Purity Culture Vs. Rape Culture
Are they really all that different?
I was twelve years old the first time I learned of my duty to dress modestly, lest I cause a man to sin.
A flat-chested, athletic, tomboy of a girl, the last thing I saw myself as was an object of sexual desire, yet the message was clear: what I wore and how I acted made me responsible for a man’s thoughts and actions toward me.
I was yet to realise this message would stay with me for the next two decades of my life. That it would be the voice that would see me unable to wear a dress or skirt should I appear too feminine and unintentionally lead a man to impure thoughts. That it would make me fearful of every interaction I had with boys through my teenage years. That it would be the self-contempt in later years when men were inadvertently attracted to me.
And that it would be the reason I would remain silent about the years of sexual abuse I endured because of the shame that somehow, I had been the one to make it happen.
This message that a woman is responsible for the thoughts and actions of men is at the core of the purity culture; a movement that rampaged through American churches in the ’90s before filtering into Christian churches here in Australia. The movement emphasised extreme modesty for women, stating if a woman was to…
