She Deserves Better: Addressing Purity Culture's Impact

Sheila empowers parents to raise confident children by fostering open communication and questioning harmful cultural messages.

### Challenging Purity Culture: Insights from Sheila Wray Gregoire's New Book
* 📚 Sheila Wray Gregoire discusses her latest book, *She Deserves Better*, which addresses the **harmful teachings of Purity culture** and its impact on **children and parents**.
* 💔 Many parents are struggling with how to raise their kids without exposing them to the toxic messages they themselves received, and Gregoire emphasizes that **"our kids deserve better."**
* 👩 Writing the book alongside her daughter Rebecca and co-author Joanna Sawatski allowed for **diverse perspectives** on the issues stemming from Purity culture, which significantly affected **Millennials**.
* 🔍 Through surveys of 7,000 women, the authors examined the consequences of harmful teachings, revealing that beliefs about **modesty and consent** can lead to **long-lasting negative outcomes**, including **low self-esteem** and **higher chances of marrying an abuser**.
* ⚠ Gregoire critiques the flawed messaging that suggests boys are unable to control their lust, stating, "**100 percent of boys have the ability to stop**," highlighting the prevalence of **victim-blaming** in these narratives.
* 🗣 The conversation also touches on the need for **open dialogues in families**, where children feel **safe to express their thoughts and disagreements**, which is **crucial for their future relationships and self-worth**.
* 💪 Ultimately, the book encourages parents to foster an environment of **curiosity and empowerment**, enabling their children to **trust themselves and recognize red flags in unhealthy situations**.
* 🙏 Gregoire's commitment to addressing these issues publicly, despite backlash, aims to create a **healthier understanding of sexuality and relationships** within the church and society at large.

Hi Sheila, welcome back to the World of Difference podcast again. Thanks, Lori, good to be here. Yes, it is good to see you. Um, I know that since we last had you on the show, your book did incredibly well, The Great Sex Rescue. And we kind of had you on early on when that first was coming out, and now you're releasing another book, She Deserves Better, and it's doing really well. And I'm so excited for you, and I'm excited for people to hear about your book if they haven't. So, how are you feeling about the book release right now? Oh, I, we're really shocked because I always thought Great Sex Rescue would be the big book. But I think people really want something different for their kids, and that's what, that's what this is all about, is uh, our kids deserve better. You know, we were really harmed, and I think a lot of parents are thinking, okay, I don't know how to raise my kids now because I don't want them to have the toxic stuff I did, but I also don't want to tell them, go do

whatever you want, so it's no one knows what to do anymore, and so we're trying to answer that question. Yes, and I thank you because it's so brave, and as people unpack what to do with their kids, they're often women and men are still unpacking what happened to them, and so it can bring up hard things, hard conversations, and those, you know, they're not easy to talk about with adults, between adults, much less processing all that as a parent with your kid. And so, um, as you were writing She Deserves Better with your daughter, also who does great work alongside you, and all the research you guys are helping us all learn from, um, what was that process like of writing together? It was fun. I like to say that Rebecca, all the snarky lines are hers. Like, she comes up with the best one-liners. So, I have to, I have to sketch the book out. She does a lot of the editing, and then she also does our survey design and our focus groups, and then Joanna Sawatski, our third co-author, runs all the stats.

for us because I don't know any of that stuff. So, we really needed all three of us to get the project done. And it's fun because this is very much a book largely coming out of Purity culture. You know what happened during those 20 years, maybe 1995 to 2015, but even some still now when search really changed. And so, both my co-authors, my daughter Rebecca and Joanna Sawatski, um, they grew up, they're Millennials, and so they grew up in Purity culture. I didn't. And so, we had very different perspectives on our teen years in church, and that was interesting. It is interesting, yes. I'm a Gen Xer as well, and then grew up in Latin America, and everything's just totally different in that situation. Um, but I have observed my Millennial friends that were growing up in Evangelical and white Evangelical Church in America. They really got hit hard with some of these messages, and it's really heartbreaking. It's not that I didn't experience it at all, even in my

