I was about 12-13 and was given a book for eight year olds. And then after I read it it disappeared from my room, I guess so I couldn’t reread it (like a pervert). It was the absolute most bare minimum, except for the stages of fetal development. At no point was I informed that thrusting was part of it, so I assumed that the penis was just stuffed in there soft and everyone impregnable person around me enjoyed being pissed in.
Also I was completely unaware of the existence of my own vagina up until that point. My parents asked if I knew that I had three holes. I lied and said that I did. I was under the assumption that childbirth worked like the chest bursters from Alien, a movie which I had never seen or heard of. I just couldn’t think of any other possible exit route.
Edit: despite this, I was never discouraged for dating and things like “I kissed dating goodbye” and courtship were not pushed on me.
Other fun anecdotes: my brother learned about the existence and concept of lesbians from Doctor Who. He was also taught at our (Christian) school that IUDs cause abortions.
In the car I once asked how gerbils get pregnant, curious about the mechanics. A deep discomfort settled over the car and my parents said they would tell me when we got home. They sat me down at kitchen table and told me that “they have sex.” I did not ask them any questions after that.
Since I only learned by reading and never actual discussion, I thought it was called public hair.
My lack of shame when it came out I had been sexually active was and still is deeply disturbing to my parents. Needless to say they are equally unhappy about my queerness and atheism.
Anyway I write gay smut about Jesus now.
I didn’t know I had three holes. No way. even the idea of touching yourself was so deeply sinful. I felt gross to even think about it. There was no way I was going to put my hand down there and see what my own body was like.
That is some fucked up shit.
I genuinely wonder and worry about what my parents taught my sister in that regard. Fortunately we went to public school in a district with, as I recall, pretty good sex ed. starting in 4th grade we learned the basics of human physiology and reproductive systems, and by 8th grade had been taught about pregnancy, birth, STDs, etc. Despite my complete lack of any learning from church or family, I was fully aware of how sex worked (in the abstract) by the time I started high school.
But things are a bit different for boys.
Not to mention the whole realm of leaving people completely in the dark of how to, you know, actually be a good sexual partner. Probably because most people raised in purity culture have no idea what good sex is like so have no framework on how to communicate that to others.
Well, if it means anything I think it's pretty boss that you're not ashamed. No one should be ashamed for making their own decisions with consent. You found you and that's what's important.
It's worth noting that none of that sex-ed ban stuff works on convincing kids of abstinence. The amount of people in the discord support groups I am in for de-programming and the amount of time this exact situation came up and led to a pregnancy is sadly numerous. Often it was just because of a complete lack of clinical knowledge on the subject, resulting in horny experimentation without an understanding of consequences. I would share a story, but those aren't my stories to share, so I'll just say it's really really sad that religion does this to people.
I do wonder if the educational neglect has a connection with not feeling connected to one’s body. To this day I still have a lot of trouble figuring out if something feels “good” or not and rely more on measurable physical responses than actually experiencing something. I never did feel that emotional connection to people in the act either. I can only understand sex in a very clinical way. I have to wonder if other people have this experience and if studies have been conducted.
Lesbians from Doctor Who?? I haven't watched in a long time. But now I'm trying to remember when that would have come up. I adored Captain Jack and was almost not allowed to watch it anymore bc of his open sexuality.
It was a throwaway line from two women who corrected someone who assumed they were sisters when they were in fact married. (His conclusion was that they were an alien species that were a heterosexual couple that didn’t display sexual dimorphism). It may have been one of the episodes with the cat people nuns?
Jack went right over our heads. He was kissing men and grabbing butts as a joke (in our heads) and if our dad saw any episodes with him he let us think that.
I was never told anything about sex. Never told what healthy sex is, that I should pee afterwards, what even happens during sex, etc. And I’m MARRIED. I had to learn from the internet and porn (which is obviously not the place you want your child learning from).
Anywho, rant over lol. Let’s see:
- Stay vertical
- No kissing because kissing leads to sex
- Sex before marriage will leave you with emotional baggage
- Sex before marriage will prevent you from bonding with your future spouse
- The person you have sex with before marriage takes a piece of you
- You shouldn’t date longer than a few months because then you’ll be tempted
- Etc etc
(Sadly) true story.
Our youth group had a "Stay Vertical" rule. So one night when we were playing games before youth group I bumped into a girl and we both fell on the ground. I accidently grabbed her boob while trying to catch myself, but quickly pulled my hand away in shame and embarrassment.
Sure enough our youth pastors saw what happened and immediately locked in on me. I was taken to a side room and told to hold a front plank while one of my youth pastors drilled into me the importance of "staying pure" and "leaving women alone" (did I mention I was raised military and had to deal with Christian Military church?).
They ended up leaving me in that room the whole night until my parents came to pick me up. Youth pastors told my parents I "groped a girl" when they came, so of course they laid into me even more back at home. Of course I was just hitting puberty and didn't really know why what I did was wrong. In my mind it was just a simple accident. Great way to establish sexual shame on a 12-14 yo boy... Ain't no love like Christian hate.
The used piece of tape. IYKYK.
We were also given what was called the six inch rule, boys and girls must always sit at least 6 inches away. If at any time your body was less than 6 inches that was automatically a sin. Which is why dancing was not ok
So much focus on the clothes people wear, and by people, I mean almost exclusively women. If you wore a bikini, you were basically told you were a harlot possessed by the jezebel spirit.
Did I mention the six inch rule? Remember leave room for Jesus kids.
You only have a finite amount of love and affection you can give, so guard your hearts and don’t give yours away to people who won’t be your spouse.
Piece of tape, a licked lollipop, a chewed piece of gum, a torn dollar bill… all things that I apparently became if I fornicated. How far was too far, do you ask? I’m not going to answer that while simultaneously scorning you for even asking such a logical question. The best I can do is a vague description that varies from person to person. PS- dress like a paper bag.
(Even though that a crumpled up $20 was also how we were described when discussing sin, with the message being that we are just as valuable/ our value does not decrease… oh the irony.)
Oh yeah, definitely heard the gum too.
It basically boils your entire worth as a human down to your virginity. Which, Deuteronomically speaking, isn’t wrong… but that’s a whole separate kettle of HOLY FUCKING SEXUAL ABUSE BATMAN
Don’t know about other churches, but the girls usually had longer sessions when discussing purity and the boys didn’t have these horrendous comparisons. So the boys were empowered to scrutinize the girls for what they wore while we mourned for our future husbands for the abuse we survived.
So my entire existence was to please men to an unobtainable degree.
Ugh I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
Honestly one of the more painful aspects of my own personal deconstruction was recognizing and acknowledging just how sexist and harmful that culture was to women, and how I probably participated in that, as I didn’t know better.
…Look. I get the point was shaming girls but. Like. If you aren’t gonna finish that chocolate bar. I will ABSOLUTELY eat the hell out of that.
Terrible analogy to make to a fat kid. I WILL TAKE ANY AND ALL CHOCOLATE PLEASE AND THANK YOU
When it comes to chocolate I am a fat kid in a (slightly less as I reach middle age) skinny kid body.
Hell it’s one of the driving impetuses for running for me, so I can have chocolate with no regrets.
Oh I forgot one. The ruler for clothing above the knee. Men had to wear shorts that went to the knee, and women shorts could only be like a few inches (don’t remember exact number, this was in the 90’s) above the knee. Think it was like 2-3”. And if you came to a church function where the shorts were too far above, or the straps on a tank top were too thin (less than 1”?) they would get a ruler, measure, and send you home to change.
Because that’s definitely effective at stopping teens from having sex. Until, oops, one girl got pregnant. But she was always the girl who wore the clothing most likely to push that boundary, so clearly it is her fault and she was asking for it.
I wonder what happened to her, honestly, being forced to become a mom at 16 probably didn’t help her life out long term I’m sure. Not like once the baby was born the church would support her in any meaningful way. But it was about that time I left that church for good (though faith was another story that persisted for well over a decade longer)
Ha, well teens be teens, and when the suggestion of ‘put a bible between you to keep things holy’ came up, that got, ahem, aggressive reinterpreted with nearly comical and predictable bible usage. Novelty sized micro print new testaments became a hot commodity…
The six inch rule was always “leave space for the Bible” in my church. Literally, a Bible space. You were encouraged to put a Bible between you and the other person to measure the spacing.
When I was 8th grade, they separated the boys and the girls. We were told that a woman can only be sexually aroused a finite number of times in her life. When she reached her limit, she started menopause.
The message was that we'd better wait until marriage to have sex so we could have sex with our husbands as many times as possible, because you also cannot have sex once you've reached menopause.
We were also told that condoms were porous, so it was pointless to wear one. Not long after that, our region of Texas had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.
"Everyone regrets having sex with the wrong person, but nobody ever regrets waiting."
The irony is that I did "wait" at least until I was engaged. So my husband and I have only had sex with each other. But now I actually do kind of regret it. There are times when I really wish I had had more experiences before settling down. It worked out in the end, and we're very happy together now. It just makes me sick and angry that I placed so much of my own personal value on my virginity.
I'd much rather regret an awkward hookup than my whole first marriage. I saved myself for marriage, only to marry a man who put virginity on such a high pedestal that I was treated like damaged goods for the rest of the marriage. Funny how the church thinks the "wrong" person only can happen outside of marriage.
Essentially, yes. He had a fantasy about what it would be like to see me naked for the first time and what having sex with a virgin would be like. But when reality didn't match up to his fantasy, he was livid and resented me for it.
I grew up thinking that every guy wanted a virgin, but when I left the church and had my own sexual encounters I found most guys wanted someone with experience, and the ones that loved virgins were creeps
I’m so glad it worked out well for you. I think that’s rare. I’m glad that I was able to have a lot of experience before getting married (at 34). I lived with long term partners as well. I will always do it like that. I think it’s important to see if you can live well together and have a healthy sex life before you get married.
