Shameless: My Story of Overcoming Purity Culture

By Dani Fankhauser

This is a deeply personal story of growing up within evangelical Christianity, and questioning its guidance on premarital sex. 

Now updated with a new preface by the author!

Dani Fankhauser was 26, in a new city, and a

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadThisNext Publishing
• Release date: Jun 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988291510

Book preview

SHAMELESS

MY STORY OF OVERCOMING PURITY CULTURE

DANI FANKHAUSER

READTHISNEXT PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

Preface

1. Firsts

2. Foreplay

3. Modesty

4. Consequences

5. Christian College

6. Bible Reading

7. Secular Living

8. God

9. New York City

10. San Francisco

11. No Shame

Afterword

Your Turn

About the Author

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Notes

© 2017 Dani Fankhauser

Cover design by Martha Kelley

PRAISE FOR DANI FANKHAUSER

Your story gave me the permission to be whatever I am.

Instagram DM from Shameless reader

Impressionistic and engaging … Fankhauser boldly offers new wisdom.

Bromleigh McCleneghan, pastor and author of Good Christian Sex

Dani Fankhauser is fearless in recounting her experiences and diving deep on her change of perspective. Highly recommend! 

Bestselling author Jennifer Ann Shore

Visual, engaging, and honest, this is a book I wasn’t able to put down. It’s about self-discovery, youth, and above all else … love. That’s something we all can relate to! 

Stephanie Thoma, author of Confident Introvert

Dedicated to my parents.

PREFACE

Five years ago, I took a plunge and published Shameless. 

At the time, my friends in New York and San Francisco didn’t know much about my evangelical background and how that played into dating, and my Christian friends from my high school and college years in southern California didn’t know that, well, I wasn’t a virgin anymore. 

Releasing this book forced me to merge identities. What followed were many difficult conversations, leading to some friendships growing deeper and others falling off. I had to own my lack of authenticity that arose from a fear of rejection. A religion is a community, and breaking off, even on a single point like premarital sex, can feel like risking death.

In my early years, as Shameless recounts, I felt limited in who I could date. Not only did I think he would have to be tall, because I’m a tall female, but he also had to be a Christian, and the right kind of Christian. The pool was limited. After Shameless came out, I felt more lax on religion. I wasn’t attending church regularly, as no church seemed to fully fit my evolving beliefs. But, I felt like a romantic partner could never understand me unless they, too, had some experience with fundamentalist religion. I worried my wounds around intimacy would be too much, too messy. Baggage. In a new way, religion was a romantic blocker.

Over time, though, this fear subsided. With therapy and practice, I learned how to talk about my upbringing and share my preferences around how I could feel safe in order to best enjoy intimacy. Once I read Come As You Are, a manual on female sexuality by sex researcher Emily Nagoski, PhD, I started to have a lot more fun. 

When I first published Shameless, it was really important to me to frame the memoir as a story about how premarital sex is both safe and valid for Christians. That was the deep question I had used my own life experiments to answer. As the time frame captured in the book concludes, I was still a Christian. 

But in the years beyond, I’ve continued to learn and grow, and the label no longer fits. Sharing my story as a sort-of testimony was a way of giving permission to others to follow their inner moral compass. For me, it gave me permission to be myself, to bring together the disparate identities I’d been managing.

Once I took one step out of the box, I kept going. I found a dazzling and benevolent world. I’ve gone on to learn about astrology and energy healing, Buddhism and yogic science. This wisdom gives me a deeper understanding of the very real spirituality I grew up with. I stand by my original thesis, that a Christian need not wait until marriage to have sex, but for my own integrity, I now would best classify myself as spiritual.

That is why I’m releasing a new edition of Shameless, with a more inclusive subtitle that is less focused on virginity and religion, and instead on a soul’s evolution. The book has once again forced me to get authentic. 

Many readers from similarly strict religions or cultures have seen their stories in Shameless, as have people simply curious about life as an evangelical, who can relate to the coming-of-age dating experiences. I’m so grateful for the Instagram DMs and messages from readers who found their own freedom and joy through reading Shameless. It is the purpose of my writing to help others. Thank you for reading! 

- Dani Fankhauser, June 2023

1

FIRSTS

One warm Friday afternoon my senior year of college, I came home to find the two-bedroom apartment I shared with three other girls empty. The four of us lived in a complex a few miles from our private Christian university, Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

The balcony facing ours belonged to two guys, who we’d often see shirtless at their barbecue. One roommate suspected they were male strippers because they were fit, stayed home