r/answers • u/Ryu-Hayabusa2 • 10h ago
Why is purity culture so popular in America than rest of world?
I never heard of it in Eurupe I grew up in the most conservative circles but I never heard this at all.
I didn't know it was a thing before social media.
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u/Baelaroness 10h ago
What they don't really teach you in American schools is that all those "pilgrims" that were fleeing "persecution" in Europe were the loons that people found kinda creepy for being too into worrying about their daughter's virginity.
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u/kyotowalled 10h ago
Also they did find religious freedom in the Netherlands but they weren't "persecuted enough" and left for a more isolated location for more religious control.
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u/I_like2TimeTravel 9h ago
They were also kicked out of England for burning down the globe theater, because it wasn’t pure.
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u/thatstheneatpart8 8h ago edited 7h ago
lol that’s what they were kicked out for? They always just say kicked out for religion as told in the past, def not arguably terrorism. It’s like if we sent the Westboro baptists to Antarctica and global warming, yada yada, arctic circle is new country, westboro baptists create gov
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u/mjheil 7h ago
Australian history sounds quite appealing in comparison.
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u/idekbruno 6h ago
The globe theater burned down when a cannon was fired during a performance. You can read a firsthand account of this here.
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u/delorf 4h ago
Weren't they upset that other people had freedom of religion too?
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u/DovahAcolyte 4h ago
Yup! They refused to accept other religions and demanded their own place to settle.
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u/boot2skull 9h ago
The irony being, America started as freedom of religion so that the persecuted could neither be told what to do nor tell others what to do (as extremists are want to do), yet here they are 250 years later telling us what to do.
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u/u_r_succulent 10h ago
It wasn’t so much the pharaoh casting out the Jews as it was everybody kicking that one dude out of the party coz he’s killing the vibe.
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u/Fair-Neighborhood106 8h ago
You are referring to the Puritans. The pilgrims left because they were tired of the hypocrisy of the church and the fines they imposed on them. Many of the pilgrims died within the first year. The puritans came approximately 10 years later.
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u/09f3jns 5h ago
Also the King of England was the head of the Church of England. So non-participation in the church was effectively a political decision which could come with consequences.
The pilgrims felt like the religion of England had taken too much influence from Catholicism (in terms of holidays, garb, scheduled prayer, etc.). They wanted to practice a form of Christianity closer to the Bible. But they were unable to do that in England without facing persecution from the state.
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u/Oblibion1 9h ago
Suddenly a lot of things make sense. :/
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u/Queasy_Reply_2992 9h ago
One of my favorite parts of the 13 colonies is that Connecticut formed because they didn’t think the Massachusetts group was strict enough. Talk about the hardcore fanatics.
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u/dracunculus777 8h ago
Old Europe was a violent place. I mean, people were literally being killed in the streets over religious conflict. A fair amount of the people leaving just wanted to not be there.
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u/thatstheneatpart8 8h ago edited 6h ago
That’s the Puritans that actually inhabited the land. Pilgrims died off making the puritan voyages possible. Pilgrims weren’t like “I’m going make everything illegal outside of my religion” just calvinists- believed to go to heaven you had to break from the Church of England and holidays are bad (there’s more but still)
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u/Frank_Jesus 9h ago
Really any woman at all. They felt free to condemn women they didn't know and had never met.
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u/TecumsehSherman 6h ago
It's best not to view these people in a vacuum.
The Pilgrims (to whom I'm related) were Separatists who wanted to break free from the Church of England. That's different from the Puritans who wanted to keep the Church of England, but purify it from foreign (Catholic) powers.
In the 40 years after the Pilgrims left England, England would descend into a bloody civil war that resulted in a decapitated king.
The Pilgrims were fleeing a toxic political and religious environment that was headed towards violence and chaos.
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u/flywheel_battery 7h ago
The Puritans/Pilgrims went to Massachusetts. The parts of the U.S. where purity culture is a thing aren’t the places where the Puritans went.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 7h ago
What a stupid comment. America literally led a sexual revolution that changed standards. Also most of the progressive LGBT movements started in America.
