Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Playlist: Religious Trauma, Episode 3

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SMNTY Playlist: Religious Trauma, Episode 3 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I know, come with
0:07
Speaker 1: stephone never told your protection of iHeartRadio.
0:18
Speaker 2: And we're on part three of our extended series. Because
0:23
Speaker 2: y'all is getting longer and longer as we work on it.
0:26
Speaker 2: I guess we should have known. This is kind of
0:28
Speaker 2: why we were so hesitant to begin with. But yeah,
0:31
Speaker 2: we're here talking about Christianity and religious trauma with the
0:36
Speaker 2: marginalized people. Yeah, and we're talking a lot about religious trauma.
0:41
Speaker 2: And I feel like doing the like basic building blocks
0:44
Speaker 2: to this is almost as long as everything else because
0:49
Speaker 2: we're also having to like decipher I guess through what
0:53
Speaker 2: specific issues we want to talk about. And again, y'ell,
0:57
Speaker 2: it's a lot. And because of that, we do have
1:00
Speaker 2: content warning for this specific episode. We're going to talk
1:03
Speaker 2: about sex, sexual abuse, religious trauma, harassment, and we're going
1:07
Speaker 2: to we mentioned rape, but we do definitely talk about
1:10
Speaker 2: rape culture in itself as well.
1:12
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And if you haven't heard our other episodes
1:17
Speaker 1: on this, especially our last one for this one where
1:19
Speaker 1: we introduced religious trauma syndrome, please go check those out
1:23
Speaker 1: important to this episode. Here's a quick definition from that episode.
1:28
Speaker 1: Religious trauma syndrome is the condition experienced by people who
1:31
Speaker 1: are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping
1:35
Speaker 1: with the damage of indoctrination. They may be going through
1:38
Speaker 1: the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and or breaking
1:41
Speaker 1: away from a controlling community and a lifestyle. URTS is
1:45
Speaker 1: a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion
1:48
Speaker 1: and the impact of severing one's connection with one's faith.
1:52
Speaker 1: It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and
1:55
Speaker 1: complex PTSD CPTSD And this was originally coined by psychologist
2:00
Speaker 1: doctor Marlene Winnell.
2:02
Speaker 2: And again we're still talking about some of the foundations
2:05
Speaker 2: that women in the marginalized community may suffer from RTS.
2:09
Speaker 2: And in this specific episode, we're actually going to visit
2:13
Speaker 2: purity culture. And yeah, this is going to be a
2:15
Speaker 2: small section because we kind of covered it before very quickly,
2:20
Speaker 2: did not realize how large of a topic this is
2:23
Speaker 2: and could be, and it could have kept going and
2:26
Speaker 2: going and going, and as in fact, there's some specific
2:29
Speaker 2: areas of purity culture that we're waiting to talk about
2:32
Speaker 2: for another section. It's a lot, it's a lot, but yeah,
2:37
Speaker 2: this specific episode we are talking and looking into religious
2:41
Speaker 2: trauma and purity culture, and questioning a lot about religion
2:45
Speaker 2: in general. Yeah, in the last episode we talked of
2:48
Speaker 2: the misogyny of the interpretations of Biblical verses and traditions,
2:52
Speaker 2: which is still held by different sects and churches today.
2:56
Speaker 2: But today's episode is focusing again on the many layers
2:58
Speaker 2: of how oppressive ideas like this one, specifically purity culture,
3:02
Speaker 2: and how it's presented today. Again, we did a past
3:06
Speaker 2: episode on the Myths of a virginity where we dug
3:09
Speaker 2: into the misconception of purity and abstinence and how it
3:12
Speaker 2: harmed women, so we were going to do a longer look.
3:16
Speaker 2: We're going to take a deeper look at it and
3:18
Speaker 2: how it relates to religious trauma.
3:20
Speaker 1: Yes, and from our earlier episode we talked about purity
3:23
Speaker 1: culture as something that has been around in the US
3:25
Speaker 1: for quite some time, but in the early nineties, conservative
3:29
Speaker 1: evangelist in the US Protestant groups organized a strategy one
3:32
Speaker 1: person called extreme abstinence. Those who advocated for this would
3:37
Speaker 1: advise girls and women to be submissive, stay away from
3:40
Speaker 1: leadership roles, conformed to old ideals of courtship, not being
3:44
Speaker 1: in mixed company unless regulated, and when they speak of courtship.
3:50
Speaker 1: The practice involves making sure that the interaction between women
3:53
Speaker 1: and men works, specifically to pursue an intent in marriage
3:57
Speaker 1: under the explicit supervision and permission of the woman's father.
4:02
Speaker 1: And as one article explains, quote, the expectation is that
4:06
Speaker 1: pure young women will remain under the authority of their
4:09
Speaker 1: fathers until they trade it for the authority of their
4:12
Speaker 1: husbands and marriages arranged by their fathers.
4:16
Speaker 2: Right, And we're going to be quoting and referencing many,
4:20
Speaker 2: many articles, So we're going to try our best to
4:23
Speaker 2: make sure we're correct in pronouncing their names. But if
4:27
Speaker 2: we don't, let us know. If you know, we apologize
4:31
Speaker 2: from the get go. So speaking of author Kayla Tricasso
4:35
Speaker 2: writes in an article written in modern nmacy dot com,
4:38
Speaker 2: the origin of purity culture or the faith based purity
4:41
Speaker 2: culture movement, traces back in the nineteen nineties. Evangelical Christians
4:45
Speaker 2: of the nineteen sixties free love movement started having children
4:48
Speaker 2: of their own and believed that many of society's problems,
4:51
Speaker 2: such as the as epidemic and rise of teen pregnancies,
4:55
Speaker 2: was due to loose morals and sexual sins such as
4:58
Speaker 2: having sex outside of marriage. Purity culture exists prominently today
5:02
Speaker 2: in white Evangelical Christian, Mormon, and Southern Baptist communities. According
5:07
Speaker 2: to sex therapists Linda K. Klain, which we will be
5:10
Speaker 2: talking about later on as well, who has firsthand experienced
5:13
Speaker 2: growing up with purity culture, Children and young adults who
5:16
Speaker 2: receive purity teachings are directed to form a commitment to
5:20
Speaker 2: God by abstaining from sex and remaining sexually pure until marriage.
5:24
Speaker 2: And of course we want to emphasize that purity is
5:28
Speaker 2: an abstract idea, an idea that He's used to discriminate
5:32
Speaker 2: and detegrate marginalized people, very similar to the white supremacist rhetoric.
5:38
Speaker 2: But again we'll dig into that later.
5:40
Speaker 1: Yes. In a research piece written by the Department of
5:43
Speaker 1: Counseling and School Psychology of the University of Massachusetts Boston,
5:47
Speaker 1: titled Decolonizing Purity Culture, Gendered Racism and White Idealization and
5:52
Speaker 1: Evangelical Christianity, they further explain gender and sexual control are
5:57
Speaker 1: at the crux of the ethics of purity. Nique to
6:00
Speaker 1: this movement are the types of tools and practices used
6:02
Speaker 1: to enforce gender and sexual control. Popularized modalities for circulating
6:06
Speaker 1: the purity movement rhetoric led to a sex obsessed culture
6:09
Speaker 1: of chastity, including purity balls, virginity clubs, and ritualized elbacy pledges.
6:14
Speaker 1: The most notable of these was the Southern Baptist Convention's
6:17
Speaker 1: creation of the True Love Weights campaign, launched in nineteen
6:21
Speaker 1: ninety three and known for large gatherings of teens making
6:24
Speaker 1: public displays of their abstinence commitments.
6:27
Speaker 2: I did this. I think we talked about this in
6:28
Speaker 2: that last episode. Did you do this? Did you do
6:31
Speaker 2: the True Love Weight? Oh yeah, we did talk about this.
6:34
Speaker 2: You like walked away. You were actually really smart.
6:39
Speaker 1: I was just like, I'm not sorry to anything.
6:45
Speaker 2: Again. Smart, Like it's very purple at all of that.
6:48
Speaker 2: And apparently it still exists today. I don't know, Well
6:53
Speaker 2: maybe not, maybe not. It doesn't seem like it's a
6:56
Speaker 2: lot of the articles that we found were dated, so
6:59
Speaker 2: maybe not. But I think people have started to kind
7:02
Speaker 2: of shy away from that. But yeah, I did it.
