Asexually Reading "The Great Sex Rescue"

An asexual flag and a rainbow flag. Image source.

Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

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Hi readers! So, I bought the book The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link] by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky, and I'm going to be writing a blog series reviewing it from an asexual perspective.

This book is about the harmful marriage advice that's commonly found in churches and Christian books. Things like "it's the wife's job to have sex with her husband even if she doesn't want to, even if it's painful, because men need it." (That's not a quote from anywhere, that's just my paraphrase, but yes there are plenty of Christian marriage books that say that.) Gregoire and her co-authors take a stand against this harmful teaching, and present their own advice on how married women can have sex that feels good.

The reason I am so interested in reading this book is that this is an ace issue. ("Ace" means asexual and other related identities under the asexual umbrella.) The teaching that "a wife is required to have sex with her husband" is especially harmful to ace women. 

And, honestly, it scares me how perfectly ace women fit into the narrative that conservative Christians teach about sex. They teach "don't have sex before marriage- best-case scenario, you have no sexual experience at all, not even sexual thoughts" and asexuals are like "okay, great, no problem." And then when you're married, now the rules change to "you have to have sex with your husband regularly- yeah women don't really like it, but that's what you have to do when you're married." It scares me, you guys, it scares me, thinking about the ace women out there who don't know they're ace- they just know that they can't have sex before marriage, and then when they're married they have to have sex, even though women don't like sex. Conservative Christians teach that this is the way it is. This is what marriage is. This is how sex is supposed to go, for women.

How can ace women in that ideology figure out that life doesn't have to be that way? That they deserve better?

For me personally, it took a long time to figure out I was asexual, specifically because of this "women don't really like sex" teaching. I kept going around in circles, reading definitions of asexuality online, thinking "yes this sounds like me, because I don't think I have sexual attraction", and then telling myself "no, that's normal, that's just how women are, it's not like a whole special identity that needs a label. Women don't like sex." (Fact check: it turns out most women actually do like sex.)

Anyway, yeah, I'm concerned about straight ace women who grew up with this kind of ideology. (Well not just straight ace women, but ace women who are partnered with men, though they may not actually be straight. And not just women, but also trans and nonbinary people who are viewed as women in that ideology.) Honestly, this concern is what first pushed me to come out to people as asexual. When I figured out I was asexual, I was like, "well, I don't really *need* to come out. Like, no one needs to know, except my partner, that's all." But I just... Who will find the straight ace women and tell them about asexuality? I need to talk about it more, I need to tell people.

Let's say there's an ace woman, with a conservative Christian background, who doesn't know she's ace. And she marries an abusive man who tells her "you have to have sex with me whenever I want, if you're in pain that's not a good enough reason to withhold sex" and then when she forces herself to have sex with him, he complains that she doesn't seem to be enjoying it, and that's ruining his mood. So then she forces herself to pretend she likes it. (Also, if she kissed another guy 10 years ago, before meeting her husband, her husband will make sure she feels guilty about that forever.) This is what she expected marriage to be like, based on the Christian marriage advice she's heard. She believes the way her husband treats her is normal. She doesn't know it's abuse. She doesn't know this is marital rape.

Or, maybe there's an ace woman who gets lucky and marries a man who is a decent human being, even though the church's dating advice didn't include anything about how to tell if your partner is a decent human being rather than an abuser. (Purity ideology says if you're not having sex before marriage, that means your relationship is healthy.) By some stroke of luck, she ends up marrying a decent human being anyway. But her husband doesn't fully understand the ideology that she was taught and that she deeply internalized. 

He believes that honest communication is important, so he tells her what kind of sexual things he's interested in. His intended message is "we are equals, so let's both say what we want, and then we can figure out which things we both like and/or are willing to try." But she hears it as "these are my requirements that you must do for me. You agreed to this in the marriage vows." And so she tries to live up to that, with the Christian teaching about "men's needs" hanging over her all the time... how men will cheat if you don't have sex with them enough... Even though her husband isn't like that, and he never did anything to coerce her, the ideology that she internalized forces her to do things she doesn't want.

And then, during sex, her husband believes it's important that he makes her feel good, so he uses his fingers on her genitals. And she has no idea what is going on- as far as she knew, sex is penis-in-vagina (PIV) and she didn't know there was a part involving fingers. But, she reasons, apparently this is what he likes. She was taught that during sex, men become overwhelmed by their desire, and can't control themselves... so... for some reason her husband's sexual urges must be driving him to poke her genitals with his fingers...? She has no idea that the reason he's doing it is specifically to do something that will feel good for her- she had never heard of a man having that kind of motivation. And it doesn't feel good, the way he's doing it- but she doesn't know that there are different ways to use fingers there, and one needs to try it out on oneself to find which way works best, because everyone is different... She doesn't know that's a piece of information that is useful to have, when attempting to have sex.

All she can do is politely tolerate it, because, of course, the church taught her that she can't say anything negative about her husband's sexual techniques- as a wife she needs to make sure the entire experience is perfect for him. Can't do anything that might ruin his self-confidence.

Even though he is trying to treat her an an equal, and wants to make her feel good during sex, she can't grasp that. She has never heard of a man approaching sex in that way. She was expecting the abuser, the rapist, who says "you have to have sex with me, because in marriage, your body belongs to your spouse", and so that's the lens she views her husband through.

I don't think I'm going too far when I say, if you are an ace woman who grows up in this patriarchal "wives need to have sex with their husbands" ideology, and you've never heard of asexuality, and you marry a heterosexual man, you WILL end up in one of the 2 scenarios I described above. Either he's a rapist, and you believe that's completely normal and don't recognize it as rape, or he's a good person but you can't comprehend that, and so you still force yourself to have sex you don't want.

This is an ace issue.

Yes, it's certainly also an issue for heterosexual women- and Gregoire's intended audience is heterosexual women. Though, honestly, this is SO MUCH an ace issue that I speculate that a disproportionate amount of her followers are actually asexual (or, they could benefit from identifying as asexual, if they knew that was a thing).

(And lesbian/bisexual women are also harmed by patriarchal Christian "purity" teaching.)

So, anyway, here's my impression of Gregoire, based on what I've seen on her blog and twitter:

First, the good stuff: She challenges common conservative/evangelical/complementarian teachings about sex and marriage in ways that I have NEVER seen before. Really engaging with these harmful ideas directly, on their own turf, and there's something I love about that. Typically the feminist response is more like "well, it's just totally out of the question to put all these extra requirements on women- we want to make a world with gender equality and that ain't it." And yes, generally that's a good response. But for people who have deeply internalized the harmful ideology, it can be extremely helpful to see someone intricately examining the logic of those harmful teachings and pointing out specific places where they are wrong.

Also, Gregoire talks about things like marital rape and abuse like they are real things. And yes, of course these are real things- but typically in Christian marriage books they are treated as some kind of rare exception, that's so rare and extreme that we don't need to address it, and people in that situation will know that their situation is so extreme and different, so they will understand that our advice doesn't apply to them. I've seen Christian marriage books saying things like "Wives have to submit to their husbands" and then somewhere there's a little disclaimer "this isn't about people who are in an abusive situation- if you're in a truly abusive situation, get help." But they don't say anything about how to recognize abuse. And their teaching gives cover to abusers. And they include anecdotes in their books which literally describe abuse and rape, but they don't identify them as abuse/rape, they present these anecdotes like these things are normal in marriage. Gregoire has written a lot of blog posts criticizing those kinds of Christian marriage books.

All right, but here's the big criticism I have about Gregoire's writing: She never acknowledges that queer people exist. This is so incredibly BIZARRE to me, because her whole thing is about how conservative Christian marriage teachings are harmful... It should be obvious to everyone that these teachings are harmful to queer people, in unique ways, and that this is a very important issue. But she never mentions it. It's like she believes everyone is heterosexual. Like, what on earth? 

It's so weird to me, because in a lot of ways her writing is extremely real and practical. Like, she points out the very real problems that are created by this abstract "wives have to have sex with their husbands" ideology. Honestly, it is shocking to me (in a good way) seeing someone inside evangelicalism being that real about this. But, that makes it even more outrageous that she never mentions queer people. She says rape culture is real, she says marital rape is real, she says vaginismus is real and women with a "purity" background are at higher risk for it, but she never says gay people are real? She never makes a statement one way or the other on the question of whether being gay is a real thing?????? She never says there are lesbian and bi women who get married to men when they're way too young and haven't even had a chance to realize they're queer? WHAT?

