The Great Sex Rescue: The Chapter Where It's Not Okay To Be Asexual

A venn diagram where one circle is "you," one circle is "me," and the overlap is "us." Image source.

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

---

Chapter 8 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link] is called "Becoming More Than Roommates," and it's about how it's bad and wrong to have a sexless marriage.

Umm. (You will notice this is a long post, because I Have Some Opinions.)

So obviously, first thing I want to say is, as an asexual I 100% disagree with that. There's nothing *inherently* wrong with having a sexless marriage. Most people do want to have sex with their spouse, so of course if you're one of those people, then you would be unhappy with a sexless marriage- but that doesn't mean it's *always* bad to have a sexless marriage. (For example, what if both spouses are asexual and aren't interested in sex?)

My overall feeling about this chapter is, ugh, it's so NOT OKAY how anti-asexual this is. And, it never actually explains WHY a sexless marriage is a problem. We're just supposed to know that obviously it's a problem. WHYYYY?

I can understand that it's a problem in the situation where one or both spouses places a very high importance on sex. But outside of that, there's no reason it would be a problem.

The authors are talking like there's something intrinsic about the nature of marriage which requires sex. And, no, I strongly disagree with that. Talk to your partner! Talk about what you want, and work out something that works for both of you. It should be based on the specific needs and desires that the actual real people in the relationship have- not abstract concepts about how marriage is "always" supposed to be.

Here, a few quotes from this chapter:

Sometimes marriages that are otherwise largely healthy become sexless or sex-starved. In that case, we need to challenge people to put more priority on sex.

Why? Seriously, why?

Here's another one:

Natasha would rather live without sex. It's not that it doesn't feel good-- it does, actually-- it's just that she'd rather watch Netflix at the end of the day than have sex. She knows her priorities are off, but frankly she just doesn't have the motivation to change.

I see no problem with this.

Continuing with the next paragraph about Natasha:

After she and her husband come home from work, make dinner, do the dishes, and get their toddler to bed, he wants to spend time together, and she, well, doesn't. She just wants downtime. She loves her husband-- that's not the problem. And he's tried everything: taking on more of the housework, giving her multiple nights a week off from childcare entirely, and booking romantic date nights out for the two of them in an effort to help her reengage in the marriage. But nothing seems to work because Natasha is, frankly, struggling with overcoming laziness when it comes to her marriage.

Oh, okay, so it sounds like the problem is this: Natasha's husband wants to have sex, so the fact that they're not having sex is making him unhappy. The book doesn't come right out and say that though, it just says Natasha is not having sex, and then we readers are supposed to automatically understand that that's a problem. 

I find it very weird that the list of things that Natasha's husband is doing to try to get her to have sex with him includes things like doing housework and planning romantic dates, rather than, you know, having a honest conversation about his needs and how he feels about the lack of sex. It reads to me like the husband (and the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue") are operating under a framework where if you are a good spouse, then your spouse should give you sex. This is just... very weird. It seems like the lack of sex is really affecting the husband emotionally, he seems really unhappy about it, but if he doesn't communicate that to Natasha, then how would she even know? Even if he does ask her "do you want to have sex," she might not realize how big of a deal it is to him. This reads to me like a communication issue, not like a "let's blame Natasha for being lazy and selfish" issue (which is what the book says it is).

This chapter categorizes sexless marriages into 3 types:

1. The sexless marriage due to selfishness or brokenness
2. The sexless marriage due to emotional protection
3. The sexless marriage in disguise

Let's go through each of them:

Scenario 1: The sexless marriage due to selfishness or brokenness

Well I'm already mad about this chapter, so this evangelical jargon "brokenness" has me even more annoyed. But I'll define it, for the readers who don't speak evangelical: "brokenness" means there is something wrong with us, at a deep level, because of sin. The book doesn't specifically say which of the examples in this section would be classified under "brokenness" but I would guess it's the example where one spouse is using porn instead of having sex with their spouse (using porn is a sin, this sin makes the porn-using spouse deeply "broken" and unable to have a good sex life without doing the work of healing from it first), and the example about sexual abuse victims dealing with trauma (the abuser committed sin against the victim, and even though the victim isn't to blame, they are still "broken" as a result, ie, they have deep trauma and can't have a good sex life until they heal from it).

