I first took the Rice Purity test at an academic summer camp in the summer before my senior year of high school. Women with scores in the 60s or below are seen as dirty and used, whereas women with scores in the 90s are too angelic and need to “lighten up and let their hair down a little.” Most offensive is the fact that people’s complex lives and experiences are reduced to a number. It reiterates the age-old slut-shaming messages that women have been subject to for centuries. The test ingrains into its subjects that a lower score makes one less pure, meaning that someone more sexually experienced is inherently immoral and promiscuous. However, the effects of such a test are widespread. The Rice Purity Test might seem like a harmless little quiz one might take at a sleepover, giggling, and sharing stories. It intends to gauge purity and assigns a dehumanizing number to those who take it. The test has warped and changed with the times, now offering a wider variety of activities than it did in 1924, but the general message stays the same. Many more versions have been created over the years, each more risqué than the last. The original version created in 1924 was only given to women. It is encouraged during Rice’s Orientation week as a bonding experience among new students. This test was created by Rice University in an attempt to gauge how much college students mature their freshman year. The last 5-10 questions are obviously the most questionable, ranging from anal sex to bestiality. In fact, question 69 just has a question mark. The test then transitions into explicitly sexual questions. For example, questions 45-65 intensify from asking about drinking alcohol in a non-religious context to getting convicted of a felony. The farther down you get, the more immoral the questions become. Questions start relatively innocently, asking questions like, “Danced without leaving room for Jesus?” and “Been in a relationship?” It then segues into slightly more sexual questions, like masturbation and fondling of a member of the preferred sex’s (MPS) bodies. It is graded on a 0-100 scale, with 0 being the least pure and 100 the most. It is a self-graded survey that attempts to assess one’s supposed purity or innocence in matters related to sex, drugs, encounters with the law, and other “naughty” activities. Many people have heard of the Rice Purity test.
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