And as for asexuality, well, yeah a lot of people don't know about it, so maybe it's understandable that she didn't mention it directly, but in her blog posts which present her views on what sex is supposed to be, it's very much along the lines of "sex is a beautiful gift from God and here is how God wants you to do it" [my paraphrase, not an exact quote] like very explicitly not ace-inclusive.

So I think I'm going to like this book, "The Great Sex Rescue." I think there are going to be a lot of places where my mind is BLOWN because the book points out some flaw in the logic of purity culture, and it's something that I never thought of before. Those parts of the book will be very helpful for aces who had that kind of conservative/"purity" background. 

But I think at the end of the day, the alternative view that Gregoire presents will not be inclusive of asexuals, or any queer people, for that matter. I have a suspicion- from reading her blog- that she wants to argue against the message "sex is a beautiful gift from God, only for heterosexual monogamous marriage, and it's something the wife does for the husband" and replace it with "sex is a beautiful gift from God, only for heterosexual monogamous marriage, and it's something that the husband and wife should enjoy equally."

Anyway, maybe I shouldn't speculate too much about what the book says, since I haven't read it yet. Come along with me on this journey and we will find out what it says together.

Oh, and 1 more thing:

Here is the #1 question I am curious about: Does this book say "you have to masturbate"?

Because, I mean, and I cannot emphasize this enough, for my own "sex rescue", masturbation was ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. Like, DO NOT attempt to have sex with a partner if you've never masturbated before. It's a bad idea.

I really have a hard time believing that anybody's sex life can be "rescued" if they've never masturbated before, and they believe they must not masturbate. Like how are you going to figure out what feels good? Just hope that your partner will hit upon it by random chance? BAD IDEA.

So, I'm very interested to see whether this book emphasizes this very important point, does not mention it as all, or says you shouldn't masturbate. Very interested.

Also, is this book going to say you shouldn't have sex before marriage? If so, I'll have to say "this is still purity culture" like I had to do for "Boundaries in Dating."

So those are my thoughts and expectations for this book. My plan is to blog through it with posts every 2 weeks (approximately). I'm looking forward to reading Gregoire's views on what's wrong with a lot of Christian teaching on marriage and sex. I'm looking forward to reading her findings about the specific sexual problems that tend to affect women who come from a "purity culture" background. But also, I'm asexual, and I will have some things to say about that.

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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

Related:

Conservative Christians Teach That Wives Are REQUIRED To Have Sex Even When They Don't Want To. Here Are The Receipts. 

If A Wife Is Required To Have Sex, That's Not "Intimacy" 

My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life 

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex

"Boys Can't Stop"

Blogaround

1. This xkcd comic about credit card rewards. Because this is exactly how I think...

2. Chinese eagerly await return of panda from US zoo (April 11) "But in recent times, Memphis Zoo has been grilled by Chinese netizens over accusations that Ya Ya and Le Le had been mistreated during their stay."

3. World Book Day: A Bookstore for the Blind (April 23) "China is home to 17 million visually impaired people, who often face barriers entering the workforce and even colleges due to a lack of braille exam papers. China only has one braille press, and there were 959 braille libraries nationwide as of 2017, but many people aren’t aware of them."

Also from Sixth Tone: Holiday Hustle: In China, Most Resent Trading Weekends for Time Off (April 25) "Since 1999, the government has created longer vacations by swapping working days with weekends preceding and following the holiday." Yeah, we get 1 day off for May 1 (Labor Day), but they moved the weekends around to make it 5 days in a row.

One criticism I have for Sixth Tone's article- it says "China’s public holiday system, which allows employees to trade weekends for longer holidays" which makes it sound like we have a choice. Lol, no, we don't have a choice. This is the work schedule set by the government. Sunday, April 23 and Saturday, May 6 are work days. If you don't want to work on those weekend days, you have to use your own vacation days for that.

4. Community Memory and the Search for Unassailable Abuse (April 23) "This pressure to turn our worst and most painful experiences into argument fodder is part of what I aimed to highlight in The Glossary & The Gristmill — a post about how our own community is contributing, in part, to why it feels like certain stories can’t be told. When community dynamics dictate that argument fodder is the top priority, that creates inhibitions against sharing our stories."

5. Preston Sprinkle’s strange interview with Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach (April 13) "In one of the creepiest moments of the podcast, Sprinkle told of an experience he had at a local coffee shop." 

Also, Preston Sprinkle hasn't heard of Brio magazine. It was a magazine for teen girls, published by Focus on the Family, which promoted a lot of "purity" teaching. I read it all the time in high school. To be fair, though, Sprinkle's work is more along the lines of "how to pretend to be an ally to LGBTQ people", rather than "here are the reasons women and girls in the church have internalized sexual shame."

6. Mattel unveils a Barbie with Down syndrome (April 25) "'Our goal is to enable all children to see themselves in Barbie, while also encouraging children to play with dolls who do not look like themselves. Doll play outside of a child's own lived experience can teach understanding and build a greater sense of empathy, leading to a more accepting world,' McKnight said."

7. Ex-officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor hired as a deputy (April 25)

8. The kingdom of heaven is like: Lizzo brings drag queens on stage at her Knoxville show to protest law (April 23)

9. Dragon catches on fire during Disneyland’s ‘Fantasmic’ show (April 23) Wow!

10. Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch (April 24)

11. Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Spicy’ to ‘Shockingly Electric’ (April 24, via) [content note: article has a few images of bugs] This is about Justin Schmidt, a scientist who went around getting stung by various insects (over 1000 times) so he could compare them all objectively. 

Blogaround

1. Oklahoma sheriff, commissioner, accused of discussing killing a reporter and returning to Black hangings (April 16) [content note: violent racist language] WTF.

(That link and several others in this post I got via the Slacktivist's Postcards from the class & culture wars (4.17.23))

2. A Good Friday funeral in Texas. Baby Halo's parents had few choices in post-Roe Texas (April 6) [content note: child death/ pregnancy loss] "'Where is the state of Texas to provide the safety net for her, after forcing her to give birth to a child that didn't survive and never would?' she asks."

3. Doctors Warned Her Pregnancy Could Kill Her. Then Tennessee Outlawed Abortion. (March 14) [content note: explicit medical details about pregnancy complications] "ProPublica spoke with 20 Tennessee medical providers about life under the ban, on condition of anonymity because they feared professional and personal repercussions; some said that they had witnessed a new trepidation in their ranks. 'I’ve seen colleagues delay or sit on assessing the clinical data longer when they know the diagnosis is probably ectopic,' one said, referring to pregnancies that implant outside the uterine cavity, which are always life-threatening. 'People were like, 'I don’t want to be involved because I don’t want to go to prison,'' said another. 'It’s crazy — even assessing the patient or having a role in their care makes people scared.'"

4. City leases property to 'Safe Ground Sacramento' for a self-governing 'safe parking shelter' (March 31, via) "The cost of the lease is $0, and its length is 120 days, renewable in increments of 120 days until all the residents obtain permanent housing." An agreement between the city of Sacramento and a group advocating for the rights of homeless people.

5. Recovery of Black teen allegedly shot by White homeowner after ringing wrong doorbell is a miracle, attorney says (April 19) "A Black teenager who authorities say was shot in the head by an 84-year-old White homeowner after going to the wrong Kansas City address received a positive prognosis but still faces a long road to recovery, according to his attorneys."

6. Parler shuts down as new owner says conservative platform needs big revamp (April 15) "'No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more,' the acquisition announcement said, promising a revamp."

7. BMW’s Mini apologizes after meltdown over ice cream at Shanghai auto show (April 21) So, there was a car expo in Shanghai this week, and apparently the BMW booth was handing out ice cream, and there's a video of the BMW employees telling Chinese people that all the ice cream is gone, and then a white guy shows up and they give him ice cream. (The news articles say "foreign" or "western" or 外国人 but let's just call it what it is, whiteness.)

