How Purity Culture Impacts Religious Trauma
By Alice McCabe
Sexuality is something that feels, for many people, a taboo topic of discussion, despite it being a universal human experience. Sex itself is a tool of bonding, self-discovery, and exploration! Despite this, the culture around us leads us to feel shame and discomfort around sex, and when it becomes extreme, this culture of purity can lead to religious trauma. Religious trauma is tied to individuals’ experiences in religious communities or groups and is often a result of abusive, fear-based, or exclusionary practices that members of a community justify through spirituality. Because religion is part of many people’s core beliefs and values, these practices can leave deep emotional scars that prevent us from living comfortably and happily. One of the most common ideas within religion that can negatively affect us throughout our lives is the concept of purity culture.
Purity culture is a set of teachings within various religious traditions that encourage abstinence, conforming to heterosexual sexual norms, and suppressing our natural sexual attractions, activities, and expressions. While mainstream understanding of purity culture is strongly associated with Christianity and is most strongly practiced in fundamentalist Christian circles in the United States, purity culture bleeds into our culture at large, telling us that aspects of sexuality are something to be hidden and feel ashamed of. It also tends to posit that heterosexual attraction is the only “right” way to feel attraction and that sexuality should be only for the purpose of building a family within the context of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage, consequently damning and placing negative moral value on ethically non-monogamous, LGBTQ+, and other relationships that could be considered “non-normative.”
Across gendered lines, purity culture manifests itself in different ways: men and people socialized as boys are told that sexual thoughts and actions are impure, while women and people socialized as girls are often taught that they as a whole are impure. Purity culture perpetuates victim-blaming, telling women they are responsible for the unwanted sexual attention of others. Women are made to be the gatekeepers of their sexuality and to control the ways in which they sexually tempt others, wrongly becoming the point of blame in cases of sexual assault. Men, on the other hand, are expected to fail and be tempted by impure thoughts that make them morally and spiritually lesser. Due to a culture of misogyny, we often hold women and assigned-female people to higher standards in the realm of purity culture and modesty. All people who are affected by purity culture learn to not fully enjoy sex or be present with it, which can lead to sexual dysfunction, difficulty in connecting and exploring sexually, and strain on relationships.
Gender roles are something that are heavily enforced within purity culture, leading anyone under its influence to be both pure and nearly sexless while also maintaining sexual viability for partners in marriage. Women in cisheteronormative relationships are expected to be available sexually for male partners at any time, and that a failure to perform sexually is a sign of an undutiful wife; it is also expected that women’s sexual needs are second to their male partner’s, being dismissed as unimportant. Anyone who might not fit within the cisgender, heterosexual box can have a very complicated relationship with purity culture, as it both influences what “should be” for the individual while denying the validity of LGBTQ+ identities and non-heterosexual sexuality at all. Under purity culture, being under the LGBTQ+ umbrella is something that is invalid, something to be fixed – which leads many LGBTQ+ individuals to feel alienated, isolated, and wrong in themselves. Many religious spaces contribute to religious trauma for these folks by shunning them from spiritual spaces, speaking against them, and refusing to acknowledge their value (or their existence).
Race and ethnicity are also important factors to consider when talking about purity culture, as racism deeply impacts the way that society views and treats people of color – and how they are pressured to meet the standards of different gendered expectations. People of color are expected to more intensely follow tenets of purity culture in order to be seen as sexually pure. Black, Asian, and Latinx individuals are many times left out of conversations about experiences in purity culture, and often must prove sexual purity, as they are deeply hypersexualised and fetishized in our culture. Purity culture must be examined through an intersectional lens in order to understand how it affects different people across racial lines, and we have to consider how the standards of gender and sexual purity are heavily intertwined with white supremacist standards.
Purity culture is widespread, serving as a confusing, defunct moral compass – and it tells us that we are somehow lesser spiritually, morally, physically, and emotionally if we do not fit into the cramped boxes it attempts to place us in. People who are affected by purity culture believe their sexuality is something to be feared. They may have difficulty with intimacy and may find it difficult to explore themselves, communicate their needs, and discover their true, authentic, sexual selves. To not live a full life and explore one’s natural sexuality due to fear of consequences, spiritually or physically, is to suppress a major part of ourselves – and in doing so, we risk great mental and emotional damage.
Across people from all backgrounds, the internalization of purity culture can intensify religious trauma – and be the catalyst for it. The greatest disservice that purity culture causes is the toxic shame that we carry about our bodies, identities, sexuality… and on. Religious spaces that practice and reinforce the ideals of purity culture can quickly become places that harbor abuse towards those who do not perfectly conform to its standards. It can leave us with deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves and the world that prevent us from living a full life in line with our own personal values. The trauma resulting from constant self-policing in our sexuality can be debilitating and lead us to believe we are not worthy of living happy, free lives. It can make us feel as though we are caught at a crossroads between honoring and exploring a beautiful, natural part of ourselves and adhering to a restrictive, oppressive, and damaging set of rules preventing us from connecting with ourselves and others.
There is no mistake that religion can offer a safe harbor for many people. Individuals may also have traumatic religious backgrounds but want to remain a part of their faith community. However, religion should be a place of respite for anyone who practices, not a box that keeps us feeling unworthy, ashamed, and filled with guilt for our natural actions. Unlearning shame about our sexuality can be a difficult journey, but it is a worthwhile one! Everyone deserves comfort in exploring their sexuality both on their own and with intimate partners.
It is difficult to fight our way out of the toxic clutches that purity culture holds us in, but it is not impossible. Therapy that aids us in working through the conceptions we have about ourselves and our sexuality is a first step in living a life more in line with our values, allowing us to be sexually free and explorative without shame. Exploring themes of purity culture and sexuality can be daunting, but the therapists at Valid Love are knowledgeable on how purity culture can cause and intensify the trauma resulting from it. Getting support towards sexual liberation has the potential to help you feel less alone and to guide you through the most difficult obstacles on your personal journey.