Blogaround

1. Michael Card - Chorus Of Faith - Here's a song from Michael Card, a Christian singer from the 80's. "He loves us with passion, without regrets, he cannot love more and will not love less."

2. Discarded toys are creating an e-waste disaster. Here’s how to stop it. (November 22) People are always giving my kid low-quality toys with pointless electronics in them. Turns out that these things shouldn't just be thrown out in the regular trash because they are "e-waste"- but wow I can't imagine, as a parent, actually having to do the task of figuring out how to throw them out "correctly" and doing it. That just sounds exhausting, and why should I have to do that, it's not my fault people keep giving my kid crappy toys. I would say the only actually workable solution is for the manufacturers to take the responsibility for how to recycle them.

3. A Mother’s Worst Nightmare (June 29, via) [content note: it's about the government taking babies away from their parents] "Federal law has put thousands of women on anti-addiction medications like Suboxone into an impossible bind: Give up your treatment or risk losing your child."

4. The Remarkable Biden Economy (November 27) "Biden has been an excellent president, particularly in his stewardship of the economy."

5. Take heart, it looks like China could send new pandas to the US (November 17, via)

6. ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis (November 22, via) "'It seems like it’s quite easy to create data sets that are at least superficially plausible. So, to an untrained eye, this certainly looks like a real data set,' says Jack Wilkinson, a biostatistician at the University of Manchester, UK."

7. I Came Out as Intersex in Front of the Texas Legislature (September 15, via) "Does that mean that, because of my genotypic XY chromosomes, I’ve been using the wrong bathroom my whole life? No. It means who cares what bathroom I use?"

The Great Sex Rescue: The 72-Hour Rule

An egg timer. Image source.

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

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We are now in the second half of chapter 7 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], pages 130-138. 

This section starts out by speaking out against the concept of "the 72-hour rule." Apparently, a lot of Christian leaders are teaching women that they need to make sure to have sex with their husbands once every 72 hours, because men need it. And this is presented like it's just a biological fact, like if a man doesn't have an orgasm every 72 hours, his sperm will build up and he'll explode or something (???). Here's a quote from the book "The Act of Marriage":

A normal and healthy man has a semen build-up every 48 to 72 hours that produces a pressure that needs to be released.

(I never heard about "the 72-hour rule" when I was in purity culture/ reading Christian marriage books, but it sounds EXACTLY like the kind of thing that you would hear from that ideology. Yep, totally checks out.)

The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" point out that this is ridiculous. Every person is different, and you should TALK TO EACH OTHER about how often you want to have sex, rather than initiate sex every 72 hours just because your husband is a man.

Then there are some anecdotes about women who followed this teaching:

When Janet married Chris, she went into her honeymoon confident that she knew how to keep him happy. Every three days, on the dot, she'd get naked and get busy because that's how she was supposed to satisfy her unquenchable man. But after a few months, she realized she was the only one initiating and started to feel miffed. "What, am I not attractive enough or something?" So she confronted Chris and asked, "Why don't you ever initiate?" Perplexed, he said, "Well, I've just been trying to keep up with you."

As they discussed it, they each realized they had incorrectly assumed the other had the higher libido. In fact, both were quite happy with sex once or twice a week (and for them, less-frequent sex actually led to better quality because it allowed desire to build). Chris originally thought this was funny until he realized that part of his wife's motivation to initiate was out of a fear that if she didn't, he would be vulnerable to sexual sin. He assured his wife that he was fine, and they could just go with what felt right.

Charlotte recounted an almost identical story. After initiating every seventy-two hours for almost twenty years, her husband was horrified to learn that the reason for this frequency was so that Charlotte could help keep him from sin.

This is so real. The wife working so hard to follow the marriage rules that the church taught her, and the husband having no idea- because this "72-hour rule" is something the church is teaching women, not men. The man often has NO IDEA that his wife has been taught that he'll cheat on her if she's not having sex with him enough- and when men find this out, they are horrified. Horrified at how the wife has had to live with that fear for so long, and insulted by how low of a view of men is being promoted by the church. 

Men are better than that. Men are fully capable of keeping their marriage vows, not cheating on their wives, communicating like an adult if they feel dissatisfied with something about the relationship, etc. But most Christian marriage resources will tell you the exact opposite. Yes, Christian marriage resources explicitly teach that a husband will likely cheat if his wife isn't having sex with him enough- and usually they throw in a caveat like "we're not blaming the wife, it's his own fault for choosing to cheat, but also, you have to know all men are like this, it's not realistic to expect men to be better than that, so actually it kinda is the wife's fault."

Men are better than that. Yes, some men are trash- if you meet a man who is trash, you need to NOT MARRY HIM. Don't marry a man who's trash just because the church told you that it's not possible to find a non-trash man. They exist!

Oh, and another gross thing I want to say about this 72-hour rule: The same Christian marriage resources that say wives need to have sex with their husbands or else the husbands will cheat, also say that men aren't really capable of understanding their own emotions and communicating about them. Supposedly, women do that emotional stuff, and men don't. And therefore, if a husband reassures his wife that he's not going to cheat, and he doesn't want her to have sex she doesn't want, etc, it's quite possible that she won't believe him. Because, even though he says that's how he feels, she's heard lots of good Christian role models telling her that a man can't possibly feel that way, and also that men can't be relied on to accurately say how they actually feel. (It's far more likely that she'll conclude she's not attractive enough, to explain why her husband isn't constantly trying to have sex with her every time she gets out of the shower or whatever, like men are "supposed to.") So. Yeah. I believe communication is the most important factor for having a healthy relationship- and Christian marriage books are literally undermining that. "If your husband says he's not a sex-crazed monster, don't believe him. We know what men are like, he doesn't." [my paraphrase]

So I'm glad to see "The Great Sex Rescue" pointing out how wrong and harmful this teaching is. (And on their website, Bare Marriage, I've even seen women sharing stories about how immediately after giving birth, they had sex with their husbands, because "men need it every 72 hours" omg, that's horrible. For those of you who aren't familiar with childbirth, let me tell you: the vagina needs time to recover, usually you have stitches because it tears down there when you push the baby out [or if it's a C-section, you're recovering from major surgery], everything hurts, you can barely even stand up or walk, right after you give birth you have basically the biggest menstrual period of your life- doctors recommend waiting 6 weeks to have sex.)

The writers of "The Great Sex Rescue" tried to find a source for this idea that "men will explode if they don't have an orgasm every 72 hours." They couldn't find any academic research that says this. They eventually concluded that James Dobson just made it up and wrote it in a book in 1977, and since then, all the other Christian marriage teachers have just been repeating it. Yeah, not cool.

Moving along, the next section of the book says that normally, in a healthy marriage, libido differences aren't that big a deal. They kind of just work themselves out naturally. Both spouses prioritize caring for each other- wanting to give each other pleasure during sex, and also not wanting to push their spouse into sex they don't want. There's kind of a give-and-take. And so even if their sex drives aren't exactly the same, it's not really a problem. 

The book says that when mismatched sex drives are a problem, it's often because of some deeper issues going on- for example, one spouse doesn't care at all about if the other spouse is enjoying sex. Or, one spouse is stressed out about life in general, and so they don't want to have sex that much. If you're not getting your basic physical/emotional needs met, it will decrease your sex drive because sex is no longer that high of a priority if other needs aren't being met.

As an asexual, I can't really tell you if this part if accurate or not. I've heard people saying things like this, about how sex drive can increase or decrease because of your feelings about your partner/ your life, but as an asexual, I don't understand it. People seem to talk about sex drive like each person has some natural level of it, which is the correct level for them, and if it decreases, then that's bad. But, why is that bad?

I'm in some social media groups for women partnered with men, and I've even seen women in these groups saying things like, "When I was with my ex, my sex drive was really low and I didn't enjoy sex- I actually started to think I was asexual. But now I am with my current partner, and he's great, he cares about if sex feels good for me, so it turns out I have a high sex drive and I really do like sex." I don't know what to make of this. When they thought they were asexual, what did that mean to them? It seems like they're portraying it as a mistake, or a bad thing... Personally, I hope that people benefit from being in the ace community, for any amount of time, even if it turns out they were "wrong" and they weren't really ace. It's totally fine with me if you think you're ace and then later decide you're not- it's good that you're getting closer to understanding yourself, and I believe many people can benefit from the ideas that are discussed in ace spaces, regardless of whether they're ace. But... I don't know, it seems like instead, the women who post these things are saying that it wasn't good when they thought they were asexual, because it meant they weren't able to recognize that they really did want sex but their partner was just really bad at it and they deserved better.

So I don't really get it. And I worry that this sounds too close to the concept of "you're not really asexual, you just haven't ever had good sex, you just haven't met the right person" which is one of the common things that people say when they don't believe asexuality is a real thing. But, I can't judge other people's experiences- I can't swoop in and say "well you're understanding asexuality wrong if you think it means you should *stop* exploring yourself and learning what you want."

Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. And, in general, I don't really understand anything people say about sex drive.

So, to sum up the second half of chapter 7 of "The Great Sex Rescue": The "72-hour rule" is absurd; instead, you should just TALK TO EACH OTHER to figure out how often each of you want to have sex. And, the book says, in a healthy marriage, libido differences aren't really a big deal- "when you work on marital satisfaction, reducing stress, and making sex feel pleasurable and passionate, libido differences usually take care of themselves." Personally I can't say if that's true or not, I'm asexual and the entire concept of libido doesn't make sense to me, but okay.

They end with, "But usually doesn't mean always. And we turn there next." So stay tuned for the next chapter, about why it's not okay to have a sexless marriage, because wow it's a doozy.

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

Related:

Reasons 

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

Blogaround

1. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and Self Love vs. Narcissism (November 8) "The Emperor's New Groove" is such a good movie!

