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SMNTY Classics: The Myths of Virginity (Part 2) · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stephone
0:07
Speaker 1: Never Told You a production of iHeart Radio. So we
0:19
Speaker 1: are back with our part two of our classic reruns
0:23
Speaker 1: on the miss of virginity. Because we have been talking
0:26
Speaker 1: about that, We've been talking about purity culture, we've been
0:27
Speaker 1: talking about religion, we've been talking about abstinence. All of
0:31
Speaker 1: these things and all of the morality that gets tied
0:34
Speaker 1: up into these things.
0:36
Speaker 2: It's a lot. It's a lot.
0:37
Speaker 3: It's a lot.
0:38
Speaker 1: So please enjoy our second part on the miss of
0:41
Speaker 1: virginity in this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and
0:50
Speaker 1: Samantha and welcome to stephone Never Told You a production
0:52
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio, and welcome.
1:03
Speaker 3: Back to Part two of the Myths of Virginity and Purity.
1:07
Speaker 3: And here we're actually going to be speaking a lot
1:09
Speaker 3: more to purity and purity culture of what it looks
1:13
Speaker 3: like today. But first, just a trigger warning. We're not
1:16
Speaker 3: really talking in depth about anything really sexual or any
1:21
Speaker 3: of that. We're just really talking more of analogies and
1:24
Speaker 3: present culture and idea of abstinence. But for those who
1:29
Speaker 3: have been raised in maybe Southern Baptist cultures or Western
1:34
Speaker 3: Christian cultures, this may be too much for you, and
1:36
Speaker 3: that's fine, So just go ahead and put that here
1:38
Speaker 3: at the topics. We're going to dive deep into that
1:41
Speaker 3: the American idea of purity, and sometimes I could be traumatic,
1:46
Speaker 3: especially if you've had a falling out with religion, this
1:48
Speaker 3: might be a little more traumatic. So FYI, right, So Annie,
1:52
Speaker 3: I have to ask, and I already know this answer,
1:54
Speaker 3: but I actually I don't know if I know this answer.
1:57
Speaker 3: Because you said you were pretty you grew up in
1:59
Speaker 3: a religious town. Did you ever get involved in any
2:02
Speaker 3: type of Christian organizations in school when you were in Delanago,
2:07
Speaker 3: which is a small town in Georgia.
2:08
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't get involved in school. Funnily enough, I
2:13
Speaker 1: once like really embarrassed myself. I was in seventh grade
2:16
Speaker 1: and this popular girl asked me in a very like
2:20
Speaker 1: in a clear way, that there's only one right answer,
2:23
Speaker 1: and she said, are you a Christian?
2:24
Speaker 2: And I didn't know what that meant?
2:26
Speaker 1: Even though I did go to church, I didn't know.
2:31
Speaker 1: But I went through a period where I was really religious,
2:33
Speaker 1: but in general I wasn't.
2:34
Speaker 2: That was like one hardcore year of my life.
2:37
Speaker 1: I thought it was cool to be religious, so I
2:39
Speaker 1: would go with my friends.
2:40
Speaker 2: Usually over the summer.
2:42
Speaker 1: I would do like, you know, Bible vacation camp with them,
2:45
Speaker 1: with their churches. I would do things like that, but
2:48
Speaker 1: I always felt like the friend who can't be saved
2:52
Speaker 1: or something to a friend who's like not enlightened enough
2:57
Speaker 1: to realize that she's gonna go straight down.
3:01
Speaker 3: Oh God, Okay, so you would have been that friend
3:05
Speaker 3: that I would have been trying to convert in high school.
3:11
Speaker 4: I guess.
3:11
Speaker 1: So, I mean by high school, yeah, I was already
3:13
Speaker 1: like nope, but not religious. But yeah, this was middle
3:16
Speaker 1: school where I was interested right in religion, but I
3:22
Speaker 1: just never, I don't know, it didn't really take off
3:26
Speaker 1: with me again.
3:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is interesting because in my school, the popular
3:33
Speaker 3: kids were the first Baptist church kids and they were
3:36
Speaker 3: the president of all the SCA. So the Christians athlete clubs,
3:43
Speaker 3: you were a part of that. You came in early
3:46
Speaker 3: mornings to do the different Christian clubs to be a
3:49
Speaker 3: part of it. You weren't cool unless you went to
3:51
Speaker 3: church events, and I couldn't afford it until way later.
3:55
Speaker 3: So I was like tenth eleventh grade before I could
3:57
Speaker 3: go to any of those things. But of course you
3:59
Speaker 3: also know that tales that couples came out of these
4:03
Speaker 3: little Christian camps as well. I was a diehard. When
4:06
Speaker 3: it comes to anything emotional spiritual, I get caught up
4:09
Speaker 3: in it. I love the beauty of that, of being
4:14
Speaker 3: swept into a moment, feeling that energy, and I got
4:20
Speaker 3: caught all up in that. And it is And when
4:24
Speaker 3: it comes to religion and sex, we know the lines.
4:29
Speaker 3: It is very defined. And though value of virginity is international,
4:33
Speaker 3: We've talked about this, we talked about this previously, is historical,
4:35
Speaker 3: it's international. When it comes to Western Christian ideology, specifically
4:39
Speaker 3: in the US, the ideology of purity has a whole
4:43
Speaker 3: new spend and a lot more money to it. So
4:46
Speaker 3: we did want to talk about that in this episode.
4:49
Speaker 3: And yes, again we know it's very Americanized in this
4:52
Speaker 3: but it's such a fascinating subject to me that if
4:55
Speaker 3: I were not in the middle of it and it
4:56
Speaker 3: did not grow up in it, I would be blown away.
4:59
Speaker 3: And as you talk about, when you visited like France,
5:02
Speaker 3: people were like, what is wrong with you?
5:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a real eye opener for me because
5:11
Speaker 1: I don't know how it came up, but the host family,
5:14
Speaker 1: I was living with. There was a woman a little
5:17
Speaker 1: bit older than me at the time, so we were
5:19
Speaker 1: both like, you know, eighteen nineteen, and she was like, oh, yeah,
5:24
Speaker 1: my first time was a good I barely remember it,
5:26
Speaker 1: like it's not a big deal here.
5:27
Speaker 2: And I was like, what right? Right?
5:30
Speaker 3: I find it funny because we talked about this earlier,
5:32
Speaker 3: how you and I when I was doing this research.
5:35
Speaker 3: Part of this research, I was looking at the cultural differences,
5:38
Speaker 3: and again, there's not a lot of cultural differences because
5:41
Speaker 3: the value of women and autonomy. It's kind of overall like, yeah,
5:45
Speaker 3: women are valued lest everywhere, let's just be very honest.
5:49
Speaker 3: But the idea that outside of the US, most cultures
5:55
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, white girls are sluts, right, they don't
5:57
Speaker 3: they don't care, they are crazy. Like it's it's almost
6:00
Speaker 3: funny to me to see that level because I don't
6:04
Speaker 3: think about that. And again, I'm Asian, and to me,
6:07
Speaker 3: I've been fetishized since my childhood. I've been abused, you know,
6:12
Speaker 3: in my childhood because a part of that and a
6:14
Speaker 3: part of that appeal of young girls and the nastiness
6:17
Speaker 3: of pedophilia and all that that, I was a part
6:20
Speaker 3: of that world and so all of that ruined so
6:24
Speaker 3: much of the concepts to me in general. So because
6:28
Speaker 3: I've already felt dirty, I already felt like an outsider,
6:31
Speaker 3: I already felt like the other white girls were the
6:34
Speaker 3: obvious preference of who I wish I was and what
6:39
Speaker 3: people prefer in my mind. Of course, we don't. That's
6:42
Speaker 3: not true at all, but it's kind of funny when
6:44
Speaker 3: we look at like I think one of the research
6:47
Speaker 3: papers talked about how the LATINX women who had grown
6:51
Speaker 3: up understanding sex was beautiful and they also valued their
6:55
Speaker 3: virginity and value this morality, but it wasn't about waiting
6:58
Speaker 3: till marriage. It was just about waiting to find someone
7:00
Speaker 3: you cared about and experiencing something beautiful in the story.
