A recent study published in the journal Sociology of Religion has revealed a connection between adherence to purity culture ideals and increased rates of sexual pain disorders among white American Christian women. The study found that belief in certain purity culture principles was linked to both higher rates of sexual pain and lower satisfaction in marriages. However, women who had never internalized these beliefs tended to have more satisfying relationships.
Purity culture gained prominence in American evangelical circles during the 1990s and 2000s. The movement emphasizes strict sexual abstinence before marriage and advocates for traditional gender roles within marriage. The ideology is centered around maintaining a woman’s “purity,” often framing premarital sex as damaging to a woman’s spiritual and physical well-being. This movement promotes the idea that women should preserve themselves as “gifts” for their husbands, discouraging behaviors deemed “provocative” to prevent inciting male desire.
In marriage, purity culture often portrays women as responsible for fulfilling their husbands’ sexual needs, teaching that it’s a wife’s duty to be constantly available to prevent marital problems. These teachings are frequently accompanied by metaphors, such as comparing women who have had premarital sex to “chewed-up gum” or “crumpled petals,” which can foster shame and guilt around sexuality, particularly for women.
The motivation behind the new study was to investigate the long-term effects of purity culture teachings on married women, specifically exploring the impacts on marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and sexual pain disorders. While purity culture’s rhetoric often focuses on abstinence and “saving oneself” for marriage, these teachings extend well beyond the wedding day, affecting how women view sex and their roles within marriage. Researchers Joanna Sawatsky, Rebecca Lindenbach, Sheila Wray Gregoire, and Keith Gregoire saw an important gap in understanding how these beliefs impact married women’s experiences.
“Sheila Gregoire has been a prolific blogger, speaker, and writer in the evangelical marriage and sex space for over a decade, and Rebecca and I worked on her website, too,” explained Sawatsky, the research coordinator at Bare Marriage and co-author of The Great Sex Rescue.
“In January of 2019, we actually read for the first time some of the best-selling Christian marriage and sex resources and were appalled to see how many teachings in these books completely erased women’s sexuality, made sex into a power struggle, and presented men as sexually uncontrollable beings. It made us concerned that much of the advice given in these circles makes marriage and sex worse, not better, and we decided to do a research study to test our hypothesis.”
The study included a large sample of 5,489 white American Christian women recruited through snowball sampling, aiming to explore the impact of purity culture beliefs on marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and experiences of sexual pain disorders. This sample consisted of mostly white women who identified as evangelical Christians and regularly attended church, reflecting the demographic that purity culture primarily targets.
The researchers assessed participants’ past and current beliefs in various purity culture tropes and measured these beliefs in relation to three key outcomes: marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and sexual pain disorders, such as vaginismus and vulvodynia, which are conditions that cause pain during sex without clear physical causes.
To examine the impact of purity culture beliefs, the study focused on six main tropes commonly found in evangelical teachings. These included “gatekeeping” (the belief that women must be modest to curb male sexual desire), “perpetual lust” (the idea that men are inherently lustful and women must accommodate this), and “soul ties” (the belief that premarital sex creates lasting bonds that damage future relationships).
Other tropes involved in the study addressed women’s roles in marriage, such as the “obligation sex” trope, which suggests that a wife must provide sex to maintain her husband’s happiness and fidelity, and “sexual methadone,” which implies that women should engage in sexual activities to prevent their husbands from seeking satisfaction outside the marriage. Participants rated their agreement with each belief at two different stages: during adolescence (often high school) or engagement (before marriage) and in the present.
By comparing participants’ reported beliefs at these two points, the researchers were able to determine who had retained, rejected, or never held these beliefs. For instance, women who reported high agreement with a trope during adolescence but low or no agreement currently were categorized as having “deconstructed” that belief.
The findings showed that belief in these purity culture tropes, especially during adolescence and early adulthood, was linked to higher rates of sexual pain disorders, particularly among women who had since deconstructed these beliefs. For example, women who believed in the concept of “soul ties” during high school were more likely to experience vaginismus, which causes involuntary muscle tightening and painful intercourse.
The researchers suggested that the mental and emotional stress associated with purity culture teachings—such as viewing sex as risky or sinful—could contribute to a trauma-like response in the body, manifesting as sexual pain disorders. “Seeing sex as a female obligation and a male entitlement leads to horrible sex, frankly,” Sawatsky told PsyPost. “It’s highly destructive to women’s marital and sexual satisfaction and is even associated with higher rates of sexual pain disorders.”
When it came to marital and sexual satisfaction, the findings were nuanced. Women who maintained purity culture beliefs generally reported lower sexual and marital satisfaction, especially if their beliefs revolved around sexual gatekeeping and perpetual lust. But those who deconstructed coercive beliefs, such as the idea of sex as a wife’s obligation, often had lower marital satisfaction compared to women who still adhered to these ideals. Women who never believed these tropes had the highest levels of marital and sexual satisfaction, suggesting a protective effect for women who never internalized purity culture teachings.
“Deconstruction is a really ‘sexy’ term regarding American Christianity these days, especially white American evangelicalism,” Sawatsky explained. “It’s typically framed in black or white terms: deconstructing is good because it means a personal quest for truth or deconstructing is bad because it provides an excuse to act outside the norms of religious communities. And of course that can come with a lot of baggage about who is ‘better’–it can essentially become a test of personal righteousness in religious spaces.”
“We actually found a mixed result. Deconstructing some purity culture tropes (e.g., all men are perpetually lusting) was associated with better outcomes while deconstructing others (e.g., that divorce is acceptable in cases other than affairs) was associated with worse outcomes. And that makes sense — humans are rational beings who will question beliefs that no longer serve them, but retain beliefs that are consistent with their environment.”
“People in happy marriages don’t have much impetus to question whether or not divorce is OK, but that question is vital for a woman in an abusive marriage,” Sawatsky explained. “Conversely, happily married wives to excellent, loving, devoted husbands will naturally be more likely to question beliefs about all men being sexually predatory because it challenges her lived experience with a good man; whereas women in bad marriages whose husbands are, frankly, problematic, will have no reason to discard a belief that tells her men cannot be trusted.”
“We feel these findings offer an interesting look into survivorship bias, and it adds context to the ‘why’ behind deconstruction that is so heavily contested.”
Overall, the study highlights the potential consequences of purity culture beliefs on women’s health, relationships, and self-perceptions, suggesting that these beliefs can have lasting impacts well into married life.
“A lot of people are unraveling purity culture right now — there are whole docuseries on YouTube about purity balls and purity rings and ‘True Love Waits’ rallies,” Sawatsky said. “There are podcasts on the topic galore. But what we want people to understand is that purity culture wasn’t just about telling kids ‘don’t have sex,’ but also included teachings to married women that told them, ‘You can’t say no anymore because it’s your job to meet his needs.’ Whole generations of women had their ability to consent eroded by threats that their husbands would have affairs or that they’d be failing in God’s eyes if they didn’t have sex every time their husbands wanted it. If she can’t say ‘no’ she also can’t truly say ‘yes.’”
“While our findings are most relevant to those who were or are a part of conservative religious communities, especially American evangelicals, we hope that the broader conversations about how consent can be undermined by misogynistic tropes can be spurred on by our research.”
As with any research, there are some limitations to consider. The study’s findings are correlational, meaning they highlight associations but do not confirm cause-and-effect relationships. Additionally, while the focus on white women aligns with the demographics most targeted by purity culture, the study does not address the potentially unique experiences of women of color within evangelical circles, where racialized notions of purity may add further complexities to these outcomes.
“We would love for someone to replicate our findings specifically with non-white samples,” Sawatsky told PsyPost. “There have been some amazing articles put out recently about the effects of purity culture within a Black context that have found similar trends as ours, but have not looked specifically at sexual pain.”
The researchers are hopeful that their findings will inspire meaningful changes in both religious teachings and the treatment of sexual health issues among women.
“What we’d love to see come from this research is threefold: (1) religious leaders simply must stop talking about sex as something that women give and men take. It’s outdated, promotes marital rape, and removes a woman’s ability to really enjoy her own sexuality since it turns sex into a male entitlement and female obligation. (2) We have had wonderful experiences working with pelvic floor physiotherapists in disseminating this research, and we hope that in the future women who experience sexual pain or discomfort are quick to seek and receive treatment that is consent-focused.”
“And finally, (3) we hope that the larger takeaway within the evangelical publishing world is that our books simply must be held to a higher standard. It’s ridiculous that this teaching has been so widespread when you consider that none of them are based in peer-review research and some of the best-selling books have zero studies in their references. We simply need a higher standard when it comes to what is passed off as advice in religious circles.”
The researchers also highlighted the severe lack of research on sexual pain disorders among women, describing them as “criminally under-represented in the literature.”
“Seriously, go to PubMed and search ‘vaginismus’ and ‘erectile dysfunction’ and look at the discrepancy,” Sawatsky explained. “Higher rates of sexual pain disorders in conservative religious women were first identified in the 1970s – but there has been very little research done to date on why this trend occurs, or even how best to treat sexual pain disorders in conservative religious women.”
“Pain disorders are often discovered the first time a woman tries to have penetrative sex, and that can be very traumatic, especially considering how few women even know that sexual pain disorders exist beforehand. Our hope is that vaginismus and sexual pain become talked about more openly so that women are empowered to seek treatment, and don’t force themselves to have painful sex over and over again because they don’t feel there’s any hope.”
The study, “Sanctified Sexism: Effects of Purity Culture Tropes on White Christian Women’s Marital and Sexual Satisfaction and Experience of Sexual Pain,” was published online on November 1, 2024.
