Blogaround

1. My Body, Their Baby: Grace Y. Kao on the Christian Ethics of Surrogacy (August 21) "So, in terms of the progressive Christian values that I hold, I want to say if you truly affirm marriage equality—and many mainline Protestant denominations do, as do progressive Catholics—and you also affirm the traditional idea that children are a good of marriage, not a requirement (because I also believe parenthood is a vocation to which not everyone is called), then there needs to be a pathway for two men to become parents. And unless you’re going to hold the position that their pathway is adoption and everyone else’s pathway is natural birth, then I think surrogacy is the next step, especially since a lot of these progressive or mainline Protestant denominations have also officially affirmed the conscientious use of IVF for infertile, married, heterosexual couples."

2. See moment India becomes 4th country to land on the moon (August 23) Cool! And it's the first spacecraft to land near the south pole of the moon.

3. The one-child policy is gone, but many of its old trappings remain (August 22) "In the end, the mother and her three kids had to buy five tickets, raising questions about the logic of the situation." 

China's one-child policy ended in 2016, and now the government is trying to create new policies to incentivize people to have more kids ("more" means like 2 or 3, Chinese people can barely imagine having more than 3), but it's not going that well. The one-child policy was in effect for 30ish years, so the entire society has adapted to this norm of families only having 1 kid. In particular, everything related to children's education/extracurriculars is SO EXPENSIVE, like the intention is you spend all your money on the one kid- so then how on earth can you have a second kid? 

And this article which I've linked is about a parent on a flight with 3 children, and the airline said she can't bring 3 children, so she needs to buy an "unaccompanied minor" ticket (???). A lot of things in Chinese society are set up with the expectation that families have 1 child, or maybe, in rare cases, 2. 

For example, when you take kids to fun places like parks, children's play areas, etc, usually the options for ticket pricing are like, 1 adult, 1 adult + 1 child, 2 adults + 1 child. Like they don't expect there would be a group that's 1 adult + 2 children.

(Also very funny how the header image on that article on "large families" seems to be 2 adults and 2 children.)

4. Responding to this bit of an AJC article on aces in fiction (August 23) The Ace Journal Club discussed an article on ace romance novels, which claimed that "Crafting a credible path to HEA [happily ever after] is less challenging for authors writing demisexual or gray-asexual characters since these orientations experience sexual attraction under certain circumstances." Coyote disagrees with this.

5. Federal District Court Refuses to Halt Florida’s Discriminatory Housing Law (August 17) "Under SB 264, people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and whose 'domicile,' or permanent home, is in China, are prohibited from purchasing property, including homes, in Florida." Wow not cool.

6. Let's Read A Paper: The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence From A Randomized Evaluation (August 18) "For many people, microcredit actually ends up functioning like a bank account. The global poor save too little money for it to be worthwhile for large banks to offer them interest-bearing savings accounts, so they typically save by paying someone in the neighborhood to keep an eye on the money. Most microcredit organizations allow participants to take out larger loans if they successfully pay off smaller loans. If you pay off your loan and then immediately take out another one, mathematically this is equivalent to a savings account you have to pay for: in the long run it doesn’t matter if you got the money at the beginning or the end of your first month. Microcredit organizations may charge lower fees than local money guards. They also have better security and are less likely to flee in the night with the money. The loan officer will show up at your door and complain if you miss your payment, so there’s an incentive to save."

7. Fukushima wastewater released into the ocean, China bans all Japanese seafood (August 25) and The science behind the Fukushima waste water release (August 27) So, Japan has started dumping wastewater from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster into the ocean. I don't know what to think about this... the levels of radioactivity are very low, scientists are saying it's probably safe, but it still seems like we don't really know what the effects could be. And China has now banned all seafood imported from Japan- that kind of feels more politically-motivated, in my opinion, rather than strictly based on science. 

8. Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99 (August 26)

9. i wish that i could wear hats (2022) lollll

"Shiny Happy People" is Worth Watching

Poster for the tv series "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets", produced by Amazon. It is a family photo of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and a huge number of their kids. All the people in the photos have their faces covered by smiley-face emojis, except for Jim Bob. Image source.

[content note: Duggar family, Bill Gothard, mentions of abuse, mentions of victim-blaming of rape victims]

I watched "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets", the 4-part documentary about the Duggar family, produced by Amazon. (Background information, in case you have no idea who the Duggars are: This is a family that had a reality show on TLC from 2008 to 2015, called "19 Kids and Counting" [actually originally the number was less than 19, they continued updating the name of the show as more kids were born] because there are in some weird conservative Christian subculture that doesn't allow birth control. The show was about how they live, how they manage such a large household. And also their weird quirky rules about how nobody is ever allowed to be alone with their boyfriend or girlfriend. [Actually, it's not weird and quirky, it's creepy and controlling.]) 

I'm ex-evangelical, so I was raised in an environment which has similarities with how the Duggars raised their kids- but they're fundamentalists, much more extreme than what I experienced. Still, a lot of ideas are very familiar to me- the emphasis on not having sex before marriage (or any physical contact at all, in the ideal case), treating obedience as more important than thinking for yourself, the idea that we already know all the right answers so there's no need to listen to anyone who believes differently from us, and how these kinds of environments are breeding grounds for abuse and coverups.

I like how the documentary included a lot of interviews with ex-fundies. These are people who were raised in that environment, and they really know what's what. (Just like I know what's what about evangelicalism.) They know that the reality is very different from the propaganda you hear from the movement's leaders. It wasn't about "let's gawk at these weirdos" like I've seen in some reality shows- it was about how this ideology has actual harmful effects on real people.

Here are a bunch of my thoughts about the documentary:

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Marrying a man who treats you better than you were taught was possible

Jill Duggar (one of the oldest daughters of the Duggar's 19 kids) is the main interview subject, spilling the beans about her family. Her husband Derick is there with her. She talks about how her father (Jim Bob Duggar) did not treat her like an adult, even when she was over the age of 18- he treated her like he controlled her life, and she couldn't make decisions on her own. He told all the kids to sign the contract with TLC for the tv show, without the kids understanding what it meant- and all the money for the show went to Jim Bob, not the kids- even though some of them were over the age of 18 when the show was being filmed.

In "Shiny Happy People", Jill and Derick talk about how they finally said no to Jim Bob. And how they got a lot of criticism for that, within their little subculture, because "not honoring your parents" is like the worst thing ever.

The way it reads to me is, as a child Jill was taught that her father controls her life, and then when she gets married, her husband will control her life in a similar way. She was taught that that's how it works for girls. That's God's design for the family. So then her father does all these things to control her life, and it feels normal to her.

And then she gets married, and her husband does NOT control her life like that. It turns out, her husband is a better person than that. He treats her like she is a person, and her feelings and desires matter. He treats her like she deserves better than the way her father pushed her around and expected her to participate in the tv show without being paid at all (!!!). 

As a disclaimer, I should say that I don't know details about Jill and Derick's marriage. I could be wrong about this. But this is how it reads to me. He treats her so much better than what she was taught about how a husband treats a wife. And that's how she got the strength to realize the way her father controlled her life was wrong, and to finally say no to him.

I know something about marrying a man who treats me better than Christians said was possible. I was taught to view sex in marriage in very transactional terms- it's something I owe to him, and if I don't want to or can't have sex, for whatever reason, my hypothetical good Christian husband would say to me "well, you better figure this out, because you're not holding up your end of the marriage vows." And also, I believed "the husband is the leader, the wife has to submit." And even though nobody at church ever gave an actual example for what that looked like, even though Christians taught me that *usually* a couple makes decisions together, as equals, and only very *rarely* would the husband need to pull rank and say "okay well this is my decision and that's that"... I believed that my hypothetical good Christian husband would have the right to pull rank like that, and he would use it sometimes, and if I was mad about it then he would tell me I'm not being a good wife, and he would be right. 

(It seems the Duggars were in a Christian subculture that was different in this regard- they didn't just pay lip service to the idea that "wives need to submit to their husbands", like evangelicals do; they really lived it out in horrifying, practical ways.)

