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The Myths of Virginity: Part 2 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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