
Purity Culture: Sacrificing girls for virginity
More than 200 million girls in the world have been cut in the name of fulfilling men. A world more comfortable with maiming women than holding men responsible for their actions is not a world that respects women.
A chewed up piece of gum, a totaled car, a mattress that has already been slept on, a woman who has had sex before marriage. One doesn’t belong. Three of these are items, things, products and objects. One is a human being with thoughts, dreams, a heartbeat, a pulse, hopes, aspirations, and a life. Yet, in many cultures and houses of worship, all four of these are seemingly stuffed into the same category all thanks to purity culture. Purity culture teaches girls:
- the importance of “saving” themselves for marriage so that they’re not seen as damaged goods in the eyes of their husband, their family, the community, the congregation, and God when they finally get married.
- their “value” is inextricably linked to their virginity status meaning their “worth” decreases with every sexual encounter, making them less marketable.
- having sex before marriage deprives their fathers of the joy of “giving away” a “clean,” “unused,” and “undamaged,” daughter.
- sex needs to be as pleasurable as possible for their future husbands, which is why they need to abstain from sex until marriage.
- to dress modestly in order to keep men from committing the sin of lust.
- it’s unnatural for women to have sexual desires.
Purity culture, in so many words, objectifies, dehumanizes, lies to, and shames women for the sake of appeasing men. All of the fundamentals of purity culture have to do with women submitting to a lifestyle of abstinence and sexual suppression to ameliorate men’s personal, social and sex lives. If it’s not for her husband, it’s for her father. If it’s not for her father, it’s for her religious leader (who is likely a man due to pervasive sexist attitudes in houses of faith about women assuming leadership positions). Purity culture reinforces dangerous and oppressive notions that women’s bodies and autonomy don’t belong to them but to men. Women are taught that the honor of their family lies on their shoulders and in their vaginas. They’re deemed responsible for their purity as well as men’s.
Let’s walk through this again. This time, with an addendum on each bullet point explaining why this language is sexist, irresponsible, and ignorant.
Purity culture teaches girls:
- the importance of “saving” themselves for marriage so that they’re not seen as damaged goods in the eyes of their husband, their family, the community, the congregation, and God when they finally get married. Women are not goods, they’re people. Goods are disposable inanimate objects. Women are living, breathing beings. Equating women to used cars, hand-me-downs, and thrift store items is inhumane, abhorrent, and downright irresponsible. This comparison of women to things has paved the way for systematic sexism to flourish, leaving women vulnerable to violence, objectification and discrimination.
- their “value” is inextricably linked to their virginity status meaning their “worth” decreases with every sexual encounter, making them less marketable. Women don’t have “value” or “worth” and neither do men. People don’t come with price tags, things do. Language like this has cost thousands of women their lives and their freedom. It has subjected girls and women to invasive and degrading procedures like virginity testing. During a virginity test, a doctor inserts two fingers inside a girl’s vagina to determine if her hymen is still intact. Governments and agencies like the World Health Organisation have slammed these tests as scientifically-invalid (since a girl’s hymen can break without having engaged in sexual intercourse), discriminatory, traumatic and cruel. Girls and women whose hymens are found to be torn are at risk of losing out on job opportunities or being fired, being ostracized from school, being publicly shamed, being imprisoned or getting killed. When virginity is prioritized and revered more so than women, we’ve got a human rights violation on our hands and purity culture has blood on it.
- having sex before marriage deprives their fathers of the joy of “giving away” a “clean,” “unused,” and “undamaged,” daughter. We’ve normalized the ritual of fathers “giving away” their daughters at wedding ceremonies. The father proudly walks his daughter down the aisle to her soon-to-be husband who is standing at the altar patiently awaiting her arrival. The officiant asks “who gives this woman away?” to which the father of the bride declares “I do.” He then places his daughter’s hand in the groom’s as he figuratively and literally passes her off to another man as to say “She was mine. Now she’s yours.” It seems innocuous but is it? What are we really implying when women are subjects of a transaction on their wedding day? That women are objects that can be passed around? That women should always be under the authority and control of a man?
- sex needs to be as pleasurable as possible for their future husbands, which is why they need to abstain from sex until marriage. Enhancing male pleasure is one reason female genital mutilation exists. The practice of partially or completely removing girls’ genitalia is nothing short of a human rights violation and is an act of gender-based violence. The goal of FGM is to prevent pubescent girls from having premarital sex and to improve the sensation of sex for her future husband. During the procedure, some circumsisers will sew a girl’s labia back together and leave a tiny hole for urine. Once that girl gets married and has sex for the first time, her husband will take a razor blade to her genitalia to remove the stitches, causing many FGM survivors to bleed excessively and sometimes, to death. Some of the other potential side effects of FGM are hemorrhage, fistula, permanent loss of bladder control, and paralysis. More than 200 million girls in the world have been cut in the name of fulfilling men, which brings me to my next point. Women don’t exist to please men. No ifs, and, or buts about it. A common justification for endorsing female purity is “a man doesn’t want to be with a woman who has been with everybody.” Ditto. Women don’t want to be with men who have been with everybody either yet purity isn’t emphasized to boys the way it is to girls. Boys aren’t raised to think their chastity is a prized possession that completes them and no holy ritual has ever called for boys to “prove their virginity” for any purpose. And I’m not saying they should. I’m saying no one, male or female, should. Also, people often conflate premarital sex with prosmiscuity. Having sex before marriage doesn’t automatically mean you’ve “been with everybody.” Maybe you’ve had sex with one other person or maybe you’ve slept with dozens of people. Regardless, having sex doesn’t make you filthy or immoral and it certainly doesn’t define you.
- to dress modestly in order to keep men from committing the sin of lust. Women aren’t responsible for controlling men’s sexual urges. Men are. There are practices throughout the world, such as breast ironing in Cameroon, that cater to this menancing mindset. Instead of demanding men not to prey on women, the focus and responsibility of moral sanctity is pinned on women. Women are forced to hide their bodies and are disfigured to decrease their appeal to the opposite sex. Language like this enables men to blame women for their indecencies and exonerates them from accountability in cases of abuse, rape and sexual assault. A world more comfortable with maiming women than holding men responsible for their actions is not a world that respects women.
- it’s unnatural for women to have sexual desires. This is just wildly untrue. While there are differences between male and female sex drives, women still enjoy and crave sex just as much as men do. We, as animals, have an innate desire to have sex, whether for reproduction, pleasure or relaxation. Sexual proclivity isn’t just a “man thing.” It’s a human thing.
Ultimately, purity culture is laced with sexist lies that are geared toward controlling women and their bodies, decisions, futures, and lives. Time to throw it out. Sexism really shouldn’t exist so comfortably in religion, of all things.
