Thank God for Vaginismus? The Evangelical Discourse of Purity Culture and its Material Consequences for the Forming of Female Bodies

17 September, 2025

 Religious Matters

Blog by Indy Booij

“On my 13th birthday, my parents escorted me to a candlelight dinner and presented me with the finest ring I had yet had the privilege to call mine. Accepting it meant I promised to stay a virgin until my wedding night – to keep my mind innocent, my body untouched, my soul blameless – so that I could one day present my husband with the ultimate gift. Protecting my purity was a daily topic in my devout Christian household, located a few rusty miles outside of Milwaukee.” 1

  • Amy Deneson in The Guardian 

“I have vaginismus now. Thanks, purity culture . . . Just feeling kinda sad and cheated and like this could’ve been avoided if I’d been taught differently. I dedicated my youth to honoring these strict purity rules to the best of my ability and feel totally betrayed.” 2

  • Anonymised user on Reddit 

These quotes are merely two examples of the numerous women whose bodies, minds and lives have been formed by purity culture. Unlike many, these women decided not to remain silent about their experiences. Many of them remain silent, or silenced, about the impact of the purity culture in fundamentalist Christian environments on their lives. 3 

Purity culture emerged in the 1990s in the United States as a Christian evangelical movement emphasising abstinence before heterosexual marriage, more specifically a ‘biblical marriage relationship (House and Moslener 2023, 83-91). It quickly spread globally and became more and more institutionalised through books, youth group curricula, and public teachings, often targeting young people. Central to the movement is the notion of sexual “purity” as a moral and spiritual state, linked to bodily actions, dress, desire, and relational behaviour. Literature from various disciplines about the purity movement, primarily psychological works, focus on the effects of purity culture on the later sex lives of teens who grew up in purity culture.4  Increasingly, scholars have also drawn attention to the psychosomatic consequences of this culture, particularly for women. Psychological and interdisciplinary studies have identified correlations between religiosity and pain disorders such as vaginismus, often linked to dysfunctional sexual beliefs shaped by purity discourse, most notably, sexual shame and guilt (Joanna Sawatsky et al. 2024; McCoy 2022, 39; Jones 2025, 46).  Combining Mauss’ concept of techniques of the body and Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, I argue that purity culture is an embodied discourse that forms the (female) body, by creating techniques of the body that discipline the body in disruptive ways, possibly resulting in vaginismus.5  While western medicine often treats these women as individuals with a problem that only they themselves can fix, the prevalence of vaginismus among women shaped by a particular discourse is striking; with recent research suggesting that rates of vaginismus within purity culture are at least twice as high as those in the general female population ( Sawatsky, J., Lindenbach, R., & Gregoire, S. 2022; Sawatsky 2021). This pain, I argue, should be viewed as the embodiment of the discourse of purity culture. 

Mauss, in his work on Techniques of the Body, very briefly mentions sexuality as one of the seven categories of techniques of the body. According to Mauss, techniques of the body refer to how people in a particular society know how to use their bodies (I would say they have been conditioned to, or have learned to use their bodies instead of that they just know how to – a point Mauss later also expands on when discussing education, which refers to the ways people are taught to use their bodies in specific manners) (Mauss 1973, 70). When addressing the techniques of the body related to sex, Mauss states, “sexual techniques and sexual morals are closely related” (Mauss 1973, 85).

Considering the body techniques taught to young people within purity culture might shed light on this close relationship between techniques of the body and sexual morals. From a very young age, boys and girls are conditioned to deny the body in different ways. A striking example of this is the organization of ‘purity balls,’ which fathers attend with their teenage daughters. On this night, the teenage girls make a virginity pledge to their fathers, themselves and the community. As a material reminder of abstinence on their body, girls wear ‘purity rings’ on their fingers, promoted by groups such as True Love waits in the United States. These practices mimic marriage or commitment to the father, until the young women’s chastity is trusted to their future husbands, who will replace the purity ring by a wedding ring, marking the moment they are allowed to engage in sexual behaviour. The technique of the body in purity culture seems a negative one, a passive one, or in emic terms, one of abstinence and chastity. However, because the body keeps the score, the body will find a way to constitute alternate active techniques. 6The discourse may be negative (don’t do this, don’t engage in that), but the body deals with this in active ways as demonstrated in the work of trauma-theorist Bessel van der Kolk. Hence, the body will actively build strategies and techniques to process the message of sinful sex. As mentioned before, research has been indicating that vaginismus is more prevalent in Christian women than in other parts of the population, indicating that the (gendered) message of purity culture and the techniques of the body linked to this culture are being stored in the female body, perhaps even becoming an involuntary technique of the body, by internalizing it (Joanna Sawatsky et al. 2024; McCoy 2022, 39; Jones 2025, 46). Other studies have shown that women experiencing pain during intercourse, particularly those in environments characterized by authoritarian control and religiously fueled misinformation about sexuality, often do not report their pain to healthcare providers because they believe pain is a normal part of sex (Fadul et al. 2019, 80).

