My high school religion teacher said that boys are like children in a toy store and they’ll take the toys out of the boxes and play with them but the ones they bring home are the ones who are pristine and untouched. All my autistic ass could think about was about how that’s not how toy stores work
But in order to take the toy home the boy or parent would have to buy it with money. Does that mean that he thinks that women are property that can be bought and taken home? And paying to take her home and have sex with her is in a sense like prostitution, but aren't these religious people against sex work? This is stupid.
Yeah, you’re completely right. If you take a toy out and play with it at the store, you’d have to buy it because it isn’t yours. That’s not a very accurate analogy at all
There was a woman named Kate Cox from Texas relatively recently (January 2024) who tried to abort a fetus with a lethal genetic anomaly that was causing her to have to repeatedly go to the ER (Trisomy 18, if I recall correctly), and they denied her the right to get a medical abortion for so long that her life was in danger and she literally had to go to another state to get it done. 😒
@@Hollyucinogen Yes, and unfortunately, she wasn't alone. Another story more people need to hear is that of Miranda Michel and her family. TLDR is she was told she was expecting non-viable twins conjoined at the spine and multiple other defects. She was forced to carry the high-risk pregnancy anyway, devastated all the while because she and her family WANTED those babies. She wasn't even fully conscious for the four hours they lived.
The damage that purity culture does runs so deep. I remember hearing a sermon about purity where the youth pastor was talking about women who wear revealing clothes and she said "then they complain when they get raped. What else did they think was going to happen?" 🤢 Edit: Pls stop arguing for the existence of god in my replies. That's not what my comment is about
Well, ...If purity culture causes deep damage,....How does (Premarital Sex Purity Culture) corrects the damage that runs deep,that you say is, made by,.... Purity Culture?
To be an ashiest and stay intellectually consistent you have to believe in moral relativism which mean there is no objective right or wrong so a person saying its okay to shave a women's hair for doing something is just as valid as you saying it not, using an ashiest logic in moral relativism. Me on the other hand who believe in objective morality can say that's objectively wrong, but you cant as an ashiest.
@@EvanCanSee if there is "objective" morality found in the bible then why are Christians on multiple sides on so many issues such as abortion rights, self assisted suicide, the death penalty, lgbtq people, etc. Morality is a human construct and deals with treating each other in a way that benefits people and ensuring the survival and thriving of people without causing harm. The concept of morality was invented by people to reduce harm. If I throw a rock against a wall that doesn't cause harm to the rock, but if I throw a baby against a wall then that harms the baby. Sentient beings and other sentient beings can experience pain and suffering, morality was invented to help relieve or reduce the suffering.
there is a learning side of TT, my wife tries to stay on that side, and not the 'wrong side of tiktok'. Like we learned that broccoli is only around 100 years old, as far as the US is concerned. "The first commercial broccoli crop grown in the U.S. was started in California in 1923, but broccoli did not become a significant commercial crop in the U.S. until after World War II." Learned it on "The Tok".
My little sisters virginity (21) is a conversation at so many family gatherings... it makes me sick... my family is so deep in the worst version of Christianity. I hate it!!
@@ouwebrood497 no need to imagine. It's honestly gross. I have to leave the table because I'm so uncomfortable. They just "don't get why I'm so weird about it"... sigh
Unless this is gosseping about the person without them being ok with this then who cares as long as who the convo is about is ok with what is being said
@lord_xylozdoomsday959 I can tell you she cares... she is a uncomfortable about it as I am. Further more the only reason is a conversation is because her elders convinced her she would be less than by having sex. Which... not cool
My parents wanted me to date, but then stopped me from dating because of being in the Church. Thanks Purity culture. That is why I am so clueless with women.
@@Jaclyn I think once you reach a certain age it’s time you realize that you’re at a point where you have been alone for so long that figuring out how to get around what you should have been allowed to do 40 years ago is too late now. I appreciate your honesty
@@2tall2handle1 I'm not sure if you realized this yet, but there are people out there who are in the same situation who would actually understand and bond with you over this. don't be defeatist, these cultists don't deserve to make us ALL miserable
I don’t understand men and also am deeply suspicious. My whole childhood was “men only want one thing and once they get it, you won’t have any value to them”. I’ve never seriously dated and honestly am not terribly interested in physical intimacy. Thanks to Christianity I will always see sex as a transaction and virginity as a reward to give a man for deigning to marry a woman.
@@peachy_lili It’s not so much being defeatist as much as I guess never finding that person to “bond” with. Most people my age are still in church, where I got out years ago.
I remember when Sarah Palins daughter got pregnant and how much shame she must of felt because she was a a pedestal for purity culture and abstinence. It can effect you for years and years. Its stunted me in my growth in so many ways.
It's using your child as a slave for political gain. By 'sinning' she felt the burden of the whole country falling away from conservatism, like Atlas that failed his task.
I was a cynical kid, I used to call the kids going to Sunday school cultists because they all thought differently and believed they had a higher purpose than "us". Then I sat down and read the Bible and man, nothing makes you an athiest faster than critically reading that book. I dodged a bullet there, because although I mocked them, I also envied their comraderies. I stood alone, but I stood free.
What's ironic is that the thing that made me go from a HARDCORE religious fanatic as a preteen-early teen... like someone who would try to preach to randoms on Runescape because I thought I ALWAYS had to be spreading the "good word"... the thing that pulled me out of that the quickest, was having questions the Church couldn't answer (mostly about hell and those who got sent there), and actually sitting down and reading the Bible. Now I despise religion and pity anyone who was never able to break free from that mind control.
@@shimmergamingasking questions with church leaders and only getting extremely vague or different answers, or told to just pray and not question it bc we will never fully understand God. And then reading the full Bible for a year was the catalyst for me realizing that God seems like a dick and this religion is extremely harmful for me.
I read that book for fun and simply enjoyed the storytelling but I never believed in it. Seeing people who are Christians unironically believe in the bible they always seemed to lack critical thinking skills. (Seriously dragons exist in the bible, you believe that???) Also how some of the rules are arbitrary and men are seen as more valuable than women in the bible.
@@deathdragoncat Dragons, boats smaller than anything we have today that can tank a worldwide flood, with 2 of every carnivore and herbivore, but who knows what they ate for that year at sea, and fuck dinosaurs I guess... a man whose strength is determined by the length of his hair... a man who got swallowed by a whale and survived... water into wine... walking on water... I used to be OBSESSED with the sheer mysticism around these stories as a kid, and Christian lore is still intriguing to an extent... but it's all fiction. It's all extremely obvious fiction that my kid brain couldn't comprehend. I love when religious people try to argue with me, and it happens a lot, because many of them don't realize I've read the Bible more than them.
This brings up so many horrible memories of growing up in a Southern Baptist church and private Christian school. 😢 The shame and repression runs deep even 10 years after leaving the church. They are setting women up to be put in dangerous and inappropriate situations and leaving them unprepared for healthy sexual relationships. It's heartbreaking.
@@eugeneroberts1468 wtf is premarital sex purity culture? Did you come up with that? Tell me, what is the problem if a couple has sex before they marry?
Purity Culture and Rape Culture also tend to intersect sometimes. Speaking from experience, I was told to not have sex until marriage. Kept telling my ex that I didn’t want sex. One day, he got tired of me saying, “no.”
In your case it seems it actually helped you get the lesser of 2 evils. If you slept with him earlier you probably would have had a longer relationship with him and maybe even children. Then if for some reason you couldn't sleep with him anymore, he would have done the same thing and with children involved the breakup would be even worse.
That's sad. You could have had a fun relationship together if you weren't kept in this delusion. Both purity culture and rape culture are denying bodily autonomy. In one you can't say yes and in the other you can't say no. Agency and consent are denied in both cases, which is the fundamental problem.
@@AndreiPopescu Uhh… no. I broke up with him because he was a creep and a rapist. I do not think that a longer relationship with that man would've been beneficial at all. Also, funny that the, "answer," was to disregard my values to stay trapped in a relationship with someone who will rape me whenever he felt like it. You haven't met the creep (I hope) but I'd rather not go into detail on the other red flags.
@@SEGASister Isn't this exactly what I said - that a longer relationship would have been worse? By the lesser evil I meant that turning him down until marriage made him show his true colors sooner, thus making your relationship with him shorter.
When I was SA'd when I was 9 I used to cry and punched my stomach in the shower almost every day for 3 years because I thought I was impure Growing up as someone who does still believe in God, I think it was just hearing my friends cries from their experience's from Religion. Once I got out of highschool it was kind of like a wake up call. I stopped going to my religious school and I started actually listening to the church I go to now. Which they call out ALL of the toxicity with other churches. They teach about love and to help one another, be there for people. I never really listened to the church that I attended because I was so checked out from the school that I went to. Bible classes and Wednesday was chapel day. I was so indoctrinated by my school I just figured all churches are the same. However; they are not. It was 100 degrees on compass one day so after school I changed into shorts and was leaving the compass. A teacher came up to me and told me that I shouldn't be wearing that short of a short or else it would make the boys think. It honestly wasn't even that short of a short but whatever lol. The same teacher told me I needed to change my profile picture on facebook because everyone thought I was naked. I was wearing a tank top. Religion for the most part is pretty awful; but the church I am in now is really nice.
Wednesday masses SUCKED. Couldn't stand being next to all these goddamn hypocrites. Told myself that I could be a better follower of Christ without even being a Christian. And so I stop believing.
It literally took me becoming a therapist and learning about human sexuality in grad school to realize just how preposterous purity culture is and the extent to which it had damaged my understanding of sex. Like that final TikTok said, it sounds silly, but when you grow up in it, it's literally all you know.
The issue is to assume that, what you learned to become a therapist, objectively justifying purity culture being "preposterous". Im not a therapist, but i really am interested in psychology and sexuality. I used to be a hardcore Atheist (not so much nowadays), even back then i understood that "purity culture" vs "sex before marriage culture" (whatever you wanna call it), the former wins in many many aspects for most people. Are there exceptions ? Yes. Are most people taught about "purity culture" in a wrong way ? Yes. Should you be ashamed of sex ? No. Is sex normal and good ? Yes. Most people who got a bad experience from "purity culture" (that would perhaps justify therapists to say its bad) is due to poor education, which i must say religions are full of it. While there are wayyyy more people across the world benefiting from it. So please if you get a patient doing this, be very careful and dont immediately assume it's bad. Talk to people who had positive experiences with it.
That, and I’m sorry but you can’t tell me having girls get on their knees for this isn’t sexual and predatory. They did this shit in my school too and I went to a public school. Disgusting
I didn't get raised in that, but the influence of it was still prevalent in my community. Back in the late 70's it was a common belief among teenagers, at least, that for a guy to `notch his belt` was a good thing. For a girl to do it got her mercilessly shamed. No one ever seemed to consider that if you took that to its logical conclusion, it's completely irrational. If every woman lived by that, who are the guys gonna notch their belts with? Seemed to me, instead of shaming girls, a simple `thanks` would have sufficed. *shrug*
As a man raised in purity culture, I was terrified of ever interrupting what a woman was doing was because she was interested in me. This resulted in me hurting a lot of girls’ feelings cause I was sure that they cuddle / hold hands / playfully flirt / lay in bed with all their close male friends. Per my purity school upbringing, men lust for women and not the other way around (I’m demisexual so, even though they were all attractive, I genuinely didn’t feel a sexual interest). It’s wild that most of that stuff happened while I recognized as an atheist but, as I had not deconstructed, my view of such things hadn’t evolved.