7:04
Speaker 3: And this whole idea of waiting till marriage was so
7:06
Speaker 3: absurd to them, in that idea of like, so you're
7:09
Speaker 3: trapping yourself without knowing you're you're going to be happy
7:12
Speaker 3: like that, that's absurd. Why would you want to do that?
7:15
Speaker 3: And I kind of laugh, I'm like, yeah, I think
7:17
Speaker 3: I grew up when I finally realized that, like twenty
7:20
Speaker 3: two twenty three that I'm like, I don't think I
7:22
Speaker 3: want to be married. This is not This is not sustainable.
7:25
Speaker 3: This idea is not sustainable. But I found that interesting
7:28
Speaker 3: when you look outside that perspective of how different it
7:31
Speaker 3: really is when it comes to the US and beyond.
7:35
Speaker 3: So it was kind of like, Okay, let's take this
7:37
Speaker 3: deep dive, because it's a hell of a tell. So
7:41
Speaker 3: purity culture has been around the US for quite some time,
7:45
Speaker 3: but in the early nineties, conservative evangelists in the US
7:48
Speaker 3: Protestant groups organized the strategy one person called extreme abstinence.
7:53
Speaker 3: And this was kind of a reaction to the MTV
7:57
Speaker 3: Wild and Out kind of era where girls gone Wild
8:00
Speaker 3: was getting really popular at this point, the beach house
8:03
Speaker 3: where girls you know, were dancing in bikinis and all
8:07
Speaker 3: of the old fashioned American families were like, oh my god,
8:10
Speaker 3: what's happening to our kids. So the reaction was extreme abstinence.
8:17
Speaker 2: Oh Lord.
8:17
Speaker 3: So those who advocated for this would advise girls and
8:21
Speaker 3: women to be submissive, stay away from leadership roles, and
8:24
Speaker 3: conform to old ideals of courtship, not being in mixed
8:27
Speaker 3: company unless regulated, and making sure they're guarding every part
8:31
Speaker 3: of their preciousness. And when they speak of courtship, the
8:34
Speaker 3: practice involves making sure that the interaction between women and
8:37
Speaker 3: men were specifically to pursue an intent in marriage under
8:41
Speaker 3: the explicit supervision and permission of the woman's father. Nowhere
8:45
Speaker 3: are we talking about mothers in this, by the way,
8:48
Speaker 3: And as one article explains, quote, this expectation is that
8:51
Speaker 3: pure young women will remain under the authority of fathers
8:54
Speaker 3: until they trade it for the authority of their husbands
8:57
Speaker 3: and marriages arranged by their father. So they were going
9:02
Speaker 3: all out and controlling from young to old. So we
9:06
Speaker 3: got you from childhood all the way up, and we're
9:09
Speaker 3: going to control every aspect, including dating, including meeting men
9:13
Speaker 3: getting married. Of course, I know on spenty they've talked
9:17
Speaker 3: about marriages and weddings and all of the bad connotations
9:22
Speaker 3: to that and all of the nice connotations. But how
9:24
Speaker 3: that is steeped in patriarchal traditions, and this is kind
9:29
Speaker 3: of fulfilling and being a part of that as well.
9:32
Speaker 3: Beyond just the practices of abstinence and submission, the movement
9:35
Speaker 3: goes another step backwards. Yeah, I said it for young
9:38
Speaker 3: girls and women, with the expectations that women would be
9:41
Speaker 3: wholly responsible for not being temptations or stumbling blocks for men.
9:47
Speaker 3: That women must be responsible by doing everything in their
9:49
Speaker 3: power in regard to the way they talk, dress, or
9:52
Speaker 3: act in a way that would not evoke sexual desire
9:55
Speaker 3: from a man, because obviously men can't control themselves duh
10:01
Speaker 3: when it comes to sex everything else. I can control
10:03
Speaker 3: our bodies, yeah, but they can't control their own bodies.
10:07
Speaker 3: And if you've ever been a part of Sunday School,
10:09
Speaker 3: we all learned of how Eve is the mother of
10:12
Speaker 3: temptation and she is the one that caused Adam to
10:15
Speaker 3: send So of course that's going to affect all of
10:19
Speaker 3: creation and humanity, right right, Yeah, And I you.
10:23
Speaker 1: Know, we are speaking in a lot of like generalizations
10:26
Speaker 1: and these because that's just the research that we have
10:29
Speaker 1: or the information that we have. But I remember the
10:30
Speaker 1: first time I went to the Vatican, and I it
10:35
Speaker 1: was summer, and I was in shorts and a tank
10:37
Speaker 1: chop and I tried to go in one of the
10:39
Speaker 1: churches and these like old men came running at me,
10:42
Speaker 1: screaming at me and like shoot me out, and they
10:46
Speaker 1: were they had like this thing they would cover you
10:49
Speaker 1: with to go in. And you know, I'm not trying
10:53
Speaker 1: to disrespect anybody's believe our cultures but it was just
10:55
Speaker 1: a moment of like, holy hell, I can't even I
10:59
Speaker 1: was wearing shorts that like right naked or something, right,
11:05
Speaker 1: but yeah, feeling that shame like immediately just it drew
11:10
Speaker 1: so much attention to me. It was so embarrassing, right,
11:13
Speaker 1: oh god.
11:14
Speaker 4: Yeah.
11:28
Speaker 1: So this new strategy and not only pushed a powerful
11:32
Speaker 1: narrative and movement, but yeah, it brought in a lot
11:34
Speaker 1: of money. Whether it was new books and study guides
11:37
Speaker 1: for church youth groups all over the country, retreats, or
11:40
Speaker 1: new programs. There was money spent to push this narrative,
11:43
Speaker 1: including large amounts of grants sent to schools and organizations
11:47
Speaker 1: that taught abstinence only programs. My school was one of those.
11:51
Speaker 1: I don't know if they got any money, but abstinence
11:53
Speaker 1: only was our education.
11:55
Speaker 3: So yeah they would because automatically that was the only qualifier.
11:58
Speaker 3: If you're willing to not take comprehensive sex said and
12:02
Speaker 3: do absence only, you get this federal grant at that
12:05
Speaker 3: point time.
12:05
Speaker 2: Wow wow wow.
12:09
Speaker 1: And out of that with the mega push for mega
12:11
Speaker 1: churches and the Southern Baptist Convention, we have programs like
12:16
Speaker 1: True Love Weights.
12:17
Speaker 3: Did you have this program?
12:20
Speaker 1: We might have I don't remember it, but I mean
12:22
Speaker 1: it sounds familiar, sounds like something.
12:25
Speaker 3: I heard about clearly and vividly. See the signs it
12:28
Speaker 3: with a giant banner. We had a whole table set
12:31
Speaker 3: in the cafeteria during lunch that kids could go over
12:35
Speaker 3: and sign the cars. You got a sticker, you got
12:37
Speaker 3: a pen, you got a little swag, and then you
12:40
Speaker 3: walked away. It was purple and white and pink and
12:42
Speaker 3: it was super cute and True Love Weights yay. And
12:46
Speaker 3: then we had a huge conference about it, an assembly
12:50
Speaker 3: for it.
12:52
Speaker 1: Well, well, I do think we're not talking about this
12:57
Speaker 1: this much in this one. We didn't talk about too
13:00
Speaker 1: much in the other one. But I do think there's
13:03
Speaker 1: been kind of a push back of basically what I'm saying,
13:08
Speaker 1: and we put too much pressure on virginity one way
13:10
Speaker 1: or the other. Because in my school, that would have
13:13
Speaker 1: been a very uncool thing to do, like you would
13:18
Speaker 1: have been made from and that, like that's not cool either.
