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| A wedding cake topper with a bride and groom. Image source. |
Here's a interesting article: Do conservative evangelicals enjoy better sex and marriage? A response to Josh Howerton, written by Sheila Wray Gregoire.
I've read some of Gregoire's blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum, before. It's a blog about sex and marriage, for heterosexual Christian monogamous married women. She gives a lot of practical advice about women's pleasure during sex, and that's a really good thing because I don't think I've seen any other evangelical Christians doing that. (Disclaimer: I don't know if she describes herself as "evangelical", that's just my read on it.) Literally- I have read lots of purity books and Christian marriage books (which talk a lot about sex), and I don't think I have ever read anything anywhere about "sex should feel good for women, and here are some tips for how to do that", except for Gregoire's blog.
It's really really good that there's someone in this niche- someone who buys into the basic evangelical Christian teaching like "sex is only for marriage", and gives sound advice for women's sex lives, and speaks out about the connections between purity culture, complementarianism, and abuse. It's very good that there's someone doing a good job in that niche- but man that is NOT my niche, and reading some of Gregoire's posts about why you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, I just roll my eyes at everything. It's not my niche, but for women who tick the boxes- heterosexual, Christian, monogamous, married- and aren't allowed to listen to sex advice from "worldly" sources, it's very good that Gregoire is there.
Overall, my opinion is that she has a lot of good advice, but it's still within this very weird restrictive framework about how sex is only meant for this one specific context which God intended, and it's not allowed to mean anything different to different people.
(I am actually really interested in reading her books though, and blogging through them- I think as an asexual ex-purity-culture queer-affirming married Christian woman, I would have some things to say. Readers, if you'd be interested in this, leave a comment. ^_^ )
So anyway, this article. Gregoire is responding to a post by Josh Howerton, which had some stats about how conservative Christians have better marriages and sex lives and other positive things. Gregoire digs deeper into the statistics and shows that the data doesn't actually say what Howerton claims it says.
Here's a quote from Gregoire:
Two co-authors and I recently surveyed 20,000 predominantly evangelical women for our book The Great Sex Rescue, followed by a survey of 3,000 men for The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex. While church attendance definitely improved women’s marriage and sex lives, we also found those benefits were wiped out if women believe certain teachings that, tragically, are all too prevalent in our evangelical culture. For instance, ideas like “all men struggle with lust; it’s every man’s battle” or “women are obligated to have sex when their husbands want it” can actually cause women’s marital and sexual satisfaction, libido and orgasm rates to tank and rates of sexual pain to skyrocket.
OOOOH! Oh man, I am extremely interested in this. Because I TOTALLY WAS taught that "all men struggle with lust; it's every man's battle" and "women are obligated to have sex when their husbands want it" and those things TOTALLY DID cause problems in my sex life. Especially because I'm asexual and for a long time I worried so much about not being "good enough" as a wife because I can't do sex correctly. I definitely see how those beliefs can cause huge problems for straight women's sex lives. Very cool that Gregoire did an actual survey about this and got some actual stats.
And then the article gets really good:
Third, Howerton fails to consider women’s rates of sexual pain and pleasure. Howerton proudly declares that highly religious women enjoy better sex. That conclusion is based on just one question asking about subjective sexual satisfaction (“I am satisfied with my sexual satisfaction with my partner.”)
OOOH this is really interesting! I bet "highly religious women" tend to have a completely different understanding of what "good sex" is, compared to the general population of women. (Gregoire talks about that too, later in the article.) For example, I can definitely see a conservative religious woman believing "good sex means my husband enjoys it" or "good sex means I can endure it well enough that my husband doesn't complain; I meet my obligations to him."
I can definitely see conservative religious women just having no idea at all about female orgasms, female masturbation, the clitoris, sex toys, other ways to have sex besides penis-in-vagina (PIV), the concept of a man prioritizing a woman's sexual pleasure, etc. And when you're evaluating your sex life without being aware of the existence of any of those things, you might feel like, hey things are pretty good.
Like... I'm not saying that all women who grow up in a conservative Christian environment like I did don't know about these things. Not everyone is as naive as me, not everyone is as asexual as me, not everyone is as... 100% buying into it, like I did. But if you follow the rules, if you really do what they teach you and avoid all "sexual sin", then yes, you will indeed have NOT A CLUE about how sex can physically feel good for a woman.
In The Great Sex Rescue, we share our findings that evangelical women suffer from vaginismus, or primary sexual pain, at more than twice the rate of the general population. We found 22.6% of evangelical women had experienced sexual pain disorders,
*raises hand* Oooh, this is me, I had vaginismus
with 7% affected so badly that penetration was difficult if not impossible.