2. Some good news on climate change (November 18) "The best message, practically speaking, would combine sounding a very loud and continuous alarm with various facts about how real progress is being made on the technological side toward ameliorating the trajectory of climate change, on both a long term and shorter term basis."

3. At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars (November 10) [content note: injury and death] "'Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,' said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was among a group of employees fired after raising workplace complaints. 'The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.'"

4. Has the ‘Double Eleven’ Shopping Festival Lost its Luster? (November 21) In China, "double eleven" (双11, November 11) is a big online shopping day, kinda the same idea as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But this article says in recent years, the excitement for double eleven deals has kind of worn off.

Also from Sixth Tone: A Food Courier’s Pursuit of Equal Treatment (November 25) "He shares that a large state-owned enterprise that he often visits doesn’t allow couriers inside, nor will it put a table at the entrance for riders to leave takeout deliveries, meaning they need to wait downstairs and hold the food until the customer comes to collect it." 

Yeah, I order food to get delivered almost every day- it's very convenient in China, and I always see tons of delivery drivers on their electric scooters, rushing around to deliver food. From what I've heard, they're under a lot of pressure to deliver the food as fast as possible, or else they get fined- and this means they often rush through red lights and do other unsafe things, to shave off a few seconds. Sounds like a really hard job. At the office building where I work, there's a locker outside the back door of the building, and the delivery drivers put the deliveries in the locker and then you get a notification on the app- this seems to work out well for the drivers because they just stick it in the locker, give you a phone call to let you know, and then they can leave, they don't have to wait for you to come down in the elevator and pick it up.

I've had situations where the driver was at the wrong building, and calling me to ask me how to get to my address, and he asked me if he can mark in the app that the order has been delivered- ie, he marks it as complete so the app doesn't get him in trouble for being late, and then he finds his way to the right address and gives me the food. 

5. Plain white Cru not white enough for Florida evangelicals (November 22) "As a result, those Republican Christians no longer respond to Cru the way that any normal person would. A normal person would be, like, 'Oh, you mean that campus ministry group that’s so fundie they make Young Life seem cool by comparison?'"

6. I Don’t Think That Parable Means What You Think It Means (November 22) "As I encountered these parables growing up in my faith tradition, I was taught that the most powerful person in a given parable—the vineyard owner, the rich man, the king—is supposed to be God. Bolz-Weber addresses this directly: 'Why in the world do we always assume that the ruler, the slave owner, the property owner, the tyrant in the story always represents God?'"

7. In wake of state bans, abortions overall rise, reproductive care falls (October 25) "Where abortion is banned around the world, there is usually more death, not less, on account of maternal mortality rates (MMRs)."

8. Will Anti-abortion Laws Drive Women to Colleges in Blue States? (November 4?) Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because when I was in college/ in high school deciding where to go to college, never in a million years would it have occurred to me "what if I need an abortion? I should go to college in a state with abortion access." I was "pro-life" back then, because everyone I knew seemed to be "pro-life"- I had never even heard any pro-choice arguments, and I hadn't the faintest idea about what kind of reasoning could possibly lead people to be pro-choice. The idea of me having sex was unimaginable to me, the idea of me ever having sex before marriage was unimaginable to me, the idea of being one of those "bad" women who wants to have an abortion was unimaginable to me. I very much did not see it as a "women's issue" that affects everyone with a uterus- I saw it as only something that bad women would ever try to access, and of course we should make laws to stop those bad women, right?

So, really mind-blowing to me to think about high school girls putting serious thought into how these laws affect them. (I mean, also apparently a lot of high school kids are having sex, and I find that hard to fathom too...)

Also from Skepchick: The Hamas Hostage with “Stockholm Syndrome” (November 11?) "Instead of it being an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s just a story the media likes to tell when explaining victim behavior that people might not immediately understand."

9. Ah, in my post about young-earth creationism, I can't believe I forgot to include a link to Joel Duff's blog, Naturalis Historia. (I have now edited the post to include a link.) If you want to know all the specific details about how young-earth creationism can't account for the scientific evidence we find in the fossil record, etc, you definitely want to read his blog.

10. [trigger warning for transmisia] I don't recommend reading this one, but I want to at least mention it here so nobody ever forgets what kind of hateful trash The Gospel Coalition is publishing about trans people. On November 22, they published a post called "I Love My Transgender Child. I Love Jesus More." (archive link) 

I'm not gonna respond to this, I will just say this: God is nonbinary. And Jesus said, "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me"- if you're mean to trans people, you're being mean to Jesus. (Observant readers may notice that this is THE OPPOSITE of what that article headline says- like you have to choose between loving Jesus and loving your trans child. WTF.) And if you cause a trans child to hate themself, well, Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

And just as God is the Creator, people are made in God's image, and people reflect God's image by creating too. Trans people create their own identity, their own gender expression, and that's an amazing and godly thing.

And if you worship a god who requires you to be cruel to trans people, that's on you. You could worship a different god. You could worship no gods at all. What does it say about you, that you choose to worship that kind of god?

11. China trials visa-free travel for six countries (November 24) The six countries are: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia- travelers from these countries will be allowed to stay in China for up to 15 days, without a visa. Interesting! I wonder why they're doing this- I'm guessing it's to encourage tourism, to have good relationships with those countries, and because they aren't worried that people from those countries will want to illegally overstay. Anyway, cool, good news if you're from one of those countries.

I used to be a young-earth creationist

Artwork showing dinosaurs entering Noah's ark (ie, young-earth creationist fanon). Image source.

Gather round, it's story time. Here's the story of me and creationism.

So, I grew up evangelical, and one thing that was definitely made clear to me is that Christians DO NOT "believe in evolution." Apparently, evolution is an evil ideology that gives people an excuse to not believe in God, even though it should be SO OBVIOUS to everyone that God created the world. 

Yeah, definitely knew I had to believe that, because that's what Christians believe. But they were very sparse on the details. I never heard anyone actually put forth a comprehensive answer to "if we don't believe in evolution, what do we believe instead?" besides just a vague generalization like "we believe the bible" or "God created the world."

And there were many snippy comments that I heard at church, about why evolution is so obviously wrong: There are no transitional fossils. How could complex structures like eyes have evolved by chance? Imagine if you found a watch in the middle of a field, would you think someone designed that watch, or the pieces just fell together randomly? If a tornado goes through a junkyard, would it create a fully-functional airplane? LOLOLOL, evolutionists think their grandfather was a monkey. And, hey, the second law of thermodynamics, when things are left on their own, they naturally get more chaotic, not more ordered and complex. And there's no way for the life to arise from non-life- like come on, what are the odds that the exact right amino acids would just *happen* to come together in the primordial soup, like even if you waited billions of years, it would never happen. (Please note that "evolutionists" actually do have detailed answers to all of these objections. I had no idea- people at church would make these statements as if they were ironclad, like scientists were trying to cover them up and distract from the fact that evolution has no answers. Uh, no.)

And my favorite: sometimes I heard adults at church saying things like "when I was in college I had to take a class on evolution, and it just made no sense" and I can't believe I accepted that as an actual argument that evolution isn't true- really it's more of an argument that this person is not a very good student.

So anyway, I definitely didn't believe in evolution, but I wasn't given any alternative "scientific" theory to believe instead. And I was a huge nerd who read tons of books about dinosaurs, and nobody ever told me to be skeptical about the science in those books. I remember one time, I asked, "if dinosaurs went extinct millions of years before humans existed, but humans were created on the sixth day, how does that work?" The math doesn't add up, right? And someone answered "I don't know, that's a good question" (which is what you should say if you don't know, so good job to them). It was just one of those things I wondered about- because, obviously, dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and never lived at the same time as humans, but also, obviously, humans were created by God on day 6. I knew both of those things were true, and I was curious about how that would work, but never came upon anyone actually attempting an answer. (I also remember vaguely wondering if you could add up the genealogies in the bible to find out how old the earth is- turns out Bishop Ussher literally did this in 1650 and that's basically where the young-earth creationist ideology gets its numbers.)

(In some Christian schools, students are actually taught that the earth is 6000 years old, and dinosaurs lived with people, and the Loch Ness monster is evidence of this- that's very different from my experience. I never heard anything that clued me in to the fact that there's a whole subculture of Christians who believe the earth is 6000 years old.)

So yeah, never heard any attempt at an explanation for this. Until one day, when I was reading an apologetics book. "Apologetics" means offering arguments and evidence about why Christianity is true. I'm a huge nerd, so of course I was really into apologetics because of the emphasis on evidence and logic- but actually, I know now that apologetics isn't about following the evidence, finding the truth wherever it is. No, apologetics is about "I know I'm required to believe this, but it doesn't make sense, please help me convince myself it does make sense." There's no awareness that if something doesn't make sense, perhaps that's a sign that it's not true, and you're better off not believing it. 

Anyway, I was reading an apologetics book, when I was in middle school I guess, and this book had a bunch of questions and answers related to Christianity. One of them went like this:

Question: Should Christians believe that the "days" of Genesis 1 were long periods of time instead of literal days?

Answer: This belief, called "day-age theory" says that the 7 days described in Genesis 1 were not literal 24-hour periods, but that each "day" was actually millions of years long. But, no, we see no reason that Christians should believe this.

And I was like "!!!!! Wow! This actually makes sense! Why on earth does this book 'see no reason' to believe in day-age theory, umm, have they ever heard of modern science?" and I immediately became a believer in day-age theory. (Day-age theory falls under the category of old-earth creationism.)

So, that was cool, it felt like a good answer to the question of where the millions of years fit into Genesis 1. I didn't dig deeper for more details on it at that time though.

