Why do evangelical women see sex as a chore?
We’re doing a fun podcast today where I’m combining a whole bunch of different things that I’ve been wanting to talk about, and putting them together so that they tell a consistent story. At least that’s the plan!
We’re going to look at several new studies that show how moms affect their daughters’ sexual attitudes, and why sometimes kids can have inhibited sexual desire. And we’re going to look at studies that show that women are more concerned with men feeling good about sex than they are about actually having pleasure themselves. Then we’re going to tell several stories from readers and that I’ve seen on Instagram to wrap it all up in a bow!
Let’s see how purity culture affected women’s libido, and what we can do to stop the generational cycle.
Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:
Timeline of the Podcast
00:00 Welcome, introduction, & why you should join our Patreon group(hint: we read books!) 4:02 Exhibit A: The Three Types of Sexual Passion (Research Breakdown) 13:22 Exhibit B: The Somatic Psychologist’s Thread on Developmental Sexual Trauma 24:12 Wedding Night Statistics: What the Data Actually Shows 30:00 Exhibit C: Why Women Feel Pressure To Protect Male Egos 39:13 Exhibit D: What a critic’s Comment Says About Obligation Sex 59:35 We Want People To Have More In Their Marriages & Sex Lives 1:02:06 Resource Flowchart: Which Bare Marriage Resource Is Right for You? 1:04:58 Closing ThoughtsKey Talking Points
- The Three Sexual Passions — Research shows three types of sexual passion in adolescents; the healthiest (harmonious) is intrinsically motivated and values-based, while obsessive and inhibited passions are the result of both under and overregulation driven by external pressure—often modesty culture.
- Developmental Sexual Trauma Is Different from Event-Based Trauma — Being sexualized before you claim your own sexuality shapes the nervous system’s baseline, pairing arousal with danger long before marriage.
- Purity Culture Sexualizes Children — Examples like the Secret Keeper Girl curriculum and Josh Harris’s “shady little girl” framing show how evangelical culture projects adult sexual intentions onto children—especially girls of color.
- Women Fake Orgasms to Protect Fragile Male Ego — Studies show women who perceive their partner’s masculinity as precarious experience more anxiety, communicate less honestly about sex, and have fewer orgasms as a result. Books like Love & Respect and For Women Only actively reinforce this dynamic.
- The Wedding Night Statistics Are Stark — In the Marriage You Want survey, 87.3% of men orgasmed in their first sexual encounter vs. only 15% of women—because couples consistently prioritize his arousal over hers from the very start.
- Obligation Sex Makes the Problem Worse, Not Better — Women who frequently have unwanted sex develop aversion over time; the five factors that actually drive women’s desire (orgasm, emotional closeness, marital satisfaction, no porn use, no dysfunction) are what need addressing—not frequency quotas.
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Things Mentioned in the Podcast
THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse Survivors by Dr. Steven Tracy. How to refute it when Bible verses are weaponized!
TO SUPPORT US:
- Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work (and get access to the book club!)
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- Join our email list!
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Our Orgasm Course and Boost Your Libido Course
- Love and Respect Docu-Series
- Research Paper: “Sexual Passion in Adolescence: Examining Its Transmission Through Mothers”
- Research Paper: “Do Women Withhold Honest Sexual Communication When They Believe Their Partner’s Manhood Is Threatened?”
- Instagram Thread by Ally Jolie (somatic psychologist, UK)
- Podcast episode on men projecting sexual attention-seeking onto girls
- The Great Sex Rescue, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex or Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, and She Deserves Better
What do you think? Did purity culture cause developmental trauma for you? Can you relate to the letter writer? Let’s talk in the comments!
Transcript
Coming soon!
You mean Josh Howerton, not Harris. Howerton was the one who talked about how little girls in miniskirts were shady and worse than the devil.
Which tells me WAY too much about Josh Howerton’s sexual appetites.
Regarding the secular guy on the Instagram reel getting it when he said “it’s women’s bodies that are being entered,” there is this general rule in secular sex, which is “the person being penetrated is the one who calls the shots.” I guess that’s pretty much the opposite of complementarian sex, where the penetrator makes the final decision. Ugh, just writing that out makes me shiver.
Yes, and I’ve been cleaning up the mess for the past twenty years.
Purity Culture has made me a lot of money and hurt a lot of people that shouldn’t have been hurt. It makes an idol of virginity doesn’t care how messed up the children end up as long as they wait for the wedding night.