My youth pastor when I was in 8th grade had a bed frame on stage and brought up all the MARRIED women group leaders and put them in the bed frame as his body count, then brought up his wife and was like oh no there’s no room for her. This is the same dude that told us in the same sermon that he cheated on his wife in the past. Also his children were present for this.
Reminds me of one young woman who did a talk about this. She was raised with that and abducted as a teen, r***d repeatedly and all she could think about was this piece of gum. That she is damaged. By something she had no influence over. So heartbreaking. Edit: Might've messed up the story since I don't remember all the details except for the gum thing.
As a man, this idea that I am so weak and pathetic, that the sight of a woman taking off her jacket and scarf would strip me of my resolve and leave me powerless before desire is so offensive it makes my skin crawl. As it happens, I actually _am_ in control of my own actions. I actually can't be made mindless by _anything_ about a woman's appearance or behavior. Women are not responsible for what men do. We are all responsible for ourselves.
@@ouwebrood497sadly it’s not for me….some people think women shouldn’t even show elbows or their collarbones. I mean….damn. I seriously hate the way purity culture portrays us guys
I went to a catholic school in Germany for 9 years (roughly ages 9 to 18) and it boggles my mind how different my experience was to these purity culture christian schools described in the video. Not once did i witness or hear about anyone being told they're dressed inappropriately, not once did anyone give us the "chewed gum" speech or anything along those lines, i dont even remember anyone ever telling us "no sex before marriage" or "homosexuality bad" or "you're going to hell". And we had proper sex education (i only found out that the US sex education is apparently as bad as they say when i had an american boyfriend much later on in life who, at the age of 30+, believed that pulling out was 100% safe). It was known to be one of the best schools in town and the only thing that annoyed me was that - as opposed to students at other schools here - we couldnt get rid of the subject "religion" (which apparently is absolutely nothing like in the US either) and we technically had to go to mass once a week, but lots of people just skipped that cause we'd rather sleep in. Oh, and noone bat an eye at students having relationships with each other. I dont remember seeing lesbian or gay couples at school, but i knew that several of my friends were gay/lesbian and is was just a non-issue.
In Switzerland, they have a 1h in a week mandatory relligiouse teaching for the katholics. The teachers are always young priests. And mind you, you would maybe think that a young priest would be a progressive one ? NO. They are the worst Christian talibans ever. They scolded the 12 years old school girs for wearing leggins with a T-shirt on the hottest summer days. He came at us with the phrase that it would be our own fault when we got r@ped. He also burned the music cassettes of students because pop music was the devil in his ayes. I was bullied by him because I refused to give him my Madonna cassette. My parents wouldn't buy me a new one.
I guess Switzerland is more conservative, even at the non katholic schools. Even in the workplace, the Christians are very vocal about it, and the atheists have to stay quiet when they don't want to get bullied. Gay people also have to fly very low under the radar to avoid complications at work. Zürich is more liberale but the rest of Switzerland is not.
European Catholics tend to be much more chill than Catholics and Evangelicals in the US. I see many traumatized people from the US because of the local Catholicism but I've heard zero European friends complain about it. This doesn't mean that there's no possibility someone will be traumatized by Catholicism in Europe, but I mention my experience to give an idea of the ratio.
@@katarinatibai8396 I'm also from Switzerland, german part, super rural and super catholic. But it's weird how chill it was in my canton. Nobody cares what faith you have, it's not something that's really openly discussed. I'm also bisexual and people really don't care, no one treats me differently because of it. It's wild how different experiences in the same country can be :D
Purity culture is just another way to force meaning and morality on a meaningless world. Trying to control sex and assign moral value doesn’t change the fact that it’s all meaningless in the end.
Purity culture also teaches men they can't control themselves. So some of them never try. You see it in the churches when a pastor gets caught sleeping with another woman or assaults a woman or a child. They just couldn't help themselves, and it was the victims fault, of course. I mostly learned Purity culture from other girls at school. We were not a church going family. My parents' just didn't want me to end up pregnant too soon. Or hurt. Or tied down to a man before I was ready. I taught my daughter that you can't lose your virginity because there is nothing to lose. It's just a word that says you haven't done an activity yet. You are just losing your inexperience of something. Putting it that way makes it sound like the religious people just want you to be bad at sex.
I am British & never heard of this purity culture. I have never heard anything like it, in fact it's frightening that in the 21st century the US seems to be going backward.
my 8th grade Bible class' purity lesson didn't go as planned. Our teacher (a 70 or so yr old woman) wrapped a box in gift wrap and gave it to a boy, and told him to unwrap it. He very meticulously removed the tape and unfolded the gift wrap so it was completely intact. She then said our virginities were gifts for our future spouses, and we should preserve that gift because it's the most important thing for our spouse to have. The metaphor didn't really work because the boy unwrapped it so well that it could easily be re-wrapped like nothing happened, but she dismissed that. Of course she took maybe 30 seconds (AFTER telling us all that we'd be worthless to future partners if we weren't virgins) to say that if your purity was "taken" from you, god still sees you as "intact" and its okay. Of course this was a room with a lot of boys and girls who were involved in that church/school for their whole lives, so there were definitely SA victims present. The whole lesson was just terrible things to say to a room of 13 yr olds.
Yeah, the hymen thing. As dudes in our teens we had the most ridiculous ideas how we could distinguish a used pussy from a fresh one LOL. While we never had seen a real one ever.
In case any males are reading this, sex does not change vulvas/vaginas in any way other than hymen (which is usually not even visible from the outside). It's a muscle, it can relax for sex then go back.
I stayed a virgin until my wedding night. I was 23. I still had no idea what it was meant to be. It took years for me to get past "purity" culture. It isn't helpful at all. I've been married for 12 years no. I still struggle.
@@LiamLoves it has to be a choice. Not forced. There is nothing wrong with abstaining from sex. It has to be balanced and there cannot be condemnation when sex happens.
Yeah, when I was 11 I had to take a very Christian abstinence only “sex ed” class and on the last day they locked us in the classroom and wouldn’t let us leave until we signed a contract stating that we would not have sex before marriage. Absolutely wild.
I'd just sign any of that BS as a kid. Even then I knew it wasn't binding in anyway, shape, or form. We had to sign off on STAR, a D.A.R.E. alternative, think I gave a shit.
@@gibbsm I wanted to at the time but some of the kids didn’t. Now I think it was ridiculous. Also isn’t it illegal to make kids sign stuff without a lawyer or parent present?
Great topic.. I grew up Catholic; Catholic schools, Catholic Churches. I believe their teachings along with the simple ways they interacted with us was the basis for my shame. They pretend to act in love but they are slowly digging at your very core.
Bruh, even my extremely religious mother was horrified when I asked if tampons work like that (some girl I went to school with was forbidden to use tampons). Like, she interrogated me to make sure none of the adults at school were saying it
It's horrific and disgusting to tell people to not get medical help in the case of an ectopic pregnancy! I don't have the words to say what I think about such awful so-called humans who says that. If I could have a wish it would be that they would magicly be puked and peed on every day when they wake up!
Another thing that people do not talk about enough is due to the lack of education around sex causes lack of information about abortions. A close friend was only 17 when she got pregnant. She looked around for different abortion clinics, and went to a clinic advertised to be an abortion clinic. It was not, it was a religious owned clinic that existed to talk and guilt women out of abortion. Luckily she realized what was going on but I can't even explain all of the gross shit they did and said to her.
It's honestly infuriating how often religious hate groups try to masquerade as legitimate organizations. Literally every single group off the top of my head does this.
Every summer, the same group of people are always walking up and down in front of the planned parenthood wearing sandwich boards. They are out there every day, and sometimes, bring what I can only assume is their grandchildren out there. I don't understand how anyone would have that much free time and choose to spend it doing that. It's sad.
@@Jax_DestroThey must be very privileged for having that time and energy to get them forced into other people's stuff. I feel only bad for the children who are dragged into the circus of their parents and grandparents. These adults who use their children like this are most likely communal narcissists.
well, it's objectively wrong to end another humans life, I think we can all agree on that, religious or not. So your friend is objectively a terrible person.
I think purity culture really did make me fear intimacy or being alone with men I remember my first boyfriend, and I was uncomfortable, and was completely against changing in front of him And I used to believe that marriage and being intimate, were one in the same Marriage and sex were vows of everlasting love to your one and only soulmate But now, I don’t wanna wait for my soulmate to start having sex
Yeah, my parents tried to get me sucked into purity culture...I had the ring and everything. When I was in highschool I started to think it was stupid and was like "nope, I'm not into this" but my cousins were so into it they were even saving their first kiss for their wedding day...some of them still are. It's their choice but I have one cousin that I think would've been married already if she wasn't just waiting for the right man to show it and actually put herself out there.
Yikes. Thankfully I never had to wear a ring. Hope your cousin finds what she's looking for. I'm sure it's not easy to find someone that is willing to wait for even a kiss. Best of luck!
I went to public school. In middle school a few weeks before highschool we had an assembly. These Christians had 10 kids half boys and girls come up to the stage. They all were given an oreo told to chew in up and spit it into a cup of water. They all did this and handed the cup down the line. The adults told us if you had sex before marriage that that is what others would think of you. Used, discarded and unworthy. It was so weird
My family isn't even particularly religious but I had a similar upbringing. My mum basically convinced me that if I did the deed with a guy before marriage I'd be broken and probably pregnant and with an STD. All it did was.... make me bigoted, honestly. She didn't need to convince me to not sleep with people in the first place cos I'm asexual, but it defiantly made me not just view guys negatively, but also frown upon sexually active ladies. Nowadays, I'm really glad to have unlearned a whole bunch of this crap.
Pregnancy can happen within a marriage or outside of one. This is so silly. People act as though there is some magical spell at work that ensures that people won't get pregnant if they're married.
Making a second comment for this: I went to Christian schools for Pre-K through 12 and got the whole purity culture "true love waits" bullshit shoved down my throat. My experience was a lot different, though, because I turned out being aroace but didn't figure that out until I was 32 years old. So when I was a teenager I saw this message of resisting temptation and how difficult it was to do _resonate_ with my peers, all while I just _did not get it_ because to me it was "Why is that so hard? Just... don't do it. It's actually pretty easy...?" because _I still thought I was straight LOL._ So instead of feeling shame for being a sexual being, I felt fundamentally broken for NOT feeling tempted. I legitimately thought something was wrong with me, and since no other orientations besides heterosexuality were ever discussed, I didn't know that asexuality or aromanticism were Things You Could Be. My family has always been Christian but have always adhered to "love everybody no matter what and God will handle everything later" so much that my sister and I both felt safe coming out as genderqueer pan and aroace respectively, and we're both loved and supported without question or condition. Even my mother - who has read the Bible with her devotional every single day for the nearly 40 years I've walked this earth - wholeheartedly believes that everyone is made exactly how God intended them to be, including all flavors of queer and the whole gender identity spectrum. All of that is to say that even though I never felt forbidden to not be straight, it just wasn't talked about in my family. That's why it took me until 32 to discover what asexuality was online and realize "oh my god, _this is me!"_ That's a really long time to feel fundamentally broken. I'm very fortunate that when I told my parents I was asexual, (after they asked some questions to understand exactly what asexuality meant) they said it actually made a LOT of sense given the way I'd always been up to that point. Then the following Christmas they gave me an ace pride necklace and throw pillow. lol I've often wondered how things would have been if I had been able to explore these things sooner so I could know there's nothing wrong with me and that there are TONS of other people out there exactly like me. And my heart still breaks for the allosexual people who have been abused within that same system. Sorry for the rambling. I just felt the need to share my experience for any other ace people out there since purity culture affects us too in ways that some people might not even consider.
