When Every Touch Is Sexualized

Bill Gothard has now admitted that he held hands with teenage girls in his employ, touched their feet, and caressed their hair, but he claims that none of that was sexual. I grew up in the same cohort and culture as these girls. As such, I think I need to share a bit more of my own story, because it sheds light on the significance of physical touch within purity culture. I haven’t shared these things because they’re quite personal and a bit embarrassing, but duty calls, so here goes.

I remember very clearly the first time I became sexually aroused.

It was the first time Sean held my hand. I was in college at the time, and Sean and I had just started dating (though at the time we called it courting). When he took my hand that very first time, something happened to my body. I became wet in strange places and had tingling feelings coursing through me. I wasn’t even having sexual thoughts—my body’s response was purely physical and automatic. Because of my complete lack of sex education, I had absolutely no idea what was happening. What I did know was that all of this had been trigged by Sean taking my hand.

Did I mention that we were both wearing winter gloves at the time? It was bitter cold and the dead of winter, and we were on a walk outside through snow drifts across campus. We weren’t even actually touching, skin to skin, and yet—and yet.

Sean was my first date, first boyfriend, first everything. I had never so much as touched a guy my own age before. No kiss, no cuddle, nothing. You have to understand that physical contact between unmarried individuals of opposite genders was thoroughly forbidden and taboo in the purity culture of my evangelical homeschool upbringing. In fact, at Gothard’s headquarters, teens were expelled for as much as looking at each other for too long. When that is your reality, even the slightest touch becomes sexual.

Because of these purity teachings, Sean and I did not have our first kiss until a full six months after we started dating. I had originally been planning to save my first kiss for the alter, but thankfully changed my mind. During those first six months, the only physical contact Sean and I had was holding hands and side hugs. Sometimes Sean and I would sit on a couch, side by side, close enough to touch. Sean would put his arm around my shoulders.

Every simple touch evoked a physical response in my body. During the hand holding, the side hugs, the sitting side by side, my body would become sexually aroused just as I had when Sean first took my hand. I turned to google to learn more about what was happening to my body. When Sean found out that all it took to turn me on was a simple touch, he would boast jokingly of his sexual prowess, or tell me I was clearly a future sex goddess. I would smile and laugh at him in turn, but I had no way of knowing whether what I was experiencing would be my longterm norm or whether it was some sort of aberration.

Today, I no longer become sexually aroused at the simplest physical touch. I can sit side by side on a couch with Sean without becoming wet and physically aroused. I’ve been married to Sean for half a decade now, and my body has become accustomed to being in a regular physical relationship. Sometimes Sean speaks wistfully of the days when he could make me sexually aroused with a simple touch, but I think he’s still relieved I finally let him kiss me.

That is how incredibly significant physical touch can be to those in the purity culture. Touch between unmarried individuals of opposite genders is not only forbidden but also, as a result, thoroughly sexualized. That Gothard, coming from that culture, could claim that he touched those girls’ hands, feet, and hair in this way, alone with them in his office and for hours at a time, but that it wasn’t sexual—that is utterly beyond me.

I can only hope no one will fall for Gothard’s rationalizations.

As a quick note for regular readers who may remember what I’ve written before on experiencing sexual dysfunction, the weirdest part of all of this was that this physical response of my body was not accompanied by sexual fantasies. In other words, my body responded to simple touch by becoming aroused, but my mind did not accompany this physical response with sexual thoughts. This became a problem when Sean and I eventually began to have sex, because it affected my ability to orgasm. As a result of my upbringing, I was somehow both oversexualized and undersexualized at the same time.