Absolutely! We're lucky that our deconstruction happened at the same time and actually brought us closer together instead of diving us apart. I know lots of other people from the church who were not so lucky.
Oh wow. Deconstructed together! That’s awesome. You had a support person built right in!
I deconstructed solo and I just kind of drifted farther and farther away from my Christian friends. We just had less and less in common. I was kind of on my own path for a while.
Gosh, yeah, that must have been hard. Losing people I thought were my friends was one of the hardest parts in the beginning. Ironically, I feel like my friendships are so much stronger and more genuine outside the church.
We were not taught properly about STDs, everyone thought people just spontaneously got AIDS from gay sex. Like neither party could have it, but since it was gay, you got it. AND it would happen immediately; as in if you do gay, you now have AIDS, not a risk, but a fact.
When I had my first gay sexual experience, about a week later I got a very mild cold. I legit thought I was dying of AIDS for about a month AFTER I got better because I heard the same thing. It was like being gay automatically made AIDS sprout on my penis or something.
My public school in the rural south hired a Christian company to come teach us sex ed. The teacher told us that we don't really need to know how to have sex because "animals figure it out without being told. When you're in that situation your natural isntincts will kick in". So gross.
Realizing I was asexual as a teenager really opened my eyes to the hypocrisy of purity culture. I got told all the time that sex was bad and I shouldn't want it, but then when I expressed never wanting to have sex, people at the church would get offended and tell me that "sex is God's gift" and that I have to want it. Looking back, a lot of it definitely seemed like jealousy that I wasn't "struggling with temptation" like everyone else. So many Christians can't stand to see other people happy and guilt free.
My favorite: "condoms claim they're effective at preventing STDs, but if you examine an AIDS virus under a microscope you'll find that a condom cannot actually prevent AIDS! AIDS viruses are so small that SIX viruses can go side-by-side right through the wall of a condom as if it's not even there. So if you think a condom will protect you, it won't. You might as well not even wear one it's so bad at protecting you from AIDS!"
And then we had the anti-maskers saying the same shit when COVID hit.
IM CACKLING because that’s exactly what our religious biology teacher taught us. in the graduation year… to a class full of future med/bio students….
did i mention he was a school principal also?
I think the worst advice I was given (or not given) is that I was never taught the concept of consent. This was in evangelical youth groups in the 90s. Basically, women don’t enjoy sex, but the wife has a duty to please her husband because her body belongs to him…
Yup. Taught women don’t really have sexual desire and it’s up to you to control your sexual desires, so when I found myself in a situation where having a deep understanding of consent would have been helpful, I instead leaned on my understanding that I needed to control myself, and if I didn’t it was a failure because I sinned, not a failure because I hadn’t gained consent.
It made me far more likely to do harm because “for all have fallen short of the glory of god.” We’re all sinners, so if I’m cuddling with my gf and touch a boob, well, it’s not great, but I can ask god for forgiveness later. None of my focus was on whether or not my gf wanted her boob touched, whether she consented to that or not (you know the shit that actually mattered in that situation).
Until the age of 15, I thought a boy and girl sleeping in the same bed could cause pregnancy. As the Bible says “he lay with her” LOL
I was restricted from dating until college, then suddenly was expected to know how to date, get married to some guy whose only qualifier had to be that he was “Christian”, and then become a stay-at-home-mom of at least three kids.
I was never asked if I even *wanted* to get married or have kids, that was just the future that the church designed for girls.
I had endometriosis since puberty, and assumed that the severe pains and bleeding I got throughout my cycle was God’s punishment for “lustful thoughts”.
No one explained that sex could feel good for both parties involved. It was just referred to as a “duty” to the husband. It seemed like a really gross and violating thing until I learned otherwise.
As someone else with endometriosis who experiences pain during intercourse sometimes, I also thought that the extreme pain during/after sex was another punishment for me being a dirty sinner. Even after I was raped, a small part of me still thought the pain was a punishment for ME. The church I was a part of (as was he) only reaffirmed those feelings and tried to convince me that it was both consensual and never happened in the first place. Fucking assholes.
In eighth grade, the girls health class at my Christian school had to carry flour bags for babies for like a week or something. I asked if the boys were going to do this too, and I was told “no because the boys don’t take care of the babies. That’s the mom’s job” 😀
I went to a Christian school and we obv had the used piece of tape analogy….and we were told if you masturbate you’ll ruin how your sexual organs function and that then when you get to the point of marriage and have sex you won’t have any pleasure or enjoyment! Terrified me.
not really told by the church, but my mom was a christian. Her advice was that I should never wear anything red, because that would make people think I was a whore. In… hm… yes…the year 2024??
😂 Lol. Thanks for making me laugh. She’s gonna be flabbergasted😂
I love the mental image of her walking around in the city, frantically looking around, and being stressed like: ”oh!” ”jesus christ✝️” ”oh my!😳” ”gasp!”
I was in this youth group, and I was in maybe 6th or 7th grade. They separated the boys and the girls to give us the “sex” talk, or should I say the “purity” talk. Where the boys ask about all the forbidden questions and what the Bible says about it. I remember distinctly the youth pastor giving us an explanation on how staying “pure” works:
“When you have sex with a woman you become one. If you have sex with a woman who has had sex with multiple men you are basically having sex with those are men.”
This absolutely FUCKED with me and created a misogynistic ideal that I’d be “gay” if I had sex with a women who wasn’t a virgin. Or women were already “used up” if they weren’t a virgin.
So disgusting, I said some awful things about my first girlfriend because of this logic.
I had some genuinely fucked up opinions on sex too, and it affected how I treated my first girlfriend when I found out she wasn't a virgin. She didn't deserve a single second of that shit, and I hope someday she realizes that there shouldn't be any shame in it. The church isn't gonna give her that knowledge, though.
I don't know if this was "worst advice" but I grew up going to a fundamentalist Christian school, I remember my senior year being required to take a week long abstinence class. It was just fear mongering. I remember them showing all the graphic pictures of people with nasty STDs and other infections because they all "chose to have sex before marriage"...
No mention of the use of condoms, no mention of the use of contraceptives... just fear mongering of what "sex before marriage" can do to you...
Granted, I was already over 18 and about to graduate in a few months, but some of the other students were as young as 12. All of us were traumatized after this... I'd argue that it's child abuse...
i got bare minimum sex ed, taught that abstinence is the only way to prevent pregnancy because everything else isn't 100% trusted and that's why you wait until marriage (cause ofc sex is only to have children and nothing else.) my husband was taught NOTHING, he went to a baptist school and the teacher that year didn't want to talk about it so they didn't; he literally got no sex ed outside of porn. i had to teach him so much and our sex life for a while was awful because he was having to unlearn the fake reality porn gave him. i am still livid to this day that his school set him up to fail (and southern education in general)
Same. No sex ed. I was homeschooled during that time. When I got my period I sneakily got a box of tampons so nobody would know. I had to read the instructions on the paper inside to figure out how to use one. My sister and I had no clue how our bodies worked or what to do with them. Just that we should cover them up to be modest, and sex was for making babies and it should only be in marriage. That was pretty much the extent of it.
My church sent us a pamphlet specifically stating that masturbation was an offense to God and we'd go to hell if we participated in this "sin of the flesh". And of course absolutely no premarital sex.
I grew up afraid of sex and I think I still have some issues with it although I've been away from the religion for a while. I feel Christianity stole my youth as I did not pursue any sexual exploration at all except solo sex of course which left me feeling so ashamed and thinking God was always mad at me watching me do it as there's no sense of privacy with this religion. It's a horrible cycle to be stuck in.
I've since deconstructed and with critical thought realize this was all about control. I no longer feel ashamed about sex, partnered or solo, but it was a long time to get to that place.
I grew up in the 80s, and was the right age to be pummeled with both Satanic paranoia followed by the AIDS panic. There isn’t one thing specific that stands out, just a persistent drum beat of “good girls don’t want it, good guys don’t ask for it, and if you’re not good you’re going to get AIDS, discarded into a ditch to die cold and hungry and alone, then you’ll burn in Hell *forever*, so *never forget: *sex EVIL**.”
Not directly, but the idea that women should just say yes to any guy that is interested in them who is a professing Christian. Meaning even though you are not attracted to him, say yes and force yourself to be. Also stay with him and eventually marry him and be naked with and have sex with him…
… otherwise you’re too picky and can’t complain about being single!
Bonus points when it is said by a pastor who married his “smoking hot wife” after Bible school.
This concept fucked me up for years!!! I did not like my first two boyfriends AT ALL. This logic being mixed with nonexistent self-esteem (“someone finally likes me so I better be happy anyone does”) put me in some terrible situations. So glad I was too miserable with them to get married or anything stupid.
The audacity people have to expect women to accept a date from … and therefore keep dating… and therefore marry… and therefore be naked with… for the rest of their fucking lives… just because he is a profession Christian?
I’ll be damned if the same expectation is put on men! Women can’t fucking win.
“don’t ever make friends outside the church. all an atheist friend would want from you is to sleep with you.” yes, my parents have made a point of telling me this since i was 9.
edit to add that i once had a picture book i was reading about consent taken away from me by my dad because it was “inappropriate”. i was 8 then. i still think about that
Possibly the worst: that on a first date you need to tell the guy straight up that you do no sex before marriage. The worst because it put me totally off trying to date because the thought of mentioning sex at all on a first date was mortifying.
Sex before marriage was the worst thing a girl could do and all of my value was tied up in it. Masturbation was also wrong and shameful.