And then I married Hendrix, who is not a Christian, and he doesn't believe any of that nonsense. It's like, he truly cares about me and loves me, rather than treating me like I owe him. The most striking example of this was when I was in the first trimester of pregnancy, throwing up every day, and feeling way too sick to even think about having sex, he was so compassionate. He brought me water, he cooked for me, he got up in the middle of the night with me when I was sick, etc. I couldn't believe it- Christians had always told me that if I'm not having sex frequently enough with my husband, then my husband simply isn't capable of loving me and being a decent human being. (Don't be surprised if he cheats on you, Christians said.) I couldn't believe it. It was like, Hendrix's love wasn't dependent on the sex that I "owe" him. Instead, he loves me as his wife, and he recognized that I was going through a really hard situation, and he wanted to help me.

I couldn't believe it.

Like, imagine a man actually having empathy when his wife is sick or in pain, rather than his only concern being about getting the sex he is "owed." Christians told me this was impossible.

(Conservatives are always claiming that "feminists hate men." I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which of these ideologies "hates men": "men were made by God to be fragile and sex-obsessed, not capable of respecting women who are dressed immodestly, not capable of loving their wives if their wives aren't giving them enough sex" or "men are better than that, men are fully capable of being decent human beings (regardless of what women are wearing) and we should hold them to that standard.")

And I wonder if this happens to a lot of girls who grow up in conservative Christian environments. We're taught that when we get married, our husbands will have these powers over us, and we're obligated to follow these rules for him. And then, if we marry a man who abuses us, we feel like it's totally normal. And if we marry a man who is a decent human being, we're shocked, because we really believed men weren't capable of being that good.

Contrast this with Anna Duggar, the wife of Josh Duggar. Josh is the oldest child of the Duggar's 19 kids. Several scandals about Josh have made the news- he sexually abused several of his sisters when he was a teenager, he had an account on "Ashley Madison", a website for married people who want to have affairs, he [allegedly] had an affair with a sex worker (Danica Dillon), who says he was so rough and violent it felt like she was being raped, and also he was arrested for possession of child porn, and is now in jail.

And "Shiny Happy People" discusses how women in that subculture are taught that you can't divorce. You just can't. It's just not an option. People wonder why Anna Duggar doesn't divorce Josh- well how can she? She's been taught her whole life that this is just how men are, and that a wife is obligated to stay with her husband, no matter what he does. Let me emphasize this again: All these things that Josh did, the cheating, the crimes, all of it, this is the behavior that women are taught to expect from their husbands, in that culture. This is just how it works. This is normal. Your husband fails you and mistreats you, in so many ways, and you have to continue to stick with him, love him, submit to him. That's what marriage is. That's what girls are taught in that culture.

Josh Duggar is kind of an extreme example, and I think most evangelical Christians I've met would say divorce is allowed if your spouse cheats on you, but my point is, women are taught to expect this kind of bad behavior from men. Like this is normal. Like every man could potentially do things as bad as what Josh Duggar did (perhaps the wife is to blame for not having sex with him frequently enough?), and that's just how men are.

If I married an abuser- if I married a man who said to me "I don't care if you're in pain, I have needs, so you have to find a way to have sex anyway or else you're a bad wife"- I would have thought that was completely normal. Somehow I got lucky, and I have a non-Christian husband who is a better person than that.

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Bill Gothard

I'm glad the documentary went into a lot of detail about Bill Gothard and his teachings and the cult built around him. (Yeah, it really is a cult.) The Duggars are not just one weird family, they're part of this larger subculture, influenced by Gothard's teachings.

I grew up evangelical, and I was not in Gothard's subculture at all. I had never heard of Bill Gothard, in my 20-some years of being evangelical. I had never seen his ridiculous umbrella diagram, clearly drawn by someone who doesn't understand how umbrellas work. And some little cultural markers, like the way Michelle Duggar (the mother of the 19 kids) uses the term "defrauding" to talk about women who are dressed "immodestly." As an evangelical, I had never heard that referred to as "defrauding" (ie, a woman is defrauding a man by causing him to have sexual desires that can't be fulfilled, what on earth). We called it "causing him to stumble." A lot of small cultural markers like that weren't the same as what I experienced.

So, fortunately, I wasn't in that specific weird Christian subculture at all.

But, there were things about it that felt familiar to me. The idea that everyone just needs to follow the rules that God gave, and then everything will be perfect- nobody should be questioning or thinking for themselves. Having very different rules for girls than for boys, which teach girls that they can't expect boys or men to have any self-control- if a boy does sexual things to you without your consent, it's not rape, it's your fault because you should have known boys are just like that.

If someone would have shown up at my church, when I was growing up, and tried to teach that ridiculous umbrella diagram, would people have stood up and said "this isn't right" or would we have gone along with it because it's similar enough to the sorts of things we believed?

We clearly weren't as "extreme" as what Gothard was teaching, but was there any explicit line between us? Was there anything that fundies were teaching, and evangelicals would take a stand against, and say "no, we do NOT believe that, we strongly believe THIS other thing, which contradicts that"? Like... we would have felt like it was really weird that they required all the girls to wear long skirts all the time, we would have gotten a really weird vibe because of little things like that, and we would have viewed them with suspicion or mockery as a result, but... but what was the real difference? 

I've mostly heard evangelicals say they disagree with fundies because "that's too extreme", which doesn't feel like an actual reason to me. If you really believe something, then shouldn't you believe it to the most extreme point you can? If you don't take it to the most extreme point, it must be because you have another belief which pushes back in the other direction, and you come to a sort of common-sense balance between the two. Well, what's the other belief? For evangelicals, it felt like there wasn't a competing belief, it was just, like... fundies were too weird. We didn't want to be that weird.

(Or perhaps evangelicals would make the argument that fundamentalists are "legalistic"? For example, we both believe women have to dress "modestly", but fundies make it into explicit rules about the exact length of girls' skirts, and that's wrong because it's "legalistic." And evangelicals would say we should follow the general idea of modesty but not make it into specific rules like that. Letter of the law vs spirit of the law, that kind of thing. This argument does not convince me either.)

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Blanket training

Well, I had read about blanket training before, on ex-fundie blogs, but that was years ago, before I had a child. And now, hearing about it now, oh it's so much worse. 

Blanket training means you take your baby, who is just old enough to crawl (maybe 6-12 months old) and you put them on a blanket on the floor. And when the baby crawls off the blanket, you hit them. !!!! OH MY GOD! WTF! You hit your baby. OH MY GOD. And in this way, you teach the baby to just stay on the blanket, and then you can get things done without worrying about the baby getting into trouble.

WTFFFFFFF

I'm a mom now. I have a little kid. And when he was learning to crawl, I was so happy to see it. He was learning, he was active, he was exploring the world, developing new skills. I wanted to encourage and teach him. I wanted him to grow and learn and accomplish all of his goals. (Except when they were like, unsafe things like falling off the bed or something.)

The idea that a baby would be trying to learn and explore, following their natural curiosity, and then somebody hits them to make them stop- oh, that's awful. I just... that's so wrong. That's so terrible.

And it's more than that- the Duggars follow Michael and Debi Pearl's teaching about "training" your child- which is basically hitting the child any time they're not 100% immediately obedient. And if the child shows any kind of negative emotion about something the parent is doing (for example, hitting the child), that's also disobedience, and you should hit the child for that. 

I've heard ex-fundie bloggers say if you ever see a family with a huge number of kids in public, and the kids are so extremely well-behaved, and everyone is like "wow your kids are so good!" it's because the parents are hitting the kids at home SO MUCH. Like, the amount of violence required to completely crush a child so that the child wouldn't dare to be anything other than "perfectly well-behaved", that's how much they're hitting the kids at home. It's horrifying.

There was a line in "Shiny Happy People" (episode 2) that said, "The audacity of Jim Bob Duggar to say, 'I've got my family under so much control'- they were that secure they could keep their secrets, with a camera crew, and that their kids were not gonna betray the truth. I cannot believe that he got away with that."

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TLC

Jill and Derick talk about how the contract with TLC (to produce the tv show) was extremely exploitative towards her. The kids did not get paid at all; all the money went to Jim Bob. Even though some of the kids were legal adults at the time the show was filmed.

In particular, Jill talks about when she was pregnant, and TLC was asking her about arrangements for a camera crew to come to the hospital with her when she gave birth, and she and Derick said "no, we don't want you guys there at all." (Previously, Anna Duggar had had a bad experience with the camera crew being there when she was giving birth.) But apparently the contract said they had to. Eventually they agreed that Jill and Derick would set up their own cameras to record the birth, with no camera crew.

TLC used that footage, and the episode about Jill giving birth was one of the most popular ones. But Jill says she did not get paid at all for that. Jim Bob got paid.