(For more on "brokenness": Miss me with your "we are all sexually broken" hot takes. I'm asexual.)

Scenario 1 can be summarized like this: Partner A refuses to have sex with Partner B, and the issue is on Partner A's side. The examples given are:

• Partner A is lazy and selfish, like our buddy Natasha
• Partner A is using porn instead of having sex with Partner B
• Partner A is a victim of sexual abuse, and has trauma related to sex
• Partner A has sexual dysfunction issues- ie, medical conditions like vaginismus, or being unable to get an erection

(And the examples in the book show that Partner A could be the man or the woman- it doesn't present it like a specifically gendered problem.)

When I say "the issue is on Partner A's side," I don't mean it's Partner A's fault, or that Partner A is sinning. Some of these examples would be seen as sin, and some would not. The point is, Partner A is the one who has the responsibility to do something about it, so that the couple can get to the point where they are having sex frequently and enjoying it.

I'll come back to this section in a minute, let me just define scenarios 2 and 3 first:

Scenario 2: The sexless marriage due to emotional protection

In this scenario, Partner A refuses to have sex with Partner B, because Partner B is not a safe person to have sex with. For example, Partner B is abusive, Partner B acts like they are entitled to sex and Partner A's consent doesn't matter, Partner B has raped Partner A before, Partner B doesn't care about whether sex is painful for Partner A, etc.

So, the issue here is on Partner B's side. It does no good to treat Partner A like they're the problem, and they just need to have sex with Partner B anyway, like most evangelical marriage resources would do. "The Great Sex Rescue" says that Partner A's refusal to have sex is the right thing to do. 

Scenario 3: The sexless marriage in disguise

In this scenario, the couple is having sex regularly, but not in a way that's good for Partner A. Maybe Partner B always has an orgasm and Partner A never does, maybe sex is painful for Partner A but they feel like they have to do it anyway because they've been reading too many Christian marriage books, etc.

Okay, I'm glad the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are bringing this up. (And it's similar to what they said in an earlier chapter about who exactly is being "deprived.") Even though I don't think there's anything inherently bad about a sexless marriage, this scenario definitely is bad. If you're having sex, but it's a bad experience for you, well, stop doing that! 

I say "stop doing that" like it's easy and obvious, but in evangelical-land, it's not that easy or obvious. There are many Christian marriage books which explicitly teach that most women don't like sex, but wives have to do it anyway because men need it. If sex is painful for you, and you don't like it, you would believe that's normal, that's just the way it is for women, and a very important part of being a wife is you have to have bad sex anyway. (Yes, they really do explicitly teach that an important part of being a wife is having bad sex.) They talk about it like it's a sacrifice that wives have to make- your marriage is important to you, and you love your husband and want him to be happy, so it's worth a few minutes of pain several times a week. Furthermore, you shouldn't tell your husband that sex is painful and unpleasant, because that will ruin his manly confidence- you need him to believe that he is good at sex and everything is perfect.

(I'm going to point this out explicitly for the ace and/or extremely sheltered readers: When Christian leaders describe sex as "it's worth a few minutes of pain", the part where it's "a few minutes" should be a giant red flag. Most women take longer than men to get aroused, so if sex is only "a few minutes" then it's likely that the woman is not aroused, and she's being subjected to vaginal penetration when she's not even aroused, which is likely to be painful. In order to feel good for women, it's usually the case that sex needs to take longer than "a few minutes", to make sure that the woman is aroused and ready before doing any penetration, and also to make sure enough time is spent on foreplay that feels good for her. The fact that Christian marriage teachers are emphasizing how little time it takes to have sex, as if that's a selling point, is deeply ****ed-up.)