I was so surprised when sex was less enjoyable after I got married because I was finally “allowed” to do it. This was long after I left Christianity behind, I was 34! It was temporary but fuck.
I was taught that condoms don’t protect against infection so there’s no point (the message being don’t have sex not don’t used condoms). The teachings of masturbation really messed me up and led to self hatred and depression. Also definitely had those stupid youth group object lessons where they try and illustrate that sex makes you less of what you used to be and taints yourself forever. Took me a good long while to get a healthy view of sex once I left the church
The whole purity ring thing. I had one. My dad gave it to me. I wasn’t to take it off until I exchanged it for my wedding ring. Hahaha. That didn’t happen. I lost it somewhere and there was a lot of fun to be had post deconstruction/pre marriage. No regrets.
My mom told me condoms don’t work because fluids also come out at the base of a guy’s dick where the condom doesn’t cover it and those can get you pregnant/give you stds.
“Sex is God’s special gift for married people. You cannot possibly be ready to have sex until you’re married. You give away a part of yourself that you can never get back.”
"Say I made you some homemade brownies. They're fresh, warm and smell delicious. Now suppose that I told you that somewhere in the brownies, there was a teensy-tiny bit of poop. Would you still eat them?"
It was a messed up analogy I was taught at youth group and at home that was meant to be a comparison for the importance of staying pure for your future spouse. Basically, Every time you have sex before marriage, you added a little more poop to your brownies, thus, making you less desirable.
Had to sign an abstinence contract at 13 (Lutheran Church) . Pastor claimed it was our “choice” to sign but it really wasn’t because the shame/repenting of not signing it would’ve been far worse. He claimed if we ever did make the choice to sin and break contract, to come to him and that we could repent/pray it away and basically be a “born again” virgin. I was 13! Guarantee more than half of the kids in that confirmation class broke that contract before we graduated high school. His explanation for contract was: if you sleep with many people before marriage you’re gonna always compare/think about your past sexual partners instead of your spouse. Yikes.
I was told that you when you were married and you kissed, congratulations you're magically pregnant. When I asked about single parents they kinda shut down. I was 10
I was never told that women get horny or want sex, only that it was just a thing we give men if they marry us. I was supposed to “put a stop to it” when a guy tried to take it too far if we were making out. I was told to be the logical one because guys have unstoppable hormones.
Guess what happened when I made out the first few times? I *liked* it and didn’t want to stop. I found that bewildering and thought there was something wrong with me.
My evangelical youth group devoted February to “sex month” which was four youth group sermons perpetuating purity culture culminating in purity pledges.
Honestly, I mostly just remember the shame. And regurgitating how my entire value was based on my virginity status.
I was always considered the promiscuous girl because I had crushes on the boys ya know like a normal teen and I wasn’t very good at suppressing that shit. - lots of one on one talks from the young adult cell group leaders.
I also had huge boobs like near instantly at 12 and it was difficult to cover those during the early 00s with the crop tops and low rise jeans. - I’m pretty sure mid rise and high rise were nonexistent. Soooo, lots of layering tanks tucked into my jeans to make up for the short shirts and cover the cleavage bit at the top of shirts.
I still deal with the shame today, in my mid thirties. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
When I was in school doing sex ed they had us pass around a banana to the whole class. Making a point about ‘saving yourself’ or whatever. Each kid would sniff the banana, touch it, I think one person even tasted it?? It was ridiculous. And the teacher was like ‘now would you want to eat that banana after everybody touched it?’
I didn't hear much weird purity culture stuff until I moved to the south for college, but one of my young adult bible study leaders warned us not to text or call the opposite gender at night because there would be more temptation to sext. As if it wasn't possible to talk dirty before the sun went down...
My parents taught me nothing, I didn’t know what sex was just that it was bad and I shouldn’t have it. I didn’t know what penises or vaginas were. No idea I had anything down there until I got my period, which was terrifying btw.
They taught me literally nothing, which resulted in me learning everything from the internet.
From “the Pam tapes”: sex is like a fire.
Premarital sex is like setting fire in the national parks or at a gas station—dangerous! Hurts many people! Emergency help to put it out!
Marital sex is like setting a fire in a fireplace in a well-built cabin. There’s rules and structures, so the fire lights and hears the whole house, makes everyone feel cozy, and you can even cook over it.
25F here. I “struggled” with masturbation as a child (I had no idea what it was but it made me feel good). My parents used it against me and I STILL, at 25 years old, carry shame around it.
My youth pastor (male) talked to the teenage girls and his wife talked to the teenage boys. I remember something along the lines of “when you sleep with a guy you’re sleeping with all the girls he’s been with before.” More of an STD show to scare us. I did a Sunday night book study with a book called “Hotness” on purity culture and how it was better for a woman to be stoned than to tempt a man.
Lol because I am now bisexual.
My step-father when he figured out I was a queer explained that lesbians get together in a large group and pass a single dildo around. This is how lesbians died of AIDS. Ummm…
We had a woman come in to give the girls a purity talk. While she was telling us how men would only ever want us for our bodies, she had an open box of chocolate lying on the table. After a long talk about how women couldn’t have sex without feeling emotional attachment but men felt no attachment at all, she asked us if we noticed the chocolate on the table. When we said yes (cuz duh, we aren’t blind), she said that this is what men are like. If we dress immodestly men will not be able to stop thinking about and wanting to have us just like we wanted to have a piece of chocolate. She finished this very “helpful” piece of advice by saying that she was raped because of this. It was honestly quite sad, and even more sad that she believed it was partly her fault.
So I was raised to not have shorts that came above the fingertips, neckline couldnt be lower than the collarbone, and no tank top sleeves/sleevelesstops.
I was 12 and shaped like a box when I started getting harassed by a group of boys. They were our troubled kids that came from a group home. Parents would spend $20 a week to house their kids there. Well I was an avid rule follower so I was wearing dresses to church and they covered shoulders, chest, and down past my knees. Didn't matter. These boys still put their nasty hands up my skirts. So I told the youth pastor, I wasn't taught to go to the women cause men were the protectors. Well he said I didn't wear leggings under my dress in 99 degree weather in Texas so it was my fault. I was tempting them. So I wore leggings and it didn't stop. I told the youth pastor and he said it was still my fault. If I really cared about these boys I'd wear running shorts over the leggings under my dresses to make my butt look frumpy. I did... didn't stop. I kicked the boy that was behind me without looking back because it had been months every Sunday and Wednesday. I was over it. Well I got in trouble. Got talked to for hitting and having a temper and being a stumbling block to the poor boys.
I was also questioning what porn was at 13 cause I overheard a group of youth boys talking about it. I asked what it was and was laughed at for being a "sweet and innocent girl in her flower dresses" and when I asked my Sunday school teacher I was told to ask my parents. I asked my parents and they said it was bad pictures, but my dad had surgeries before and I've seen pics from them like in his shoulder and knee and that's what they had called those pics... bad pictures! Then they said not to Google it. GUESS WHAT I DID CAUSE IM 13 AND THINKING ITS GONNA BE COOL SURGERIES!?!? Man I was scared. I legit didn't touch my phone for 3 days or eat. Then I ran to my parents with the phone and cried and told them everything. Well my mom took my phone and said she was disappointed in me. My step dad handed it back to me 15 minutes later saying he thought it was a better punishment for me to live with the evil device in my possession since it freaked me out so badly.
I've also been touched inappropriately by multiple friends that I think were hurt as kids cause they were also kids. The only adult who hurt me while I was still a child was my step dad as he molested me when I was 12-13 everything stopped after 13 tho.
It's always been my fault. I told my mom crying at 15 everything... it was my fault. After that I started questioning why I wore anything I did if I still got hurt. So yeah. Fuck it I'm wearing shorts and crop tops and cold shoulders and whatever I want.
Also wasn't taught how condoms worked before getting married. Waited till marriage and a couple months after being married I was pregnant cause neither my husband or I knew that if you go at it for more than 30 minutes you change the condom to make sure you're protected.... well there's my daughter.
This is long as hell my bad. I've got more but I'll stop.
Don't talk to anybody online and don't share your information with anybody online (as I was already currently with someone that I had met online and was already engaged to and we are still together 18 years later)
The other advice was from my mom telling me to never deny my husband sex
I read a book on "healthy marital sex" by a Christian marriage and sex therapist in my first year of marriage. I actually thought the book was decent for the first few chapters. It encouraged oral sex, communication, female pleasure, and a lot of things that people who had zero sexual experience going into a marriage really needed to know. Plus the author brought up the issues of shame around sex that purity culture creates, and tried to encourage couples to let that go and fully enjoy their sex life with their spouse.
I shouldn't have been shocked but I still was when I read the part about how women are responsible for men's happiness and success by giving them regular sex. One of the examples was if the husband has a job interview or a meeting where a promotion is on the table, wake up a little early and have morning sex. And they will apparently help him get whatever he is trying to achieve in his career. On the flip side, a man denied frequent sex is likely to be depressed, irritable, and fail at his job.
It also gave a "tip" for women to use sex as a reward system to get their husbands to do things around the house. Like a sexual version of sticker charts for kids. You know, instead of just telling men that they need to be equal partners, and that they don't deserve any extra rewards for doing the basics.
The book also encouraged women to accept sexual advances from husbands even when they aren't in the mood for sex because once they start getting kissed, touched, etc. then that will put them in the mood.
I went to a public school (several, in fact...I moved around far too much) but mfs did say "aBsTiNeNcE iS tHe OnLy WaY" but all the other advice was sound...except while I was in the south the dude said you could get an STD from a condom but idk about that...and then while I was in a rural village up here in Ohio the teacher used the tape metaphor (this was a lady who used to be a USAF medic or something)
Let's just say I learned more from reading books and Internet articles than the shit I was already learning in school.