13:22
Speaker 1: But you know, I do think we've also got that
13:25
Speaker 1: aspect of yeah, once you reach a certain age in
13:29
Speaker 1: your virgin wipe your hands with that person, which is
13:34
Speaker 1: also ridiculous, right, But okay, True Love Weights is a
13:38
Speaker 1: campaign created in nineteen ninety three, which was an absinent
13:41
Speaker 1: only youth program that used different tactics for young teams
13:44
Speaker 1: to commit to abstaining from sex and waiting for love.
13:49
Speaker 1: They use conferences, concerts, school campaigns that registered kids to
13:53
Speaker 1: sign cards with with a vow of chastity. Purity balls
13:58
Speaker 1: began in the nineties as well, a bit different. Instead
14:01
Speaker 1: of just a vow written on a card promising to
14:04
Speaker 1: yourself and God, it was a father daughter dance that
14:08
Speaker 1: allowed an opportunity for the daughter and father to exchange
14:12
Speaker 1: vows of chastity and protection to each other, the daughter
14:15
Speaker 1: vowing to her father to remain pure until her marriage
14:18
Speaker 1: and a father vowing to somehow protecting their daughter's purity
14:24
Speaker 1: as well.
14:25
Speaker 2: Many of the.
14:26
Speaker 1: Events involved in exchange of purity rings. A lot of
14:30
Speaker 1: these events were actually federally funded and not surprisingly a
14:35
Speaker 1: pretty big hit in the Christian schools, including Christian homeschool
14:38
Speaker 1: movements and a lot of modern relevant churches and affiliated
14:43
Speaker 1: Christian programs.
14:45
Speaker 3: Right I found these fascinating. I was not a part
14:48
Speaker 3: of this. Again, my family they would talk about it
14:52
Speaker 3: and would hope for the best, but let you be
14:54
Speaker 3: kind of understand, I think they understood that you can't
14:57
Speaker 3: make a kid do something that's not possible, forbid something,
15:01
Speaker 3: why why would you do that? And there was there
15:03
Speaker 3: was a decent amount of conversation and trust when it
15:06
Speaker 3: came to that type of conversation. I will say because
15:11
Speaker 3: of this in my circle, which it was not necessarily
15:14
Speaker 3: uncool to be a virgin, that was not a thing.
15:16
Speaker 3: It was weirder to see people have sex. And I
15:18
Speaker 3: wasn't shocked for it because I was in like, but
15:22
Speaker 3: but but but but when it came down to what
15:27
Speaker 3: happened instead, kind of in that same idea of waiting
15:32
Speaker 3: until marriage, marriage ended up being at nineteen years old,
15:34
Speaker 3: and now chuckle, people are divorced, and that included my
15:37
Speaker 3: family members. They're trying to save themselves of a marriage.
15:40
Speaker 3: They're trying to wait, do the right thing. And then
15:42
Speaker 3: oh no, I rushed into this because of LUs rather
15:45
Speaker 3: than love, which is easy to confuse when we're confused
15:48
Speaker 3: about what love and lust does in general.
15:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when you're young.
15:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, these purity balls were such a weird
15:56
Speaker 3: concept to me. It sounded nice because of course, you
16:00
Speaker 3: want to be with your dad and hanging out and
16:02
Speaker 3: kind of reminiscent of the father daughter dance at a wedding,
16:05
Speaker 3: which also has a lot to do with the patriarchal
16:08
Speaker 3: traditions as well, and handing over the daughter. All of
16:12
Speaker 3: these things, and the fact that this began to early.
16:15
Speaker 3: So some of the people who some of the kids
16:17
Speaker 3: who's attended, some of the girls were six years old,
16:19
Speaker 3: So it started as six years old. Wow. Yeah, I
16:21
Speaker 3: know a lot of people say sixteen, but it actually
16:23
Speaker 3: started as six. And so this kind of level was
16:28
Speaker 3: this automatic like instillment of your mind and if you
16:32
Speaker 3: do this, you're going to disappoint me, which is kind
16:35
Speaker 3: of the majority of sitcoms and or TV shows that
16:39
Speaker 3: I've seen is the narrative of disappointing the father because
16:42
Speaker 3: they had sex, oh no, and ruining their relationship because
16:46
Speaker 3: they somehow broke a trust, which is sad.
16:50
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, so much of what we're talking about,
16:51
Speaker 1: all of it that's very heteronormative. I know we said it,
16:54
Speaker 1: yes and the last one, but yeah, also here very heteronormative. Vagina,
16:58
Speaker 1: penis sex we're talking about, but almost everything we're talking about.
17:01
Speaker 1: I'm struck and I shouldn't be by how it's all
17:04
Speaker 1: about men. Right, Like, even if we're talking about women
17:10
Speaker 1: and why you know, women doing these things, it's still
17:13
Speaker 1: like the men first doing it.
17:18
Speaker 3: So you never signed those cards?
17:20
Speaker 1: No, okay, And I don't remember that being a thing.
17:26
Speaker 1: Like I said, in my school, it was kind of
17:29
Speaker 1: a tightrope and it was hard to win.
17:31
Speaker 2: But that would have been very uncool.
17:33
Speaker 1: There were certain there was a group of like really
17:36
Speaker 1: Christian kids and yeah, my best friend who is her
17:40
Speaker 1: parents were really Catholic. I got a lot of like
17:42
Speaker 1: hearing from her about yet no living together before marriage
17:45
Speaker 1: and a sex before marriage. She always said try it, free,
17:48
Speaker 1: buy it. But yeah, in my.
17:52
Speaker 2: Group, we didn't really do that.
17:53
Speaker 3: I know.
17:53
Speaker 1: I've told the story before that a niece of mine
17:58
Speaker 1: I got contacted she was eight by her mother, and
18:01
Speaker 1: her mother wanted me to be at this chastity ceremony
18:04
Speaker 1: and I refused.
18:05
Speaker 2: To go, and I told her why.
18:07
Speaker 1: I was like, look, I want to be supportive of
18:09
Speaker 1: things that these are my problems with it.
18:11
Speaker 2: Never heard from her again.
18:13
Speaker 3: How old was the girl and they had this ceremony.
18:15
Speaker 2: I think she was eight. She was pain so wow.
18:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, so were they having her in like a white
18:21
Speaker 3: dress and all of that, Yes, yeah, so it was
18:23
Speaker 3: a mock wedding with her father. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:29
Speaker 3: There's so many things to uncover with that. Again, it's
18:34
Speaker 3: kind of this whole, this whole conversation, as you were
18:37
Speaker 3: saying before, it's like, yeah, it's very heteronormative, but it
18:39
Speaker 3: is also the understanding of how this gendered roles and
18:42
Speaker 3: gender biases are placed and staunchly looked down on if
18:47
Speaker 3: you try to disrupt it as well, which is why
18:50
Speaker 3: they're not considered because automatically you're dismissed. As we talked
18:53
Speaker 3: about in the last episode when marginalized women were automatically
18:56
Speaker 3: dismissed of being pure point blank because you're not. It's
19:01
Speaker 3: that same concept here that if you're not heterosexual and
19:04
Speaker 3: you're not cis gender, that means your art automatically dismissed
19:07
Speaker 3: as impure, so therefore you're not part of this narrative. Again,
19:11
Speaker 3: very damaging in so many ways because it neglects so
19:14
Speaker 3: much and obviously it's hurtful, dismissive, and just fairly the
19:20
Speaker 3: fact to other that because you're not in this majority,
19:24
Speaker 3: which is kind a majority if you really think on it,
19:27
Speaker 3: but in their mind it is because it's supposed to
19:29
Speaker 3: be the norm quote unquote, and I'm saying this very
19:33
Speaker 3: very like sarcastically, but this is the assumption. But yeah,
19:37
Speaker 3: this is that very big conversation of like, we are
19:40
Speaker 3: instilling gender biases that are damaging in this type of practice.