Umm. Okay. I'm white, I live in Shanghai, and the first thing I wanna say about this is it rings true. In this kind of business-event context, Chinese people definitely do give preferential treatment to white people. I've experienced that.

BMW issued an apology and said that actually the reason the white guy got ice cream is he's a BMW employee. Who knows if that's true. I don't think the Chinese internet masses are buying it.

8. UMC clergy reportedly face complaint, church trial after marrying nonbinary couple (April 19) When people get married, the correct response is "congratulations!" Rejoice with those who rejoice. But the church is butting in and making it into a problem instead.

9. This whole twitter thread about why abortion care is very important for people who are struggling with infertility and trying to have a baby. It's common for people to have miscarriages when they're having these problems, and they need to have access to health care that can handle miscarriage in a reasonable way, instead of "pro-life" health care which doesn't connect to reality.

I liberalized two college age girls last night.

Two students were told by their teacher to shadow a support group. I run an infertility support group.

They mostly observed with a few questions. They were visibly floored when I told them how abortion care was critical to us.

— Angel of the Ozarks (@AngelSSMO) April 21, 2023

10. Religious Authorities Are Not God (March 10) "In more cynical terms, I remember feeling suspicious that the ministry organization was trying to frame something as a call from God on Grace’s life that was really just their own best attempt at having enough staff at all the different schools."

11. P!nk - F**kin' Perfect (Lyric Video) I know I've posted this several times before, but I'm ex-evangelical so I need to post this song a lot.

Chinese Jokes Make Me Think About God

xkcd comic showing 3 people (some of whom have beards and turbans) laughing about "Nine silvers for a ham? That's too much!" and "Too much? There's a monk out back with a ladder!" Image caption says, "There's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers." Image source.

So the other day my husband showed me a video on bilibili. (Bilibili is a Chinese video site that's similar to YouTube.) It was a promotional video from BYD (a Chinese electric car company) showing their new car which is able to "dance" by lifting up and down on its wheels somehow. (Here's the link, but I don't know if bilibili will load outside of China. Here's a YouTube link for the same video; alas, the YouTube version does not have a bunch of hilarious comments in Chinese scrolling across it.)

Anyway, at the part where the car bounced up and down, people left comments on the video saying, "爸爸的爸爸叫爷爷" and my husband explained to me why this is hilarious. I didn't notice the comments at first, and I didn't get the joke until he explained it, but okay, let me tell you guys, this is just objectively hilarious.

So let me explain the joke:

There's a Chinese song for children about family-related vocabulary. See, in Chinese, the number of words for specific different types of relatives is just ridiculous. I've met Chinese people who can't even keep track of them all. Maternal grandmother (外婆) is a different word than paternal grandmother (奶奶). Your uncle who is your mom's older brother is a different word than your uncle who is your mom's younger brother, which is a different word than your uncle who is your dad's older brother, which is a different word than your uncle who is your dad's younger brother, which is a different word than an uncle who is a spouse of your parent's sibling (bunch of different words for that). And so on. 

Anyway, there's a children's song about all this. (Here's a YouTube link to the song.) The lyrics are like, "What is dad's dad called? Dad's dad is called yeye. What is dad's mom called? Dad's mom is called nainai." And so on. Yeah, a song for Chinese kids to learn the family relationships.

Also, outside of convenience stores, it's common to see little rides for kids. You put a coin in, the kid sits in the little car, and the car goes up and down for few minutes. 3-year-olds love it. And apparently it's very common that these little kid rides play children's music, for example, the Chinese family relationships song.

So, putting it all together, when Chinese internet users saw this video of this cutting-edge-technology electric car which can lift itself up and down, they thought of the little kiddie rides that you see outside little stores, the cars that go up and down while playing children's music. And these internet commenters referenced those little kid rides by quoting a line from one of the songs that's commonly played- "爸爸的爸爸叫爷爷。" ("Dad's dad is called yeye.")

Spiderman kiddie ride. Image source.

I am like, so entertained by this. Seriously, this is so funny. (Though I do realize that the more I explain a joke and claim that it's funny, the less likely you are to think it's funny... that's just how jokes are...)

Anyway, the reason I am blogging about this is, God understands this joke. Yes, there are several layers to it, and you have to know some background about Chinese language and culture- but that's no problem for God. They know everything, right?

What I want to say is, the world is full of things I don't know. The world is full of people being creative and hilarious, and the majority of that I'll never get to experience because it's in a different language and requires some cultural background knowledge I just don't have. But God is everywhere and knows everything. God knows all the intricacies of every culture, every language, every inside joke. And all of that, all of that complexity and diversity and creativity, the joy and the humor, that is the image of God. 

I believe people are made in the image of God. But, what do I mean by "people"? I mean all the diversity, all the people in the whole world, every language, every culture, every demographic, every minority group. That's the image of God. And no person can understand all that- and so no person can really know God. You can know parts of God; that's all.

(This applies to religions too. I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that everyone is "supposed" to be Christian. I think it's good that many religions exist, and that some people are not religious at all. People having the freedom to explore those topics on their own terms and find something meaningful to them is an inherently good thing. I do NOT think it would be good if everyone was forced to believe the "correct" beliefs.)

And yeah, this is the reason I moved to China. When I was in the US, everyone spoke English. The church where I grew up was all white people. It gave me the illusion that I understood everything- that I understood God. My first trip to China gave me an overwhelming drive to free myself from that illusion. I felt that the only thing that made logical sense was to dedicate my life to learning a new language and new culture.

I think there's value in putting yourself in situations where there's a language barrier and you don't know what's going on. The awkwardness and discomfort of not understanding what someone said- that's what it's like to try to know God.

But also, I'm not sure how to talk about this, because I don't want to come across like "everyone should do the same thing I did." There are plenty of reasons not to leave your own country. That's valid. And me being able to move to China- well, that's privilege. Having a US passport means I can go to lots of countries. Being a native English speaker means I can get teaching jobs which I am not really qualified for- which is what I did. (The good news is, I am no longer a teacher; now I'm a software engineer in China.) I really had no idea that not everyone can do that. Depending on what country you're from, it may be impossible to get a visa. As an American I always had this idea that I can just go to whatever country I choose to go to, and I had no idea that many people in this world can't do that. 

(Having the time and the resources to learn a new language is also privilege. And I didn't have any student loan debt...)

And when I'm talking about putting yourself in situations where you don't understand the language, and you feel uncomfortable because people are different from you and sometimes you don't know how to act, I mean it in a "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" way. If you're already a minority, then you're already in those kinds of situations, and I'm not saying you have to do it even more, or anything like that. I'm talking to white American Christians who go to churches where everyone is white and everything's in English. Doesn't something seem wrong about that, if you worship a God who knows every language and is incarnated in every culture?

No one can really know God, because look at how vast and diverse and complicated the image of God is. There's so much out there. The human capacity for creativity, for happiness, for sharing your life with others, for thinking of a goofy joke and posting it on the internet- it plays out in so many diverse and beautiful ways all over the world. All throughout history. That's the image of God.

Every tribe, every tongue, every nation.

So when I hear Chinese jokes, and I understand them enough to form an opinion like "this is objectively hilarious" or "this is a lame pun", I think of how vast and how deep and how intricate God's knowledge is. God understands all the jokes in every language. 

I first learned about God from a bible written in English, and Sunday school teachers who were all white, and that was a misrepresentation because it only shows one small part of who God is. The image of God is all the people in the whole world. The Holy Spirit is tongues of fire that came down and enabled the apostles to proclaim Christ's resurrection in every language.

No one can truly know God, but when you learn to appreciate something outside of your own culture and your own comfort zone, you get one step closer.

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Related:

Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China

"Where's Jesus' Car?" 

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

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My Blog is Blocked on Facebook

Image has a thumbs-up "like" symbol, and the text "Smash that like button." Image source.

Over the past year or so, I've gotten some messages from readers telling me that Facebook doesn't let them share links from my blog. (Thank you for telling me about this problem, readers!) I don't really know why this is, but seems like a lot of blogs are blocked on Facebook.

Anyway, here are 2 things you can do about it:

1. Send feedback to Facebook to tell them to unblock it

On this site, you can check if a link is blocked, and you can send Facebook a message to unblock it: Sharing Debugger. 

