Purity Culture and Sexual Abuse

If you are a survivor of either purity culture or sexual abuse, or both, and are in need of support, please reach out to a qualified professional. The harm inflicted on you matters deeply and deserves to be witnessed and healed. If you’d like to contact either Casey or I for one on one sessions, you may reach us here.

“It took me four years to recognize that what I had been through was actually abuse rather than my own sinful nature.”

Purity Culture

You have likely heard this term before. If you grew up in or have been exposed to evangelicalism at all, purity was probably a regular part of your vocabulary. Casey wrote a wonderful blog going more in depth about purity culture which you can read here. But let’s just define what Purity Culture is for the sake of exploring it as it relates to sexual abuse. Purity culture placed an emphasis on a woman’s virginity, highlighting her sexual innocence as holiness and purporting female sexuality as a gift to her future husband. The teachings within purity culture encouraged women to take responsibility for the sexual temptations of the men and boys around them, telling women and girls it was up to them to cover their bodies so as not to make their brothers stumble. I remember being taught that if I were to participate in sexual activity before marriage, I would always have “soul ties” to that person, I would have flashbacks when I was having sex with my future husband, and that it would be a major obstacle in my future marriage. This kind of messaging left no room for experiences of sexual abuse. Further, it implied that any sexual activity outside of a heteronormative, Christian marriage was largely the fault of women and girls.

Because purity culture placed such an emphasis on women being careful not to “cause their brothers to stumble” (among other things) consent and bodily autonomy were never taught or discussed. Women weren’t encouraged to learn about their own bodies or to explore what female pleasure actually is. Rather, women are taught to fear their own bodies and seriously disconnect from any experiences of pleasure. If someone does not know what they want when it comes to sex, there is no ability to fully consent. For so many women, sex is painful, uncomfortable, triggering, and often traumatizing but they’ve been conditioned to believe sex is not for them and their pleasure, it’s a gift to a man and something they owe to their husbands. A lack of information about our bodies, sex, and sexuality is a form of sexual abuse in and of itself. In my case, I bought into the messages of purity culture so strongly that I could not even recognize that what happened to me in my adolescence was actually sexual abuse rather than my own sexual sin.

Purity Culture as a Promise

Before discovering and diving deep into purity culture as a college freshman, I was in a sexually abusive dating relationship from the ages of 15 to 18. I spent most of my high school years feeling controlled by someone who never seemed satisfied with what I could compromise sexually, and who manipulated me into thinking I’d be lost without him. When I attended my first college Bible study, it happened to be focused on sexual purity. I felt like I finally had a way out of the hell I was living in. The messages of purity culture justified my discomfort with the sexual nature of my relationship and I began to pray for strength to leave.

I’m not surprised that many sexual abuse survivors find ourselves drinking the Kool-Aid of purity culture. To us, purity culture can feel like a protective friend wrapping us tightly in rules that promise relief. Chaos had been cruel to us and purity culture presented us a promise of control. Purity Culture assured me with a kind of safety I savored. A lot of us who have endured abuse feel oddly comforted by the belief that it was our fault. If it was my fault then it was mine to control. Maybe I wasn’t so helpless after all. Purity Culture reinforces this belief in a powerful way – so powerfully that I couldn’t even recognize that what had happened to me was abuse at all. I eagerly adopted the narrative that I was lost and living in sin. My pain was my fault and that meant that now, I could do things differently. When I noticed a guy in my campus ministry starting to “pursue” me, I took off some makeup and changed into a t-shirt and jeans, making sure that he wouldn’t do what I had caused that other guy to do. The whole reason I ended up leaving my abusive relationship is because of what Purity Culture promised me. She extended her hand in my first college Bible study and gave me an out that wasn’t coming from my own measly authority. I could invoke God’s name to keep myself safe! I’m forever grateful that Purity Culture gave me the power I needed to push back. The problem is I traded my abuser’s authority over my body and his comments of “I own you” for “Purity’s” authority over my body – which was presented in a more comforting way but was shaped just like the syringe of sexual abuse. I was injected with “God owns your body, it is his to use for his good. He will use you to advance his kingdom. Your body is God’s temple and you need to stay sexually pure so as not to defile it.” Do you hear the parallels? No wonder I felt myself cringe every time I heard about God wanting to use me. Hadn’t my body been used enough? 