19:45
Speaker 3: But it's also yeah, it is absolutely a key point
19:49
Speaker 3: for a lot of the religious right. This is what
19:52
Speaker 3: they want. This is what they're doing, is to bring
19:55
Speaker 3: this And we don't talk about this in this episode,
19:58
Speaker 3: but actually, and every I read through, of course it
20:01
Speaker 3: hasn't evolved. I was just tired. I think by we
20:04
Speaker 3: were just tired by the end of this. We're like, oh,
20:05
Speaker 3: there's so much that we were just like, okay, we can't
20:07
Speaker 3: get into this too. But yes, this is very political.
20:10
Speaker 3: This is a very big political stance. A lot of
20:12
Speaker 3: these movements are political about taking autonomy away from women
20:16
Speaker 3: in general. And it begins at a young age when
20:18
Speaker 3: it comes to sexual identity, because you must find shame
20:21
Speaker 3: and shame factors into what you're allowed to do, which
20:24
Speaker 3: you're not allowed to do what you're seeing as and again,
20:27
Speaker 3: if it's not based for procreation, then therefore it's already
20:31
Speaker 3: sin to begin with, right right. So it's this whole
20:34
Speaker 3: level and I remember growing up reading books like Passion
20:38
Speaker 3: and Purity, which I'm sure you I read a lot
20:41
Speaker 3: of Christian literature in high school. And I want to
20:44
Speaker 3: shout out to our friend who wrote to us who
20:47
Speaker 3: live in rural Georgia saying, I hear you submit them.
20:50
Speaker 3: I'm right with you with the religion. Hi, Yeah, this
20:52
Speaker 3: is exactly like I was inundated and I put myself there.
20:56
Speaker 3: But it wasn't my parents because they didn't read this stuff.
20:59
Speaker 3: It was me that I got caught up in that
21:01
Speaker 3: because I needed to fill whole. And I'm gonna kind
21:04
Speaker 3: of come back to my own little editorial bit I
21:07
Speaker 3: guess in that because I got caught up in this,
21:10
Speaker 3: I really wanted to find value in myself again, and
21:13
Speaker 3: this felt like a way I could. So I took
21:15
Speaker 3: that whole thing of I don't know if you told
21:18
Speaker 3: you about this book. I kissed dating Goodbye, which turns
21:20
Speaker 3: out the dude who wrote this book made a lot
21:23
Speaker 3: of money finally found his wife. Wrote about that and
21:26
Speaker 3: how about how he saved himself from marriage and purity
21:29
Speaker 3: and courtship again. We talked about it in the first episode.
21:32
Speaker 3: If you want to know what we're talking about, but courtship,
21:35
Speaker 3: all of these things, and then coming into like I
21:38
Speaker 3: think present day, he was like, I was wrong, never mind,
21:41
Speaker 3: don't do that, and essentially disabout that. And there's been
21:45
Speaker 3: several actually several more current contemporary Christian people who are
21:50
Speaker 3: on that same line, not necessarily saying you should have sex,
21:52
Speaker 3: but like, this is not the right idea, this is
21:54
Speaker 3: not the right way, this is too patriarchal, this is
21:57
Speaker 3: this is damaging to girls. And as in fact, the
21:59
Speaker 3: woman that I passion and purity, she wrote the story
22:01
Speaker 3: about finding her husband, finding her love. Turns out he dies.
22:04
Speaker 3: I think she marries three more times since they all
22:06
Speaker 3: die on her, which is sad, but somehow finding love
22:10
Speaker 3: all the time you're like, well, congratulations, I guess. And
22:14
Speaker 3: this whole idea of concept of like having purity and
22:17
Speaker 3: growing together and there are missionaries together and saving the
22:19
Speaker 3: world together. And then he goes off and gets killed,
22:23
Speaker 3: and so she finds a new husband but really idealizes
22:26
Speaker 3: her first husband. It was really odd went to a
22:29
Speaker 3: conference that I didn't attend it, but people who were
22:31
Speaker 3: so excited to see her, so excited to hear her
22:33
Speaker 3: words because she's such a you know, godly woman, as
22:35
Speaker 3: they would say. And then she comes about talking about how, hey, girls,
22:39
Speaker 3: if you're fat, you're displeasing your husband. If you're not
22:42
Speaker 3: cooking for your husband, then you're not doing it, like
22:44
Speaker 3: all of these things, giving a list of what you're
22:46
Speaker 3: doing wrong. And like I remember, one friend of mine
22:49
Speaker 3: at that time came home heartbroken because she had already
22:52
Speaker 3: struggled with the fact that she felt like she was overweight,
22:54
Speaker 3: which wasn't true. She felt like because she was I
22:57
Speaker 3: think she was mid thirties, late late twenties, that because
23:01
Speaker 3: she hadn't found a husband, she was failing and all
23:03
Speaker 3: she wanted to do was have a child and be
23:04
Speaker 3: a wife because that's what she was told her value was.
23:07
Speaker 3: And because this woman was blaming her for her physical state,
23:11
Speaker 3: not doing being submissive enough, not praying enough, she truly
23:14
Speaker 3: felt that and it was so heartbroken. I think she
23:17
Speaker 3: also understood this is wrong, but still put that into herself,
23:22
Speaker 3: like that, yeah, you're right, it's my fast. And I
23:24
Speaker 3: felt that in religion being a leadership of I'm not
23:27
Speaker 3: faithful enough, that I'm not submissive enough, I'm not all
23:31
Speaker 3: and it's such a that guilt. When I finally was
23:34
Speaker 3: like this is bullsh was such a release. I just
23:38
Speaker 3: can't talk about it enough. But this plays all into this,
23:41
Speaker 3: this purity aspect, which again the whole idea of virginity
23:45
Speaker 3: was always about controlling women and subjugating women to men.
23:49
Speaker 3: As it says of the meaning at the very base
23:52
Speaker 3: of the word, that's what the problem is. It's not
23:54
Speaker 3: the problem that you don't have sex. If you don't
23:56
Speaker 3: want to have sex, that's perfect, that's normal, that's okay, Hey,
24:01
Speaker 3: that should be your choice. And just as you said,
24:04
Speaker 3: people pushing you in like this whole narrative of trying
24:07
Speaker 3: to peer pressure someone into having sex. That's so absurd too,
24:12
Speaker 3: and that is just as dangerous.
24:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely.
24:15
Speaker 3: As us all we're talking about for sure. But it
24:17
Speaker 3: is this whole narrative controlling it and why is it
24:20
Speaker 3: being pushed that's the biggest thing. And honestly, as I
24:25
Speaker 3: was talking about with my own self, feeling like even
24:28
Speaker 3: though it was not my fault, it was nothing to
24:30
Speaker 3: do with me, this dirtiness of this, and yeah it is.