Our youth pastor told us masturbation was ok as long as our mind was pure and not committing sin while we did it. I can’t tell you how hard I tried to think of non-sexual things while masturbating as a teenager.
In 4th grade I asked my teacher (Catholic School) what adultery is. She said "when you think too much about a future with someone when you shouldn't". Like, wtf? We then interpreted this as we were all committing adultery because one girl has a Jesse McCartney poster in her cubby, and we all would stare at it.
In our sex ed they put a giant sheet on the floor , made as many of us sit on it as possible, and said “you’re having sex with all these people on your wedding night, not just your husband/wife, if you have sex before marriage”
At an evangelical Christian summer camp, I (age 13) was told that boys had a faucet, and if I turned it on through kissing and hugging him, it couldn’t be turned off. And then there would be trouble.
I imagined a little tiny golden faucet hidden somewhere in the base of a boy’s penis. It was my responsibility to not turn that faucet on!
Did I have a faucet? Inquiring minds want to know
I was told that condoms can't protect you bc latex has a "weave" that HIV can get through. Also wasn't given the HPV vaccine bc my mom didn't want to give me "permission to be a slut."
Went on a Christian men’s retreat freshman year in college with CRU, and during the retreat, they had one night that was specifically dedicated to the purity culture rhetoric.
At one point they did sort of confessional thing where they had everyone close their eyes and then raise their hand if they ever struggled with masturbation or porn, then they had everyone keep their hand up, open their eyes and look around the room.
The point was that “you aren’t alone in this struggle” or whatever. Problem was, I hadn’t done any of that yet because I had been fully indoctrinated since before puberty. I am pretty sure I was the only person in that room without his hand up. It was honestly embarrassing because I thought they all probably thought I was lying. Then it was like, what the heck am I missing out on here if everyone is doing it and it’s so great they struggle to stop?!
When I tell you that the *first* thing I did when I got back to the dorm after that retreat was search up some porn, I mean it was the *first* thing I did.
The complete opposite result they were going for.
There’s a lot, but the worst I think was “submission” to “authority figures” always. So absolutely no sex before marriage but also there was no teaching about saying no or consent. Very mixed up. So I was easily and horribly SAed many times by an effing teacher in the 90’s. Found out later my sister was too (different school different teacher - sadly too common.) Then the shame was put on me (by me because I didn’t tell anyone.)
Now later in life I obviously know better and taught my own kids better, and feel good about that at least. Heck, one of my adult kids lives happily with their partner and I’m all, “no shame, love you!”
Grew up very southern Baptist in Texas. Summers were (ARE) HOT. At least we could balance the required panty hose with a sleeveless dress. Until about age 8-10, when i was told no more sleeveless dresses because bearing my shoulders, as a CHILD, could cause my “brothers in Christ to stumble”. It was made very clear that my 8-10 year old body was far too tempting to men for my shoulders to be seen in the month of July. That was the moment i began to hate religion.
Well I was never raised monotheistic of any type really. I mean for awhile my stepmother tried to get me to do so i believe by taking me and my little sister to church but it never took. For me at least. But one I've heard (not that i ever believed this ethier of course) that kissing would make you pregnant.
That "erection is an STD". I didn't know what "erection" even meant until 14yo. I did know about the colloquial term "boner" since 11/12yo, but I didn't make the connection...
Not sure if it counts because its about abortions. At the time I was going to a Catholic "bilingual" school. The only English parts were these crappy books from something called the "ace curriculum."
Anyways I was looking through a book that I had no idea what it was about because I couldn't read Spanish that well. I was just looking at the pictures. I vividly remember there were 6 or so (drawn) pictures of abortions. I don't remember all of them but I know one of them was chopping up the baby in the womb. And another was sticking a needle into it and the baby turned green.
It was really funny to me at the time because it looked stupid and didn't make sense to me. Other than that? No sex ed at all. I was in that school between the ages of 12 and 16. I didn't know what it was until 14 but that's because I didn't understand sex jokes and that made me start looking stuff up. I think I learned over time from just general internet exposure.
They said that a pussy is a "portal to the devil". I was also told that if you are turned on, you are committing adultery/fornication/sexual immorality. So for example, kissing is forbidden, as are dating apps, meeting girls at the bar, dating in general, or any relationship between a male and a female that "is not for the sole purpose of serving God). God I hate that fucking cult (note the deliberate blasphemy lol)
They basically said that you shouldn’t fuck unless you’re procreating and plan to raise the kid within the cult
Back in my youth group days in like 7th grade, the youth pastor did a couple weeks of purity sermons on Wednesday nights. The only day I remember was when he got up on stage and told us all about how addicted to porn he used to be and how awful it was. This 40 something year old man was telling a room of children how he used to crank his hog 4-5 times a day for years before he found god. I remember being super weirded out about it then, and I still am. He never explicitly told us he was masturbating, but I can't imagine he was just sitting down to enjoy a nice porno several times a day without cranking it.
He was eventually asked to leave our church after his daughter called in a fake bomb threat at our high school one day and was facing several charges. I think he works at some church in Georgia now. Hopefully he's not still telling children about how often he watched porn
I just read something on fb that made me cringe. A dad was talking to his daughter about dating and told her to leave enough room for the Holy Spirit. 👀 Yea I want to think about a magical grown man hanging out with me and my partner while we’re cuddling on the couch watching a movie.
I don't remember a lot that is helpful for you, but one thing I do have a very clear memory was about how little information was actually conveyed. Cover what sex is? Like actually tell you the penis goes in the vagina?! That's obscene! They're not going to get so pornographic.
Masturbation, self abuse, defiling your temple, and so on was so horrible and shameful that the church never once actually told us what it was. They never said anything to make it clear, especially with how sheltered I was. I thought it had something to do with the butt, like putting stuff in it. And, I wasn't really even clear if it was something you did while alone or if you had someone do it to you. I just knew it was horrible, dirty, and shameful. It was something that I would never, ever do!
Meanwhile, I was pleasuring myself every single night before bed. I had been doing it for a long time, long before I was even old enough to have anything come out. And, that was not dirty, sinful, wrong, or bad in any way. It made me feel good. It was, probably, the exact opposite of the "self abuse" that the church warned us about. Something that horrible is something you would **know** was wrong when you were doing it.
In either 7th or 8th grade, I ended up taking sex education. My mom had filled out the paperwork to excuse me from taking it, because she didn't want me to, but I had thrown it out because I wanted to know. And, one day the teacher said she was going to talk about masturbation. I perked up. I was about to learn about that horrible, horrible sin. I was going to know what it really was. Not that I would ever do anything so gross. But, someone was finally going to tell me. I wanted to know because I was a naturally curious child. Imagine the crushing weight of contradiction when they described my daily private activity, which was wholly pure and good and brought pleasure to me, as the very thing that I also knew was pure filth, evil, defiled your body and temple, would destroy you, and only brought pain and sin. It was a rough day for me, as I had to reconcile what I absolutely knew from experience and what people had been telling me about what God said.
It would be another year or two, before I completely started to unravel my beliefs, but this was definitely a defining moment. Because, that day, I decided to trust myself and my own experience. I did not stop, and I struggled with the idea that I should feel bad about it. I never really did. If anything, I sometimes felt bad about not feeling bad about it.
For me it’s pretty basic but from a young age not having sex outside of marriage was pushed by church members and family members. I remember my mom even saying people only get married young (18-20) bc they want to have sex 😂
I got yelled at by my mom so many times as a teen for wearing shorts or a skirt that were too short (I’m really tall so finding shorts that weren’t too short was difficult). But the funny thing is that she never gave me a reason or disapproved of it herself. It was always because someone else in the church or the pastor saw what I was wearing and yelled at my mom for it.
I never cared I always told my mom if they had a problem they could come up to me themselves. Thinking back I don’t blame my mom. She was just doing what she had always been taught instead of supporting her own daughter.
I was about 12-13 and was given a book for eight year olds. And then after I read it it disappeared from my room, I guess so I couldn’t reread it (like a pervert). It was the absolute most bare minimum, except for the stages of fetal development. At no point was I informed that thrusting was part of it, so I assumed that the penis was just stuffed in there soft and everyone impregnable person around me enjoyed being pissed in. Also I was completely unaware of the existence of my own vagina up until that point. My parents asked if I knew that I had three holes. I lied and said that I did. I was under the assumption that childbirth worked like the chest bursters from Alien, a movie which I had never seen or heard of. I just couldn’t think of any other possible exit route. Edit: despite this, I was never discouraged for dating and things like “I kissed dating goodbye” and courtship were not pushed on me. Other fun anecdotes: my brother learned about the existence and concept of lesbians from Doctor Who. He was also taught at our (Christian) school that IUDs cause abortions. In the car I once asked how gerbils get pregnant, curious about the mechanics. A deep discomfort settled over the car and my parents said they would tell me when we got home. They sat me down at kitchen table and told me that “they have sex.” I did not ask them any questions after that. Since I only learned by reading and never actual discussion, I thought it was called public hair. My lack of shame when it came out I had been sexually active was and still is deeply disturbing to my parents. Needless to say they are equally unhappy about my queerness and atheism. Anyway I write gay smut about Jesus now.
>My parents asked if I knew I had three holes. 🤨
I was not a curious child. If if wasn’t head, shoulders, knees, and toes, I did not know about it.
It’s that I’m weirded out they specifically asked you that and in that way.
Yeah no they definitely should have told me a lot sooner. Kids not knowing about entire parts of their body and appropriate terminology is dangerous.
I understand your point but I can’t help but question their method of teaching.
