You have just returned from the market with a basket of fruits and vegetables. You go to the chapel where your neighbour, a widow in her 80s, often spends the rest of her days in prayers; that or just having friendly chatter with the village priest.
The wrinkled woman, filled with gratitude, collects a small batch of the fresh veggies from you and looks over to the priest, boasting;
“Mon père, elle suit toujours la bonne voie. Une vraie prude, douce et ferme à la fois.”
Meaning:
“Father, she always follows the right path. A true prude; gentle and strong at once.”
This might have been a probable scenario if you were born in Southern France, maybe near Toulouse, where the people spoke Old French between the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
At this time, the word “Prude” emerged naturally from Latin and Old French vocabulary. It was initially phrased as “prudefemme”, meaning “a respectable woman”, and it was largely considered a compliment.
However, the word started to shift in tone between the 1600s and 1700s when it entered English Protestant Victorian culture and was typically used mockingly to suggest excessive or affected modesty, especially with regard to sexuality.
Today (and for many), to be prude is to be sexually repressed and judgemental, especially if it’s used in reference to a woman or AFAB (a person assigned female at birth). It usually suggests that someone is uncomfortable with their body and sexuality, unwilling to explore, unable to express their sexual desires, or trying to police other people.
In a recent conversation with a friend, we explored the different ways the word ‘prude’ is currently used among people in our generation. We also reflected on how societal norms and parental upbringing influence our beliefs around sexual conservatism and liberalism.
Part of our discussion focused on defining what it means to be ‘prude’ without attaching shame or negativity to it. We wondered:
“Is there a way to describe someone who leans toward restraint without making it sound like a flaw?”
In a brief moment of reflection, I thought about the first time someone, a young man who was making advances at me at the time, referred to me as prudish. I was at the university, and he was trying to learn more about my sexual history, but I hesitated to speak about it. And when I eventually decided to, the ‘most intense thing’ I had done was admit my feelings to anyone that I had liked in the past—if and only if I was sure that the feeling was mutual.
For one, even though I had been curious enough to secretly study the ins and outs of sex right from when I was a preteen, I struggled to even incorporate words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” into my everyday lingo with my peers. I felt too self-aware, like simply speaking those words aloud might unravel something tightly wound inside me. And even though I had gotten into the university without even having had my first kiss, I hadn’t felt like I had missed out on anything. Or had I?
The conversation made me pause. On the surface, it seemed like a simple interaction. But in that moment, something shifted. For the first time, I had to confront the hard fact. I had always been conflicted when it came to anything regarding sex. On one hand, I’d always been an obedient and compliant child. My go-to reaction was always to flee from anything that had the semblance of sin or temptation in it. For this, I was proud. I had made my parents, my family, and the village who raised me proud.
But on the other hand, did I really subscribe to any of this? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if my supposed bragging rights truly stemmed from my personal convictions on the subject. Or I was only regurgitating years and years of conditioning to view sex and anything associated with it as evil when it’s reviewed outside the lens of religion and the scope of marriage.
The thing is, one can lie to everyone but themselves. So although I had always practised and preached abstinence, at the point of my conversation with this boy, it began to seem as though, i had simply coveted the beliefs of a generation of women suppressed into silence and that maybe, just maybe, this farce I put up was all just a brilliant and well-executed performance.
My friend and I also talked about how not everyone fits neatly into either extreme, whether sexually conservative or liberal. Since humans exist on many spectrums (race, age, gender, emotional expression, etc.), it makes sense that our sexual values and boundaries would vary, too. We were keen to explore more compassionate, inclusive ways to talk about that.
The first thing we quickly agreed to was the fact that our parents grew up in a world where sex and sexuality were taboo and spoken about in hushed tones. This background then influenced how many of those parents approached sex education with their children. For me, my mom struggled a bit but ensured I understood the basics, even if at times it was done with the help of an older friend with older children. My friend, on the other hand, mentioned that her mother didn’t have any explicit conversations with her regarding sex education but gave her the proverbial “remember the family from which you come” advice and hoped she would get the hint.
When you add layers of puritanical social conditioning from our cultural, religious and academic institutions to the mix, it becomes even trickier to decipher whether a person’s sexual preferences are based on what they truly want or on what they’ve been fed. We’re then forced to ask questions like:
“Is the average virgin who’s waiting until marriage doing so because they’ve considered the option of premarital sex and made a conscious choice? Or is it simply because of what they’ve been taught by their parents, their priests, Muslim clerics or other religious leaders, their teachers, as well as other authority figures in their communities?”
Are these decisions made from a place of knowledge and agency, or from a place of ignorance and fear?
This leads us to discuss the worn-out saint or sexy narrative that’s often slapped against women, forcing them into a binary where you’re either the pure, untouchable saint who must uphold impossible standards of virtue or the desirable, liberated figure who performs openness for social approval.
Myths and misinformation have also been used as tools to manipulate and control women by teaching them to fear their desires, doubt their autonomy, and stay confined within boundaries defined by others.
In my secondary school, I remember the stereotypical labels we casually assigned to ourselves and others. These ideas slipped into conversations, often masked as innocent banter. Boys would say things like, “quiet girls are always low-key bad girls,” implying mystery equalled hidden promiscuity. Or they’d spread the annoying and dangerous assumption that the loudest girls, the ones who spoke their minds and owned their presence, had no boundaries and were the easiest to have sex with.
The implication of this reductionist thinking is clear: women are not (and have never really been) simply allowed to be. There’s rarely space to choose modesty without being labelled repressed or to express sexuality without being reduced to it. The word ‘prude’ becomes more than just a judgement. It becomes a tool of control, weaponised to silence, embarrass, or pressure anyone, especially women, who dare to define intimacy and autonomy of our bodies.
In our current era, where ‘prude’ has become a derogatory term for anyone who resists or questions dominant narratives around sexual freedom, leaving little room for nuance, boundaries, or personal choice, loud and proud feminists like Chidera Eggerue, aka SlumFlower, are redefining agency while balancing celibacy and sexual freedom to her own benefit and on her own terms.
“We do not have to wait till next week Monday to improve our lives or to rebuild our relationship with ourselves. We can start now with what we have and grow with it until it becomes enough, and we become enough in that way,” she says.
Chidera lives freely and fiercely as an activist and writer, while she continues to empower and teach women the importance of self-control, self-respect, and self-advocacy in their sexual journeys.
The next time someone throws the p-word at you, remember this: its meaning is yours to define, and so is your response. No one can weaponise it against you unless you let them.
And this collective action can begin when we support each other by destigmatising conversations around sex and sexuality for women, teaching intentionality and reminding ourselves that we can and should always have autonomy over our bodies without shame or regret.
About the Author:
Mercy Williams is a multi-passionate creative whose non-linear career blends storytelling, product design, and advocacy, with a gift for writing everything from scripts and poetry to essays and fiction. As the founder of Denlaa Creative, she nurtures a vibrant community of African storytellers, using her layered voice to immerse, disrupt, and leave a lasting impression. She is on the writing track for the 2025 Adventures Creators Programme.