adult years. I would say there were things going on living overseas in the Southern Baptist world with Americans from overseas who had moved to Asia, and they brought in a lot of things like, you know, We're going to be going to this meeting in Bali, but the women shouldn't have their shoulders uncovered. I'm like, And Bali women are topless. What are you talking about? Like, And I've been living under Islamic law with hijab and can't even paint my fingernails, and I just want to go to Bali in a bathing suit, and my shoulders are going to be on display. I'm sorry. Like, it's kind of like, and if you have a problem with that, there's something really strange going on. So, yeah, yeah. So, you're helping people unpack those really bizarre things. Um, as you do that with people, what are some of the common things that you hear of people unpacking? Oh, there's so many. You know, we looked at, um, I think the big ones that have

resonated for Millennials are the conversations around modesty and consent. Yeah, because so much was put on women's shoulders and girls' shoulders with both of those messages. And I think it really can be summed up. So what we did, we took seven thousand women and we surveyed them, and we said, Hey, did you ever believe these things when you were a teenager? Do you believe them now? And then we asked about their self-esteem in high school, their self-esteem now, their marital and sexual satisfaction if they're married, their likelihood of marrying an abuser, all kinds of different outcome variables, so that we could trace, you know, what happens if a girl believes this in high school or what happens if she's exposed to this in high school. And a lot of the messages really had to do with the fact that boys are dangerous and can't help themselves, and so girls, you need to be careful, and you need to just control what the boys do and how they treat you. So for instance, ideas like boys are visual in a way the

girls will never understand um a Boy Can't Stop in a makeout situation, and so it's your responsibility to put the brakes on um or a boy can't help but lust if you're dressed like you're trying to incite it. So these messages make it sound like you're never gonna be able to experience real intimacy. Intimacy is a pipe dream. All men around you will always objectify you because that is all they care about, and you put that on these little girls, and all you're telling them is this world is never going to be a safe place for you ever. Yeah, it's abuse culture really. I mean, I've seen people unpack it in that way, more experts on what like abuse culture looks like, and cultures that inherently in the system don't allow consent um or encourage it or provide a way right um. And so it ends up when you have a situation like that, and I'm thinking of the SBC right as I always say, the denomination that raised me to know Jesus, and I'm very grateful for but at

least in the U.S. context in particular is the Department of Justice is having to get involved because there were systems within it where it's like oh well we just don't talk about that or a a way you a girl would end up blaming herself if something happens like well what did you do like you know you come and you say this happened to me to somebody in the church it's like well what were you wearing or what did you say or were you in the wrong place or you should you know you shouldn't have done this or that and when cultures are are ready like that and then you have like this whole intense couple of Decades of Purity culture books being written in youth groups and youth camps and that's just it's so you know astronomically difficult so in your book as you were writing this how did you sort of navigate and what kind of information are you giving people in terms of how they can do better together and this whole conversation well one of the big things we wanted to show people is okay

What are the outcomes of these common teachings? And then we showed them where the teachings were. Like we gave examples. So here, let me give you a good one about consent. Um, Shanti Felden, in her book For Young Women Only, she asked a bunch of survey questions to boys. So I'm about to give you a stat. I do not believe this stat is correct. I think that her survey questions were very badly written. The possible answers the boys could choose from were very badly written. And then her analysis of the results was very bad. So I'm gonna tell you something. It's not true. But what she told her readers was that 82 percent of boys felt either little ability or little responsibility to stop in a makeout situation. And her conclusion that she put a nice big bubble and bolded it was, If you want to stop, it's safest to not even start. Now, 100 percent of boys have the ability to stop. Yes, 100. Yes. How can you tell girls that 82 percent of boys have little ability?