7:06
Speaker 2: I'm sure I could probably find that card soy to
7:10
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Anyway, And in that same article,
7:16
Speaker 2: they write, while much of the Purity teachings targeted youth
7:18
Speaker 2: ministries and churches, its influence carried over into the larger
7:22
Speaker 2: culture within public schooling sectors and national funding for abstinence
7:25
Speaker 2: only until marriage or AOUM sex education, which they're talking
7:31
Speaker 2: about doing again, and then actually it still exists, I
7:34
Speaker 2: guess in different places. They still teach that the Purity
7:37
Speaker 2: movement's reform of sexuality in the US based AOUM sex
7:41
Speaker 2: education programs grew from the religious rights political influence as
7:46
Speaker 2: well as a rise in white Christian nationalism. Yes, and
7:49
Speaker 2: this is kind of what we're referring to, but again
7:51
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about that later in this segment.
7:53
Speaker 2: We're kind of trying to keep it in where there's
7:55
Speaker 2: lots to dissect. But yeah, definitely we did this at school.
7:59
Speaker 2: This was something that was at school. Of course, I
8:01
Speaker 2: think it was before school started and during lunch, but
8:05
Speaker 2: we were in the school building really yeah. Yeah, and
8:09
Speaker 2: it was a public school.
8:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I at our public school. On my high school,
8:13
Speaker 1: we had I know I've told this story before because
8:15
Speaker 1: it was so shocking to me as a kid, but
8:19
Speaker 1: we had a lot of asket in its only posters
8:21
Speaker 1: go up, and it was a girl in my class
8:26
Speaker 1: who went around and put up like right next to them,
8:30
Speaker 1: like condom information about condoms. Wow, it was pretty good.
8:36
Speaker 2: That's impressive. I don't think anyone had that type of thought.
8:41
Speaker 2: I wish, man, I wish I had that freedom of understanding.
8:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it was kind of like it
8:51
Speaker 1: was great. I mean, it was fantastic, but it was
8:54
Speaker 1: She did have a reputation of kind of being in
8:57
Speaker 1: heavy cloaks, slutty.
8:59
Speaker 2: Of course, of course, inevitably she's the enemy. So if
9:02
Speaker 2: she's not pure, she's a slut exactly, which again we're
9:05
Speaker 2: gonna dig into, all right, and here's another quote from
9:09
Speaker 2: that paper they write. Several key authors have contended that
9:12
Speaker 2: purity teachings characterize young men as inherently sexual beings without
9:16
Speaker 2: control over their urges or responsibility for uncontrollable sexual actions,
9:21
Speaker 2: and situate young women as both gatekeepers of sex without
9:24
Speaker 2: any urges or sexuality of their own, while simultaneously shaming
9:29
Speaker 2: young women as temptresses. This type of shame conditioning is
9:32
Speaker 2: perpetuated through the pervasive use of metaphors, comparing women who
9:36
Speaker 2: are sexually active to broken teacups, half eaten candy, sticky tape,
9:41
Speaker 2: covered and the breed, trampled flowers, and paper hearts. Ripped
9:45
Speaker 2: into pieces and yeah, did you do that? We talked
9:48
Speaker 2: about this before too. Yeah, the whole passing of the candy.
9:52
Speaker 1: We didn't do the candy. We did like the pouring
9:54
Speaker 1: of the drink have like a chart and that somebody
10:03
Speaker 1: I remember exactly who was like the one who was
10:07
Speaker 1: contaminated and then we all drink from the water and
10:12
Speaker 1: shared cups and because she was contaminated.
10:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never been through a hell house, which is
10:24
Speaker 2: essentially a Christian haunted house where you're going through hell
10:29
Speaker 2: or how you go to hell, right, but I think
10:32
Speaker 2: part of that is like a woman who gets pregnant
10:34
Speaker 2: and dies or someone who dies of a's because they
10:36
Speaker 2: were sexually promiscuous. Like I remember thinking, what the that's
10:40
Speaker 2: this is? What is this? And people who performed in
10:43
Speaker 2: it were so excited. I was so confused.
10:46
Speaker 1: There's one near where I grew up, and I didn't
10:49
Speaker 1: go to it, but I still see billboards for it.
10:51
Speaker 1: It's still going well. If I visit home around that time.
10:56
Speaker 1: And I had a friend who went and she didn't
10:58
Speaker 1: know it was like a Christian based on an house,
11:01
Speaker 1: and she said she was essentially like trapped in a
11:03
Speaker 1: room for an hour while the Red Bible verses at
11:06
Speaker 1: her people excreaming.
11:08
Speaker 2: Shock without knowing what you're getting into. I just got
11:14
Speaker 2: tracked and I can't leave. This is the hell.
11:17
Speaker 1: This is the hell the cults they're trying to pull
11:20
Speaker 1: me into. Oh that's what I would think. Well, as
11:26
Speaker 1: we talked about in the past episode, the damage left
11:28
Speaker 1: behind with ideals such as these have been immense and
11:32
Speaker 1: long lasting. As written in another article in the Kindman
11:37
Speaker 1: dot Co blog quote, to say that purity culture was
11:40
Speaker 1: and has been destructive would be an understatement. Purity culture
11:44
Speaker 1: impacted and instilled concreteness around ginger roles, reinforcing the strength
11:48
Speaker 1: and masculinity of men and the smallness and submissiveness of women.
11:52
Speaker 1: Women hold immense responsibility in the ways in which they dress,
11:56
Speaker 1: act and behave due to the beliefs that if men
11:58
Speaker 1: are to us to i e. Think impure thoughts, it
12:02
Speaker 1: is due to women's stress and or actions. The assumptions
12:07
Speaker 1: that are in the foundation of purity culture are clear
12:09
Speaker 1: as well. The gender binary is important, and heterosexuality is
12:14
Speaker 1: the only normal form of partnership and desire. This leaves
12:18
Speaker 1: out so many beautiful people. These hard and fast rules
12:21
Speaker 1: around gender sexuality and pleasure create more questioning, doubt, and isolation.
12:26
Speaker 1: Anytime there is rigidity with a fear based reinforcement, there
12:30
Speaker 1: will be the aftermath of anxiety, shame, and sadness. And
12:34
Speaker 1: that is the basis of a majority of morality based
12:37
Speaker 1: control slash fear, such as fear of disappointing, fear of failure,
12:42
Speaker 1: fear of burning. For eternity and for women, not only
12:45
Speaker 1: do we answer to a deity, but we have to
12:48
Speaker 1: answer to the patriarchy, even if we are the ones
12:51
Speaker 1: being victimized.
12:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're not going to talk about it too much,
12:55
Speaker 2: but I do want to point out that they do
12:57
Speaker 2: speak specifically about queerness and people in the queer community
13:01
Speaker 2: and how it pretty much erases it from the conversation,
13:06
Speaker 2: and that is on purpose. When we're talking about rature
13:10
Speaker 2: of a specific community like the queer community, it is
13:13
Speaker 2: a violent removal. I think it's important that we note this,
13:18
Speaker 2: especially when we're talking about purity culture. Sex is bad enough,
13:22
Speaker 2: queerness should not exist, and we see that today and
13:24
Speaker 2: again we're talking about how this is leading to white supremacies.
13:28
Speaker 2: We are going to talk more about that in our
13:30
Speaker 2: conversation about religious trauma and the queer community. Don't worry y'all,
13:35
Speaker 2: We're not forgetting this. And from the research article we
13:39
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, they write, purity doctrine teaches that reward for
13:43
Speaker 2: sexual abstinence is given in the form of a highly
13:46
Speaker 2: satisfying sex life and happy heterosexual marriage. As adolescents are
13:50
Speaker 2: taught to repress their sexual desires until their wedding night,
13:54
Speaker 2: unrealistic expectations of sex and pleasure are encouraged, along with
13:58
Speaker 2: the narrative that wives would rein sexually available to the
14:01
Speaker 2: needs of the husband at all times. The passing or
14:05
Speaker 2: trading of the body of a woman from a father
14:08
Speaker 2: to husband through the wedding ceremony and the trading of
14:10
Speaker 2: a purity ring for wedding ring perpetuates the commodification of
14:15
Speaker 2: the female body as sexual property, while the sexual expression,
14:19
Speaker 2: needs and desires of the women are negated. As girls
14:22
Speaker 2: are conditioned to believe that the responsibility of purity before
14:25
Speaker 2: marriage and a successful sex life after marriage rests with them,
14:30
Speaker 2: the emotional fallout associated with any perceived failure becomes their
14:33
Speaker 2: burden to carry. As well. Fear of failure is furthered
14:37
Speaker 2: as young women are taught that sex before marriage will
14:40
Speaker 2: affect their ability to give and receive love, harm their
14:44
Speaker 2: future marriages, and according to the AOUM or the Abstinence Program,
14:48
Speaker 2: true love waits ultimately destroy lives. I cannot, honestly, of
14:55
Speaker 2: all the things I grew up with in Christian culture,
15:00
Speaker 2: purity was the biggest focus outside of saving souls for women,
15:06
Speaker 2: Like I remember I've told the story previously, just about
15:11
Speaker 2: the fact that I was like, I cannot meet these
15:13
Speaker 2: standards and this constant feeling of failure, this can't be okay,
15:21
Speaker 2: And also the fact that because I was abused as
15:24
Speaker 2: a kid, I am now thought as impure. What does
15:27
Speaker 2: this mean for me as a woman in this culture?
15:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, It's one of those things when I look back,
15:36
Speaker 1: is kind of bizarre, how you know, you're kind of
15:39
Speaker 1: a young, young kid and we're talking about like I
15:42
Speaker 1: can't she's going to hell because she already had sex,
15:47
Speaker 1: and like those kind of those things we put on
15:51
Speaker 1: young people right around this and definitely with the responsibility
15:56
Speaker 1: for women, and I think it is setting women up
15:59
Speaker 1: to fail because all of the blame is coming our way,
16:05
Speaker 1: and that like you will never feel like you've succeeded.
16:10
Speaker 1: You will always write that I mean, like that successful
16:13
Speaker 1: sex life. To me, it sounds like you could just
16:16
Speaker 1: kind of fake it till you make it as long
16:18
Speaker 1: as the man is happy, and you could pretend right
16:20
Speaker 1: that you are as well.
16:23
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that level that we were not talking
16:25
Speaker 2: about here. But when men still assume again that women
16:30
Speaker 2: cannot find pleasure and sex, they're not supposed to, so
16:34
Speaker 2: their opinions don't matter. As well as the fact that
16:37
Speaker 2: a lot of people firmly believe rape does not exist
16:41
Speaker 2: in marriage, and a lot of countries today still do
16:43
Speaker 2: not acknowledge that as a violation, So this is I
16:46
Speaker 2: think some states still haven't acknowledged that as well, because again,
16:52
Speaker 2: this whole idea of the sexual ownership is not of women,
16:56
Speaker 2: it is of men, so therefore they have control of
16:58
Speaker 2: that as long as they're in marriage.
17:00
Speaker 3: Right.
17:15
Speaker 1: And as we talked about in our virginity episode, many
17:18
Speaker 1: of the scare tactics used to purity culture all lean
17:22
Speaker 1: towards the idea that it is either good or bad,
17:25
Speaker 1: heaven or hell, and typically more of a failure for women.
17:30
Speaker 1: In an article written by Elizabeth Ross, who wrote her
17:32
Speaker 1: Masters of Religion thesis on purity culture, she talks about
17:36
Speaker 1: the black and white thinking within purity culture and gives
17:40
Speaker 1: three specific examples, and here are some quotes. Is it
17:45
Speaker 1: safe or dangerous? Quote? I can only explore my sexuality
17:50
Speaker 1: in marriage, otherwise I'll be ruined forever. If I have
17:53
Speaker 1: sex before marriage, I won't go to heaven. If I'm
17:56
Speaker 1: a survivor of sexual assault before marriage, I'll never be
17:59
Speaker 1: lovable again. Purity culture demonizes all forms of intimacy and
18:03
Speaker 1: sexual activity that takes place before marriage. These beliefs can
18:07
Speaker 1: be incredibly frightening, especially when inappropriately linked to personhood or salvation.
18:12
Speaker 1: Experiences of sexual assault and abuse may intensify these fears.
18:16
Speaker 1: This approach may cause significant anxiety and difficulty expressing one's
18:20
Speaker 1: physical or emotional needs for both single and married folks.
18:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this is all specifically from Ross's writings,
18:28
Speaker 2: the explanations, the kind of thoughts that go in with this,
18:33
Speaker 2: so this is straight from her blog. It says, the
18:36
Speaker 2: question is is it good or bad? Black and white?
18:38
Speaker 2: Good or bad? And here are some of the thoughts
18:40
Speaker 2: you might have If you wait, sex will always be
18:42
Speaker 2: good in marriage. If I don't get married, my sexuality
18:45
Speaker 2: goes to waste. If I'm a survivor of sexual assault
18:48
Speaker 2: before marriage, I'll never be lovable again again. That same
18:51
Speaker 2: kind of conversation. So quote. While marriage is not a
18:54
Speaker 2: reality for everyone, purity culture assumes that heterosexual marriage and
18:59
Speaker 2: penetrative create a sex is the goal for everyone. Other
19:03
Speaker 2: sexual activities in marriage, such as masturbation, oral sex, and
19:06
Speaker 2: outer course, are often debated or given less serious consideration. Singles,
19:11
Speaker 2: couples struggling with infertility or intimacy, and those who do
19:14
Speaker 2: not wish to have children may feel excluded and or
19:16
Speaker 2: feel like they failed once again are being punished. Sex
19:20
Speaker 2: is a good gift from God, but there's no guarantee
19:23
Speaker 2: it will happen perfectly every time. This doesn't make anyone
19:26
Speaker 2: a bad spouse. It simply emphasizes the human element of sex.
19:31
Speaker 2: A narrowly defined understanding of sex limits playful, honest, and
19:35
Speaker 2: consensual exploration of pleasure, independent from orgasm or procreation. It
19:39
Speaker 2: may also perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes.
19:44
Speaker 1: Yes, and then another quote, protected or promiscuous. She wasn't
19:51
Speaker 1: wearing a sweater, she was asking for it. If I
19:53
Speaker 1: wear shorts, I'll always be labeled to slut. I was
19:56
Speaker 1: wearing a tank top, it was all my fault. The
19:58
Speaker 1: trouble is modesty can be wildly subjective. Standards for modest
20:02
Speaker 1: dress vary from community to community. This binary sets to
20:05
Speaker 1: stage for victim blaming, where sexual abuse victims are held
20:08
Speaker 1: responsible for their own mistreatment. This also does not allow
20:12
Speaker 1: men the space to take responsibility for their own sexualities.
20:16
Speaker 2: And yeah, we're having a conversation about modesty all the time.
20:19
Speaker 2: It may not come out as modesty, but when we
20:21
Speaker 2: look at things like state houses regulating women not being
20:25
Speaker 2: able to wear sleeveless clothes or not being able to
20:28
Speaker 2: wear pants, literally, that is a conversation of what they
20:32
Speaker 2: esteem as modesty. Though they may say it's more of
20:36
Speaker 2: a professionalism, but we know that's undercover words and that's
20:40
Speaker 2: something that we wanted to look into as well. So
20:42
Speaker 2: we wanted to take this minute to talk about modesty
20:45
Speaker 2: as it relates to religious trauma and purity culture. And
20:52
Speaker 2: when we were looking this up, all I put was
20:55
Speaker 2: modesty and religious trauma or modesty and women. And all
20:59
Speaker 2: of the articles work Christian articles teaching women how to
21:01
Speaker 2: be modest and what it meant to be modest, like,
21:03
Speaker 2: it was all in favor of modesty. And trying to
21:05
Speaker 2: teach women this, and I was like, oh my god,
21:07
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is all I'm getting. I'm gonna
21:09
Speaker 2: have to reverd this completely. But in that when we
21:13
Speaker 2: talk about modesty, we also have to talk about rape culture.
21:16
Speaker 2: And we're going to get into this as we talk
21:18
Speaker 2: about now and as Ross Elizabeth Ross, which just quoted,
21:22
Speaker 2: states she wasn't wearing a sweater, she was asking for it.
21:26
Speaker 2: And the measure of violence to modesty that justifies victim
21:29
Speaker 2: blaming and even the violent act of assault on women
21:32
Speaker 2: is constant, and that's why this is so important to
21:34
Speaker 2: have a conversation on. In an article written by Faith Butcherman,
21:38
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry if I said that wrong. Title that
21:40
Speaker 2: roses in revolution, and yes this is actually written in
21:43
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, so it is dated but still relevant. She
21:47
Speaker 2: talks about modesty and purity culture, and she writes a
21:50
Speaker 2: special niche of purity culture is deeply concerned with modesty.
