Do you know the extent to which purity culture and abstinence-only education can infiltrate your life? We've got a promise for you: by the end of this episode, you'll have a deeper understanding of this complex and controversial topic. We're joined by special guests Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Pastema, hosts of the podcast and educational platform, Sexvangelicals. Together, we dissect and discuss the defining features of purity culture, strict gender norms, and the harmful impacts these ideologies have on relationships and sexuality.
On our journey into purity culture, we also highlight its paradoxical effects. From the double bind faced by men taught to control their impulses while being encouraged to pursue sexual relationships, to the heightened risks and lack of sexual communication, we confront the harsh realities of this belief system. We reference the insightful book "Real Sex" by Lauren Winner, posing provocative questions about the so-called "slippery slope" of sexual activity.
Wrapping up our discussion, we delve into the personal experiences of Jeremiah and Julia. They share their transformative journey from music ministry and therapy to becoming sex therapists, and how their beliefs in evangelical Christianity were challenged. They reveal a new understanding of consent, and we extend our support to those affected by purity culture. Join us as we emphasize the importance of comprehensive, inclusive education around relationships and sexuality. Listen in as we shed light on the broader impacts of purity culture, and how we as a society can move forward.
Follow us on social @sexeddebunked or send us a message at sexeddebunked@gmail.com
Do you know the extent to which purity culture and abstinence-only education can infiltrate your life? We've got a promise for you: by the end of this episode, you'll have a deeper understanding of this complex and controversial topic. We're joined by special guests Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Pastema, hosts of the podcast and educational platform, Sexvangelicals. Together, we dissect and discuss the defining features of purity culture, strict gender norms, and the harmful impacts these ideologies have on relationships and sexuality.
On our journey into purity culture, we also highlight its paradoxical effects. From the double bind faced by men taught to control their impulses while being encouraged to pursue sexual relationships, to the heightened risks and lack of sexual communication, we confront the harsh realities of this belief system. We reference the insightful book "Real Sex" by Lauren Winner, posing provocative questions about the so-called "slippery slope" of sexual activity.
Wrapping up our discussion, we delve into the personal experiences of Jeremiah and Julia. They share their transformative journey from music ministry and therapy to becoming sex therapists, and how their beliefs in evangelical Christianity were challenged. They reveal a new understanding of consent, and we extend our support to those affected by purity culture. Join us as we emphasize the importance of comprehensive, inclusive education around relationships and sexuality. Listen in as we shed light on the broader impacts of purity culture, and how we as a society can move forward.
Follow us on social @sexeddebunked or send us a message at sexeddebunked@gmail.com
Hi, this is Sex. Ed Debunked a cross-generational podcast hosted by mother-daughter duo, christine and Shannon Curley.
Speaker 2:Every episode we tackle a new myth about sex, sexuality and pleasure, and use research and expert insights to debunk stereotypes and misinformation from the bedroom and beyond. In 2022,. We won the American Association of Sexuality Educators, counselors and Therapists Award for Best Podcast and also managed to not totally freak out our family and friends along the way.
Speaker 1:We believe in healthy sex-positive, pleasure-focused sex education backed by real research and real experience.
Speaker 2:Follow us on Instagram, facebook or Twitter at Sex Ed Debunked or email us at SexEdDeBunked at gmailcom to share your sex miseducation tales and the myths you'd like to hear us debunk. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3:Hi, this is Sex. Ed Debunked a cross-generational podcast about sexual health, sex positivity and what it really means to leave room for Jesus.
Speaker 1:So on today's episode, we're talking about purity culture and to facilitate this conversation, we're bringing two special guests to the podcast Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Pastema, hosts of the podcast and educational platform. They're going to say it for me, that's me and Jala Calls. There you go. I'm much better that way. Jeremiah and Julia, welcome to Sex Ed Debunked. Thank you, I'm excited for this Good to be on the show. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 5:Yes, happy to have you here.
Speaker 3:But tell us how you got here, tell us a little bit about this platform and the podcast that you run, and a little bit about yourselves.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I'll let Jeremiah tell you about how we met, and then I'll tell you a little bit about the podcast.
