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| 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:
If A Wife Is Required To Have Sex, That's Not "Intimacy"
My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life
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