21:54
Speaker 2: The idea is a really self respecting woman will dress
21:58
Speaker 2: herself in a way that her body will not be
22:00
Speaker 2: the focus at all. Sermon's conferences, books, even t shirts
22:04
Speaker 2: all advocate the notion that modesty is a prime component
22:08
Speaker 2: of sexual purity and therefore paradoxically desirability to the proper
22:13
Speaker 2: sort of Christian judglemen. Of course, and there are endless
22:18
Speaker 2: debates on what constitutes modesty. The general consensus is, however,
22:23
Speaker 2: a woman's clothing must not be too revealing of either
22:26
Speaker 2: flesh or figure, too scanty or too tight. Quibbling about
22:30
Speaker 2: inches and guidelines take up an amazing amount of time
22:34
Speaker 2: and energy among modesty advocates, but the idea is the same.
22:38
Speaker 2: Good girls are modest and yet and also it doesn't
22:42
Speaker 2: stop the fat phobia within the Christian community. Yeah, you
22:47
Speaker 2: would think that would be one of the reasons, but
22:48
Speaker 2: it's really not.
22:50
Speaker 1: No, no, When we've talked about that before. There is
22:53
Speaker 1: a lot of reality wrapped around fat phobia in Christianity.
22:57
Speaker 1: There's a long history of it. It feels like when
23:04
Speaker 1: I think about this, a lot of it does feel
23:06
Speaker 1: like essentially, you as a woman have to you have
23:13
Speaker 1: to quote save yourself for marriage for a man, but
23:20
Speaker 1: you still have to be desirable to that man, like
23:24
Speaker 1: your body is still for him to consume and he
23:27
Speaker 1: needs to like it.
23:29
Speaker 3: Right.
23:29
Speaker 2: Oh, I think I've talked about it before. We talked
23:32
Speaker 2: about the author a Christian author named Elizabeth Elliott, who
23:36
Speaker 2: disappointed a lot of the un Christian women because they
23:39
Speaker 2: looked up to her for her book Passion and Purity.
23:41
Speaker 2: Yes I read it, don't judge me. But she apparently
23:45
Speaker 2: during the conference told the women in the audience if
23:48
Speaker 2: you aren't dressing right for your man, then you're sinning.
23:51
Speaker 2: If you gain weight, then you are sinning. If you're
23:54
Speaker 2: not being pretty every morning, then you're sinning against God
23:57
Speaker 2: and man. It was such like what that it brought
24:01
Speaker 2: divisiveness in the community in itself, and it really crushed
24:05
Speaker 2: a lot of people's spirits, which is kind of that
24:07
Speaker 2: whole like, oh, God, I believed in something and this
24:09
Speaker 2: something is killing me or really like hurting me. And
24:13
Speaker 2: having that realization it was interesting, but like things like
24:16
Speaker 2: that in conversation when you're being told emphatically if your
24:21
Speaker 2: physical presence is not perfect, you are asin.
24:25
Speaker 1: Right right, and kind of that like the power and
24:28
Speaker 1: balance of oh, if he left you is because you
24:34
Speaker 1: you weren't dressing correctly.
24:36
Speaker 2: Right, or you had a baby and gained too much weight.
24:38
Speaker 2: Why would you do that?
24:39
Speaker 3: Right?
24:39
Speaker 2: I would yell at someone.
24:42
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and both. Shomen continues explaining Some of the
24:48
Speaker 1: mindset behind the idea of modesty and modesty is for
24:51
Speaker 1: everyone's protection. Men are less tinted sexually when the women
24:55
Speaker 1: around them cover up modest women are less likely to
24:58
Speaker 1: be taken advantage of, whether just by ogling on the street,
25:01
Speaker 1: by men pressuring them to have sex, or by rape.
25:04
Speaker 1: So the story goes, anyway, do you feel a little judged,
25:07
Speaker 1: a little meddled with when a stranger tells you how
25:10
Speaker 1: to dress? Don't they really have your best interest at heart.
25:14
Speaker 1: They want you to respect yourself by doing your best
25:18
Speaker 1: to control other people's reaction to your body, and they
25:21
Speaker 1: can't be held responsible for what happens when you don't
25:24
Speaker 1: dress modestly enough.
25:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. Recently, there was a youth pastor did you see
25:29
Speaker 2: this that went viral on TikTok because he was berating
25:33
Speaker 2: these this young group of women for wearing bikinis and
25:35
Speaker 2: we're not talking like really scantily, like they were just
25:38
Speaker 2: bikinis on a public beach and telling them they needed
25:43
Speaker 2: like yelling at them, telling them they're sinning and they
25:45
Speaker 2: need to get their to lives together and all these things,
25:47
Speaker 2: and everybody's like, what is happening? And then he thought
25:52
Speaker 2: it was smart and came and did a response to it.
25:57
Speaker 2: I believe he was a youth pastor, and he's very
25:59
Speaker 2: calm and a chair, talking biblical stuff and being like,
26:02
Speaker 2: you know, I just had I just wanted to protect
26:04
Speaker 2: these young women. And I'm like, yeah, why are you
26:07
Speaker 2: sexualizing and looking at these young women? Why aren't you
26:10
Speaker 2: walking away? Because in the Bible it says that if
26:13
Speaker 2: your eyes are last thing, you need to pluck them
26:15
Speaker 2: out because it caused you to sin. Broh just saying,
26:20
Speaker 2: which is I think what everybody comes back with, like doe,
26:23
Speaker 2: the sin happens first in you, like essentially, But he
26:26
Speaker 2: does not acknowledge that he blames the women and telling
26:29
Speaker 2: these women young girls so that this is something they
26:32
Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing, which is odd. Again, even if they
26:35
Speaker 2: were dressing for other people, it wasn't for him.
26:38
Speaker 1: Right, And that's something we'd come into. We encounter so
26:41
Speaker 1: many times with this stuff. Is it's like, but you're
26:44
Speaker 1: sexualizing them, Like.
26:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you not understand what's happening. They may feel
26:49
Speaker 2: great about themselves and they may be feeling sexy, they're
26:52
Speaker 2: not trying to put themselves on top of you as
26:54
Speaker 2: in fact, they're minding their business, laying down and hanging
26:57
Speaker 2: out with each other. M So go talk to your
27:01
Speaker 2: wife about why you have built these feelings becausee he
27:04
Speaker 2: did have his wife with them, I believe. Oh and
27:06
Speaker 2: Bochamen breaks down the problems with these things, saying, here's
27:11
Speaker 2: the first ugly truth. As soon as a woman falls
27:14
Speaker 2: outside the standard of what is perceived as modest, those
27:17
Speaker 2: advocating modesty culture immediately join rape culture. They shrug and say,
27:23
Speaker 2: whatever happens is on her, she's asking for it, and
27:26
Speaker 2: they're not actually concerned about all women, only women who
27:30
Speaker 2: are willing to conform to their standards of modesty. It
27:33
Speaker 2: gets worse when a woman is a victim of sexual violence.
27:36
Speaker 2: It matters much less to modesty culture than to current
27:40
Speaker 2: American rape culture how she addresses or acts. Modesty culture
27:45
Speaker 2: will assume much more likely that it is somehow her fault,
27:49
Speaker 2: probably because their standards of how good girls dress and
27:52
Speaker 2: behave are so much higher.
27:54
Speaker 1: Right and Pushiman goes on second, Both cultures have a
27:59
Speaker 1: very problem stance on men. It's not as bad as
28:02
Speaker 1: their view of women, but it's another of the shocking
28:04
Speaker 1: similarities between the two. Why does modesty culture try to
28:07
Speaker 1: get all women to cover up because men, according to
28:10
Speaker 1: modesty culture, cannot help themselves since actually sincere Christians want
28:15
Speaker 1: their men to be sexually pure as well as their women,
28:18
Speaker 1: or at least they say they do. But of course
28:20
Speaker 1: the onus for keeping men pure is put on the women.
28:24
Speaker 1: All temptation must be removed, for even seeing a flash
28:28
Speaker 1: of skin he ought not to have seen will make
28:29
Speaker 1: a man think all sorts of lusty and rapey thoughts.