I didn't tell anyone about being assaulted well into adulthood because I was horrified they'd know I was gay and I knew that meant everyone was going to hate me and think I was a demon. I was outted when I was 14 and that's exactly what happened. I didn't ever feel safe telling anyone until some of my best friends when I was 18 they were the first people I ever believed loved or cared about me. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
I was so heavily into purity culture i started driving my best friend away when she became active (trying to not get flagged by youtube 😂). Therapy was my big help to get out of that ridiculous mindset...because i fell in love...and did stuff i wasnt ready for because i was afraid of losing him...i messed myself up even more. Sometimes i wish i could relive my early 20s. Also spot on timing with this sponsor...my favorite toy stopped working 😢
I remember sitting in my high school auditorium and a 'so-called youth & virtue pastor' compared girls not being virgins when they got married to "an old used shoe". I felt and still feel so much disgust and anger when I heard that. I wish I had the frame of mind as teen to throw a shoe at him lol. I am thankful I had a nurse for a parent who never shamed me or sister and answer all our questions candidly and openly, but so many of my friends & other student were not taught anything about sex/relationships/their bodies. And even worse, they were misinformed by their peers, older siblings, or the internet.
I remember knowing a girl in highschool who was very Catholic, it wasn't an issue on the surface, but having gathered a bunch of friends together one night, my boyfriend and I decided to cuddle together on the couch, and that apparently made her uncomfortable? Purity culture is one hell of a drug.
Just because I didn't hear this mentioned in the video...one of the most famous advocates of purity culture came out against it a few years back and basically recanted - Joshua Harris, best known for his book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye."
I’m glad you got on your soap box Jacklyn. Because this has been going on forever and is messing up young and old mines. People really need a good adult education!!
Growing up in a really well-educated liberal German household, this purity culture thing in the US blows my mind every time I hear about it. I so second your statement (21:31) and I hope that more children and young adults get the opportunity to be raised save and well-informed. It's more than worth it. Sending love and good thoughts.
Im a 17 year old ex-jw (Jehovahs Witness), born again atheist and your channel has helped me so much in seeing what atheists are actually like. I always thought, atheists were salty, angry, sad people but finding your channel and others like yours has allowed me to see that atheists are just normal people which has made it easier for me since I woke up and became an atheist.
Those to things are actually quite connected. It's hating humans, denying their autonomy. Every human has both a mother and a father, we're not two species. Any 'manosphere' talking head presenting their ideology as the canape for men is misrepresenting, even if appealing to frustrated single men. It's no wonder the manosphere has so much dark corners, almost nobody is happy.
The ectopic pregnancy one REALLY pissed me off! I had an ectopic pregnancy between my 1st & 2nd children. It was the most painful thing I ever experienced, far beyond my natural childbirth experiences. I desperately wanted that baby & asked the doctor if there was ANY way to save it. Of course there wasn't, so it was terminated & removed. I went on to have 2 more wonderful children. I can't imagine having to let that pain go on, travel to another state, or bear that pain until it killed me, leaving my oldest son without a mother. WTF is wrong with these sociopathic old men forcing this on women?
Oh gosh.. hitting me hard this morning. Purity culture messed me up SO BAD (90s teen here). When I told my mother that it hurt me, she acted like there must be something wrong with me. I highly recommend the book "Pure" by Linda Kay Klein if you're struggling with the effects of purity culture. When I read that book, I realized I wasn't alone. I wasn't crazy. Purity culture's only intention and effect is to destroy and damage. I cannot BELIEVE it has made its way into popular social media in 2020s. It's not a cute or funny social trend. It is destructive to young people, that is a hill I will die on!!
The good news is that I am raising two young men who are educated and informed about their bodies and sex in age-appropriate ways, and will never know the words "purity culture" unless they ask. They will also never have the notion that anyone has ownership or control over their bodies or sex lives but THEM.
I imagine that "chewed gum" concept ends up influencing people a lot more than intended. I imagine a lot of people end up thinking they're somehow devalued after having sex, even if it's within the confines of "what's allowed" according to religion/culture.
I was raised Mormon, I’m still unpacking purity culture and it’s hella hard for me to be comfortable with nudity. I have heard that for some artists something that helped them was either being a nude model for an art class or taking those art classes really helped a lot in deconstructing how they view nudity and human bodies
It's true for me. I was raised evangelical, atheist now. Studying anatomy and the human figure (my favorite subjects) helped me de-stigmatize nudity and helped me see the variety of beauty that humans possess. It also helped me broaden my definition of beauty to where the minimizing of beauty by the beauty industry makes little sense.
@@raichutoyou definitely a study I need to get into as an artist, especially after going to a k!nk party for the first time this weekend and seeing how I responded to that… you’d think being in the k!nk community so long and being out of the church so long and polyamorous for my entire dating life (I left the church as much as I could at 14) I’d be more able to handle these things but apparently no lol I definitely still have work to do
Purity culture (and, sadly, some tragic personal experiences) taught my mom to see all men as rapists just waiting for their chance. She felt very uncomfortable when I lived in a dorm with men, when I lived in an apartment and then a house with men (where I had my own room with a lock,) and even suggested it wasn’t safe for my younger sister to sleep in my bedroom overnight with me if my boyfriend was also there. There is caution, and then there is a total lack of trust.
The skirt/shorts thing happens at public school too unfortunately. I had two different educators at public school constantly watching what I was wearing whether it was my shorts or it was a shirt I was wearing that showed my shoulders. It still affects me to this day.
IN my southern louisiana PUBLIC school, they enforced Christianity and christian views, which i learned as an adult thats technically illegal. We were taught abstinence. No sex ed....... There were pregnant 7th graders who got pregnant from seniors in HS................. i have considered making a tik tok telling stories about my school experiences because i can promise they are WILD and not the norm. Edit: at my PUBLIC school. PUBLIC school, we had uniforms and the skirt measuring and earring measuring and just insane neuroticism Edit 2: some news...Louisiana just mandated all public schools to have the ten commandments in every classroom, not surprising at this point. Eff louisiana
I once taught a lifeguarding class with another college guy to a bunch of girls from a Catholic high school. Holy crap! The beginning of every class, held indoors in winter, by the way, was delayed by ten minutes as we made these girls put their required one-piece suits on over their bikinis, or distributed the bag full of oversized T-shirts we always had to have available. Sheesh, it was seriously nerve wracking. And the "cross chest carry"(?), forget about it. They were on their own with that and most of the demonstrations.
I went to therapy to get over a lot of my purity culture BS... I still have issues and I don't know if I'll ever be fully okay, but one thing I won't do is raise my daughter with it...maybe it will heal me to see her thrive
I’d actually love to hear one about hookup culture too ; or even hookup culture vs. purity . This was an amazing talk about how purity culture hurts us . Appreciate you as always , Jacelyn❤
Thank you Jaclyn! It is really strange how easily we can be manipulated as children. I was never in catholic school, and I never heard intense purity culture stories like the one with the stickers but I did go to some kind of German YMCA and it was a bit americanized, a bit evangelical. So it was never discussed openly but somewhat implied. No sex before marriage, and girls were judged more than boys. And I clearly remember after my first relationship ended when I was 17 (and we did not even have sex we just made out) I had a strong feeling like I would be damaged now and I could never love a man as much as my first boyfriend because we had some kind of sexual experience together. I was so scared, I was so sad. And it took me a few years until I realized Wooow, I can love a man even more than my first boyfriend, it just takes some time to get over a relationship, it’s normal but it will pass. Now I feel like these purity horror stories are made by people who have some issues and maybe never managed to get over an ex and would need therapy. What a relief it would have been to know at that age that one can heal. Because we are not objects, we can heal and recover and grow.
Thanks for touching on this, Jaclyn. 💕 I was debating on sharing my story because I don't ever want to seem like I just want to complain about my past, but I hope it helps someone, somehow. I grew up Catholic in the middle of nowhere Midwest and was harmed in various ways by a former partner (also Catholic). My parents were on my case so much about getting pregnant in highschool that even after making the choice to get sterilized, I still have to check to make sure I'm not. I'm very grateful we couldn't afford to go to private school because I'm not sure I'd have gotten out of that bad relationship. If I hadn't, I don't think I'd be here today. Even though I didn't attent private school, we still had someone come in and teach us all about abstinence and how "dirty" STDs were my junior year. Even though that person wasn't preaching about God, the underlying message still felt as if they may as well have. It took moving away from home to college, getting out of that small town "bubble" so I could learn to think for myself, and SO much therapy to rewire my brain to fully understand that I am NOT a man's property and be a lot more comfortable with my body. There's a part of me that feels that I will never *completely* get over all of that. Something that boils my blood that not enough people talk about or have a problem with is that now a few states, including the one I currently live in, have found a way to fund private education using taxpayer dollars. Either income of the parents no longer matters, or it won't in the next year or two. Not to mention, they're cutting down every bit of funding surrounding public schools that they feasibly can and trying to be 'sneaky' about it. I hate to be a cynic, but I just know that more harm will come to more kids this way. My heart breaks for everyone who's ever had to go through anything related to everything talked about here today. I encourage one and all to do your own research, explore other points of view, think for yourself, and GO VOTE in every election (if applicable). 💜
@@Greenghoul_95 it's still a society and culture she'll have to interact with. I fear the same for my daughter and will obviously not raise her with these "values". I honestly fear the same for my son. My only defense is education and a very open line of safe communication in our family.
@@Greenghoul_95 my six year old comes home from school repeating homophobic ideology she's hearing from her peers. SIX YEAR OLD. We can only shelter our children from so much bigotry; they're going to hear about it and we parents have to work against it.
So I did go an an international mission trip when I was a teen. I know it's not everyone's experience, but I still look at it as one of the most eye opening opportunities for my personal self growth. Thankfully it wasn't youth oriented, it was labor oriented. We added a roof onto a dilapidated building that was being used as a church and school, and prepped it for the addition of a second floor. Yeah we did typical church service type stuff too, but the work was the primary focus. I don't think my mission trip really contributed to my indoctrination. Now youth retreats on the other hand? Oh boy yep! At least until I was an older teen and was already setting the foundation for my deconstruction. Plenty of purity culture stuff, plenty of apologetics stuff. Never did the writing a letter to a future spouse thing, but we definitely did the purity ring stuff, the talks about used (insert disposable, single use item here) stuff, and plenty of other horribly negative stuff.
7:36 - 9:07 Can so relate. At a primary school (school before highschool), we were told that "people are like a slab of chocolate. Everytime you have sex a block of chocolate is eaten till only an empty wraper is left. You are the empty wrapper." We were 13. Looking back now, it is messed up. And this has messed me up.
The colored paper thing unlocked a memory. Ugh. Additionally, they’ve been doing the shame in Christianity since the beginning, and it hasn’t worked, but they’re still trying!
The mental health aspect of not wanting or being able to have a child if something that I don't think it's talked about enough. I have mental health issues I'm not suicidal or anything like that, but I know that I wouldn't be able to give a child the attention it needs. Everyone in my family keeps telling me I need to have a kid and I would be such a great dad. And there are times that's true, but there are times when I can't stand to be around people and I need to go off in the woods for a week to clear my head. I wouldn't be able to do that with a child, and I'm sure I would need to do that more often than I already am. Sorry for any typos I used voice to text for this since I was in a hurry to write it.
You sounded great and it makes complete sense. It’s also very responsible and respectable for you to make that decision for yourself. As a woman, I feel the same way.
