Purity rings, abstinence pledges, courting— Evangelical Christianity has a particular and peculiar stance on human sexuality. If you’re like me, you grew up surrounded by this “Purity Culture,” which relies on poorly sourced data, psychologically harmful misinformation, and carefully prooftexted bible verses. The effects of Purity Culture have been almost universally negative, and I wonder what it would look like for Christians to talk about sex more healthily. In each post in this series, I’ll give a misconception I heard growing up and offer a healthier counterpoint.

This week’s Purity Culture misconception:
“Guys, try not to masturbate all the time. Like, we know you will, but keep it within reason— like a couple of times a week max. Oh, and don’t look at porn. We don’t want you getting addicted to porn.”

And yes, bizarre and uncomfortable though they seem, these words come verbatim from my Purity Culture indoctrination as a teenager. Anywho…

Everything in purity culture revolves around personal piety, never relational or social consequences. This highly individualistic take on holiness not only messes up people’s understandings of personal morality; it robs teens of a framework for engaging larger social injustices. In the grand scheme of things, issues like mass incarceration and human trafficking are much bigger deals than our frequency of masturbation, but Purity Culture lasers in on the latter. This shortcoming is especially clear in the conversations about pornography, which completely overlook the frequent mistreatment of sex workers in favor of personal holiness. Purity Culture also skips over the part where porn can skew someone’s expectations of sex, which can be really detrimental to someone’s partners later on (again, an overlooked social consequence). Nope, the focus is entirely on keeping yourself pure.

Tragically, conversations about porn were also the only times I ever heard any reference to addiction in the Evangelical setting where I grew up (which is unfortunate since even those of us who didn’t use drugs and alcohol still knew where to find them). I applaud our churches for being gutsy enough to address some kind of addiction; I just think they picked the wrong one. Because more recent iterations of American Evangelicalism have engaged in programs like Celebrate Recovery, I hope this particular Purity Culture criticism has been left behind. Still, this emphasis on porn and personal piety plagued folks my age who grew up in Evangelicalism.

Maybe instead, we should say…
Listen, be careful about porn. Not only are the ethics of the industry pretty shady, but it may give you some weird ideas about sex. If you’ve already been watching it, make sure you’re being open with your partner and talking about the expectations it’s giving you. If you’re watching it frequently (i.e. many times a week or even daily), it may be time to pull a counselor into the conversation.

Porn is acting. It’s fake. It’s people on a set being paid to play out a scene with cameras rolling and some very awkward moments in between takes. If your assumptions about sex (positions, noises, whatever) come from porn, then sex will hold some major surprises for you. Also, not all porn is… um… ethically sourced. Some of the performers are there because of coercion or trafficking, and some aren’t even of legal age. Of course, even in the most ideal situations (consenting un-coerced adults being treated well and compensated fairly), there’s always the question of whether sex performed for an audience can ever really be ethical. And yeah, there’s the addiction component too. Abuse of porn really does rewire your brain, so porn should be regarded with caution.

I’ll admit this is an issue where I probably err on the prudish side; sex for an audience doesn’t really jive with my personal views on sex and intimacy, so while I support the fair treatment of sex workers, I’m not too gung-ho about the industry as a whole. At the same time, I’m not comfortable giving a sweeping condemnation or approval across all circumstances either, and I would urge people to consider for themselves where porn specifically and sex work in general fit into your sexual ethics. For those who choose to watch, be careful and consider the interpersonal and larger societal consequences. Monitor your consumption but also make sure you’re talking to someone regularly about your emotional and sexual health— ideally a counselor who can listen and advise without judgment. Porn is a complicated issue, and I don’t pretend to have all the right answers on this one. As always, honesty and destigmatization are crucial if we want to have real dialogue about porn’s effects on sexual health at the individual, interpersonal, and societal levels, so let’s start there and see where the conversation takes us.