This week’s radical is Linda Kay Klein, author of the memoir Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, and founder of the nonprofit Break Free Together, which helps people who have left the purity movement to find closure and a sense of community by sharing their stories with others.
Over the course of our conversation, we discuss what purity is, how it impacted a generation of women (and men), the path that led Linda to a new understanding of the world, and how she’s worked to help others find the same healing she has.
Some Questions I Ask:
- What was the spark for your book, Pure? (1:21)
- What does it mean to be expected to go from no sexual contact whatsoever, to being hypersexual? (13:32)
- Tell me about your nonprofit, Break Free Together (16:44)
- What brought your family into the Evangelical church? (27:41)
- What led to you leaving the church? (34:15)
- What was the path that led you to New York? (41:29)
- How did your parents handle your shift away from the purity movement? (44:14)
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- The rise and fall (and transformation) of the purity movement (4:12)
- What purity culture entails (6:17)
- How pornography (poorly) fills the void left by the absence of meaningful sex education (16:04)
- How the everyday practice of purity culture is traumatizing to those who experience it (20:44)
- The factors that made the purity movement so successful (32:54)
- The events that started to chip away at the narrative of purity for Linda (36:36)
- How Linda coped with her mother’s fear that she would go to Hell (45:38)
- How the language around purity is shifting and becoming more insidious (48:47)
Resources:
Follow Linda on Twitter and Instagram
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