28:33
Speaker 1: That's the gist of it. I've read modesty books that
28:35
Speaker 1: go into great detail on how men's chemistry works, essentially
28:39
Speaker 1: saying that if he catches just a glimpse of a
28:41
Speaker 1: woman's body, he will be sexually turned on in an instant,
28:44
Speaker 1: and after that he is incapable of controlling his mental
28:47
Speaker 1: slash physical reaction, and it is only a woman's body
28:51
Speaker 1: that will create this reaction. Modesty culture is heteronormative to
28:55
Speaker 1: the point of denying that real homosexual attraction even exist.
28:58
Speaker 1: So both rape culture and modesty culture envisioned men as
29:01
Speaker 1: jeweling hound dogs with everlasting erections. As a side note,
29:06
Speaker 1: modesty culture is also made up of people who think
29:08
Speaker 1: men ought to be the ones running the world. And
29:10
Speaker 1: that the male gender holds all spiritual authority, and it
29:15
Speaker 1: is important to recognize how something that is disguised as
29:18
Speaker 1: morality is often weaponized to insert dominance, control, and supremacy.
29:23
Speaker 1: I find it, for instance, interesting, how this really is
29:27
Speaker 1: like allowing for men to rape women in it being
29:31
Speaker 1: their faults and they can still be good Christian men
29:36
Speaker 1: because she was wearing a tank top.
29:38
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, right right, I mean, there's definitely that
29:42
Speaker 2: conversation of who is being judged the most people way
29:45
Speaker 2: too short of shorts. And again, when I was a
29:48
Speaker 2: part of that Christian world, I definitely preached this, I
29:51
Speaker 2: definitely bought into this, which is again why I have
29:55
Speaker 2: so many many body issues in itself. And again a
29:58
Speaker 2: part of that was able to hide my body issues
30:01
Speaker 2: by pretending it was modesty. I mean again, self esteem,
30:05
Speaker 2: all of that. But to me, there's so much in
30:09
Speaker 2: this conversation that we need to take take a moment
30:12
Speaker 2: to look at and how the overlapping good intentions of
30:17
Speaker 2: discussing modesty has overlapped with rape culture and how often
30:22
Speaker 2: times they'd excuse us rape. And again when we look
30:25
Speaker 2: at old Testament stuff from the Bible, if a woman
30:28
Speaker 2: was raped, it was her fault. And if she was
30:30
Speaker 2: not being married, if she's not married to the rapist
30:34
Speaker 2: and she had to beg for them to marry, then
30:35
Speaker 2: she was outcast forever. Like that's that level again. And
30:38
Speaker 2: for some reason, even though that seems so extreme, people
30:42
Speaker 2: still oftentimes will throw away had heavy quotes women specifically
30:50
Speaker 2: who have gone through trauma like that when it comes
30:53
Speaker 2: to religious or purity cultures in general. So that's something
30:57
Speaker 2: to remember. And for me, this was the crux of
31:01
Speaker 2: my service to religion, the idea of being pure and
31:04
Speaker 2: remaining modest and supporting men to gain more power like
31:08
Speaker 2: I was taught, I need to be behind the man
31:13
Speaker 2: literally to make him the better man. And this whole
31:18
Speaker 2: like the idea that that phrase the men are the
31:22
Speaker 2: heads and the women are the next, all these things
31:25
Speaker 2: that supports the men. I'm like, God, that is so,
31:27
Speaker 2: why why do we think that that's such a great
31:31
Speaker 2: like saying I don't want that, don't knit that on
31:34
Speaker 2: a pillow for me? What the hell? Oh no, my gift.
31:38
Speaker 2: I would thank you, thank you for that. But yeah,
31:55
Speaker 2: and with the stigma of purity and modesty when it
31:58
Speaker 2: comes to sex and sexuality as we talked about earlier.
32:01
Speaker 2: There is a level of impact that can linger causing
32:04
Speaker 2: damage throughout your entire life, and here's some examples from
32:07
Speaker 2: that same Kidman dot co blog. It could include feeling
32:10
Speaker 2: shame about your body and about having sex, fear of
32:12
Speaker 2: what sex before marriage might do to you, discomfort and
32:16
Speaker 2: receiving pleasure, difficulty naming needs and wants during sex, separation
32:20
Speaker 2: and distance from yourself and body sometimes called dissociation, uncertainty
32:25
Speaker 2: around how to bring this up to other people in
32:27
Speaker 2: your life, difficulty trusting yourself and others, anxiety around a
32:31
Speaker 2: lack of agency that you have in your life. And yeah,
32:34
Speaker 2: all of those fit me. All of those fit me,
32:36
Speaker 2: like I maybe not the dissociation, well, you know, maybe
32:39
Speaker 2: the association actually none of the thing about it, like
32:42
Speaker 2: my initial thoughts of sex. Of course, everything I do
32:48
Speaker 2: this sounds ridiculous. I have to think about it for
32:51
Speaker 2: a long time before I decided to do it. So
32:53
Speaker 2: I had made up my mind that purity and this
32:57
Speaker 2: chastity that I thought was so great was not about
33:00
Speaker 2: religion and purity and being honest heavenly way, It was
33:04
Speaker 2: about fear. And it was perfectly aligned with my fear
33:08
Speaker 2: and trauma, previous trauma, previous sexual abuse. So therefore it
33:12
Speaker 2: was perfectly fitting because at least I could say it's
33:16
Speaker 2: for Jesus.
33:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean I do think all of
33:23
Speaker 1: these things. You've listed a lot of a lot of
33:27
Speaker 1: listeners and myself I can relate to. But it's it's
33:30
Speaker 1: so isolating, and it's so you can't ask people about it,
33:34
Speaker 1: you can't talk about it, and it's basically telling you
33:39
Speaker 1: to be submissive to the man and his wants take precedence.
33:43
Speaker 1: So even if maybe you maybe you're not sure about
33:46
Speaker 1: like do you want to have sex or not, if
33:48
Speaker 1: he pressures you, though, then it's it's like almost telling you, well,
33:53
Speaker 1: if my religion is saying, he's the man, and if
33:56
Speaker 1: that's what he wants, then that's what he gets.
33:58
Speaker 2: Right, exactly exactly what he wants and what he gives,
34:02
Speaker 2: no matter how comfortable and uncomfortable you are. And if
34:05
Speaker 2: you're the ones saying no, then you are sinning against man.
34:10
Speaker 2: To your authority.
34:11
Speaker 1: Once again, yep, but these aren't the only types of
34:17
Speaker 1: trauma reactions. More often than not, many of those who
34:21
Speaker 1: have suffered trauma due to the purity cultures suffer from
34:24
Speaker 1: sexual dysfunction and fears, the anxiety brought on by shame
34:28
Speaker 1: and guilt. After years of being told that your worth
34:31
Speaker 1: is your body, slash your purity, the undoing and unraveling
34:35
Speaker 1: of those ties can become a process and even dangerous
34:38
Speaker 1: to your mental health. In a Vice article talking about
34:41
Speaker 1: Linda kay Klein's book Pure Inside the movement that shamed
34:45
Speaker 1: generation of young women and how I Brook Free, which
34:47
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, they discuss the severe impacts of the
34:52
Speaker 1: purity culture and physical and mental side effects. Here's a
34:56
Speaker 1: quote from that Vice article. It's teenage girls who end
34:59
Speaker 1: up most effects did clin fines because while boys are
35:02
Speaker 1: taught that their minds are a gateway to sin, women
35:04
Speaker 1: are taught that their bodies are. After years of being
35:07
Speaker 1: told that they're responsible for not only their own purity,
35:09
Speaker 1: but the purity of the men and boys around them,
35:12
Speaker 1: and of associating sexual desire with depravity and shame, clin
35:15
Speaker 1: rights those feelings often haunt women's relationships with their bodies
35:20
Speaker 1: for a lifetime. And she goes on to explain her
35:23
Speaker 1: own experiences in trauma after realizing she couldn't be the
35:26
Speaker 1: woman the church wanted her to be. It was at
35:29
Speaker 1: that point when she began considering having sex that the
35:32
Speaker 1: symptoms started. It began when I took the possibility of
35:35
Speaker 1: having sex and put it on the table. Client says,
35:38
Speaker 1: from that point on, sometimes it was my boyfriend and
35:40
Speaker 1: I being sexual that would make me have these breakdowns
35:42
Speaker 1: where I was in tears, scratching myself into light bled
35:45
Speaker 1: and ended up on the corner of the bed crying.