In their work Bodies that Matter Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most “material” dimension of sex and sexuality: the body (Butler 1993). Butler attempts to examine how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the “matter” of bodies, sex, and gender. In their analysis, Butler argues that ‘sex’ is not a fixed, static category, but rather that it is a reiterative process, whereby regulatory norms materialise ‘sex.’ This process is not a conscious adoption of a subject, but rather a repeated and bodily practice forced upon the subject (Butler 1993, 3). Performativity, a central notion in Butler’s work, is closely tied to discourse; in fact, it can be stated that it is the reiterative power of discourse (Butler 1993, 3). This reiterative power forms reality by materialising gendered and sexual subjectivities through repeated performance of norms, which is an unconscious and non-volitional process; the subject is formed through discourse, rather than choosing it; it is a forcible materialisation (Butler 1993, 1-3). Purity culture upholds the idea that women belong not to themselves, but either to their fathers or husbands and that their sexuality is not their own, but that of the community and of their head, who leads them in everything. This discourse is materialised in the body through its repeated performance. 

This process of performance, or the reiterative power of discourse, is visible in big and clear embodied rites of passage such as purity balls, marked by receiving purity rings. The process of performance is also materialized through the ‘smaller’ everyday ideas and practices of sexual purity and abstinence. 7Through reiteration of performing the discourse, the body comes to bear the gendered truth of the discourse, appearing to confirm it. Adolescents within purity culture are taught not to engage in any sexual behaviour; from thinking about sex, touching themselves, let alone touch each other. They are only taught that sex is dangerous territory and that one misstep means that sin will come and get you. The discourse is highly gendered, in a way that performance is different for men and women. Borrowing the term of emotional stickiness from Sarah Ahmed, helps to consider how sex becomes sticky with fear and shame, particularly for girls. Ahmed describes how emotions and affective states are not private states but circulate socially, “sticking” to objects and (gendered) bodies over time (Ahmed 2004, 12, 17).

The female body is ‘stuck with’ or connected to fear and shame. So once women within this discourse are ‘allowed’ sexual relations, which is on their wedding night, the female body and her pleasure, is not her own and not for her to enjoy. Men’s bodies are sticky with sexual desire, while that of women are sticky with fear, shame and sexual submissiveness to their husbands. Once their body is shutting down, excruciating in pain, women do not think to address this pain; women believe it is normal for their bodies formed in these discourses to have pain, to not enjoy sex (Fadul et al. 2019, 80). The body at this point, seems to sustain the discourse and reproduce it. Which in my reading, is what Judith Butler refers to as the reiterative structure of discourse, in which regulatory norms must be continuously repeated in order to appear natural. The body, then, becomes the site through which purity culture sustains itself: it appears to reflect innate truths about female sexuality, while in fact reproducing the discourse that enforces those truths. Is the female body then truly deficient, when it develops a pain disorder? Or is it in fact not broken at all, but responding and adapting to the very culture that forms her?

Butler’s concept of reiterative power, in my reading, raises the question about agency. This process of reiterative power is not a conscious adoption of a subject, but rather a repeated and bodily practice forced upon the subject, they argue (Butler 1993, 3). In other words, actions are not solely an individual choice, but are embodied discourses, within a specific tradition, where certain powers are at play. Combining this idea with Mauss’ concept of techniques of the body, I argue that vaginismus appears in the female body as a result of learned bodily techniques of the tradition (how to position and discipline the body and foremost, what not to do with the body). The embodied discourse of purity culture forms the body by disciplining it, resulting in involuntary psychosomatic states. Perhaps healing these would begin by approaching vaginismus not as a dysfunction of the individual body, but as the body keeping the score and developing techniques as it is formed through embodied discourse. 