to stop in a makeout situation. That is straight-up rape culture. Yeah, it is. But when we believe this about men, and this is what has largely been taught in Evangelical circles, the idea of Every Man's Battle, lust is Every Man's Battle. Men have this insatiable sex drive, um, where we equate the objectification of women with male sexuality. Then, when a guy does something to a girl, it obviously must have been her fault because he can't act any other way. That would be acting against his maleness, and God made him male. So, isn't this wonderful that God made him this way? And so, you as the girl was created to help protect him from himself. Yeah, and that's what was put on girls. And we talked to so many girls, well, women now in our focus groups, who said they didn't know they had been date-raped for a decade or two because they had listened to these messages, and they thought, Well, I consented to kissing, so what did I expect? It's victim-blaming in the system. They

don't even have to victim blame them after because they're going to do that inherently because of how it's already been scripted for them, right? It's so heartbreaking, which is why it's so important that you just speak the truth out loud. But I know that when you've spoken the truth out loud, it has not gone well, as it often does not for women. They just would like to keep us small and silent and nice and sweet, so we're in the corner. And when we do that, we watch these things happening, and there's something about the Holy Spirit and our giftings that it rises up in us, and we just have to say something. And so I'm so glad that you have. But that's turned out to be, um, I know that Shanti Felden in particular has made comments on a podcast recently, um, insinuating that it's this Twitter mob out to get celebrity pastors when, you know, just reasonable pushback on a theological difference or a philosophical difference that could be

dangerous is being voiced in a very appropriate way that you have done, but um yeah, how do you respond to that type of narrative? Yeah, so what she was saying on the Theology and the Raw podcast, and she never actually named me, but I know that the, I know this is about me. I was on um the same podcast two weeks ago um and I had named her and and given some of the quotes from her book For Young Women Only. And she and I have had a big back and forth in emails behind the scenes um. She's written a statement about me. So much of what she was saying had had to do with me and her her point was that in Jesus we should all be loving one another and we should be going to one another privately not publicly because that isn't kind and we need to remember that everyone deserves love. So yes, the victims deserve love but so does the pastor and so do the authors and we should be treating people accordingly. I find this very difficult because she never admitted that she did harm and

that other authors have done harm. This is not a question of a difference of opinion. That's the whole point of what we did both in Great Sex Rescue and in She Deserves Better. We did surveys, okay? So, 20,000 women for Great Sex Rescue, 7,000 women for She Deserves Better. And we can now quantify what happens when people believe the things she taught. In fact, in She Deserves Better, we actually used her wording in some of our survey questions for beliefs because she criticized us in Great Sex Rescue saying she never taught what the things that we were critiquing her for because a word or two was off. And so, we used her actual wording in the survey so that we couldn't get that critique. And it was devastating. You know, the things that she taught, for instance, the modesty messages that she taught. If you believe that all boys are visual in a way the girls will never understand, you have a 52 percent higher rate of experiencing vaginismus, higher chance of

experiencing vaginismus as an adult, which is a really bad sexual dysfunction disorder, which makes intercourse very painful if not impossible. You have a six to eight percent higher chance of marrying an abuser. You have a 30 percent higher chance of having low self-esteem long-term if you believe this as a teenager, even if you don't believe it today. So, this stuff has lifelong impacts, yeah, and for her not to acknowledge that and just act like this is just a difference of opinion is not okay because this is real harm. She has sold millions of books, and she's done real harm, um, and there was no humility and to say that it's just a Twitter mob coming after her and that we should all just go privately. I find that really ironic because she was saying this while she was on an extremely large podcast, so she is able to get on a very large podcast in order to shape the narrative, yeah. If you, as a woman, read For Women Only and were traumatized by her depictions of

men's propensity to lust. What recourse do you have except Twitter or social media, right? Because she's in her book Through a Man's Eyes, she actually records stories of people coming to her privately, and she ignored them. She said that they just didn't get it, uh, and so now she's writing a whole other book about the same thing to double down. So people have gone to her privately, and she's ignored them. And so to say that people should not be discussing this on social media simply means that the powerful get to stay in power, and no one should ever challenge them. That's not Jesus; that's not the one we follow. I mean, we look at what he was doing, and his harshest words were for some of the religious powerful people, and um, the people on the margins, the people who had to access him through Twitter on a DM, right, were the ones he was like, you know, they're tagging at his robe because they've been bleeding for 12 years, and he notices among the crowd that he could

have been a celebrity pastor, but he rejected that right. And so, um, yeah, it's kind of a Bizarro to think about it in terms of following Jesus in that way. And yet, I know that psychologically, it has to be really difficult to admit someone to. We don't like admitting we're wrong. I mean, human beings, we don't like that. It takes a great deal of deep work and humility on our part to do that, and certainly to do it on a grand scale of having sold that many books and having a career built on that message. And yet, we've seen people do that, and that's remarkable when it happens. So, that we have good examples of people who have been like, You know what? Pull my book because I was wrong, or Let me rewrite it. I've done that. I've pulled two books. I've rewritten two books. Um, I took down, well, my blog had three thousand blog posts, and I switched servers, I switched domains, and I deleted 1500 posts.