Speaker 5:So Julia and I are both certified sex therapists and licensed psychotherapists in Massachusetts, and so we actually met through work. We actually, funnily enough, had the same supervisor who connected us for another project that I'm working on, and over time we began to talk and realize that we had a lot in common. We're both sex therapists who escaped evangelical Christianity in our own ways.
Speaker 4:Congratulations, thank you, thank you. It is worth the congratulations, no.
Speaker 5:So we, as we talked more, we were talking about both the similar ways and the different ways that evangelical movements impacted us, and also the ways that impacted the relationships that we had historically present, things like that. So as we began to move into a dating relationship, we also realized that, hey, we could collaborate professionally on this as well, and the first bit of that was through the podcast, sex Evangelicals. And as Sex Evangelicals has grown, we have also talked about other opportunities to work together through some writing projects, through some co-therapy processes that we're excited to launch in the next year or two. So that's the introduction to our story, and you want to talk a little bit more about Sex Evangelicals.
Speaker 4:Absolutely so. The tagline for Sex Evangelicals is the sex education the church didn't want you to have. The didn't want is intentional. Folks have asked us about that. This isn't the sex education the church missed. This isn't the sex education the church forgot. This is the sex education that was intentionally left behind from our lives. Now, over the past 10-ish years, there has been a lot of good research and resources around what we would call deconstruction in general, which would be the process of folks unlearning harmful religious messages and shifting their worldview. More recently, there has been some good resources available for sexuality post or during deconstruction. However, very few resources exist for how to navigate multiple different relationships in this process. So reclaiming sexuality after adverse religious experiences is hard enough, as it is, just as an individual, and then when you consider family relationships, friendships, partners, spouses, multiple partners, dating, that is just hard as hell really, and so our niche is to consider how can we reclaim sexuality while in the context of relationships following the negative sex messaging and relational messaging from religious structures?
Speaker 1:Right. So you're actually looking at all forms of relationships, not just dating and love relationships, but that would include friendships and, classically, with your family and things like that. So I think we need to take a step back and really define for our listeners exactly what we mean when we say purity culture.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I printed up a definition from Linda Kay Klein. Linda's a friend. She wrote pure inside the evangelical movement that shamed a generation of young women and how I broke free. She writes the term purity culture is generally associated with the white American evangelical Christian purity movement and the corollary purity industry launched in the early nineties.
Speaker 5:However, evangelicals don't have a monopoly on the ethics that undergird purity culture. The specifics vary by religion and culture, but gender and sexual control, upon which purity culture stands, is global, cross religious and cross cultural. In purity culture, gender expectations are based on a strict, stereotype based binary. Women are expected to be strong, masculine leaders of the household, church and, to a lesser extent, society. Women are expected to support them, to be pretty feminine, sweet, supportive wives and mothers, and so there is a. There are macro systems that have developed around that, julie. You'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute, but at the root of that is the practice, the implementation of these very strict, very rigid gender norms and the expected relationships heterosexual relationships, monogamous relationships that are expected as a result of that.
Speaker 4:And Linda Klein, in the definition that Jeremiah described, talks about the gendered norms more generally speaking. Later, if it's helpful, we can talk a bit more about how that impacts specifically sexuality, because I think there are specific factors to consider in terms of the double binds that men experience, the double binds that women experience, and, sadly, any folks who are not a cis person are completely erased from those types of structures.
Speaker 1:First question is you said the 1990s, I mean, is that the definition of the term purity culture? I'm sure the idea of this culture has existed a long time before the 1990s and when it was given a term.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so what Linda's referring to is products that were developed, that started being developed in the 80s and 90s, from purity rings, purity balls, different relics that represented those, and then also multi-million, multi-billion dollars at this stage, publishing houses from Focus on the Family, thomas Nelson, zondervan, who have published thousands of books, relationship books, sexuality books all of which are, most of which repackage and repurpose these rigid gender stereotypes into the practice of complementary in relationships and the limitations, obviously, that come as a result of that.
Speaker 4:And I would add, not just complementary in relationships, but hierarchical relationships.