24:35
Speaker 3: It's part of that instilling that it's dirtiness for girls
24:39
Speaker 3: if they have sex. And as I was talking about earlier,
24:42
Speaker 3: and it really always rubbed me the wrong way, but
24:45
Speaker 3: it made sense because I love a good analogy about
24:49
Speaker 3: the lollipop. You know. So if you read Jessica Valenti's
24:53
Speaker 3: book The Purity Myth, she actually talks about going to
24:56
Speaker 3: a conference. Actually this dude says, your body is a
25:00
Speaker 3: rapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he
25:03
Speaker 3: had rapped your lollipop and sex on it. It may
25:06
Speaker 3: feel great at the time, but unfortunately, when he's done
25:09
Speaker 3: with you, all you have left for your next partner
25:11
Speaker 3: is a poorly rapped saliva field sucker. Oh yeah, so
25:15
Speaker 3: that's the analogy that was being passed around, and I
25:17
Speaker 3: heard that, like, you know, you take a look, and
25:20
Speaker 3: again I think I said it in the first episode
25:22
Speaker 3: about the analogy of this youth. Pastor brought out a
25:25
Speaker 3: candy bar, passed it around and by the time he
25:28
Speaker 3: got to a certain person that they're like, I don't
25:30
Speaker 3: want this, and like, see, that's exactly what we're talking
25:32
Speaker 3: about when he talks about sex. When you go around
25:34
Speaker 3: with so many partners, who's gonna want you? It is
25:38
Speaker 3: absolutely to do. And it didn't have much to do
25:40
Speaker 3: with the guy of course typically, yes, it was also
25:44
Speaker 3: supposed to be for men as well, and that's why
25:47
Speaker 3: the Dude who Did I Kissed Dating Goodbye was so
25:49
Speaker 3: popular because it was written by a man about his
25:50
Speaker 3: virginity and finally we could see this, but it had
25:55
Speaker 3: the same idea of you're being shared, you're being dirty. Yeah,
26:00
Speaker 3: there was also this whole conversation about chewing gum, essentially
26:03
Speaker 3: unwrapping her and chewing her up. That's who has left
26:06
Speaker 3: over is leftover chewing gum. And if you've been doing
26:08
Speaker 3: any church or youth group, I think this all sounds
26:11
Speaker 3: probably very familiar because you know, analogies and metaphors make
26:14
Speaker 3: up about fifty percent of all the sermons and lessons
26:18
Speaker 3: pre when it comes to stuff like this, especially if
26:20
Speaker 3: they're like more of a relevant contemporary church, you definitely
26:23
Speaker 3: hear that. I mean, that's kind of what the Bible was,
26:25
Speaker 3: parables upon parables and parables. But the purity movement was
26:29
Speaker 3: no different. And again, yeah, there's so many analogies alluding
26:33
Speaker 3: to the idea that people who have sex are dirty
26:36
Speaker 3: and used up, and as in fact, it's so steeped
26:39
Speaker 3: into our idea, it's not just there it's always been
26:42
Speaker 3: around sex. And the city did the whole thing once
26:45
Speaker 3: again we converse in the city they did. They talked
26:48
Speaker 3: about the fact that again Charlotte, if she was too sexual,
26:51
Speaker 3: she was the whore and he saw her as a madonna,
26:54
Speaker 3: so he couldn't have sex with her because she was
26:56
Speaker 3: too pure type of thing. But then at the same
26:58
Speaker 3: time talking about how many partners they've had and feeling
27:01
Speaker 3: dirty and oh my god. Yeah, and like it's and
27:04
Speaker 3: it's definitely the slut versus you know. The episode of
27:07
Speaker 3: the thing is called am I a slut? But it's
27:09
Speaker 3: such an idea that is inundated in women that that's
27:12
Speaker 3: what it is. We're being used up, which is such
27:15
Speaker 3: a weird conversation to have anyway, and it is a
27:18
Speaker 3: part of this whole level of purity. Again obviously dirty.
27:24
Speaker 3: If you're not pure, you're dirty. What else are you?
27:26
Speaker 3: But it is so heavily laid that it becomes really
27:30
Speaker 3: dangerous and problematic.
27:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean we've all heard the the jokes about,
27:37
Speaker 1: you know, the village bicycle, and that kind of puts
27:42
Speaker 1: I guess that's another avenue where we see this value
27:45
Speaker 1: that we place on virginity and purity because essentially what
27:48
Speaker 1: you're saying, there's like two men.
27:51
Speaker 2: She's easy to get.
27:52
Speaker 1: Anyone can get her, like she should be ashamed, she's dirty,
27:55
Speaker 1: and you want as a man to get someone that
27:59
Speaker 1: other men could get, right, and that somehow is great
28:03
Speaker 1: for your ego. And yeah, you don't have to worry
28:06
Speaker 1: that maybe she's gotten another child with another.
28:09
Speaker 3: Man somewhere once again.
28:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's unsurprised to see that these types of
28:28
Speaker 1: ideas and methods and myths can be damaging. And we
28:33
Speaker 1: wanted to look a bit into what could be some
28:36
Speaker 1: of the results of all this. And since Samantha, you
28:39
Speaker 1: brought up sex in the city, I shall bring up
28:41
Speaker 1: something I bring up all the time, horror movies. There's
28:43
Speaker 1: a horror movie called The Last Extorcism, which has its situes,
28:47
Speaker 1: but at the heart of it, it's a really religious
28:49
Speaker 1: girl who well it's complicated because there's a twist, but
28:54
Speaker 1: she is traumatized because she had sex before marriage and
28:59
Speaker 1: like goes into demon possession as an alternative to I
29:04
Speaker 1: would rather people think that than think that I've had
29:06
Speaker 1: set wow before.
29:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she at the end when like.
29:10
Speaker 1: The extracism is you know, it's coming to a head.
29:15
Speaker 2: She just screams out, I'm not in u set because
29:19
Speaker 2: she has sex. But then also demons happened.
29:21
Speaker 3: So the demons happened.
29:23
Speaker 1: That's fair, yes, yes, But in the real world when
29:28
Speaker 1: we are talking about problems of all this, well we've
29:30
Speaker 1: been talking about them, but here's some more. There's fetishism
29:34
Speaker 1: of virginity. It's not hard to see that it has
29:37
Speaker 1: become a whole thing. Yeah, we've seen it in badly
29:41
Speaker 1: made movies that reference the idea of taking someone's virginity,
29:44
Speaker 1: or porn videos which promote the viewing of a young
29:47
Speaker 1: girl losing her virginity, or even seeing it as a
29:51
Speaker 1: fear tactic of sex trafficking and young girls. There becomes
29:55
Speaker 1: a dangerous line of how girls are viewed as literal commodities,
29:58
Speaker 1: are trophies to be conquered, that is tied to the
30:02
Speaker 1: overall mythical importance of trying to keep one's morality.
30:08
Speaker 3: Taken is a prime example of that movie, that whole thing.
30:12
Speaker 1: I never saw that documentary film my dad told me
30:15
Speaker 1: about Are Taken.
30:19
Speaker 3: No, okay, uh, yeah, it's absolutely the whole thing. Again,
30:23
Speaker 3: Because we talked about with bridget about the fact that
30:26
Speaker 3: you know, trafficking girls. But at the end, his daughter
30:29
Speaker 3: is a prize because she's a virgin, a white virgin,
30:33
Speaker 3: and she's bid on and given all the fancy treatment,
30:37
Speaker 3: and of course she saved. Her virginity is saved by
30:40
Speaker 3: her father, y'all. Her virginity saved by her father. There.
30:44
Speaker 2: That is wow, that's the thing you were talking about.
30:46
Speaker 3: Uh huh. And we could go on to one step
30:49
Speaker 3: further about this fetishism which ties to the pickup artist
30:52
Speaker 3: believes in tactics that women are taught to fight men,
30:55
Speaker 3: so that means a man has to push harder and
30:58
Speaker 3: try harder because it's all a rude So this is
31:00
Speaker 3: something that they's just taught. This is something that's ingraded
31:03
Speaker 3: into them, but they don't really want it, and they
31:04
Speaker 3: want men to pursue women to the point of harassment
31:07
Speaker 3: and to the point that they can't say no obviously,
31:11
Speaker 3: And this is kind of that one last thing. This
31:12
Speaker 3: is kind of more of what you're talking about about
31:14
Speaker 3: the fact that women can choose not to have sex.
31:16
Speaker 3: It's just either way, consent is taken away. Saying that
31:20
Speaker 3: you know, you don't want to say no, you don't
31:22
Speaker 3: want to say yeah, but you don't want to say
31:23
Speaker 3: no either. It's this whole level and that it's a
31:26
Speaker 3: game that we're being taught because again, we have no autonomy.