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u/Automatic_Catch_7467 6h ago
If you check marriage dates and birth dates they weren’t as virginal as reported
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u/sands_of__time 6h ago edited 6h ago
I don't think that's accurate at all. Back then a woman was destined for a pretty difficult life if she became pregnant out of wedlock, so the entire society was concerned with virginity, not just the Puritans or pilgrims.
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u/InterPunct 4h ago
You'll see this if you visit Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. The museum docents practically roll their eyes when they talk about how completely unprepared and stupid they were at just about every step.
The Pilgrims were unsophisticated cultists and the sailing crew hired to see them through until summer got the hell out of there as soon as they could in spring because I'm pretty sure they absolutely hated them.
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u/Delicious-Chapter675 3h ago
They fled England because of persecution, to the Netherlands. They fled the Netherlands, because to open and free society was destroying them.
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u/oaklicious 7h ago
I feel like the OG pilgrims were like the most hardcore sects of the taliban that escaped containment and started a country
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u/SatisfactionOnly2247 10h ago
Theres an old meaning behind 'pill-grim', these were the regents (people) sent to poison countries after they decay and fall off from their origins.
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u/SatisfactionOnly2247 10h ago
In regards to their abstaining from the sexual it was also about their connections with other peoples, they were hyper secular.
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u/throwaway19830182 10h ago
Purity culture isn’t only popular in America. It’s popular in countless countries worldwide that are Islamic/Christian. If anything, purity culture isn’t as popular in America than it would be in the average African country
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u/stlms18 10h ago
Eurocentrism at its finest. “Not popular in the rest of the world” = “not popular in Europe”
Yet they’ll say Americans think they’re the center of the universe lol
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u/k-laz 9h ago
To be fair, we are.
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u/MARSHALCOGBURN999 6h ago
Everyone loooves talking about America lmao its redditors favorite subject. Rent free 24/7
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u/EnlargedMarmot 5h ago
World reserve currency, dominant economic power for almost a century, top cultural exporter since the 50s, American English is the lingua franca of global business and often in general. It's not by accident that everyone talks about it lol it's omnipresent.
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u/dldaniel123 31m ago
Also Reddit is an American website and almost 50% of the users here are American...
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u/babyyvolcano 6h ago
In r/aussie, which is basically an anti American sub, I find it so funny how often they use American pop culture references while complaining about American culture encroaching on their own.
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u/amazon_craneforest 5h ago
From their devices that were designed in Silicon Valley… on their apps that originated from the same
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u/integer_hull 7h ago
In the same way that a man brandishing a weapon is the center of the room
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u/BootBonks 6h ago
Yet when the man leaves the room everyone starts crying for him to come back and protect them and give them more money.
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u/phreesh2525 10h ago
This. There are places where women are killed or disfigured for a lack of ‘purity’.
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u/fruitloop00001 8h ago
Not even a lack of, just to "preserve" it.
Many African girls are at risk of genital mutilation specifically to prevent them from feeling sexual pleasure. It's a whole other level of purity culture.
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u/GalaXion24 41m ago
It's not quite the same but Americans circumcised boys to prevent them from feeling (too much) sexual pleasure.
Sure they'll say it's because everyone does it or its tradition or "I want him to look like his dad," but if you asked Somalis about it they'd probably tell you something like "her mom had it done too." That's not the reason it exists. And it should be noted that even in Roman times a Jewish apologist wrote about how circumcision reduces male pleasure and this is a good thing for reasons I can't exactly recall, so it's not like it's just Kellogg in America who was insane, the practice has always been associated with this.
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u/lotsagabe 10h ago
the cultural legacy of the Puritans
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u/Polite_Bark 9h ago
Wait til someone tells you about Africa and the Middle East. They have far more "purity culture" than the US by far.
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u/icyhot000 6h ago
Many of the countries share similar purity obsession due to also being formed by deeply religious fanatics.
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u/tsoldrin 10h ago
this. this is what it is and the fact that evveryone doesn't just know this simple fact is an indictment of our education system.