And, the documentary says, the wedding episodes and birth episodes were the most popular ones. In other words, the women of the family were the ones bringing in the viewers and the money. But Jim Bob is the one who got paid.

It's really outrageous, what TLC did during the filming of this show. You have this extremely patriarchal subculture, where of course the money goes to the dad, of course it doesn't go to the mom or the kids, of course not, that would never even occur to anyone. And the kids (even the ones over the age of 18) aren't allowed to make their own choices about if they want to sign a contract, if they want to be in the show or not- no, of course not, of course your dad is the one who makes those decisions for you, no one in that subculture would even think that it could be any other way. 

And TLC just kinda goes along with it. Did they not realize that these kids didn't have a real choice? Did they not realize that even though Jill signed the contract, that doesn't mean she had an actual choice? Or did they just not care?

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I'm glad to see some of the kids getting out

I'm glad to see Jill speaking out about the way her parents treated her. I'm glad to see she's wearing pants and she has a nose ring, and a husband who believes she matters as a human being.

Jinger (another one of the daughters) has also gotten out. She is also married- it seems to me that for women in these kinds of patriarchal subcultures, marriage can go two ways: Either you marry a man who treats you better than you thought possible, and with his help, you're able to break out of that ideology, or you marry a man who buys into all of that abusive teaching, and you immediately start having babies, by the time you figure out your husband is awful and you need to leave him, you have 5 kids, and you have no education, what can you even do? You're trapped.

Anyway, glad to see Jinger got out. And she has written a book called Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear [affiliate link]. I'm kind of interested in this book (lol I have such a huge pile of unread books already though). But, as far as I know, Jill and Jinger have moved from "super conservative Christian fundamentalist cult" to "average conservative evangelical Christianity." Like, don't misinterpret this and assume they don't have terrible opinions about queer people, for example. (I could be wrong about that- I would love to be wrong.) As far as I know, they are still conservative Christians, but closer to the evangelicalism I'm familiar with, rather than the "extreme" version they were raised in.

But anyway, good for them, I'm happy for them. I hope more of the kids are getting out of that abusive ideology.

And I hope Anna can get out too. 

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Conclusion

"Shiny Happy People" is a documentary series about the Duggar family. It is very well-done. It shows how the Duggars aren't just one weird family; they are part of a whole subculture, influenced by Bill Gothard's teachings. The documentary includes interviews with many people who grew up in that environment and are now speaking out about how harmful and abusive it is. This needs to be exposed, and I hope people trapped in that ideology can break free from it.

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"... there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs."

Matthew 10:26-27

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Related:

He Just Loves Me (a post about Sex, Pregnancy, and My "Wifely Duty") (Google put this behind a "Sensitive content warning", I guess because I included the words "vagina" and "penis" in this post, but it's not like it's more explicit than anything else that's been written about one's "wifely duty." This "wifely duty" thing is literally rape culture, literally marital rape, and I see it promoted by Christians everywhere, but somehow they don't get slapped with a "sensitive content warning.")

My posts from 2015 about Josh Duggar sexually abusing his sisters:
Josh Duggar's "Sin" Doesn't Matter Because Being Pure is Really Hard 
Josh Duggar and His Victims are "Damaged Goods" 
Josh Duggar's Real Victim Was God (So It's Okay) 
Also this blogaround from May 2015 and this one and this one from June 2015 have a bunch of links.

Also, Libby Anne's posts about the Duggars. (These cover A LOT more than just the 2015 scandal.)
Libby Anne knows what's what. She knew what was what all the way back in 2012: Carefully scripted lives: My concerns about the Duggars
(And the link roundup I posted here has a bunch of Libby Anne's posts about the 2015 scandal with Josh Duggar.)

The Slacktivist also has a 2015 link roundup on Josh Duggar: The Duggar Family Scandal: A reader

Blogaround

1. Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta] (2020) "More broadly, this also positions Camp Green Lake's mission as deliberately individualistic, in opposition to collaboration and teamwork. The hard work of hole digging needs to be undertaken alone in order for prisoners to supposedly 'learn their lesson.' This means that the 'lesson' they're supposed to be learning is explicitly not anything to do with cooperation, coordination, or learning how to get along and work well with others. Otherwise, if these skills/values were compatible with 'building character' as the authorities understand it, then there should have been no reason to object to prisoners working together to dig the same amount of holes." (An analysis of the movie "Holes.")

Also from Coyote (osteophage): The Violence of Fate (or, How To Tell the True Kind of Lie) [Meta] (2022) "Reflecting on this helps to articulate my understanding of the concept of 'fate.' Becoming legible in terms of 'fate' requires highlighting that an outcome is unresponsive to any attempt to change it. It is something that happens to matter what you do, what you choose, or what you want. It is a way of conceptualizing events to say that your will—desire, permission, consent—fundamentally does not matter. In this way, it requires the capacity for violence."

2. ‘Too much to bear.’ The incalculable emotional toll of the Maui wildfires (August 19) "At least 114 people have died in the western Maui wildfires and more than 1,000 people remain missing."

3. This tweet: 

I was talking to my dad about those 1-10 pain scales they use at doctors' offices and how they don't really work and my dad, an engineer, said they should have a standardized needle they stab you with as a benchmark and tell you, "This is 5."

— Abby Denton's favorite Digimon is Koemon (@mizabitha) August 18, 2023

Wow I love the way this guy thinks. Remember when I blogged about the 1-10 pain scale and what it actually means?

4. The Queer Vibes of Guardians of the Galaxy (August 19) 2-hour-15-minute video from Jessie Gender. "I relate to [Nebula] so hard as a trans person, because both of us have had our bodies literally forced to be something that we didn't want them to be."

Also, I love this song from "Guardians of the Galaxy 3": Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - Dog Days Are Over 

5. A Brand New Puzzle Type - This Is LOVELY (August 12) 31-minute video. Wow this is a cool little puzzle. I didn't understand the rules at first- I thought you were supposed to put a number in every box, like a fillomino (and that wouldn't be possible). No, you don't put any numbers in at all, it's just about dividing the grid up into regions such that the given numbers are in valid places.

6. Meet ‘creation care,’ the evangelical substitute for environmental activism (July 13) "As part of their self-declared role as ambassadors, evangelicals pretend that Jesus is very nicely allowing his most beloved and trusted followers to manage things for him in his absence, like parents allowing small children to help with light housework so they feel involved."

The Slacktivist has also written about how "creation care" is seen as "controversial" in evangelical culture, because it's "liberal" or something:
The Late Great Planet Earth (2017)
Climate change (2005)

When I was an evangelical... typically nobody discussed the question "should we protect the environment?" in a serious way, but there was a lot of mocking of environmentalists- which taught me that Christians aren't supposed to care about the environment, but never gave any reasons why. There was 1 time though, I was at an InterVarsity conference, and we did a bible study about why "creation care" is important. And a lot of us kind of responded like "I always thought Christians shouldn't care about this, but... but yeah, of course we should protect the environment." Like if you actually think about it, there aren't any good arguments to support "let's trash the planet, it doesn't matter" even though we all had been implicitly taught that's what Christians are supposed to believe. (Possible arguments given are: Jesus is going to come back any minute now, so no need to care about the future; the bible says the world was perfect when God created it, and just getting worse and worse since then, and there's nothing we can do to change that; climate change isn't real. None of these arguments really work, though.)

7. Customers wing it, as fried chicken store drums up crowd (August 20) A Popeye's restaurant opened in Shanghai.

8. What put Hurricane Hilary on a collision course with California? (August 20, via) "For at least the last 165 years, these conditions have kept California hurricane-free, experts say."

Orientation is About Finding the Pattern

A set of (x,y) data points with a best-fit line drawn through them. The data is basically linearly correlated, but the fit isn't perfect. Image source.

The topic for the August 2023 Carnival of Aces is "Asexuality and Orientation." So, I want to talk about how orientation labels are about describing the overall patterns of your feelings/experiences. It doesn't mean every single feeling you've ever felt fits the definition for that orientation label. It's about the pattern.

Here's a bunch of examples. First I have examples about orientation, and then I want to talk about finding or not finding patterns in my own life, related to dating, etc.

Here we go:

I once met a lesbian who was dating a trans man. This was confusing to me, because... "lesbian" means she's only attracted to women... is she saying that trans men are women? Uh that seems... not very trans-accepting. But thinking about it now, I don't think that's it. I think the overall pattern that describes her attraction is, she's attracted to women, and her trans man boyfriend is something of an exception to that. Or perhaps she's attracted to him because he has some of the qualities that she finds attractive in women, even though he's a man. The overall pattern of her being a lesbian is still true, but that doesn't mean every single thing in her life has to fit the simple definition of "lesbian."

