Emily
Emily
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

I know the author of “I kissed dating goodbye” has retracted a lot of the content. He was also sleeping with his gf/wife’s friend as he was writing about sexual purity. While that doesn’t invalidate what he said (it’s possible to give excellent advice and not be able to follow it ourselves), it certainly feels like God/the universe suggesting that, perhaps, his is not the best way to go.

There’s a pretty simple test to know whether or not you’re ready to have sex: can you talk about sex openly and honestly with the person you’d have sex with? Can they with you? Do you have a (mutual) plan if pregnancy occurs? Can you talk openly about your body?

If a person can’t say “yes” to these questions (and enthusiastically say yes) he or she is probably not ready for sex, especially if they are under the age, of, say, 40. Okay, I exaggerate, but not by much. Healthy sex comes from people being able to communicate. Loving a partner is great, and means that, theoretically, open communication and comfort is already present, but “love” (esp. in the romantic sense) is not necessary for having health (or at least not rampantly toxic) sex.

While I definitely grew up in purity culture in school (I was at a very conservative, though not Goddard, school), my home was much more liberal. While the school was screaming about no sex, my mother was very “make sure you’re ready, make sure the guy is worth it, MAKE SURE IT IS SAFE!!, you can always talk to me about it.” It was that last one that got me. I knew, to be safe, I’d have to talk to my mom about it, and the last thing I wanted in hs was to talk to my mom about sex. I was so not ready. And it was good, for lots of reasons, that I waited. I’d give slightly different advice now to kids (I don’t have my own and won’t) than my mom gave, but she was very non-blamey. Sex wasn’t evil. Girls weren’t whores, etc. That voice in a cacophony of “dirty girl” crap was a life saver.

The backlash to purity culture — sex is meaningless, and waiting is dumb, desiring to wait is anti-feminist, etc. — is ugly. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to wait to have sex. There’s nothing wrong with putting parameters on relationships, etc. I think a lot of young people would be better off waiting, if only because sex is a complicated thing — with messy emotions and bodies and attitudes. Not having to deal with that at 14, 15, 16, even 21, 22, is possibly a very good thing.

The problem is the unification of sex and purity, and then that purity with (women’s) human worth. Humans are filled with worth because they are humans. A virgin is not worth more to the world or to God than a person whose had sex a million times.

I find the notion that a person’s body at all determines a person’s worth deeply UN-Christian. If you aren’t “productive” you’re not worthwhile? So, disabled, elderly, sick, tired, aren’t as worthwhile as the young and fit? Well, that sounds a lot like secular culture to me. While the body isn’t irrelevant to a relationship with God or the church, it certainly isn’t the be-all and end-all.

    Emily

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    Emily

    prof, writer, hockey fan, cat owner.