Yuck-uck-uck-uck Purity Culture - a load of B*lls

[intaglio]

[font color="darkred" size="12"]Trigger Warning[/font]

This post driven by the the following article on Alternet
How Christian Purity Culture Enabled My Step Dad to Sexually Abuse Me

Posted here because certain posters on the Religion forum would regard it as attacking faith and only concerns a non-representative minority. Not posted in GD because when the MRAs try to say these girls are not really sexually abused, the host can shut them down.

My step-father began having problems getting erections when I was a senior in high school. How did I find out about this? He told me that he was using me to get an erection so that he could have sex with my mother.

/snip

In those incredibly awkward and galling conversations he reassured me repeatedly that he would never do anything to compromise my virginity. Using the tone of a person explaining something perfectly logical that should be obvious to anyone with the IQ of a mollusk, he explained that my mother had gained weight and it was killing his boners. I was young, slender and attractive and he saw nothing terribly wrong with using my body to kick-start the old engine and thoughts of me to keep it humming along.

/snip

My step-father couldn’t woo me using Purity Balls, because there were none at that point. Back then, fathers were encouraged to woo their daughters on regular dates. My step-father would bring me flowers, open doors for me and generally treat me like I was his much younger girlfriend. The example that he set for me while on these dates was supposed to keep me from picking bad guys in the future. The logic seemed to be that a man who opens your car door for you will never beat you, and if he pushes in your chair for you, he will never try to rape you.

/final snip

Eventually my step-father “admitted” that he had succumbed a bit to my “seductiveness” during the command-performance fashion shows. And he allowed that and he might have made his hugs last too long. But whatever mistakes he made were “between him and God.” I was considered the instigator, not the victim.

Other sites do not mention actual physical abuse but concentrate on the other type of damage caused by emotional abuse.
Defeating the Dragons - that dating your dad thing and Dispatches from the Culture Wars - She’s Got Big Purity Balls (not a title I like) but it does include a supremely creepy video.

With that caveat in place I have been left wondering how many of these poor girls trapped in this will have been inveigled into "helping" their "poor, weak" fathers/brothers/grandfathers/uncles and granting him some relief. In my life I have been lucky enough to have had many women and men trust me sufficiently to open the dark corners of their lives. A significant proportion of those people have been subject to sexual abuse by family members and I hardly think the patriarchal cesspit of purity culture will be immune.

Edit to add - xcrom and I must have been doing our posts at the same time