“Social purity philosophies deeply informed ableist, xenophobic and racist policy and legislation over the past century and continue to do so”
BY EMMA CIESLIK
When I was in middle school, I participated in a retreat hosting young girls from across my diocese for an overnight in the parish basement, learning about inner and outer beauty through consultations and lessons about purity of body and mind. Especially cringe as a queer woman, I encountered youth pastors leading us in prayer for our future husbands and walked up the aisle of the church to place a white rose on the altar next to Mary.
While I try not to think about it often, the experience affected me deeply, so when sex educator Erica Smith reposted a biting social commentary on how purity culture affects queer women from activist and speaker Rachel Klinger Cain, it all began to flood back. Rachel’s reflection on how “Christian purity culture keeps WLW ignorant of their queerness” because “Christian culture teaches that women aren’t sexually driven” resonated with me.
As a queer kid – who didn’t even know what “queer” meant or that queer women existed, the messaging from the retreat was especially toxic – arguing that not only was I broken in not wanting or being attracted to a man, but that I seemed to be the only one. This existed because of the fear that children could “turn gay” when LGBTQIA+ people were mentioned or represented. It’s a false idea – my existence is proof of it – that persists to this day, with a US Supreme Court decision this past month allowing parents to opt out of lessons including LGBTQIA+ stories.
I didn’t learn what purity culture was until college, when Ray Replogle, the only queer affirming wedding videographer at the time in Indiana, dared to say “purity culture” during the interview I conducted for the Muncie LGBTQ+ History Project. It opened up my world to understand how my experience resonated with others, and I began researching and writing about the histories of purity culture within modern Catholicism because the experiences I read online largely centred white, straight, cis Protestant women.
At the same time, I also began foregrounding and sharing the experiences of queer and trans people raised within purity culture systems, including my own. As I learned conducting oral history interviews with evangelical and Catholic queer and trans people and historical archival research, purity culture thrives not only on the erasure of queer bodies, identities, and expressions, but also, White supremacy, and Christian nationalism, specifically the Social Purity Movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the US and UK.
In fact, social purity philosophies deeply informed ableist, xenophobic and racist policy and legislation over the past century and continue to do so: most recently, a UK Supreme Court decision that denies the truth that trans women are women. This legislation seeks to qualify not only who can be women but who can profit from the privilege of white womanhood; social purity philosophies are deeply misogynistic and racist, and focus on the preservation of white women’s virginity at the expense of disabled, Black and POC, and queer women.
Justification for preserving a pure, White race fueled the mass institutionalisation, incarceration, and forced sterilisation of these very women for a century. This is a much older issue tied to the policing of women’s bodies and sexualities, and in order to deconstruct it, people like me need not only to document and call out these histories but also to form and spearhead specific communities and conversations for others raised in high-control religions.
As a result, I found that Erica, a sex educator working with people seeking out comprehensive and queer inclusive sex education later in life. Herself a queer woman, Erica runs the Purity Culture Dropout Community, connecting people who want to find friends with shared experiences. In this community, Smith runs programs about embracing queerness after high-control religion and teaching people comprehensive (queer-inclusive) sex education.
It’s a powerful model that I wanted to share this Pride season, as I, along with Erica and Rachel, reflect on how purity culture harms queer people, especially queer women. My hope is that by sharing my experience, and connecting people with resources, people know they are not alone and have the tools they need to understand (but not excuse) what they experienced.
Note: I am hopeful to this end to collect stories of queer people affected by purity culture and invite people to reach out to me as I pull together an archive of stories about how purity culture harms queer people, especially queer women. Feel free to reach out to me at eocieslik@gmail.com.
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