Related to that, I remember seeing a post online where someone said, "I'm a lesbian, but my boyfriend was grandfathered in." (I find it HILARIOUS to use the word "grandfathered" here.) I guess she means, she already had a boyfriend, and then she figured out she's a lesbian, but she wants to stay in the relationship with him. (There could be all kinds of reasons she would choose to do that.) So "lesbian" is the term that best fits the overall pattern of her feelings/ how she wants other people to see her, but her boyfriend is an exception.

And here's a question: How do non-binary people fit into the straight/gay/bi/pan framework? If someone is, for example, a straight man, that means he's attracted to women. Is he attracted to non-binary people? Should we not use the terms "straight" and "gay" because they treat non-binary people like they don't exist? My answer to that is, most people know very few non-binary people (if they know any at all), and non-binary people's gender expression is all over the map- is it even possible to make generalizations, to find the "pattern" that summarizes your attraction to non-binary people? I think most people simply don't have enough data to find a pattern, so it doesn't make sense to use an orientation label that indicates "I'm attracted to non-binary people" or "I'm not attracted to non-binary people." If I'm a straight woman, and I'm attracted to 1 out of 100 men, and I've met 5 non-binary people and I'm not attracted to any of them, well, who can say if it's because I'm just not attracted to non-binary people, or if it's because I don't have enough data? It wouldn't make sense to draw conclusions one way or the other.

(See also this post from Siggy, Attraction to nonbinary people, and this video from Verity Ritchie, Everyone is Attracted to Nonbinary People)

Another example: In the comments section of my post Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality, sildarmillion said, "For me personally, I ID as ace, as I've only felt sexual attraction to one male person, so I could be ace and hetero for all I know, but idk, I don't feel a strong connection with the Heterosexual label, so I don't identify with that label." This was surprising to me, because I thought being a woman, and having at least 1 experience of being attracted to a man, and not any other genders, that falls under the category of straight/hetero. But for her, there's no pattern to it. It just happened 1 time, so it doesn't make sense to draw a conclusion about being straight/hetero.

Also, one of my friends, let's call her Claire, once told me that her attraction changes a lot, like one day she's only attracted to women, and a different day she's only attracted to men- I think she described this as "sexually fluid." (And later she found the term "abrosexual" and was very happy because she felt it totally fit.) Like, from day to day or week to week, her sexual orientation changes. This was very surprising to me, specifically, the idea of having a high enough frequency of data points that you can track changes on such short time scales. Wow! I very much cannot do that! I'm attracted to men, but on a typical day I probably won't meet any men I'm attracted to. (Except my husband because I live with him.) It's a really small percentage of men, and it's very normal for me to go for days or weeks without any of the men I meet being in that category. 

Really it's a super-interesting math question about how as you measure at higher and higher frequencies, any calculations you make about rates of change become less reliable because of noise. But, apparently, Claire had such a high frequency of being attracted to people, that she really could identify patterns on the scale of days or weeks. Wow! Cool!

(I can identify patterns on a time scale of years, personally.)

And, since it's about finding patterns, there could be 2 people with the same experiences, but one of them thinks those experiences show a pattern, and the other thinks those experiences are just exceptions that can be ignored, and so they use different identity labels. For example, maybe one person is bisexual, and one person is "I'm straight but I fooled around in college." Maybe it's a woman who usually dates men, but she has had a few sexual experiences with women here and there. Does she see those experiences with women as a key part of the overall pattern of her attraction? Then she might identify as bisexual. Or does she see herself as straight, and those were just small minor exceptions that don't really matter? Both interpretations are valid- it's a matter of what she feels like counts as a "pattern."

But, also, I've seen bi people who were unhappy about people labelling themselves as "straight but I fooled around in college" or "heteroflexible." The criticism was, people want to say their same-sex experiences don't "count", because they believe there's something *wrong* with being bi- so it's internalized bigotry against bi people. I think I come down on the side of "you shouldn't tell people what labels they're allowed to use" but also... maybe there's some truth to the argument that your own internal biases can have an effect on whether you identify something in your life as a "pattern" or an "exception."

Or, let's talk about the difference between asexual and gray-asexual. I think this difference is ALL ABOUT whether you personally perceive there to be a pattern in your own life or not. When I was first questioning if I was asexual, I was very concerned about how the exact definition says "no sexual attraction." What if I have had sexual attraction, at some point in my life, but I don't remember, or I didn't understand what it was? I can't prove that this never happened! How can I confidently ID as asexual? And eventually I concluded that since I can't figure out if I've ever experienced sexual attraction or not, that pretty much means I haven't- so I can ID as asexual. And also I was glad that the category of gray-asexual also exists, because then if I'm wrong and I actually have experienced sexual attraction, then that means I wasn't really that far off- asexual and gray-asexual are similar enough. It wouldn't be like... I'm a totally not-queer heterosexual person trying to invade the queer community because I want to label myself and be special.

But my point is, don't worry about "oh maybe I have had sexual attraction at some point in my life but I just didn't realize it" and think you're not allowed to ID as asexual. If it hasn't happened enough times that you can find a pattern to it, then you don't have to base your identity on it.

And what if you have experienced sexual attraction to exactly 1 person, throughout your whole life? Is that asexual or gray-asexual? Well, it could go either way, depending on whether you feel like it fits into a pattern that describes your identity, or it was just a weird thing that happened once and isn't really connected to the rest of your life. Perhaps you felt sexual attraction to 1 person, and you clearly understood that's what it was, and it feels like the sort of thing that could happen again- maybe then, you ID as gray-asexual. Or perhaps you felt sexual attraction, but the whole thing was confusing and seemed out of character for you, and you can't make sense of it- maybe you decide to ID as asexual then, because your overall pattern is being sexually attracted to no one, and this 1 experience just doesn't fit.

And maybe these hypothetical asexual and gray-asexual people actually had the exact same experience, and it's their own perspective and mental model of the world that leads them to conclude "this fits a pattern" or "this doesn't fit a pattern." Both interpretations are fine here. There's more to it than just your raw experience- it's also about the assumptions you use when you analyze your experiences to look for patterns.

(Gray-asexual can mean a lot of other things too- I recommend Siggy's post Many ways to be between.)

And I can talk about my own experiences with patterns or lack thereof. I'm straight, I know I'm straight because I'm a woman and I've been attracted to lots of guys, and not any women. Clearly a pattern. (Turns out, it wasn't sexual attraction though. It was other kinds of attraction.) Ever since I was in high school, if you asked me at any time who I'm attracted to, I could name offhand at least 1 of my friends/acquaintances and maybe a few celebrities. (Not that I would actually tell someone if they asked- that's none of their business.) Like, right now, there's my husband, and also Robert Downey Jr. (And more.)

Robert Downey Jr., as Tony Stark in the "Avengers" movies. Causing me to stumble. Image source.

And the patterns of how I'm attracted to guys have changed some, over the years. The ace concepts of romantic attraction/ sensual attraction/ aesthetic attraction are useful for analyzing that- but also, there are some other patterns I have which are more complicated. And I don't want to give details because it's my own feelings and not of interest to anybody else, but yeah I can identify patterns and see how some aspects of it have changed. But it always fit the definition of "straight."

So I can definitely talk about the overall patterns of how I experience attraction. And crushes. Plenty of those. But you know what I don't have a pattern for? Dating. I've only dated 3 people total (1 of them is my husband) and basically the whole time I felt like I was winging it and had NO IDEA what was going on. Every exciting development that happened was a huge surprise, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react. Every relationship problem we had, it felt like a completely unique situation, and I didn't have the faintest idea about general principles for how to solve those kinds of things.

(3 people total, not counting the times I went on dates without realizing they were dates.)

Here's an example from when I was dating my first boyfriend, let's call him BF1. So, we weren't officially dating yet, but we went out and spent the whole day together, and then had dinner at a restaurant, and I asked him, "So... are we dating?" and he said "I hope so" and I said "okay good." Is that normal? Is that how it usually works? Is that what I was supposed to say? I HAVE NO IDEA!

Like, how do people ask people out? How do people know when they're "officially" a couple? I don't know! I can tell you how it happened for me, these 3 times I've been in a dating relationship, but I definitely don't feel like my experiences are "normal" or like they fit into a bigger pattern of "how dating works."