35:49
Speaker 2: Right. And I think it's really important. We definitely want
35:52
Speaker 2: to look at that a little deeper, having that conversation
35:55
Speaker 2: that this is traumatic when we talk about CPDSD and PTSD,
36:00
Speaker 2: this is an actual reaction that comes out physically. For me.
36:05
Speaker 2: I didn't have that initial reaction when I first had sex.
36:08
Speaker 2: What I wanted to do is get it over with,
36:11
Speaker 2: not tell anybody, and never talk to that guy again.
36:13
Speaker 2: But there was definitely a lot of shame factor to
36:16
Speaker 2: this because so many reasons, so many reasons, and part
36:21
Speaker 2: of that is my own past trauma. Part of that
36:23
Speaker 2: is trauma with religion, and part of that is like
36:25
Speaker 2: trying to say that I'm an adult. So many bad things,
36:29
Speaker 2: but this emphasis on sex, which you and I have
36:32
Speaker 2: talked about before, has really damaged in every way, like
36:37
Speaker 2: to the point that we hope consent is a conversation
36:40
Speaker 2: that we can have because doing that what I did.
36:44
Speaker 4: Was also an awful way to start off right, right,
36:49
Speaker 4: And we have talked about that before, like if you
36:51
Speaker 4: don't feel comfortable saying no, is there any how what
36:56
Speaker 4: is true consent?
36:57
Speaker 1: I think that I too. I have a journal entry
37:03
Speaker 1: where I felt bad even before the sex part, if
37:06
Speaker 1: people were attracted to me, And I wrote a whole
37:10
Speaker 1: journal entry about how I felt like a monster and
37:12
Speaker 1: my body was monstrous and why did it this keep happening?
37:16
Speaker 1: And it should be like a nice thing, It should
37:17
Speaker 1: be like a somebody's attracted to me, but instead I
37:21
Speaker 1: turned it inward and felt horrible about myself.
37:25
Speaker 2: Right, And again, this is something that we have learned
37:29
Speaker 2: or we've been conditioned to do. And obviously Klein wasn't alone,
37:33
Speaker 2: and she started gathering a lot of data, which, by
37:35
Speaker 2: the way, this is around the same time frame that
37:37
Speaker 2: I was doing this, Like her time frame is my
37:39
Speaker 2: time frame, and I feel really old this research, but
37:45
Speaker 2: that's okay, I'm fine, I'm fine. But she started gathering
37:49
Speaker 2: data in two thousand and six, and she wrote in
37:51
Speaker 2: her book based on our nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia.
37:55
Speaker 2: One might think that my childhood friends and I had
37:57
Speaker 2: been to war, and in fact we had. We went
38:00
Speaker 2: to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own
38:03
Speaker 2: sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of that church.
38:07
Speaker 2: And that's exactly kind of that level. What I'm talking
38:09
Speaker 2: about is I wanted to get it over with so quickly,
38:13
Speaker 2: as if it was a war, as if I was
38:15
Speaker 2: going to battle, and get it out and get it
38:17
Speaker 2: done because I hated that beginning, because I wanted to
38:23
Speaker 2: break free so badly from that religious trauma and that
38:27
Speaker 2: standard that I did it that way and it was
38:30
Speaker 2: not healthy. And then yeah, going on, her research shows
38:35
Speaker 2: without a doubt that traumatic effect of this type of culture.
38:39
Speaker 2: Here's another quote from that article. The resulting book is
38:42
Speaker 2: an eye opening blend of memoir, journalism, and cultural commentary
38:45
Speaker 2: that masterfully illustrates how religion, shame, and trauma can inform
38:49
Speaker 2: one another. Citing medical studies, as she lays out that
38:52
Speaker 2: evangelical adolescents are the least likely to quote expect sex
38:56
Speaker 2: to be pleasurable and among the most likely to expect
38:58
Speaker 2: that having sex will make them feel guilty and in
39:02
Speaker 2: comparison to boys, Klein observes girls are ninety two percent
39:06
Speaker 2: more likely to feel shame, especially girls who are highly religious.
39:10
Speaker 2: For many women, like Cline, that shame can manifest in
39:14
Speaker 2: physical symptoms.
39:15
Speaker 1: Right In another blog, author Jenna Dubois writes in her
39:18
Speaker 1: article titled religious trauma plus painful Sex, the human body
39:23
Speaker 1: has an incredible memory. Even if someone doesn't have a
39:25
Speaker 1: history of physical or sexual trauma, the trauma of hearing
39:28
Speaker 1: their body is terrible and not for their own pleasure,
39:31
Speaker 1: their whole life begins to manifest in some pretty profound ways.
39:35
Speaker 1: Sex is a very somatic experience, especially for women. Penetrative
39:39
Speaker 1: sex is more pleasurable and comfortable when the body is relaxed,
39:42
Speaker 1: which is extremely hard to do if your sexuality has
39:45
Speaker 1: been shamed since childhood. Combine that with a lack of
39:48
Speaker 1: sex education in religious communities i e. Condoms, lube, glatorial simulation,
39:53
Speaker 1: and penetrative sex can quickly become less than desirable. And
39:57
Speaker 1: she goes on to further explain sex is also very mental,
40:01
Speaker 1: and there are two very significant ways that religion hurts people,
40:04
Speaker 1: specifically women, by not teaching them their bodies are theirs
40:08
Speaker 1: and for their pleasure, and here are some direct quotes
40:11
Speaker 1: from that if you are taught something is bad or
40:15
Speaker 1: wrong your entire life, but expected of you during marriage
40:18
Speaker 1: and not for your pleasure, only procreation. While let's just
40:21
Speaker 1: say that's not the sexiest setup for a pleasant, relaxing
40:24
Speaker 1: sexual experience. For women, sex is expected. During my experience
40:29
Speaker 1: in Christian culture, I experienced many of my friends getting
40:32
Speaker 1: married and getting married very young. The conversations for men
40:35
Speaker 1: around sex slash marriage were generally filled with excitement. For women,
40:39
Speaker 1: it was more complex. The wedding night in Christian culture
40:43
Speaker 1: is massive because it automatically insinuates sex, and usually for
40:47
Speaker 1: a lot of Christian couples, this is sex for the
40:50
Speaker 1: first time, so there's a lot of pressure, usually and
40:53
Speaker 1: mostly on the women. I believe that this expectation, even
40:57
Speaker 1: if it's unspoken between partners, it makes sex more difficult
41:01
Speaker 1: for women. It also feeds into the beliefs that their
41:03
Speaker 1: body is never for themselves, but for everyone else as
41:07
Speaker 1: a woman, and it's only good when it's of service. Obviously,
41:12
Speaker 1: this is far from the truth.
41:14
Speaker 2: Right and again, because I grew up in the world,
41:17
Speaker 2: I had a lot of friends getting married, if not
41:20
Speaker 2: during college immediately after college because they did not want
41:24
Speaker 2: to wait for sex, as in fact, I have family
41:26
Speaker 2: members who did that because they just didn't want to wait.
41:30
Speaker 2: That was the whole reason that they got married, thinking
41:32
Speaker 2: that their sexual lust for each other was obviously a
41:35
Speaker 2: sign and that they were supposed to be together again,
41:38
Speaker 2: the courtship thing. There's more to that, Like, don't think
41:41
Speaker 2: that that's the only reason, but it was a rush
41:43
Speaker 2: to get married. They didn't want to wait type of conversation,
41:47
Speaker 2: and with that they there was a whole loss of
41:51
Speaker 2: kind of like experience in understanding and many many of
41:55
Speaker 2: them came in blind. Don't get me wrong, several of
41:58
Speaker 2: them were like, yeah, it was great, but it took
42:01
Speaker 2: a lot of learning, and it took a lot of
42:03
Speaker 2: breakdown in their conversations, meaning they did not have an
42:08
Speaker 2: actual talk about sex until much much later than when
42:11
Speaker 2: they actually had sex. So it's so so sad to me.
42:16
Speaker 2: And for those that were lucky that was like, oh,
42:18
Speaker 2: we love sex, amazing, that's that's great. Good on you.
42:21
Speaker 2: But that was rare that I could see. Of course,
42:24
Speaker 2: they also these friends also wanted to paint marriage as
42:28
Speaker 2: perfect because again, if it's not perfect, then they have failed,
42:33
Speaker 2: and again the women have failed. And then also like
42:36
Speaker 2: a lot of it, finally people finally kind of realized
42:38
Speaker 2: how tiring weddings were. So many of them finally admitted
42:42
Speaker 2: they weren't having sex. On my back, we just crashed, Okay,
42:46
Speaker 2: which happens.
