Pure White

This episode examines how the True Love Waits and the Southern Baptist church influenced Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform bill with an amendment that created funding for abstinence-only education. This pairing demonstrates how myths about sexual purity deeply impact how the system uses the assumption of sexual purity as a normative experience to reinforce poverty, racism, and misogyny.Subscribe to Pure White: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pure-white/id1718974286Axis Mundi Media: www.axismundi.usTo purchase Virgin Nation: https://massivebookshop.com/products/9780199987764To Subscribe to Chew On This, A Newsletter from the After Purity Project:https://afterpurity.substack.comRe-thinking Sexual Citizenship by Jyl Josephsonhttps://sunypress.edu/Books/R/Rethinking-Sexual-CitizenshipAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode focuses on the organization True Love Waits and its founding as a highly ambitious campaign to transform the diversity of sexual cultures, expressions, and ethics in the US into a singular ethic based on Christian principles. While doing so, the campaign also contributed to the culture of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention by sacralizing the practice of victim blaming. For anyone experiencing sexual or gender-based violence in their religious community:https://intoaccount.org/our-team/Staying Alive, How Martyrdom Made Me a Warrior by Stephanie Krehbielhttps://mla.bethelks.edu/ml-archive/2006Dec/krehbiel.phpThe Myth of Colorblind Christians by Jesse Curtis https://nyupress.org/9781479809370/the-myth-of-colorblind-christians/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Emmett Till. Lionel Richie. The Atlanta Massacre. This episode looks at how the legacy of lynching remains active in the promotion of myths of sexual danger which even today promote white women’s sexual purity and racial innocence. It examines several cases over 7 decades that demonstrate how this myth remains an active part of the white racial imagination. Includes discussion of Caroline Bryant, the Lionel Ritchie urban myth, the Central Park jogger, Central Park dog lady, and the Atlanta ShootingSubscribe to Pure White: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pure-white/id1718974286To purchase Virgin Nation: https://massivebookshop.com/products/9780199987764To Subscribe to Chew On This, A Newsletter from the After Purity Project: https://afterpurity.substack.com“The Flaw at the Center of Purity Culture” by Angie Hong.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/purity-culture-evangelical-church-harms-women/618438/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode is named after an especially violent time in US history immediately following Reconstruction in the US South.  Frequent racial-terror lynchings were justified by what journalist Ida B. Wells called the lynching myth. The myth was rooted in two racialized stereotypes: sexually violent black men and sexually pure white women. When Wells publicized her analysis, she found herself in conflict with white women such as Frances Willard, a prominent social purity activist. Their debate offers significant insight into how white Victorians utilized sexual purity to signal their own racial supremacy.Subscribe to Pure White: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pure-white/id1718974286To purchase Virgin Nation: https://massivebookshop.com/products/9780199987764To Subscribe to Chew On This, A Newsletter from the After Purity Project: https://afterpurity.substack.comSouthern Horrors and Other Writings by Ida B. Wellshttps://bookshop.org/p/books/southern-horrors-ida-b-wells-barnett/92999?ean=9781502768001Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy