“While each of these sources had varying nuances on how and why premarital sex could and should be avoided, one of the central tenets was that men could not be counted on to control themselves. The responsibility to avoid sex would fall squarely on female shoulders. This only worked because, in this belief system, women do not experience sexual desire.”

As a teen girl, grown men would tell me with a chuckle that I simply could not understand “what teenage boys are like.”

Never did these men pause to wonder what it is like to be a teenage girl.

The assumption was that the female virgin simply did not desire sex. If someone did express sexual desire (a very bold thing to admit to) she was told that it was not sex that she desired, but the “emotional closeness.” Men enjoyed sex. Women enjoyed cuddling afterward.

Of course, all of that shame and ignorance about sex is supposed to simply melt away as an Evangelical woman says her wedding vows. Instantly sex goes from forbidden to mandatory. (Is there anything more antithetical to desire than obligation?)

Evangelical Purity Culture is an exercise in controlling female sexual desire.

Source: How Evangelical Purity Culture Sacrifices Female Pleasure — Fundamentally Free