42:48
Speaker 1: Strange. Yeah, we all know they're having sex. That's just strange.
42:54
Speaker 2: I get it in this sense, like old school ways,
42:58
Speaker 2: you really weren't married until you cod the marriage, which
43:01
Speaker 2: is again real sexist. But that's not a thing anymore.
43:06
Speaker 2: So I don't know why we put pressure onto that.
43:09
Speaker 2: That makes me sad anyway, And from that previous article
43:12
Speaker 2: we talked about Kline, she expands on it and says
43:15
Speaker 2: client observes and sites an expert who found that many
43:18
Speaker 2: women who grew up in purity culture and eventually began
43:21
Speaker 2: having sex report experiencing an involuntary physical tightening of the vagina,
43:27
Speaker 2: also known as vaginismus, that is linked to a fear
43:30
Speaker 2: of penetrative sex and makes intercourse extremely painful. And yes,
43:34
Speaker 2: I've had friends experience this, you know what. I actually
43:37
Speaker 2: I've experienced it. Too too much information, I understand. But
43:40
Speaker 2: when you are pressured into things, or when you feel
43:42
Speaker 2: like you have to do things and you're not relaxed,
43:44
Speaker 2: and then you're thinking about all the things that are bad.
43:48
Speaker 2: It doesn't go well, and the testimonies from many women
43:51
Speaker 2: who have grown in this type of environment is telling.
43:54
Speaker 2: Here's some quoted testimonies in that article. One moment, she
43:59
Speaker 2: spoke to describe having years of awkward, uncomfortable sex with
44:02
Speaker 2: her husband until she began to feel overcome by such
44:06
Speaker 2: extreme exhaustion she had difficulty getting out of bed. Another
44:10
Speaker 2: share that after her first sexual experience, her body began
44:13
Speaker 2: to shake uncontrollably. In one extreme account, a woman said
44:17
Speaker 2: that the feelings of panic and guilt flooded her mind
44:19
Speaker 2: quote like a cloud of locusts after an early sexual encounter.
44:24
Speaker 2: Soon after, orange sized welts broke out on her arms, stomach, back,
44:28
Speaker 2: and breast, and it became difficult to breathe. After jumping
44:32
Speaker 2: into the shower to find relief, wels the size of
44:34
Speaker 2: both of her palms formed on her vagina. Quote. I
44:38
Speaker 2: would say it's the scariest thing I've ever seen in
44:41
Speaker 2: my life, she told Kleine. I had no idea what
44:43
Speaker 2: was happening to me. My legs, my face, everything was
44:46
Speaker 2: bright red. It felt like I had absolutely no control
44:49
Speaker 2: over this horrific, nightmarish things that were happening to my body.
44:54
Speaker 2: That woman was rushed to the emergency room, and though
44:56
Speaker 2: the doctors told her she went into anaphylactic shock, they
44:59
Speaker 2: couldn't explain what caused it. Again, while she knows something
45:03
Speaker 2: medical happened, she told Klein that she is certain that
45:06
Speaker 2: something spiritual happened to her as well as the result
45:08
Speaker 2: of what happens when you tempt Satan, which I'm like, oh,
45:13
Speaker 2: I hate that. There's so many things because honestly, and
45:19
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about this in Motherhood and the
45:23
Speaker 2: Christian Ideal of mothers, which is another episode, y'all. I
45:26
Speaker 2: don't know how many episodes we've got, there's so much.
45:28
Speaker 2: But I've had friends blame miscarriages on their previous sexual encounters,
45:34
Speaker 2: of being sexually promiscuous, and that was something that broke
45:38
Speaker 2: my heart that that would they would take on that
45:40
Speaker 2: blame and they would literally apologize and grovel to their
45:44
Speaker 2: husband because they said, I sinned against you. These are
45:47
Speaker 2: words I send against you because I had sex before you.
45:50
Speaker 2: And I'm just like, oh, what a horrible God that
45:56
Speaker 2: would that would use that against just women.
46:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's heartbreaking. And as more and more people are
46:08
Speaker 1: talking about the effects of religious trauma and purity culture,
46:11
Speaker 1: there are still those who are holding tight to these
46:13
Speaker 1: traditions and even trying to change with the times. As
46:17
Speaker 1: the world started to become more sex positive, those in
46:20
Speaker 1: conservative churches continued to preach morality again disguised as protecting women.
46:26
Speaker 1: In another Vice article written by Scout Ropes, oh I
46:31
Speaker 1: hope I didn't butcher it, titled how young Evangelical women
46:35
Speaker 1: are navigating a sex positive Internet, Ropes look into a
46:38
Speaker 1: group called Girl Defined and how they are talking to
46:41
Speaker 1: young women. She writes the quote highly visible online ministry.
46:45
Speaker 1: Girl Defined a collection of blog posts, videos, and instructional
46:48
Speaker 1: books aiming to provide mentorship to young Christian women. The
46:52
Speaker 1: name refers to Bielin Clark's foundational message that one must
46:56
Speaker 1: work against the odds to be a God defined girl
46:59
Speaker 1: and a culture defined worlds and the founders, Bethany Bille
47:03
Speaker 1: and Kristin Clark, have been in the influencer world and
47:06
Speaker 1: Sisters have created a network focused on issues that matter
47:10
Speaker 1: to high school and college aged girls, naming sexual politics
47:14
Speaker 1: and temptation.
47:15
Speaker 2: Right yeah, and within their focus they advertise a community
47:19
Speaker 2: of like minded young women who can come together with
47:22
Speaker 2: a redefined idea of purity. And from that same article
47:25
Speaker 2: they describe the organization like this, as with all sin,
47:29
Speaker 2: falling short of the model of purity, physical, emotional, and
47:32
Speaker 2: spiritual is seen as almost inevitable. That does not change
47:36
Speaker 2: the fact that it is the model. The ultimate sexual
47:39
Speaker 2: freedom in the Ministry of Girl defined comes when one
47:42
Speaker 2: acknowledges this losing battle and chooses to pursue abstinence anyways,
47:47
Speaker 2: so you can little more leeway, little more forgiveness. And
47:52
Speaker 2: apparently they do a lot of retreats, and they had
47:54
Speaker 2: one recently, and in a recent retreat, while on stage,
47:57
Speaker 2: the founders reiterate the quote importance of submission in a
48:01
Speaker 2: world that has to fetishize women's independence and self sufficiency.
48:07
Speaker 2: I feel like they don't know what fetishism means.
48:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, not quite. Maybe glamorized what they were going for.
48:20
Speaker 2: Were gonna, We're gonna keep it anyway. And the evolution
48:23
Speaker 2: of relevance or perhaps counterculture and if you will, has
48:29
Speaker 2: always existed. I laugh and I chuck a little bit
48:32
Speaker 2: because I was a part of this y'all. I was
48:34
Speaker 2: part of this, I admitted freely. This was my early
48:36
Speaker 2: two thousands upbringing in leadership in church.
48:41
Speaker 3: Uh.
48:42
Speaker 2: Their need to grow and expand with the changes, and uh,
48:46
Speaker 2: it's nothing new in the big sea church, you know,
48:49
Speaker 2: the big c the capital c Developments like retreats. Uh,
48:54
Speaker 2: youth groups have always been a catalyst for movements like
48:58
Speaker 2: purity movement, which is what we talked about previously about
49:01
Speaker 2: going to camps and what they can do, how they're
49:03
Speaker 2: just focused on it. We talked about praise and worship,
49:06
Speaker 2: which is kind of a newer thing with like full
49:09
Speaker 2: on bands. I know recently, I believe I saw a
49:12
Speaker 2: video where they had the musicians flying in from the
49:17
Speaker 2: back to the stage, and this is a church, this
49:21
Speaker 2: is a church, but they really are like trying to
49:25
Speaker 2: amp up entertainment within the church culture. I don't know
49:32
Speaker 2: what else to say that.
49:34
Speaker 1: I went to a very very small church, extremely small,
49:38
Speaker 1: but most of my friends went to bigger churches. And
49:40
Speaker 1: one of them invited me to her church once and
49:43
Speaker 1: it was I think it was middle school, and she
49:45
Speaker 1: was in a band, a metal band, i might say,
49:48
Speaker 1: and she was playing at the church that night, and
49:52
Speaker 1: I remember just being blown away, like this is not
49:54
Speaker 1: like my church.