yeah exactly, and you know what? It isn't that I actually didn't find it that hard, no, and people appreciated it. They do because we're human, we can be wrong, it's okay. Great Scholars also find new information, and when you have new information, then you're like, Oh, guess what? I should change this because now I know better. But to act like you have all the answers and that you're infallible, well, that's reserved for only one, and we worship that one, and it's not a human, right? And I think the reason that we've done so many studies and done this really in a data-driven way is because there have been so many debates about this, but they've mostly been theological debates, yeah, over the years. What is the correct marriage teaching? Can you divorce for abuse? And how should we talk about sex? And when things are only in the theological Realm, it's hard to make progress because people can just say, Well, your interpretation of the Bible is wrong, or You just don't believe the Bible, and so

our idea is, you know what, let's just take Jesus at his word. Jesus said that a good tree can't bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can't bear good fruit, and so you can recognize things by their fruit. So we thought, okay, if these teachings are so great, then they should stand up to scrutiny. They should. And over and over again, what we found is that the big things that are taught in Evangelical circles about sex, about gender relations, about power, and marriage, they don't stand up. They bear really bad fruit because it's not based in Jesus. Yeah, yeah. And you know, a case in point, another controversial thing that's happened on Twitter in the last little bit, is the Josh Butler article ahead of the Gospel Coalition, and similar situation, right? I mean, it's also, I've not been someone who's experienced sexual assault, but I, when I read, I couldn't, I didn't read the whole article as I don't think it's probably a good idea for me to do that.

um just where I'm at and just recovering from an abuse of different kinds from a church I was involved with. But um reading even just the little excerpts um that were on you know quoted and screenshotted on things like that on Twitter and um hearing people engage about his book and reading that I was shocked at how anything like that could have passed through a group of people and no one would have noticed how this sounds like rape. What he's describing from my perspective as a woman who has friends that have been raped. Most women have these friends because statistics bear out that we know a lot of people um. I was so shocked and it just read exactly like a rape situation to me. And then when it was equated with the gospel itself, it's just nauseating. And the fact that it's now being defended and saying that a Twitter mob is now against this is what is going on. So what is your response to the Josh Butler situation as it stands now in the article itself? Well at first I I was very heartened because

It was like one of the first times I've ever seen all the different, um, types of Christianity uniting under one banner, which is to collectively say, Ooh, what did I just read? Like, like, I think the article dropped on a Wednesday, and by Thursday, everybody was saying, My eyes, my eyes, make it go away. Um, and for a while, it looked like it worked because they did take the article down, but then within about 24 hours of them taking the article down, this new narrative came out that everyone had tried to cancel Josh Butler, and poor Josh. First of all, Josh has not lost his living, okay? He is still pastor of a very large church, and he got a six-figure advance for this book, which he gets to keep, so he has not lost his livelihood, right? Um, but none of us were coming after Josh. If anything, I was coming after the Gospel Coalition, who had allowed this stuff to be published and who had put Josh in that position. Yeah, um, we were not coming after Josh; we were coming after the ideas.

and he described sex in such a way exactly. It made it sound like rape. Women's experience was entirely absent. He actually quoted me in chapter one, and he completely missed the point of my quote. Yeah, it was really interesting because I was talking about female orgasm, and he made it sound like romance, and he just, I don't know, from reading his book, if he truly understands anything about the sexual response cycle, about women's bodies, or anything. And this is one of my bigger critiques too. If you look at all of the books that I have found are really harmful, like Love and Respect, Every Man's Battle, For Adults, For Women Only, or the books that we analyzed in She Deserves Better, our books for how to talk to your teenagers about all this stuff, like For Young Women Only, Lives Young Women Believe, Every Young Woman's Battle, Passion and Purity, they're all written by people that are not qualified to write on this stuff. Yeah, they are not licensed therapists. No, they do not.