One of the main messages of "The Great Sex Rescue" is that this whole "women don't like sex but have to do it anyway" is WRONG. I'm glad to see them taking a stand against that.

So... if you're a good evangelical woman, and you get married (to a man, obviously, since you are a good evangelical woman and wouldn't dream of being queer) and then sex is painful, you wouldn't even know that was a problem. You would think that's normal, and you just have to do it anyway, because that's what it means to be a wife.

"The Great Sex Rescue" has some anecdotes in this section, where men are saying things like "after 20 years of marriage, my wife just stopped having sex with me, for no reason, completely out of the blue." The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" say that actually, it wasn't "out of the blue"- the wife had been suffering through bad sex for 20 years, and finally decided she couldn't take it any more- and GOOD FOR HER! Furthermore, the book says that if you continue to have sex even though it's bad, it's likely your husband will have no idea there's a problem- so you should speak up right away and refuse to have bad sex. Don't try to tolerate it.

Yes, as an asexual, I totally agree with this. Don't tolerate bad sex, because that's not sustainable, and it's not good for you.

---

Okay so those are the 3 scenarios given in the book. Overall, the message is, if you're the one causing the marriage to be sexless, then you're the one who has a responsibility to work on yourself and make changes so that you can have a good sex life with your spouse. Basically, the lack of sex is a problem, and whichever partner is causing the lack of sex, is the one who needs to change.

I don't think the lack of sex is a problem, in and of itself. I think the problem is when there's a mismatch between what the two partners want. And the way to resolve that mismatch is NOT "let's work on whatever issues are stopping us from having a normative ideal sex life" like the book says [this is my paraphrase, not an actual quote]. The way to resolve that mismatch is to really think through what you want- specifically, which parts of sex do you like or not like? What kind of intimacy is important to you? How do you show love to your partner, and how do you want them to show love to you? Get some specific answers- more specific than "I like sex" or "I don't like sex"- because sex can be a lot of different things. And then communicate with your partner, compare your lists of what you want and what you don't want, and come up with a plan that works for both of you.

There are 2 examples from "scenario 1" I want to go back and look at, and discuss how my advice of "figure out what you want, and then work something out with your partner" would play out (and how it's different than what "The Great Sex Rescue" says). First, we have this part, which mentions the writers' experiences with female sexual pain:

Not wanting sex when you're dealing with sexual dysfunction is a perfectly understandable and normal response. But whatever the sexual dysfunction, if it impedes libido and makes sex difficult or impossible, it is incumbent upon that spouse to seek and follow medical treatments. All three of us writing this book have been treated for sexual pain at one time or another, so we are not telling you to do anything we have not done ourselves. Dilators, internal massages, perineal stretches, the works-- it's not fun, but it gets the job done.

I'm gonna have to disagree with this.

I used to have vaginismus (a medical condition where the vagina involuntarily closes itself, making penetration very painful or impossible). One of my main "hot takes" about vaginismus which I've blogged about is, this is not necessarily something you need to get treatment for. Vaginismus means you can't easily put things in your vagina- this is only a problem if you want to put things in your vagina. Besides that, it's not a problem at all.

And I'm glad that I found the asexual community- a group of people dedicated to analyzing and categorizing all of our feelings on what we really want out of sex and relationships- rather than finding a doctor who could tell me how to change my body to be good enough for a man.

The short version of the story is, I did a bunch of trial-and-error on my own (involving masturbating and sex toys) and eventually I did figure out a way I could manage to have PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex without pain (though it didn't always work)- and along the way, figured out some other things that worked better for me than PIV. (And it's great that I figured those things out!) And then when I gave birth to my baby, I guess that cured the vaginismus and now it's not a problem at all any more.