Okay, fast forward to high school biology class, in public school. I knew that we would be learning about evolution at some point that year. It would be my first time being confronted with evolution in a school setting, and I wanted to be ready to "stand up for my beliefs." I had read many fiction stories in Christian magazines about a brave student who stands up in biology class and says "I don't believe in evolution" and all the other students mock them, etc- I really believed that was a real thing that would totally happen to me, rather than some culture-war propaganda. Anyway, I knew that at some point in that class, the topic of evolution would be covered, so I decided to do a ton of research on my own so that I could argue against evolution in class or whatever. Also I prayed about it A LOT, this was a really big deal for me, fighting for my faith or something. (Yeah I feel very cringe, writing about it now.)

So that's when I really started looking for answers. And looking for even more answers. And more answers. I wanted to fully understand all of it. That's when I first encountered young-earth creationism.

See, before this, I had never heard about young-earth creationism at all. I had heard of the question "is the earth old or young" but I assumed they meant like, is the earth 6 billion years old or 1 billion- I had absolutely no idea that anyone was claiming the entire field of geology was just wrong about everything. And I had heard Christians talk about radioactive dating like "well how do they REALLY know that's how old it is" but again, I assumed they meant it like, maybe there's a slight math error and the number is off by a few percent- I had no idea that people thought every single rock on the earth was less than 6000 years old.

I think some Christians feel good about not being "extreme." Like, they told me evolution was wrong, but they didn't teach me young-earth creationism- see, they're being reasonable and not "extreme." But... no. When you make indirect negative comments about evolution, but you never provide any alternative explanation, that leaves science-nerd kids like me vulnerable to believing in "extreme" things like young-earth creationism. Because the young-earth creationists were actually presenting a whole entire ideology which answered all of those questions. That was much more useful to me than the occasional "well where are the transitional fossils???" comments I heard at church.

(I feel the same way about purity culture- I was definitely taught that it's a sin to have sex before marriage, but the rest of it was very vague, a lot of judging teenagers for this or that behavior which someone thought was "slutty" but no clear guidelines were ever given. Well then when someone came along and actually presented a whole complete ideology, with answers and guarantees and clear guidelines, of course I was all over it.)

So what I'm saying is, nobody personally taught me about young-earth creationism. I just learned it from books and the internet. But I believed it because many many many Christians had personally taught me that of course Christians don't believe in evolution, no way no how, definitely NOT- but never gave any details beyond that.

I started reading Answers in Genesis's website. (Answers in Genesis is one of the biggest young-earth creationist organizations. You know the "Ark Encounter," the full-size replica of Noah's ark in Kentucky? That's them.) And at first, it sounded completely ridiculous to me. They believe the earth is only 6000 years old! Like, what on earth??? I had taken earth science class in school, learned all about how rocks are formed, the different layers that different fossils are found in, how they're divided up into different prehistoric eras, radioactive dating, plate tectonics, all of that. I did very well in earth science class and learned a lot, and now here was Answers in Genesis saying all of that was wrong???

I had NO IDEA that the "controversy" about evolution had any connection to the age of the earth. Like, yeah of course I knew that as a Christian I couldn't "believe in evolution" but I had NO IDEA there was any "controversy" about the age of the earth. All my life, I had been happily reading books about how this or that species of dinosaur lived however many millions of years ago, and I had taken earth science class and learned all about geology, and nobody ever said anything that clued me in to "maybe all of this is wrong?" The most anyone ever said was "well how do they really know it was millions of years ago" which meant nothing to me. I was not concerned with *exactly* how many millions of years ago something happened, and surely if someone was so concerned about the exact number, they could go find an academic paper that explained it. Right?

So. Little high-school-Perfect-Number, reading the Answers in Genesis website. At first I didn't believe any of it, because the concept of the earth being only 6000 years old is just so ridiculous. But let me tell you the basic overview of their Genesis fan theory: So, God made the world, 6000 years ago, over the course of 6 literal 24-hour days. Well, then where did all the fossils come from? The answer is, Noah's flood. Yes, the bible says God sent a flood that covered the entire earth, but Noah and his family and 2 of every animal survived in the ark. Well, the flood is what created all the layers of sedimentary rock, and the fossils in it are the animals/plants that died in the flood. The reason that less-complex organisms are found in "older" layers of rock are that they were less able to escape from the flood, so they were buried first. And then as you move up the layers of rock- which were all formed in the span of 1 year or so, not hundreds of millions of years- you get more and more complex animals, because these animals were more intelligent and capable of escaping from the rising flood waters, until eventually they were buried too.

That's the overall structure of young-earth creationist ideology. Creation and the flood. See, before I started reading about young-earth creationism, I hadn't really thought scientifically about the flood at all. (Of course I believed it was a literal flood that covered the whole earth, and I believed it really happened like the bible said, but I didn't know there were, um, a lot of issues with that, from a science perspective.) I knew people were debating the science of Genesis 1, the creation story, but the flood was not anywhere on my radar at all. 

It actually fits together neatly. (If you, um, don't really think about any of the details...) Like, if the earth is only 6000 years old, then how do we have millions of years' worth of rock layers of fossils? If Genesis didn't have a flood story, it would be much more difficult for young-earth creationists to answer that question. The flood creates all the fossils and sedimentary rock that the 6-day creation story isn't able to create.

So that's the overall story, but obviously, high-school-Perfect-Number-who-had-just-taken-earth-science-class saw a lot of problems with it.

If you had asked me back then, before I really started examining young-earth creationism, I guess I would have said that everything I learned in earth science class was right, and new species of animals arose because God popped them into existence at various points in time over hundreds of millions of years- NOT through evolution. Like, look at the Cambrian explosion, for example. A whole bunch of new species just suddenly appeared at the same time- that sounds like God created them, not like they gradually evolved.

I guess I still believed in some form of day-age theory, but I didn't know any details about that either. And Answers in Genesis had many articles about why day-age theory is wrong. You see, Answers in Genesis doesn't just argue against evolution; they also argue against other creationists who believe in a different type of creationism. All those so-called Christians who don't agree with Answers in Genesis are bad and wrong and don't really believe in the bible, they've been led astray by the world, etc.

That's AiG's whole schtick. Bearing false witness against your neighbor (ie, claiming that Christians who disagree are motivated by sin) and taking the Lord's name in vain (ie, "God agrees with me").

(Also, there are some things about day-age theory that don't quite fit- like, Genesis says that God made fish and birds on day 5, and land animals and people on day 6. But, the fossil record tells us that fish appeared first, then amphibians and reptiles, then birds and mammals. The order doesn't match up. Young-earth creationism has similar problems though- the bible says the sun was created on day 4, so... how could days 1-3 be days? How can you measure a "day" without the sun?)

Anyway, as I read more and more of Answers in Genesis's articles, I really struggled with it, because young-earth creationism just sounds so laughably ridiculous. But finally it came down to this: I knew that as a Christian, I have to believe the bible is true. And if you open the bible to Genesis 1, it's right there in black-and-white: On the first day God made light. On the second day, on the third day, etc. That's what it says, and I believe the bible, right? Why would the author of Genesis write "day" if they actually meant "millions of years"? And Answers in Genesis had cobbled together enough sciency-sounding words that I felt it could be scientifically supported. So, I became a young-earth creationist.

If you're wondering what ended up happening in biology class, well, uh, yes, I did "stand up for my beliefs." But now I feel really embarrassed about that so I won't go into details.

Anyway, after the school year finished, biology class was over, and I didn't really think about creationism and evolution much any more. Then in college, occasionally my friends would happen across young-earth creationist ideas, and they would all laugh- "can you believe that there are people who really think the earth is 6000 years old???" I didn't tell anyone I was a young-earth creationist. I knew they would think it was so obviously absurd, I wouldn't be able to find any kind of common ground to begin to communicate to them about it.

I started to wonder, why are people treating creationism like it's so ridiculous that it's not even worth a response? And then on the creationist side, this is spun like "they're not even responding to our arguments, because we're bringing up such good points and they don't have answers and they're trying to cover it up." I wondered, why does it seem like everyone is talking past each other? I even watched a video of a debate between creationists and evolutionists, and the creationists were saying all kinds of things about evidence that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time or whatever, and the evolutionists answered "these are half-truths" and didn't really engage with the actual points the creationists were making.

I later found out that there's a debate technique (the "Gish gallop" named after creationist Duane Gish) where you spout a whole bunch of nonsense, so much nonsense that your opponent can't possibly keep up with it and respond to every single point, and then you claim that you win because they aren't able to respond to all of your amazing points. Fortunately, though, I have discovered this website: An Index to Creationist Claims (from Talk Origins), which really does give detailed responses to a massive list of common creationist talking points. Yes, these answers exist- it's not like scientists are totally stumped and just hoping no one notices. The answers exist, it's just that it's not practical to take the time to go through all of them in a live debate setting.

Another thing that happened in college, is that a Christian friend gave me a bunch of video files which contained hours' worth of Kent Hovind's videos. Kent Hovind is a young-earth creationist who basically presents the same ideology as Answers in Genesis, except he's a little more loony. I later found out he spent several years in jail for tax evasion. Anyway, I watched his videos, and the creationist ideology basically made sense to me, but what I really wanted to know was, why do scientists all act like this is so ridiculous it's not even worth a response? Why aren't the two sides actually engaging with each other? I kinda felt embarrassed, like I didn't want anyone to know I believed in young-earth creationism, but I couldn't figure out why everyone else was so sure it was obviously wrong- were they seeing something that I wasn't?

But anyway, I didn't really think about creationism much for several years. It's just not relevant to my day-to-day life. 

Then I started reading ex-evangelical blogs. I started questioning a lot of things that I thought Christians "have to" believe. Creationism wasn't one of them, though, because I just never thought about it- I was more concerned about the harmful effects of purity culture, anti-LGBTQ ideology, etc. I read Rachel Held Evans's blog- and that's how I first found out that it's NOT true that Christians have to believe all the things that I was told that "Christians have to believe." I was so confused when I first started reading her blog- I was like, "is she a Christian, or not?" Because she knew the bible, and she knew could speak evangelical fluently, and she was very motivated by very Christian concepts like, you know, the love of Jesus- but she asked questions that Christians weren't allowed to ask. She believed things- about the bible, about equality for women, about LGBTQ acceptance- that Christians weren't allowed to believe.