have specialized training and sex. They haven't done research; they're not peer-reviewed, and they, by and large, do not use peer-reviewed research to inform their perspectives. No, and we need to raise the bar on what counts as advice. Yes, in Evangelical circles, just because someone is a pastor does not mean that they know, that they are qualified to speak about sex. No, and just like somebody that might even have a PhD in theology or anything, they don't know everything about theology. They just know very narrowly what they did their dissertation on. They are not an expert on every single subject, and I think that's where things have gotten pretty twisted. The power dynamics as well in the Evangelical Church here in the US in particular, I'm noticing, is that um, The Narrative or the kind of air people breathe is you just can't question these people. They're Untouchable, or you have to approach them um, in very special ways as if their egos are so large that they might fly off the handle at any moment. This is not godly.

this is not Jesus. No one is a king. We have a king. We worship Jesus as king, and no one else has that power over another human being. In fact, Jesus was flipping hierarchy. The majority of what we read about in his ministry, and so for people to not be able to be questioned is, uh, you know, troubling all by itself in a spiritual sense. But as you said, academically, academics constantly are, you know, writing counterpoints to each other's paper. Like, this is normal. It's not called a Twitter mob; it's just academic work. What is your response to how we could do better, as you mentioned, in this way? Yeah, we need to remember Jesus said that he is the way, the truth, and the life. So, he is the truth. So, as we find out more about the world, we're actually finding more about Christ and about how he made us and about, you know, what intimacy really means and what it means like we're, as we find this stuff out, we are growing more Godly. We aren't growing away from God.

and to say I can never be questioned. What you're really saying is I do not want to grow, and I don't want any of you to grow. I just want to maintain my power. You know, I said things 15, 20 years ago that I would never say today, and I've gone back and forth, and I thought, like, was it wrong when I said it, or was it just a different time, and we didn't know as much, and it needed to be said in order to move us towards what I'm saying now. And I, you know, I'm kind of like, yeah, maybe that was what it was. Like, we needed to go through these stages of development of realizing, okay, wait, there is something wrong here, even if I'm not quite articulating it properly, just so that we could see it more clearly. And I think in 20 years, I'm hoping our kids and grandkids will see it even more clearly. But we have to be able to question things, and if someone truly loves Jesus, they're not going to feel threatened by

that they're going to invite it. Um, yeah, absolutely. In terms of your work and your writing, um, for the church, for women, for parents in this case, um, men and women both suffer under this misunderstanding of how our bodies work, how God created each of us as image bearers, how God created sex to be a beautiful, um, expression, not at all like the judge Josh Butler article of it actually truly beautiful, where it's a mutuality, and it's not just a woman serving a man in his quote-unquote needs, you know, um, how um, what are some of the narratives that you're having to continually read word for people that you find. I think for adults, it is this idea that men want sex and women don't, and so men need to, or women need to service men and take care of their needs so that men don't sin in some way. For girls, it's a little bit different. It's really that um, boys are insatiable and they can't treat you well unless you

do all of these things first, so you need to cover up. I need to be unconditionally respectful, and you need to be real, and you need to bolster their egos because boys have very fragile egos. And all of these things are taught, and it makes girls sound so small. Yeah, and that's basically what it's telling girls: don't use your voice, your voice, your problem, girls. You are a problem. And the modesty messages to girls tell girls you should not be seen. But then, because we have mostly male leadership, because we believe things like girls talk too much. Shanti Feldhahn actually put that in her book, Girls Talk Too Much, Brio magazine. Oh yes, from Focus on the Family. It was constantly telling girls, You talk too much. Boys don't like girls who talk too much. Oh my gosh, yeah, it was a big message that, and many women believed that as teenagers, the girls talk too much. I need to be quiet. And so, in evangelicalism, we teach girls, You can't

