Abstract

“Purity culture” is a set of discourse and practices developed in the 1990s in the United States that has been widely criticized since the 2010s. Online, people have posted numerous accounts of trauma caused by the sexual norms of purity which limit sex to heterosexual marriage and are part of a broader heteronormative system. In this article, I analyze online testimonies to understand how “purity culture” became an issue raised by evangelicals and ex-evangelicals that circulated outside the United States, notably in France. I show that the problem of “purity culture” did not radically transform evangelical institutions in France, even though changes can be observed in a context of greater awareness regarding psychological and sexual violence.