I have that same urge you do, especially when I get depressed despite being on crap tons of meds (just got out of an episode less than a month ago), where I just want to drop off the grid. I got into sketchy situations in pre-cell phone/early cell phone days where I got lucky nothing bad happened to me. I’m high key convinced I would have gotten kidnapped at some point with my general lack of stranger danger if I lived in a more urban area. But that idea of needing to constantly be there for someone else when I can’t constantly be there for myself would make me irresponsible and selfish to bring a child into that scenario. I have a nephew who’s visiting this weekend with my brother, and I adore and cherish him so much. It was seeing him grow up and watching my brother parent him that I became even more sure that having my own children wasn’t for me. Kudos to you for having that presence of mind to know that what is best for you means not hurting someone else who isn’t even here. I know women who are child free by choice get lots of crap, but it can’t be great for men either. I wish you well in your continued journey to know yourself well enough to know what is good and bad for you despite outside voices that might be saying otherwise. Not having children doesn’t mean a person is worthless, it just means they don’t want kids.
I experienced multiple instances of SA from 7-9 and again at 14 and I felt horrific about myself. I asked the pastor if I was "ruined for my future husband" and he said "I mean... you'll find a man that will still want you, I guess". Fast forward, and I meet my husband who patiently waited and helped me get over the insane amount of guilt I STILL feel. Purity culture messed me up BAD. But f-ck you, Pastor John. I DID meet a man who wants me despite my past THAT WASNT MY FAULT and he's a better man than you could ever be. Thank you for sharing these humans' experiences.
I was SAed and because I was raised in a religious household, I had many break downs because I felt I was damage goods, I was tainted, I was tarnished goods. I had a pastor tell me it was my fault because I put myself in that situation.
I saw an interesting thread on Reddit asking people who waited for marriage what their sex lives were like now, a woman who said both her and her husband waited until marriage. She said that their sex life was awkward and sporadic for a while, bc she still thought of sex as a dirty wrong thing. She said being told you shouldn’t do it until marriage then as soon as you’re married you’re encouraged to do it often (to make babies of course) leaves you kind of messed up
Even though I didn't go to a christian private school, I still went to church and sex was always a confusing thing. As guy I didn't here a lot about purity but it was always weird where in one sex talk they say its a good thing, it brings new life into the world, its a good intimate thing between you and your spouse and enhances your relationship with them. Then take that same sex talk and do a 180 and now start talking how its evil and the devil uses it to tempt you and if you do it outside marriage then you're a bad person. After the talk is done I'm just in the back going, is sex good or bad? I don't understand.
i do hope (with the paper thing) there's someone every now and then who asks "what does the color have to do with them sticking to each other" and then they'll have to say it out loud at least
I was raised Catholic. Also told those negative things about sex and masturbation. The fucked up thing (and yet the thing that saved me from the religion at a young age), I was m*lested from as early as I can remember (4 or 5). This caused me to be hypersexual and masturbate from a very very young age (5ish). I was told I was disgusting and bad for it and that I’d go to hell. It was very traumatizing. And I never told anyone I was being abused in part because I felt dirty and bad. The one good thing of the extreme negativity of that situation is that it enabled me to break free by time I was 15. I couldn’t help what happened to me and I couldn’t help how that affected me (being hypersexual). And knowing it wasn’t my fault, I just cut ties with the religion and became an atheist. For anyone who is struggling with that: It is NOT your fault. Internalize that. Chant it. Write it. It is not your fault. And f anyone, including any religion, that would treat you as less than for it. They are the ones who are less than, not you.
As for the effects purity culture can have on SA victims, I'd encourage those who'd like to explore that more to google Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and assaulted at age 14. In at least one interview, she talked about how some victims in her shoes may not even try to escape their kidnappers because "what's the point since they're already ruined." (I seem to recall one victim saying that was their own perspective. I thought it might even be Smart herself, but the articles I could find today only say she indicated that she understood why some victims might feel that way.)
That pink and blue paper thing is straight out of an abstinence only education curriculum that has been around since the late 1980's early 90's. You can find clips of teachers doing that going way back.
Modern purity culture is based on a very old cultural practise that served an actual purpose (given the circumstances), but serves none today. In ancient Israel, God chose not to teach them about things like wills and probate. The All Knowing Creator of All, instead, decided the family property would pass down to the eldest son. So every family needed to be certain the children were of the direct bloodline of the father so no one else could lay claim to the estate. To that end, they had to be certain the blushing bride had not been with anyone else, and stayed true to her hubby to make sure any other inheritors in the line were also of "pure" blood (of the father's lineage) if the eldest son was unable to inherit (like dying in war). It had absolutely nothing to do with being spiritually 'soiled' as much as having the bloodline sullied. Obviously, we no longer need this practise in a modern age where we now have wills and courts to handle inheritance rights and settle squabbles. Christianity took an essentially legal practise and warped it into something it never was. And should not even be around today. And, as far as I know, the Bible never once has Jesus saying, "Thou shalt not rub one out after a stressful day at work." 😁
@@k4nd1incyb3rsp4c3 -- might be more sensible...but nope. We're talking a culture that had rampant skin (and other) diseases from plunging into the communal mikveh that was never sanitized. Germ theory wasn't a thing. Diseases were spiritual afflictions. The fatality rate of infants was extremely high. A woman would need to have 6 pregnancies to get two children who survived into adulthood. To that end, no one understood STDs and no pregnancy would have been unwanted. As long as that pregnancy had a firm 'pedigree' to the father. Which is also why men were able to dally around at the local brothel but women needed to stay at home and not mess about. It also explains the ordeal of bitter water in Numbers. Also why a woman who had not conceived with her hubby had to lay with hubby's brother if hubby died. It keeps that family bloodline intact.
@@k4nd1incyb3rsp4c3 Yes, I think that's how lot of these morals evolved. That explains why the Bible has such an issue with men sleeping together but not with women sleeping together. And that with sex outside marriage the woman is seen as the problem.
What you said at around 6:37 is exactly what happened to me as a child up until my teenage years. I had no words to explain the sexual abuse and i was so ashamed...i still struggle to this day with the trauma.
I remember my dad telling this story about my grandma convincing a school board to ban sex ed through the chewing gum argument. He held so much awe for his mother and because I was little I agreed that she was so smart and wise. Now as an adult I realize that it was so f*cked that she supported and fought for this kinda garbage especially with seven daughters. I love my grandma but as an adult I have to reconcile with the fact that she was racist and sexist.
I have a similar "body is ruined" feeling about my weight. Like, I feel like I wouldn't want to subject someone to the horrifying thing that is me. It's always either purity culture, or that.
thank you for this video 💔💔 as a young adult, it's really difficult for me to undo all of the damage purity culture has done to me. the guilt it makes me feel is awful. it's so hard to talk about it to anyone irl so i'm glad that there's content like this online ❤
I was a beautiful girl who went through purity culture. I also had a disability I was bullied relentlessly for by the adults, mostly the mothers, in the congregation who claimed I was possessed or a child of satan. Occasionally older men would show an interest. Then they would drop that interest when they realized I'd openly talk about all the shit these horrible women were saying to me, because they figured if they tried anything I'd probably talk about that too. At the time, I didn't know what was happening. Why older men would be so nice then drop me like a sack of bricks (or better yet, introduce me to their wives as a 'charity case'), but looking back I see how easily I could have been abused because I didn't even know male parts EXISTED until I was 17. Purity culture doesn't protect girls, it creates a breeding ground for stalkers, groomers, and child predators. I get SO happy every time I see a poll that shows younger generations are becoming more sex positive and are totally over this bullshit.
The only thing I heard during that time was my uncle Luke after I heard the chewing gum one said “well that’s stupid. You’re more like 20 bucks…. A wrinkled 20 bucks is still 20 bucks. Ain’t nobody not want 20 bucks.”…. Only man in my childhood that made be feel like I had intrinsic value.
My high school religion teacher said that boys are like children in a toy store and they’ll take the toys out of the boxes and play with them but the ones they bring home are the ones who are pristine and untouched.
All my autistic ass could think about was about how that’s not how toy stores work
But in order to take the toy home the boy or parent would have to buy it with money. Does that mean that he thinks that women are property that can be bought and taken home? And paying to take her home and have sex with her is in a sense like prostitution, but aren't these religious people against sex work? This is stupid.
Pretty sure any kid who took a toy out of the box at a toy store without buying it first would get in trouble for doing that.
My non-autistic ass is in full agreement with you.
@@spiceupyourafterlife Well those stores don't exist anymore anyway so it doesn't matter. RIP Toysrus. You're one with the Force now.😥
Yeah, you’re completely right. If you take a toy out and play with it at the store, you’d have to buy it because it isn’t yours. That’s not a very accurate analogy at all
“So pro-life that you’re pro-death.” That hit hard
There was a woman named Kate Cox from Texas relatively recently (January 2024) who tried to abort a fetus with a lethal genetic anomaly that was causing her to have to repeatedly go to the ER (Trisomy 18, if I recall correctly), and they denied her the right to get a medical abortion for so long that her life was in danger and she literally had to go to another state to get it done. 😒
@@Hollyucinogen Yes, and unfortunately, she wasn't alone.
Another story more people need to hear is that of Miranda Michel and her family.
TLDR is she was told she was expecting non-viable twins conjoined at the spine and multiple other defects. She was forced to carry the high-risk pregnancy anyway, devastated all the while because she and her family WANTED those babies. She wasn't even fully conscious for the four hours they lived.
Christainty teaches Martyrdom over everything, they see a sinless death better is than a sinful life.
@@Hollyucinogen WOW!!! SO FUCKED UP!!! CHŔISTANS DONT SEEM GET GOD WILL LET BABYS GO 2 HEAVEN!!!
@LakinMae5 And living after an ectopic pregnancy is not a sinful life. Just rediculous.
Always be suspicious of those who compare human beings to inanimate objects. Shows how little fundies value women as people.
It's also suspicious when they compare people to animals, like sheep.
It shows a fundamental lack of morals.
be suspicious if peope ignore the fact that it happens and is accepted behaviour by society. theres another extreme to purity culture.
I mean, it’s not premarital sex if you never get married.🤷♂️
That's how I get away with it LOL.
hahahah nice loophole
ive been saying this for years lmao
Doesn't that mean ya gotta finally DIE to conclude you've had premarital sex?
The damage that purity culture does runs so deep. I remember hearing a sermon about purity where the youth pastor was talking about women who wear revealing clothes and she said "then they complain when they get raped. What else did they think was going to happen?" 🤢
Edit: Pls stop arguing for the existence of god in my replies. That's not what my comment is about
This makes me so angry. I was taught this idea in school too. Exactly why I related to the misandry clip so much.
Well, ...If purity culture causes deep damage,....How does (Premarital Sex Purity Culture) corrects the damage that runs deep,that you say is, made by,.... Purity Culture?
It is definitely a part of rape culture
To be an ashiest and stay intellectually consistent you have to believe in moral relativism which mean there is no objective right or wrong so a person saying its okay to shave a women's hair for doing something is just as valid as you saying it not, using an ashiest logic in moral relativism.
Me on the other hand who believe in objective morality can say that's objectively wrong, but you cant as an ashiest.
@@EvanCanSee if there is "objective" morality found in the bible then why are Christians on multiple sides on so many issues such as abortion rights, self assisted suicide, the death penalty, lgbtq people, etc. Morality is a human construct and deals with treating each other in a way that benefits people and ensuring the survival and thriving of people without causing harm. The concept of morality was invented by people to reduce harm. If I throw a rock against a wall that doesn't cause harm to the rock, but if I throw a baby against a wall then that harms the baby. Sentient beings and other sentient beings can experience pain and suffering, morality was invented to help relieve or reduce the suffering.
Purity culture taught me men were monsters, my body was awful, sex was evil and being pregnant was a punishment.
I’m gay. 🤷🏻
Mission accomplished?