be seen and it can't be heard. Um, you exist to support the boy. I just want girls to know that you have a plan and a purpose all on your own, and you can thrive, and you have permission to be big. Yeah, that's what she deserves better is doing. Hopefully, it's helping parents, first of all, re-parent themselves so that they can hear that healing message because a lot of us didn't hear it, and then also how they can pass that on, especially to their daughters. [Music] Heartbreaking because, I mean, I just preached a few weeks ago on Palm Sunday at a church here in the Bay Area on Mary Magdalene and her Magnificat and how she influenced Jesus's social justice ministry. And, you know, I think the voice of women, the voice of a mother, the voice of, um, women, you know, girls and women in men's lives are there because God wanted us to be voices in one another's lives. There's no bigger or lesser voice, but in terms of examples of Jesus with

people as he was with women. He seemed to always be elevating and amplifying their voices because he himself was living in a culture of the Greco-Roman world, was swimming in patriarchy, and our cultures are today too, but maybe in a, you know, more intense way at some point, at some point, sometime in some cultures. And so, Jesus was amplifying the voices of women because he was trying to, you know, work for equity at the way God himself created God's daughters to be equal and work shoulder to shoulder in this Kingdom work. And so, it's so heartbreaking to hear that there's messages out there that women talk too much because that's only not only not godly. I don't think it's statistically true. Yeah, it actually so, so um, the idea got started. We traced it back to James Dobson in 1983. He wrote a book called Love for a Lifetime where he claimed, and I might have the numbers wrong, but like women say 25,000 words a day, whereas men only say 12,000. And so

the point was, ladies, when he gets home from work, he has already used all of his words for the day, but you're just waiting to go at him, and you need to just be quiet and let him be. And then Gary Smalley took the same idea. I think he said 50,000 versus 25,000. Other people said 14,000 versus 7,000. Like, the numbers kept changing, but the idea was the same, that women speak about twice as many words as men. No one ever gave any citations, and so actual researchers started paying attention to this and were going, Wait a minute, why is everyone making these claims? So they measured it, and multiple studies have found this, and meta-analyses have been done now that show it, that men and women say virtually the same number of words in a day. There's no statistical difference. That makes sense to me, yep. But we've been taught that women say too much. In fact, if you are in a mixed group, so where there's both men and women, the

The problem is not that women talk too much; it's that they don't speak enough. So unless there are eighty percent female in that group, women will not say their fair share. Men will speak more than they should. That resonates, and I wonder if a woman does speak equal to a man in that group, if it makes certain men, kind of more of the narcissistic type men, a little bit uncomfortable. Well, yeah, other studies have found that if women speak thirty percent of the time, men estimate that they speak the majority of the time. This I've read research about this. Yes, yep, how it's all about perception because you're almost used to in situations like that, I think as a man, being the one speaking more. And so, yes, I've read that statistic too. And since I work in business, like you see that kind of thing here and there, but we're working on it in places like Silicon Valley. Like we have diversity, equity, inclusion conversations. We're talking about women at work. There's all these, you know, events like Microsoft.

women. We're all trying to work on these kinds of things, and what's sad is in my experience here in the largely white Evangelical Church in North America has been that it is largely absent, or at least if it exists, it's such a slow, uninformed process that feels like it's never gonna get there because they're just still dealing with these very low-level issues. Equity seems so far out of the imagination. It's like almost you have some, you know, the SBC is still fighting over women. Can they even preach or be pastors? We're not even at the point of trying to be fully equitable as God's daughters in the church. And so, although this conversation is largely around the sexual experience and these messages, I think so much of it goes together where power lies, where voice and agency lie. And so, what are some things that you would say to parents as they are, like you said, your book is largely about how they can have these conversations?

it's not that we're just throwing everything out and saying whatever you want to do is fine. What is, what are some tips you're giving parents? Yeah, so in the book, we certainly cover consent and modesty, but we also cover this idea of how you can raise up your daughter's voice, how you can help her trust her feelings. Because girls who have constantly been told, you know, the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, you need to stand on faith, not feelings, you need to be nice, you Jesus gave up everything for you, you need to let other people do what they want and not stand up for yourself because that's selfish. And these are the kinds of messages our girls hear. We're also constantly told, you know, women are easily deceived. There's a whole book series on that, Lies Women Believe, Lies Young Women Believe, about how women are especially susceptible to believing lies. That's not actually true. Research has showed the opposite, that women are more likely to be, first of all, um, to not be heretical in our beliefs as

