Analyzing an Abstinence Anthem
Examining the lasting personal impact of an award-winning virginity bop almost 30 years after its release
Currently listening to…
I woke up with a song in my head a few days ago. All morning, I found myself singing the chorus on loop as I tried to place it.
I don't want it, I don't want it, want it
I don't want it, want your sex for now
I don't want it, I don't want it, want it
I don't want it, 'til we take the vows
By mid-afternoon, I’d unlocked a core memory! I was singing “I Don’t Want It” by DC Talk. This is fascinating to me for many reasons, all of which I will detail in this post. The first, and perhaps the most interesting, is that the last time I heard the song was probably 2002.
So that’s where I’ll start.
I can still feel the weight of my bulky Sony Sports Walkman in my hands. I got it for Christmas and it quickly became one of my most treasured possessions. This thing was legit. I’m talking about anti-skip technology, a secure twist-close, and a thick band that allowed me to slip my hand through and access the controls with my thumb so I could run, rollerblade, or dance around in my bedroom without actually having to hold it. (Describing my old Walkman in such detail for this post made me suddenly want one again. It’s linked here in case you’re curious and/or motivated by nostalgia when making impulse purchases online.)
When I try to remember the bedroom I was dancing around in, I see spelling bee trophies, wicker furniture, and Kenny Chesney posters. When I try to remember what my thoughts were about sex at that time, my memories are sparse. I wasn’t thinking about sex very much in 2002, but I was singing along to blatant lyrics about not having it.
S-E-X is a test when I'm pressed
So back up off with less of that zest
Impress this brother with a life of virtue
The innocence that's spent is gonna hurt you
Safe is the way they say to play
Then again safe ain't safe at all today
So just wait for the mate that's straight from God
Don't have sex 'til you tie the knot
This is in stark contrast to how often I think about sex now which is to say, I think about it all the time. As I comb through revisions for my first draft of Hard Things, my book about my decade-long struggle with vaginismus, I’m constantly thinking about the building blocks of my personal sexual identity and how inadequate sex education, specifically in religious contexts, contributes to sexual dysfunction. Research about the link between religious orthodoxy and vaginismus is ongoing, as is my treatment.
Girl, it's gonna take a little time
For us to see [the truth]
That love is simply more
Than fulfilling the need [for S-E-X]
Respect is what we need to find the cure
For this disease [of lust]
And trust in God above
To shape our lives in harmony
[Do you copy?]
That's why I'm saying
It would seem that, for better or for worse, DC Talk’s “I Don’t Want It” was definitely a building block for me. Hearing the lyrics twenty years later illuminates a lot of my early understanding of sex. If S-E-X was a test that DC Talk guaranteed was going to hurt me, it was one I became determined to pass in the years to come… even when it stopped making sense.
…even when I decided I didn’t want to get married.
…even when I admitted to myself that I didn’t subscribe to Christianity anymore.
…even when I was in a committed relationship with someone I wanted to have sex with.
It doesn’t surprise me that an oldest daughter with people-pleasing and perfectionist tendencies was exposed to antiquated messaging like this and ended up with vaginismus. It doesn’t surprise my therapist or the myriad of medical professionals I’ve connected with over the last 10 years either.
Girl, they say that it takes two
To make a thing go right (for love)
But girl, we gotta remember
There's another in our lives (in God we trust)
We must add up the cost
Before indulging in the heat (for now)
And trust that God will give us
Something better if we wait
That's why we got to say...
The lyrics are admittedly cringey and haven’t particularly aged well in my 2022 reconceptualization, but the messaging is pervasive and unfortunately, doesn’t exclusively exist in religious pop songs from the ‘90s. I recently played the song for my sister and mother. I was curious to see if they recognized it. My sister did. My mother didn’t, but she acknowledged that she agrees with the message in the lyrics. (You can read about my experience at her sex toy party here. It’s worth noting that many of the women who attended the party were unmarried, including me, but the subject of abstinence did not come up during the festivities.)
Listening to the song with them prompted a conversation about our individual experiences with purity culture. My sister remembered an exercise during which her public school educator passed a piece of tape around the classroom. After each student touched the tape, what little stickiness was left was covered in dust particles. “This is what happens every time you have sex.” She told the students. Demonstrations like these are not uncommon.
“Sex-as-dirty and women-as-tainted messages are central to the virginity movement and are perpetuated most visibly in the most unfortunate of places — our schools.”
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth
In my research for this post, I found a podcast episode from 2014 that featured Kevin Max of DC Talk. I was surprised to learn that while Free at Last earned the group their first Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album in 1994, “I Don’t Want It” was considered scandalous by the church whose abstinence message it bopped to promote.
I found it peculiar that in Kevin’s view, DC Talk was “tackling” taboo subjects like abstinence when in my experience, sex before marriage was a topic of conversation in my youth group and at my dinner table long before I even had a basal interest in the subject. I’m not doubting his experience. It wouldn’t be the first time Christianity misaligned its own message.
1-900-LOVE, S-E-X is on the TV
Too much skin is in your vision
You gotta make the right decision
God has set His standard higher
Purity is His desire, I'm gonna choose to wait
In the podcast episode, Kevin explained why he felt the church was initially apprehensive in embracing the song. While addressing his divorce and other “messy” sexual politics, he advocated for more transparency and honesty in Christian conversations relating to sex.
“The church doesn’t want to talk about sex.”
— Kevin Max of DC Talk, The Bad Christian Podcast EP 24
I sort of agree with his take. I’d argue that the church has no problem talking openly and often about sex as long as the subject matter fits into their narrow definition of it, but by that exclusionary nature, it’s a short conversation. The message for untouched, unwed, heterosexual women is: Don’t Have It (yet) or in this case, Don’t Want It.
But I have some questions.
What does waiting to have sex look like for women who don’t aspire to marry?
Where do the 81% of women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted nationwide fit into the definition of sexual purity?
What if informing, entrusting, and empowering women to make their own decisions regarding their sexuality wasn’t such a radical concept?
Questions like these come up a lot in writing Hard Things. I’m a heterosexual, cisgender female and evangelical purity culture did a number on me. So much of the healing I’m still working toward today involves dismantling engrained sexual shame that flooded my psyche at such an impressionable time in my life. 20 years later, this song still lives somewhere in the depths of my subconscious! Imagine the lasting impact lyrics like these might have had on a young person in the LGBTQ community.
I was drafting this post when my partner and I happened upon an especially fitting episode of the sitcom, Parks and Recreation. In the scene below, Leslie Knope attempts to provide controversial (read: safe) sex education to senior citizens in her town. She is interrupted by abstinence advocates AKA “morality watchdogs” from the Society for Family Stability Foundation. The best part? They rap!
This scene is absurd because the abstinence in question is that of senior citizens, but it does an exceptional job illustrating just how limited the parameters of abstinence-only education can be. Over-policing the sexual activity of the elderly in favor of sex-negative, virginity-vigilant messaging seems wacky, but virginity as a concept, perpetuated by purity culture and mobilized by media like DC Talk’s “I Don’t Want It,” is black and white. It doesn’t make exceptions for age, trauma, personal agency, sexual orientation, or common sense. What if the old people in the scene were replaced with adolescents, specifically young women? Suddenly, things aren’t so wacky.
Suddenly, we’re right back where we started in 2002.