We entered each Sunday to see a wall full of charcoal drawings of the great church fathers, but no church mothers. I attended a staunchly complementarian church where the women were largely silent. I wore my performative virtue like a suit of armor, even choosing “Good Girl” as my moniker on our team’s personalized sweatshirts. Everything I did was a desperate performance designed to convince myself that if I worked hard enough, I could regain some of the worth that ring was supposed to represent. I was the girls’ Bible study leader and the captain of my high school basketball team. I put on a front and played the part of the good Christian girl. It didn’t remind me that I was pure it reminded me that I was already damaged, that whatever my future husband was interested in was already gone. When I wore it, I didn’t experience resolve I experienced cognitive dissonance. It was a stunning ring with a stunning problem my parents had purchased it from the man who had spent the first 10 years of my life sexually abusing me. This, they told me, was a purity ring, to be worn as a reminder of my commitment to God to remain sexually pure for my future husband. Inside I found a delicate gold ring with an opal stone. On my 13th birthday, my well-intended parents took me out to a fancy waterfront restaurant, where they announced that I was becoming a young lady, and it was time for “the talk.” It was a super awkward affair that essentially boiled down to “Don’t have sex until you get married.”Īs we waited for our food to arrive, they handed me a small black box, and I opened it in eager anticipation.
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