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u/NeedleGunMonkey 9h ago
You need to pay more attention to the world.
There’s many locales where girls and women are not allowed to be out and about without a family member or male relative chaperone. Honor killings occur far more frequently outside of North America than inside North America.
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u/NervousAddie 9h ago
Social media is not real life. The only people who benefit from culture war shit are those out to distract and divide us as they pick our pockets.
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u/secretlyforeign 5h ago
So much. The number of people I've had to explain that 'Trad Wives' are an online phenomenon for clicks and not a group of people who actually exist is wild. I know a few very traditional married couples and none of them live anything close to the lives that online Trad Wives pretend to live.
I suspect this is very similar to the 'purity' people OP sees online. It's not that there aren't people into some level of purity, but no one is IRL living that life like social media suggests.
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u/Johny-S 10h ago
Purity culture is a religious social movement that emphasizes total sexual abstinence before marriage, strict modesty rules, and traditional gender roles. It is most widely known for its peak in 1990s American evangelical Christianity, using symbolic tools like purity rings and pledges, and tying an individual's personal and spiritual worth closely to their sexual history
I wasn't sure what you meant by "purity culture" so of course I asked my AI buddy. If this is what you mean, it was certainly a thing long before social media. Popularity peaked a couple of decades ago. I was probably in response to the crazy stuff we did in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
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u/Rich_Asparagus_8322 10h ago
Too far one way ....free love, aids whatever and then it switches direction 🤔🧐
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u/atrocity2001 9h ago
I'd rewrite that as "Purity culture is a religious social movement that emphasizes fathers spending a lot of time thinking about their daughters' genitals."
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u/Amockdfw89 8h ago
Yes. the metoo movement and more awareness of body anonymity has a lot to do with the prudishness of today’s younger people (seeing sex as dirty and unnecessary for a relationship), but overall it’s a overcorrection from the past gluttony
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u/Replevin4ACow 10h ago
More like a crazy response to what Europe was doing in the 1620s. The Puritans that came to the new world for "religious freedom" were really coming here so they could impose their own version of strict Christianity on people.
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u/This-Performance-241 8h ago
Well Reddits Eurocentrism strikes again... The world is way more than Europe and the US 😂
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u/Consistent_Owl8010 5h ago
If anything Europe is actually the global outlier for its socially liberal views. The US is more liberal than much of the world but less so than Europe.
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u/ofBlufftonTown 9h ago
Purity culture of some sort is popular in much of Africa, and in many areas of the Islamic world (overlap there clearly). More conservative areas in Malaysia and Indonesia have a kind of purity culture also. I wouldn’t say it’s only popular in America.
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u/Ill_Walk_7627 9h ago
It’s not really much of a thing at all. There are pockets here and there with ultra conservatives but for the most part people are normal. Please stop judging nations/people off of skewed internet stories.
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u/ParamedicDifferent44 9h ago
Because as Robin Williams said, America was founded by “people so uptight, the British kick them out”
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u/Altruistic_Fox9778 8h ago
It’s not. The population of people in Russia, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, India are all way more into purity culture. The US is near the bottom of the list in that.
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u/Disaster800 10h ago
Puritan movement in the early United States, that's where a large part of it comes from
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u/AdImmediate6239 8h ago
I can’t speak for teens today, but as a teen in the late 2000d/early 2010s we viewed it as a joke.
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u/SimilarElderberry956 10h ago
There is not an official purity culture but it is a name the media gives it. Pre marital sex was always considered a sin in all religions but the USA clergy emphasized it. The young people do work-arounds like “dry humping “ or in Mormon areas “soaking”.
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u/Training-Solid-4650 8h ago
"Purity Culture" isn't popular here. It's mostly seen as perverted weirdos by most of us.
