same rhetoric conservatives use mocking "safe spaces" and how the dumb liberals don't know anything about the Real World. some people like being warned before they hear about heavy topics. some people want to avoid some topics altogether. that is fine. and it is morally neutral to not want to consume triggering content. hope this helps.

[leanderkevin]

கற்பு/Kaṟpu (Chastity) Chastity is generally defined as the act of abstaining from extramarital or all sorts of intercourse. My views on ‘Karpu’, have been heavily influenced by the works of Periyar. In his 1942 book பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்? (why were women enslaved?) Periyar tears down every social hindrance and patriarchal norm that oppresses and enslaves women. The first two essays discuss chastity and how it became a tool to oppress and control women. According to him, the word karpu has the word root ‘kal’ (to learn). If we look at it in this context, “karpenappaduvadhu solthitambamai” would simply mean ‘living up to one's words’, which contains concepts of integrity and truth. However, over the years the word karpu has been used to indicate ‘Magalir Nirai’ (virtues of women). There is no evidence to prove that the word karpu only applies to women. In the English language Chastity simply means ‘virginity’ or ‘purity’. Within this framework, the word can be applied to all genders. In Sanskrit, chastity is identified as ‘pativrata’ (loyal wifehood) and this is where the word chastity becomes a sexist term. He also criticizes the works of Thiruvalluvar as being sexist (chapters 6 & 91) and questions if women themselves had written Thirukural or other epics, they would have portrayed such sexist ideas. Chastity is an age-old toxic tradition that is still justified and glorified across different cultures. The concept of chastity has been aggrandized and a woman's worth and her character questioned if she chooses to no longer be “chaste”. Calling female bodies “pure” and “valuable” only commodifies them and thus, dehumanises them. It, for centuries, has stripped them of their expressive and sexual agency, even criminalise it. Forced chastity continues to be one of the biggest tools of oppression in modern society. While chastity can be a virtue, it must always be an independent decision irrespective of gender and not a social standard. P.S. you guessed it, they’re gay and they’re married😙✌🏽✨. #leanderscribbles#tamil#தமிழ்#tamilartist#tamilart#tamilculture#feminism#patriarchy#purityculture#gay#queer#lesbian#wlw#bisexual https://www.instagram.com/p/ChgvB5OBinF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[aprilwashere]

I’m not interested in being innocent

and I’m not interested in being ashamed. 

[supercodi]

It’s been a long journey between the left photo and the right photo. 😳 ... Just looking at this photo kind of makes me giggle 😂 It also makes me feel vulnerable but hey this is part of my life, and I also feel proud. - Yes I am trans, and yes I was once married. I got married at 21. I grew up religious so purity culture was my jam. Young Christian couples getting married young to have sex is not problematic at all 🤪 I don’t think I want to go down that rabbit hole today 🤣 ... There has been a lot of gym sessions between these photos, and most importantly a lot of therapy sessions. 😊 - Obviously I’ve put on some muscle over the years. 😂 - On the left I was just doing my best to survive, and today I am thriving. - It’s amazing how different life feels once you start to come out of survival mode. The more secure you start to feel within yourself, the less decisions you make based on outside acceptance. 💪 - On the left, I lost my self in order to be accepted by others...and God. 😢 - Sure, people will continue to tell me I’m mentally ill, I’m confused, I’m going to hell, that I’m still a woman... but I know who I am today and that is all that matters. If that is how they want to spend their time then by all means go ahead 😂 - Always be true to yourself! ❤️ - #transformationtuesday #transformation #fitness #fitfam #physique #bodybuilding #purityculture #christian #exchristian #god #lgbt #trans #ftm #ftmfitness #ftmbodybuilding #fit #nutrition #workout #fitfam https://www.instagram.com/p/CECPJiiMkL6/?igshid=o17ua5qbklbk

[queerin]

I lived through Purity Culture and all I got was this t-shirt...oh, and shame.

I just finished reading the book “Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free”  by Linda Kay Klein. It’s made me reflect on my own journey and the effects that purity culture has had on my life.

As a homeschooled pastor’s kid growing up in the 90s? I was immersed in it. 

The message was simple: Keep yourself pure for God and your future husband. 

However, that message was implicitly complicated and nuanced in daily life. What exactly was “pure?” How far was too far? What if I did something by accident that made myself impure? Forget even considering IF I ever wanted to have a husband someday. The standard was “you will get married to a good Christian man” and “he and God expect you to be a virgin.” Actually communicating about sexuality and purity, though, seemed to be off the table.

We talked about how to avoid causing our “brothers in Christ” to stumble. We had Sunday School lessons about how to apply minimal makeup so our faces would look “natural.” Our youth group broke into boys and girls groups; the boys played paintball and the girls had lessons about modesty. My father had to approve all clothes that my mom, sister, and I purchased, so we would do a fashion show of sorts, begrudgingly twirling our outfits in front of him while he watched TV until we knew which clothes we could hang in our closets and which had to go in the “return” pile. 