*waves enthusiastically* THIS IS ME
And a belief in gender hierarchy makes vaginismus more likely to occur. Our study echoes 50 years of medical research: Sexual pain is largely a conservative religious problem.
OMG I really want to read her book! This is totally exactly what happened to me.
Wow I am super curious about how she advises overcoming vaginismus. I wonder if she advises women to masturbate! Can you imagine, an evangelical recommending masturbation? For me, I COULD NOT have solved it without masturbating. I would have had to just give up on PIV sex altogether, if I hadn't masturbated- because masturbating was the only way I could learn about my body enough to figure out what would help my vagina to open.
And also, another thing that was essential to my own "great sex rescue" was the idea that my sex life is about ME, and then I SHARE IT with my husband. It's not 100% about him and then any tiny bit that's not about him is "cheating"- which is what I used to believe. I believed masturbating was cheating, and I believed that me stimulating my genitals myself, during sex with him, was cheating.
But from what I've seen of Gregoire's blog, I doubt she would agree with me on this. I doubt she would agree with me saying "you need to take control of your own sex life, it's about you, and you should masturbate." Hey maybe I'm wrong, but that's just the impression I've gotten from what I've seen of her blog. (Hey if I'm wrong, and she has a blog post that says "married women should masturbate" then I totally want to read it- send me a link!)
That’s pain; what about pleasure? We found evangelicals have a 47-point orgasm gap, meaning 95% of evangelical men report almost always or always reaching orgasm during a sexual encounter, but only 48% of women do. That doesn’t sound like something to brag about.
YIKES that is a huge gap. 95% of evangelical men almost always or always having an orgasm, but only 48% of evangelical women. DAAAAANNNGGGG.
I made this galaxy-brain meme to help convey my opinions about orgasms:
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| Galaxy brain meme (made from this meme generator). The first level says "I don't need to have an orgasm because sex is all about my husband." The second level says "Both partners should orgasm because that's equal and fair." The third level says "I don't need to have an orgasm because sex can be whatever you define it to be." |
Let me break down this meme for you:
Level 1: "I don't need to have an orgasm because sex is all about my husband." This is where I was when I first started having sex (though actually Hendrix and I weren't married when we first started having sex). I really had no idea about female orgasms. Me having an orgasm was not at all part of my view of what sex was. I was conceptualizing it the way I had been taught by all the Christian marriage books- that sex is something a woman does for a man. If he was happy with it, that meant I had done a good enough job. As for my own pleasure, I was happy because I was touching him. I didn't even know about arousal, didn't know there was a huge element that was missing.
Level 2: "Both partners should orgasm because that's equal and fair." This is the advice that I think we should give in basic sex ed. The general guideline should be that both partners orgasm. (Or, not just "both", because there could even be more than 2 partners.) This should be the foundation, and then on top of that we can consider specific cases where it might not be beneficial to aim for this target. For example, maybe one partner actually has no idea how to orgasm at all, but now they've heard this advice and they think they're "supposed to", and their partner is acting like they're both required to keep trying and trying and trying even though they're both tired and frustrated, and in the end the non-orgasm partner just fakes it so they can just be done- see, that's an example of a situation where treating "both partners should orgasm" like a hard-and-fast rule would be harmful. But the solution isn't just to conclude "it's totally fine if only one partner has an orgasm"- no, you should dig deeper into what's going on, and do the work of figuring out what each of you want from sex. And also buy a vibrator so you can at least have the experience of having an orgasm, and let that inform your thoughts on what you want from partnered sex.
Level 3: "I don't need to orgasm because sex can be whatever you define it to be." This is what I actually believe- but the advice in point 2 is the advice we should give to beginners. I am kind of annoyed when people say "sex can be whatever you define it to be" even though that's true... because that's really harmful advice for people who are completely clueless. You have to at least tell people "here are some examples of red flags"- and if one partner always orgasms and the other partner never does, that's a red flag. A red flag doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, but it's definitely something that needs to be investigated further.
I personally do make sure I have an orgasm every time (TMI?). But it's not because "that's what you're supposed to do"- it's because that's what I want to do. It's because I'm experienced enough to know what I want (okay lol I've only had sex with 1 person so maybe not that experienced...). But I can imagine scenarios where one partner is fine with not having an orgasm- and if it comes from a place of really knowing themself, and really feeling their feelings, making an informed decision, then that's a good thing. Nothing wrong with deciding that your own orgasms are a low priority for you when you have sex.