Another thing about purity culture is that I’ve seen it make a “super sin” regarding pre-marital sex, at least for girls. When we sin, fall, err, etc. we can get forgiveness. While purity culture teaches that we can be forgiven for pre-marital sex as well, they also say that when a girl has sex before marriage, she is forever “tainted” and less valued, and can never get that back, no matter what.
Thank you for tying these threads together. This episode reminded me of a trauma that I continue to experience every time I carry my purse.
When I was young my family attended a Mennonite Brethren (MB) church. There was a publication called the MB Herald that was delivered to our home and like most denominational publications it included a variety of articles, news, obituaries, and letters. In high school I remember flipping through the pages and reading a letter to the editor from a man and he was enraged that women dared to wear purses across their bodies, intentionally drawing men’s attention to their breasts. How dare they! How completely inappropriate and why could they not be more modest! Where were the church leaders?!
At that time (1980s), the style of purse was to have a long strap and you wore it across your body, so yes, for many girls and women the strap came across the middle of the chest. I worse purses like this all the time, just like every other girl in my youth group and at the public school I attended. I truly had no thought whatsoever that my purse wearing was a sexual activity. After that I was very self conscious of my purse. But if you have a long strap and wear it on one shoulder it tends to slip down. Was I supposed to use a granny purse like the Queen? Was I not supposed to carry a purse? As a young teenager I was flustered by this letter. My parents had never said anything and neither had our youth leaders. Was this letter reflective of all men, or was the writer a pervert?
It’s now almost 40y later and I literally think of that letter every time I wear a purse or bag that goes across my body. I’m just trying to function day to day, carrying my essentials like a wallet, phone, etc. I’m not trying to tempt anybody. But it is so sad that a man ‘told’ on himself and declared how he looked at women. And it’s sad that his lack of respect and objectification of women has continued to influence me with the most mundane activity of wearing a purse.
That’s such a good example! I remember some people told me that at youth group events when they were going places, the girls were told to put the shoulder strap of the seat belt behind them so it didn’t hug their breasts. That’s downright life threatening!
It’s absolutely insane.
” a letter to the editor from a man and he was enraged that women dared to wear purses across their bodies, intentionally drawing men’s attention to their breasts. How dare they!”
I think I know the letter-writer’s personal Kink.
Not surprising this was Mennonite, two steps removed from Amish, “the Plain People”.
The spectrum (told to me by an Anabaptist country preacher friend) goes like this:
* Mennonites are one step beyond Anabaptists.
* Old Order Mennonites are one step beyond Mennonites.
* Amish are one step beyond Old Order Mennonites.
* Old Order Amish are one step beyond Amish.
* It is impossible to go one step beyond Old Order Amish.
I do wonder how bullying by other children fits into the development of healthy or unhealthy sexuality. As a child, other children told me that nobody would ever find me attractive and I wonder how that’s affected me. Tangential to today’s topic but I imagine there were some interesting interactions with purity culture. Similarly I wonder how children being sexualised early, and internalising that, then affects their peers. Ie do we know whether or how a child or group of children who are told from a young age ‘she’ll be fighting off the boys when she’s older’ will transmit those views to peers?
I was constantly told how fat and unattractive I was/am, and it did a lot of damage. It was everything from not understanding why men were so eager to sleep with me and so upset when I wouldn’t, to not understanding the more subtle signals that genuinely nice men put out there.
“Did Purity Culture Cause Developmental Trauma?”
North American Christianese Culture causes Developmental Trauma in general.
Even short exposure time (like my 2 years) can do it.
This podcast made me think of a cartoon that I saw a long time ago. (Sorry, I would love to link to it, but I have no idea where I saw it!) Here’s the gist:
A couple is lying in bed together, post-intercourse. The man turns to the woman and asks, “How was the sex?”
A thought bubble appears above the woman’s head, and she starts to frantically think about what to say. “Well, it was pretty good, but I’m worried that if I tell him that he’ll get complacent and it will never get any better. So I can’t tell him it was good…but if I say it wasn’t good, he’ll be devastated. He’ll probably stop putting in any effort at all because he’ll feel so emasculated!”
The man asks again, “So…how was the sex?”
The woman cheerfully answers, “What sex?”
I feel like that sums up the anxiety and communication issues you were talking about!
Perfect!