Its what i've been saying: bad education. So im sorry you went through that. No sex before marriage should not be taught like that
Success!
I'd be gay too, or at least I'd wanna be if I was taught that.
@@newme1589 why? it's baseddd
"I spent hours watching people on TikTok-" oh, god. I'm so sorry.
there is a learning side of TT, my wife tries to stay on that side, and not the 'wrong side of tiktok'. Like we learned that broccoli is only around 100 years old, as far as the US is concerned. "The first commercial broccoli crop grown in the U.S. was started in California in 1923, but broccoli did not become a significant commercial crop in the U.S. until after World War II." Learned it on "The Tok".
My little sisters virginity (21) is a conversation at so many family gatherings... it makes me sick... my family is so deep in the worst version of Christianity. I hate it!!
Oh boy, imagine the sexual status of an adult family member as a conversation topic in your family.
@@ouwebrood497 no need to imagine. It's honestly gross. I have to leave the table because I'm so uncomfortable. They just "don't get why I'm so weird about it"... sigh
Unless this is gosseping about the person without them being ok with this then who cares as long as who the convo is about is ok with what is being said
@lord_xylozdoomsday959 I can tell you she cares... she is a uncomfortable about it as I am. Further more the only reason is a conversation is because her elders convinced her she would be less than by having sex. Which... not cool
geez! my family is pretty christian but that is very very extreme and (in my opinion) very inappropriate
My parents wanted me to date, but then stopped me from dating because of being in the Church. Thanks Purity culture. That is why I am so clueless with women.
It's never too late to learn something new!! :) A lot of us raised like this had to rewire a few things lol
@@Jaclyn I think once you reach a certain age it’s time you realize that you’re at a point where you have been alone for so long that figuring out how to get around what you should have been allowed to do 40 years ago is too late now. I appreciate your honesty
@@2tall2handle1 I'm not sure if you realized this yet, but there are people out there who are in the same situation who would actually understand and bond with you over this. don't be defeatist, these cultists don't deserve to make us ALL miserable
I don’t understand men and also am deeply suspicious. My whole childhood was “men only want one thing and once they get it, you won’t have any value to them”. I’ve never seriously dated and honestly am not terribly interested in physical intimacy. Thanks to Christianity I will always see sex as a transaction and virginity as a reward to give a man for deigning to marry a woman.
@@peachy_lili It’s not so much being defeatist as much as I guess never finding that person to “bond” with. Most people my age are still in church, where I got out years ago.
I remember when Sarah Palins daughter got pregnant and how much shame she must of felt because she was a a pedestal for purity culture and abstinence. It can effect you for years and years. Its stunted me in my growth in so many ways.
So sad that any person would feel that way.
It's using your child as a slave for political gain. By 'sinning' she felt the burden of the whole country falling away from conservatism, like Atlas that failed his task.
And then knowing her mom would use her experience as a “pro-life” platform. 🙄
did it though?
The main thing in purity culture is shame and that everything sexual is shameful. Like, how do they think we got here if our parents didn't have sex.
Exactly
I was a cynical kid, I used to call the kids going to Sunday school cultists because they all thought differently and believed they had a higher purpose than "us". Then I sat down and read the Bible and man, nothing makes you an athiest faster than critically reading that book. I dodged a bullet there, because although I mocked them, I also envied their comraderies. I stood alone, but I stood free.
What's ironic is that the thing that made me go from a HARDCORE religious fanatic as a preteen-early teen... like someone who would try to preach to randoms on Runescape because I thought I ALWAYS had to be spreading the "good word"... the thing that pulled me out of that the quickest, was having questions the Church couldn't answer (mostly about hell and those who got sent there), and actually sitting down and reading the Bible. Now I despise religion and pity anyone who was never able to break free from that mind control.
@@shimmergamingasking questions with church leaders and only getting extremely vague or different answers, or told to just pray and not question it bc we will never fully understand God. And then reading the full Bible for a year was the catalyst for me realizing that God seems like a dick and this religion is extremely harmful for me.
Yeah I grew up southern Baptist but critically reading he the Bible got me out as well. It’s a book of R rated fairytales.
I read that book for fun and simply enjoyed the storytelling but I never believed in it. Seeing people who are Christians unironically believe in the bible they always seemed to lack critical thinking skills. (Seriously dragons exist in the bible, you believe that???) Also how some of the rules are arbitrary and men are seen as more valuable than women in the bible.
@@deathdragoncat Dragons, boats smaller than anything we have today that can tank a worldwide flood, with 2 of every carnivore and herbivore, but who knows what they ate for that year at sea, and fuck dinosaurs I guess... a man whose strength is determined by the length of his hair... a man who got swallowed by a whale and survived... water into wine... walking on water... I used to be OBSESSED with the sheer mysticism around these stories as a kid, and Christian lore is still intriguing to an extent... but it's all fiction. It's all extremely obvious fiction that my kid brain couldn't comprehend. I love when religious people try to argue with me, and it happens a lot, because many of them don't realize I've read the Bible more than them.
This brings up so many horrible memories of growing up in a Southern Baptist church and private Christian school. 😢 The shame and repression runs deep even 10 years after leaving the church. They are setting women up to be put in dangerous and inappropriate situations and leaving them unprepared for healthy sexual relationships. It's heartbreaking.
100% agree. Education is everything. Preparation just means safety.
Well, ...I understand your comment, is the World 🌍 of (Premarital Sex Purity Culture) helping women to gain a healthy sexual relationship?
@@eugeneroberts1468 wtf is premarital sex purity culture? Did you come up with that? Tell me, what is the problem if a couple has sex before they marry?
@@NoKidsNoProblem Yes thak you! This guy is all over the comments section asking the same stupid question.
@@michellerhodes5477yep :)
Purity Culture and Rape Culture also tend to intersect sometimes. Speaking from experience, I was told to not have sex until marriage. Kept telling my ex that I didn’t want sex. One day, he got tired of me saying, “no.”
In your case it seems it actually helped you get the lesser of 2 evils. If you slept with him earlier you probably would have had a longer relationship with him and maybe even children. Then if for some reason you couldn't sleep with him anymore, he would have done the same thing and with children involved the breakup would be even worse.
That's sad. You could have had a fun relationship together if you weren't kept in this delusion.
Both purity culture and rape culture are denying bodily autonomy. In one you can't say yes and in the other you can't say no. Agency and consent are denied in both cases, which is the fundamental problem.
@@AndreiPopescu
Uhh… no. I broke up with him because he was a creep and a rapist. I do not think that a longer relationship with that man would've been beneficial at all.
Also, funny that the, "answer," was to disregard my values to stay trapped in a relationship with someone who will rape me whenever he felt like it. You haven't met the creep (I hope) but I'd rather not go into detail on the other red flags.
@@SEGASister Isn't this exactly what I said - that a longer relationship would have been worse?
By the lesser evil I meant that turning him down until marriage made him show his true colors sooner, thus making your relationship with him shorter.
@@AndreiPopescu My apologies. Here I thought you saying my having children with him would be a good thing.
When I was SA'd when I was 9 I used to cry and punched my stomach in the shower almost every day for 3 years because I thought I was impure
Growing up as someone who does still believe in God, I think it was just hearing my friends cries from their experience's from Religion. Once I got out of highschool it was kind of like a wake up call. I stopped going to my religious school and I started actually listening to the church I go to now. Which they call out ALL of the toxicity with other churches. They teach about love and to help one another, be there for people. I never really listened to the church that I attended because I was so checked out from the school that I went to. Bible classes and Wednesday was chapel day. I was so indoctrinated by my school I just figured all churches are the same. However; they are not.
It was 100 degrees on compass one day so after school I changed into shorts and was leaving the compass. A teacher came up to me and told me that I shouldn't be wearing that short of a short or else it would make the boys think. It honestly wasn't even that short of a short but whatever lol. The same teacher told me I needed to change my profile picture on facebook because everyone thought I was naked. I was wearing a tank top.
Religion for the most part is pretty awful; but the church I am in now is really nice.
Wednesday masses SUCKED. Couldn't stand being next to all these goddamn hypocrites. Told myself that I could be a better follower of Christ without even being a Christian. And so I stop believing.
No it isn't. All churches are corrupt. Stop going to church, watch After the Tribulation and Marching to Zion, and tune into Infowars daily instead.
@@WarPigstheHunCatholicism is heresy.
"Stop wearing that, you're distracting the boys!" Then punish the boys for being distracted ????
It literally took me becoming a therapist and learning about human sexuality in grad school to realize just how preposterous purity culture is and the extent to which it had damaged my understanding of sex. Like that final TikTok said, it sounds silly, but when you grow up in it, it's literally all you know.
I learned a lot when studying psychology. I took specifically lessons around sexuality to have some counter weight to my upbringing.
The issue is to assume that, what you learned to become a therapist, objectively justifying purity culture being "preposterous".
Im not a therapist, but i really am interested in psychology and sexuality. I used to be a hardcore Atheist (not so much nowadays), even back then i understood that "purity culture" vs "sex before marriage culture" (whatever you wanna call it), the former wins in many many aspects for most people.
Are there exceptions ? Yes.
Are most people taught about "purity culture" in a wrong way ? Yes.
Should you be ashamed of sex ? No.
Is sex normal and good ? Yes.
Most people who got a bad experience from "purity culture" (that would perhaps justify therapists to say its bad) is due to poor education, which i must say religions are full of it. While there are wayyyy more people across the world benefiting from it.
So please if you get a patient doing this, be very careful and dont immediately assume it's bad. Talk to people who had positive experiences with it.
17:12 That's honestly so messed up. The uniform THEY gave you was too short, so you got in trouble? That's so backwards.
THIS!
Essentially it's a witch hunt. Depict certain women as evil by design and punish them for it.
That, and I’m sorry but you can’t tell me having girls get on their knees for this isn’t sexual and predatory. They did this shit in my school too and I went to a public school. Disgusting
I didn't get raised in that, but the influence of it was still prevalent in my community. Back in the late 70's it was a common belief among teenagers, at least, that for a guy to `notch his belt` was a good thing. For a girl to do it got her mercilessly shamed. No one ever seemed to consider that if you took that to its logical conclusion, it's completely irrational. If every woman lived by that, who are the guys gonna notch their belts with? Seemed to me, instead of shaming girls, a simple `thanks` would have sufficed. *shrug*
I went to school in the 2000's, and that attitude prevailed where I was...probably STILL the same...
Maybe that's what being gay started to become such a thing around that time 😂
As a man raised in purity culture, I was terrified of ever interrupting what a woman was doing was because she was interested in me. This resulted in me hurting a lot of girls’ feelings cause I was sure that they cuddle / hold hands / playfully flirt / lay in bed with all their close male friends. Per my purity school upbringing, men lust for women and not the other way around (I’m demisexual so, even though they were all attractive, I genuinely didn’t feel a sexual interest). It’s wild that most of that stuff happened while I recognized as an atheist but, as I had not deconstructed, my view of such things hadn’t evolved.
My youth pastor when I was in 8th grade had a bed frame on stage and brought up all the MARRIED women group leaders and put them in the bed frame as his body count, then brought up his wife and was like oh no there’s no room for her. This is the same dude that told us in the same sermon that he cheated on his wife in the past. Also his children were present for this.
😮
Reminds me of one young woman who did a talk about this. She was raised with that and abducted as a teen, r***d repeatedly and all she could think about was this piece of gum. That she is damaged. By something she had no influence over. So heartbreaking.
Edit: Might've messed up the story since I don't remember all the details except for the gum thing.
