Attached below is my presentation on the complexities of purity culture, specifically in the Evangelical church, and how this culture influences hook-up culture in the United States (specifically in relation to women). Both of these cultures are incredibly harmful to women. While they perpetuate very different standards for women in the U.S. they are both influenced by one another. I hope my presentation along with some student testimonials will shed some light on the complexities and dangers these cultures present and where they respectively need to change. Enjoy my presentation!
You wrote: “A study published in 2009 found that the sexual behavior of teens who had taken a purity pledge does not differ from that of closely matched non-pledgers. (Five years after the pledge, 82 percent of pledgers denied having ever pledged).” This is completely unsurprising to me. I always have found it hard to believe that so many young Americans are following through on their promises to wait until marriage, though I believe many originally intended to. It reminds me of how many people deny ever having masturbated, especially among certain cultures and religious groups. 15.85% of Americans deny ever masturbating, with older people being significantly more likely to deny ever having masturbated than those under 35, because of the increased stigma attached masturbation in the past, despite the elderly having had much more time to have tried masturbation at least once. Fewer than ten percent of Brazilians deny ever masturbating, compared to more than forty percent of Kenyans. in some countries, a clear double standard of masturbatory stigma is evident, like in China, where men were 41⅔% more likely than women to admit ever having masturbated.
Reading your presentation makes me wonder how many people lie and say they have never had sex in order to conform to their cultural or religious expectation of abstinence.
I was appalled reading the reports of people saying their partners did not care about their sexual pleasure! Who would continue seeing someone like that, if they weren’t putting in the work to pleasure their partner. I guess if it were just a one-time thing, maybe the men didn’t care and were okay being selfish because they weren’t going to see the partner again. Upon further googling, my hypothesis was confirmed: women are much more likely to orgasm with a partner they have known longer, and least likely to orgasm with a one-time partner. Good presentation, I learned a lot!
Jaden, I loved your presentation! You did a great job breaking down what purity culture and hookup culture are, and gave really thorough background on how they came to be. I definitely learned a lot from your project, I had no idea purity culture really took off in the 1990s and that Southern Baptists came up with the “purity pledge” to try and stop people from having sex. It was really interesting to see that the research shows these purity pledges actually have no effect in stopping the transmission of infectious disease, and to see all the negative effects that purity culture has on women especially. Your section on student experiences with hookup culture at UofR was also really interesting! I thought ending with how we can uplift women who have been affected by purity/hookup culture was a great touch! Great work overall!
Jaden, your presentation was very informative and crucial I feel to see how purity culture influences hook-up culture in the United States. I really liked how you included two separate definitions of what purity culture is in an Evangelical Christian definition and Feminist approach/opinion to the definition. It was also interesting to see the commonality between hook-up culture and purity culture on where both create an unhealthy cycle of women basing their worth on sex. I agree and it does make sense when you mentioned how queer people do not exist within purity culture because it mostly applies to cisgender straight women who are expected to uphold these traditional stereotypes. I also really appreciated that you included a slide on “How to Uplift Women Affected by Purity/Hook-Up Culture” because its important to not only talk about the topic itself but also how to resolve the issue. Concludingly, I do feel that you did reach your goal in shedding some light on the complexities and dangers that both purity and hook-up culture presents.
I really like how you present hookup culture and purity culture almost as sexual extremes, because it can often feel like people have to conform to one or the other when there’s really so much space between the two. I find it especially interesting how you mention that purity culture and hookup culture are actually very similar in that they both create unattainable standards for how women “should” behave. It seems that people often turn to hookup culture as an escape or rebellion from purity culture, which in theory might seem liberating, but based on your presentation, hookup culture can be equally as harmful. Both cultures reduce the value of women to their bodies, and your presentation does a really good job of exploring how women are impacted by them.
I had never really thought about how purity culture and hook-up culture are interlinked, but after hearing your presentation, it makes so much sense!! I genuinely learned so much about purity culture and it’s history. It’s crazy to think about how engrained purity culture is on society that it has impacted something like hook-up culture, which stands for so many things that purity culture detests. I have noticed, however, that with things as negative and repressive as purity culture, the response tends to be the direct opposite – there can never seem to be a happy medium. I also really enjoyed your section talking to U of R students about their experiences with hook-up culture on campus. Overall, this project was both really informative and fun!!
