Growing Up Asexual In The Purity Culture Movement
By: Nicole Hankey
Tags: Sexuality, Purity Culture, Asexuality, Life, Exvangelical

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

I grew up in a homeschooling, conservative, evangelical household. I grew up believing homosexuality was a sin, along with premarital sex. I grew up with the full weight of purity culture on me, firmly convicted that not only did I need to save sex for marriage, I also needed to save my first kiss and every other remotely sexual act. At the same time, I was inundated with the patriarchal, “biblical” roles of wives and husbands, believing that while I was supposed to abstain from sex until marriage, once married I was expected to sexually please my husband as a part of my wifely duties.

The weird part is that I didn’t feel much of a pull towards sex itself. I didn’t typically feel what I could describe as sexual attraction. I felt every other kind of attraction — physical, romantic, intellectual, emotional, etc. — but not sexual. The thought of emotional intimacy, and even physical intimacy — kissing, holding hands, cuddling, making out — all of that excited and tempted me big time. But thinking of actual sex stuff didn’t excite me in the same way at all, in fact it almost repulsed me. That was of course a huge relief at the time, since I was so immersed in the purity culture movement. I felt enough guilt and shame as it was. I can remember only a handful of distinct times as a teenager where I actually felt what I could describe as sexual attraction towards someone. At the same time, I noticed that there was something different about me, and that I seemed to experience sexual feelings way less frequently than my peers. This began to concern me, since I felt so much pressure to (once married) please my husband sexually. I started to wonder, what if I couldn’t do that?

It didn’t seem strange to me that I made such clear distinctions between different kinds of attraction and romantic feelings. I had romantic, emotional, and physical crushes on lots of people, but they weren’t sexual. Even with my highschool boyfriends, sex was not something I wanted with them, and I had no trouble separating the lack of sexual interest from all the other ways I experienced attraction and everything else I wanted from the relationship.

Fast forward to my first sexual relationship. I didn’t want it to be sexual. I was very clear on my boundaries. Unfortunately, the person I was dating did not care at all for those boundaries and bulldozed right over them. So naturally, I blamed the fact that I wasn’t all that interested in having sex with him on the sexual trauma from early in our relationship. Once that relationship ended, I genuinely thought that my next relationship would be different.

I worked through the trauma, allowing myself to process it and heal. I worked hard to get rid of residual purity culture thoughts and to change my mindset towards sex. In all of this work, I didn’t notice that that’s all it was — a mindset shift — and not actual feelings. I still didn’t feel any more sexual attraction or desire for sex than I had in the past. Oblivious to this, I entered my next relationship expecting it to be an exciting, freeing, sexual adventure. Needless to say, that was not the case. Although I was attracted to my partner on multiple levels, I didn’t feel the sexual feelings I expected and wanted myself to feel. Even though I was further away from the trauma in my past, it didn’t seem to make a difference.

Slowly, I began to realize that there was something different about me on a fundamental level. I just don’t experience sexual attraction and desire the way most of the people around me do. I realized this by stumbling across a tweet that mentioned asexuality, which then prompted me to do a quick Google search, which then turned into a bit of a deep dive into multiple articles on the subject. While I’m still figuring out where exactly I lie on the spectrum, I am confident enough to claim the asexual label for myself.

Having language to finally be able to name and explain my experience has been so freeing. I only wish I had been able to process this sooner. I blame purity culture for keeping me from a space where I could safely discover this part of myself, instead of making me feel like there was something wrong with me.

If you’re interested in learning more about some of the harmful effects of purity culture in general, I’d recommend listening to this podcast episode on purity culture as a good starting point. Overall, while there has been and continues to be a lot of work done on exposing the damage inflicted by the purity culture movement, there is a lack of stories from those in the asexuality community and our unique experience within that movement. I hope to hear more stories like my own in the future.