Elizabeth Smart
As a man, this idea that I am so weak and pathetic, that the sight of a woman taking off her jacket and scarf would strip me of my resolve and leave me powerless before desire is so offensive it makes my skin crawl. As it happens, I actually _am_ in control of my own actions. I actually can't be made mindless by _anything_ about a woman's appearance or behavior. Women are not responsible for what men do. We are all responsible for ourselves.
The taking of scarf and jacket is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard about purity culture.
@@ouwebrood497sadly it’s not for me….some people think women shouldn’t even show elbows or their collarbones. I mean….damn. I seriously hate the way purity culture portrays us guys
I went to a catholic school in Germany for 9 years (roughly ages 9 to 18) and it boggles my mind how different my experience was to these purity culture christian schools described in the video. Not once did i witness or hear about anyone being told they're dressed inappropriately, not once did anyone give us the "chewed gum" speech or anything along those lines, i dont even remember anyone ever telling us "no sex before marriage" or "homosexuality bad" or "you're going to hell". And we had proper sex education (i only found out that the US sex education is apparently as bad as they say when i had an american boyfriend much later on in life who, at the age of 30+, believed that pulling out was 100% safe). It was known to be one of the best schools in town and the only thing that annoyed me was that - as opposed to students at other schools here - we couldnt get rid of the subject "religion" (which apparently is absolutely nothing like in the US either) and we technically had to go to mass once a week, but lots of people just skipped that cause we'd rather sleep in. Oh, and noone bat an eye at students having relationships with each other. I dont remember seeing lesbian or gay couples at school, but i knew that several of my friends were gay/lesbian and is was just a non-issue.
In Switzerland, they have a 1h in a week mandatory relligiouse teaching for the katholics.
The teachers are always young priests. And mind you, you would maybe think that a young priest would be a progressive one ?
NO. They are the worst Christian talibans ever.
They scolded the 12 years old school girs for wearing leggins with a T-shirt on the hottest summer days.
He came at us with the phrase that it would be our own fault when we got r@ped.
He also burned the music cassettes of students because pop music was the devil in his ayes.
I was bullied by him because I refused to give him my Madonna cassette.
My parents wouldn't buy me a new one.
I guess Switzerland is more conservative, even at the non katholic schools.
Even in the workplace, the Christians are very vocal about it, and the atheists have to stay quiet when they don't want to get bullied.
Gay people also have to fly very low under the radar to avoid complications at work.
Zürich is more liberale but the rest of Switzerland is not.
European Catholics tend to be much more chill than Catholics and Evangelicals in the US. I see many traumatized people from the US because of the local Catholicism but I've heard zero European friends complain about it.
This doesn't mean that there's no possibility someone will be traumatized by Catholicism in Europe, but I mention my experience to give an idea of the ratio.
@@katarinatibai8396 I'm also from Switzerland, german part, super rural and super catholic. But it's weird how chill it was in my canton. Nobody cares what faith you have, it's not something that's really openly discussed. I'm also bisexual and people really don't care, no one treats me differently because of it. It's wild how different experiences in the same country can be :D
It is also in the Netherlands, but only in a really smal sub culture.
Purity culture is just another way to force meaning and morality on a meaningless world. Trying to control sex and assign moral value doesn’t change the fact that it’s all meaningless in the end.
Morality is already forced it’s just changed. And the world isn’t inherently meaningless we give meaning.
@@pewtercamaro if yousay we give it meaning youalso mean its inherently meaningless
@@RaymacfirsterGumbo correct. There’s no inherent meaning to life. Though I feel humans are wired to attempt to survive and pass on genes.
Okay, ....What information are you using to draw this conclusion ?
@@eugeneroberts1468 Information? I’m just observing the endless human attempts to impose order and morality in an indifferent universe.
Purity culture also teaches men they can't control themselves. So some of them never try. You see it in the churches when a pastor gets caught sleeping with another woman or assaults a woman or a child. They just couldn't help themselves, and it was the victims fault, of course.
I mostly learned Purity culture from other girls at school. We were not a church going family. My parents' just didn't want me to end up pregnant too soon. Or hurt. Or tied down to a man before I was ready. I taught my daughter that you can't lose your virginity because there is nothing to lose. It's just a word that says you haven't done an activity yet. You are just losing your inexperience of something. Putting it that way makes it sound like the religious people just want you to be bad at sex.
I am British & never heard of this purity culture. I have never heard anything like it, in fact it's frightening that in the 21st century the US seems to be going backward.
my 8th grade Bible class' purity lesson didn't go as planned. Our teacher (a 70 or so yr old woman) wrapped a box in gift wrap and gave it to a boy, and told him to unwrap it. He very meticulously removed the tape and unfolded the gift wrap so it was completely intact. She then said our virginities were gifts for our future spouses, and we should preserve that gift because it's the most important thing for our spouse to have. The metaphor didn't really work because the boy unwrapped it so well that it could easily be re-wrapped like nothing happened, but she dismissed that.
Of course she took maybe 30 seconds (AFTER telling us all that we'd be worthless to future partners if we weren't virgins) to say that if your purity was "taken" from you, god still sees you as "intact" and its okay. Of course this was a room with a lot of boys and girls who were involved in that church/school for their whole lives, so there were definitely SA victims present. The whole lesson was just terrible things to say to a room of 13 yr olds.
Ooh I remember the chewing gum one so vividly! It was heavily implied that that’s what our lady parts would look like if we had sex before marriage:)
I remember thinking that too! It terrified me!
I don't even have lady parts but I know that's false.
Yeah, the hymen thing.
As dudes in our teens we had the most ridiculous ideas how we could distinguish a used pussy from a fresh one LOL. While we never had seen a real one ever.
In case any males are reading this, sex does not change vulvas/vaginas in any way other than hymen (which is usually not even visible from the outside). It's a muscle, it can relax for sex then go back.
I wish purity culture was only something in a church. YT has purity culture too, because my decent comment is already deleted.
I stayed a virgin until my wedding night. I was 23. I still had no idea what it was meant to be. It took years for me to get past "purity" culture. It isn't helpful at all. I've been married for 12 years no. I still struggle.
I feel this. Frigidity can be brutal. I struggled with it for a while.It takes work to achieve that middle ground of chastity, but it can be done.
@@LiamLoves it has to be a choice. Not forced. There is nothing wrong with abstaining from sex. It has to be balanced and there cannot be condemnation when sex happens.
Yeah, when I was 11 I had to take a very Christian abstinence only “sex ed” class and on the last day they locked us in the classroom and wouldn’t let us leave until we signed a contract stating that we would not have sex before marriage. Absolutely wild.
I'd just sign any of that BS as a kid. Even then I knew it wasn't binding in anyway, shape, or form. We had to sign off on STAR, a D.A.R.E. alternative, think I gave a shit.
@@gibbsm I wanted to at the time but some of the kids didn’t. Now I think it was ridiculous. Also isn’t it illegal to make kids sign stuff without a lawyer or parent present?
Great topic.. I grew up Catholic; Catholic schools, Catholic Churches. I believe their teachings along with the simple ways they interacted with us was the basis for my shame. They pretend to act in love but they are slowly digging at your very core.
THIS
I remember being told I’ve lost my virginity, the most sacred thing a woman has, by my mother when I used a tampon as a 11 year old.
Bruh, even my extremely religious mother was horrified when I asked if tampons work like that (some girl I went to school with was forbidden to use tampons). Like, she interrogated me to make sure none of the adults at school were saying it
It's horrific and disgusting to tell people to not get medical help in the case of an ectopic pregnancy! I don't have the words to say what I think about such awful so-called humans who says that. If I could have a wish it would be that they would magicly be puked and peed on every day when they wake up!
Another thing that people do not talk about enough is due to the lack of education around sex causes lack of information about abortions. A close friend was only 17 when she got pregnant. She looked around for different abortion clinics, and went to a clinic advertised to be an abortion clinic. It was not, it was a religious owned clinic that existed to talk and guilt women out of abortion. Luckily she realized what was going on but I can't even explain all of the gross shit they did and said to her.
It's honestly infuriating how often religious hate groups try to masquerade as legitimate organizations. Literally every single group off the top of my head does this.
Every summer, the same group of people are always walking up and down in front of the planned parenthood wearing sandwich boards. They are out there every day, and sometimes, bring what I can only assume is their grandchildren out there. I don't understand how anyone would have that much free time and choose to spend it doing that. It's sad.
@@Jax_DestroThey must be very privileged for having that time and energy to get them forced into other people's stuff.
I feel only bad for the children who are dragged into the circus of their parents and grandparents.
These adults who use their children like this are most likely communal narcissists.
well, it's objectively wrong to end another humans life, I think we can all agree on that, religious or not.
So your friend is objectively a terrible person.
@@wolfsmaid6815 it’s not really alive.
I think purity culture really did make me fear intimacy or being alone with men
I remember my first boyfriend, and I was uncomfortable, and was completely against changing in front of him
And I used to believe that marriage and being intimate, were one in the same
Marriage and sex were vows of everlasting love to your one and only soulmate
But now, I don’t wanna wait for my soulmate to start having sex
The way ur intro hits tho 😭😭🤣
“Ugh…” *gestures with wine in disgust*
To quote Woody Allen, "Don't knock Masturbation. Its sex with someone you love.
maybe woody allen isnt the best person to quote in regards to this video
@@jksgothbabymy thoughts exactly lol
what if you don't love yourself?
@@jksgothbaby Well how about this quote, from Steve Martin. "Weeeelllll Excusssss meeeeee.
Rosie Palm got me through many lonely nights in my 20s.
Yeah, my parents tried to get me sucked into purity culture...I had the ring and everything. When I was in highschool I started to think it was stupid and was like "nope, I'm not into this" but my cousins were so into it they were even saving their first kiss for their wedding day...some of them still are. It's their choice but I have one cousin that I think would've been married already if she wasn't just waiting for the right man to show it and actually put herself out there.
Yikes. Thankfully I never had to wear a ring.
Hope your cousin finds what she's looking for. I'm sure it's not easy to find someone that is willing to wait for even a kiss. Best of luck!
If I'm not mistaken there are even rituals where you get a ring from your father as a little girl, like marrying to your own father. It's so gross.
Purity culture made me a hardcore misandrist. I was so uncomfortable around men as a kid.
The main point is that it's someone else's fault that you're a crappy person.
I went to public school. In middle school a few weeks before highschool we had an assembly. These Christians had 10 kids half boys and girls come up to the stage. They all were given an oreo told to chew in up and spit it into a cup of water. They all did this and handed the cup down the line. The adults told us if you had sex before marriage that that is what others would think of you. Used, discarded and unworthy. It was so weird
My family isn't even particularly religious but I had a similar upbringing. My mum basically convinced me that if I did the deed with a guy before marriage I'd be broken and probably pregnant and with an STD. All it did was.... make me bigoted, honestly. She didn't need to convince me to not sleep with people in the first place cos I'm asexual, but it defiantly made me not just view guys negatively, but also frown upon sexually active ladies.
Nowadays, I'm really glad to have unlearned a whole bunch of this crap.
Pregnancy can happen within a marriage or outside of one. This is so silly. People act as though there is some magical spell at work that ensures that people won't get pregnant if they're married.
Making a second comment for this:
I went to Christian schools for Pre-K through 12 and got the whole purity culture "true love waits" bullshit shoved down my throat. My experience was a lot different, though, because I turned out being aroace but didn't figure that out until I was 32 years old.
So when I was a teenager I saw this message of resisting temptation and how difficult it was to do _resonate_ with my peers, all while I just _did not get it_ because to me it was "Why is that so hard? Just... don't do it. It's actually pretty easy...?" because _I still thought I was straight LOL._
So instead of feeling shame for being a sexual being, I felt fundamentally broken for NOT feeling tempted. I legitimately thought something was wrong with me, and since no other orientations besides heterosexuality were ever discussed, I didn't know that asexuality or aromanticism were Things You Could Be.