Speaker 5:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:So they were capitalizing on a culture that was already there, but now they've packaged it. So that means you can buy and there's the all, like you said, all the rings and things like that. But it doesn't mean that the idea of these gender roles and rigid stereotypes didn't exist before. That's right.
Speaker 5:So, but there's a capitalistic flair that starts to happen in the 90s, and then also in 1996, you have the Clinton administration passing Title V abstinence only until marriage follow, actually in response to hundreds of thousands of purity pledges being planted on Capitol Hill a year earlier, and that becomes a foundation for nationally funded education policies that promote abstinence only education, for instance, abstinence to sexuality before marriage is the expected standard. Mutually faithful, anogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard. And federal grants, federal money, is given then to everything from local municipalities to larger state governments, and recipients of those funds are required then to teach those in a variety of settings. This isn't just a private school, this isn't just a parochial, this isn't just limited to evangelical Christianity. This impacts the entire nation for at least two generations of people Gen Xers and millennials.
Speaker 4:And I am only just starting to understand this world, but there is now a new movement called Purity Culture 2.0.
Speaker 5:2.0, right.
Speaker 4:More perpetuated by the Gen Z generation and influencer style versus the structures that Jeremiah just described. And the really tricky part is that the Purity Culture 2.0 has a guise of being more progressive, more liberal, but it's really just a repackaging of the same messages. For example, oh how terrible that all you women were compared to chewed up pieces of gum passed around to your classmates. That's so terrible. And then the messaging that they describe following that is really the same, just with less violent types of imagery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think we tend to think. You know, Gen Z is very progressive and TikTok is a progressive platform, and that's true, but there it is still a platform to continue to push outdated messaging. In any way, to your point, you can kind of rebrand the same thing, Right?
Speaker 4:so maybe it's more insidious, less violent imagery, but trickier to discern as harmful or similar to previous Purity Culture, I suppose 1.0.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is 1.0 still active? And the reason I'm asking is I'm actually planning next week on showing this 60 minute segment on Purity Balls to my class and I wonder if they're still doing them. It used to have, like these big conventions in Colorado and the dads would be the dates and it's like yeah, yeah, the rules of the father-daughter relationship is really bizarre in those.
Speaker 5:To answer your question, yes, I actually haven't done much research on what's currently happening in evangelical movements and Pentecostal movements. You have, I have, go for it.
Speaker 4:No, no no, keep going. No, no, finish what you were saying.
Speaker 5:Oh no, that's it.
Speaker 4:That was your intro.
Speaker 5:That was your intro.
Speaker 4:Well and I'll give the scope of my understanding because it is somewhat limited.
Speaker 4:But because this is our niche population and because I love podcasts, I actually stay pretty up to date on the dominant messages around sexuality within what we would call emphish communities, and by emphish we mean evangelical Mormon and Pentecostal. I don't know the statistics of how often purity balls are occurring. I can find that out and let you know. But, for example, there is a group called Authentic Intimacy and I'm not sure if you can see it. It may or may not still be associated with focus on the family, but it is very, very influential in evangelical circles and while they I believe if I am being charitable are trying to do some good work around course correcting, the outcome is a bit similar to the purity culture 2.0. So messages around abstinence, monogamy, heterosexuality are still pretty dominant. But it would be very interesting to look at the extent to which the purity pledges, purity balls and other big time events are still occurring. I've had some clients talk to me about it, but I don't know how that would hold up to like numbers nationally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's interesting. It's funny. I follow a couple of social media accounts that are satirical having to do with abstinence, but sometimes I worry that it's too clever and I'm like you know, are people understanding that this is satire or is this like a modest proposal and they're thinking we really should eat the kids? You know, because if you're assuming a certain audience, I think and it's similar to what you were saying about TikTok but if you're assuming a certain audience, you can kind of lose the educational arc along the way and accidentally continue to push the wrong messaging.
Speaker 4:Sure Right. Well similar to SNL during the 2016 elections. The SNL clips were, like you said, almost too clever because they were just a repackaging of what was actually happening, so it was more horrifying than funny Right. It was a little too close to reality, right.