Go ahead and paste https://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/ in there. The message I get is "We can't review this website because the content doesn't meet our Community Standards. If you think this is a mistake, please let us know." Click the "let us know" and you can tell them it shouldn't be blocked.

Honestly I'm not optimistic this will really work, though, because I've tried it several times and it's still blocked. But hey, we can try.

2. Use archive.org to create a link that Facebook will accept

If you want to share my blog on Facebook, first of all thank you!!! Bloggers love it when people share their stuff.

You can go to the Wayback Machine and paste a URL into the "Save Page Now" box, and it will create a link which is a snapshot of what that webpage currently looks like. As far as I know, Facebook will allow you to share this link.

From a blogger's perspective, archive links are not as good because they don't give the blogger any data on pageviews or where the hits are coming from. (You're not actually sharing my blog, you're sharing a link to an archived snapshot of my blog. I will just have to hope that anyone who's interested is then able to find their way onto the actual blog...) But since Facebook is blocking it, this is the best solution I have.

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Once again, thank you to all my readers who read/lurk/share/comment. ^_^ I love getting encouraging comments from readers, but also, if you just lurk and never say anything, that's great too.

Blogaround

xkcd comic which shows "Figure 6.14 The Periodic Table of the Elements" which only has H, He, Li, and Be. The caption says, "You can spot an outdated science textbook by checking the bottom of the periodic table for missing elements. For example, mine was published half an hour after the big bang." Image source.

1. Deep Song Breakdown, “Pride” (“In the Name of Love”) by U2 (April 11) "Indeed, 'What more in the name of love' rings very close to John 15:13"

2. Trinity Moravian Church Forgives Medical Debt Costs Around $3.3 Million For Triad Families (March 25) This is literally the kingdom of heaven. This is exactly what Christians should be doing. 

And there's a video here:

The members of Trinity Moravian Church in North Carolina purchased nearly $3.3 million of local residents’ medical debt for just $15,048.

Then, they held a debt jubilee ceremony and burned up the debt, canceling it all. pic.twitter.com/AntlVKC0o2

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 11, 2023

3. Transgender Law Center - This is an organization that supports trans people with legal issues related to housing, discrimination, immigration, etc. Recently there have been a lot of US states passing laws to restrict the rights of trans people. I think right now it is important to support trans people by donating money to organizations that fight for their rights.

4. Does Higher Sex Drive Lead to Rape? Pushback as a Learning Tool (April 10) [content note: purity-culture myths about rape]

There’s a move evangelical men make a lot when they’re talking about pastoral sexual abuse or rape that involves coercion by non-physical means where they’re trying to find this elusive “third thing” between rape and sex. There’s rape (man forces woman), there’s sex (everyone wants it), and there’s this thing in the middle where a situation just gets out of control, who can say what really happened.

Okay, let me be clear about this.

THERE IS NO THIRD THING, PRESTON. There’s no Diet Rape! There is no situation where someone has sex with someone else against their will and there’s blame to go around! There’s no situation where someone doesn’t consent to sex but wasn’t raped!

5. Florida lawmakers pursue death penalty in child rapes (April 11) Whoa, okay, I'm really not comfortable with this. For one thing, isn't Florida one of the states where politicians have been claiming that supporting the rights of queer kids is "grooming"? So now they want the death penalty for sexual abuse, but they also believe that accurate sex ed is sexual abuse, so, uh, this is not good. Also, I don't think it helps victims when people push the idea that sexual abuse is The Worst Thing Ever and only the worst monsters would do it, because then if an abuser looks like a nice person, no one will believe the victim, and people will say "oh you want to ruin this man's life and let him be executed, just because of this little thing that only happened 1 time, how could you" etc. 

6. What is a 'Gray Rhino'? It's big, obvious, and headed straight for you. (2020) "The Gray Rhino is a metaphor for the threats that we can see and acknowledge yet do nothing about: the two ton thing that should be hard to ignore, but from which we look away even though it’s in our interest to get away before it charges."

7. A ‘City’ in the Nevada desert shows the glorious human-ness of art for its own sake (January 9) "As lasting art goes, City is perfectly human: one artist with an incredible idea and the wherewithal to make it happen. One artist creating something of this unimaginable scale out of the desert for no reason at all beyond the statement it makes to the vanishingly few people who will ever see it in the flesh."

No One Can Take The Bible From Me

Book cover for "Inspired" by Rachel Held Evans. Image source.

As an ex-evangelical who is still a bible nerd, I LOVED the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again [affiliate link], by Rachel Held Evans. It's about reading the bible in a whole new way- well, actually, not new at all, but in a way that I never heard about in evangelicalism.

The intro chapter is SO GOOD and so relatable. Evans talks about how, as an evangelical, she always viewed the bible as a "magic book", but in slightly different ways as she grew up. As a child, she viewed the bible as a wonderful storybook. As a teenager, it was a handbook to tell you how to live. As a young adult, it was an answer book that gives all the reasons why we need to vote Republican/ reject evolution/ oppose same-sex marriage/ etc. But then, she began to question her faith, and question the interpretations of the bible that she had always heard.

Some quotes from the intro:

It was as if the Bible had turned into an unsettling version of one of those children's peekaboo books. Beneath the colorful illustration of Noah's ark was-- surprise!-- the violent destruction of humanity. Turn the page to Joshua and the battle of Jericho and-- peekaboo!-- it's genocide. Open to Queen Esther's castle and-- look!-- there's a harem full of concubines. [page xvii]

and

Beneath all the elaborate justifications for Israel's ethnic cleansing, all the strange theories for where Cain got his wife and how Judas managed to die in two different ways (he hanged himself and then fell headlong onto the ground), I sensed a deep insecurity. There was a move-along-nothing-to-see-here quality to their arguments that only reinforced my suspicion that maybe the Bible wasn't magic after all, and maybe, deep down, they knew it. Instead of bolstering my confidence in the Bible, its most strident defenders inadvertently weakened it. Then when a pastor friend asked me what personal sins might have triggered my questions-- "sexual immorality, perhaps?"-- I saw that my journey through these doubts would be a lonely one. [page xviii]

Damn that is so real. The "move-along-nothing-to-see-here," and the idea that people who question their church's teachings are motivated by a desire to have sinful sex (which makes me especially angry as an asexual). (See also: Evans's 2013 post, Is doubt an STD?)

I feel the exact same way. I know the bible so well- I've read the entire thing multiple times, in college I would have a "quiet time" every day where I read the bible and prayed, I started bible study groups, etc etc etc. But at some point, as I began to question a lot of evangelical teaching, it became so difficult for me to read the bible at all. These familiar stories that I knew so well, that had always comforted me- and suddenly I would try to read them and immediately have so many questions. There were so many things that seemed weird or wrong, that I had never seen before.

These were the stories we knew so well, we lived them, we memorized them. But we only saw one side of them. Children's bible story books and Sunday school classes are always about "here's the nice tidy moral lesson we are supposed to get out of this bible story. Ruth teaches us about loyalty. Joseph teaches us about forgiveness. Abraham teaches us about obedience. Daniel teaches us about standing up for what's right." And when you grow up and become an adult, it's still like that... Sermons about "this is what this bible passage means." That's how the bible is taught, in my experience. Here's the bible, here's what it means. If you have more questions, let's find you an apologetics book that answers them. And that's that.

There's something so amazing about hearing the stories discussed in a new way. It's like, all these bible verses I know so well, suddenly tilted at a slightly different angle, like wow, how did I not see that before?

Let me give an example- and this was back when I was evangelical, so it has nothing to do with challenging evangelicalism or the "inerrant" view of the bible. I sometimes went to the international student bible study back when I was in college- this was a college in the US, and I am American, but I went there because I was studying Chinese and wanted to meet Chinese people. One night, the group was reading a passage about how we are not citizens of this world, we are citizens of heaven. (Perhaps Philippians 3:20 or 1 Peter 2:11?) And the bible study leader was saying "we understand how this is, because we are living in this country but we are not citizens, and we miss our home countries." And I was just so amazed, because I had never thought of that- reading a verse about how we are not citizens, and connecting it to actual people who are not citizens of the country where they live, and how they understood that verse in a way that was different than I did, because of their experiences. (And now I live in China...)