Rachel Held Evans taught me that it's *not* true that "the bible is clear." It's not true that being a Christian means I have to accept all these culture-war ideologies or else I'm a "fake Christian."

I started reading the Slacktivist (Fred Clark)'s blog. And at first, I disagreed with a lot of things he said, because they went against the beliefs that Christians "have to" believe. But, the thing is, I read more and more and more, and... he is a Christian. He really is a Christian. Even though he says so many things that Christians aren't supposed to say, even though he says things that would cause good evangelicals to immediately label him as a "fake Christian" and ignore everything he says... no, he really is a Christian. He knows the bible backwards and forwards. He preaches, on his blog- but he preaches about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God, about hope and resurrection, about the kingdom of God, about the Ethiopian eunuch and Peter's vision that meant "God has shown me I should not call any person unclean" and how this means radical acceptance of queer people. I saw all this, and gradually I concluded that Fred is a Christian, despite every red flag that my evangelical perspective saw.

And, I eventually read some of his posts about evolution. He accepts evolution.

Why I am not a theistic evolutionist and why I do not ‘believe in’ evolution (part 1)
Why I am not a ‘theistic evolutionist,’ etc., part 2 
Young-Earth Creationism is Cruel
'We too fall with it' 
The Long March of the Koalas 
Young-Earth creationism and the light of distant stars 
Young-Earth creationism and the problem of telescopes (part 2)
Cain’s wife and Tubal-cain’s sonic screwdriver
Have a yabba-dabba-doo time
Creationism requires a global conspiracy of lying scientists and/or a lying God
Omphalos theory fan fiction 
A grove of aspen trees that proves Ken Ham is full of it

That's how I found out that it's possible to be a Christian and accept evolution. And, actually, I was relieved. I was very happy I didn't have to believe in creationism any more. I just kinda dropped it, immediately ready to trust that scientists know what they're doing. Excited to learn, instead of fighting against it like I had always done.

It feels really good to be able to just learn from experts. When I happen upon some very knowledgeable person explaining something I don't know much about, to just take it in and marvel at how amazing reality is. Instead of constantly making sure I'm ready to argue about why they're wrong. Feels good, to just accept evolution and not have to have my guard up in every natural history museum.

(And young-earth creationism is a really cool fan theory. Seriously, it's impressive how much work they've put into this fan theory. But it's not true in any sense.)

You may have noticed that if you meet someone who believes in something very absurd, or some ridiculous conspiracy theory, and you tell them scientific facts that disprove their beliefs, it doesn't seem to affect them. That's because their reason for believing in it is something else- the scientific facts aren't the real reason, though they may spend all their time talking about their so-called scientific evidence for their theory. If you want to change their mind, you have to figure out what their actual motivation is, and argue against that. In my case, I believed in creationism because I thought that a "real Christian" can't believe in evolution, and being a Christian is very important to me. And even if someone told me "there are Christians who accept evolution", I had been warned many times that those people are bad fake Christians, so that wouldn't have convinced me at all. I had to really spend time reading what the Slacktivist had to say, before I became convinced that his Christianity was real.

But once I found out that it *is* possible to be a Christian and "believe in" evolution, that was great news to me. I didn't want to believe in something that everyone thought was ridiculous. I was happy to ditch it at that point. It was easy. And I was glad that it meant there was so much more science out there that I could now learn about, which I hadn't been allowed to learn about before.

So, what do I believe now, about Christianity and evolution and creationism? Well, I don't think Genesis 1 is a true story. It's just simply not a true story. It's not literally true, and it's not metaphorically true (whatever that even means). It's great literature, which is important to me for cultural reasons. But if you want to know where the world really came from, or where people really came from, Genesis has nothing to do with that. You should ask scientists.

The challenge that evolution brings to Christianity isn't about specific words in specific bible passages, or calculating how much water there was in Noah's flood, or trying to make the story in the bible line up with the fossil record, or anything like that. No, the actual issue is this: Evolution means that the reason we have such a beautiful world, full of complex animals, and humans with the ability to achieve amazing things- the reason is that natural selection ruthlessly eliminated any creature that wasn't "fit" enough to survive. Animal species become stronger and more able to survive, because the weak ones died. Animals take advantage of other animals which are weaker- and that's just the way it is, there is no justice, and in fact this ruthless taking-advantage-of-each-other is the driving force that has made us human.

That's just... really bleak.

I want to believe we live in a universe where love triumphs over power. Where "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Where "blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Where "he has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble, he has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty." Where "the first will be last, and the last will be first." Where Jesus died on a cross like a criminal, and then he rose and conquered death, and that changed the world.

But instead, we know that this is what happened, for hundreds of millions of years: Sometimes, by chance, an organism is born with a mutation which makes it better able to survive and reproduce, compared to other members of its species. If the mutation really does have a clear benefit, then eventually, the ones that don't have the mutation will die out- this is how the species advances, this is progress. It's about organisms competing with each other- members of the same species compete for food and other resources, predators and prey have an arms race as predators develop new ways to exploit any weaknesses the prey may have, and the prey animals develop ways to escape the predators. Any new development that makes an organism better able to take from others and ensure its own survival and reproductive success, will by definition become the dominant trait in that population. Power wins, not because it's right, not because that's how it "should be"- but because it can. Because if you're powerful enough to take advantage of others, then you do, and that's how it goes. Nobody cares about the weaker organisms who were exploited- that's the price of progress. They necessarily die out, because they are weaker, and that's how humans came to be.

Natural selection is bleak. But that's how it works- the logic of it is obvious, it's obvious that natural selection is real. (And even when I was a creationist, I knew natural selection was real and could cause changes in gene frequencies in animal populations- the creationist ideologies I followed never argued against that.) But evolution says more than that- not just that natural selection happens, but that it is the reason that the world as we know it exists. This is the reason that the people we love exist. This is the reason that humans have brains. This is the reason that humans have hands. And all of the abilities we have to do great things- these are the accumulation of small changes, and every time, those who weren't "fit" enough to keep up just died, and the universe didn't care.

(And I know I'm sort of oversimplifying it here. It's *not* true that animals will always take every opportunity to take advantage of each other. It is often evolutionarily advantageous to cooperate- and people do naturally feel that it's good to help each other. But here's the thing: animals cooperate not because "it's the right thing to do" but because, if you look at it as a long-term strategy, that's what's most advantageous. It's still about power, and what works and what doesn't work, rather than right and wrong.)

This is how it works, this is the reality we live in. But also, we long for a world that is better than that. As humans, we all have a sense of right and wrong. All throughout human history, there have been activist movements fighting for justice- people who stand up and say it's WRONG that the strong take advantage of the weak. All throughout human history, there have been religions that say you will be rewarded in the afterlife if you used your time on earth to help others, and you will be punished if you just selfishly amassed power for yourself.

We want a better world than this, and yet we are only able to exist because of the ruthlessness of natural selection, because our ancestors (all the way back to the first single-celled organism) were power-hungry and did whatever it took to get ahead.

And I know that the science of evolution is just describing what happens, and can't say anything about morality or what "should" happen. Creationists are always misrepresenting evolution, saying "this teaches people that they *should* take advantage of each other, and that life is meaningless, and that's why we have crime/murder/genocide." I'm not saying that. I have read articles from scientists talking about evolution, who say "that doesn't mean we have to be like that- we can be better, we can choose to protect the weak." What I'm saying is, it feels so pathetic to decide "we can be better," now, after hundreds of millions of years of benefitting from the strong preying on the weak.

If there's no god, then sure, there's nothing weird about humanity suddenly deciding to go in a different direction, and prioritizing equality and compassion for each other. Let's do it! But if there is a god... why would God have let things go on like that, for hundreds of millions of years, if that wasn't how They want people to live? Were They trying to create a world where love wins, or where power wins?

These are questions I don't have answers to- and this is the real reason that evolution is a challenge to my religion. And it doesn't bother me to be posting these things on my blog without answers- these things are worth talking about, and I'm not worried that this is not a good strategy to convince people to become Christians or whatever, because I don't care if y'all are Christians or not. I'm *not* trying to convince anyone. I just want to ask the questions that need to be asked.

So that's the story of me and creationism. I was always taught that Christians don't "believe in" evolution, but never heard any actual explanation of how the 6-day creation in Genesis 1 fits with the earth being billions of years old. Until I was getting ready for high school biology class, and decided to actually go looking for answers, so I could "stand up for my faith," and I discovered that young-earth creationists have a whole comprehensive ideology which uses sciency words and overconfidently answers all of my questions. But eventually, I found out it *is* possible to be a Christian and accept evolution, so I was like "oh, okay" and dropped my creationist beliefs without much fuss. And actually, that was great news for me, because it meant I was free to actually learn about evolution, rather than fighting it. That's great, because I love science. But still, here's the challenge that remains: Why would God let the world be this way, governed by the heartless process of natural selection? That's the real conflict between evolution and my religion, and I don't have an answer for it.

---

Related:

As a former creationist, I'm super excited to re-learn evolution 

Animals Screw Over Other Animals and Get Away With It

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

An Ex-Evangelical Mom Review of "When God Made The World"

She was the first (Thank you, Rachel) 

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

Also, I highly recommend Joel Duff's blog, Naturalis Historia. He takes young-earth creationism extremely seriously, and truly investigates what the implications would be if it were true- and then shows SO MANY examples of scientific evidence that can't really be explained by young-earth creationist ideology.

Blogaround

1. Tumblr is downscaling after failing to ‘turn around’ the site (November 10, via) On Pillowfort I've been seeing a LOT of new members who have migrated from Tumblr. Looks like Tumblr might shut down, but we don't really know yet.