Survivors of sexual assault are vulnerable to repeated victimization for several reasons. One of those reasons is that with any kind of active trauma, there is a chance you will subconsciously re-enact the trauma which occurred as a way to gain some sense of control over it. This is why we see a lot of people marrying partners that recreate the patterns of harmful parents - something in us tends to believe that we can change the outcome of our past by overcoming the same issue in our present. Now take this concept and apply it to thousands of women who have histories of sexual abuse - purity culture becomes a covert opportunity to re-enact sexual trauma because it shares so much in common with perpetrators of sexual abuse.

Purity Culture as a Perpetrator

Perpetrators of any form of abuse tend to prey on people who are most vulnerable. For me, it was my complex childhood trauma and desperation to be seen and wanted by a man that created the perfect opportunity for abuse. My perpetrator saw my desperation and used his love as bait to entice me into giving him exactly what he was hungry for.

Purity culture, for me, was the perfect platform for re-enactment of my own trauma. When we re-enact, we are attempting to finally gain power over something or someone that once caused us to feel so overwhelmingly powerless. Purity culture presented me with multiple opportunities to try to reclaim power. By being very cautious about how I dressed, and policing how my fellow females were dressing, I thought I was gaining power over how men perceived me. I thought I could make them stop seeing me as a sexual object (little did I realize, seeing women as objects of temptation was actually what they were being trained to do, and I had made an internal agreement with this cause). By overly controlling my own sexual desires and therefore disconnecting from my body, I thought I was gaining power over the thing that had hurt me so badly and the thing I was now being told would always hurt me that badly if I partook before marriage. In reality, I was still deeply disconnecting from my own experience of being an embodied human, unable to listen to what my body liked and didn’t like, wanted and didn’t want, and still felt stripped of a sense of choice. Purity culture was victim-blaming in disguise. Because I was deeply drinking in her messages right after I left my abusive relationship, it took me four years to recognize that what I had been through was actually abuse rather than my own sinful nature. If we are taught as women that our bodies are the problem, how are we supposed to be able identify our own oppression and abuse? Purity culture is a perpetrator of sexual abuse.

Healing From Purity Culture

Just a few years ago I might have thought I could never heal from my sexual abuse. It felt all consuming and like the most defining thing of my life. But with a lot of patience, support from my therapist, and a lot of listening to the story my body was holding, I experienced unbelievable freedom. And you can too. I deeply believe that for you. If I didn’t, I could not keep doing this work day after day - it would be too dark. One of the first steps in any kind of healing is to recognize and name the harm that happened. We get to feel angry, finally, about the harm inflicted on us by a system we so strongly trusted to protect us. When we name the problem as something external, like purity culture or sexual abuse, it gives us room to have compassion for the ways we have tried to cope with the harm. Your body tensing at the mention of sex is not a problem with your body, it’s a brilliant way your body has learned to protect you because of the problem of sexual perpetrators, sexual abuse, and purity culture. This leads to another hugely important part of healing: learning to befriend, listen to, and trust your body again. The sensations in your body are an unfolding story worthy of being heard and held. Unlike purity culture which teaches us to disconnect from our bodies and tells us our senses are sinful (which makes us so much easier to control), healing requires connection. You might need a safe guide to help you slowly and safely begin to reconnect with your body, and that guide might be a trauma therapist, coach, spiritual director, or even an author. Whatever or whoever your trusted guide may be, you are so worthy of being seen and heard for what you have experienced. Your pain and sense of violation are completely valid. Be patient with yourself - you’ve likely spent years beating your precious body into submission in order to survive the culture you were in - healing doesn’t happen violently or under force. Healing comes through unlearning that your body is bad, shameful, disgusting, and deceitful and learning to befriend her and hear her cries. So I leave you with this: you are just as capable of healing as you were of adapting to the harmful environment you found yourself in. Purity Culture doesn’t have the last say - you do.

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