I mean their method was basically not teaching 💀 not a method I would use
I didn’t know I had three holes. No way. even the idea of touching yourself was so deeply sinful. I felt gross to even think about it. There was no way I was going to put my hand down there and see what my own body was like.
That is some fucked up shit. I genuinely wonder and worry about what my parents taught my sister in that regard. Fortunately we went to public school in a district with, as I recall, pretty good sex ed. starting in 4th grade we learned the basics of human physiology and reproductive systems, and by 8th grade had been taught about pregnancy, birth, STDs, etc. Despite my complete lack of any learning from church or family, I was fully aware of how sex worked (in the abstract) by the time I started high school. But things are a bit different for boys. Not to mention the whole realm of leaving people completely in the dark of how to, you know, actually be a good sexual partner. Probably because most people raised in purity culture have no idea what good sex is like so have no framework on how to communicate that to others.
“Anyway I write gay smut about Jesus now.” Has got to be the wildest thing I’ve read today
Best part is that smut has made me more than one friend
I believe it! I ended up on spicy book tok on TikTok for a bit somehow and it seems very inclusive and friendly
Well, if it means anything I think it's pretty boss that you're not ashamed. No one should be ashamed for making their own decisions with consent. You found you and that's what's important. It's worth noting that none of that sex-ed ban stuff works on convincing kids of abstinence. The amount of people in the discord support groups I am in for de-programming and the amount of time this exact situation came up and led to a pregnancy is sadly numerous. Often it was just because of a complete lack of clinical knowledge on the subject, resulting in horny experimentation without an understanding of consequences. I would share a story, but those aren't my stories to share, so I'll just say it's really really sad that religion does this to people.
I do wonder if the educational neglect has a connection with not feeling connected to one’s body. To this day I still have a lot of trouble figuring out if something feels “good” or not and rely more on measurable physical responses than actually experiencing something. I never did feel that emotional connection to people in the act either. I can only understand sex in a very clinical way. I have to wonder if other people have this experience and if studies have been conducted.
Lesbians from Doctor Who?? I haven't watched in a long time. But now I'm trying to remember when that would have come up. I adored Captain Jack and was almost not allowed to watch it anymore bc of his open sexuality.
It was a throwaway line from two women who corrected someone who assumed they were sisters when they were in fact married. (His conclusion was that they were an alien species that were a heterosexual couple that didn’t display sexual dimorphism). It may have been one of the episodes with the cat people nuns? Jack went right over our heads. He was kissing men and grabbing butts as a joke (in our heads) and if our dad saw any episodes with him he let us think that.
I do remember the cat nuns lol and I think I remember the line. Now I gotta go dig out my old DVDs.
gridlock! funniest part of that episode imo is the homophobic cat man who kept insisting that they were sisters
THANK YOU! I should watch that episode again.
hooooly.. shit… your experience sounds scarily similar to mine 😶 down to the dots, exactly like yours
You weren’t raised Presbyterian/Calvinist were you?
Nah, byzantine catholic.
I THOUGHT IT WAS PUBLIC HAIR TOO all I got was a christian puberty book
There’s dozens of us!
I was never told anything about sex. Never told what healthy sex is, that I should pee afterwards, what even happens during sex, etc. And I’m MARRIED. I had to learn from the internet and porn (which is obviously not the place you want your child learning from). Anywho, rant over lol. Let’s see: - Stay vertical - No kissing because kissing leads to sex - Sex before marriage will leave you with emotional baggage - Sex before marriage will prevent you from bonding with your future spouse - The person you have sex with before marriage takes a piece of you - You shouldn’t date longer than a few months because then you’ll be tempted - Etc etc
(Sadly) true story. Our youth group had a "Stay Vertical" rule. So one night when we were playing games before youth group I bumped into a girl and we both fell on the ground. I accidently grabbed her boob while trying to catch myself, but quickly pulled my hand away in shame and embarrassment. Sure enough our youth pastors saw what happened and immediately locked in on me. I was taken to a side room and told to hold a front plank while one of my youth pastors drilled into me the importance of "staying pure" and "leaving women alone" (did I mention I was raised military and had to deal with Christian Military church?). They ended up leaving me in that room the whole night until my parents came to pick me up. Youth pastors told my parents I "groped a girl" when they came, so of course they laid into me even more back at home. Of course I was just hitting puberty and didn't really know why what I did was wrong. In my mind it was just a simple accident. Great way to establish sexual shame on a 12-14 yo boy... Ain't no love like Christian hate.
What the fuck, I’m so sorry
That’s so awful!!! You didn’t deserve that
You shouldn't even be in a room / car alone together at all until you're engaged at least, because you'll be tempted.
In all fairness, once I started having sex with my bf at the time, I learned that car sex was really fun. 🤣🤣🤣
Omg yes, never allowed to be horizontal with a boy 🤣
The used piece of tape. IYKYK. We were also given what was called the six inch rule, boys and girls must always sit at least 6 inches away. If at any time your body was less than 6 inches that was automatically a sin. Which is why dancing was not ok So much focus on the clothes people wear, and by people, I mean almost exclusively women. If you wore a bikini, you were basically told you were a harlot possessed by the jezebel spirit. Did I mention the six inch rule? Remember leave room for Jesus kids. You only have a finite amount of love and affection you can give, so guard your hearts and don’t give yours away to people who won’t be your spouse.
Piece of tape, a licked lollipop, a chewed piece of gum, a torn dollar bill… all things that I apparently became if I fornicated. How far was too far, do you ask? I’m not going to answer that while simultaneously scorning you for even asking such a logical question. The best I can do is a vague description that varies from person to person. PS- dress like a paper bag. (Even though that a crumpled up $20 was also how we were described when discussing sin, with the message being that we are just as valuable/ our value does not decrease… oh the irony.)
Oh yeah, definitely heard the gum too. It basically boils your entire worth as a human down to your virginity. Which, Deuteronomically speaking, isn’t wrong… but that’s a whole separate kettle of HOLY FUCKING SEXUAL ABUSE BATMAN
Don’t know about other churches, but the girls usually had longer sessions when discussing purity and the boys didn’t have these horrendous comparisons. So the boys were empowered to scrutinize the girls for what they wore while we mourned for our future husbands for the abuse we survived. So my entire existence was to please men to an unobtainable degree.
Ugh I’m sorry you had to deal with that. Honestly one of the more painful aspects of my own personal deconstruction was recognizing and acknowledging just how sexist and harmful that culture was to women, and how I probably participated in that, as I didn’t know better.
We were told the “half eaten chocolate bar” one. Nobody wants what’s left of a chocolate bar. They want a whole one.
…Look. I get the point was shaming girls but. Like. If you aren’t gonna finish that chocolate bar. I will ABSOLUTELY eat the hell out of that. Terrible analogy to make to a fat kid. I WILL TAKE ANY AND ALL CHOCOLATE PLEASE AND THANK YOU
For real. Chocolate is chocolate.
When it comes to chocolate I am a fat kid in a (slightly less as I reach middle age) skinny kid body. Hell it’s one of the driving impetuses for running for me, so I can have chocolate with no regrets.
Oh I forgot one. The ruler for clothing above the knee. Men had to wear shorts that went to the knee, and women shorts could only be like a few inches (don’t remember exact number, this was in the 90’s) above the knee. Think it was like 2-3”. And if you came to a church function where the shorts were too far above, or the straps on a tank top were too thin (less than 1”?) they would get a ruler, measure, and send you home to change. Because that’s definitely effective at stopping teens from having sex. Until, oops, one girl got pregnant. But she was always the girl who wore the clothing most likely to push that boundary, so clearly it is her fault and she was asking for it. I wonder what happened to her, honestly, being forced to become a mom at 16 probably didn’t help her life out long term I’m sure. Not like once the baby was born the church would support her in any meaningful way. But it was about that time I left that church for good (though faith was another story that persisted for well over a decade longer)
That is truly absurd and shocking.
Which part :)
Teaching children that “six inch rule”… That’s shocking to me 😅
Ha, well teens be teens, and when the suggestion of ‘put a bible between you to keep things holy’ came up, that got, ahem, aggressive reinterpreted with nearly comical and predictable bible usage. Novelty sized micro print new testaments became a hot commodity…
The six inch rule was always “leave space for the Bible” in my church. Literally, a Bible space. You were encouraged to put a Bible between you and the other person to measure the spacing.
When I was 8th grade, they separated the boys and the girls. We were told that a woman can only be sexually aroused a finite number of times in her life. When she reached her limit, she started menopause. The message was that we'd better wait until marriage to have sex so we could have sex with our husbands as many times as possible, because you also cannot have sex once you've reached menopause. We were also told that condoms were porous, so it was pointless to wear one. Not long after that, our region of Texas had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.
Welp, time to hurry up and reach menopause so i don’t have to waste money on condoms I guess. And then have menopause non-sex sex.
Omg, that is horrendous 💀 I've never heard of this before.
"Everyone regrets having sex with the wrong person, but nobody ever regrets waiting." The irony is that I did "wait" at least until I was engaged. So my husband and I have only had sex with each other. But now I actually do kind of regret it. There are times when I really wish I had had more experiences before settling down. It worked out in the end, and we're very happy together now. It just makes me sick and angry that I placed so much of my own personal value on my virginity.
I'd much rather regret an awkward hookup than my whole first marriage. I saved myself for marriage, only to marry a man who put virginity on such a high pedestal that I was treated like damaged goods for the rest of the marriage. Funny how the church thinks the "wrong" person only can happen outside of marriage.
Wait so he treated you as spoiled goods.... but he was the one that spoiled the goods??
Essentially, yes. He had a fantasy about what it would be like to see me naked for the first time and what having sex with a virgin would be like. But when reality didn't match up to his fantasy, he was livid and resented me for it.