Speaker 3:Well, it's like the onion, right Like the onion they kind of ran material, because everything was just happening for real Right, true story. So the one thing that you know we've talked about is this virginity, and I think people can conflate the terms of like virginity and abstinence only with purity culture. But there's more to it than simply like don't have sex, right? So can you talk a little bit more about, I guess, the far reaching influence of purity culture beyond simply abstinence?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So abstinence only education, as all four of us know, has some pretty damning consequences. That being said, the way that I would differentiate is that purity culture is a broader system that perpetuates a culture of anxiety in which folks, including adolescents and small children, are defined by their purity. We can talk about what purity means later. In many contexts, that's far more than having sex.
Speaker 4:Right, right. So defined by purity, defined by modesty, and then defined by how well these folks fall within those rigid norms. And I can give an example from my own life. So the pervasiveness of purity culture meant that for me I tell this example a lot my friends and I had conversations about whether or not spaghetti straps were sinful, and these were real conversations at nine years old. And I remember telling Jeremiah recently that I had one friend, one friend who was a non-believer I'm saying air quotes because that us them.
Speaker 4:Language is also pretty problematic and I asked my mom if it was okay if I went swimming with her because she had a two piece bathing suit. And so purity culture really infiltrates every single part of how you view yourself as a specific gender and then as you interact with other folks. And we can talk about how this impacts men as well, because purity culture fucks with more than women. I'm giving examples from my own life. I was very anxious, even as a prepubescent child, around men because I learned that men were dangerous. Were these sexual monsters? So purity culture, more than abstinence, only education, defines the way that you exist, with a high degree of shame and a high degree of anxiety.
Speaker 5:And it reduces you to sexuality.
Speaker 4:Or your genitalia. Or your genitalia Really Right.
Speaker 5:Because if you're nine or 10 and worried about spaghetti straps like, the implications of that is that there are people that are sexualizing you as a nine or a 10 year old.
Speaker 4:And that sometimes happens.
Speaker 5:Sometimes happens Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting how many times in media, when you look at, like a movie where they're at a Catholic school and they're wearing their skirts and they roll up the skirts, and they roll up the skirts, they're the bad kids, right, because they're. And why is that? You know you should be able to roll up your skirt without fear of judgment, but you do see it, I think and that's just a basic example but the ones that roll up their skirt, the ones that take their cardigan off and they're wearing the spaghetti straps, it's like that's the bad one.
Speaker 4:Right, right, so that demonizes the body as well.
Speaker 1:Right, I was curious, does it go the other way? Where? Like, like, if a young, because it's a cultural thing if you were to wear your spaghetti straps, would the young boys around you think that you were like, that you were impure and that you were unworthy of talking to because you were, you know, somehow tainted and you know how? Dare you wear spaghetti straps and show your skin? I mean, it seems like the culture is so embedded for both genders and all genders really.
Speaker 5:I think that's one outcome. I also think the other outcome is that Julia, building on what you're talking about in terms of men, are socialized to be sexual monsters, would be that men would or boys, boy peers would see that as. Oh, this is someone I absolutely need to talk to, because this is someone that I can fairly easily quote unquote move into a sexual relationship with.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:And that actually sets up the parameters of rape culture, yeah, which are, which in quite a few ways intersect with purity culture.
Speaker 4:Right, and something that I often talk about on our podcast is that the double bind for men is that they are told and taught that they are sexual aggressors and that they have the right to sexuality and that this is how God made them.
Speaker 4:So they've got to lean into that which Jeremiah was describing our rape culture. If you lean into that, then you see women as vessels that are purely for your own pleasure. At the same time, men also receive the messages that this part of their God given nature is also something they have to fight. So it's a real mind fuck because they get these two very different messages around what it means to be a man, and they have to simultaneously be the sexual aggressors which have all kinds of violent implications, and they've got to do everything in their power to be sure that they reign that in Right, control those impulses and I'm sure the culture is not encouraging of self-pleasure and masturbation, because that's exactly antithetical to being strong and in control and going after the pure woman right.
