Which Purity Culture Myth Affects You?

Welcome to my quiz, Which purity culture myth affects you?

Purity culture offered myths and false promises that perpetuated shame in order to convince Christians to abstain from premarital sex.

Maybe you don’t currently agree with purity culture, but you grew up with those teachings. Unknowingly, the beliefs and messages of purity culture have permeated your thinking. It has shaped the way you think about sex and faith, and affects the way you view yourself and others.

How to take this quiz: You may want to take this quiz from your present vantage point to see what beliefs continue to affect you. Or you might pick an age or stage in your development (perhaps adolescence or college/young adulthood) and answer the questions as you would at that stage. Or do both--take it once for your current beliefs, and once for how you would have answered in a previous stage of life. After you get your results, I’ll help you understand that myth more, how it affects your thinking, and how you can work to change it.


Thank you for taking Which purity culture myth affects you?

Enter your contact information to find out your score and get a copy of your results sent to you.

To learn more about how to deconstruct the myths of purity culture and reconstruct a healthy sexual ethic, visit http://www.DrCamden.com



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9 thoughts on “Which Purity Culture Myth Affects You?

  1. Your appearance on KevOnStage & MrsKevOnstage pod cast really blessed me! It was refreshing to learn I’m not alone in this quest to rid my mind of myths promised by purity.

  2. Quizzes lack the nuance that makes it possible to demonstrate a healthy view of faith & sexuality. This exercise was pointless.

    1. Hi Jess, you’re right that all quizzes do lack nuance! My quiz is meant to provoke thought and get you thinking about the myths and how you might still believe in them. So if it provoked thought, then it wasn’t pointless!

    2. We should ALL, women and men alike, always aim for purity in every area of our lives, not just sexuality. When we miss the mark there is forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep aiming for God’s standard. No, it doesn’t mean God will give us a fairytale life if we obey, look at Job, but sin separates us from God. As David prayed in Psalms 51: Against you and you only have I sinned” it’s the same with us. David repented and the relationship was restored. Sin is sin and all sin separates. It is always right to tell people there are consequences for sin. We can’t control the consequences but we can learn to have self control when we are tempted. And we can always seek reconciliation and restoration.

  3. I just finished the quiz and checked agree with every question. Each question I read brought a memory of my experience in church youth group lessons.
    Wow! Now I need to figure out how I want to teach my children.

  4. I took this quiz twice – once pretending I was my teenaged self and once more as I am today, much more jaded after 10 years of struggling with physical intimacy. It was interesting to see how the scores were different and where I might still need work.

    1. Yes, I hear that a lot from people who take it twice. It is interesting to see how far you’ve come!

  5. I was introduced to the whole purity culture nonsense by a former friend at 20. We’d met at 14, lost contact for 5 years. In those 5 years I realised that I was bisexual, though due to having a sex negative, highly controlling (and ironically atheist) mother, I did not ever have the opportunity to deeply explore dating women.
    The former friend introduced me to not only purity culture in a highly extreme form (as in, not even thinking about the opposite sex or about marriage or even holding hands when dating–preferably, having a man from church ask my father […who, I might add, molested me for the first five years of life, and was ALSO an atheist…] for my hand in marriage, having a handful of supervised meetings with the guy, and then marrying him after 6 months) but biblical womanhood.
    I still struggle with both biblical womanhood (which sucks, because I am a housewife, and I really DO love what I do, but the culture around it is so toxic that I feel like I’m supposed to be a doormat for my husband, who is quite egalitarian and handsome and charming) and purity culture (mostly around ideas of modesty; I have lost count of the number of times I’ve worn layers upon layers in the hottest part of summer, and have ended up getting badly sick in the heat).
    After all every Christian I’ve know has insisted that suffering is somehow good. I got excommunicated after my first spouse got busted for child p*rn, because I divorced him; said friend doesn’t want to have anything to do with me now because it’s easier to take my mother’s side, the one who covered up the abuse with false mental health diagnoses, and after all, I’m SO mentally ill. /sarcasm
    Anyway I’m going with my husband to the beach today, and we’re going to a proper nightclub for the first time tonight. I’m going to wear something akin to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears circa 2003. I’m 38 now so that gives an idea of the time period.
    All I can say is NO MORE BARLOW GIRL lololol. How narcissistic is it to go around bragging that you’re ‘not your average girl’ because you decided to just wait for God to mail order a husband to your door.

  6. Thank you for the quiz, I just heard you on Dr. Julie Hanks podcast and thought you were great. I’m an active life long member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. I’ve heard Dr. Hanks talk about fairy tale myth and flipped switch myth before so I’m sure they are common among my religion but they seem so weird to me. I got a zero for both of those. I am having a hard time thinking back to anything that could have made anyone think those were true. Thank you again!

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