2. Israel-Hamas War: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (November 13) Wow, John Oliver does a very good job with this.

3. Inside the Mind of one Evangelical Republican Voter (November 13) "She does not believe that she can or should try to change the world or to fix broken systems—anything larger than what she can personally control is God’s domain. She wouldn’t use this analogy, but she acts more or less a first-person video-game character for whom all of life is a series of tests created by the Game Designer for her to personally pass or fail."

4. One in three (November 10) "Generations of relentless teaching have made it clear that any expression of this belief is not acceptable in those communities and that support for criminalizing abortion is mandatory dogma for all white evangelicals and all American Catholics. And yet none of that aggressive, constant, emphatic propaganda has altered those consistent poll results."

5. Stereotypes & media about Black masculinity made it harder to come out as asexual (October 27, via) "In another instance, I was told by one person that I would probably be really good in bed, because I’m Black. It didn’t matter whether or not I even wanted to have sex. In their minds, I was only a sexual object due to my Blackness."

6. Minnesotans detest our state flag (November 9) "The state is currently accepting submissions for redesigns, and you can view all 2,123 online. Yikes."

7. Journal Club: Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire (November 15) "The paper very vehemently argues against biomedical treatments, lamenting how people still believe them despite the evidence going against them."

"Afraid of the Doctor" (I read this book because I have medical trauma)

Book cover for "Afraid of the Doctor."

I recently read the book Afraid of the Doctor: Every Parent's Guide to Preventing and Managing Medical Trauma [affiliate link] by Meghan L. Marsac and Melissa J. Hogan. This post is my review.

So, the reason I was interested in this book is, I have medical trauma. In my case, it's because I'm autistic, so a lot of normal medical procedures are extremely invasive and unbearable to me (and that was even more true when I was a child). I have a little son now, and I hope I can help him to navigate this better than I did as a child. I am very interested in a framework for what consent should look like for children in a medical setting (as I wrote about in this post: Boundaries With Dentists). 

It turned out that the focus of the book was on children with serious, long-term medical conditions. For example, a child who has cancer, a child who has diabetes, a child who was in a car accident and needs to go through months of treatment to recover, etc. These children are likely to develop medical trauma because they have to go to doctor's appointments so frequently that it kind of takes over their lives, and the treatments are much more intense than what the average healthy person typically experiences (for example, needing to have blood drawn every single time, having a portacath implanted in the skin, etc).

So, not really my situation, which is that I just do the normal medical things that healthy people do, but they are often overwhelming and invasive to me, because I'm autistic.

So there were parts of the book which weren't relevant to me at all, but would definitely be useful to parents who are in that situation. Like big-picture stuff about how to plan your family's life around your child's medical condition and all the appointments you have to take them to. And psychology stuff about how to take care of yourself and how to help the child's siblings cope with all the changes. All very useful, but not related to the reasons I was reading the book.

And the book didn't say anything about consent as it applies to the child. It did talk about how parents should gather information and take an active role in working with the doctors to make the treatment plan better fit the child's needs. So that was good, but that's just about the parents being able to advocate for their child and consent on behalf of their child. It didn't talk about how to teach your child to stand up for themself.

But anyway, when it talked about specific techniques to help your child handle medical treatments better, there was a lot of useful advice. Here are some of the things it talked about:

Working with the medical team to make things easier for the child: The book says that parents should not be afraid to ask questions, and if something is difficult for their child, the parent should ask if it's possible to do it in a different way. A lot of examples in this book were about timing. Maybe the doctor says that the child needs to wake up at 7 am and take medicine, but the child has a really hard time waking up so early. The parent can ask, does it really need to be 7 am, or could it be later? Some medicines really do have to be taken at certain times, but some can have a more flexible schedule. Definitely ask the doctor if it's possible to change the schedule, if that would make it easier for your child.

Don't just go along with whatever the doctor says- if something is difficult for your child, ask the doctor if there's any way to do it differently to make it easier.

Visual schedules: The book spends a lot of time talking about how to explain the process of doctor's appointments to the child in a way the child can understand. One way to do this is with a visual schedule, which has a sequence of pictures that represent the things that happen at the doctor's appointment. I really like how much emphasis there is on communicating this to the child and making sure they understand what's happening. 

Some keywords you can search, to find examples of visual schedules and other things along those lines: visual schedule, teaching story, social story, social skill story.

Medical play: You can buy toy versions of medical equipment, so your child can play with them and become more familiar with them, and less scared. I think this is a great idea.

(Also, this doesn't seem to be an example of medical play, but could be useful: One of the authors of this book, Dr. Marsac, created Cellie Coping Kits, which include an odd-shaped stuffed animal named Cellie, and cards related to medical conditions, to help encourage kids.)

And there were some other good, practical ideas too, besides these. Basically, part 4 of the book was the part with the actual concrete strategies. That's the part that I felt was very useful. The other sections of the book were mainly about really big-picture stuff about how if your child is diagnosed with a really serious problem, this affects the whole family's life, and how do you face that? So, that's useful for people in that situation, but not relevant for me.

One thing that I found kind of, uh, disturbing, was the term "therapeutic hold." This is when you physically hold the child to physically force medical treatment on them. I do think it's sometimes necessary, but isn't that a f***ed-up name for it? When my son gets a vaccine, I hold him forcefully because he does not consent to the vaccine, and it sucks, but it's because he's too little to understand the benefits of, you know, not dying of measles.

It's better if I don't have to do that, but as I said in my post Boundaries With Dentists, even if I use some strategy to convince my son to accept a vaccine, it's still non-consensual. It's definitely better if I don't have to physically force him, but still, either way, he doesn't have a choice. And it has to be that way, because he's a child, but I don't want him to internalize the idea that people have the right to do things to his body as long as they are being "nice" and "reasonable" about it.

If I have to physically force him to get a vaccine, that's nonconsensual. If I have a long conversation with him about how he needs to "be good" and how he has to do this and I don't give him any other options, and finally he agrees to it and allows the nurse to give him the vaccine, that's also nonconsensual. If it happened to an adult, we would call it coercion. I need to make sure he knows that just because someone has a long conversation with you, very kindly explaining why you have to let them do things to your body, and how you need to "be good" and agree to it- NO, that doesn't mean you owe them ANYTHING. 

I've seen a few books for children about consent, and they are very much like "your body belongs to you, no one can do things to you without your consent" and I can't get behind that because it's just SIMPLY NOT TRUE. For children, they really DON'T have the right to own their own body, and they really CAN'T, because, like I said, it's very important to me that my child doesn't die of measles or whatever, but he's too little to understand that. 

And, I don't know, maybe somebody will make the argument that medical situations are an *exception* to the teaching about consent. And maybe someone will say that actually the real goal of teaching children about consent is to protect them from sexual abuse. All the "your body belongs to you" stuff is a lie, and what we actually want to teach is "if someone sexually abuses you, that's wrong and it's not your fault", nothing more, nothing less. I'm autistic, and when I was a child, there were always people touching me in ways that I didn't like, and I understood that I was the one who was being "too sensitive" and unreasonable. I understood that when adults said "if someone touches you in a way you don't like, tell your parents" they didn't actually mean that; they actually meant if someone touches your "private parts." It had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with whether *I* didn't like the way someone was touching me. No, that was me being unreasonable, and nobody was obligated to care about that or respect my boundaries, because it wasn't sexual so it didn't matter.

So I very much disagree with the idea that teaching kids about consent is mainly about protecting them from sexual abuse. No, I believe that if someone is doing non-sexual things to you that you don't like, that is bad in and of itself. It's not "oh if you force your kid to hug grandma, that's bad because then what if they apply that same logic when someone tries to sexually abuse them, and they don't realize it's wrong"- no, forcing the child to hug grandma is bad in and of itself, not because of its potential to make the child more vulnerable to sexual abuse. 

And as an adult, medical situations are the area of my life where consent is THE MOST important. This isn't an "exception" where the normal concepts of consent shouldn't apply- this is where they should apply THE MOST. And I believe this is also very important for children. But how do you define consent for children, when they actually don't have the right to say no to medical procedures that their parents want them to have?

Yeah, those are the questions I really want to talk about it. I think there's A LOT to be said about the link between childhood medical trauma and nonconsensual medical treatment. This book wasn't about that though.

Anyway, that's my take on this book. I think the most useful idea is that the parent should take initiative to gather information, ask questions, and ask for things to be done differently, if the standard process doesn't work well for their child. Advocate for yourself and your child, instead of just doing whatever the doctor says. Also, there were many useful, practical strategies for helping children feel safer and less scared about medical procedures. (I feel these are helpful, as an autistic person, even though overall the book is targeted at parents whose children have very serious diagnoses like cancer.) What I really want to talk about, though, is what consent could look like for kids in a medical context, and the book wasn't about that.

---

Related:

Boundaries With Dentists 

Doctors (part 3 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)

On Gynecologists and Angry Turtles

Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus 

I Don't Want My Baby To Be "Brave"

Blogaround

1. Abortion Rights: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (November 6) Yeah, I'm really worried about what's going on with abortion rights in the US.

John Oliver's target audience for this video is people who are already pro-choice. For people who are "pro-life", he doesn't offer any arguments that actually address the reasons they want abortion to be illegal. So I'll link to a few of my posts on that:

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice 
Why I Am Pro-Choice
Don't You Think If It Was Possible To Re-Implant Ectopic Pregnancies, We Would Already Be Doing That?

