HOW PURITY CULTURE ENABLES RAPE CULTURE.
Purity /noun/: the state or quality of being pure.
Pure /adjective/:(1)clean and not containing any harmful substances,(2) complete and total.
Purity culture: any teaching that places the honour of a girl/woman on her vagina and reinforces the idea that premarital sex make women worthless.

I grew up in a Pentecostal church where I listened to many fire and brimstone messages.Messages about how you will burn in hell if you step out of line. I remember when I was admitted into the University at 16. A deaconess in my church asked me to see her before going to school. When I met up with her, she talked to me about life in uni. What to do and what not to do, gave me some advice on how to navigate through my first year. I was really happy until she finished talking to me and asked me to close my eyes so we could pray. While she was praying, she made a strange statement. She basically asked God to tie up any sexual urge in me in order to stop me from thinking about having sex, or even going as far as having sex. I think about this all the time and I laugh.
Many churches practice and teach purity culture targeted mainly towards girls. Some go to the extreme, by holding daddy-daughter dances where girls pledge their virginity to their fathers ~WTF~ vowing to wait until they get married to have sex. Some wear rings on the fourth finger of their left hands, which they eventually take off and replace with their wedding rings after they get married and have sex for the first time.
WHAT IS PURITY CULTURE ?
- Purity culture is blaming Eve for giving the apple to Adam and enticing him to sin. Every Christian girl knows Eve is the architect of our misfortune. Every bad thing women experience today is a result of Eve’s sin.
- Purity culture is comparing girls who are sexually active to expired food products. Because you know, girls automatically become expired milk after they have sex.
- Purity culture is placing the burden of the sexual thoughts of men on women. If a man lusts after you, then you probably looked or dressed a certain way to entice him.
- Purity culture is using “defile" to describe rape and saying Dinah was defiled, instead of saying Shechem raped her.
- Purity culture is telling girls that they are responsible for the sexual purity of men, because unlike men who are inherently sexual, we are just vessels who aren’t supposed to be sexual.
- Purity culture is telling girls that only “bad girls” enjoy sex.
HOW PURITY CULTURE ENABLE RAPE CULTURE.
Purity culture is marketed as something that protects women but to be very honest, that is not true.
Rape culture, like I explained in my previous post ( https://medium.com/@heyyberv/rape-culture-and-the-art-of-silencing-survivors-with-victim-blaming-274f63f03c84) normalizes and trivializes sexual assault while purity culture places the responsibility of the sexual thoughts of men on women there by putting the responsibility of preventing rape on women.
Purity culture enables rape culture in so many ways, many young girls are taught that dressing “modestly” or conservatively protects them from rape and that is not true. This is victim blaming, nothing, absolutely nothing protects girls from sexual predators .
Purity culture doesn’t teach consent instead it encourages women to go into marriage as naive and inexperienced as they can be, this also enables rape culture .Purity culture also encourages marital rape . Most women don’t even understand what marital rape is because they’ve been taught by the church and society that it is wrong to say no to sex whenever their partners ask for it. In other words, they believe marital rape is just a man talking what belongs to him according to the church and society.
Purity culture divides women into two groups ; the good girls and the bad girls and pray to God you don’t fall into the latter group. When a girl who is seen as a bad girl is abused sexually or physically, people see it as a punishment for her behaviour.
Guilt and shame are products of purity culture, when girls are taught that they become worthless after they have sex outside marriage they live with guilt and shame and it is even worse when they experience sexual violence because the victim automatically assumes it is just a punishment for the way she behaved or even dressed. What I don’t understand is how people expect women who finally have sex after they get married to just shake off this feeling of shame and guilt they’ve associated with sex because of what they were taught.
Nobody throws chastity balls for boys asking then to pledge their virginity to their mothers and the church, nobody makes women the gatekeepers of the sexuality of men so why then do people do it to girls? Double standard much?
Don’t get me wrong, abstinence is a good thing and it wonderful but not when it is forced on people. Instead of teaching and encouraging purity culture, instead of teaching girls to associate fear, shame and guilt with sex why not teach girls good and quality sex education. Teach them their body belongs to them alone and not to their fathers or the church. Talk to them about the clarity that comes with abstinence, tell them abstinence is a choice they can make without the pressure of the church. Teach them that they are not responsible for the sexual purity of men. Teach girls to love and embrace their bodies instead of seeing it as a weapon the devil uses to lure men to hell.
Do you know other ways purity culture enables rape culture? Or ways we can end purity culture? Drop a comment below, I would love to hear from you.