31:30
Speaker 3: There's another problem with this whole thing. Again, Yes, there's
31:33
Speaker 3: been so many problems that I've been saying. I've been
31:35
Speaker 3: going off on early sexualization of young girls. And it's
31:38
Speaker 3: that same narrative we've seen repeatedly throughout society. Whether we're
31:42
Speaker 3: talking about how a girl dresses so a school dress
31:44
Speaker 3: code or what they're being told to protect or how
31:47
Speaker 3: to act, it begins to sexualize them. They don't even
31:51
Speaker 3: think they're coming on with a cute dress. They want
31:53
Speaker 3: to match their mom in a cute way. They want
31:55
Speaker 3: to wear heels, and it's automatically like, how dare you
31:58
Speaker 3: dress a young girl like that? That is sexualizing that
32:01
Speaker 3: They're not doing it, you're doing it. Why are you
32:03
Speaker 3: doing this? But this is kind of that whole propagation
32:06
Speaker 3: of yeah, this is what you're doing and it's your fault,
32:09
Speaker 3: and I see her like this because of you, and
32:11
Speaker 3: it's part of this conversation. Again, it teaches girls things
32:15
Speaker 3: like purity balls, which for some occur again in their
32:18
Speaker 3: adolescence that their bodies are a weapon of sin, so
32:22
Speaker 3: it is something that can be used against them or
32:25
Speaker 3: they have to protect as if it's like a weapon.
32:27
Speaker 3: And instead of allowing a girl to be a girl,
32:29
Speaker 3: they're just based on whether not they're tempting men. And
32:32
Speaker 3: we talked about that in our book club for the
32:35
Speaker 3: House on Manga Street is kind of that conversation on
32:39
Speaker 3: whether they're tempting men just because they're there, because they
32:42
Speaker 3: wore heels, that hole that kind of reminds me of
32:44
Speaker 3: that they just thought it was pretty. They just liked it.
32:46
Speaker 3: They saw their parents and then they thought it was cute,
32:49
Speaker 3: and it became a weapon and a temptation for a man,
32:52
Speaker 3: and it scared them because they realized what they were
32:54
Speaker 3: being seen as, even though they didn't do this for them.
32:58
Speaker 3: And in this very way, the balls are teaching them
33:01
Speaker 3: to fear their own bodies. Yeah, and not just parity balls,
33:04
Speaker 3: but this purity movement and ideas are teaching kids at
33:07
Speaker 3: a young age about their bodies and how they're tempting
33:09
Speaker 3: and how they need to be afraid of themselves. And
33:12
Speaker 3: we talked about it when we talked about the Lolita
33:15
Speaker 3: Podcast with Jamie and the whole Lolita effect which is
33:19
Speaker 3: out there and out and about, which allows for many
33:22
Speaker 3: to blame a young girl for their own impure thoughts
33:25
Speaker 3: or for some older women's self hatred. Like this level
33:28
Speaker 3: of where we become so aware of ourselves and fearful
33:33
Speaker 3: of what our bodies are doing. It's just it's so heartbreaking.
33:38
Speaker 3: I hate it. I hate it so much. And this
33:40
Speaker 3: also makes naive young girls gatekeepers of sex, as in fact,
33:44
Speaker 3: Jessica Valenti, she talks about her experience when she first
33:46
Speaker 3: has sex and what she thought of versus and then
33:50
Speaker 3: she contacted her partner at the time, her boyfriend from
33:54
Speaker 3: the time, and asked him what he thought for her book,
33:57
Speaker 3: and he kind of was He literally just said, you know,
33:59
Speaker 3: but you had more control than I did because you're
34:01
Speaker 3: a girl. You know, girl. Boys can't control this. And
34:04
Speaker 3: because of these misconceived ideas of who is more sexual,
34:08
Speaker 3: girls are seeing being able to be in more control.
34:10
Speaker 3: So therefore they have all the control of whether they
34:13
Speaker 3: say so yes having sex or not having sex, or
34:16
Speaker 3: whether or not Who's to blame and who's the shame
34:19
Speaker 3: mm hmm when this happens. So it's kind of that
34:22
Speaker 3: whole level of like, wow, y'all are putting a lot
34:25
Speaker 3: on young girls. How do they even? How did we function?
34:29
Speaker 2: Yeah?
34:30
Speaker 1: No, for sure, Like it's it's setting you up as
34:34
Speaker 1: a young girl to be ready to blame yourself if
34:38
Speaker 1: any like sexual assault happens to you, and to fear
34:40
Speaker 1: your body. Your body is to blame you did something wrong.
34:44
Speaker 1: You have to question that was I sending any wrong
34:48
Speaker 1: signals anything like that?
34:49
Speaker 2: It's just from so young teaching them right.
34:53
Speaker 1: And then something we've kind of discussed throughout is the
34:55
Speaker 1: misconception of consent for women when looking at the purity culture.
35:01
Speaker 1: The concept is that sex is a commodity and has
35:04
Speaker 1: some type of moral value, but is something to be
35:08
Speaker 1: owned and taken, which can send a lot of mixed
35:11
Speaker 1: messages of what consent looks like Biblically. We have examples
35:15
Speaker 1: of women who were raped and not being seen as
35:18
Speaker 1: a victim, but seen as soiled and ruined, and if
35:21
Speaker 1: they are not married to their perpetrator, their worth and
35:25
Speaker 1: value has been diminished and oftentimes cast aside and no
35:30
Speaker 1: longer part of society and blamed for letting their most
35:34
Speaker 1: valuable asset be taken.
35:35
Speaker 2: I feel like we see that in movies all the time.
35:37
Speaker 1: Where it's like the army is invading, I'm gonna rape
35:41
Speaker 1: your wife over and over, and it's meant to be
35:44
Speaker 1: like now she's ruined for you right now, less.
35:46
Speaker 2: About the trauma she's going to go through, but more
35:49
Speaker 2: about for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
35:53
Speaker 1: Though this has changed somewhat in society, we can see
35:56
Speaker 1: the value of women in that same manner when it
35:58
Speaker 1: comes to roles inside of marriages to day. It wasn't
36:01
Speaker 1: until not too long ago when the law recognized here
36:04
Speaker 1: in the US that rape canicker in marriage. For those
36:08
Speaker 1: who are victims of abuse, who have been taught that
36:11
Speaker 1: purity is the most valued part of them, feeling of
36:15
Speaker 1: this overwhelming guilt and shame can really overshadow their worse.
36:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it doesn't even if not a question of
36:24
Speaker 3: oh my god, this has happened to me and it's
36:25
Speaker 3: traumatic and I have violated, it's becomes a coquestion of
36:29
Speaker 3: oh my god, what did I do? I allowed this,
36:32
Speaker 3: which we kind of talked about before, and consent goes
36:35
Speaker 3: out that window. No one understands consent, which is also
36:37
Speaker 3: that whole level of well, if I tempted him, then
36:40
Speaker 3: I owe it to him, because this is my fault.
36:43
Speaker 3: Was again going back to we are the gatekeepers of
36:47
Speaker 3: sexuality in general, and therefore we are also the gatekeepers
36:50
Speaker 3: of whether or not a man is tempted, and that
36:52
Speaker 3: means we owe it and that takes away consent. But
36:55
Speaker 3: that absolutely takes that away. And this misconception of I
36:58
Speaker 3: have to give it to you, and if I didn't
37:01
Speaker 3: explicitly fight you, yeah, then I was willing. It's such
37:06
Speaker 3: a narrative that again, it just perpetuates the rape culture
37:10
Speaker 3: that we were talking about in that last episode as well.
37:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
37:16
Speaker 1: And it also teaches women and girls that any pain
37:18
Speaker 1: or abuse that happens to them may be a punishment
37:21
Speaker 1: for their pre marital sexual interactions. Right.