I used to be evangelical, and obviously as an evangelical, you're required to be "pro-life"- back then I only ever heard "pro-life" talking points, and I really had no idea how on earth anyone would be pro-choice. (I remember in college, I heard some of my friends discussing a news story about an abortion ban, and I had always heard stuff like that described in terms of "hooray good news, we're stopping those bad people from killing their babies"- but then my friends were talking about how the abortion ban was a bad thing, and what a bad situation you would be in if you found out you were pregnant and couldn't get an abortion. It was the first time I had ever heard any kind of pro-choice argument. Before that, I couldn't even imagine what kinds of arguments the pro-choice side could even make.) Honestly now I still think that a lot of the language from the pro-choice side doesn't actually help to get rid of those misconceptions that "pro-life" people have. For example, saying "this is about women having control over their own bodies" is nonsensical to people on the "pro-life" side, because they believe that needing an abortion isn't something that happens to *women in general*, it's something that happens to *bad* and *irresponsible* women, and it's easy to think "well I'm a woman but obviously I would never be in that situation." I mean, the *truth* is that it *is* about women having control over their bodies, but my point is, framing it that way doesn't do anything to convince "pro-life" people to change their minds.

Basically, the main thing that changed my mind was this: Trust women. (Also trans/nonbinary people/ anyone with a uterus.) Yes, abortion does end the embryo/fetus's life, and I don't take that lightly, but there are so many other factors that need to be weighed against it. Like, pregnancy is GRUELING. And what if you're in an abusive relationship, and being pregnant makes you more vulnerable to being hurt or killed by your partner. And the risk of losing your job because you're pregnant. And how expensive everything is for babies- starting with the hospital bills for giving birth, if you don't have insurance. And sometimes it's a wanted pregnancy, and then some horrible health problem (for the baby or the pregnant person) is discovered, and every option is terrible and heartbreaking- but you should at least have every option- that would be THE WORST time for some politicians to step in and tell you what you can or can't do.

Basically, the pregnant person is the only one who can weigh all those factors and decide what's best. Nobody else knows the situation well enough. Certainly not some cis male politician who just thinks that voting for more restrictions is better because it makes him more "pro-life", without really understanding what those restrictions are. Restrictions on imaginary people who just want to kill babies for no reason. Come on. 

"Pro-life" myths about women waddling down to the abortion clinic, massively pregnant. Come on. If someone's having an abortion that late in the pregnancy, then it's a wanted pregnancy and something has gone horribly wrong, and the last thing they need is some stranger judging them.

"Pro-life" myths about doctors being eager to find any excuse to end a pregnancy. The reality is- and anyone who has been pregnant and given birth will know this- doctors are EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS about doing any kind of medical treatment that could possibly harm the unborn baby. No x-rays if you're pregnant. If you have some health problem and you need medicine for it, the doctors are very very careful about only prescribing medicine that's been shown to not harm the unborn baby. If your baby is breech, most doctors will say you have to have a c-section rather than a vaginal delivery, because vaginal delivery could be risky for the baby. Etc. "Pro-lifers" making up bizarre stories about doctors sitting around dreaming up excuses to kill babies. Come on. Doctors choose to go into gynecology and deliver babies because it's such a beautiful thing seeing new life born into the world. That's the reality- and if you spend a few seconds thinking about it, you realize it must be true. But instead, "pro-life" people are making laws to stop the imaginary doctors and imaginary women who are eager to kill babies for no reason.

Relatedly, I was glad to see this news from Ohio: Ohio voters enshrine abortion access in constitution in latest statewide win for reproductive rights (November 8)

2. Taking Stock of Love and Losses in the ‘World’s Supermarket’ (November 4) "Between 2015 and 2016, I spent 12 months in Yiwu and interviewed over 100 people involved in transnational marriages. At their best, the pairings offer mutual support in life as well as business. But the complex entanglement of love and commerce that characterizes many of these relationships is fraught with uncertainty — especially for Chinese women, whose credit within the local community is perhaps the couples’ greatest asset, even as it exposes the wives to additional risk should their marriages one day fall apart."

Also from Sixth Tone: How Shanghai Turned a Notorious Dump Site Into an Eco-Haven (November 9) [content note: it's about garbage]

3. The DeSantis-approved version of American racial history (July 24) "To tell that story, the standards identify a lot of high-achieving Black Americans, as well as many admirable Whites who were abolitionists or allies of the civil rights movement. But slavery itself just sort of happened; it emerged out of vague historical and economic forces. Ditto for Jim Crow."

4. 18,000 strangers sing ‘Africa’ by Toto (August 16) Wow, this is AMAZING.

5. Matisyahu - One Day (YouTube Version) (2009) This song is actually my religion. "All my life I've been waiting for / I've been praying for / for the people to say / that we don't want to fight no more / there'll be no more wars / and our children will play."

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

6. “Parents’ Rights”—Especially Moms for Liberty—Lost Big in Elections Last Night (November 8, via)

7. Astronauts dropped a tool bag during an ISS spacewalk, and you can see it with binoculars (November 10, via) "McDowell also explained that the bag has also been given its own categorization in the U.S. space force cataloging system for artificial objects in orbit officially designated 58229 / 1998–067WC."

The Great Sex Rescue: Sex Drive

People playing Scrabble. 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: sex]

We are now in chapter 7 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], which is about libido differences. In this post, I'll cover the first half of the chapter: pages 121 to 130. Specifically, it's about how purity culture/ evangelical Christianity commonly teaches that men want sex ALL THE TIME, and women basically don't like sex. And how this teaching causes a lot of problems (and also is just not true).

This post is mostly about how I just don't understand the concept of sex drive. So don't take it as me criticizing "The Great Sex Rescue." If we imagine a universe where "sex drive" is a real thing that exists, then I would say that almost everything "The Great Sex Rescue" says in this chapter sounds very reasonable and is probably correct. (Until it gets to the part about HSDD.) I am way too asexual to be able to tell if we actually live in such a universe or not. Probably yes? Because everyone talks about sex drive like it's a real thing, so I suppose it is?

So, let's get started.

So, it's about libido, also known as sex drive. I really don't understand the concept of sex drive. I really feel quite baffled by the way people talk about it. I am asexual and I seem to not have a sex drive. (???) Based on what I've pieced together from other people's descriptions, it seems to work like this:

Sex drive is about how often a person feels a physical "need" to have sex. A "high sex drive" means a high frequency of feeling a need to have sex, and "low sex drive" means low frequency. Apparently the way it works is, every so often, a person's sex drive will prompt them to want to have sex, and if their partner's sex drive is also prompting their partner, at the same time, then they have sex. (The partner could be prompted by a "responsive" sex drive, we'll talk about that.)

And apparently, the way people talk about it, it seems like people believe that the prompting from one's sex drive is a necessary prerequisite to having sex. (???) Like people always talk about "how can I increase my sex drive?" because they want to have more sex, but apparently they can't just simply have more sex, they need to coax their sex drive into prompting them first, and then they can have sex. This is extremely confusing to me. (And this was the main reason I was so confused by the book "Come As You Are.")

The way I see it, it makes a lot more sense to just decide when you want to have sex and when you don't. Like, just decide based on what you want and what fits your schedule. It sounds horribly inconvenient to have to structure one's behavior around these biological "needs" which could randomly occur at any time.

Is there some reason that people believe they can't just have sex because they want to have sex, and instead they have to wait for their "sex drive" to kick in and prompt them to have sex? I'm just brainstorming here- maybe the sex isn't as good when you just intellectually choose to do it, rather than doing it from a biological "need"? Maybe people have trouble getting aroused when they're not being prompted by their sex drive? Wait, maybe the "prompting" actually is arousal????? Omg, what is the connection between sex drive and arousal? I never even thought about that!

I mean, maybe there is some reason that sex is better when it's prompted by sex drive, rather than just because you decide to have sex. I personally don't have the experience necessary to make a comparison.

Actually, I do have one anecdote: A few years ago, when I was pregnant, sometimes I felt like I really wanted to masturbate or have sex. Maybe that's what sex drive is. It was because of the pregnancy hormones; pregnancy hormones are wild. Anyway, it was horribly inconvenient, because what if my husband didn't happen to want to have sex at the exact same time? Feels really unworkable to me, to have that always be the basis for when one ends up having sex. I'm glad that only happened to me in that one specific period of time. 

Really makes a lot more sense to say to your partner "Do you want to have sex this weekend? Which day do you have time?" (But apparently people think that's "unromantic" or something? Apparently it's more romantic when you're in the middle of doing something else and then you get interrupted and you end up having sex? Like I said, baffling.)

Okay, so, we've established that I do not understand sex drive. Let's actually talk about "The Great Sex Rescue" now!

This chapter starts out talking about how American parents have so much trouble trying to convince their kids to eat broccoli, but French parents don't seem to have that problem. This is because Americans act like there are certain foods kids will like, and certain foods that kids aren't expected to like, whereas French parents treat all food as something that kids would like. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy- if you expect your kids to not like broccoli, and you say "oh just eat a few bites of broccoli, then you can have dessert," then it's likely your kids will understand that they're not supposed to like it, and so, they won't.

In the same way, the book says, conservative Christians don't expect that women will like sex. They talk about it like it's something that wives are required to do for their husbands, that men need it and women don't, that wives have to do it even if they are in pain or tired. Trying to convince women to have sex with arguments like "it doesn't take that long!" instead of anything that hints that sex can actually feel good for women. And all of this adds up to women believing that they won't like sex, and then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My experience with this is sort of mixed. I was taught 2 completely contradictory things in purity culture:

1. Sex is the greatest feeling EVER. Everyone wants it, everyone is tempted by it, everyone needs to enact rules in their dating relationships so they don't fall into the trap of having sex. It bonds people together, and it can feel so amazing and addictive that it causes people to stay in bad relationships, and this is why you must not have sex before marriage. And if you wait till marriage, oh wow, your wedding night will be AMAZING. It will be THE BEST THING EVER. It will be indescribable, mind-blowing. Sex is the highest form of communication, the greatest expression of love. It's truly knowing someone, the highest form of intimacy. It's amazing and everyone wants it. (And this applies to both men and women.)
2. Women don't really like sex. But, men need it, so wives have to do it for their husbands. This is a central part of what it means to be a wife- you have to have sex that you don't want. Even if it's painful, even if you're really stressed or tired, even if you have 3 kids and they've been driving you crazy the entire day- men need it, and women just can't possibly understand how much men need it, but men need it so much that it overrides all of those excuses. 