Christians so women are more likely to hold on to the fundamentals. We're more likely to go to church in general, uh, and we are less likely to be duped in financial schemes. But because people think that we are more easily deceived, we're more likely to be victimized. So we're more likely to be for people, more likely to try to victimize women. So it's all just a big mess, and the church has taught our girls that because he needs to be a leader as a teenager, you need to practice letting boys lead. You need to defer to boys. Um, Shanti Felden says that we need to give boys unconditional respect, which means you get complimenting them, affirming them, even if they haven't done anything worth affirming. You need to call out the best in them, etc., etc. And then she has this great line where if you're wondering if you've crossed the disrespect line, look for anger. Oh gosh. So if she's telling teenage girls, she's telling your 15-year-old daughter that

if a boy is angry at you, it's probably because she's disrespected him. Dear Lord, that's so victim-blaming. It is. It's atrocious. But this is what has been taught, and we need to undo it. And often, it doesn't come from parents. Like, you could be the best parent in the world, but most of these messages are taught in youth groups. They're on Instagram channels, um, they're social media influencers, the pop stars they listen to. Like, they don't always hear it from you. So, you could be really healthy, but if this is what they're hearing in a youth group, yeah. And youth groups are usually run by a guy who's in his early 20s and often has very little life experience, hasn't worked outside a church situation, has very little experience of women, um, being valued. Then what is it that your daughter's gonna hear? Nothing that's going to help her flourish and be who God wants her to be and be able to trust herself, like you said, trust her body to speak to her.

and trust her. You know the Holy Spirit in her, right? Because, uh, if she's being taught to respect all teenage boys in ways that if they get angry, it's her fault, that is a setup for a lifetime of pain and suffering. And not just the sadness of her being small and, you know, quenching the Holy Spirit's gift to help her let her light shine and not hide it under the bush like the little song we're taught, right? But also, it's just, um, you know, it's setting her up and her relationships to blame herself, victim blame her, to, you know, darvo the whole deny, accuse, um, reverse victim-offender situation that we see so often. Like, that's embedded in the system, right? And so, it's a setup for if she is around an abusive boy or man that she's so easily groomed. Why would we want to create a situation where girls are easily groomed? We wouldn't, right? So, yeah, tell us some more about how we can do a better job both as parents and maybe aunties and uncles.

that have influence on these teenage boys and girls or the youth group leaders that we know. How can we be influential well? And I want to say many youth group leaders are wonderful. Yeah, as parents, we need to get to know what is being taught in youth group. Don't just assume because this church is amazing, because this church is huge, because this church has so many youth leaders on staff, that that is going to be healthy. We've actually often found the opposite. The more the bigger the church, often the more these messages are there. So, um, just be very careful. Find out what your church teaches. Anything your church believes about gender, it will be exponentially worse in youth group. Because even if gender stuff is not talked about largely in adult church and youth group, the majority of what they talk about is relationships. So, the majority of it is about sex and gender. So, whatever your church believes will be exponential given to the youth. Um, I think if I can give one piece of advice to parents, it's this.

cultivate a dynamic in your family where your teenagers can disagree with you. [Music] Because if your daughter especially can disagree with you, then she's going to be able to disagree when she's in a toxic work situation. She's going to be able to disagree if she's in an abusive relationship, and she might even get out of it faster when you tell her your voice matters and you won't be penalized for using your voice. Now, I might not go along with what you say, but I'm not going to punish you for saying it. And I'm so, you know, if you don't think that we should do this as a family and we think we should, we might still do it, but we're going to validate your feelings and we're going to talk about maybe how we can compromise in another way. Like, you are allowed to have your own thoughts because too often in the church we have taught parents that children need to obey unquestioningly, and that is grooming children to be abused later. Yeah.

