NPR Fresh Air Interview With Linda Kay Klein -- Evangelical soiled Oreos are regarded in the same way as Mormon licked cupcakes. Girls are taught to be intellectually inferior and sexually untempting to prevent "sexually weak" boys and young men from losing their way...

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/18/648737143/memoirist-evangelical-purity-movement-sees-womens-bodies-as-a-threat



When Linda Kay Klein was 13, she joined an evangelical church that prized sexual "purity" and taught that men and boys were sexually weak.

According to Klein's faith, girls and women were responsible for keeping male sexual desire in check by wearing modest clothing, maintaining a sexless mind and body and taking a "purity pledge," in which they promised to remain virgins until marriage.

Looking back now, Klein says, "It was all about how [a woman] needed to be a good Christian by protecting them from the threat that is you — the threat that is your body. The threat that is your sexuality."

Klein says the central tenant of the purity movement is to delay the age at which young people first have sex. But in practice, she says, the movement is most effective at stifling women's sexuality and creating a "deep, long-lasting shame" among its practitioners.

Because she was a curvy teen, Klein was often chastised for not being modest enough. Even after leaving the church when she was in her 20s, Klein continued to experience anxiety and shame about her body and sexuality.

"When I left, I thought that I was going to be completely free of sexual shame and fear and anxiety," she says. Instead, she says, "I had so internalized the sexual shaming, that I no longer needed external shamers. ... I was more than capable of shaming myself."

Klein is the founder of Break Free Together, an organization that tries to help people escape the sexual shame from their upbringing. Her new memoir is Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2018 02:36PM by anybody.

back in the late 1960s, early 1970s. My ex doesn't believe me.

We were also taught we wouldn't like sex, but it was our job to keep our men happy so they wouldn't stray.

When my ex cheated on me, a "good friend," who was a bishop at the time, told me that I must not have been giving him enough sex and that is why he cheated. So I asked gays on this board how much straight sex does a gay need in order to not want sex with men. Well, we all should know that answer I got.

The gays on this board finally let me know IT WASN'T MY FAULT. Mormons still try to blame me for the fact my ex is gay. They still believe it is a choice. Shocks the hell out of me.

I've been in rooms full of gay men. It was if I didn't exist. As an over six feet tall female I usually get more attention than I know what to do with but I was totally invisible to them. They simply aren't interested in females. Why this is news to some people I don't know...

anybody Wrote:
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> Why this is
> news to some people I don't know...

Because they are not gay and question the existence of anything that isn't in their experience.

As a child I was and still am attracted to both men and women sexually. I didn't understand my homosexual side because I was never taught it was possible. I just thought that liked to look at anyone nude.

Didn't mean to take this thread in a different direction. BUT the way the leaders dealt with me was that they thought of he just had sex with a woman, he'd know what he was missing and never go back. I knew they were wrong. For one, I knew he wasn't attracted to me. I at least had dated some nonmormons who showed they desired me, not so with the mormon guys I dated. My ex at the time was the only gay I knew of or was aware of at the time. The bishop of the ward thought I was the prettiest girl in the ward and he couldn't figure out why I wasn't married at age 25. Well, I turned down 3 nonmormons, but the mormons didn't like me. I guess I was too independent or didn't WORSHIP them.

Anyway, I was taught exactly what this woman is saying and the leaders used their "authority" over me and keeping me chaste all my life and then turned it around and told me I should experiment with my gay boyfriend so we could see if he could be turned on. Even gave him assignments and told him NOT to tell me, but he did. We did next to nothing of what they told us. They said we could do everything but intercourse and they'd still give us a TR to get married, but I couldn't deal with that, so they proceeded to try destroying what they had taught me to be--chaste. It was a mind fuck I can't even begin to explain.

Well, now I'm with the first nonmormon who asked me to marry him when I was 20 and I'm 61. Been together 13 years now. He is all STRAIGHT and I know it. And I knew it then.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2018 06:33PM by cl2.

It holds Virgin Mother Mary up as the ultimate role model for women -a woman who had a perfect child (impossible) with out ever having to have sex (impossible). Screwing with the female brain.

Which causes this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex

She got knocked up before she was even married. God to Jehova: “Remind me not to let you host the next party.”

I'm not so sure that it is accurate to say that it makes them "subservient to men." Seems like a non-sequitur. Sounds more like it makes them contemptuous toward men/boys.

If the girls are taught to believe that men/boys are sexually weak, mentally inferior and fragile egos, leading men/boys to be prone to destructive behavior and that the girls essentially always have to be the adult in the room, using various strategies to manage the men/boys, even if it requires the girls to pretend to be less capable than they really are in order to keep the boys self-esteem from cratering. Kind of like the way a parent will let a small child win at basketball to make the child feel confident or praise a crappy crayon drawing to encourage the child to keep trying.

I'm not so sure that it is accurate to say that it makes them "subservient to men." Seems like a non-sequitur. Sounds more like it makes them contemptuous toward men/boys.

If the girls are taught to believe that men/boys are sexually weak, mentally inferior and have fragile egos, leading men/boys to be prone to destructive behavior, and that the girls therefore essentially always have to be "the adult in the room", using various strategies to manage the men/boys, even if it requires the girls to give less expression to their own sexuality and pretend to be less capable than they really are in order to keep the boys from acting out and keep the boys' self-esteem from cratering...then in this way of looking at female-male relationships, it's the males who come off looking like inferior beings. Physically strong, maybe, but sexually, mentally and morally weak.

So the girls are taught to act kind of like the way a parent will in letting a small child win at basketball to make the child feel confident or praising a crappy crayon drawing to encourage the child to keep trying or keeping the ice cream hidden until the child has first finished eating his spinach and broccoli.

The "shame" referred to here is when some leader (not men in general) is essentially chastising the girls for not being more responsible (as the adult in the room) in taking precautions to avoid triggering negative behavior in sexually weak, childish men.

It reminds me of the way that Jackson Galaxy (of "My Cat from Hell" fame) chastises cat owners for not being more responsible in learning how to avoid doing things that are likely to trigger negative behaviors in their cats. The analogy is that these girls are essentially in the position of being the cat owners and the boys are feral cats who have no self control or self awareness. That seem like something that is more in the direction of contempt and condescension towards boys, not subservience. But, in a way, I guess that you could say that a cat owner that is altering her behavior in order to better manage her cat's behavior is "subservient" to her cat.

Believe me that the emphasis on sexual purity greatly damages men, too.

I suffered a lot of needless guilt growing up, and I remained a virgin until my wedding day when I was 28 years old. It turns out I married somewhere that I am not sexually compatible with.

What a mistake to teach total chastity before marriage!

Boyd K Pecker Wrote:
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> What a mistake to teach total chastity before
> marriage!

Amen. You are basically asking for sexual dissatisfaction unless by some miracle two virgins can get lots of experience without intercourse.