49:57
Speaker 2: Oh did you not get into all the like big
50:00
Speaker 2: rock star groups of the Christian groups technically P O D. Yeah, yep,
50:09
Speaker 2: which I think they're like complete opposite.
50:11
Speaker 3: Now.
50:11
Speaker 2: I feel like these bands I've grown with us. I
50:14
Speaker 2: think there's a couple of bands that I was like, oh,
50:17
Speaker 2: they're Christian and they were like hell no, not anymore.
50:23
Speaker 2: And then there's some real embarrassing like white boy raps
50:26
Speaker 2: in the Christian world that I'm like, why did I
50:28
Speaker 2: think this was cool?
50:29
Speaker 1: Yeah?
50:30
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but it was super cool for me as
50:34
Speaker 2: a teenager. I guess being able to find that type
50:37
Speaker 2: of music that's talking about Jesus, oh Dear Face is
50:43
Speaker 2: turning red.
50:59
Speaker 1: Well, my, like the movements in these churches, their singular
51:02
Speaker 1: focus remains on cis white, heteronormative groups. And this is
51:06
Speaker 1: not by mistake. Earlier be quoted from the article Decolonizing
51:11
Speaker 1: Purity Culture, but we wanted to share this from that article.
51:14
Speaker 1: Two quote, Christian nationalist ideology has historically had racialized and
51:20
Speaker 1: imperialist underpinnings, suggesting that the resurgence of Christian nationalism in
51:24
Speaker 1: the public sphere, such as AOUM served to buttress notions
51:29
Speaker 1: of white purity and systemic non white exclusion in American
51:33
Speaker 1: social life. The knowledge vacuum created by AOUM disproportionately impacts
51:38
Speaker 1: WOC due to its association with decreased access to sexual
51:43
Speaker 1: and reproductive health decisions. Additionally, AOUM effects WOC differently than
51:49
Speaker 1: their white female counterparts due to the perpetuation of racialized
51:52
Speaker 1: tropes of hypersexuality and presumed inherent sexual knowledge specific to
51:58
Speaker 1: black and LATINX students.
52:00
Speaker 2: Right, and when we say, let you see, we're talking
52:03
Speaker 2: about women of color, and they continue as they address
52:06
Speaker 2: the intersectional rature of women of color. While there is
52:09
Speaker 2: clear evidence of the harms perpetuated by purity culture, there
52:13
Speaker 2: has been a dearth of empirical research and literature that
52:16
Speaker 2: includes the experiences of women of color in that discourse. Today,
52:20
Speaker 2: participants simple within the empirical literature are disproportionally white slash
52:23
Speaker 2: European American and assume that since purity culture is primarily
52:27
Speaker 2: a product of white evangelicalism, communities of color are not
52:31
Speaker 2: impacted to the same degree as white women. However, as
52:34
Speaker 2: noted above, the religious right and white evangelicalism have been
52:38
Speaker 2: a dominant influence in the cultural and political makeup of
52:41
Speaker 2: mainstream North American society. This largely and disproportionately impacts communities
52:47
Speaker 2: of color through various intersectional forms of oppression, both locally
52:52
Speaker 2: and globally.
52:53
Speaker 1: Quote continues given that white evangelical narratives greatly influence how
52:57
Speaker 1: we discuss race and sexuality in the US, Centering white
53:01
Speaker 1: women's experiences within purity culture perpetuates a colorblind racial ideology.
53:05
Speaker 1: This ideology is a modern form of racism that relies
53:08
Speaker 1: on color evasion i e. Denial of racial differences and
53:12
Speaker 1: emphasizing sameness and power evasion ie denial of racism by
53:16
Speaker 1: emphasizing the belief that everyone has the same opportunities, which
53:20
Speaker 1: has been shown to reinforce racial prejudices and or inequality.
53:25
Speaker 2: We've talked about this before, how research is inherently focused
53:28
Speaker 2: on the heteronormative data, which draws a distinct line about
53:31
Speaker 2: what demographic is worth counting while erasing all the marginalized communities.
53:36
Speaker 2: And yeah, here's more from that research in Anderson's formative
53:39
Speaker 2: book written in twenty fifteen on Christian purity culture called
53:43
Speaker 2: Damaged Goods. New Perspectives on Christian Purity They called attention
53:46
Speaker 2: to the evaluative differences within its modesty culture, illuminating the
53:50
Speaker 2: ways in which modesty was created for white, able bodied
53:54
Speaker 2: and is applied to the bodies of women of color differently.
53:57
Speaker 2: While all women suffer from objectification and sexualists, black women
54:01
Speaker 2: receive the brunt of the sexualization due to their simultaneously
54:04
Speaker 2: blackness and femaleness, which reflects on the unique ways gender
54:09
Speaker 2: racism is perpetuated within and woven throughout purity culture and
54:12
Speaker 2: its teaching. Black women's bodies are sexualized by both women
54:17
Speaker 2: and men in ways that white bodies are not, and
54:19
Speaker 2: this is a distinct privilege that white women have. And
54:22
Speaker 2: we definitely wanted to add all of that to this
54:25
Speaker 2: conversation because we can't ignore the intersectionality of these types
54:29
Speaker 2: of traumas, but it is on a deeper level on
54:31
Speaker 2: different points. And who is seen once again as being
54:35
Speaker 2: worthy of having that conversation and getting treatment from it
54:40
Speaker 2: because right now, the reason we have so much content
54:43
Speaker 2: in the last ten years, last twenty years, there has
54:46
Speaker 2: been a focus in treating what is RTS since doctor
54:51
Speaker 2: Wennell came out with her own experiences talking about how
54:55
Speaker 2: to come away from the dogma of very very very
55:00
Speaker 2: deep religion theological teachings. I guess when you're indoctrinated by
55:05
Speaker 2: a lot of this, because this works on an emotional, physical,
55:08
Speaker 2: and a mental level that is completely different from your
55:12
Speaker 2: other types of conversations, even teachings. And yeah, this has
55:18
Speaker 2: been a long episode. We know there's so much that
55:21
Speaker 2: we could address. We haven't even talked about the treatments
55:24
Speaker 2: that are available, if there is, and what people would recommend.
55:27
Speaker 2: There's a few different types. Counseling is definitely good. I
55:31
Speaker 2: think it was important for us to note the extent
55:37
Speaker 2: of how these types of traumas do affect people and
55:40
Speaker 2: why movements like the Purity movement purity culture can be
55:45
Speaker 2: It is still very very damaging, and it kind of
55:48
Speaker 2: looks like we're going back into it and it makes
55:50
Speaker 2: me very very very sad and very very very scared
55:55
Speaker 2: by our gen zers. Man, they're killing it with like
55:58
Speaker 2: trying to find the truth on all of this, and
56:02
Speaker 2: there's some things that we haven't talked about. Again, we
56:04
Speaker 2: do want to address purity culture and queerness, and we're
56:08
Speaker 2: going to talk about queerness in religious trauma, so we'll
56:11
Speaker 2: put that in with that conversation, we are going to
56:14
Speaker 2: talk about women, specifically in Christian culture that are married
56:19
Speaker 2: married women and the types of abuse and trauma that
56:23
Speaker 2: they suffer because of how it's set up, as we
56:27
Speaker 2: talked about the misogynistic and patriarchal ideals of what Christian
56:32
Speaker 2: morality is, especially from the Western nice point of view,
56:37
Speaker 2: especially from that Christian nationalist point of view. We're getting there, y'all,
56:41
Speaker 2: but it's a lot.
56:43
Speaker 1: It is it is, and like you said, we knew
56:45
Speaker 1: it would be. So that's why we put it off
56:48
Speaker 1: for months and months and months. But here we are
56:52
Speaker 1: and we will be back with those episodes. There is
56:55
Speaker 1: a lot more to address in the meantime. Listeners, If
56:59
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts about out this, any resources, we
57:02
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. You can email us
57:04
Speaker 1: at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You
57:07
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, or
57:09
Speaker 1: on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff I've Never told You.
57:12
Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube. We also have a book coming out.
57:14
Speaker 1: Do you can pre order it. That's Stuff you Should
57:17
Speaker 1: Read Books dot com. Thanks as always to our super producer, Christina,
57:21
Speaker 1: our executive producer Maya, and our contributor Joey. Thank you all, yes,
57:26
Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told
57:28
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