Purity Culture - Blog Posts
Saving myself for dinosaurs
I know I'm gonna ruffle a lot of feathers when I say this, but I think this is something people don't really touch on when it comes to the topic of female modesty (at least not too often).
A big criticism I have when it comes to the topic of female modesty (especially in some ‘Christian’ spaces) is that most who speak on it often approach it from the lens of “Immodesty makes men lust.” And regardless of how true that is, lots of women roll their eyes when they hear it because lots of us have experienced harassment (and a lot of women even sexual abuse) from men REGARDLESS of WHAT we are wearing.
Whether or not the message of “dress this way and men won’t harass you” was your personal intention or not, that is unfortunately the message that has been pushed on a LOT of women from the time we could first walk by OTHER people.
Sure, clothes have an effect on how people perceive us, I’m not gonna pretend it doesn’t. You obviously can’t walk into your office job wearing a low cut halter top and booty shorts—you have to dress for the environment you’re in (durr).
But clothes definitely have not stopped people from doing what they want to do to us at the end of the day. I think the main reason why lots of women roll their eyes when the topic of modesty comes up is because we’re being told the solution to a problem that we know for a fact has not actually worked.
If people kept telling you that wearing a helmet prevents serial killers from targeting you, but serial killers kept targeting you anyway, would you be more convinced to wear a helmet? No, because wearing a helmet didn’t change anything.
Lots of women realize this reality and so I think that’s why a lot of women dress with the mindset of “I’m gonna wear whatever the heck I want because it clearly doesn’t matter what I wear or don’t wear—men are still gonna behave the same.”
I’ve gotten harassed by a male ‘friend’ who bullied me in highschool and snuck around to obtain my phone number (without my permission) so that way he could flirt with me despite me telling him to stop (pretty tame all things considered). And all throughout high school, I wore nothing except big hoodies, jeans, and sometimes sweatpants.
Modesty is important, I agree. But stop promising women that it provides GRAND changes in how men will treat them. So many women have experience that proves it really doesn’t. Because it’s not about the clothes and never will be about the clothes, it’s about the character of the men we interact with. So if the only way a man can respect a woman is if she covers herself head to toe like a box, I don’t know if I can consider him a respectable person.
Sure, modesty can help people respect you more---but stop telling women that it ELIMINATES mistreatment from men---because it doesn't. And to tell something that isn't true is a lie.
Tumblr's new potentially mature content label is crazy, apparently my middle school level humor is too much for it. I make sure that anything that is NSFW is marked with a mature label already. Whatever standards their bot used are worse than that of my hyper conservative puritanical parents.
Turning conventional restrooms into coed bathrooms is not a sin against the Christian God. And, assuming that there will be men who just say they identify as women merely to get inside a woman's bathroom is ridiculous, and that devalues the experience of those who actually identify unconventionally.
Maybe instead of putting so much emphasis on only two genders, male and female, we instead reinterpret our core beliefs to embrace masculine and feminine energy, and souls, as opposed to male and female bodies.
Maybe it's time to address why traditional Christians are so overly obsessed with sex and gender and purity. As well as why traditional Christians are overly obsessed with sin, and do not give notice to the essence of connection and love that can bring humanity together for the greater good as a whole as opposed to an "us vs them" mentality of the "haves and have nots," the straight and the unconventional; the dualism that has oversaturated the minds of traditional Christians to the point that they can't even accept that there has always been more than two genders, Middlesex people and eunuchs, and other outcasts that have been in our societies as long as humans have been around.
Maybe we ask ourselves why we believe what we believe, why are we not open to expanding our beliefs outside of the traditional walls we've been raised in? Why is it so hard for us to understand that people are people, and it's been those who are judgmental that have excluded outcasts such as LGBTQ+ & gender non-conforming people. Is being a beloved child of God an exclusive opportunity reserved only for those who are perfect in Christ? Newsflash, no human is perfect, we all have cast stones at others to move the spotlight off of our own missed marks and insecurities. We project all over each other all the time.
If you're a traditional Christian, I challenge you to challenge your beliefs. Ask yourself why you believe what you do, without referencing something you've been told or heard someone else say. When that happens and you can legitimately defend your stances on traditional Christianity, I'd love to have a conversation about hot topics such as trans rights, LGBTQ+ rights, equity and equality of BIPOC and Native Americans, and all marginalized groups. I'd like to talk about socialism versus capitalism and the influence of religion on our politics. We need to be having conversations with people we do not agree with, and not only that, we all need to be open to learning something uncomfortable, challenging to our own beliefs, and have the ability to open our minds to other cultures and ways of life. Just a thought
Oklahoma is attempting to pass a bill that would ban explicit romance novels. Authors, narrators, and sellers could all face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in jail for each instance.
If you live in OK, call your representative and tell them this bill should not be allowed to pass.
This is likely a test case. Republicans will try to pass it in OK and if it passes other states will likely try to pass similar laws.
In the meantime, get physical copies of books you like. Download those pdfs. Archive your AO3 stories and keep them on a physical hard drive. (Storing those files in the cloud could be problematic in the future as the company managing the cloud service can see what your files are)
YOU got into fandom because you were bored in quarantine
I got into fandom because i was bullied for being weird (autistic) and needed to think of something other than killing myself
YOU are now trying to bully weird people out of fandom (we built it)
WE ARE NOT THE SAME
A special shoutout to LGBTQ+ Mormons and exmos this pride; to you in the closet, sitting awkwardly in sacrament meeting, finding excuses to duck out of homophobic Sunday school lessons, you, wearing a rainbow pin to girl's camp, you out and proud and still attending, enduring side eye from sisters and comments to "maybe tone it down" from your bishop. You, afraid to bring your partner home, you who's only Mormon on Sundays but can't bear to let your parents down (earthly and heavenly). To you who took the bravest step and left the church and your community, and feel like you'll never find a new one. To you who hears "no way you were a mormon!" but are still unravelling the trauma of purity culture.
I see you.
I love you.
It gets better.
am I asexual or do I just have
✨severe religious trauma✨
A saga by me