I absolutely loved your presentation! It was incredibly interesting to hear about given that we both did our project on purity culture. I thought it was so interesting that you pointed out how intertwined purity culture and hook-up culture are. Prior to your presentation well I would have thought the two were connected in some way I could not have guessed how intertwined they actually are. I definitely think this speaks to the overall shame over women’s bodies, which is so greatly intertwined with religious beliefs. Overall this was an awesome presentation!
Hi Jaden! I really loved your presentation. Hookup culture and purity culture are both two really impactful and interconnected aspects of society, especially on college campuses and even in the political scene like you mentioned. Thank you for emphasizing that although women can enjoy hookups, they can at the same time, acknowledge its toxicity. I think, unfortunately, there are a lot of men who only have a surface level understanding of consent. I wish more people were taught that a yes isn’t really a yes if they were pressured into it. The way you related purity culture to men thinking it’s “hotter” to take a woman’s virginity was also really interesting to me. Thank you for including the section at the end on uplifting women. Your presentation was very meaningful and informational.
I thought your presentation was really well done. The contrast between purity culture and hookup culture was made very clear, while also introducing how the two very different constructs can have similarly harmful effects on individuals who have been involved in either. I think the inclusion of a few interview questions was wonderful and it really brought a deeper level of reality to the project.
Amazingly informative project! I think you took an interesting approach to handling one of the many factors that might have influenced hook-up culture as we know it today, since it seems to be of great daily impact. I especially appreciate the emphasis on how it leads to the ill-treatment of women under hook-up culture as it aims to serve men. Although, at this university the issue might seem more lowkey, it continues to be omnipresent through student experiences and the unspoken expectations. I love that you do not necessarily argue that hook-up culture is completely negative but rather provide ways in which it can potentially serve and uplift women. I wonder whether hook-up culture would continue to exist after it stops placing men at the top of the hierarchy. Great work!
Your presentation was very informative! I’m honestly not surprised that purity pledges tend to be ineffective. While I personally never had to sign a purity pledge, my school did have the DARE program and made us sign pledges to never do drugs. I definitely don’t think that determined whether or not people eventually did do drugs or drank. I really liked how you brought together both purity culture and hookup culture even though many people would think that they are complete opposites of each other. I also liked how you included the intersection of purity culture and US/Right-Wing extremist culture and how purity culture and hookup culture can both be very harmful to women. Great job!
I think it’s so crazy how Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers and all of the other Disney channel stars were (most likely) told to wear the purity rings because the producers know how much persuasion celebrities have on the viewers of their shows. Your explanation about how purity cultures affects hook-up culture was so interesting and well developed. I think it’s so important how you pointed out that both cultures disadvantage women by providing an unachievable image of what a woman should is so women can never win under either culture. Thank you so much for sharing this !!
I loved your project! I found your quotes from students here to be so insightful as I had never really given consideration to how the influence of purity culture extends so far into hook up culture and how such ideas still play a role in the way people think about casual sex. I was completely disgusted to see the quote about finding it “much hotter to be with a girl who was ‘untouched’.” This really made me reflect on my own experiences on this campus in regards to hook up culture and the men who I have hooked up with.
Jaden, I really enjoyed your presentation! Even though they appear to be diametrically opposed on the surface, purity culture and hookup culture are really just two sides of the same coin, and often feed into one another. I really appreciated the interviews that you did, as they provided a real look into the often negative experiences that women tend to have with hookup culture. The answers about consent were especially interesting, as consent is something that a lot of men do not understand well, and these answers made it apparent that they really have a hard time grasping consent within the context of hookups. When your interviewee reflected on how she was often coerced into consent, I was reminded a lot of previous experiences I’ve had with men within a relationship setting in which they struggle to understand that “I don’t know” really means “no,” so I can only imagine how much worse it is within the context of hookups with someone you do not know.
I absolutely loved this presentation! I had no idea about the origins of purity culture, so this was very informative. I’ve experienced purity culture as an unspoken rule not to have sex before marriage, so it was interesting to learn about the religious basis in Christianity for purity culture.
I also really liked how you included student’s experiences with hooking up with men on this campus. The quote about men on this campus not knowing what they were doing and having a sense of cockiness about them for no reason was pretty funny, but also sad and unfortunate because it’s clear many men in college don’t understand why female pleasure is important or how to build true intimacy in any way.