Yes, really, purity culture teaches both of these things. Uh, but, how to reconcile them? I guess maybe you could say that sex outside of marriage is tempting and exciting for everyone, but sex in marriage (after the honeymoon) is unenjoyable for women? Maybe that would be a way of believing both of those things? I don't really know...

But anyway, way back when I was young and didn't know anything, I thought I had a high sex drive. Because I'm generally enthusiastic and passionate about a lot of things in life, and I have a lot of romantic attraction, so doesn't that mean I'll be super-excited about sex, when the time comes? (Spoiler: lol no, it doesn't.)

(I remember reading a reddit thread one time, where a woman asked "is it weird if I don't masturbate?" and people replied "no, not weird, it's fine, some people just have a lower sex drive." And I was like, personally offended that people would think that not masturbating means someone has a low sex drive, ahem, I do not masturbate because it's a SIN, but I still have a high sex drive because obviously sex is great and everyone wants it and my wedding night will be mind-blowing, this is God's plan for me. Spoiler: lol if you don't masturbate, and you never even wanted to masturbate, never even thought about it, that means you have a low sex drive.)

So I was taught both of these points in purity culture- that sex is amazing and everyone likes it, but also, that women (married women specifically???) don't like sex. I didn't really pay much attention to the second part- Christians said wives are required to have sex, and I thought, "well that won't be a problem at all, because sex is amazing and I'll be totally into it." But then, after I did start having sex and it was painful and confusing, I already had this internalized belief that explained it- women don't want sex, but they have to give it to their husbands anyway.

And maybe that happens to a lot of women. Maybe they have sex for the first time, and it's painful, and instead of thinking "let's figure out how to do this so it's enjoyable and not painful", they think "well, sex is painful for women but we have to do it anyway, that's just the way it is." And that's the self-fulfilling prophecy that this book is talking about. Yes, that feels very real.

And I guess that would have happened to me too, except that it was so painful and impossible, that I was actually unable to fulfill my "wifely duty." It was either give up on PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex entirely, or spend a lot of time looking for answers. I went looking for answers, and that's how I found out about asexuality, and later, vaginismus. (See: Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality) But if it had only been a little bit painful, and I could have forced myself to just keep doing it anyway... then yeah, that's what would have happened. I would have thought that's just the way it is for women, and I have to do it because "men need it." Thank nonbinary God that I found out about asexuality instead.

(Which is also why I'm so concerned about the straight women aces... how many women out there fit the definition of asexual, and would benefit from learning about asexuality, but they just don't know about it? Straight people are less likely to come across resources that talk about asexuality, compared to people who already have some kind of connection to the LGBTQ community. I worry about the straights.)

Next, we have a section where "The Great Sex Rescue" introduces the concepts of spontaneous or responsive libido:

Could part of the problem be that we don't actually understand what libido is? Watch any TV show or movie, and the plot when it comes to sex is always the same: The couple is together, and they're panting. So they start to kiss, they take off their clothes, and they end up in bed. That's basically it, right? They pant, and then they kiss, and then the clothes come off, and then they're in bed.

Pant. Kiss. Clothes. Bed.

That's what we think libido looks like. 

But what if that's not the way libido works for many people?

I gotta say, as an asexual I have never seen any sex scenes in movies that felt realistic to me, so I'm kinda lost here. It seems like this is directed at readers who expect that sex should always look like what it looks like in the movies, but, lollll, I can't even imagine. (Like... watching a sex scene and then thinking "yes, ideally sex should happen to me in this way" instead of "what on earth is going on, none of this makes any sense." lolll I can't even imagine.)

But I guess yeah, if that's a thing that people think, it's good to tell them that sex doesn't have to look like that.

Some people have a felt need for sex that leaves them physically frustrated if they don't have sex. That's what we call spontaneous libido. But some people have more of a responsive libido. Once they begin making love, arousal kicks in. In our follow-up survey, we found that among women who are reliably aroused by the time sex is over, 29.1% were aroused when they started, but 70.9% weren't yet aroused but knew they would get there. If libido is simply the ability to desire and enjoy sex, then just because you're not aroused first does not mean you don't have a libido; it just means yours may work differently than your spouse's. 

Then there's a graph that compares 4 different categories of married Christian women- "Women were asked, 'Before sex, I feel...'"

1. already sexually aroused
2. not yet sexually aroused but I know I will get there when we're having sex
3. not yet sexually aroused and I am unsure as to whether or not I will get aroused during sex
4. not aroused and I know I will not become aroused during sex

The graph shows that the first two groups had similar emotions about sex- a high percentage felt "relaxed" and "emotionally connected with husband", and a very low percentage had negative feelings like "disappointed", "sexually frustrated", "ashamed", and "used." The third group had a much lower percentage of the positive emotions, and higher percentage of negative emotions, and the fourth group was even worse. So yes, this shows that group 1 and group 2 have pretty similar results, so it doesn't matter if you're aroused at the beginning, as long as you know you'll get aroused at some point.

The contrast between spontaneous and responsive libidos shows that there are many different "normals" when it comes to sexual desire. You aren't made wrong if your libido manifests differently than your spouse's. But what often happens is that those with responsive libidos say to themselves, I'll initiate sex when I begin to pant. So they wait to pant. And nothing really happens, so they figure, "not tonight" and go stream a few more episodes of Law & Order. But if they had just jumped in, they likely would have started panting. We don't have to operate like the pant-kiss-clothes-bed scenario. It's okay if one of you is like that and the other is more kiss-clothes-bed-pant, or even bed-kiss-clothes-pant. As long as you're both panting at some point, and you're both enjoying yourselves, that's perfectly healthy sex.

One thing I'm really enjoying about this book is how it goes into detail, explaining things that nobody else bothers to explain because it's assumed that everyone intuitively gets it. You know, things that aces are always extremely confused about, because no we don't intuitively understand them, and everyone refuses to explain. (Like the chapter that explained what people mean by "one thing leads to another.") For example, this whole thing about movie sex scenes and "panting"- I'm starting to get the idea that panting means arousal (????). Like... oh... is THAT what all those movie scenes were attempting to portray?

So... I'm confused about this hypothetical person who thinks, "I'll initiate sex when I begin to pant" and therefore never has sex. I'm more familiar with the idea of a wife initiating sex she doesn't want because she believes "men need it" and she has to. In other words, she doesn't "pant" but of course she believes she should have sex anyway- her lack of "panting" is not an excuse. This hypothetical person who does NOT initiate sex is perhaps influenced by a slightly different variety of purity culture than I was.

But anyway, if they don't "pant", and therefore never have sex, I don't see a problem with that? Like... someone doesn't feel like they want to have sex, so they don't have sex, this seems completely fine, why would this be a problem? I suppose there could be a few reasons why the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" might see this as a problem:

1. Maybe this person would actually really enjoy having sex, and it's unfortunate that they're missing out
2. Maybe this person's spouse is unhappy about not having sex, and if the "responsive libido" partner would just go along with it anyway, they would both have a good experience- the spouse is needlessly missing out on something that's really really important to them
3. Maybe having sex is an essential part of marriage- they need to do it in order to have a good and healthy marriage

My asexual opinions on these:

Reason 1: Yeah maybe, but that's something the person has to decide for themself. You can't really advise people "oh try this thing, you'll enjoy it" because who knows, if they're not naturally interested in it, then there's not really any good evidence one way or the other on whether they'll benefit from trying it. 

But more importantly, I am just SO CONFUSED by the idea of a person who has had sex before and enjoyed it, but thinks they it's simply not possible to have sex again unless they first feel some nebulous "panting"/arousal feeling. Are there really people sitting around saying "I would like to have sex, but I can't actually do anything about it until my body starts telling me to, and who knows when that will be, oh well"???

Surely I'm missing something here, right?

Reason 2: So in this case, the lack of sex isn't a problem in and of itself. It's the mismatch between what the 2 partners want, which creates the problem. So, talk to each other!

And again, I'm very confused at the idea that one partner might say "it's really important to me to have sex" and the other will say "well yes, I also like to have sex, and I wish I could have sex with you, but unfortunately I am not 'panting' right now so it's simply not possible." ??????

Surely I'm missing something, right?

Reason 3: Well as an asexual I say LOLOLOLOLOL. Yeah this one's just not true.

You know what it sounds like, when I hear about "responsive sexual desire"? (I first heard about it from the book "Come As You Are"- that book talks about it A LOT.) It sounds like this scenario: Let's imagine that your friends ask you to play Scrabble with them. And you don't really feel like playing Scrabble, so you want to say no. But you go along with it anyway, perhaps because you feel it's good to spend time with your friends. And then, when you're in the middle of playing Scrabble, you're having a great time and you wouldn't want to stop, and you're glad you let them talk you into it.

But this could apply to ANYTHING. Anything that's "you didn't feel like doing it, but once you get into it then you enjoy it and you're glad you did it." Exercise. Reading a book. Going shopping. Making art. (And if I can say something about depression here- in my experience when I had depression, EVERYTHING is this. Any productive, healthy activity, like I hated the thought of getting up and doing it, but if I could force myself to do it, then it really would make me feel better.) It's an inertia thing.

So I just don't understand... why is "responsive desire" for sex discussed like it's an innate biological fact, but people don't label themselves like "I have spontaneous desire to play Settlers of Catan"/ "I have responsive desire to play Settlers of Catan"? Like this just seems like a completely normal thing to me, that you might not feel like doing something, but then once you start doing it, you enjoy it... but the way "responsive sexual desire" is talked about, it's like... it's like people feel it's important to label it because they didn't expect sex to work that way? Or like, when it's responsive desire for sex, that's a primitive-level biological drive, whereas for other activities it's a higher-level psychology thing? 