Speaker 5:Well and also control those impulses has a paradoxical impact to them, because the way that eroticism works so eroticism being able to create a type of sexual energy is through being attracted to someone and also having a set of obstacles to overcome. So purity culture also puts especially people who are not married, who are interested in exploring sexuality, puts those folks in double binds as well. I'm being told not to do this and by being told not to do this, like that actually encourages me to figure out okay, how am I gonna sneak around this? How am I gonna skirt kind of the authorities and figure out how to get what I want? And then, when I do that one, there's a higher likelihood of risky sexual behavior, including a lack of contraceptions, a lack of sexual communication, not in consent, gone consent exactly the consensual practices and also opens people up to the experience of shame and deep rooted anxieties.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I joke that like nothing is sexier than a 20, then two 20 year olds at a Christian college who are trying to maintain purity culture. Like that sexual tension you could cut with.
Speaker 4:You don't even need a knife, it's just so joking, not joking Like it's way harder than porn, right? Because that boundary and that barrier is so so, so high. And then when folks get married, often very young, they have no skills or resources to actually develop sexual tension, which is important, sexual eroticism, because they no longer have that barrier which was keeping the relationship sexy.
Speaker 1:Right so. I have a quick question. When we're talking abstinence only and the barrier, I assume impurity culture that includes any going anywhere near the genitalia like anything sexy at all, not just intercourse. That's like stay away from anything down there. Quote unquote.
Speaker 5:There is a book written, I think 2008, called Real Sex by Lauren Winner, and Real Sex is essentially an exploration of what she calls the slippery slope and this idea of how far is too far, and I read this book when I was dating and kind of used that to kind of figure out, okay, like, how are we gonna navigate the sexual tension that, julia, that you're talking?
Speaker 1:about Looking for loopholes, Jeremiah. Looking for loopholes yeah.
Speaker 5:A few absolutely, but that's essentially like what the purpose of the book is and it's painted as this like I don't know theological treatise about sexuality and like God's vision, and maybe it's a little bit more progressive than what evangelicals are talking about, but at the end of the day, that's what it was.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say to answer your question. There's two main categories of folks. There are the folks where actually everything is on limits as long as that penis doesn't go into the vagina, because that is what sex means. And then the other folks, like myself, who grew up in what I would call like the purity contest, in which you wanted to avoid even touching, even being a couple inches away, like Jeremiah and I sitting kind of with our shoulders not really touching, but a little bit touching. That was bad, and so it's interesting to talk with folks that most couples that I talk with in this fall into the, you know, as long as we didn't do X, y or Z, which is pretty harmful for other reasons, or it was, you know, in my church, the women who didn't kiss until they got to the altar. They were the best women, and so then that also pits women against each other. Who's the purest of the women?
Speaker 1:Wow, that's just. I just want to digest that first, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, so I mean we kind of alluded to it and we talked about it a little bit earlier. But so what does it mean to be pure? And it sounds like there are multiple definitions. But like, what does it mean to be pure in the context of purity culture?
Speaker 4:Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, I think it probably would be a different answer for men than women. For women, I would say that it is maintaining an asexual type of identity, even though that's not the language that would be used, until you get married and then your sexuality really belongs to your male spouse and they are the leaders and the dominant ones. It also would mean being modest. It would also mean being quiet, being too mirror. You can't be too funny, you can't be too loud, you can't take on a leadership kind of role, can't have a podcast, right, right, and becoming a sex therapist was really something. That, and then our podcast to some degree has almost wrecked my relationship with certain family members.
Speaker 5:And then to answer the second part of that question, I would say that for men, men aren't really striving for purity. Purity culture, as we're talking about from the context of abstinence, only the moral consequences, the eschatological consequences, are really only for women.
Speaker 3:Let's take a step back. How'd you escape? Talk to us a little bit about your respective journeys, because, of course, this conversation is deeply embedded in your life. It is how you are raised, it is influencing you, but you got out, so tell us a little bit about you, I got kicked out. That's one way to do it yeah.