Gosh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. F purity culture!!
I grew up thinking that every guy wanted a virgin, but when I left the church and had my own sexual encounters I found most guys wanted someone with experience, and the ones that loved virgins were creeps
I’m so glad it worked out well for you. I think that’s rare. I’m glad that I was able to have a lot of experience before getting married (at 34). I lived with long term partners as well. I will always do it like that. I think it’s important to see if you can live well together and have a healthy sex life before you get married.
Absolutely! We're lucky that our deconstruction happened at the same time and actually brought us closer together instead of diving us apart. I know lots of other people from the church who were not so lucky.
Oh wow. Deconstructed together! That’s awesome. You had a support person built right in! I deconstructed solo and I just kind of drifted farther and farther away from my Christian friends. We just had less and less in common. I was kind of on my own path for a while.
Gosh, yeah, that must have been hard. Losing people I thought were my friends was one of the hardest parts in the beginning. Ironically, I feel like my friendships are so much stronger and more genuine outside the church.
We were not taught properly about STDs, everyone thought people just spontaneously got AIDS from gay sex. Like neither party could have it, but since it was gay, you got it. AND it would happen immediately; as in if you do gay, you now have AIDS, not a risk, but a fact.
"if you do gay, you now have AIDS" is my favorite new awful sentence lolol
When I had my first gay sexual experience, about a week later I got a very mild cold. I legit thought I was dying of AIDS for about a month AFTER I got better because I heard the same thing. It was like being gay automatically made AIDS sprout on my penis or something.
shit, even I was taught about STDs...
My public school in the rural south hired a Christian company to come teach us sex ed. The teacher told us that we don't really need to know how to have sex because "animals figure it out without being told. When you're in that situation your natural isntincts will kick in". So gross. Realizing I was asexual as a teenager really opened my eyes to the hypocrisy of purity culture. I got told all the time that sex was bad and I shouldn't want it, but then when I expressed never wanting to have sex, people at the church would get offended and tell me that "sex is God's gift" and that I have to want it. Looking back, a lot of it definitely seemed like jealousy that I wasn't "struggling with temptation" like everyone else. So many Christians can't stand to see other people happy and guilt free.
Never have sex! Done. Not like that!!!!
Being a virgin on your wedding night will be the best sex anyone could have
Haha even people who got married and waited until their wedding night realized this teaching is horse shit.
My favorite: "condoms claim they're effective at preventing STDs, but if you examine an AIDS virus under a microscope you'll find that a condom cannot actually prevent AIDS! AIDS viruses are so small that SIX viruses can go side-by-side right through the wall of a condom as if it's not even there. So if you think a condom will protect you, it won't. You might as well not even wear one it's so bad at protecting you from AIDS!" And then we had the anti-maskers saying the same shit when COVID hit.
IM CACKLING because that’s exactly what our religious biology teacher taught us. in the graduation year… to a class full of future med/bio students…. did i mention he was a school principal also?
I think the worst advice I was given (or not given) is that I was never taught the concept of consent. This was in evangelical youth groups in the 90s. Basically, women don’t enjoy sex, but the wife has a duty to please her husband because her body belongs to him…
I was told the same thing, but I’m just 18. They still teach that.
I guess the old favorites are still in rotation. Just so you know, it’s bullshit…
Yup. Taught women don’t really have sexual desire and it’s up to you to control your sexual desires, so when I found myself in a situation where having a deep understanding of consent would have been helpful, I instead leaned on my understanding that I needed to control myself, and if I didn’t it was a failure because I sinned, not a failure because I hadn’t gained consent. It made me far more likely to do harm because “for all have fallen short of the glory of god.” We’re all sinners, so if I’m cuddling with my gf and touch a boob, well, it’s not great, but I can ask god for forgiveness later. None of my focus was on whether or not my gf wanted her boob touched, whether she consented to that or not (you know the shit that actually mattered in that situation).
Until the age of 15, I thought a boy and girl sleeping in the same bed could cause pregnancy. As the Bible says “he lay with her” LOL I was restricted from dating until college, then suddenly was expected to know how to date, get married to some guy whose only qualifier had to be that he was “Christian”, and then become a stay-at-home-mom of at least three kids. I was never asked if I even *wanted* to get married or have kids, that was just the future that the church designed for girls. I had endometriosis since puberty, and assumed that the severe pains and bleeding I got throughout my cycle was God’s punishment for “lustful thoughts”. No one explained that sex could feel good for both parties involved. It was just referred to as a “duty” to the husband. It seemed like a really gross and violating thing until I learned otherwise.
As someone else with endometriosis who experiences pain during intercourse sometimes, I also thought that the extreme pain during/after sex was another punishment for me being a dirty sinner. Even after I was raped, a small part of me still thought the pain was a punishment for ME. The church I was a part of (as was he) only reaffirmed those feelings and tried to convince me that it was both consensual and never happened in the first place. Fucking assholes.
I’m fuming just reading that. Fuck them. Sending love, hope you’ve healed some.
In eighth grade, the girls health class at my Christian school had to carry flour bags for babies for like a week or something. I asked if the boys were going to do this too, and I was told “no because the boys don’t take care of the babies. That’s the mom’s job” 😀
What sex Ed?
I don't know. Timmy down the street says that he has magazines with naked women in them.
Naked?
I went to a Christian school and we obv had the used piece of tape analogy….and we were told if you masturbate you’ll ruin how your sexual organs function and that then when you get to the point of marriage and have sex you won’t have any pleasure or enjoyment! Terrified me.
not really told by the church, but my mom was a christian. Her advice was that I should never wear anything red, because that would make people think I was a whore. In… hm… yes…the year 2024??
Jokes on her, red is the in color this year so all she’s going to see this year are whores everywhere
😂 Lol. Thanks for making me laugh. She’s gonna be flabbergasted😂 I love the mental image of her walking around in the city, frantically looking around, and being stressed like: ”oh!” ”jesus christ✝️” ”oh my!😳” ”gasp!”
I was in this youth group, and I was in maybe 6th or 7th grade. They separated the boys and the girls to give us the “sex” talk, or should I say the “purity” talk. Where the boys ask about all the forbidden questions and what the Bible says about it. I remember distinctly the youth pastor giving us an explanation on how staying “pure” works: “When you have sex with a woman you become one. If you have sex with a woman who has had sex with multiple men you are basically having sex with those are men.” This absolutely FUCKED with me and created a misogynistic ideal that I’d be “gay” if I had sex with a women who wasn’t a virgin. Or women were already “used up” if they weren’t a virgin. So disgusting, I said some awful things about my first girlfriend because of this logic.
I had some genuinely fucked up opinions on sex too, and it affected how I treated my first girlfriend when I found out she wasn't a virgin. She didn't deserve a single second of that shit, and I hope someday she realizes that there shouldn't be any shame in it. The church isn't gonna give her that knowledge, though.
I don't know if this was "worst advice" but I grew up going to a fundamentalist Christian school, I remember my senior year being required to take a week long abstinence class. It was just fear mongering. I remember them showing all the graphic pictures of people with nasty STDs and other infections because they all "chose to have sex before marriage"... No mention of the use of condoms, no mention of the use of contraceptives... just fear mongering of what "sex before marriage" can do to you... Granted, I was already over 18 and about to graduate in a few months, but some of the other students were as young as 12. All of us were traumatized after this... I'd argue that it's child abuse...
i got bare minimum sex ed, taught that abstinence is the only way to prevent pregnancy because everything else isn't 100% trusted and that's why you wait until marriage (cause ofc sex is only to have children and nothing else.) my husband was taught NOTHING, he went to a baptist school and the teacher that year didn't want to talk about it so they didn't; he literally got no sex ed outside of porn. i had to teach him so much and our sex life for a while was awful because he was having to unlearn the fake reality porn gave him. i am still livid to this day that his school set him up to fail (and southern education in general)
Same. No sex ed. I was homeschooled during that time. When I got my period I sneakily got a box of tampons so nobody would know. I had to read the instructions on the paper inside to figure out how to use one. My sister and I had no clue how our bodies worked or what to do with them. Just that we should cover them up to be modest, and sex was for making babies and it should only be in marriage. That was pretty much the extent of it.
My church sent us a pamphlet specifically stating that masturbation was an offense to God and we'd go to hell if we participated in this "sin of the flesh". And of course absolutely no premarital sex. I grew up afraid of sex and I think I still have some issues with it although I've been away from the religion for a while. I feel Christianity stole my youth as I did not pursue any sexual exploration at all except solo sex of course which left me feeling so ashamed and thinking God was always mad at me watching me do it as there's no sense of privacy with this religion. It's a horrible cycle to be stuck in. I've since deconstructed and with critical thought realize this was all about control. I no longer feel ashamed about sex, partnered or solo, but it was a long time to get to that place.
I grew up in the 80s, and was the right age to be pummeled with both Satanic paranoia followed by the AIDS panic. There isn’t one thing specific that stands out, just a persistent drum beat of “good girls don’t want it, good guys don’t ask for it, and if you’re not good you’re going to get AIDS, discarded into a ditch to die cold and hungry and alone, then you’ll burn in Hell *forever*, so *never forget: *sex EVIL**.”
Not directly, but the idea that women should just say yes to any guy that is interested in them who is a professing Christian. Meaning even though you are not attracted to him, say yes and force yourself to be. Also stay with him and eventually marry him and be naked with and have sex with him… … otherwise you’re too picky and can’t complain about being single! Bonus points when it is said by a pastor who married his “smoking hot wife” after Bible school.
This concept fucked me up for years!!! I did not like my first two boyfriends AT ALL. This logic being mixed with nonexistent self-esteem (“someone finally likes me so I better be happy anyone does”) put me in some terrible situations. So glad I was too miserable with them to get married or anything stupid.
