In this episode, we continue our discussion around "Purity Culture" by exploring the ways it is used as a method of control—particularly the control of women. We can see this logic of control extend to every form of oppression as Purity Culture serves to reinforce white supremacy, Christian supremacy, patriarchy, and more.

Purity Culture" emerged in the 1990s as conservative Christians sought to promote sexual abstinence before marriage. It was, however, part of a larger religious tendency to see correctness or "doing the right things the right way" as the core of spirituality.

We can see this broader, deeply performative, tendency operative in many places, even well outside conservative Christian spaces. And, in many of those places, it becomes a suffocating approach to life that subordinates life to an unhealthy ideal.

Part two of a three-part series.