And when we had relationship problems, I didn't have any sense of "yes, this is the sort of problem that happens sometimes in a relationship, and usually it's related to this underlying reason, and you can address it by doing this." No, it always felt like the problems that came up were completely unexpected, and I had no idea how to deal with them.

But... that could be because of purity culture. Because I followed purity ideology back then, I didn't really have any understanding of what healthy or unhealthy relationships look like. It was just "if you're not having sex, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you're both Christians, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you want to date someone, you have to pray about it and find out if God says you can date them." So if there was a relationship problem, all I could do was... like... not have sex (that's easy, of course we're not having sex) and... ask God what to do. And God's answers could be ANYTHING- I had no understanding of like... a general body of healthy advice that applies to pretty much all relationships.

So anyway, back then, when I was dating other guys before my husband (and also at the beginning of my relationship with my husband) I felt that the things that happened were unique reactions to the unique situations we were in, and not at all generalizable to some "this is what dating is like" idea. And when my friends tell me about their experiences with dating, they're not like mine at all. So I don't have a "pattern" for dating.

I also don't have a pattern for "what sex is like"- I only know what sex is like with my husband, and when other people talk about sex, it isn't relatable to me at all. So I have no idea what sex is like "in general." I always wonder, how many people do you have to date, before you can make generalizations about "how dating works"? How many people do you have to have sex with, before you can make generalizations about "how sex works"?

But, actually, it doesn't necessarily have to be about your own experience with sex and/or dating. It could also be observing your friends' relationships, seeing relationships in movies, etc, and feeling like they make sense to you.

Because, here's something interesting: I *do* make generalizations about marriage. Hmm, I've only been married to 1 person, and yet I often make statements like "this is what marriage is about." How can that be? 

I think it's because, when I hear other people describing the specific dynamics of their marriage, they feel similar to things I've experienced in my marriage. Things related to living with someone for so long that you know all their little quirky/annoying/charming habits. Things like, "in a marriage, there's always 1 person who turns on all the lights in the house, and 1 person who goes after them and turns all the lights off." (This is the biblical definition of marriage.) Or, here's a little piece of advice: Before you get married, you have to find out if your partner is the kind of person who can't stop talking about what other movies all the actors are in, every time you watch a movie. Or, this is cute- the husband who gathers a whole bunch of pillows and sets them up on the wife's side of the bed, because she likes to sleep with a lot of pillows. Knowing these little details about your partner's habits, and showing them love in the way you adapt your own habits to fit together with theirs. That's what marriage is about.

And I think that is something that can generalize to most happy marriages (or even most relationships where people live together long-term). When people talk about marriage- specifically, the very deep ways that people know each other so well and care for each other, as a natural result of being together for so long- it does feel relatable to me. (I love Taylor Swift's song "Lover" and Justin Timberlake's song "Mirrors" because they're about these long-term relationship dynamics.) So that's why I feel I can make generalizations about marriage. (Unless they're talking about sex in marriage, lol I still have no idea.)

So maybe it's not just about if a pattern exists or not- it's about your ability to recognize the pattern, and that's very much based on the examples you've seen from other people, and what patterns they describe. Many queer people have had the experience of hearing about an identity label, and suddenly it "clicks." They never had a way to make sense of their experiences and feelings before, but then this identity label comes along and describes a possible pattern, and they realize, wow, I fit this pattern!

So when you're thinking about orientation and what label to identify with, you don't have to take it literally when a label says it means "only" attracted to a certain gender, or "never" experiencing sexual attraction, or any other words like that. You can identify with a label while still having a few experiences here or there which are "exceptions" to it. You look at the overall pattern of your feelings and experiences. And it's totally possible that people with the same experiences would choose different identity labels, because they may reach different conclusions about what's a pattern and what's not.

---

Related:

Labels Are Useful When You're Far Enough From "Normal" That "Normal" Makes No Sense
OF COURSE Dating is Different as an Adult 
If One Partner Doesn't Want to Fix the Relationship, Then It's Just Not Fixable 
What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus) 

And these posts from Siggy: 
An ace perspective on single-target sexuality 
Shared Experience, Different Words

Update: sildarmillion wrote a response to this: Am I Straight Though? Or, Does Orientation Matter?

The Great Sex Rescue: Don't have sex till you're married AND aroused

A sign that says "Caution: Slippery surface." Image source.

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

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[content note: NSFW descriptions of arousal and "sexual progression"]

We are now in chapter 4 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], which is about arousal. I have MANY OPINIONS so I'm going to just cover the first part of the chapter (p 61-65) in this post. 

Before I actually talk about what's in the chapter, I want to define "arousal", for the extremely naive readers. Arousal means physical changes happening in the genitals, to get ready for sex. The penis gets hard, the vagina gets wet and open. (The sex-ed resources I've read tend to just say the vagina gets wet, but I had vaginismus, and getting it to be "open" was the biggest issue. If it's not wet, you can use lube, but there's no shortcut to "open.") If these changes do not happen, PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex is difficult or painful or impossible. Also you can't have an orgasm if you're not aroused.

Years ago, I had heard the word "arousal" and I believed it meant emotionally wanting to have sex. Like, normally, you feel like "genitals are super weird, why would I ever want to interact with someone's genitals?" but then you're with your partner who is super attractive, and you're kissing, and you're so into them, and you think "you know what, I like you so much, I *would* interact with your genitals. For you, it doesn't seem so weird any more." I thought that's what arousal was. LOL. Nope. It's actual physical changes in your body.

The book does not directly give a definition for "arousal", but it's clear that it is talking about a physical process that needs to happen, in order for PIV to feel good for the woman and not be painful. Even though it doesn't explain it super-explicitly, if Perfect-Number-10-years-ago had read this, it would have been enough for her to realize "wait, I'm understanding arousal wrong." So that's helpful.

ANYWAY.

The chapter starts with this anecdote:

When Piper (one of our survey respondents) and her now husband were dating, they enjoyed a few steamy made-out sessions. But both Piper and her husband were dedicated to waiting until marriage for sex, and whenever Piper felt like they had let things go a little too far, she'd declare a fast from kissing for forty days, when they would shift gears and focus on Jesus. [Note from Perfect Number: omg a 40-day "fast" from kissing, that's so evangelical, this is so real.] She liked kissing, but she also felt very convicted about it.

After their wedding, they awkwardly tried to have intercourse-- with tried being the operative word. They quickly discovered that Piper suffered from vaginismus, and penetration was too painful. For the six years it took for them to finally achieve penetration, they did other forms of stimulation that helped him [Note from Perfect Number: !!!! only him?] reach orgasm. But the disappointment and frustration grew.

I asked Piper if she had felt aroused before she tried intercourse for the first time. "Nope," she admitted. They had tried to make it straight from Toronto to Ottawa without going through Kingston [this is the metaphor this chapter uses for how arousal is a necessary step in getting an orgasm]-- and they had stalled out. Piper said she often wondered what would have happened if they had just tried intercourse one of the times she felt "steamy" before they were married. It's not that she wishes they'd had sex when they were dating; it's just that she wishes the first time they tried to have sex, she had actually been aroused. Maybe if that had been the case, her story would not have been what it was. But she'll never know.

This anecdote is followed by 2 other anecdotes which are similar. So we have 3 stories here where a man and woman made the decision to "wait till marriage" to have sex, had some "steamy make-out sessions" before marriage, but stopped themselves from having sex. They were very proud of themselves for doing the "right" thing and stopping and not having sex, and then on their wedding night, sex was painful for the woman and really didn't go well, which was a huge disappointment. She later learned that arousal is a thing, and wondered if maybe they would have been better off if they had had sex during one of those "steamy make-out sessions" before marriage.

All three women still say they don't believe in sex before marriage. They just wonder, and they wish sex had started differently.

This is blowing my mind. Gregoire and her co-authors believe you shouldn't have sex before marriage, but here they are floating the idea that, hey, there are some situations where maybe it would have been better if they'd had sex before marriage. They're just asking the question, not saying they actually agree with it, but WOW. 

I've never ever ever seen anyone in the "don't have sex before marriage" camp give any sort of hint that there might possibly be benefits to having sex before marriage. No, generally I've heard about how premarital sex is the worst thing ever and will ruin your life. Or, the less "extreme" ones might say, it won't ruin your life, it's not cool how Christians treat it like it's the worst sin, really it's just the same as other sins, but still, it's a sin and it's bad and no one should do it.

Then there's another anecdote in this chapter about a woman who did have sex before marriage, and also had these problems (wasn't aroused the first time, didn't get any physical pleasure). So, the point is, it's not about if you're married or not, it's about if you know what arousal is.

We are told in church that the key to great sex is waiting until the wedding night. But if that's the case, why do so many of the women in our survey who waited until their wedding night have the same story as Natalie, who didn't? Here's an uncomfortable truth: your marital status is not what makes sex orgasmic or not-- your arousal level is. Many single women have no problem orgasming, and that fact shouldn't threaten our traditional Christian view of sex. Saving sex for marriage is not about making it more orgasmic but about making it more meaningful-- a deep knowing-- while protecting ourselves from heartache, diseases, and single parenthood. They key to sexual pleasure is not a wedding ring.

That's why, if you want an orgasmic marriage, having sex within twenty-four hours of saying "I do" does not guarantee anything. Our catchphrase should not just be "Wait for sex until you're married"; our catchphrase should be "Wait for sex until you're married and turned on!" Save sex for when you're married, and then once you're married, don't have sex until your body is begging for it.

Okay, so, I have a bunch of things to say about this.

First of all, cards on the table, I had sex before marriage and it was a really good decision for me. (See: I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage) I had spent a lot of time working my way out of purity culture, and came to the point where I no longer believed it was a sin to have sex, but I still feared it, and thought maybe I shouldn't have sex with my boyfriend, just in case purity culture was right and it would ruin my life. We already had been living together for a while, and were happy and loved each other and were very comfortable with each other, and I couldn't understand why it would be a bad thing to do this one specific arbitrary action that everybody was making a big deal about (PIV sex). There was no rational reason that this one specific bizarre action would completely change our relationship/ ruin my life/ etc. The only way I could get myself to believe I shouldn't have sex with him was just to make myself fear it more and more.

And it really took a toll on my mental health, agonizing over this decision, not seeing anything wrong with it but needing to make myself believe it might ruin my life. Finally I decided to face my fear and do it. And the first night, we weren't able to do PIV, as much as we tried, and then the second night, we managed to do it. And I was very happy because it didn't ruin my life, so I was ready to move on from it and didn't necessarily see a reason we should have sex again. Since now we already know what it is, and we know it doesn't ruin our lives.

(All of this feels very asexual to me, now that I know what asexuality is.)

We got married a few years later. And I remember, after our wedding was over and we were going back to the hotel room, I thought to myself, wow I'm so glad I'm not about to find out RIGHT NOW that sex makes no sense. Imagine if I hadn't decided to have sex before marriage, if I had just lived with that fear for a few years, doing my best to convince myself that it would be really bad to have sex, and that if we wait till marriage it will be all worth it, that sex on the wedding night will be AMAZING because we waited, and the whole 18 months of wedding planning, knowing the exact date in the far future that I will find out what sex is, trying to make myself really really believe that it would be BAD to have sex before that date, but AMAZING to have sex on that date, all those years of fear and anticipation and mystery, finally leading up to it... on this one amazing special day that we've been planning for 18 months... and then THAT'S when I find out sex is actually painful and confusing and makes no sense. Oh my GOD I'm so glad that's not what happened to me.

(Would have also added a few years' delay to me figuring out I'm asexual. Ugh.)

So that's the perspective I'm coming from here, when I read "The Great Sex Rescue" saying we shouldn't have sex before marriage. I don't agree with that.

But also, the way it's written in the book, it doesn't bother me at all. The book doesn't try to defend the "don't have sex before marriage" rule. There's only that 1 sentence (that I quoted above) about how Christians believe in saving sex for marriage to make sex more meaningful and to avoid STDs/pregnancy. That's the only place where this chapter gives any kind of defense of "don't have sex before marriage." It comes after a page and a half of anecdotes of women who waited until marriage and now wonder if they shouldn't have, in the middle of 2 paragraphs about how a wedding ring doesn't guarantee amazing sex, and plenty of single women are having great orgasms, and then the rest of the chapter is about how to help married women get over the sexual hang-ups they've developed as a result of "waiting for marriage."

So, my point is, this chapter is very much NOT making a good case for the "don't have sex before marriage" argument (quite the opposite, I would say), and honestly, it's not even trying. (And this is a book for married women, so there's really no need for it to get into what you should or shouldn't do before marriage. Its focus is on repairing the damage caused by the "waiting for marriage" ideology.)

So even though I very much disagree with "don't have sex before marriage," I'm not bothered by what this chapter says, because it's not trying to defend that belief. It's just about giving advice to women who follow that belief, without saying anything about "you SHOULD believe in waiting till marriage."

Another thing I want to say: Their advice is that instead of "don't have sex till marriage", Christians should teach "don't have sex till you're married and aroused." And, WOW. Wow. "Don't have sex till you're married and aroused" is such a hugely different thing than "don't have sex till you're married." So incredibly different. It's hard for me to even describe how different it is.

If it's "don't have sex till you're married"- that's just a rule that other people put on you. But "married and aroused"- now, if people start to believe that, then it's not just about a rule, it's about "do I want this or not?" It's about "is this right for me, at this time, or not?"

That's such an incredibly different thing. That's a huge improvement on the "don't have sex till marriage" rule. Huge. Like, so huge that it changes the entire meaning, I would say.

Also, if you believe in "don't have sex till you're married and aroused", you will know that MARRIAGE IS NOT CONSENT. Which is a big issue in purity ideology- consent is seen as totally not a factor, because before marriage the correct answer is always "no", and then when you're married it's "yes." That's so wrong. Marriage is not consent.

And I would say this means that, if you have decided to "wait till marriage" to have sex, you should expect to NOT have sex on your wedding night. It's very possible that you just can't go from 0 to penetration in 1 night. So you can start trying some stuff, but it may take time to actually get to a point where you're able to do PIV without pain. (And, if it's painful, don't do it.)

And one more thing I want to say about this section: "once you're married, don't have sex until your body is begging for it." Well, lololol, I'm asexual so that doesn't really happen to me. But actually, from the rest of the chapter we see that you don't really have to be in the state where "your body is begging for it", you just have to be aroused and consenting.

Here's the next section:

Each of these women, whether they waited for marriage or not, missed the natural progression of sexual arousal. And that progression looks something like this:

• low-key physical contact that makes you feel close, such as holding hands, having your arms around each other, or short kisses
• kissing and touching that is drawn out when you start to feel aroused
• removing some clothing and learning to touch each other without awkwardness
• exploring each other's bodies to see what arouses you and what arouses the other
• learning to bring each other to orgasm without intercourse
• having intercourse

When you allow your body to tell you when it's time to move forward, these steps naturally follow, one after the other. That's why when a dating couple has sex "by accident," he doesn't just slip into her vagina by surprise. It's often that they've been cuddling and kissing while they talk, and that kissing turns to making out. They start to get turned on, so their hands start wandering, making them even more aroused. And eventually, they get to the point where their bodies are screaming out to them, We know what the next step is. Can we just do the next step already?! They've been kissing and making out and touching for so long that their bodies are saying, We NEED the sex! And it truly feels like they are out of control-- they just can't contain all this passion and desire, and they end up having sex. "Accidental" sex isn't so accidental at all. It's often hours in the making. But for many women, sex initially moves at too fast a pace and steps are skipped. Their bodies never have a chance to say, "I need this!"

Oh my god, this is the best explanation of "one thing leads to another" that I have EVER READ.

Like, I'm not even mad that it says "these steps naturally follow" which is not inclusive of aces. Oh my god, my whole life, I've heard people warning that "you shouldn't kiss your boyfriend, because one thing leads to another and then you will have sex," and anecdotes about good Christian couples who tried so hard to be "pure" but them "stumbled" because of "temptation" and somehow had sex even though they were trying not to, and people saying it's so hard to not have sex until marriage, and so on and so on... I was always so very confused because I was pretty sure that to have sex, you have to take your clothes off, and like... interact with someone else's genitals... and I couldn't imagine there could possibly exist any series of steps that I might do "accidentally" which would lead to that. Like... so you're kissing, okay I understand kissing, and then... and then some steps that I'm not understanding but everyone is telling me they're real steps which could totally happen to me if I kiss a boy... and then sex. How??? It doesn't make sense! But I had to live in fear of those mysterious, impossible-to-understand steps.

But this! This here, this section of "The Great Sex Rescue", this is what they were all talking about! Every time somebody warned me that "one thing leads to another", this is what they meant! OMGGG!

And, there's more to this: In purity culture, this series of steps (or rather, a very simplified version, which doesn't mention arousal) is presented as the slippery slope that happens when people know they're not allowed to have sex, but they still want to do physical things, and they increase the intimacy little-by-little until, unfortunately, they end up having sex anyway. And this serves as a warning for why you shouldn't even kiss before marriage, or whatever.

But in "The Great Sex Rescue," not only is this presented as the steps that couples commonly go through when they're trying not to have sex before marriage, but it's also the steps you SHOULD go through when you are married and you want to have sex. And, the book says, the reason that some women feel like they were more aroused when they were messing around before marriage than when they actually got married and are actually allowed to have sex, is that these steps are important and often necessary for women to get aroused and be able to have sex that feels good.

This is, wow. This is so huge. So this is presented not as like, "these steps are like the counterfeit version of sex that people try to content themselves with when they're not allowed to actually have PIV, but it's a bad idea" but as "this is really what you SHOULD do when you have sex." According to purity culture logic, once you're married and you are allowed to have sex, why would you bother doing any of this other stuff? Just have sex, because that's what you really want. But this book is saying, no, PIV doesn't feel good if you're not aroused first, so you really do have to take the time to get aroused. (It doesn't say you literally have to do these exact steps, but the idea is, you have to take the time to make sure both partners are aroused enough before you can do PIV.)

And also, let me tell you, I am asexual af, so I actually did all of these steps with Hendrix (who is now my husband) slowly over the first 2-ish years we were together- well, all the steps as listed here, except that any steps that include female arousal or female orgasm, when we did that step, it didn't include those. Yes, we did each step, we spent a lot of time on each one, but I was not aroused. There were a few rare exceptions, but not enough for me to realize "hey, arousal is important?"

So, lol, no guarantee that if you do all of these steps, and take the time to enjoy them, you will actually get aroused. Just sayin'. 

One more thing from this section of the book: The authors posted a poll on Twitter and Facebook which asked, "If you were a virgin on your wedding night, were you aroused the first time you had sex?" 52% were. Now, obviously a lot of people follow Gregoire on social media specifically because they are having problems in their sex lives and want her advice, so yes we would expect that the number of people who said they were not aroused in this poll is higher than in the general population. But still, wow, this is a problem. I thought I was the only one naive enough to try to have sex without even knowing what arousal was, but apparently not. 

And purity culture sets women up for this- we're not allowed to have comprehensive sex ed, we're not allowed to masturbate, we're not allowed to use porn... if you're a good girl who follows the rules, of course you wouldn't have any idea about the role that arousal is supposed to play in sex. Of course you wouldn't. Purity culture said if you have 0 sexual experience, then on your wedding night everything will just magically work, you don't need to know anything or prepare anything beforehand. (I mean, I knew that we would need to have a plan about birth control beforehand, but other than that, nope, I had no idea about anything else that would need to be done in order to be ready for PIV.)

I'm glad to see this book is exposing those false promises. Turns out, for pretty much anything you do, if you don't have a clue what you're doing, it doesn't go very well. Sex is not some magical exception to this. (Even though the entirety of purity culture is built on the assumption that sex is a magical exception to this. That, unlike every other thing that one might attempt to do, sex works best when you have no experience and no idea what you're doing.)

To summarize: This section of chapter 4 is saying that arousal is extremely important during sex- you can't have an orgasm if you're not aroused- but that for many Christian women who "wait" till their wedding night, they are not aroused the first time they have PIV sex, and it's not a good experience. The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" seem to still believe that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, but they don't make any attempt to actually argue for this, so, I'm glad to see that. Also, they actually explain the so-called "natural" sexual progression that purity culture always warned about- how exactly does "one thing lead to another"... I've never seen anyone actually EXPLAIN it, but WOW, this book does, and that's so extremely helpful for me. Because lol that's not how it works at all for me as an asexual.

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

Related:

I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage 

For This Asexual, Purity Culture Was All About Fear 

Allow Me To Showcase Some Internet People Who Know What's What About Vaginismus

On Purity, Asexuality, and Timing 

Boundaries in Dating: #stillpurityculture

Blogaround

1. Workplaces Without Borders And Sexual Harassment (August 8, via) "You might say 'well, if Harvey Weinstein asks out of nowhere whether your breasts are real, when you aren’t working on a Miramax film, he’s boorish and misogynist and a creep, but he’s not engaged in workplace sexual harassment—there’s no employment relationship between you and him.' But in a very real way that’s wrong, because even if Weinstein isn’t your employer right now, he might well have been your employer last year and be about to be your employer next year. Because the workplace is borderless, Weinstein’s behavior still creates a hostile work environment."

2. Phistomefel's Sequel (August 11) 1-hour-55-minute video. Normally Simon solves sudokus, but in this video it's a weird variation called "chequered arromino." "I think the big game in town here is to know whether yellow is orange or blue, and whether purple is orange or blue."

Wow, this one is also very good: Is There ANYTHING Cleverer On YouTube? (July 30) 1-hour-26-minute sudoku solve video.

3. Google will start deleting inactive accounts in December under new security policy (August 10) I find this very concerning, because they don't say how it will affect blogspot blogs. (Blogspot is a google product. My blog is hosted by google.) So, doesn't affect me because they're only going to delete stuff after 2 years of inactivity, but will people's blogspot blogs be deleted just because the blogger hasn't logged in to their blog or used their google account for a long time? The policy says that accounts with youtube channels won't be deleted, but what about blogs?

Also, another very concerning thing is what if you have a gmail account that you never log into because you've set it up to forward the emails to a different account? So you still use it, you still read the emails from it, but you don't log in. Would google see that as "inactivity"? (This answer on reddit says yes...) 

Google posted their policy here, Inactive Google Account Policy, and here About Inactive Account Manager. And also you can see what the recent activity was on your account here: My Google Activity.

4. Ooooh look at this, there's a new book called Color Taste Texture: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food. A cookbook for autistic people! (And anyone else who has food aversions.) I am very interested in this.

5. US, China agree to double weekly flights between countries (August 12) Yessssss. "The 24 weekly flights are still a fraction of the more than 150 round-trip flights allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-pandemic." Also, a complicating factor is that US airlines aren't flying over Russia now.

6. 'Blind Side' subject Oher alleges Tuohys made millions off lie (August 14) "Oher eventually hired a lawyer who helped him uncover the details surrounding the movie deal and his legal connection to the people he believed were his adoptive parents. His lawyer unearthed the conservatorship document in February, and Oher came to the painful realization that the Tuohys had not adopted him."

7. Christlike or Pornlike? A Christian Woman’s Role in Marriage (2021) [content note: abuse] This is what happens when everyone takes it for granted that a husband is simply not capable of being a decent human being if his wife's not regularly having sex with him. He is mistreating her in so many ways, and everyone (husband, pastor, church culture) tells her that the first step to fix the relationship is she needs to have sex with him whenever he demands it, otherwise nothing will change.

8. We can't stop thinking about Barbie's deliciously cutting Matchbox Twenty moment (August 1) "First, it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being made to listen to a man sing, unsolicited, when he clearly thinks he’s being so dreamy right now."

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Edit: Well I published this post, and I went to schedule it to tweet on tweetdeck, like I always do with my new blog posts, and now I have to add another link:

9. Twitter finally figured out how to kill TweetDeck, by putting it behind a paywall (August 17) Ah, well, I guess it's just a matter of time till I'd end up leaving twitter, it's just one thing after another. We'll see.

"Fair Play": Identifying and Assigning All the "Invisible Work" of Running a Household

Book cover for the book "Fair Play" by Eve Rodsky.

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) [affiliate link] by Eve Rodsky, is a book which presents a system that couples can use to keep track of all the little tasks that are required to run their home, and to divide the tasks fairly. This is a solution to the problem where the wife is the one who does all these tasks, all day long, and is very stressed about it, while her husband has free time and is completely unaware of all the work that she is doing.

Okay, yeah, this is a real problem. Society expects that women do all of these things, and husbands often expect their wives to do all these things. Communicating with the kids' teachers, being the one who goes in to work late because someone needs to be home when the internet maintenance person comes, planning meals, knowing what time the kids are supposed to be at their various weekend activities, scheduling doctor's appointments, etc etc etc. (The term "second shift" is sometimes used to refer to this unpaid labor that women do at home.) Husbands think they are "helping" or "doing half of the work" when they do a task here or there which their wife reminds them to do... but many women will tell you that having to remind someone over and over also counts as work, and it's often easier for her to just do the thing herself. (And husbands often complain that their wives are "nagging" them, by reminding them to do things.)

This applies to both stay-at-home-moms and women with full-time jobs. When both the husband and wife work full-time, it's very common that the wife somehow ends up doing the overwhelming majority of the housework. And for a stay-at-home-mom, doing all the household tasks can easily add up to more than a full-time job- so no, it's not fair if the husband does none of it.

And the book even has a few anecdotes about women who quit their jobs to be stay-at-home-moms, and then 20 years later their husbands wanted a divorce, and the husbands claimed the wives shouldn't get anything in the divorce because the wives stayed home and "didn't do anything." Oh this makes me so mad. And there are men who claim that they get paid more, so their time is more valuable, so they shouldn't have to do unpaid tasks at home- the wife should do that- ugh, no. The book makes a big deal about how "all time is created equal." And how, if the husband is able to work full-time and focus on his job, that's because his wife is doing all the behind-the-scenes work that makes his lifestyle possible. Not cool when men have an attitude like "I'm the one who earns the money to make her life possible, so I shouldn't have to do anything at home." No, she is the one making his life possible.

(This book is mainly for straight married couples, but it notes that the system can also be helpful for any collection of people who live together, including same-sex couples. And there is at least 1 anecdote about a man and his husband who benefitted from using the "fair play" system. I like this- I think overall the problem this book is addressing is an "are the straights okay" sort of problem, but yes, the system can also help people who are not straight married couples.)

Here's the solution from the book "Fair Play": You have a set of cards, and every task is a card. For example, there is a card for kids' extracurricular activities. There is a card for making dinner on weekends. There is a card for buying birthday gifts for relatives. Etc. The book presents a set of 100 cards, which basically cover everything required to keep your family's life running smoothly. You should decide which cards are worth doing, and you can throw away any that aren't. For example, some couples decide that sending holiday cards is not worth the effort, so they get rid of that card. That's a good thing- don't spend your time on something if it's not worth doing. (Also, if you don't have kids, you can get rid of something like 30-40% of the cards.)

So you discuss with your partner and agree on which cards need to be done. And then you divide them up between the two of you. The important thing is, if you own a card, you are responsible for conception, planning, and execution (CPE) of that task. You are responsible for the entire thing, and your partner doesn't have to worry about it, or remind you, or anything. For example, if you have the "weekday dinners" card, that means you have to plan the dinners, you have to make sure you have all the ingredients (I think "grocery shopping" is a separate card, so you have to communicate with whoever has that card), and you have to cook the dinner.

Combining conception, planning, and execution is super important, because I think one of the common problems that couples have with dividing chores is they only see the "execution" part of the task. I remember reading a story on the internet once, where a woman's husband agreed to cook dinner on a certain day, and then dinner time rolled around and he said to his wife, "okay I'm going to cook now, what do you want me to cook?" And the wife was so upset, so overwhelmed she could barely even talk, because even though he was "going to cook", he still expected her to do all the planning and grocery shopping. Or rather, he had no awareness that planning meals and grocery shopping are big, stressful, time-consuming tasks. He just thinks that groceries magically appear in their home, without recognizing how much work she always did. He thinks that "cooking dinner" means you just roll up at 5 pm and cook dinner- but no, it's way more than that.

Also, the concept of CPE is important because it's ideal for the person who executes the task to be the one who did all the planning- that means they completely understand the task. The book calls it a "break up" when one person does conception/planning and the other person does execution, because there could be miscommunication between them, and the one who executes the task doesn't have the information they need to do it correctly. (An example in the book: The wife has the card for "taking the kids to their friends' birthday parties", so she makes sure the birthday gifts are bought, and the kids are ready to go, but then she isn't available at the time of the party so she asks her husband to drive the kids there. But her husband doesn't have the address, and when he texts her to ask for it, she doesn't check her phone, so they kids don't make it to the party. The book says you should solve this problem by "redealing" that card- if the wife isn't available to do the "execution" of that task, then the wife should not have that card at all. The husband should do the entire CPE, then. Yes, the book says you should frequently evaluate what's working and what's not, and "redeal" the cards as necessary.)

Also, if the person who executes the task is not the one who did the planning, it will feel like a Randomly Assigned Task (RAT). This is something that husbands often complain about- suddenly, out of the blue, the wife asks him to do something, but the husband doesn't understand the purpose, so he doesn't really treat it as a priority. The book makes a big deal about how no, you should NOT assign your partner to execute a task if you own that card. If you really aren't able to do the execution yourself, ask someone who is not your partner to do it. I understand the reasons for this, but I don't know if it's really possible to follow it all the time. And I think that many couples are able to communicate well enough that this is not an issue- even if one person did all the planning, both of them understand the task well enough that it's not a problem if the other person is the one who executes it.

I have to say, I really like the idea of quantifying everything in a system like this. Because, whether you represent them with "cards" or not, these are the tasks that are necessary to run a household, and someone is doing them, and it's probably the woman doing them "invisibly." I don't feel that I need to literally sit down with my husband and assign cards- I think we manage well enough- but the concepts in this book are helpful even if you don't literally implement it.

So, here's a question: Should our goal be to have each person have an equal number of cards? A 50/50 split? No. The book says that the goal is not to be equal, but fair. I agree with this, and I'm glad the book emphasized it. If you try to make everything "equal", that means you'll be keeping track of every little thing, and comparing with how much time your spouse spent doing housework, and that will just cause more conflict. Personally, I feel that it doesn't bother me if I'm doing more household tasks than my husband, as long as I have enough of my own free time. I don't care if it's "equal", as long as I'm able to have enough free time that I can enjoy my life.

(And, if you really want to know, the book says that most women feel it's "fair" if the husband takes 21 cards out of 100. Like, you shouldn't really make a big deal about the specific number of cards each person has, but generally, if the husband had at least 21 cards, the wife felt that the result was good. I'm not really sure how to feel about this- like... why are we accepting that it just won't be equal, that women do more work than men, and that's just the way it is? But realistically, women are socialized to be aware of all these tasks, and men just aren't, so... realistically, for most couples, it's just not going to be equal. I guess.)

Another thing is that some tasks are "daily grind" tasks, which means they always have to be done at a specific time. Like taking the kids to school. And other tasks can be done any time, like making sure your home has enough spare light bulbs. It's very important that both partners have some "daily grind" tasks, because these tasks restrict your freedom a lot. And actually, a lot of the "traditional" ways that men and women divide tasks have the women doing the "daily grind" tasks (like cooking) while men do the tasks that have more flexibility about when to do them (like yard work). It's important to be aware of this and make sure both people have some "daily grind" tasks.

And one more thing, which is very important in this book: unicorn space. The book says that everyone needs their "unicorn space", which means you have the time and resources to pursue your passions, which aren't related to your job or your role as a spouse/parent. Your identity should be more than just "I'm a wife and mom." And often, women feel "mom guilt" when they spend time on their own hobbies. They feel like it's "selfish" and they should spend that time with their kids instead. I thought it was interesting when Rodsky talked about asking fathers "if you were on a business trip, and you had to extend the trip 1 extra day, would you feel guilty?" and the men answered "well I would miss my wife and kids, but why would I feel guilty?" Whereas the moms that she asked felt bad just thinking about this hypothetical, because they feel they are "supposed" to always be with their kids, and should feel guilty about any time not spent with their kids.

But yeah, unicorn space. This is important. You should have some time which is your own, which you use to develop your skills and be an interesting person and share your passions with the world. I guess my blog is my unicorn space.

Anyway, that's my summary of the book "Fair Play." I enjoyed it, and I think a lot of the concepts in this book are very valuable, like the idea of being aware of all the invisible work that you or your partner is doing, and the importance of combining conception, planning, and execution rather than just seeing the "execution" part of a task. Personally I don't feel I need to literally make cards and divide them up between me and my husband. But all of those tasks still exist, and still need to get done, whether you literally put them on cards or not, and it's important to be aware of that.

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I heard about the book "Fair Play" from Sheila Wray Gregoire's blog- here is the link: EMOTIONAL LABOR: How the Fair Play System Helps Share Mental Load

Related:

What I Wish I'd Known About Breastfeeding 

Pregnancy and Depression