Speaker 5:So my first career is in music ministry and I did that in my 20s at a fairly sizable church in Texas and then started to become a therapist. My license is in marriage and family therapy, and marriage and family therapy is rooted in the idea of systems theory. So systems theory is this idea that, in summary, everything is interconnected and the work that we do is figuring out what those interconnections are and how those then impact relationships. That process in and of itself helped, was the beginning process of me, like chipping away some of the beliefs of evangelical Christianity, and so moved to Boston in my late 20s, early 30s, and then ended up doing music ministry at a very small church.
Speaker 5:While that's going on and practicing being a therapist, I stumbled into sex therapy pretty accidentally. I wanted to be a couples therapist. That was kind of how I conceptualized myself, what I studied to be. My boss said hey, I am starting a sex therapy program. I know you want to be a couples therapist. I think you should specialize, have a specialty to go along with your couples therapy. Come be a part of this program, I'll subsidize it. I'm like okay, sweet, okay, fine, whatever.
Speaker 5:And so I get into this program and the first class that we take is about sexual health principles, which we actually talk about on our podcast in the series the sex education we wish we had, and the first of the sexual health principles is consent, and at the root of consent is the idea that consent is a conversation between two people, and I thought about my own relationship at that time like, oh fuck, this has not been like.
Speaker 5:Our sexual relationship has been just this assumptive kind of thing where we rely on nonverbal communication and the performance agenda roles to create something that's going, and I began to spiral and be like I can't do this anymore, like I care too much about my ex, and so the next couple of years were a process of trying to rewrite the ways that sexual relationship worked, and I was moving much quicker in this than my partner and my ex was, and so there were a lot of negative consequences that came as a result of that.
Speaker 5:In conjunction with that, there were people at my church that she and I actually were both on staff at. There were people at my church that were uncomfortable with the fact that I was a sex therapist and I talked about it, and so what essentially happened I later found out was essentially a coup where the church leadership made up, utilized some conflict, made it much bigger than it was and ended up firing me. And I was later told, jeremiah, you should know that you were fired because of your views on sexuality. So I tried to play it both ways. I tried to both be a sexual person, sex therapist, while also limiting that a little bit, because I was in a marriage that didn't allow that sexuality to flourish and I was in a church community that didn't allow that marriage to flourish. And so for me, the ultimate ending was I got kicked out.
Speaker 1:And I imagine that that's probably the beginning of getting kicked out of the marriage too because of that Uh-huh.
Speaker 5:Yep, yeah, we were separated five months later.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah, but I can see hear what you're saying, though, is that she didn't feel like she could even understand consent culture either, because in the culture she was always supposed to consent, she didn't have that kind of free will at all but couldn't really move as fast as you, as you said, right, like you would think you know we're obviously, you know very, you know, progressive, liberal feminist You'd be think like, oh, somebody's giving me the opportunity to reclaim my sexual power and exert consent. That sounds like a great idea, and the fact that your ex couldn't embrace that really speaks to how deeply embedded the culture is, absolutely.
Speaker 3:That's a great point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Julia, what about you? And what's your? What's your?
Speaker 4:tale. Well, like many Christian folks, I lost my fundamentalism at my Christian college, so my undergraduate degree is in social work. No, I went to a Christian college, so Christian colleges by and large, particularly in terms of administration, are quite conservative. That being said, student body doesn't always match that, and I was in this liberal bubble and very quickly, within a couple weeks of starting college, I realized oh shit, what I learned about the world was bullshit. Now the process around sexuality was a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 4:So, although I left my fundamentalism, I really latched onto a progressive Christian identity, and something that became really important to me was the rights of queer folks within religious spaces, and so I had this idea that, oh, I go to these open and affirming churches and I'm a social worker, so I I've done my work and I've healed from purity culture. I still followed the rules because those messages run real deep. So I got married when I was 22. And very quickly became disillusioned about sexuality Something, and not just sexuality, but my entire world view. Another interesting part of purity culture is honeymoon sex, and the bill of goods that I and anybody else in purity culture learned was that if you follow these rules, when you get married. You are going to have this blissful, magical experience on your honeymoon, and that will be the greatest thing that ever happens to you.
