Writing Virgin-ia: Part One (Research)

When it comes to my writing of a play it starts with a very small idea, and then comes my favourite part: research. For me, research is what takes a small seed of an idea and nurtures it to bring to life a full narrative. With my most recent play, Virginia, the idea of purity within the confines of Christianity was that seed. I knew I wanted the female perspective on the subject, but I didn’t want the story to be solely my experience. I figured I couldn’t be the only one who grew up with a skewed view of the world of sex due to the church, so I decided to create a survey. I sent it out to about 50 women around my age whom I knew grew up in or around the church. I made the survey anonymous but left a blank at the end in case anyone wanted to reveal themselves and speak further.

THE SURVEY QUESTIONS:

1. Did you grow up in a Christian environment?

2. In regards to sex, were you taught abstinence until marriage?

3. If not, what were you taught?

4. How did you feel about your body growing up? Positively or Negatively?

5. How did it affect you?

6. Did you have a “purity ring”?

7. If yes, did you choose to wear it or was it given to you?

8. If you went back now, would you still wear it?

9. Did you have anyone to talk to openly about sex growing up?

10. Do/did you have any hang-ups/fears about sex because of this and if so what were they?

11. Did you follow/are you following the abstinence path and waiting for marriage?

12. If not, did you feel shame, and, if you feel comfortable, would you care to expand on what that felt like?

13. If you did do the abstinence path, are you glad you did?

14. Do you feel differently about sex now that you are older?

15. If you could go back and tell your younger self one thing in regards to you and your views now, what would you tell her?

16. If you have children or plan on having them, will you teach them the abstinence path?

I would love to have more personalised conversations with you! If you are willing to speak with me more in-depth, please leave your name and email here so I can contact you.

I expected to get maybe 10 responses back and was pleasantly shocked when I received 38 responses and 26 of those gave their name and email. I was honoured to have the trust of these women and the license to help get their voices heard. After reading them and having further personal discussions with a couple I found that quite a few had similar experiences to me, but many shined a light on other traumas, triggers, and expectations I knew nothing about. I read about women who were still virgins and embarrassed to the point they wished to be raped just so the choice was taken away from them. I heard from women who had been married many months before having sex because they couldn’t process the shame. I listened to women who had been raped but didn’t realise that’s what it was till years later. I heard so many stories that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to incorporate them all into one story.

Now, as I said, I am a big researcher, so I went even further by reading a book called Pure by Linda Kay Klein. In it, like myself, Klein interviewed and documented conversations with women, men, and trans folk about their upbringings with church and sex. It was becoming even more apparent to me that this was a bigger issue than I could have imagined.

From these stories, I began to look into the sermons and teachings that were the cause of these women’s struggles. I found archived sermons by male preachers about women’s place in the church and marriage. How it was down to them to keep men from straying or sinning. I even found online articles where women were advocating the toxic traits that have affected so many of the aforementioned interviewees.

The list of research I had kept growing and I had a whole toolbox full of information that was already creating characters on its own, and thus, Virginia was born.