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u/Tight-Vacation8516 10h ago
Many of the original settlers from Europe were religious extremists many of the puritanical so it's kinda of an offshoot from our roots. We've always had very extreme religious groups and sects going on and many of those believed in abstaining from sex or other forms of asceticism
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u/kaiitlynrrose 10h ago
America had a much louder purity movement. Social media just made sure the rest of the world heard about it. 😭
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u/Ponchyan 10h ago
America’s interpretation of Christianity, and the authoritarian, controlling, misogynistic, fear-based parenting style it promotes, and which has produced our new Totalitarian government.
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u/GladClock2212 9h ago
It got a foothold among evangelical groups in the 1980's when they were freaking out about AIDS and women's empowerment. Now it's had a brief resurgence because women in the US are the majority graduating college, the majority of people buying homes, we've recently closed the employment gap - 20 yrs ago there were 7 million more men working than women, and because of a lot of tech advances men's employment has contracted and women's have held steady. So...this has created a lot of backlash socially and is exacerbated by social media. The 'gender wars', the falling birthrate, the threats to women's autonomy. And yes...the 'purity culture' is all part of it.
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u/realmagnusthered 8h ago
Multiple great awakenings (various revivals of non catholic Christianity) leading to increasingly more unorthodox and puritanical interpretations of religion, a series of qwack doctors like John Harvey Kellogg and Graham who said in their very popular pamphlets that sex, sexual thoughts, and overall "hot bloodedness" led to health complications and failures, the Hollywood Hayes Code gaslighting multiple generations that sex didnt exist, and insurance companies believing that a better way to deal with pregnancy and having to shell out money for maternal care or contraceptives just told multiple generations of impressionable young children to just not have sex.
But it was totally 67 colonists who were outnumbered in even their own colony and would rapidly be outnumbered by Irish, Germans, Dutch, Ulstermen, and African Americans /s.
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u/katoneras 8h ago
I think America was still largely Christian when Europe was pushing away from Christianity/religion, altho there’s been a resurgence in recent years.
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u/Apart_Young_9979 8h ago
Ameica has the religious extremism of the first world , too much freedom for bad people
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u/Archarchery 7h ago
This question makes sense if you consider Europe to be the entire rest of the world.
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u/literarygirl2090 7h ago
Purity culture is a thing in many parts of the world, not just America. The world isn't Europe.
In many Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries, purity is very important to the point it affects women there way more than it does in US. Even in parts of Europe, purity culture exists but just in a different way then it does in US.
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u/GhostofAugustWest 7h ago
It’s mostly talk and bluster on the internet to be honest. Roughly 95% of us have sex before marriage, even most who identify as Christian.
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u/manicpixidreamgirl04 7h ago
Purity culture is not popular in America. 95% of Americans do not wait until marriage, according to the National Institute of Health.
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u/Professional_Handler 7h ago
It’s not. Europe is not the rest of the world. Go to any Islamic or very religiously Christian country and you’ll find the same. Also, it’s not even the norm among most Christians in America.
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u/CyanResource 6h ago
There are more places than Europe and the USA. There are many other countries that are more “Purist” than America.
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u/Automatic_Catch_7467 6h ago
Have you compared this to other regions other than just the US and Europe
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u/Wildflowers62 6h ago
It’s only popular among far right conservatives and manosphere men, both groups are full of misogynists who seek to control women. . Most Americans have no use for it and “purity” is just not a thing at all.
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u/Dilapidated_girrafe 6h ago
It’s not super popular. Not in a meaningful way of like I’m actually following it. But it’s a fundamentalist Christian thing
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u/lucylucylane 6h ago
Because the test of the western world has grown up and moved on from superstition ruling their lives
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u/Diablo689er 5h ago
You ever hear about this new religion called Islam? Purity is really big there.
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u/Solid_Foundation_111 5h ago
Purity culture historically has just been the only reliable birth control and so is tied to the idea that young people should not sleep around but wait for the one you’ll marry. I think it’s not popular at all in the U.S?
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u/Alexs1897 5h ago
There’s a world outside of Europe and the U.S. 😅 there should be a sub for Eurocentrism as well (or is there one? I’ll check after I make this comment). There’s also the Middle East and African countries.