But here's the problem: Someone might think they're at the third level, but they're actually at the first level. Like if you feel like "if I only care about my husband's pleasure, and I don't feel my own dirty sexual feelings, that means I'm a better wife" and so you trick yourself into believing that you're genuinely not interested in having orgasms yourself. Soooo... again, my solution for this is "this is why we need the second level"- like there should be some general guidelines about what good sex looks like, and what things could be red flags. It's impossible to come up with a "one size fits all" but at least there should be a starting point we can give people, and then if they choose to do something differently, they do so because they know themselves well enough to know what works for them.
And I don't want to get into games about "oh you SAY you're okay with [apparent red flag], but actually that's because subconsciously you believe [bad thing]." That's never going to go anywhere good, trying to tell people you know them better than they know themselves. Even if you end up being right, it's not helpful to confront them in this way about it. A lot of asexuals have to deal with this- this "oh you're just saying you don't like sex because [whatever reason] but you need to get over that, and then you will like sex." So I don't want to play those games.
So, okay, circling back around to Gregoire's article: 95% of evangelical men are having an orgasm every time or almost every time, but only 48% of evangelical women. I laid out my whole perspective about orgasms just now because I am a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that a woman not having an orgasm automatically means something is wrong. It could be fine, as I said, if it's an informed choice. BUT WOW, it is DEFINITELY NOT going to be the case that 52% of women legitimately do not like having orgasms. The percentage of women who would go the "informed choice" route and arrive at "no orgasm for me" is WAYYYYY lower than that. So something is definitely wrong. The majority of these 52% are not having orgasms because they are ignorant, or because their partner is not treating them right. This is a problem. Women deserve better.
Moving on:
What if conservative evangelical women are simply more likely to rate objectively bad sex as satisfactory? That’s actually a caveat the IFS gives:
“It is possible that simply being married is more important to highly religious women, which may raise their satisfaction ratings. They may be more likely to look at their relationship through a rose-colored lens.”
Well, we found evidence of these rose-colored glasses. Let’s look only at women who rarely or never orgasm. If they believe in a gender hierarchy, they are 22% more likely to be satisfied with the frequency they orgasm (even though it’s abysmal!) than women who believe in gender equality. The only way women in patriarchal marriages do better is if we consider apathy toward personal pleasure a perk.
This is SPOT-ON. As a woman, if you really, truly buy into complementarian ideology, then you won't have any awareness that it matters whether you have an orgasm or not. Like why would that even be a part of sex?
What happens when sexual pain is a part of the picture? Women who report having experienced vaginismus are 36% more likely to have sex at least once a week if they believe in gender hierarchy than if they believe in egalitarianism. Egalitarian women are less likely to feel they should endure pain for the sake of their husbands’ pleasure than women who believe in patriarchy.
OOOOH! First of all, I find it EXTREMELY INTERESTING that having sex at least once a week is framed as a negative thing for women with vaginismus. Like, from my point of view, yes of course it makes sense that if PIV sex is painful, then it's reasonable to do PIV sex less frequently. But typically these sex-advice experts see "having sex more often" as an inherently good thing, like that's the ideal that they want to help people work toward. (This is a generalization, perhaps I am unfairly lumping in Gregoire with the "having sex more often is inherently better" crowd. See also my review of the book Come As You Are.) VERYYY INTERESTINGGGG that Gregoire is indirectly telling us that the right thing for women who have vaginismus is to have sex less frequently. I mean, I agree with it (though I have a bunch of additional advice I'd want to add), but I'm just surprised to see someone say it.
And also, YES, 100%, this rings true, that women who believe in gender hierarchy are having painful sex more often than women who believe that their needs and their husband's needs matter equally. I, uh, did that. Because "men need it" and that's supposedly the most important thing a wife does for her husband. It wasn't until I was pregnant that I felt like I had a "good enough reason" to not have sex. (My husband never pressured me- I'm glad he is not a Christian and doesn't believe any of this BS. It was this internalized teaching about "my wifely duty" that pressured me.)
And one more quote from the article:
Evangelical culture has told women sex is about satisfying a man’s needs so he won’t stray. We’ve made sex a male entitlement and a female obligation, turning it from a knowing into an owing. Should we be surprised when women downplay our own needs?
Yep. Well said.
So. I am super fascinated by Gregoire's article, in particular because it talks about the intersection of vaginismus and conservative Christian teaching about marriage- and I've also been at that intersection. I want to see more people talking about it. Readers, what do you think- should I try to get my hands on "The Great Sex Rescue" and write a book review of it?
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Related:
How Pregnancy and Childbirth Changed My Asexuality (or, actually, A Post About Vaginismus)
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