My Ex and My Future Wife

Theo, Maggie, and Bridget are three lesbians with some questions about G-d. Coming from Protestant and Jewish backgrounds, with some Catholicism and Tibetan Buddhism thrown in, they’ve been taught varying lessons about what religion looks like. On My Ex and My Future Wife, they weekly explore gender, sexuality, politics, and much more, through a theological lens. And for the record, they’re lying about who’s the ex and who’s the future wife.

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My Ex and My Future Wife

MXMFW 5: Purity Culture Part 2

August 23, 2021 • Bridget Fox, Maggie Haralson, Theo Unger • Season 1 • Episode 5

Last week we learned about the history of purity culture, and this week Theo, Maggie, and Bridget dive in and discuss how Purity Culture effects people today. They discuss how Purity Culture leads to internalized sexual shame, how it promotes rape, rape culture, and child abuse, and they also discuss how unsuccessful abstinence-only sex education really is.

CW/TW: This episode contains discussions of sexual abuse, rape, rape culture, child abuse, misogyny, sexual shame, and racism

**Thank you to Tiktoker Rachel Cain (@iblamebill) for the metaphor about the vertical vs. horizontal view of sin

**Peggy Reeves Sandy is the researcher mentioned who researched the characteristics of rape prone cultures

Episode Transcript Available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11vsX6TPwQwaG5PYfLibPOTgSV_e1IHS6/view?usp=sharing

Sources for this episode

“Rape-Prone Versus Rape-Free Campus Cultures” by Peggy Reeves Sandy

Rachel Cain, @iblamebill on TikTok

“I Have the Power in My Body to Make People Sin': The Trauma of Purity Culture and the Concept of 'Body Theodicy” by Katie Cross in Feminist Trauma Theologies: Body, Scripture & Church in Critical Perspective.

“Daddy’s Little Girls” by Breanne Fahs

“Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement” by Elizabeth Gish

“‘ARE YOU A ‘TRASHABLE’ STYROFOAM CUP?’: Harm and Damage Rhetoric in the Contemporary American Sexual Purity Movement” by Elizabeth Gish

“Suffer the Children: National Crisis, Affective Collectivity, and the Sexualized Child” by Susan Knabe

Developing a measure of Purity culture: Sexual messages in evangelical Christian culture, an unpublished doctoral dissertation by Amanda Ortiz

“Broken Promises: Abstinence Pledging and Sexual and Reproductive Health” by Anthony Paik, Kenneth J Sanchagrin, and Karen Heimer

“What is the Prosperity Gospel” by Dr. Anderew Spencer

The Impact of Patriarchal Religions on the Creation of Oppressive Cultures of Female Purity and the Contribution to Rape Culture, and unpublished doctoral dissertation by Haley Stepp

The purity myth: How America's obsession with virginity is hurting young women by Jessica Valenti