37:25
Speaker 3: And I remember specifically one of my friends who went
37:30
Speaker 3: through a few miscarriages still born. It was so traumatic
37:33
Speaker 3: and I was so painful for her because she just
37:35
Speaker 3: was so excited and when these things happened to her,
37:39
Speaker 3: she came back and told me, it's because I had
37:41
Speaker 3: sex with so and so before marriage, and I knew it,
37:43
Speaker 3: and I knew it, I would think I was pregnant
37:44
Speaker 3: then and I'm miscarried then, Like there was no. These
37:49
Speaker 3: were all assumptions for her, but she was so sure
37:52
Speaker 3: that it was her wrongdoing that she suffered in her
37:55
Speaker 3: guilt to the point that she pushed everyone away because
37:58
Speaker 3: she felt like she was so dirty and unclean because
38:03
Speaker 3: she had sex before marriage and this was God's punishment
38:06
Speaker 3: to her, and which I kind of was just like,
38:09
Speaker 3: what is happening? This is no, that's not that's not
38:12
Speaker 3: how this works. Because also that that conversation for those
38:17
Speaker 3: there's so many who have in their mind done it
38:20
Speaker 3: the right way that go through the same things. It's
38:23
Speaker 3: such a sad punishment for a needless, needless made up
38:29
Speaker 3: social construct that it truly broke my heart. And I
38:33
Speaker 3: was just like, I kind it flored me. To be honest,
38:35
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't know what to say to
38:37
Speaker 3: this other than no, it's not. But you can't fight
38:39
Speaker 3: someone's religious you know what I mean, believe in themselves.
38:42
Speaker 3: You really can't, even though I'm like, what it was
38:45
Speaker 3: the whole thing. Another problematic thing with the purity culture
38:49
Speaker 3: is the romanticism and the exaggeration of having sex. The
38:53
Speaker 3: expectation of sex grows wildly out of proportion when we
38:57
Speaker 3: really dream up this. The night of the wedding thing,
38:59
Speaker 3: and I know, I think it's finally come to the
39:01
Speaker 3: point that everybody's like, hey, don't get too excited, right,
39:07
Speaker 3: But it's this whole like kind of a similar idea
39:11
Speaker 3: of getting your periods or you've become a woman, you're
39:13
Speaker 3: a whole new changed a woman, and you look different,
39:15
Speaker 3: you walk differently. That's not true. Sure, I'm in pain,
39:18
Speaker 3: I'm not even more pain, and I'm very confused with
39:20
Speaker 3: what's happening with my body. But that's not it's not
39:23
Speaker 3: a romanticized thing. And it's just such a misconception of
39:25
Speaker 3: what sex is. And and yes, having a connection and
39:28
Speaker 3: an emotional intimacy is a beautiful thing. And if you
39:31
Speaker 3: you're using the narrative of saving yourself for the one,
39:35
Speaker 3: you know, do what you need to. If that's something
39:38
Speaker 3: that you believe and that's what you treasure, and it
39:40
Speaker 3: works out, it's gonna be it's gorgeous. I'm so glad.
39:43
Speaker 3: I am so glad. But it also brings on the
39:46
Speaker 3: idea that sex will be always be beautiful and magical
39:50
Speaker 3: and it's gonna be perfect. When it's misleading, and it
39:55
Speaker 3: can be severely disappointing when everything goes awry, and I've
39:59
Speaker 3: heard many tales of people's honeymoons being ruined because they
40:04
Speaker 3: didn't know what was going to happen, to the point
40:05
Speaker 3: that I even heard one person that it was so
40:07
Speaker 3: painful that she cry and they had to stop.
40:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that, I mean, that is a similar conversation
40:13
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about with the orgasms, where
40:16
Speaker 1: we've made it into this huge, huge thing and it
40:20
Speaker 1: really shouldn't be, Like, if you want it to be
40:22
Speaker 1: special and all that, that's like, that's great, but yeah,
40:25
Speaker 1: I remember once I think it was you know, college,
40:29
Speaker 1: and me and my like really close group of women
40:33
Speaker 1: female friends we talked about like so sex over rated,
40:39
Speaker 1: were like yeah, we all kind of like yeah, yeah.
40:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
40:46
Speaker 3: And that's kind of where that lie comes in, that
40:48
Speaker 3: women can't orgasm or or shouldn't enjoy sex. It's not
40:51
Speaker 3: supposed to be for use for us, you know that
40:53
Speaker 3: men's perspective, And again, yeah, that type of lie and
40:56
Speaker 3: that kind of misconception is really dangerous too, and really sad.
41:00
Speaker 3: It's so sad when it can be a beautiful thing,
41:04
Speaker 3: which also, yes, leads to a complete misunderstanding of sex
41:09
Speaker 3: in general. The terms technical vision and partial version are
41:13
Speaker 3: often floated around because the lack of sex has education
41:16
Speaker 3: when it's abstinence only that we kind of ignore everything,
41:19
Speaker 3: so everything's out of bounds, but nothing is talked about.
41:22
Speaker 3: So of course girls are very confused about oral sex
41:27
Speaker 3: and who can do what, and then it becoming dirty
41:29
Speaker 3: and what becomes dirty and what becomes okay, what becomes taboo,
41:33
Speaker 3: what's sinful beyond just having premeneral sex, And no one
41:37
Speaker 3: talks about the ends and outs of sexual contact or
41:40
Speaker 3: interaction at all and paints everything as immortal. Like I said,
41:43
Speaker 3: it's just like all taboo and all hush hush, And
41:46
Speaker 3: so therefore there's a lot of things that you don't understand, right,
41:49
Speaker 3: which is not always bad, but at the same time,
41:53
Speaker 3: to be like to and be taken advantage of happens
41:55
Speaker 3: a lot, a lot, which allows for misleading information such
42:00
Speaker 3: as being able to get pregnant in hot tubs that
42:02
Speaker 3: float around I believe different minute, or that you can
42:05
Speaker 3: stop pregnancies by drinking bleach, which was yeah, which actually done. Apparently,
42:10
Speaker 3: there was a couple of cases in Florida where teenagers
42:12
Speaker 3: got sick and you're like, oh no, don't do that
42:15
Speaker 3: or that again. By defining sex in such a heteronormative
42:18
Speaker 3: manner ignores the queer community completely again and others them
42:23
Speaker 3: and shames them in general and brings even more confusion,
42:26
Speaker 3: and so more disinformation comes out, and it just becomes
42:30
Speaker 3: a whole festival of disinformation.
42:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I remember, like you see that in instances
42:36
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago when there was that story
42:40
Speaker 1: that made headlines that a lot of young girls were
42:42
Speaker 1: being pressured into oral sex because they were being told
42:45
Speaker 1: it's not sex, so we can't have it, and then
42:48
Speaker 1: you won't be dirty, and you won't you know, lost
42:51
Speaker 1: your virginity and then you know, those those can be
42:53
Speaker 1: confusing lines across, but they were basically, yeah, being pressured
42:58
Speaker 1: into something based on this purity thing and based on
43:02
Speaker 1: the boys wanted to have some type of sex, right,
43:05
Speaker 1: some type of sexual contact.
43:07
Speaker 2: Right.
43:07
Speaker 3: It's everything but right, But yeah, it is and it
43:10
Speaker 3: is sad because you could the conversation is that you
43:12
Speaker 3: can also get sdis it this way, and people are
43:15
Speaker 3: not talking about it, people are not understanding it's it's
43:18
Speaker 3: seriously dangerous on a health level when you like again
43:22
Speaker 3: spread this of information as well as the fact things like,
43:25
Speaker 3: you know, accidental pregnancies are happening because they're not talking
43:28
Speaker 3: about how they can get pregnant or how it actually
43:30
Speaker 3: works and what they need to do. And again, if
43:33
Speaker 3: they're not talking about it at all, you're not going
43:35
Speaker 3: to be prepared. So having a condom is not going
43:37
Speaker 3: to be a thing. Knowing how to use a condom
43:39
Speaker 3: is not going to be a thing, right, which is
43:40
Speaker 3: all pretty sad.
43:44
Speaker 4: It is, it is.
43:45
Speaker 2: Indeed. Yeah, I believe I've even seen.
43:49
Speaker 1: God, I'm trying, I can't remember it exactly, but I
43:52
Speaker 1: remember there was this idea that women could like stop
43:55
Speaker 1: sperm like by clinching. Oh yeah, so it wouldn't go
44:00
Speaker 1: in far enough too.
44:04
Speaker 3: And there's also lunar cycles that people base it on.