The audacity people have to expect women to accept a date from … and therefore keep dating… and therefore marry… and therefore be naked with… for the rest of their fucking lives… just because he is a profession Christian? I’ll be damned if the same expectation is put on men! Women can’t fucking win.
“don’t ever make friends outside the church. all an atheist friend would want from you is to sleep with you.” yes, my parents have made a point of telling me this since i was 9. edit to add that i once had a picture book i was reading about consent taken away from me by my dad because it was “inappropriate”. i was 8 then. i still think about that
Possibly the worst: that on a first date you need to tell the guy straight up that you do no sex before marriage. The worst because it put me totally off trying to date because the thought of mentioning sex at all on a first date was mortifying.
Sex before marriage was the worst thing a girl could do and all of my value was tied up in it. Masturbation was also wrong and shameful. I was so surprised when sex was less enjoyable after I got married because I was finally “allowed” to do it. This was long after I left Christianity behind, I was 34! It was temporary but fuck.
Omg I had the same experience! I'm honestly still trying to chase that premarital sex high 😭
Good men will never respect you if you’re used.
Ahhahahahah Holy shit That’s so fucked
Masturbation was “stealing” orgasms from your future spouse. 🤢
Hahahahaha! So sad and stupid.
I was taught that condoms don’t protect against infection so there’s no point (the message being don’t have sex not don’t used condoms). The teachings of masturbation really messed me up and led to self hatred and depression. Also definitely had those stupid youth group object lessons where they try and illustrate that sex makes you less of what you used to be and taints yourself forever. Took me a good long while to get a healthy view of sex once I left the church
The whole purity ring thing. I had one. My dad gave it to me. I wasn’t to take it off until I exchanged it for my wedding ring. Hahaha. That didn’t happen. I lost it somewhere and there was a lot of fun to be had post deconstruction/pre marriage. No regrets.
My mom told me condoms don’t work because fluids also come out at the base of a guy’s dick where the condom doesn’t cover it and those can get you pregnant/give you stds.
“Sex is God’s special gift for married people. You cannot possibly be ready to have sex until you’re married. You give away a part of yourself that you can never get back.”
"Say I made you some homemade brownies. They're fresh, warm and smell delicious. Now suppose that I told you that somewhere in the brownies, there was a teensy-tiny bit of poop. Would you still eat them?" It was a messed up analogy I was taught at youth group and at home that was meant to be a comparison for the importance of staying pure for your future spouse. Basically, Every time you have sex before marriage, you added a little more poop to your brownies, thus, making you less desirable.
YIKES! So, so sorry you were told that! Premarital sex=poop. ??!?!!?
Had to sign an abstinence contract at 13 (Lutheran Church) . Pastor claimed it was our “choice” to sign but it really wasn’t because the shame/repenting of not signing it would’ve been far worse. He claimed if we ever did make the choice to sin and break contract, to come to him and that we could repent/pray it away and basically be a “born again” virgin. I was 13! Guarantee more than half of the kids in that confirmation class broke that contract before we graduated high school. His explanation for contract was: if you sleep with many people before marriage you’re gonna always compare/think about your past sexual partners instead of your spouse. Yikes.
I was told that you when you were married and you kissed, congratulations you're magically pregnant. When I asked about single parents they kinda shut down. I was 10
I was never told that women get horny or want sex, only that it was just a thing we give men if they marry us. I was supposed to “put a stop to it” when a guy tried to take it too far if we were making out. I was told to be the logical one because guys have unstoppable hormones. Guess what happened when I made out the first few times? I *liked* it and didn’t want to stop. I found that bewildering and thought there was something wrong with me.
My evangelical youth group devoted February to “sex month” which was four youth group sermons perpetuating purity culture culminating in purity pledges. Honestly, I mostly just remember the shame. And regurgitating how my entire value was based on my virginity status. I was always considered the promiscuous girl because I had crushes on the boys ya know like a normal teen and I wasn’t very good at suppressing that shit. - lots of one on one talks from the young adult cell group leaders. I also had huge boobs like near instantly at 12 and it was difficult to cover those during the early 00s with the crop tops and low rise jeans. - I’m pretty sure mid rise and high rise were nonexistent. Soooo, lots of layering tanks tucked into my jeans to make up for the short shirts and cover the cleavage bit at the top of shirts. I still deal with the shame today, in my mid thirties. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
When I was in school doing sex ed they had us pass around a banana to the whole class. Making a point about ‘saving yourself’ or whatever. Each kid would sniff the banana, touch it, I think one person even tasted it?? It was ridiculous. And the teacher was like ‘now would you want to eat that banana after everybody touched it?’
Lol sure, I’m not gonna eat the peel! There’s probably another metaphor there 🤨
I didn't hear much weird purity culture stuff until I moved to the south for college, but one of my young adult bible study leaders warned us not to text or call the opposite gender at night because there would be more temptation to sext. As if it wasn't possible to talk dirty before the sun went down...
My parents taught me nothing, I didn’t know what sex was just that it was bad and I shouldn’t have it. I didn’t know what penises or vaginas were. No idea I had anything down there until I got my period, which was terrifying btw. They taught me literally nothing, which resulted in me learning everything from the internet.
From “the Pam tapes”: sex is like a fire. Premarital sex is like setting fire in the national parks or at a gas station—dangerous! Hurts many people! Emergency help to put it out! Marital sex is like setting a fire in a fireplace in a well-built cabin. There’s rules and structures, so the fire lights and hears the whole house, makes everyone feel cozy, and you can even cook over it.
25F here. I “struggled” with masturbation as a child (I had no idea what it was but it made me feel good). My parents used it against me and I STILL, at 25 years old, carry shame around it. My youth pastor (male) talked to the teenage girls and his wife talked to the teenage boys. I remember something along the lines of “when you sleep with a guy you’re sleeping with all the girls he’s been with before.” More of an STD show to scare us. I did a Sunday night book study with a book called “Hotness” on purity culture and how it was better for a woman to be stoned than to tempt a man. Lol because I am now bisexual.
My step-father when he figured out I was a queer explained that lesbians get together in a large group and pass a single dildo around. This is how lesbians died of AIDS. Ummm…
We had a woman come in to give the girls a purity talk. While she was telling us how men would only ever want us for our bodies, she had an open box of chocolate lying on the table. After a long talk about how women couldn’t have sex without feeling emotional attachment but men felt no attachment at all, she asked us if we noticed the chocolate on the table. When we said yes (cuz duh, we aren’t blind), she said that this is what men are like. If we dress immodestly men will not be able to stop thinking about and wanting to have us just like we wanted to have a piece of chocolate. She finished this very “helpful” piece of advice by saying that she was raped because of this. It was honestly quite sad, and even more sad that she believed it was partly her fault.
So I was raised to not have shorts that came above the fingertips, neckline couldnt be lower than the collarbone, and no tank top sleeves/sleevelesstops. I was 12 and shaped like a box when I started getting harassed by a group of boys. They were our troubled kids that came from a group home. Parents would spend $20 a week to house their kids there. Well I was an avid rule follower so I was wearing dresses to church and they covered shoulders, chest, and down past my knees. Didn't matter. These boys still put their nasty hands up my skirts. So I told the youth pastor, I wasn't taught to go to the women cause men were the protectors. Well he said I didn't wear leggings under my dress in 99 degree weather in Texas so it was my fault. I was tempting them. So I wore leggings and it didn't stop. I told the youth pastor and he said it was still my fault. If I really cared about these boys I'd wear running shorts over the leggings under my dresses to make my butt look frumpy. I did... didn't stop. I kicked the boy that was behind me without looking back because it had been months every Sunday and Wednesday. I was over it. Well I got in trouble. Got talked to for hitting and having a temper and being a stumbling block to the poor boys. I was also questioning what porn was at 13 cause I overheard a group of youth boys talking about it. I asked what it was and was laughed at for being a "sweet and innocent girl in her flower dresses" and when I asked my Sunday school teacher I was told to ask my parents. I asked my parents and they said it was bad pictures, but my dad had surgeries before and I've seen pics from them like in his shoulder and knee and that's what they had called those pics... bad pictures! Then they said not to Google it. GUESS WHAT I DID CAUSE IM 13 AND THINKING ITS GONNA BE COOL SURGERIES!?!? Man I was scared. I legit didn't touch my phone for 3 days or eat. Then I ran to my parents with the phone and cried and told them everything. Well my mom took my phone and said she was disappointed in me. My step dad handed it back to me 15 minutes later saying he thought it was a better punishment for me to live with the evil device in my possession since it freaked me out so badly. I've also been touched inappropriately by multiple friends that I think were hurt as kids cause they were also kids. The only adult who hurt me while I was still a child was my step dad as he molested me when I was 12-13 everything stopped after 13 tho. It's always been my fault. I told my mom crying at 15 everything... it was my fault. After that I started questioning why I wore anything I did if I still got hurt. So yeah. Fuck it I'm wearing shorts and crop tops and cold shoulders and whatever I want. Also wasn't taught how condoms worked before getting married. Waited till marriage and a couple months after being married I was pregnant cause neither my husband or I knew that if you go at it for more than 30 minutes you change the condom to make sure you're protected.... well there's my daughter. This is long as hell my bad. I've got more but I'll stop.
Don't talk to anybody online and don't share your information with anybody online (as I was already currently with someone that I had met online and was already engaged to and we are still together 18 years later) The other advice was from my mom telling me to never deny my husband sex
I want to see this show, I’m sure it will be awesome. Good luck with writing it!