So... the idea of seeing bible stories in a "new" way is something that evangelicals love, in my experience. But there are limits to it... Some of the interpretations of bible passages in this book would probably get a "wow that's cool!" reaction from evangelicals, and some are crossing a line into "false teaching" and saying the bible isn't inerrant (gasp!).

---

Structure of the book

Here's how the book is organized: Each chapter is about a different type of bible stories- for example, origin stories, deliverance stories, war stories, etc (8 types in all). Each chapter has a fanfic (or poem or something along those lines) at the beginning.

For each of the different types of stories, Evans discusses it in a completely new light. Well, not actually "completely new", because Christians have been reading these stories for 2000 years (and Jewish people have been reading them even longer than that)- none of this is actually new. But I say "new" because I never heard anything like this when I was evangelical.

---

Bible fanfic, and honoring the bible's victims

OKAY. YOU GUYS. I love bible fanfic SO MUCH. I am so ridiculously proud of the ones I have written. You have no idea. This is SO important to me.

And, let me just take a moment here and share MY FAVORITE bible fanfic: lament for the slave girl in pharaoh’s house (2018) by Micah J. Murray [content note: child death].

In the book "Inspired," my favorite bible fanfic is the one about Hagar. When I was growing up, I just viewed Hagar and Ishmael as Abraham's mistake- a symbol of Abraham's sin of not trusting God. But no, Hagar and Ishmael deserve better than that.

Background info, if you don't know the story [starting in Genesis 16]: God promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a son. But Abraham and Sarah were both very old and unable to have children. They were supposed to have faith in God's promise, but instead they decided that Abraham would impregnate Hagar, the slave. So Hagar had Abraham's baby, and the baby's name was Ishmael, and there was *drama* between Hagar and Sarah. Later, God did keep the promise, and Sarah had a baby named Isaac. Isaac was the child that came from having faith in God's promises, and Ishmael was the child that came from sinfully taking things into your own hands instead of trusting God. (Also, rape... but in church I never heard anyone say "Abraham raped Hagar" even though it's clearly true.) In Galatians 4 (in the New Testament, hundreds of years after Abraham), Paul makes this whole big analogy about how Hagar represents slavery and the law, and Sarah represents God's promise, and obviously we want to be Sarah's children rather than Hagar's.

So anyway, I always thought Hagar and Ishmael were the "bad guys" and Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were the "good guys." In the simplest children's bibles, Hagar and Ishmael are not even mentioned- it's all about Isaac. Hagar and Ishmael are... kind of a "stain" on the story of Abraham the Good Godly Role Model.

(Also, I've heard that Muslims have a completely different take on Ishmael. It would be interesting to hear more about that.)

But, that's terrible, to treat Hagar that way. None of this was her fault. It was what Abraham did to her. 

And actually, the writer of Genesis doesn't even treat Hagar so one-dimensionally. In Genesis 16, when Hagar, pregnant, runs away into the desert because Sarah is so cruel to her, an angel meets her. The angel gives her a promise- her son Ishmael will be "a wild donkey of a man" and she will have uncountable descendants. Hagar responds by saying "You are the God who sees me" and "I have now seen the One who sees me" which is significant because NOWHERE ELSE IN THE BIBLE does a person give a name to God. (Evans's fanfic is about this story.) And a similar thing happens in Genesis 21- drama between Hagar/Ishmael and Sarah/Isaac, Sarah drives them away, and again an angel meets Hagar and encourages her, and gives her a promise that Ishmael will become a great nation.

(Some of my posts related to Abraham and Hagar: Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves and "Waiting On God" - But Like, Why Though?)

Yeah, I love bible fanfic, and actually, evangelicals love bible fanfic too. All the kids books about bible stories, all the Hollywood movies based on bible stories- they all add some embellishments. You pretty much have to add things, because the bible passages are short and just tell the basic story, without enough details to be a whole movie. Modern writers add their own ideas about what the characters were thinking or feeling, add characters who weren't mentioned in the bible at all, add extra scenes to make the story fit together better, etc.

Evangelicals love bible fanfic (though they don't call it "fanfic") but there's a limit to it. It has to be consistent with evangelical beliefs about what the bible means. 

For example, I remember one fanfic I read in a Christian magazine for kids- it was from the perspective of the wife of one of the shepherds who had seen the angels in the sky when Jesus was born, and the whole fic was about how surprised she was that her husband and the other shepherds had left their sheep behind to go see baby Jesus. This "shepherd's wife" is a totally made-up character, not mentioned in the bible, and the idea that the shepherds left their sheep behind when they went to see baby Jesus is also not mentioned in the bible- but this fic made a big huge deal about how "they left the sheep" and how it was so hard for her to understand what was so important about baby Jesus, that would cause the shepherds to respond like that.

The point of the story was, Jesus is so amazing and important, that it is worth it to take shocking risks or make sacrifices in order to have a chance to experience him. So, from an evangelical perspective, that's a great message to send. (But, to be honest, there are probably some evangelicals who would quibble with it, for making up things that weren't mentioned in the bible. And yeah every time there's a movie based on the bible, you can find evangelicals arguing with each other about this or that thing in the movie that wasn't in the bible, and whether it means the entire movie is blasphemous.)

I also write my bible fanfics to make a point, but they're always points that challenge evangelical beliefs. For example, Noah's Evangelism was one giant metaphor about evangelical beliefs about hell. Strange Fire is about the bible story where God kills the priests Nadab and Abihu for their sin of ... something about burning incense wrong? idk? ... and my fic says the bible is wrong about that, and here's what really happened. Mary's Choice was a pro-choice metaphor (hopefully this was obvious) which grapples with the idea of making big choices that change the trajectory of your life, when you're too young and inexperienced to even know what you're getting into, and how that intersects with being called by God and choosing to take risks for God.

So, I mean, yeah, there's a whole range of bible fanfic, pushing different ideas. Thinking about Evans's fanfic about Hagar, my first instinct is that this would not be an evangelical-approved fanfic, because it invites the reader to empathize with Hagar, who is, you know, a "bad guy", a sin, a mistake in Abraham's life, that we just want to forget about.

The thing is, though... the bible does say that Hagar was a slave, and Sarah "gave" Hagar to Abraham. And that when Hagar was pregnant, Sarah was so cruel to her, that she ran away into the desert. The bible says these things. Hagar was a victim, and what Abraham and Sarah did was wrong. There's no way to read those verses and then argue with that. It's right there, chapter and verse. 

Nobody's embellishing anything. Evans's fanfic is, quite simply, the thoughts and feelings that a pregnant woman would likely have in that situation. The reason it strikes me as not-church-approved is that it invites readers to consider how Hagar felt, to care about her, rather than viewing her as nothing more than a regrettable detour in the story of the birth of Isaac.

Fanfics that draw attention to the minor characters in the bible who are innocent victims who suffer because of what God does, or because of what the "bible heroes" like Abraham do... We need more fanfics like that.

Evans discusses the idea of honoring the bible's victims and, wow, this blew my mind, and I love it:

In one of the most moving spiritual exercises of my adult faith, an artist friend and I created a liturgy of lament honoring the victims of the texts of terror. On a chilly December evening, we sat around the coffee table in my living room and lit candles in memory of Hagar, Jephthah's daughter, the concubine from Judges 19, and Tamar, the daughter of King David who was raped by her half brother. [Note from Perfect Number: this list is 4 people total. In case the commas make it confusing.] We read their stories, along with poetry and reflections composed by modern-day women who have survived gender-based violence. My friend built a diorama out of a pinewood box that featured five faceless wooden figures, huddled together beneath a ring of barbed wire, their silhouettes reflected on the backboard by pages cut from a book. Across the top of the box were printed the words of Christ-- "As you have done unto the least of these, so you have done unto me." [p 75]

This is, wow, really powerful. To say, what happened to them was wrong, and they deserve to have someone care about that. Typically, all that Christians have to say about these stories is "these parts of the bible are descriptive, not prescriptive- it tells the truth about how sinful people were, and it does NOT mean we should act like that too." As if the only issue is the bible's position on whether or not it's okay to gang rape a woman and then cut her body into pieces (Judges 19, trigger warning, my god)- don't worry everyone, the bible is NOT saying that's okay! All right now move along nothing to see here.

