I am personally not religious. I have a very logical brain; with no evidence, I struggle to believe it exists. The idea that some man or “being” is looking down on us and watching every single thing we do, sounds a little creepy to me. The main point that baffles me about religion is that this “God” is meant to love everyone, no matter what. As long as they are as he created them. So, he’ll love you with all his heart as long as you aren’t gay or aren’t enjoying yourself with tasks such as masturbation.

Religion doesn’t bother me unless you try to shove it down my throat.

The only reason I decided to write this blog post I have recently come across this Youtube channel called Girl Defined. Girl Defined is made of 2 Christian girls called Bethany and Kristen making videos about how to become girls defined by God. In short how to become “perfect” in God’s eyes.

They make many videos ranging from topics such as finding a “Godly” husband to how to deal with sexual struggles. Before you ask, I don’t actually know what makes a man “Godly”.

The main video I want to talk about today is the one where they discuss how you shouldn’t have sex before marriage. Now obviously for most of us who are non-religious, this might be a bit extreme but actually, most Christians do save themselves for marriage.

At the end of the day, the whole idea of Christianity is to read the Bible and interpret it how you think God meant. You can cherry pick the Bible and have it say what you want it to say. Purity culture could be a thing that someone just plucked for the Bible for it suited them. It is all subjective as there are still religious people out there who don’t see the idea of staying “pure” till marriage in the Bible but still class themselves as Christians.

And I understand, there are non-sexual ways to be intimate with your partner. And if you are with the right person sex shouldn’t be the basis of the relationship. But I do believe people do make losing your virginity a bigger deal than it has to be. The idea that you have to save our virginity for that soulmate is a very old fashioned concept. It is a very stupid concept that this “virginity” is something that a woman has to give to her man. I mean both men and women will experience losing their virginity but it was more important for women to be virgins as they would then become their husband’s property.

So, it isn’t even the idea that you can’t have a relationship without sex, like I said there are many non-sexual ways to get intimate with a partner such as holding hands, giving hugs, having long talks etc. But sex is all about compatibility; you can be with someone who is great at sex but just find that you two don’t link up the way you want to.

Sex is about finding out what you enjoy the most. When you first have sex, you don’t know what it feels like and therefore you don’t know what you want, how you want it etc. That is why everyone’s first time is always shit, with more experience you better you get and you have a better understanding of how you like to enjoy it. Whilst sex is about making sure your partner is having an enjoyable time it is also about making sure you get the pleasurable experience too.

The idea of signing this binding contract and then realising that not only is the sex bad that you are sexually incompatible, makes it quite difficult to walk away.

Overall, I think it is an old fashioned and not an amazingly smart idea. I’m not suggesting you have to go out and bang everything with a pulse but just don’t feel that you have to stay “pure” just because some ancient text told you to.

Grace Hemphill x