Speaker 1:We promise, I mean like coming from the heavens you're not learning any skills between now and then.
Speaker 4:Right, right and so on you, honey, what's that Right? And so I was pumped for this. I was like I'm waiting, here we go, yeah, yeah, and it's both. It's like so many parts of my story. It's one of those hilarious and heartbreaking things all at the same time and, depending on the day, I'll laugh, depending on the day, I'll cry.
Speaker 4:Today feels like a funnier kind of day, and the sexual experience is limited that I had prior to getting married held all kinds of shame and fear and anxiety, so I was just excited to get the sex that was promised to me and I cried every single day of my honeymoon. And what's really important to remember for folks to survive this is that this also isn't just sex. I would say sex is never just sex. But what shattered for me and what I didn't realize at the time was that my entire identity crumbled because I learned that my worth as a human being, as a woman specifically, was around sexuality and that when I got married, I would become a sexual person and a sexual goddess although they would have never said that, because a goddess is not a woman Monotheism that doesn't go too well with it, yeah, and so it really.
Speaker 4:It crushed me and I knew that this was connected to sexuality, but I didn't understand what was happening relationally, psychologically, physiologically. I eventually found a great sex therapist in Boston a couple years after getting married, which is a couple years after some really terrible patterns around sexuality and my ex-husband and I who's a phenomenal human being I always would like to say that, even though we are divorced, we came to our first couples therapy session and God bless Nancy McGrath forever. She was incredibly foundational in my life and she was asking me, as a good therapist, about messages around sexuality and communities of origin. And I remember saying to her well, I grew up in this strange cultish kind of community, but I really don't think it impacted my sexuality all that much.
Speaker 4:Uh-huh, and it absolutely did, a thousand percent.
Speaker 4:I did become a sex therapist and actually my therapist at the time as I was growing, learning, evolving was actually someone to encourage me to do that, and that was that in and of itself was actually a reclaiming of my sexuality to have someone who had seen me through the worst of the devastation say and you can do this.
Speaker 4:That being said, some relationships don't recover from purity culture and my relationship did not recover, and as I started my sex therapy training, I was afraid to say that I didn't want to be married, and I said that for the first time with another therapist and ultimately I did get divorced, which was a pretty devastating experience.
Speaker 4:I still, as many people who are divorced, have some grief around that, and part of reclaiming sexuality was learning to be a sexual person outside of my marriage and outside of what I learned, not just about sexuality but about relationships. I encourage folks to get married after their brain fully develops, which is not 22. So even with some of the sexual growth that my ex-husband and I were able to accomplish, we we did not survive that and that is okay. That's not a moral failing of me or of him, but that's one of the other, really negative consequences. And the same folks who set me up to get married that young, the same folks who gave me no tools or resources around sexuality or relationships, were the same ones who shamed and berated me, sometimes publicly, for the decision to get divorced.
Speaker 3:Right. What's interesting about both of your stories is that you both had an oh shit moment. I'm sure you had multiple oh shit moments.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, for sure. I'm sure that there was not isolated to one, but both of you kind of had this moment where you were introduced to a different perspective that really shook your whole world and that of course, has impacts on your relationships, which we again talked about at the beginning of the episode, but also really points to the destructiveness of that abstinence. Only culture, of course, purity culture, but virginity culture, like if you don't understand that there are other possibilities out there for you, then that's super destructive when inevitably you learn about those other possibilities Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the other thing I'm hearing is how critical people like you therapists like you are to getting out of this, like we like to say, cultural swamp, this cultural mindset and the importance of seeking out therapists who are adept at understanding what you're trying to extricate yourself from.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I'd like to start like talking a little bit about that process, because obviously both you had wonderful mentors in your journey, which is, I'm sure, what inspired you to be mentors for other people's journeys. So it sounds like a long journey. So what's the first step that people have to take? Great question, yeah.