My family has always been Christian but have always adhered to "love everybody no matter what and God will handle everything later" so much that my sister and I both felt safe coming out as genderqueer pan and aroace respectively, and we're both loved and supported without question or condition. Even my mother - who has read the Bible with her devotional every single day for the nearly 40 years I've walked this earth - wholeheartedly believes that everyone is made exactly how God intended them to be, including all flavors of queer and the whole gender identity spectrum.
All of that is to say that even though I never felt forbidden to not be straight, it just wasn't talked about in my family. That's why it took me until 32 to discover what asexuality was online and realize "oh my god, _this is me!"_ That's a really long time to feel fundamentally broken. I'm very fortunate that when I told my parents I was asexual, (after they asked some questions to understand exactly what asexuality meant) they said it actually made a LOT of sense given the way I'd always been up to that point. Then the following Christmas they gave me an ace pride necklace and throw pillow. lol
I've often wondered how things would have been if I had been able to explore these things sooner so I could know there's nothing wrong with me and that there are TONS of other people out there exactly like me. And my heart still breaks for the allosexual people who have been abused within that same system.
Sorry for the rambling. I just felt the need to share my experience for any other ace people out there since purity culture affects us too in ways that some people might not even consider.
Thanks for sharing, and glad your story does have a happy, if delayed, ending! Or start to your life as someone who knows their full identity.
Even Ben Shapiro constantly says that in the scenario of a pregnancy that can cost the life of the mother you should prioritize the mother.
I didn't tell anyone about being assaulted well into adulthood because I was horrified they'd know I was gay and I knew that meant everyone was going to hate me and think I was a demon. I was outted when I was 14 and that's exactly what happened. I didn't ever feel safe telling anyone until some of my best friends when I was 18 they were the first people I ever believed loved or cared about me. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
Sending you love, please know you matter and I’m so glad you found friends who love you for you, that is a precious gift.
@@edvh88 Thank you so much that means a lot 💘💘💘 best wishes 💘💘💘
Straight into the pee-play. That escalated quickly.
I was so heavily into purity culture i started driving my best friend away when she became active (trying to not get flagged by youtube 😂). Therapy was my big help to get out of that ridiculous mindset...because i fell in love...and did stuff i wasnt ready for because i was afraid of losing him...i messed myself up even more. Sometimes i wish i could relive my early 20s.
Also spot on timing with this sponsor...my favorite toy stopped working 😢
I remember sitting in my high school auditorium and a 'so-called youth & virtue pastor' compared girls not being virgins when they got married to "an old used shoe". I felt and still feel so much disgust and anger when I heard that. I wish I had the frame of mind as teen to throw a shoe at him lol. I am thankful I had a nurse for a parent who never shamed me or sister and answer all our questions candidly and openly, but so many of my friends & other student were not taught anything about sex/relationships/their bodies. And even worse, they were misinformed by their peers, older siblings, or the internet.
I remember knowing a girl in highschool who was very Catholic, it wasn't an issue on the surface, but having gathered a bunch of friends together one night, my boyfriend and I decided to cuddle together on the couch, and that apparently made her uncomfortable?
Purity culture is one hell of a drug.
Just because I didn't hear this mentioned in the video...one of the most famous advocates of purity culture came out against it a few years back and basically recanted - Joshua Harris, best known for his book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye."
I’m glad you got on your soap box Jacklyn. Because this has been going on forever and is messing up young and old mines. People really need a good adult education!!
Growing up in a really well-educated liberal German household, this purity culture thing in the US blows my mind every time I hear about it. I so second your statement (21:31) and I hope that more children and young adults get the opportunity to be raised save and well-informed. It's more than worth it. Sending love and good thoughts.
Im a 17 year old ex-jw (Jehovahs Witness), born again atheist and your channel has helped me so much in seeing what atheists are actually like. I always thought, atheists were salty, angry, sad people but finding your channel and others like yours has allowed me to see that atheists are just normal people which has made it easier for me since I woke up and became an atheist.
It's kind of baffling how purity culture manages to be both misogynistic and misandristic at the same time.
Those to things are actually quite connected. It's hating humans, denying their autonomy. Every human has both a mother and a father, we're not two species. Any 'manosphere' talking head presenting their ideology as the canape for men is misrepresenting, even if appealing to frustrated single men. It's no wonder the manosphere has so much dark corners, almost nobody is happy.
The ectopic pregnancy one REALLY pissed me off! I had an ectopic pregnancy between my 1st & 2nd children. It was the most painful thing I ever experienced, far beyond my natural childbirth experiences. I desperately wanted that baby & asked the doctor if there was ANY way to save it. Of course there wasn't, so it was terminated & removed. I went on to have 2 more wonderful children. I can't imagine having to let that pain go on, travel to another state, or bear that pain until it killed me, leaving my oldest son without a mother. WTF is wrong with these sociopathic old men forcing this on women?
Oh gosh.. hitting me hard this morning. Purity culture messed me up SO BAD (90s teen here). When I told my mother that it hurt me, she acted like there must be something wrong with me. I highly recommend the book "Pure" by Linda Kay Klein if you're struggling with the effects of purity culture. When I read that book, I realized I wasn't alone. I wasn't crazy. Purity culture's only intention and effect is to destroy and damage. I cannot BELIEVE it has made its way into popular social media in 2020s. It's not a cute or funny social trend. It is destructive to young people, that is a hill I will die on!!
The good news is that I am raising two young men who are educated and informed about their bodies and sex in age-appropriate ways, and will never know the words "purity culture" unless they ask. They will also never have the notion that anyone has ownership or control over their bodies or sex lives but THEM.
I imagine that "chewed gum" concept ends up influencing people a lot more than intended. I imagine a lot of people end up thinking they're somehow devalued after having sex, even if it's within the confines of "what's allowed" according to religion/culture.
I was raised Mormon, I’m still unpacking purity culture and it’s hella hard for me to be comfortable with nudity. I have heard that for some artists something that helped them was either being a nude model for an art class or taking those art classes really helped a lot in deconstructing how they view nudity and human bodies
It's true for me. I was raised evangelical, atheist now. Studying anatomy and the human figure (my favorite subjects) helped me de-stigmatize nudity and helped me see the variety of beauty that humans possess. It also helped me broaden my definition of beauty to where the minimizing of beauty by the beauty industry makes little sense.
@@raichutoyou definitely a study I need to get into as an artist, especially after going to a k!nk party for the first time this weekend and seeing how I responded to that… you’d think being in the k!nk community so long and being out of the church so long and polyamorous for my entire dating life (I left the church as much as I could at 14) I’d be more able to handle these things but apparently no lol I definitely still have work to do
Purity culture (and, sadly, some tragic personal experiences) taught my mom to see all men as rapists just waiting for their chance. She felt very uncomfortable when I lived in a dorm with men, when I lived in an apartment and then a house with men (where I had my own room with a lock,) and even suggested it wasn’t safe for my younger sister to sleep in my bedroom overnight with me if my boyfriend was also there. There is caution, and then there is a total lack of trust.
It is always amazing to hear how medieval parts of US society think.
The skirt/shorts thing happens at public school too unfortunately. I had two different educators at public school constantly watching what I was wearing whether it was my shorts or it was a shirt I was wearing that showed my shoulders. It still affects me to this day.
IN my southern louisiana PUBLIC school, they enforced Christianity and christian views, which i learned as an adult thats technically illegal. We were taught abstinence. No sex ed....... There were pregnant 7th graders who got pregnant from seniors in HS................. i have considered making a tik tok telling stories about my school experiences because i can promise they are WILD and not the norm.
Edit: at my PUBLIC school. PUBLIC school, we had uniforms and the skirt measuring and earring measuring and just insane neuroticism
Edit 2: some news...Louisiana just mandated all public schools to have the ten commandments in every classroom, not surprising at this point. Eff louisiana
As someone who didn't grow up in religion, and an SA survivor, even I teared up imagining if I had to go through this.
I once taught a lifeguarding class with another college guy to a bunch of girls from a Catholic high school. Holy crap! The beginning of every class, held indoors in winter, by the way, was delayed by ten minutes as we made these girls put their required one-piece suits on over their bikinis, or distributed the bag full of oversized T-shirts we always had to have available. Sheesh, it was seriously nerve wracking. And the "cross chest carry"(?), forget about it. They were on their own with that and most of the demonstrations.
I love the speechprof. Such wholesome dad energy.
I went to therapy to get over a lot of my purity culture BS... I still have issues and I don't know if I'll ever be fully okay, but one thing I won't do is raise my daughter with it...maybe it will heal me to see her thrive
I’d actually love to hear one about hookup culture too ; or even hookup culture vs. purity . This was an amazing talk about how purity culture hurts us . Appreciate you as always , Jacelyn❤
I went in to a confessional once
Then I got kicked out.
All I said was "Punish me Daddy, I've been Naughty."
Thank you Jaclyn! It is really strange how easily we can be manipulated as children. I was never in catholic school, and I never heard intense purity culture stories like the one with the stickers but I did go to some kind of German YMCA and it was a bit americanized, a bit evangelical. So it was never discussed openly but somewhat implied. No sex before marriage, and girls were judged more than boys. And I clearly remember after my first relationship ended when I was 17 (and we did not even have sex we just made out) I had a strong feeling like I would be damaged now and I could never love a man as much as my first boyfriend because we had some kind of sexual experience together. I was so scared, I was so sad. And it took me a few years until I realized Wooow, I can love a man even more than my first boyfriend, it just takes some time to get over a relationship, it’s normal but it will pass. Now I feel like these purity horror stories are made by people who have some issues and maybe never managed to get over an ex and would need therapy.
What a relief it would have been to know at that age that one can heal. Because we are not objects, we can heal and recover and grow.
As a married woman myself I understand this hard it still feels like I'm doing something wrong
Thanks for touching on this, Jaclyn. 💕 I was debating on sharing my story because I don't ever want to seem like I just want to complain about my past, but I hope it helps someone, somehow.
I grew up Catholic in the middle of nowhere Midwest and was harmed in various ways by a former partner (also Catholic). My parents were on my case so much about getting pregnant in highschool that even after making the choice to get sterilized, I still have to check to make sure I'm not. I'm very grateful we couldn't afford to go to private school because I'm not sure I'd have gotten out of that bad relationship. If I hadn't, I don't think I'd be here today. Even though I didn't attent private school, we still had someone come in and teach us all about abstinence and how "dirty" STDs were my junior year. Even though that person wasn't preaching about God, the underlying message still felt as if they may as well have.
It took moving away from home to college, getting out of that small town "bubble" so I could learn to think for myself, and SO much therapy to rewire my brain to fully understand that I am NOT a man's property and be a lot more comfortable with my body. There's a part of me that feels that I will never *completely* get over all of that.
Something that boils my blood that not enough people talk about or have a problem with is that now a few states, including the one I currently live in, have found a way to fund private education using taxpayer dollars. Either income of the parents no longer matters, or it won't in the next year or two. Not to mention, they're cutting down every bit of funding surrounding public schools that they feasibly can and trying to be 'sneaky' about it. I hate to be a cynic, but I just know that more harm will come to more kids this way.
My heart breaks for everyone who's ever had to go through anything related to everything talked about here today. I encourage one and all to do your own research, explore other points of view, think for yourself, and GO VOTE in every election (if applicable). 💜
I have a daughter now and I am terrified for her for this reason.
