These are all things I had heard before, just in a different context: sitting in a musty church basement. I was initially shocked by the bluntness of the Girl Defined duo’s language, but not surprised. Their posts are littered with cisnormativity and harmful gender essentialism. They hosted a similar podcast episode on ‘Same Sex Attraction’ with Ellen Dykas, an outwardly pro-conversion therapy minister. They push back on allyship with a video entitled ‘Why We’re Not Declaring Our Gender Pronouns’. Much of their content focuses on heteronormative relationships, and often slides into becoming blatantly homophobic and transphobic. Numerous therapists and influencers such as Cody Ko, Daz and Trixie Mattel have openly criticised their work in reaction videos, explaining the toxicity of their lessons about perfection and purity. One example of this is Girl Deleted, a YouTube account dedicated to documenting videos that have been taken down by the duo. They push both modesty and shame surrounding relationships with – and attraction to – men.īethany Beal and Kristen Clark, the sisters behind Girl Defined Ministries, have faced a good deal of backlash in the last five years. Throughout their content is a theme of godly womanhood equated with sexual purity of the mind and body. Their videos cover a variety of topics, such as ‘3 ways Christian girls can promote Godly manhood’, ‘Why Christian girls should be beautiful but not seductive’, and ‘How to recover from being a desperate flirt’. Girl Defined describe themselves on YouTube as “two sisters striving to be God-defined girls in a culture-defined world”. This is what makes Girl Defined and other purity culture social media influencers so unique their ideologies are bound in digital currencies – likes and shares – not physical ones. These rings and pledges followed people throughout their young lives and have become one of the most recognisable symbols of purity culture. Programs like balls were commonplace, where the rituals included the giving and receiving of a purity ring from a parent – typically a father to a daughter. Religious organisations often cemented these ideas in objects such as purity rings and pledges. In extreme forms, they emphasised a sexlessness of mind and body prior to marriage. These groups wholly denied the existence of non-heteronormative attraction and non-cisgender identities. In lectures, conferences and parental trainings, these organisations and their supporters emphasised different levels of sexual control, but often ones which put the brunt of sexual responsibility on women. I grew up in the Purity Movement (late 1990s-early 2000s) in a small Chicagoland suburb in Illinois, during the height of popularity for abstinence-promoting organisations like Truelovewaits and Silver Ring Thing. Mattel cringed throughout their video ‘How To Wear Makeup In A God Honouring Way’, while I felt my childhood hit repeat. They share a strikingly similar message surrounding sexuality, gender and bodily autonomy to what I learned at church retreats growing up.Īmong the most well-known influencers is a pair of Texas sisters running Girl Defined, who I first encountered through a reaction video by one of my favourite drag queens, Trixie Mattel. Image: Thomas VitaliĪs one generation of young people – particularly queer TikTokers – create safe learning spaces for one another, groups of faith-oriented influencers and religious leaders have also taken to social media to reach new audiences. It didn’t take long, however, to see how purity culture had followed me onto the platforms – and to recognise the dangers it imposed to its young followers. They created spaces where I could identify and unlearn harmful ideologies about female sexuality that I’d absorbed growing up in a Catholic community during the Purity Movement. For the first time, I encountered openly queer influencers and sex-positive educators like Matt Bernstein and Erica Smith. My early experiences with the platforms were eye opening. It was right after I graduated high school and entered college, in 2017.
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