I guess I can sum up my confusion like this: People talk about "responsive sexual desire" like it's a revolutionary, groundbreaking idea. But, hasn't everyone experienced "responsive desire" for all sorts of other activities? Why are people acting like sex is somehow different?

Maybe I'm missing something, and sex somehow is different. (This reminds me of reading blog posts from aces and aros that say, "I don't understand how romance is different from friendship? The activities people want to do with their romantic partners, I want to do with my friends... maybe romance isn't a real thing at all????" and I'm like... I'm asexual but I have SO MUCH romantic attraction, yeah romance is a real thing. So probably I'm doing the same thing now, missing some huge important fact about sex drive or whatever.)

But hey, apparently the concept of "responsive sexual desire" is really useful for a lot of women. So, good for them! Uh... if anyone has insight on this, feel free to share in the comment section.

And, actually, let me come back to this question that I asked in my "Reason 1" section: "Are there really people sitting around saying 'I would like to have sex, but I can't actually do anything about it until my body starts telling me to, and who knows when that will be, oh well'???" Actually, I'm in some social media groups for women in long-term relationships with men, and people really do post things like "I want to increase my sex drive." I don't get it! If you want to have sex with your husband, then go ahead and have sex with him, why do you need to "increase your sex drive" first??? If you don't want to have sex, then don't! Nothing wrong with that! 

The way it reads to me is, these women feel like they *should* be having more sex, but they don't actually want to. So they're trying to make themselves want to. But, whyyy??? NOT COOL how they've internalized the idea that they're not having sex "enough" or that something is wrong with not wanting sex. (And I could be misinterpreting this... I know it's a very common asexual experience to incorrectly assume "everyone is just having sex because of peer pressure and they don't really want to." So.)

Maybe what they mean is "when we were younger, sex was really great, but now when we have sex, I don't have those same feelings any more, and I wish I did, how do I recreate those feelings again?" Now that makes sense to me. And maybe for most people, sex is more enjoyable when it's prompted by sex drive, rather than just intellectually deciding you want to have sex. Maybe that's what they're getting at? I have no idea.

Or maybe, what they mean is "my husband wants to have sex but I don't really like to, are there ways that we can make sex a better experience for me?" I definitely understand that. I don't see what sex drive has anything to do with it though.

ANYWAY. I don't have "spontaneous" or "responsive" sex drive at all. I just have sex when I decide I want to, for various reasons which honestly make A LOT MORE SENSE than "my body is randomly pushing me to do this thing." (???) And when I decided I wanted that, the next step was to learn how to have sex, which actually was really difficult and took a long time because I'm asexual af. Getting arousal to happen mechanically by stimulating with fingers or a sex toy. Using lube. It works, and those are the things I recommend to aces who want to figure out how to have sex. 

I don't get why people talk about this like it's just supposed to happen "naturally" and it's wrong to actually, ya know, learn it like you'd learn any other skill. When I first started IDing as asexual, the biggest benefit was I was able to stop searching all my feelings and desires, to try to find the ones I could follow in order to result in sex without me really having to do much thinking. I don't have any such feelings, it turns out, and it's really great that I could just accept that fact, and then take the next step of actually planning out analytically how to do the research and figure out how to have sex. Instead of hoping that somehow it would mysteriously happen "naturally" just because I love my partner or whatever.

Wow I am shocked at how long this blog post has gotten [editor's note: she is actually not shocked]. Let's see what else "The Great Sex Rescue" has to say.

The next section is about gender stereotypes. Christian marriage resources always assume that men want sex way more than women. Men need sex, and women don't like sex at all. Men have spontaneous libido and women have responsive libido. All these things are taught like they're *always* true about *everyone*. But, "The Great Sex Rescue" points out, these are just generalizations. Even if men have a higher sex drive than women on average, that doesn't mean EVERY straight couple will have a man with a higher sex drive than the woman. There are plenty of couples where the woman has a higher sex drive. 

And in evangelical culture, women who are in that situation feel completely lost. Like, she's in a situation that wasn't ever supposed to exist. Or maybe she'll think she's not attractive enough, and not satisfying her husband's sexual needs well enough, and that's why he doesn't seem to want her as much as he "should." "The Great Sex Rescue" points out how messed up this whole ideology is. And also, there's a section on how harmful it is to men, when Christians teach that men don't need emotional connection, they only need to ejaculate frequently enough and they're good to go.

But, uh, there's this:

Libido exists on a spectrum, and a couple will occupy two points of that spectrum. One will be higher, one will be lower, or the two will overlap. On the extreme ends of that spectrum, we cross over into dysfunction: at some point libido becomes so high that we have sex addiction issues, or so low that it disappears into hypoactive sexual desire disorder, often combined with anorgasmia (see fig. 7.2). [Fig. 7.2 is a one-dimensional spectrum showing "Normal libido" in the middle, "Hypoactive sexual desire disorder" on the left end, and "Sex addiction" on the right end.]

Unfortunately, much Christian teaching treats women who are lower on the spectrum than their husbands as if they are already past that cutoff point, even if they're not.

And then a few paragraphs later, there's this question for the reader to think about:

CHECK-IN: In your marriage, have you felt that your spouse has an abnormal libido-- like there's something wrong with them? Do you think that's actually true, or is it just a normal difference in felt need?

So, umm, this is the part that I have a problem with.

For a bit of background on hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD): Many people in the asexual community are very uncomfortable with the existence of this as a possible diagnosis. It's basically treating asexuality like a medical problem that needs to be fixed. Remember when people thought homosexuality was a disorder, and tried to "fix" gay people with reparative therapy? How about we don't do that to aces? (See these blog posts from other aces: Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? and Drug Watch: New Addyi Marketing Campaign, “Find My Spark” and a brief primer on hsdd & flibanserin)

First of all, let me say, I understand the point they're trying to make in these paragraphs, and the reasons why. When a couple has "mismatched sex drives", people often act like it's the woman who is the problem. Like the man is the objective standard that the woman should be measured against. Like the problem is that her sex drive is too low, not that his sex drive is too high. Not cool.

The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are saying, it's not right that people treat a wife's "lower sex drive" like it's automatically the problem, when she's in a totally average range for women. Okay, yes, so far I agree. They're saying that, as long as both people are in the "normal" range in the middle of the spectrum- not so high that it gets into sex addiction, and not so low that it gets into HSDD- then they can make it work. Even if their sex drives aren't exactly the same, they are able to be compatible with each other.

But, they're saying, if your sex drive is wayyy too high, or wayyy too low, then yes YOU are the problem, there's something wrong with you, you need to change.

Uh.

Let me offer a different take on this:

If your "sex drive" is extremely high, or extremely low, the issue is that it's difficult to find a partner who is compatible with you. If you do find a partner who is basically in the same range (or you find that you're happy with an open relationship or some other arrangement like that), then, that's great, no problem at all! So there's nothing inherently wrong with this.

And, I would say, you should figure out if you're "sexually compatible" before you decide to get married.

But here's the problem: The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" believe you shouldn't have sex before marriage. So... there's no way to know if you're sexually compatible with your partner or not. I suppose that there may be some indicators that can help you kinda guess if you have a high or low sex drive... and I know there are lots of aces out there who are very confident that they never want to have sex, even though they haven't experienced it before. But that didn't work for me... like I said, I always assumed I had a high sex drive, lolololol. I didn't find out that PIV sex made no sense until I actually tried it. And I'm really glad my husband and I had sex before marriage, because blah, imagine if I had to wait that much longer to figure out I'm asexual.

I think what's going on in this section of "The Great Sex Rescue" is... okay I'm going to be very blunt here... imagine if you are a normal person, and you fall in love and decide to get married, and of course you don't have sex before marriage. And then once you get married, you, a normal person, find out that your spouse is way off the extreme end of the sex drive spectrum. Your spouse is hypersexual, or asexual. Like, what on earth, this is so unfair to you, a normal person. If you had just married another normal person, you could have made it work; even if your sex drives were different, you still could have been compatible. But, oh geez, something is wrong with your spouse, and there's no way you could have known about it beforehand, this is so unfair! And obviously it's your spouse who's the problem, because you are a normal person.

If people aren't allowed to have sex before marriage, then you have to treat people who end up being sexually incompatible with most everyone else like they are the problem. If everyone was "normal", and people didn't have sex before marriage, then after they get married these normal people will discover that their sex drives are different, but not that different, so they can still be compatible.

If people aren't allowed to have sex before marriage, there is just no room for people who are sexually incompatible with most everyone else. 

Gif from "Star Trek: First Contact." Data says, "Captain, I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say, to hell with our orders." Image source.

To hell with that. Be queer! Know yourself! Try out a hundred different microlabels if you have to. Know what you want, know what's important to you in a relationship and what's not, and then communicate with your partner(s)! There's nothing wrong with high sex drive or low sex drive or no sex drive. The only problem is if it's incompatible with your partner, so talk to your partner and figure that out! And some people find that they need to break up because of this incompatibility- that's reality, unfortunately, but it's good to figure that out before marriage.

Ugh, this whole "abstinence until heterosexual marriage, and then compulsory sex in marriage" is such a SCAM.

All right, that's the first half of chapter 7 of "The Great Sex Rescue." To sum up: I'm asexual, and the whole concept of "sex drive" makes no sense to me. But I definitely agree with the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" when they critique the common Christian marriage teaching that men always want sex, and women don't like sex. That teaching is definitely harmful. The part I take issue with, in this chapter, is when it implies that everything in the "normal" range for sex drive is acceptable, but when you start getting into the "HSDD" range, then there's something wrong with you. 

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

Related:

"Come As You Are" is helpful I guess but not for me

Reasons

Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality