Random Experiences Of Former Participants In 'Purity Culture' (16 items)

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  (#16) One Former Purity Culture Follower Burned Her Membership Card

  From WordPress blogger A Spirit Unchained:

  I finally arrived at my conclusion that remaining a virgin until marriage was not a God-given mandate. After well over a decade of wholeheartedly embracing purity culture, I took a good, hard look at it and chose to walk away. I burned my True Love Waits card a few months later as a symbol of the fact that I no longer believed in or followed purity culture. 
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  (#1) This Woman Learned To Be Ashamed Of Her Body

  From Redditor /u/lunazeus:

  Purity culture destroyed my self-esteem because older people in church told me I couldn't wear tank tops and shorts like my friends because I had [a chest] and curves at 11. "It might cause your Christian brothers to stumble." Well, maybe creepy Mr. Mike, the usher, shouldn't be [fantasizing about] an 11-year-old girl. But no, it was my fault. I got in trouble so many times for the clothes I wore innocently because I wanted to be like my friends who just happened to not be developing the same way I was.

  I was still a child. There were always extra rules for me. We all had to wear one-piece bathing suits to church camp, but I was told to put a t-shirt on, too. So most of the time, I just didn't swim. What kid wants to swim in a t-shirt?

  I hid my body behind oversized clothes and didn't dress cute or enjoy fashion for years because I didn't want to be a stumbling block. I'm lucky that I wised up and got out of it so my self-esteem and confidence could be on the mend, but I look back at my teenage and childhood self, and I feel terrible because of the way adults made me feel ashamed of my body. If I have a daughter, I will never expose her to that. It nearly destroyed me.
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  (#6) Some Women Base Their Identities On Being A Virgin

  From Redditor /u/CttCJim:

  Purity culture is women basing their entire identities around their virginity, so once it's gone, be it by premarital sex, r*pe, or married honeymoon copulating, the woman slowly realizes she has nothing left to offer the world but the drudgery of child-rearing.
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  (#7) Purity Culture Affected Her Into Her Adult Years

  From Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free:

  Based on our nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia, one might think that my childhood friends and I had been to war, and in fact, we had. We went to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of the church.
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  (#15) This Church Taught That Premarital Sex Haunts You Even After You Are Happily Married With Kids

  From Redditor /u/JarethOfHouseGoblin:

  The Christian group I was part of a few years ago had a sermon on [intimate] immorality. The speaker that night was a student leader. He did the Christian dude-bro humble-brag thing of admitting to taking a former girlfriend to the boneyard, but being totally remorseful about it, of course. For Jesus. Then telling us that his former girlfriend is now married with kids, and she'll "have to carry that with her for the rest of her life."

  Had I not already been in the [de-conversion] process, that would have flipped the "this is bullsh*t" switch in my brain. Along with the fact that, after the sermon, we had to read the anonymous postings about the various acts of immorality committed by the organization members. They were taped to the walls and we had to walk by to read them like we were going through the world's sh*ttiest haunted house. It was mind-bending what people thought was worthy of an anonymous confession. I wish I did know who they were so I could tell them that they're just people and are not deeply broken.
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  (#5) One Woman Went Into Anaphylactic Shock During Intercourse

  From a person who spoke with Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free: 

  And then, I distinctly remember him saying, "Wait, there is... What's on your back?" I reached around and it felt like an enormous mosquito bite the size of your palm. And then I looked and they were on my arms, like this [in real-time, the speaker shows Klein the size of the welts by taking half of a large orange peel and placing it over herself]. And I am watching them rise on my stomach, on my breasts, like a horror movie. And then my coughing - I was struggling to breath, to catch air...

  Not one person can make sense of what happened. The most anyone can tell me is that I might have a mild version of some kind of allergy - maybe to cat fur on his bed or some kind of lubricant on the condom. But I mean, these are really stretches. Some people I've told the story to have suspected the photojournalist tried to roofie me, and it went wrong. But I did not have any food or drink with him that day. All of it remains a perfect jet-black mystery.

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