This brilliant article has a particular resonance for me, because I have always felt that puritanism was an additional harm to rape victims, not to mention the rape and pedophilia indirect glorification it represents, but I rarely read such a straight to the line and clear thinking. There are so many disturbing examples like the testimonies and statistics in this article. Child marriage is a pillar of religious grip.
Purity culture is about possession : women are reified as sexual resources from their birth and then discarded. Purity fetichists are the more inclined to be rapists or pedophiles or to find excuses to protect rapists and pedophiles.
During the Polanski trial, the question was shockingly no more about how he drugged and raped a 14-y.o. minor, but turned into the search for proof of impurity which would had justify her rape. The defender's argument was to plead that the 14-y.o. girl had sex before, implying that she is not pure and that she didn't deserve to have minor protection. Then every rape supporter debated about the age of consent, as it was the main subject, which resulted in a mad public debate forgetting that is was a rape accusation under drug in the first place, so it was an unnegotiable crime.
Christian rape culture always transforms sexual crimes into a negotiable affair and rapistsplaining pollution. Everything is negotiable and rapists HAVE to be forgiven. In puritanism, the sex is criminal per se, so the victim is at least as responsible as her rapist. Incest for example means unchastity and (moral) stain. Who is stained in this horrible mindset ? The victim.
In addition, the rapist's concept of temptation turns the victim into the true criminal for a christian mind : as a crime can lead to damnation, the raped woman has the role of the devil by "tempting" her rapist and by letting them do this. There is a moral obligation for her to repair her fault by forgiving her rapist and erasing the "error". So it can imply marrying the pedophile rapist like in the testimony in the upper link.