To actually spend time caring about the victims of the bible... wow, that's something new and powerful.

---

Job

There's a section in "Inspired" where Evans talks about the story of Job. If you don't know this story from the bible, here it is: Job was a righteous man. One day, Satan and God were discussing Job, and Satan said the only reason Job worships God is because God has blessed him with huge herds of livestock and lots of children, but if all this was taken away, Satan is sure Job would not worship God any more. God says, okay, sure, try it and see. So then a series of disasters causes Job to lose all his wealth, and all his children die. This happens in the first 2 chapters. The book of Job is 42 chapters long; the entire rest of the book is Job and his "friends" debating the question of why God allowed such terrible things to happen to Job. The "friends" say Job must have sinned, and these things happened as a punishment, but Job insists that's not true.

So... if this is a true story, then, well, God's behavior is horrifying. Letting all of Job's children die, just to win a bet with Satan? NOT COOL.

But Evans says the story of Job is in the bible to present a different perspective than other bible passages which say that living a righteous life leads to prosperity- mainly the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs in the bible is about wisdom- basically a bunch of simple, common-sense principles to live by, to make good decisions and have a happy and successful life. 

Job's friends are basically following the logic of Proverbs. Proverbs says that if you follow God's rules and make wise decisions, then you will have a good life. Job had all these bad things happen to him, therefore he must not have been following God's rules correctly. He must have sinned, and that's what caused these bad things to happen.

Please note that that's a terrible thing to say to someone who's grieving. Telling them that it's their fault. That's awful. But if you believe that the principles given in Proverbs are always true, then it follows logically.

That's why the bible includes the book of Job, to offer a different perspective than the one presented in Proverbs. The book of Job tells a story about a man who truly was innocent, and had the worst tragedies happen to him, for reasons that really had nothing to do with him, reasons that no human could have possibly figured out. This shows us that yes, in general you should live according to the wise advice in Proverbs, in general that leads to success, but not always. Sometimes innocent people suffer, that's a fact, and it doesn't do any good to question them about what they did wrong to "cause" it to happen.

Also: The story of Job didn't really happen. Perhaps some progressive Christians would phrase it as "The story of Job is not literally true" but I don't really see a difference between "not true" and "not literally true." (Maybe because I'm autistic.) It's not a true story. It didn't happen. It was written to engage with the question of why bad things happen to good people. To bear witness to the reality that sometimes bad things happen to you, and it's not your fault. 

And those things are literally true. Yes, it is literally true that sometimes bad things happen to people, and it's not their fault, and we don't have answers about why God allowed it, and we just need to respond with compassion, rather than blaming them. That is literally true.

The story of Job is basically what you would get if a writer wanted to write a fictional story with the most extreme elements of "bad things happen to good people and we don't know why." Job is a righteous man, so righteous that he even makes extra sacrifices to God, just in case one of his children sinned. He is extremely rich. Then he loses everything- all of his wealth and all of his children. And the reason is that God and Satan happened to be arguing about the motivation for Job's obedience to God- it had nothing to do with any "sin", and none of Job's friends could have possibly guessed that that was the reason.

I'm imagining the ancient people who heard the story of Job... perhaps then they heard about someone in their community who suffered some terrible tragedy, and their first thought was to wonder what sin this person committed, to cause the tragedy- but then they remembered the story of Job, and how Job and his family suffered even though they were innocent.

Job wasn't a real person, but "bad things happen to good people" is real. It's fascinating to me that writing a fictional story about this real-life fact can make it feel more real.

And, if the story of Job isn't a true story, well, that's great news, because then we don't have to get stuck on the way it portrays God. God, in this story, is arrogant, heartless, allowing Satan to kill Job's children just to prove a point. But, since it isn't a true story, if someone is horrified by God's behavior in the story, we can just say "you're reading too much into it." You can just ignore that part, because it's not true, because the whole story is not true.

Interesting that the story teaches "God doesn't care if Satan kills your children" and also teaches "sometimes bad things happen to good people", and one is true while the other is "oh stop it, you're reading too much into it." (So... then the bible is not authoritative- it depends on its readers to have an understanding of which parts they are supposed to learn from and which parts they are supposed to ignore.)

---

Pronouns

In this book, Evans does not use any pronouns for God. She just uses "God." You get sentences like, God did this because God wanted God's people to blah blah blah, a lot of "God" in the sentence instead of She/He/They/Whatever.

(I don't remember if the characters in her fanfics use pronouns for God. In my bible fanfics, my characters use he/him pronouns for God, because that fits with the way they would have viewed God, even though personally my God is a They/Them.)

I was glad to read a book that doesn't use he/him pronouns for God, because honestly it's a bit jarring to me when people refer to God as a "he." (Wow look how queer I am, I guess.)

At the same time, though, if you don't use any pronouns for God, well, your readers might not even notice. If your God is a he/him, and you read a section of Evans's book, which says "God did this and God did that, etc" with no pronouns, just a lot of "God", and after you read it, someone asks you if Evans referred to God as "he" in that section, what would you say? Maybe you would say yes, because when you read about God, you imagine it's a he/him God, and you didn't notice whether the text explicitly said that or not.

It's something that I think people won't notice unless they're specifically looking for it. Or, if there's a sentence like "God loves God's people" like very blatantly crying out for a pronoun because the density of "God" in the sentence is just over-the-top. Or if you have a sentence with the word "Godself" where a normal person would put himself/herself/themself. If you can avoid those specific issues, then you can write and write and write about God and most readers won't even notice that you never gave God a pronoun.

So, I gotta say I'm not really a big fan of not using any pronouns for God. It feels like not taking a stand. Yeah, it's better than using "he" pronouns, but ... If you have a reader whose God is a he/him, who has never even heard of the idea that God could be anything other than a he/him, and this reader reads your entire book and still has no awareness that God could be anything other than a he/him, well, I'm not impressed by that. 

If you're going to not use pronouns for God, I would like to see some kind of explicit statement about "I don't use pronouns for God, because God is all genders. God is not more masculine than feminine." Yeah, I would be happy with that.

---

Conclusion

For this blog post I just picked out a few interesting things about the book "Inspired," but there's so much more. I loved this book. Evans looks at so many different bible stories and puts a fascinating new spin on them- although, actually, there's nothing "new" about any of this, really, it's just that you could live your entire life in evangelical culture, read the bible every day, and never hear these interpretations.

It feels so incredible to me, reading these new takes on the bible stories that I know so well, that I've read so many times and memorized. To look at them from a different angle, and wow, it's like I knew all of this but I never put it together that way, and suddenly there it is.

(And that's why I write bible fanfic.)

The bible we see in "Inspired" is not an authority over us, telling us what the right answers are, and we must force ourselves to stay within those rigid interpretations. No, this bible is living and active. We are made in the image of God, and we create just as God creates. We take the bible stories and we use them to create meaning, informed by our own identities and our own experiences. Living with the story and in the story.

--- 

Follow-up posts:

For Rizpah (or, a post about human sacrifice in the bible) 

If God Metaphorically Made the World in 6 Days, What Does That Even Mean?

Related:

She was the first (Thank you, Rachel) 

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

My mind is blown by how cool the Synoptic Problem is 

Peter Enns Makes Me Want to Actually Read the Bible Again

I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About

Pain scale chart, with facial expressions. Image source.

[content note: mentions of physically painful situations and speculation about how bad they are compared to each other. No graphic details though.]

Okay, you guys, big revelation here. You know how when you go to a doctor for some pain problem, and they always ask you "how would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10"? And this is always super confusing to me, because how am I even supposed to know how this scale is calibrated? 

Like, the obvious questions that I want to ask are, what are the endpoints of this scale? What do 1 and 10 mean? Also, is this a linear scale, or...? (And, can you believe, many doctors have thought it was kind of funny that I asked these questions? What??? Funny? Why would this be funny- these are the key pieces of information that are needed in order to answer this question correctly. Like, "don't overthink it, just answer the question"- like how am I supposed to answer it if you haven't even told me the parameters of this scale???)

