The blatant double standards of many pentecostal or fundamentalist churches regarding women’s behavior versus men’s behavior fill women with unnecessary shame while allowing men to shake off their perceived discretions without a backwards glance. That discrepancy does serious harm to faithful women’s self-esteem. Whenever I encounter a woman suffering under that burden I do my best to lift her up, as I did here:
You didn’t get that sense of overwhelming guilt out of nowhere. That’s how they do in so many churches. Men get away with all kinds of things, but women can’t so much as sneeze without being shamed for how they sneezed, when they sneezed, what parts of their body moved while they sneezed, etc. You internalized all of that. Now you can free yourself. It may not happen overnight, but you can do it.