My mother never, ever wore makeup or did her hair, so I never learned how to make myself look presentable. In fact, the implicit message was that you should strive to make yourself look unattractive. I learned that being a girl meant I should live for the men around me. If I emphasized my body or sexuality, I was slowly chipping away at the gift that belonged to my husband. Every time I had an impure thought or did an impure act, I was defacing what was sacred in the eyes of God. 

My self worth during my teenage years was loooooooow. I hated who I was. I was desperately seeking to gain approval from my community, but secretly was having all kinds of thoughts and desires that I knew my community would find disgraceful. I tried so hard to fit in. I wore the purity ring. I avoided boys. I sat through youth group where we tore up paper hearts to represent our virginity. I bought the Virginity Rocks t-shirt (The back says ”I’m loving my husband and I haven’t even met him yet!”). I didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t wear clothes that fit me, let alone flattered me. I played the part of the good Christian girl flawlessly. No one knew that I was struggling with my sexuality and had no one to go to. 

I had to break myself out of purity culture and the shame that came with it. I came out as a lesbian in my late teens, and basically said to hell with the church and every message it ever gave me. Every “rule” the church had given me about sex and purity was thrown in the dumpster. I overcame my shame by running headfirst into the culture that I had been told would surely be my downfall. 

And you know what? It wasn’t my downfall. I definitely made mistakes. If I could go back and change things, there are some things I wouldn’t have done with some of the people who came into my life. But there are other things that I shared with people who I loved fully, and I don’t regret those interactions for a second, even if the church would shame me for my sexual history. 

I actually don’t feel shame about my sex life. What?! The pastor’s kid made it out unscathed? Well, not quite. While my ability to have a healthy sex life is intact, other effects of the purity culture are still evident in my life. No, I don’t have panic attacks in the bedroom. I don’t feel an ounce of guilt or shame when I’m intimate with my partner. But I have extreme insecurity about my body and feeling good about myself. I’m getting better at makeup, but I always question if I’m doing it right and often opt for a “natural” look over the smokey eyes and dramatic colors. I know how to do my hair two ways: straight or a bun. I am insanely jealous of girls who can effortlessly curl their hair just right and look adorable. I try to curl my hair and I feel like I’m doing something wrong just by getting a little dolled up. 

Clothes are still really hard for me. I know that I can buy clothes that are flattering, I know I don’t need to have anyone’s permission or approval, I know that I don’t need to feel shame about feeling good about how my body looks. Yet I still ask my fiance if I should get this top or wear that dress, I still avoid revealing clothes (that really aren’t revealing at all), and I still feel so incredibly uncomfortable when I’m wearing anything that’s not a size too big. I may fight those feelings for my whole life, but I’m working on it. 

My biggest hope is that I’m able to stop these messages from reaching my future daughter’s ears. I want to have conversations with her about her sexuality and explain that it’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to feel the feelings. It’s okay to feel good about yourself. It’s okay to look nice. I pray that she never feels shamed into behaving a certain way for someone else. I hope that she knows about her options when she is considering having sex, and that she feels comfortable coming to her mom if she has questions or needs help. God knows I didn’t have that when I was a kid. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to save yourself for your future husband, or even just waiting until you feel the time is right. There IS something wrong with using shame to make women behave a certain way and live up to a standard put in place by an institution. I’m thankful that I found freedom and that so many other women have, too. 

[cottoncqndy]

MILKY TITTY BITCH

SOLIDARITY 🤝

[faithfullyuncool]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1YZLXpbFL4)

[bitacrytic]

I know this is a sarcastic jibe at purity culture but GOD, I'm going to start doing this now. I'm going to include, at least, one scene about my characters having a healthy meal or talking about a healthy meal in all my stories from now on.👩🏿‍🦯

tumblr media criticism

[marshmallowsandmedicine]

“You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

This is a little out of the norm for what I post on this blog, yet it’s a story of coming full circle - of the way that learning the practice of medicine has helped heal me.  And so, I think it fits.

I grew up in a conservative Christian family and from a young age was taught about modesty.  There were certain body parts that were “private” and should always be kept under wraps.  Two-piece swimsuits were out of the question, along with short-shorts, tank tops, tube tops - anything that showed too much skin.  My inquisitive prepubescent 9-year-old mind had a really hard time accepting this, mainly because I couldn’t fathom what my mom meant when she said that kind of clothing caused boys to have “bad thoughts.”  Resentfully, I complied, inwardly wishing I could wear the same outfits “cool kids” wore.

Fast-forward to middle school and my family moved north to south, where we started attending a much more conservative, hard-line church.  Now the leotards I used to wear in ballet were preached against from the pulpit.  The one-piece swimsuits in my closet?  Forget about it - girls and boys shouldn’t even be swimming together anyway!  I knew families who wouldn’t let their kids swim even fully clothed because apparently the sopping wet wrinkly look left too little to the imagination.  Necklines were high, pants had to have a certain amount of give, skirts were knee-length or longer, and shorts were really out of the question.  Better just stick to capris.