And if I ask for clarification on it, the doctor always says, "1 is only a little pain, 10 is the worst pain you can imagine." Oh gosh, the worst pain I can imagine? Uhhh, okay... well let's see, giving birth without anesthesia is apparently painful. Breaking a femur. Root canal. Let's see, what else? Stab wound? Water boarding? Foot binding? Crucifixion? Getting eaten by piranhas? Getting lost in the wilderness and you need to amputate your own hand without anesthesia? Giving yourself a C-section?

Like, geez, I just want to see the doctor to get some help with whatever little problem I have, and when I walk in the door I'm immediately expected to have a good understanding of how painful crucifixion is compared to a root canal. As if there is one standard scale for these things, and everyone knows what it is so it can be easily used as a reference when you want to describe your problem to your doctor.

This is why it wouldn't make sense for this pain scale to be a linear scale, actually. Suppose that crucifixion is 5 times more painful than giving birth without anesthesia. Okay, so, we have to put crucifixion at 10, and giving birth without anesthesia at 2. Yes, I know people who have given birth with no anesthesia/ no epidural/ nothing- this is a thing that some women do. So, the 2 on the scale will be experienced by some women/ people who give birth, but the majority of people will never experience anything at all in the 2 to 10 range of the scale. Most of the scale is unusable, if it's calibrated like this. Most people's entire life experience would have to be squeezed into the 0-2 range (yeah I put 0 on it because if we're talking about something being 5 times worse than something else, it makes sense to start at 0 rather than 1). 

Basically the issue with the linear scale is, there are a lot of painful experiences that some humans throughout history have had- painful experiences which the overwhelming majority of people will never ever experience, thank goodness, but which are very different from each other, and some are very much worse than others. So if the scale is really linear, then most of the scale ends up being used to differentiate between these extreme rare excruciatingly painful experiences that the overwhelming majority of people will never ever have to go through, thank goodness. So the scale's not very usable then.

What would make more sense, is to calibrate the 1-10 (or 0-10?) pain scale so that 9 is the worst pain that most people in our current society will experience in their lifetime. From 1-9 (0-9?) the scale can be linear, and then 10 can be used for anything beyond that. If something is greater than 9, it's not really important to know exactly how bad it is compared to a 9. It's already really really bad and should be taken as seriously as you possibly can take it- it doesn't matter whether it's as bad as crucifixion or whatever.

ANYWAY, years ago I was having some health problems, and every time I went to the doctor they asked me about my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, and usually I said something around 3. You know, out of respect for my ancestors who were mauled by saber-toothed tigers or whatever- I wouldn't want to act like my pain is anywhere close to that.

It just always felt very weird to me, that in order to get the doctor to help me, I needed to have an understanding of how much pain a human being has ever experienced. And an understanding of what 50% of that amount of pain would feel like. And 10%, and 20%, and so on.

Like, what does that have to do with anything???

This is already such a difficult question, but doctors treat it like it's very simple, like everyone understands where their pain fits on the scale of all pain ever felt throughout human history- so simple and easy to understand, in fact, that this is the primary way that we can communicate to each other about how bad our own personal pain is, and everyone will clearly understand it.

Like, what? This makes no sense.

Well, guess what. I finally figured out what this 1-10 pain scale is actually about. It is NOT about "the worst pain you can imagine." It is NOT about objectively comparing your pain to some standard. It is actually not about measuring your pain at all.

Here's what the "scale of 1 to 10" question is actually asking: What is your opinion of how bad your pain is? In the context of your own life, how much of a big deal is it? What do you want to communicate to the doctor about how seriously they should take it?

WOW.

I KNOW! This makes so much more sense as a question that a doctor should ask, right? Because really, does it matter that my health problem is, for example, 25% as painful as foot-binding? I mean, that doesn't seem like useful information at all! What would you even do with that? But if what they're actually asking is, how much of a problem is it for me, well that actually makes sense!

So really it has nothing to do with measuring pain at all. It's more about, what are my feelings about how much of a problem the pain is. So 1 doesn't mean "10% as bad as getting crucified" (??? why would you even have a scale for that, how would this ever be useful information???); instead, 1 means something like "it kind of bothers me but not really a big deal."

And 5 means something like "yeah it's pretty bad" and 10 is like "OH HOLY CRAP THIS IS SO BAD I CANNOT EVEN THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE RIGHT NOW, HELP." You can be at that point even if it's not "the worst pain you can imagine." Even if your own situation is very obviously not as bad as some torture victim from medieval history, or whatever.

(And back then, when I said my pain was a 3, now I'm realizing I should have said 8. Now that I have figured out what this scale was actually supposed to be measuring. And, I should note, I actually have seen some versions of the 1-10 pain scale which defined each number in terms of how much the pain interferes with your life- which makes sense and is a lot more useful than measuring your pain as a proportion of "the worst pain you can imagine.")

So, I mean, wow. This isn't about measuring your pain against some objective standard, or anything like that. It's asking what your opinion is about how much of a problem your pain is. It's a way to communicate to the doctor how seriously they should take it. That makes so much more sense, because that's something that you can actually easily know about yourself, and is useful information for your medical treatment.

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Blogaround

AI-generated image of white Jesus and the disciples taking a selfie at the Last Supper. Image source.

1. Christ is Risen - Matt Maher - Lyrics. One of my favorite Easter songs.

Readers, do you have any favorite Easter songs?

2. How Much Does Superhero Destruction Actually Cost? An Insurance Lawyer Reviews | Vanity Fair (January 20) I CANNOT EVEN TELL YOU how much I love this video. This is the EXACT CONTENT I want to see. This is what's missing from all the superhero movies- what happens to all the buildings/cars/etc that get destroyed? What happens in the aftermath of these big "exciting" superhero battles? Who pays for the damage? Do the Avengers have insurance? 

3. How Can This Puzzle Possibly Exist?? (March 19) 52-minute sudoku solve video.

4. Holy Saturday (April 7) "But that’s Sunday language and Sunday certainty and it doesn’t make much sense here on Saturday. Here on Saturday, we can hope it’s true and we may even try to believe it’s true, but we can’t know 'in fact' one way or another. Not now. Not on Saturday."

5. Chris Hedges: The Hypocrisy of the Christian Church (April 8) "Is Black Lives Matter a commodity, a piece of branding, or does it mean we will stand with those Black and Brown and Asian and white bodies in our prison gulags and internal colonies? This seminary may have removed the name of Samuel Miller, a slaveholder who used the gospel to perpetrate and defend a crime of Nazi-like proportions, from the seminary chapel, albeit only when students protested, but it embraces a billionaire who makes his fortune fleecing incarcerated men and women who work 40 hour weeks in prison and are paid, when they are paid, little more than a dollar a day."

6. Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth (April 10) "They’re the Platonic example of what philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls a bullshitter: a person who says whatever suits them in the moment, without regard to whether it’s true or even consistent with their past statements."

Blogaround

1. ASCII art by chatbot (March 31) "The use of slashes and backslashes to represent the shape of the shark is effective, and the bold letter 'O' for the eye is a nice touch. The overall composition feels well-balanced and the shark's menacing presence is conveyed effectively." I laughed SO HARD.

2. Sharing Space - Episode 1: Daniel Radcliffe (April 1) "The first episode of 'Sharing Space' features six trans and nonbinary young people who sit down with Radcliffe to have a candid, vulnerable, and illuminating conversation about their unique lived experiences."

3. The swagged-out pope is an AI fake — and an early glimpse of a new reality (March 27) I saw that image shared on Twitter- the pope in a giant puffy white coat- and I thought it was real. A few days later, I saw a comment online that said it was AI-generated. Yeah, it's not real.

4. Solitary Confinement: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (April 3) "Solitary isn't something we do to people behind bars. It's something we do to them forever." Having flashbacks to the Shanghai lockdown now- and wow, obviously solitary confinement is even worse than that.

5. Heaven’s ATM: How Chinese People Have Been Sending Money to the Afterlife For Centuries (April 4) "In rural China, these forms of ghost money are still in use today as people continue to wish their deceased loved ones a good life that is free from hunger and cold in an underworld with sky-high inflation."

"Winners Take All": Businesspeople Only Want To "Change The World" If It Makes Money

Book cover for "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" by Anand Giridharadas.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is a book about how rich and powerful people want to make the world better, but only in ways that don't threaten the systems that made them rich/powerful in the first place.