44:07
Speaker 1: Mm hmm yep. I have a friend who did that
44:10
Speaker 1: on her honeymoon. They only had sex the one time triplets.
44:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a friend of a friend kept blowing that
44:19
Speaker 3: and was surprised when he has a sex baby.
44:24
Speaker 2: She's the weak.
44:38
Speaker 1: So clearly, there are so many other things that we
44:42
Speaker 1: could cover.
44:43
Speaker 2: We've been talking about.
44:44
Speaker 1: Them on and off air, other topics and some we
44:48
Speaker 1: could absolutely go more in depths on. Yeah, Yeah, there's
44:52
Speaker 1: nothing wrong at all with waiting until you are comfortable
44:55
Speaker 1: to have sex. But we can't ignore the trauma and
44:59
Speaker 1: overall damage these types of myths can cause.
45:03
Speaker 3: Right for myself again, like I've been saying, I think
45:07
Speaker 3: I've struggled, and you can tell there's a lot of
45:09
Speaker 3: things that I'm a little upset about, a little angry about,
45:11
Speaker 3: because I was inundated in this culture as well. Again
45:14
Speaker 3: my choice. It was like I pushed myself into this
45:16
Speaker 3: because this is what I needed, I think at the time.
45:19
Speaker 3: But I now understanding, Wow, I'm having a hard time
45:22
Speaker 3: and learning some of these concepts here though I very
45:25
Speaker 3: well understand, like this is bad, and then coming back
45:27
Speaker 3: to realize this is a strategy that was used politically
45:31
Speaker 3: to motivate young women to understand, hey, you need to
45:35
Speaker 3: be under the authority of men. And yeah, I struggled
45:38
Speaker 3: and I still struggle with the idea that sex can
45:40
Speaker 3: equate love at all. Again, my own trauma, my own
45:44
Speaker 3: ordeal as a child, really had a lot to do
45:47
Speaker 3: with it. So abstinence was actually easy for me. I
45:50
Speaker 3: did not have sex until in my mid twenties, but
45:52
Speaker 3: for me in high school because I was afraid of
45:54
Speaker 3: men and intimacy, partially because of my own ethnicity, was
45:58
Speaker 3: again being other. I wasn't pure, And to begin with again,
46:01
Speaker 3: my childhood experience as an orphan and things I went
46:03
Speaker 3: through as an orphan defined me and as something that
46:08
Speaker 3: was no longer usable or as valuable, and the culture
46:11
Speaker 3: of purity made me think it was because I was
46:14
Speaker 3: already defined that it was too late. And of course
46:16
Speaker 3: I clung to that faith throughout some of the darkest
46:18
Speaker 3: time for me, and it helped. It pulled me out
46:20
Speaker 3: in that forgiveness and being able to come into But
46:24
Speaker 3: there's something else bigger than me, and I think that's
46:26
Speaker 3: beautiful and for people who truly understands that, it allows
46:29
Speaker 3: that to be to make them a better person, wonderful.
46:32
Speaker 3: But that also meant intimacy or just having a boyfriend
46:36
Speaker 3: meant that I was owned, that there was an ownership
46:39
Speaker 3: of me, And for me, it was easier to understand
46:41
Speaker 3: that because that's what I was taught and that's what
46:43
Speaker 3: I was understanding, and it felt it made sense because
46:48
Speaker 3: that's already something that I'd been cultivated to feel like
46:51
Speaker 3: I've already been that way. Literally was bought from Korea
46:54
Speaker 3: to the US when they bought me, and it went
46:58
Speaker 3: through a lot of things, and even an I came here,
47:00
Speaker 3: I would shown my worth as a sexual being and
47:03
Speaker 3: being at ten and eleven years old, eight nine, ten,
47:06
Speaker 3: So all of those things really did prepare me to
47:10
Speaker 3: be the perfect vessel under this purity culture because I
47:13
Speaker 3: wanted to be clean, because of course that type of
47:16
Speaker 3: trauma teaches you that you're not clean, and I think
47:20
Speaker 3: that's part of this misconception why it can be dangerous.
47:23
Speaker 3: And I've made it out. I had therapy, I still
47:27
Speaker 3: had any therapy, hunting, medication, I have to do all
47:29
Speaker 3: the things because it's not going to be cleansed from me. Essentially,
47:32
Speaker 3: I guess the best way because it's always going to
47:34
Speaker 3: be a part of my history. But I think that's
47:36
Speaker 3: part of things, like we have to really recognize it
47:38
Speaker 3: for what it is and why these myths are dangerous
47:42
Speaker 3: and perpetuating it in such a manner, especially when you're
47:46
Speaker 3: self serving for an agenda. Yeah, why we need to
47:50
Speaker 3: talk about it and dig a little deeper onto it again.
47:54
Speaker 3: That book that I was telling you about, the Purity
47:56
Speaker 3: Myth by Jessica Valinti, she has some really great takes
47:59
Speaker 3: in and we probably should visit it as a book club,
48:04
Speaker 3: even though I'm like, no, I don't know I can
48:05
Speaker 3: do this anymore. But yeah, I feel like and you
48:08
Speaker 3: and I've talked about this before, like that that feeling
48:12
Speaker 3: it attaches, and when you start really going down that
48:14
Speaker 3: rabbit hole, it feels dark, even though it doesn't have
48:18
Speaker 3: to be.
48:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and so much of what we're talking about
48:22
Speaker 1: here is political and patriarchal, and we're teaching it from
48:26
Speaker 1: such a young age. And I will say, as we
48:29
Speaker 1: wrap this up, like it's really nobody's business, right, because
48:34
Speaker 1: I know for me when like you be playing never
48:39
Speaker 1: by ever and people will be like, have you lost
48:41
Speaker 1: your virginity? And I lost it in a very traumatic
48:45
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and I would I would literally freeze and
48:49
Speaker 1: not know what to do right, And that turned into
48:53
Speaker 1: I know I've said before, there were these rumors I
48:55
Speaker 1: was like a slut. It was because people thought like
49:00
Speaker 1: I got into some bedism stuff, which is not even
49:03
Speaker 1: like that's incorrect assumption as well, right, but like that
49:06
Speaker 1: I anyway, like so that question can be very traumatic,
49:11
Speaker 1: and my my therapist said some people reframe it as
49:14
Speaker 1: like a separate issue entirely, but like even the idea
49:19
Speaker 1: that this virginity has that much meaning that you're doing that.
49:24
Speaker 1: So it is unfortunate and like one of the periods
49:29
Speaker 1: of abuse in my life I went through, I didn't
49:31
Speaker 1: know what.
49:34
Speaker 2: Like dating was.
49:36
Speaker 1: I didn't like this guy is telling me he's my boyfriend.
49:38
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know. I guess maybe this is
49:41
Speaker 1: how it is, and this is maybe how sex is
49:44
Speaker 1: because I didn't have any education.
49:47
Speaker 2: And I was young.
49:49
Speaker 1: So it is really sad because there's all of these
49:51
Speaker 1: like things that are coming together to create a very unhealthy,
49:57
Speaker 1: dangerous system and society for a lot of us. But
50:02
Speaker 1: here we're talking about like young girls and setting them
50:06
Speaker 1: up to take the blame for it. Right, So, yeah,
50:10
Speaker 1: there is a lot to and pack on the whole.
50:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, we came in saying, oh, yeah, this is gonna
50:16
Speaker 3: be a big one, and then I came in and saying, Okay,
50:18
Speaker 3: this might be a two partern and it was.
50:22
Speaker 2: It was.
50:23
Speaker 1: And if there's anything, listeners that you want us to
50:27
Speaker 1: unpack in more detail, there.
50:29
Speaker 2: Was certainly plenty. Please let us know.
50:32
Speaker 1: Our email is Stuffydia Mom stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
50:36
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram at stuff I've Never
50:37
Speaker 1: Told You, or on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks
50:40
Speaker 1: as always start a super producer, Christina, thank you and
50:43
Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You
50:45
Speaker 1: A protection of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
50:50
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. No