References

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

Anonymised user. “I Have Vaginismus Now. Thanks, Purity Culture.” Reddit. r/Exvangelical, June 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/Exvangelical/comments/vo8exg/i_have_vaginismus_now_thanks_purity_culture/.

Brückner, Hannah, and Peter Bearman. “After the Promise: The STD Consequences of Adolescent Virginity Pledges.” The Journal of Adolescent Health: Official Publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 36, no. 4 (2005): 271–78.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge, 1993.

Deneson, Amy. “True Love Waits? The Story of My Purity Ring and Feeling like I Didn’t Have a Choice.” The Guardian, February 18, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/18/purity-ring-virginity-abstinence-sexual-education.

Fadul, Rosario, Rafael Garcia, Rosa Zapata-Boluda, Cayetano Aranda-Pastor, Lori Brotto, Tesifon Parron-Carreño, and Raquel Alarcon-Rodriguez. “Psychosocial Correlates of Vaginismus Diagnosis: A Case-Control Study.” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 45, no. 1 (2019): 73–83.

Gregoire, Sheila Wray, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky. The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended. Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

House, Kathryn, and Sara Moslener. “Evangelical Purity Culture and Its Discontents.” Theology & Sexuality 29, no. 2-3 (2023): 83-91.

Jones, Andreya. Deconstructing Purity Culture to Embrace Sexual Pleasure. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2025.

Mauss, Marcel. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70-88.

McCoy, Jessica Phillips. “Religious and Cultural Sexual Purity Ideologies, Pain-Related Female Sexual Dysfunction and Female Sexual Pain: A Scoping Review.” Thesis, The Ohio State University, July 18, 2022. 

Sawatsky, Joanna, Rebecca E. C. Love, Leah Payne, and Samuel L. Perry. “Sanctified Sexism: Effects of Purity Culture Tropes on White Christian Women’s Marital and Sexual Satisfaction and Experience of Sexual Pain.” Sociology of Religion, 2024. 

Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.

Indy Booij is a Religious Studies RMA student at Utrecht University, where she also obtained her BA in Religious Studies. Her research interest lies in the intersection of religion and sexuality; she is currently researching religious-based sex-shops, aiming to contribute towards challenging the prevalent religion-sex dichotomy. 

  1. Amy Deneson, “True Love Waits? The Story of My Purity Ring and Feeling like I Didn’t Have a Choice,” The Guardian, February 18, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/18/purity-ring-virginity-abstinence-sexual-education. ↩︎
  2. Anonymized user, “I Have Vaginismus Now. Thanks, Purity Culture,” Reddit, r/Exvangelical, June 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/Exvangelical/comments/vo8exg/i_have_vaginismus_now_thanks_purity_culture/. ↩︎
  3. I am aware that my analysis focuses on cisgender women and that this piece may not reflect the experience of gender nonconforming people who experienced purity culture. I recognize that purity discourse also impacts genderqueer people in different, or possibly similar ways. Since the discourse analysed in this blogpost is a highly gendered, binary framework and this analysis focuses on the experiences of cisgender women and the construction of gendered female bodies, experiences of genderqueer people may fall outside the limited scope of this blogpost.  ↩︎
  4. See, for instance, Hannah Brückner and Peter Bearman, “After the Promise: The STD Consequences of Adolescent Virginity Pledges,” The Journal of Adolescent Health: Official Publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 36, no. 4 (2005): 271–78.  ↩︎
  5. Vaginismus is a condition where the muscles around the vagina tighten up involuntarily when something tries to enter (like a tampon, finger, or during penetrative sex). This tightening can make penetration painful, or even impossible, even if the person wants it to happen. It is an automatic involuntary physical response, often linked to trauma, fear or other psychological or physical factors. ↩︎
  6. See, for instance,  Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Viking, 2014).  ↩︎
  7. I borrow the term “Rites of passage” from Arnold van Gennep, who introduced this idea as a framework to study rituals and transitions. Rites of passage are ceremonial or ritual processes that mark transitions between different stages of life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, or death. They have a three-phase structure: separation, liminality (transition), and incorporation. These stages reflect a movement from one social or ritual state to another. Les Rites de Passage, (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1909).  ↩︎