and it also helps them to think right, and it also is really highly correlated with low self-esteem. When our girls have low self-esteem, which means they don't think that they matter, they don't think that their voice is important, they're far more likely to marry an abuser, and they're far less likely to have good marital and sexual satisfaction later once they are married, if they get married. So, let's help them disagree, and when we start to do that, then we can have these conversations about how to spot red flags in systems, in people, so they know how to keep themselves safe. But until they're able to disagree, then they won't be able to recognize, Hey, I'm thinking something, and I'm not uncomfortable here. If they're not allowed to voice that with you, they won't voice it anywhere else either. [Music] Um, that's such good advice and a great way to end this. We want to foster curiosity in ourselves and in our children because curiosity leads to knowledge, and we want

to know we want to know the truth. The truth sets us free, doesn't it? So, thank you for this conversation, thank you for the great work you're doing, the research you're doing, the hits you're taking on Twitter, and for just continuing to be faithful to speak the truth and help set people free. Um, it really means a lot to me, and I know that it's meaning a lot to a lot of people because a lot of people aren't dedicated enough or have the time or space, um, or even the courage to do it. So, just really grateful for you and the work you're doing. Sheila, thanks for being on today. Thank you.

Sheila Wray Gregoire on She Deserves Better: Redefining Women's Worth

A World of Difference Podcast

She Deserves Better: A New Perspective on Parenting

Sheila's new book, "She Deserves Better," is gaining unexpected success, as it addresses the need for a different approach to raising children in the aftermath of toxic messages from purity culture.

The writing process was a collaborative effort with her daughter Rebecca and co-author Joanna, bringing together different perspectives on the impact of purity culture.

The book's research, based on a survey of 7,000 women, highlights the harmful messages around modesty and consent, and their lasting effects on self-esteem, marital satisfaction, and the likelihood of experiencing abusive relationships.

The Impact of Purity Culture on Intimacy and Consent

Purity culture messages promote the idea that boys can't control their lust and that girls are responsible for preventing it, leading to a cycle of victim-blaming and objectification.

These teachings create a harmful environment where girls feel unsafe and struggle to recognize their own experiences of abuse.

The perpetuation of these beliefs in evangelical circles contributes to a culture that undermines consent and places the burden of responsibility on women.

Addressing Harmful Narratives in Christian Teaching

The speaker discusses a back-and-forth with an author who has been criticized for her teachings, emphasizing the need for accountability and acknowledgment of harm caused.

They highlight the devastating impact of the author's messages on women, using survey data to quantify the negative effects.

The speaker argues that challenging powerful figures publicly is necessary for justice and change, and shares their own experience of admitting wrongs and making amends.

Critique of Evangelical Teachings on Sex and Gender

The speaker emphasizes the importance of acknowledging human fallibility and the need for new information to drive change.

They argue that the teachings in Evangelical circles on sex, gender relations, and marriage often bear bad fruit and do not align with Jesus' message.

The speaker expresses shock at the controversial Josh Butler article, criticizing its portrayal of sex and women's experiences, and calls for accountability from the Gospel Coalition for publishing such ideas.

Questioning Authority in the Evangelical Church

The Evangelical Church often lacks qualified individuals to give advice on topics like sex, leading to a problematic power dynamic.

The untouchability of leaders and the reluctance to question them is troubling and goes against the teachings of Jesus.

Common narratives perpetuated in the church create harmful gender dynamics, teaching girls to be quiet and submissive while placing the burden of men's needs on them.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of women's voices and their equal role in God's kingdom work, challenging the notion that women talk too much.

Research shows that men and women speak the same number of words daily, and the perception of women speaking more is often skewed.

The speaker calls for equity and agency for women, highlighting the slow progress in achieving this, particularly within the evangelical church.

Parents can help raise their daughters' voices and trust their feelings, countering harmful messages about women's deception and victimization.

The church's teachings on deferring to boys and unconditional respect can set girls up for a lifetime of pain and suffering.

It's important for parents to be aware of the external influences, such as youth groups and social media, that may perpetuate these damaging messages and to actively work towards undoing them.

The Influence of Youth Group Leaders on Teenagers

Youth group leaders play a significant role in shaping the beliefs and values of teenagers, and parents should be aware of what is being taught.

It's important to recognize that larger churches may not always provide healthier messages, especially regarding gender and relationships.

Fostering a dynamic where teenagers can disagree with their parents is crucial for building their confidence and ability to navigate toxic situations in the future.