By high school I fully endorsed the modesty standards of my church (mostly).  I was the girl who told people they shouldn’t go to prom, the girl who read “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and absorbed the critical underlying premise of purity culture: girls’ bodies are a stumbling block.  I believed that God wanted me to dress modestly, yes, but I also believed that if I didn’t, guys around me would be all but forced into objectifying me and lusting after me.  The implied reason for dressing modestly was that I needed to cover up my body, which was a tantalizing piece of meat.  Although I had a diverse and positive high school experience which gave me a multi-faceted identity, somewhere in the back of my mind the dangerous thought was planted, that I was my body, and my body was a sexual object - a potential cause of sin.

College was a time of struggle and obsession over body image.  It was nearly 3 years of disordered eating, which although not reflected in the scale, certainly reflected in lost productivity, lost happiness, and low mental health.  When things went wrong, when people didn’t like me, I assumed it was my body.  I must be too fat (forget that I had always been, and still was, borderline underweight).  Dropping a pound meant happiness, success - because in my mind, I was my body, and to be thin was the highest goal.  Eventually, with maturity and greater self-kindness I overcame my demons and turned over a new healthier leaf, for a while.

Two years ago, I met a boy.  First we were friends, then we were more.  He was sweet (sometimes awkward) and deeply spiritual.  As we grew closer, he became one of the few guys I had ever met who really inspired me to be better.  I looked up to him.  He was so disciplined, so self-controlled, and he seemed to know the Bible inside and out.  At first I didn’t think I could be good enough for him, since the word on the street was that his standards were high.  But somehow I made the cut and we set out on an ill-fated journey.  There were warning signs along the way, but don’t we always see what we want to?  1) He had grown up going to the same conferences as the Duggars, the Institute of Basic Life Principles, led by the now-disgraced Bill Gothard (a legalistic “Christian” sleazebag accused of inappropriate relationships with young interns).  2) All the women in his family wore skirts and never wore pants.  3) He attended a tiny, exclusive church with extra-restrictive doctrines which taught that churches like mine were in “error.”

I should have read the writing on the wall.

It was a slow, insidious process.  One month of being reeled in and falling in love, and then the strings came out.  I’ll love you IF...  There were many strings, many conditional clauses, many things I needed to change to please him, but the biggest battle was what I wore.  As a clinical scribe, my daily outfit was scrubs.  You’d be hard-pressed to find a more relaxed and baggy pair of pants aside from sweats or pajamas.  And yet he told me, “When you move, I can see everything.”  “Guys aren’t like women, we’re very visual.”  “Why is it necessary to show every crack and cranny?”  And in so many words, “Wearing jeans that fit is basically like wearing nothing at all.”  We argued in circles.  Why isn’t it a double standard that men can wear pants if pants are too form-fitting?  I countered.  Well, men’s bodies aren’t attractive that way, he would answer.  In other words, it’s YOUR BODY that’s the PROBLEM.  You are sexual and create sexual thoughts in men, just by virtue of existing and being visible.

In the end, I stood my ground.  On principle, I don’t barter my integrity or views for a relationship, I don’t want love that comes with those kind of terms.  But the guilt lingered.  It was more than the typical breakup fallout, it was a deep sense of shame, of being not good enough, not holy enough, not modest enough.  And as someone who self-identified as modest and does care about dressing decently, this cut deep.  It meant spending endless hours of googling “are pants immodest” and perusing every article I could find.  It was questioning my intuition.  It was feeling that hot sense of anxiety and self-consciousness when I bent over or walked around clinic in my scrubs.  What if I was tempting some guy to check out my butt?  Who was looking?  What were they thinking?  I was, in short, viewing myself through the eyes of a pervert.  Objectifying myself.  Internalizing yet again the idea that I was a piece of meat.

***

I firmly believe in the power of a single idea.  (Didn’t Inception teach us anything?)  And our deepest emotional wounds are often not the result of external circumstances, but the way we choose to internally narrate the stories of our lives.  Often, it is a single false premise, a pesky, faulty, misbelief that must be brought to the light, inspected, and discarded before the healing can occur.  For me, one of these was the idea that I am my body, and my body is inherently sexual.

What needed to change was the way I saw the body.

Who knew that the key to this change looked like my student ID, scanning me into the cadaver lab?  There I started to see the human body differently, in all its post-mortem humility and frailty, but also as an amazing intricate masterpiece of coordinated systems.  I touched hearts and livers, fascia and genitalia.  The bodies of our donors lay before us, totally bare.  No clothes, no skin.  And it was not profane, not indecent, but sacred.

This semester we were introduced to the hallowed ritual of the physical examination.  We learned to become comfortable inspecting, auscultating, percussing, and palpating, and also taking off our shirts in front of our peers.  Stripping away clothing, we were also chipping away at the cultural lies that tell us our bodies are inherently sexual.  We learned to look with respect and touch with kindness.  

Today was our final OSCE.  It might seem like a small thing, but today I stood before one of my classmates, a male, in just shorts and a sports bra.  This was the first time I’d ever worn so little in front of one of my male peers.  And I knew in that moment, that he was not undressing me in his mind.  He was looking at me through a different lens, one of respect and dignity.  And in that moment, I understood once and for all.  My body is not, and has never been, a problem.  My body is not the reason someone catcalls or objectifies me.  The issue isn’t what there is to see, but the way we choose to see it.

“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?  But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.  These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

(Matthew 15:16-20)