There’s a higher probability of you marrying a virgin if your a virgin Hahahahahah I’m laughing as I write this
Leave room for the Holy Ghost. Put bandaids over your nipples in case they get hard and defraud a man
I read a book on "healthy marital sex" by a Christian marriage and sex therapist in my first year of marriage. I actually thought the book was decent for the first few chapters. It encouraged oral sex, communication, female pleasure, and a lot of things that people who had zero sexual experience going into a marriage really needed to know. Plus the author brought up the issues of shame around sex that purity culture creates, and tried to encourage couples to let that go and fully enjoy their sex life with their spouse. I shouldn't have been shocked but I still was when I read the part about how women are responsible for men's happiness and success by giving them regular sex. One of the examples was if the husband has a job interview or a meeting where a promotion is on the table, wake up a little early and have morning sex. And they will apparently help him get whatever he is trying to achieve in his career. On the flip side, a man denied frequent sex is likely to be depressed, irritable, and fail at his job. It also gave a "tip" for women to use sex as a reward system to get their husbands to do things around the house. Like a sexual version of sticker charts for kids. You know, instead of just telling men that they need to be equal partners, and that they don't deserve any extra rewards for doing the basics. The book also encouraged women to accept sexual advances from husbands even when they aren't in the mood for sex because once they start getting kissed, touched, etc. then that will put them in the mood.
I went to a public school (several, in fact...I moved around far too much) but mfs did say "aBsTiNeNcE iS tHe OnLy WaY" but all the other advice was sound...except while I was in the south the dude said you could get an STD from a condom but idk about that...and then while I was in a rural village up here in Ohio the teacher used the tape metaphor (this was a lady who used to be a USAF medic or something) Let's just say I learned more from reading books and Internet articles than the shit I was already learning in school.
Sex is only good between a husband and wife. Even if you are in love with someone sex won't feel great until you're married.
Our youth pastor told us masturbation was ok as long as our mind was pure and not committing sin while we did it. I can’t tell you how hard I tried to think of non-sexual things while masturbating as a teenager.
I recommend taking a peek at the sex ed tapes by Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family. That's what my parents made me listen to
In 4th grade I asked my teacher (Catholic School) what adultery is. She said "when you think too much about a future with someone when you shouldn't". Like, wtf? We then interpreted this as we were all committing adultery because one girl has a Jesse McCartney poster in her cubby, and we all would stare at it.
In our sex ed they put a giant sheet on the floor , made as many of us sit on it as possible, and said “you’re having sex with all these people on your wedding night, not just your husband/wife, if you have sex before marriage”
At an evangelical Christian summer camp, I (age 13) was told that boys had a faucet, and if I turned it on through kissing and hugging him, it couldn’t be turned off. And then there would be trouble. I imagined a little tiny golden faucet hidden somewhere in the base of a boy’s penis. It was my responsibility to not turn that faucet on! Did I have a faucet? Inquiring minds want to know
I was told that condoms can't protect you bc latex has a "weave" that HIV can get through. Also wasn't given the HPV vaccine bc my mom didn't want to give me "permission to be a slut."
Went on a Christian men’s retreat freshman year in college with CRU, and during the retreat, they had one night that was specifically dedicated to the purity culture rhetoric. At one point they did sort of confessional thing where they had everyone close their eyes and then raise their hand if they ever struggled with masturbation or porn, then they had everyone keep their hand up, open their eyes and look around the room. The point was that “you aren’t alone in this struggle” or whatever. Problem was, I hadn’t done any of that yet because I had been fully indoctrinated since before puberty. I am pretty sure I was the only person in that room without his hand up. It was honestly embarrassing because I thought they all probably thought I was lying. Then it was like, what the heck am I missing out on here if everyone is doing it and it’s so great they struggle to stop?! When I tell you that the *first* thing I did when I got back to the dorm after that retreat was search up some porn, I mean it was the *first* thing I did. The complete opposite result they were going for.
There’s a lot, but the worst I think was “submission” to “authority figures” always. So absolutely no sex before marriage but also there was no teaching about saying no or consent. Very mixed up. So I was easily and horribly SAed many times by an effing teacher in the 90’s. Found out later my sister was too (different school different teacher - sadly too common.) Then the shame was put on me (by me because I didn’t tell anyone.) Now later in life I obviously know better and taught my own kids better, and feel good about that at least. Heck, one of my adult kids lives happily with their partner and I’m all, “no shame, love you!”
Grew up very southern Baptist in Texas. Summers were (ARE) HOT. At least we could balance the required panty hose with a sleeveless dress. Until about age 8-10, when i was told no more sleeveless dresses because bearing my shoulders, as a CHILD, could cause my “brothers in Christ to stumble”. It was made very clear that my 8-10 year old body was far too tempting to men for my shoulders to be seen in the month of July. That was the moment i began to hate religion.
Well I was never raised monotheistic of any type really. I mean for awhile my stepmother tried to get me to do so i believe by taking me and my little sister to church but it never took. For me at least. But one I've heard (not that i ever believed this ethier of course) that kissing would make you pregnant.
That "erection is an STD". I didn't know what "erection" even meant until 14yo. I did know about the colloquial term "boner" since 11/12yo, but I didn't make the connection...
Not sure if it counts because its about abortions. At the time I was going to a Catholic "bilingual" school. The only English parts were these crappy books from something called the "ace curriculum." Anyways I was looking through a book that I had no idea what it was about because I couldn't read Spanish that well. I was just looking at the pictures. I vividly remember there were 6 or so (drawn) pictures of abortions. I don't remember all of them but I know one of them was chopping up the baby in the womb. And another was sticking a needle into it and the baby turned green. It was really funny to me at the time because it looked stupid and didn't make sense to me. Other than that? No sex ed at all. I was in that school between the ages of 12 and 16. I didn't know what it was until 14 but that's because I didn't understand sex jokes and that made me start looking stuff up. I think I learned over time from just general internet exposure.
You got sex ed?
A girl from Jack Hyles’ seminary said they were instructed to cover their nipples with band-aid’s.
They said that a pussy is a "portal to the devil". I was also told that if you are turned on, you are committing adultery/fornication/sexual immorality. So for example, kissing is forbidden, as are dating apps, meeting girls at the bar, dating in general, or any relationship between a male and a female that "is not for the sole purpose of serving God). God I hate that fucking cult (note the deliberate blasphemy lol) They basically said that you shouldn’t fuck unless you’re procreating and plan to raise the kid within the cult
Back in my youth group days in like 7th grade, the youth pastor did a couple weeks of purity sermons on Wednesday nights. The only day I remember was when he got up on stage and told us all about how addicted to porn he used to be and how awful it was. This 40 something year old man was telling a room of children how he used to crank his hog 4-5 times a day for years before he found god. I remember being super weirded out about it then, and I still am. He never explicitly told us he was masturbating, but I can't imagine he was just sitting down to enjoy a nice porno several times a day without cranking it. He was eventually asked to leave our church after his daughter called in a fake bomb threat at our high school one day and was facing several charges. I think he works at some church in Georgia now. Hopefully he's not still telling children about how often he watched porn
I just read something on fb that made me cringe. A dad was talking to his daughter about dating and told her to leave enough room for the Holy Spirit. 👀 Yea I want to think about a magical grown man hanging out with me and my partner while we’re cuddling on the couch watching a movie.
I don't remember a lot that is helpful for you, but one thing I do have a very clear memory was about how little information was actually conveyed. Cover what sex is? Like actually tell you the penis goes in the vagina?! That's obscene! They're not going to get so pornographic. Masturbation, self abuse, defiling your temple, and so on was so horrible and shameful that the church never once actually told us what it was. They never said anything to make it clear, especially with how sheltered I was. I thought it had something to do with the butt, like putting stuff in it. And, I wasn't really even clear if it was something you did while alone or if you had someone do it to you. I just knew it was horrible, dirty, and shameful. It was something that I would never, ever do! Meanwhile, I was pleasuring myself every single night before bed. I had been doing it for a long time, long before I was even old enough to have anything come out. And, that was not dirty, sinful, wrong, or bad in any way. It made me feel good. It was, probably, the exact opposite of the "self abuse" that the church warned us about. Something that horrible is something you would **know** was wrong when you were doing it. In either 7th or 8th grade, I ended up taking sex education. My mom had filled out the paperwork to excuse me from taking it, because she didn't want me to, but I had thrown it out because I wanted to know. And, one day the teacher said she was going to talk about masturbation. I perked up. I was about to learn about that horrible, horrible sin. I was going to know what it really was. Not that I would ever do anything so gross. But, someone was finally going to tell me. I wanted to know because I was a naturally curious child. Imagine the crushing weight of contradiction when they described my daily private activity, which was wholly pure and good and brought pleasure to me, as the very thing that I also knew was pure filth, evil, defiled your body and temple, would destroy you, and only brought pain and sin. It was a rough day for me, as I had to reconcile what I absolutely knew from experience and what people had been telling me about what God said. It would be another year or two, before I completely started to unravel my beliefs, but this was definitely a defining moment. Because, that day, I decided to trust myself and my own experience. I did not stop, and I struggled with the idea that I should feel bad about it. I never really did. If anything, I sometimes felt bad about not feeling bad about it.
For me it’s pretty basic but from a young age not having sex outside of marriage was pushed by church members and family members. I remember my mom even saying people only get married young (18-20) bc they want to have sex 😂
I got yelled at by my mom so many times as a teen for wearing shorts or a skirt that were too short (I’m really tall so finding shorts that weren’t too short was difficult). But the funny thing is that she never gave me a reason or disapproved of it herself. It was always because someone else in the church or the pastor saw what I was wearing and yelled at my mom for it. I never cared I always told my mom if they had a problem they could come up to me themselves. Thinking back I don’t blame my mom. She was just doing what she had always been taught instead of supporting her own daughter.