Speaker 5:I think that and, again, our perspective is working with relationships. So I would say that the first step is being willing to talk about hard things. So, julia, you and I were on a podcast a couple of weeks ago called Flow. The Flow podcast is a podcast about menstruation and the process of the menstrual cycle. Menstruation and the impact all the impacts that it has on biology, feminism, all of that. And when we got on this podcast, I'm like why the hell am I talking about?
Speaker 5:with three women about menstrual health, because there's enough of that shit going on in politics. I also grew up in a household and in a culture where comments about menstruation were pretty quickly devolved into sexism, pretty quickly devolved into kind of shaming around emotional volatility and all that, and so I was really anxious kind of talking about that. And, julia, I talked with you, I talked with a couple of colleagues of mine, I talked with hosts about this, and one of the things that they were talking about is like all people need to be talking about this, and that includes men, and I realized that, oh shit, like Julia you and I talk about, there's another oh shit moment. Just give me a drinking game.
Speaker 5:Please don't drink it if you're driving and listening to this, but I had another oh shit moment because I realized, like Julia, you and I talk about menstrual health but you initiate 100% of those conversations and like part of a healthy dialogue. A healthy relationship, excuse me is both people being able to initiate to some capacity, whatever the topic is. I am like six years into my journey as a certified sexual health professional and like there's a lot of this information I didn't know and there's a lot that I should know and being able to help clients better, being able to be a better partner to you and to be able to ask you better questions about what your menstrual experience is like and the sexism in political structures and occupational structures that you have to navigate in order to experience menstruation and the potential pain and other biological factors that come with that. So that's a really long answer. I know you just asked about the first step, but I hope that in talking about the first step, that that can lay out a longer process.
Speaker 3:It's something we talk about on this show a lot and it's like the idea that you know you can want to change and also acknowledge that you don't know everything and that you're not going to know everything and that as much as you wanna dedicate yourself to baking the change and being informed, you're never gonna know everything. And we say that about ourselves all the time. We're like we're doing our best here but like we're gonna miss this stuff.
Speaker 3:We're gonna bring in experts where we can, but I think, giving yourself the grace and the space to understand that you're not gonna know everything as soon as you decide you want to change your mindset, like you still have to do, yourself the time to develop all of the information that you need to have Right. So I guess, to wrap up, there's a lot right, there's a lot that we've covered today, but, in terms of folks who are curious about or finding their way out, what is your advice? What is the note you'd like to leave from your personal perspective, personal and professional but I think your personal journey is one that a lot of people can appreciate too.
Speaker 5:I would plagiarize your answer from earlier, julia, of Go Slow, that this is like. Think about this like an onion. The moving out of religious spaces is a 20, 25 step, 30 step process and sometimes you think you're going forward, whatever forward means, and then you have a really hard experience. A lot of grief comes up. You find yourself reverting to behaviors that were part of the older systems. So change isn't a linear process. So, I guess, is what I'm setting up. So go slow, be easy on yourself, be patient with yourself and those in your systems as well. ["sex?
Speaker 6:Vangelicals"]. Thanks again to Julia and Jeremiah of Sex Vangelicals.
Speaker 3:You can find them at sexvangelicalscom or you can find their podcast anywhere you stream podcasts, including this one, sex Ed Debunked. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back again next week with another study session and, as usual, if you have any questions, comments or myths you'd like to debunk, send us an email at sexeddebunkedcom or message us at any of the socials at Sex Ed Debunked. Have a good week. ["sex Ed Debunked"].
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in for this week's episode of Sex Ed Debunked During the course of our podcast. We have limited time together, which means that, unfortunately, many identities, groups and movements may not be represented each week. The field of sexuality and gender orientations, identities and behaviors are changing and growing rapidly, and we remain committed to being as inclusive as possible.
Speaker 6:Please remember that all of us, including us are learning in this area and may occasionally slip up. We ask that we all continue to be kind to one another so that we can create a truly inclusive and accepting environment. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us at Sex Ed Debunked on Instagram, facebook and Twitter. ["sex Ed?
Speaker 1:Debunked"] Sex Ed Debunked is produced by Trailblaze Media in Providence, Rhode Island. Our sound producer is Ezra Winters, with production assistance from Shay Weintraub.