This is a good book, though it kind of made me feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the state of the world. But it's important to be aware that this is how the world works.

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Overall message

You always hear ambitious and successful people talking about how they want to make the world a better place. And in particular, nowadays people talk about using tools from the business world for this (whereas in the past, people were more likely to view political activism as the way to do it). The book refers to this culture of people who want to use business strategies to solve the world's problems as "MarketWorld."

Basically, there are people who really genuinely do want to make the world better, but they find that in reality, they need to limit their efforts to only things that rich people will accept. Things that make rich business types feel like they're doing something good, without changing the overall systems that gave those people their success in the first place.

Before I read this book, I was looking at the summary and I thought, "oh... well I've never thought about it that way before, but yes, that must be true. That's... disappointing..." Powerful people want to help others, but only in ways that allow themselves to continue being the powerful people in the world. Not in ways that actually make society truly fair for everyone. When you think about it, you realize it must be true. There's something kind of survival-of-the-fittest about it. Whatever works to give people more money and power, they will continue to do, not because it's "right" or "fair" or "good", but because it gets them more money and power. And even in the realm of charity and changing the world, that still applies.

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Win-win vs win-lose

The book talks about how entrepreneurs trying to solve society's problems have a "win-win" mindset, but what is really needed is "win-lose."

"Win-win", in this case, means you see a problem in the world, and you find an aspect of it that can be a business opportunity for you. (The book talks about finding the part of the "venn diagram" where there's money to be made from helping people.) You start a startup that will address the problem. You make money from your startup, and other people benefit from the work that your startup is doing.

The example from the book that really stuck out to me was the "Even" app. The book describes it as an app created to address the difficulties that workers have if they are paid on irregular schedules. Sometimes they get a large paycheck, but in a different season of the year they might get a much smaller paycheck, and this makes it difficult to manage their money. So, the Even app puts their paychecks into a virtual account, and then transfers a fixed amount of money from that account to their actual bank account at regular intervals. So they get paid the same amount every time.

When I read this, I was like, "WTF, can't you like, just set up 2 bank accounts that literally do that exact thing for you? Instead of paying money for this Even app. This is a scam."

I've googled it and found the website for the Even app, and it turns out it also has some features about keeping track of what bills need to be paid and when, how to take those things into account when figuring out how much extra money you have, etc. It seems like it could be a useful budgeting tool. (I personally wouldn't pay money for it though.)

So I think if you view it as "this app going to solve the world's problems" then it's awful. Clearly, the actual problem here is that people's wages are too low, so they aren't able to save up extra money to deal with the irregularities of their payment schedule, and/or the problem is that companies should be paying people more stable wages instead of having weird payment schedules in the first place- the employees shouldn't have to be the ones directly affected by the fluctuations in seasonal demand for things. The app doesn't have any effect on the companies that are not paying their workers well. It lets them continue to do that, while trying to make things at least a little better for the workers.

But if you view it like "for people who are in that situation, this is a useful tool to have" then it seems good in my opinion.

But anyway, yeah, it seems obvious to me that looking for "win-win" opportunities and thinking that's going to be an effective way of bringing real change is just ridiculous. No, that will never work.

The book says that instead, we need "win-lose." This means, for example, that companies who have gotten rich off of exploiting workers need to STOP EXPLOITING WORKERS. This is a "lose" for the company, so obviously a company will never agree to it. So you can't get there through business practices; the only way to get there is if the government makes laws forcing companies to change.

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Trump supporters, and the idea that companies should be invested in the local town

There's also a section in the book about businesses that have a "globalist" mindset, and therefore believe they have no responsibility toward the people who live near them. In the past, businesses didn't have access to international markets or the ability to outsource labor to other countries, and so they really had to focus on their own local area. If they didn't help make people's lives better in their own local area, it would affect their potential customers and employees, which would end up being bad for the business itself. But nowadays, companies can calculate the costs of producing part of their product in one country and part of it in some other country, and expanding to markets in even more countries, and it's all about what makes more money for the company, rather than having a responsibility toward the people near you/ people affected by you.

When Trump supporters complain about "globalism" and "taking away American jobs", well my first instinct is to roll my eyes at it (please note that I'm an immigrant in China)- but actually, there's something to this. If "globalism" means changing from "you have a responsibility to care about and benefit the city that your business is located in" to "you have a responsibility to no one, just do whatever makes the most money for you" then yeah that is NOT COOL. (Or, perhaps in reality, it would be "do whatever makes the most money, and then sponsor some charity project that makes you look good." Also NOT COOL.)

And the existence of very powerful businesses can undermine local government. It can undermine democracy. This is a problem.

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Hooters and the excuses that we make

The book talks about a woman named Kat Cole, who worked at Hooters. She started out as a waitress when she was in high school, and says she found it "empowering" to be making money. Eventually she moved up to a management role. She believes Hooters supports and benefits its female employees, and she rejects the idea that they "exploit" women. She knows many women who have successful careers in management for Hooters. (Important background info: Hooters is a restaurant that is known for having waitresses with big breasts. Like that's their whole company image. Like men should come and enjoy staring at the waitresses.)

So, the book says this is an example of the "rationalizations" that people make for participating in harmful systems. And... yeah... I don't know what to think about this, because I have also thought along similar lines. Like you recognize that the larger system that you're in is doing harm in the world, so why are you letting yourself be part of it? Because you need a job? Because there's no alternative- all companies have their flaws? Because if it wasn't you doing it, it would be someone else who is less moral than you? Because you are donating some of your income to charity?

How much of that is valid, and how much is not?

The writer, Anand Giridharadas, seems to have a very negative view of these "rationalizations." He seems to be saying that the only moral thing to do is just completely refuse to participate in these systems at all. However, in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end, he talks about his own experiences in this "MarketWorld" culture, and how he also thought along the same lines as many of the ambitious would-be world-changers he mentions in the book. Many of them are his friends or people he knows personally.

So I feel like, I don't necessarily think we can dismiss Cole's views (for example) as just "rationalizations" that are automatically wrong. I think it's a hard question. And I think the author, Giridharadas, has also struggled with this.

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"Power pose" / changing your message so people can accept it

The book talks about Amy Cuddy, a "social psychologist at Harvard Business School who had spent more than a decade publishing papers on the workings of prejudice, discrimination, and systems of power." She was invited to give a talk, and chose to pick 1 small thing related to her research, which she could easily convey to an audience. She talked about the "power pose"- women can stand like Wonder Woman for a few seconds in order to give themselves more confidence before going into a big meeting or something like that.

Well, people loved this "power pose" thing, and she was later invited to give a TED talk about it. Powerful businesspeople loved the idea that individual women could just do 1 little thing differently, rather than challenging the big overall systems of sexism and the real reasons why men don't listen to women in business meetings. I think eventually Cuddy was unhappy with this, because she is a feminist and a researcher and she knows the problems go much deeper than that- but this 1 simple "power pose" trick was what everyone wanted to talk about.

And there were a few other examples in the book of people who knew they had to say things in a certain way to get powerful businesspeople to accept them. Don't talk about how your audience played a role in creating the problems. Don't blame them. There's a certain kind of story they want to hear, and if you tell a different story, and they don't like it, they won't fund your charity project.

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So what's the answer?

The book doesn't really give a solution for this problem. There are a few times that it hints that big government is the solution- it mentions that in the past, people would have viewed political activism as the way to solve problems, it says that the problem with democrats is they view big government as a bad thing, etc. Probably this is right- businesses aren't going to choose to do things that benefit society and make themselves less money- it will only happen if the government forces them to.

At the same time, though, government also has problems. I don't think it's the magic solution. I'm sure government also has a lot of the same survival-of-the-fittest dynamics which incentivize people to do things which give themselves the most power, rather than things that benefit society (though it would play out in different ways than the business world).

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Summary

The book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is about how people try to make the world better using the tools of the business world, but this can never really work. I think it's important that we are aware of this dynamic. Even though it's really discouraging. I felt like a lot of it was very relateable- about people who are trying to make a difference, but keep running into the reality of how things really work in the world. How some solutions aren't even going to be tried because rich people don't want to try them.

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