You know, a big part of purity culture is an inability to cope with your own mistakes, because in your mind, there’s no way to bounce back from serious errors. You can’t just apologize for doing something Problematic™ and then try not to do it again, because then you’re just Bad, so you’ve gotta prove that whatever you did was never bad to begin with. That you’re still Good and therefore did not actually do anything wrong.
So it kind of irks me when I see people acting like ‘purity culture’ is pointing out mistakes or debating about the implications of various actions.
That’s not purity culture, that’s normal culture. Purity culture is getting so overwhelmed at the prospect of ‘being bad’ that you can’t even cope with it and your only recourse is to fight against the implication tooth and nail, as well as the other, more widely understood issue of people refusing to let anyone else grow or change. Because the conceit of purity is that deep down, you’re either virtuous or evil. So there’s no room for forgiveness or for personal growth.
That’s also why you see it cropping up in social circles all over the political spectrum. Because it’s a fallacy that anyone can fall into as long as they have actual morals. It’s based in a belief that morality is a matter of innate nature, not active choices. Regardless of what your values may be.
This literally sums up what it took me a LOT of therapy to figure out, and real fucking well, too.