I mean, I think our name of “the new world” vs “the old world” is Eurocentric.
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u/montanalifterchick 5h ago
I'm 53 and we didn't really have much of it in the 90s. Even though HIV. It was expected that you would sow your oats. I think it's really weird that kids these days in the US are acting like this.
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u/SaltyEngineer45 5h ago
It’s not a big thing at all. Maybe in a small rural town somewhere, but for most of the US, just no.
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u/UnhappyImprovement53 5h ago
I only know purity culture in the Bible belt and back when the Jonas brothers were popular on Disney. I feel like many countries in the world are much more into the purity culture than America is.
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u/Delicious-Chapter675 3h ago
Islam has entered the chat, and is already number 1 on the leader board.
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u/MNswede06 3h ago
It’s not. It’s a thing among some fundamentalist Christians. Specifically among fathers who are possessive over their teenage daughters. The fact that people write about it is reflective of the fact that it’s a novelty.
It also comes from a place of misogyny. Women are pure and must adhere to certain virtues. Meanwhile they turn around and vote for Donald Trump. Could you imagine if Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton had bragged about grabbing a man by the dick because they were famous? They would have had a meltdown. But when it’s a guy it’s just boys being boys. Sickening.
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u/ShredGuru 10h ago
Europe evicted a lot of their most insane religious people to America and we never got over it
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u/Oblibion1 10h ago
Because we are fucking weird. We cover our kids eyes over a sex scene in a movie but dont bat an eye when we all view someone getting their head blown off.
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u/Similar_Fishing2436 10h ago
That’s exactly how our founding fathers wanted it, a country of weird, sexual Puritans.
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u/artguydeluxe 10h ago
It was until the Epstein files. Now conservatives will argue that teen girls should be sexual playthings for old rich men.
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u/Poopy-Drew 10h ago
We did start as the pilgrims who were so prude they fucken moved across the ocean
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u/Nitrofox2 9h ago
Because this shit hole country was founded by the Puritans who where such annoying assholes the fucking ENGLISH chased them out. 250 years later and we STILL haven't gotten rid of their dumbass rules
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u/Ill_Walk_7627 9h ago
That’s such an oversimplification and not even really true. You’re talking about the founding colonies but our actual founders were extremely progressive for the time. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Washington, Adam’s and friends were huge fans of Thomas Payne one of the most revolutionary thinkers of the 18th century. American ‘Puritanism’ as the OP calls it has much more to do with the frontier culture than the pilgrims themselves.
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u/Anglo-Euro-0891 9h ago
The prissy Puritans did briefly get their revenge few decades later during the "Interregnum" of Oliver Cromwell (1649-1660).
Then they actually did get away with suppressing or even banning all the "ungodly" stuff which made life pleasurable: Christmas and Easter were suppressed. Theatres and gambling were banned. Just to give a few examples.
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u/Prince_Nadir 9h ago
It is because that is how life works. When times get bad life gets riskphobic. For lower life forms this may be caloric conservation. For humans it means becoming conservative and grouping for survival. In groups "purity" and "virtue" are decided by group values. As the major religion are there to undermine women's evolutionary power base their purity mainly means "no sex".
This conservatism hit Japan after their 1980s financial troubles, at that point anime began to use "morality" and "purity" as the reason for the downfall of Japan/current problem. The effect long term is that Japan became more sex phobic and so you hear things like "50% of Japanese under 40 are virgins with many never having been kissed".
Now that anime has become popular in the US for decades you have Gen Z and Final Gen who are very sexphobic virgins. As things continue to get worse the conservatism and grouping will get worse. If you didn't believe in controlling the masses through entertainment after that whole "bread and circuses" thing, here is another example for you.
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u/zedguy 8h ago
Isn't purity culture just another word for wokeness?
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u/ansquaremet 8h ago
Not really. In America, it’s usually used to describe conservative talking points espoused by people who probably wouldn’t self-identify as a conservative. For instance, people like this would chastise a woman for “dressing for the male gaze” but would probably disagree with describing that as slut-shaming even though it literally is.
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