If you don't raise her with these values than you shouldn't be
@@Greenghoul_95 it's still a society and culture she'll have to interact with. I fear the same for my daughter and will obviously not raise her with these "values". I honestly fear the same for my son. My only defense is education and a very open line of safe communication in our family.
@@Greenghoul_95 my six year old comes home from school repeating homophobic ideology she's hearing from her peers. SIX YEAR OLD. We can only shelter our children from so much bigotry; they're going to hear about it and we parents have to work against it.
@Greenghoul_95 the other comments are correct. I can't shield her from a society and culture that acts and feels like this.
You say that you have a daughter now, .....What are, (You) terrified of?
So I did go an an international mission trip when I was a teen. I know it's not everyone's experience, but I still look at it as one of the most eye opening opportunities for my personal self growth. Thankfully it wasn't youth oriented, it was labor oriented. We added a roof onto a dilapidated building that was being used as a church and school, and prepped it for the addition of a second floor. Yeah we did typical church service type stuff too, but the work was the primary focus. I don't think my mission trip really contributed to my indoctrination.
Now youth retreats on the other hand? Oh boy yep! At least until I was an older teen and was already setting the foundation for my deconstruction. Plenty of purity culture stuff, plenty of apologetics stuff. Never did the writing a letter to a future spouse thing, but we definitely did the purity ring stuff, the talks about used (insert disposable, single use item here) stuff, and plenty of other horribly negative stuff.
As a woman who doesn’t only date men, purity culture effected the way I interacted with both men and women.
7:36 - 9:07 Can so relate.
At a primary school (school before highschool), we were told that "people are like a slab of chocolate. Everytime you have sex a block of chocolate is eaten till only an empty wraper is left. You are the empty wrapper."
We were 13.
Looking back now, it is messed up. And this has messed me up.
There are reasons why I refer to this as the Purity CULT. Most of those reasons were expressed in this video.
The colored paper thing unlocked a memory. Ugh.
Additionally, they’ve been doing the shame in Christianity since the beginning, and it hasn’t worked, but they’re still trying!
The mental health aspect of not wanting or being able to have a child if something that I don't think it's talked about enough. I have mental health issues I'm not suicidal or anything like that, but I know that I wouldn't be able to give a child the attention it needs. Everyone in my family keeps telling me I need to have a kid and I would be such a great dad. And there are times that's true, but there are times when I can't stand to be around people and I need to go off in the woods for a week to clear my head. I wouldn't be able to do that with a child, and I'm sure I would need to do that more often than I already am.
Sorry for any typos I used voice to text for this since I was in a hurry to write it.
You sounded great and it makes complete sense. It’s also very responsible and respectable for you to make that decision for yourself. As a woman, I feel the same way.
I have that same urge you do, especially when I get depressed despite being on crap tons of meds (just got out of an episode less than a month ago), where I just want to drop off the grid. I got into sketchy situations in pre-cell phone/early cell phone days where I got lucky nothing bad happened to me. I’m high key convinced I would have gotten kidnapped at some point with my general lack of stranger danger if I lived in a more urban area. But that idea of needing to constantly be there for someone else when I can’t constantly be there for myself would make me irresponsible and selfish to bring a child into that scenario.
I have a nephew who’s visiting this weekend with my brother, and I adore and cherish him so much. It was seeing him grow up and watching my brother parent him that I became even more sure that having my own children wasn’t for me. Kudos to you for having that presence of mind to know that what is best for you means not hurting someone else who isn’t even here. I know women who are child free by choice get lots of crap, but it can’t be great for men either. I wish you well in your continued journey to know yourself well enough to know what is good and bad for you despite outside voices that might be saying otherwise. Not having children doesn’t mean a person is worthless, it just means they don’t want kids.
@rsesters
I don't know if it helps but there are a lot of 'childfree channels' on youtube that talks about things like that.
"What if both papers are pink?"
lmao🤣
DON'T YOU DARE!
"what is both papers are pink"😂😂I lost it
This is so great. I can't believe The Line hasn't tried to get you on yet!
I experienced multiple instances of SA from 7-9 and again at 14 and I felt horrific about myself. I asked the pastor if I was "ruined for my future husband" and he said "I mean... you'll find a man that will still want you, I guess".
Fast forward, and I meet my husband who patiently waited and helped me get over the insane amount of guilt I STILL feel. Purity culture messed me up BAD. But f-ck you, Pastor John. I DID meet a man who wants me despite my past THAT WASNT MY FAULT and he's a better man than you could ever be.
Thank you for sharing these humans' experiences.
I am very sorry that horrible crime was perpetrated against you. I hope you know peace and happiness your whole life long.
The “what if both papers are pink..?” absolutely SENT me 💀😭🤣
I was SAed and because I was raised in a religious household, I had many break downs because I felt I was damage goods, I was tainted, I was tarnished goods. I had a pastor tell me it was my fault because I put myself in that situation.
That pastor either didn't read the Bible or he doesn't want to preach it. It clearly says it's not the victim's fault.
I saw an interesting thread on Reddit asking people who waited for marriage what their sex lives were like now, a woman who said both her and her husband waited until marriage. She said that their sex life was awkward and sporadic for a while, bc she still thought of sex as a dirty wrong thing. She said being told you shouldn’t do it until marriage then as soon as you’re married you’re encouraged to do it often (to make babies of course) leaves you kind of messed up
I'm so glad i was raised with very little religion near me. My school was catholic but not that extreme
Luckily I got kicked out of catholic school for "asking too many questions".
Even though I didn't go to a christian private school, I still went to church and sex was always a confusing thing. As guy I didn't here a lot about purity but it was always weird where in one sex talk they say its a good thing, it brings new life into the world, its a good intimate thing between you and your spouse and enhances your relationship with them. Then take that same sex talk and do a 180 and now start talking how its evil and the devil uses it to tempt you and if you do it outside marriage then you're a bad person. After the talk is done I'm just in the back going, is sex good or bad? I don't understand.
i do hope (with the paper thing) there's someone every now and then who asks "what does the color have to do with them sticking to each other" and then they'll have to say it out loud at least
Thank you for covering this ❤❤ wishing healing amongst us all
I was raised Catholic. Also told those negative things about sex and masturbation.
The fucked up thing (and yet the thing that saved me from the religion at a young age), I was m*lested from as early as I can remember (4 or 5).
This caused me to be hypersexual and masturbate from a very very young age (5ish). I was told I was disgusting and bad for it and that I’d go to hell.
It was very traumatizing. And I never told anyone I was being abused in part because I felt dirty and bad.
The one good thing of the extreme negativity of that situation is that it enabled me to break free by time I was 15. I couldn’t help what happened to me and I couldn’t help how that affected me (being hypersexual). And knowing it wasn’t my fault, I just cut ties with the religion and became an atheist.
For anyone who is struggling with that: It is NOT your fault. Internalize that. Chant it. Write it. It is not your fault. And f anyone, including any religion, that would treat you as less than for it. They are the ones who are less than, not you.
As for the effects purity culture can have on SA victims, I'd encourage those who'd like to explore that more to google Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and assaulted at age 14. In at least one interview, she talked about how some victims in her shoes may not even try to escape their kidnappers because "what's the point since they're already ruined." (I seem to recall one victim saying that was their own perspective. I thought it might even be Smart herself, but the articles I could find today only say she indicated that she understood why some victims might feel that way.)
I have heard her story, but actually I don't remember it anymore. I should look it up again.
That pink and blue paper thing is straight out of an abstinence only education curriculum that has been around since the late 1980's early 90's. You can find clips of teachers doing that going way back.
Modern purity culture is based on a very old cultural practise that served an actual purpose (given the circumstances), but serves none today. In ancient Israel, God chose not to teach them about things like wills and probate. The All Knowing Creator of All, instead, decided the family property would pass down to the eldest son. So every family needed to be certain the children were of the direct bloodline of the father so no one else could lay claim to the estate. To that end, they had to be certain the blushing bride had not been with anyone else, and stayed true to her hubby to make sure any other inheritors in the line were also of "pure" blood (of the father's lineage) if the eldest son was unable to inherit (like dying in war). It had absolutely nothing to do with being spiritually 'soiled' as much as having the bloodline sullied.
Obviously, we no longer need this practise in a modern age where we now have wills and courts to handle inheritance rights and settle squabbles. Christianity took an essentially legal practise and warped it into something it never was. And should not even be around today.
And, as far as I know, the Bible never once has Jesus saying, "Thou shalt not rub one out after a stressful day at work." 😁
pretty sure it's more about preventing STDs and unplanned pregnancy since they kinda had no other reliable ways to do it...
Idk I think I remember that last line in the bible somewhere...
@@k4nd1incyb3rsp4c3 -- might be more sensible...but nope. We're talking a culture that had rampant skin (and other) diseases from plunging into the communal mikveh that was never sanitized.
Germ theory wasn't a thing. Diseases were spiritual afflictions. The fatality rate of infants was extremely high. A woman would need to have 6 pregnancies to get two children who survived into adulthood.
To that end, no one understood STDs and no pregnancy would have been unwanted. As long as that pregnancy had a firm 'pedigree' to the father.
Which is also why men were able to dally around at the local brothel but women needed to stay at home and not mess about. It also explains the ordeal of bitter water in Numbers. Also why a woman who had not conceived with her hubby had to lay with hubby's brother if hubby died. It keeps that family bloodline intact.
@@k4nd1incyb3rsp4c3 Yes, I think that's how lot of these morals evolved. That explains why the Bible has such an issue with men sleeping together but not with women sleeping together. And that with sex outside marriage the woman is seen as the problem.
What you said at around 6:37 is exactly what happened to me as a child up until my teenage years. I had no words to explain the sexual abuse and i was so ashamed...i still struggle to this day with the trauma.
I remember my dad telling this story about my grandma convincing a school board to ban sex ed through the chewing gum argument. He held so much awe for his mother and because I was little I agreed that she was so smart and wise. Now as an adult I realize that it was so f*cked that she supported and fought for this kinda garbage especially with seven daughters. I love my grandma but as an adult I have to reconcile with the fact that she was racist and sexist.
Same with mine being mostly racist.
I have a similar "body is ruined" feeling about my weight. Like, I feel like I wouldn't want to subject someone to the horrifying thing that is me. It's always either purity culture, or that.
thank you for this video 💔💔 as a young adult, it's really difficult for me to undo all of the damage purity culture has done to me. the guilt it makes me feel is awful. it's so hard to talk about it to anyone irl so i'm glad that there's content like this online ❤
I was a beautiful girl who went through purity culture. I also had a disability I was bullied relentlessly for by the adults, mostly the mothers, in the congregation who claimed I was possessed or a child of satan.
Occasionally older men would show an interest. Then they would drop that interest when they realized I'd openly talk about all the shit these horrible women were saying to me, because they figured if they tried anything I'd probably talk about that too.
At the time, I didn't know what was happening. Why older men would be so nice then drop me like a sack of bricks (or better yet, introduce me to their wives as a 'charity case'), but looking back I see how easily I could have been abused because I didn't even know male parts EXISTED until I was 17. Purity culture doesn't protect girls, it creates a breeding ground for stalkers, groomers, and child predators. I get SO happy every time I see a poll that shows younger generations are becoming more sex positive and are totally over this bullshit.
The only thing I heard during that time was my uncle Luke after I heard the chewing gum one said “well that’s stupid. You’re more like 20 bucks…. A wrinkled 20 bucks is still 20 bucks. Ain’t nobody not want 20 bucks.”…. Only man in my childhood that made be feel like I had intrinsic value.
Wow, that's a good one.
A good way of explaining the dignity of the human person. I may use it in the future.
Absolutely excellent work Jaclyn, much appreciated!!!