It's really good that I was able to figure out what I actually wanted, instead of approaching it like "I need to find a doctor who can help me meet the heteronormative standards of what I'm supposed to be doing as a wife." And... well that's basically what "The Great Sex Rescue" is saying here- if you have medical reasons why you can't do PIV like you're supposed to, then you need to get treatment so you can do PIV like you're supposed to. Eww, no. Figure out what you actually want.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being too negative about doctors, when I blog about vaginismus. Let me clarify this: If you are coming at it from a place of confidently knowing what you want, then treatment from a doctor can be a very useful tool, if that's what you want. But back then, I was definitely not in a position where it would have been useful for me. I was so "pure" I had never even used my hand to feel around "down there" and get a sense of the basic geometry. All I knew was I wasn't supposed to have sex or know anything about sex- and even when I rejected that belief, I still had this weird idea that "monogamy" means I shouldn't investigate my own body by myself... and then sex didn't "work"- well of course sex didn't "work", I had no idea what I was even trying to do. I assumed it would just happen "naturally." And when I asked doctors for help- because I did ask doctors for help, but they were all useless- they told me "just relax" and other things that very much did not help me to realize that I needed to figure out what *I* wanted. If one of them had diagnosed me with vaginismus and given me a set of dilators, I would have approached it like, "okay I still have no idea what I'm even trying to do, but if I follow the doctor's instructions about these dilators, then I can be good enough to have sex with my partner correctly." Which, no, don't do that. Instead, figure out what *you* actually want.

But, if you're coming at it from a place of "I've analyzed the pros and cons of being able to have PIV sex, and I think this is something that would benefit me" then yeah, go ahead and get help from a doctor. Probably more efficient than the trial-and-error that I did. (And I can't speak for anyone else's situation- maybe some people's sexual medical issues can't be solved without an actual doctor's help.) But I needed to do that trial-and-error, because my only other option was just going along with what everyone was telling me I needed to do to have sex correctly.

(And if you feel it's worth it to work on the vaginismus issue so you can have PIV for your partner's sake, well, sure, if that's your decision, then that's valid- but is your partner also going to great effort to make sure you are getting the kind of intimacy that's important to you? They should! If you are literally changing your body for them, are they making it clear that they understand and value that? They should! Or are they treating it like, you fail to meet the bare-minimum requirements for being married, so you better get that fixed as soon as possible, and they are being a saint for putting up with your inadequacies? Oh YIKES.)

Anyway, "The Great Sex Rescue" doesn't see it that way. Their view is, if you're married, you need to have PIV sex, and if you aren't able to have PIV sex, then you need to get medical treatment so that you can. No! I have big news: Even if you're straight and married, you don't need to have PIV sex! If you want to have sex, there are other ways to have sex, did you know that?

I've actually seen comments, in the comment section of the "Bare Marriage" blog (ie, the blog written by Sheila Gregoire and the other authors of "The Great Sex Rescue"), where men are saying things like "PIV sex is so painful for my wife, I can't possibly ask her to do that, so we just do other sexual things instead." I'm very happy to see men saying things like that! You don't need to do PIV, even if you're straight and married, and honestly if PIV is painful then you definitely SHOULDN'T do it- but good news, there are plenty of other sex things you can do! (Also, I think those men's wives would benefit from learning what vaginismus is- it's likely that they don't even know it's a real medical phenomenon and there are treatments for it. Once they know what it is, they can weigh the pros and cons of getting treatment, and make the decision that works for them.)

Here's another example from "The Great Sex Rescue"- an anecdote that comes from a comment on their blog or survey:

My husband doesn't really care that he can't get an erection. He just shrugs it off as, "Well, I tried, but it just isn't working," and that's good enough for him. His doctor gave him blood pressure medication, and said, "It shouldn't be a problem now," and pushed us out the door. But it's still a problem, and my husband doesn't care. I'm barely forty, and we've been through a lot of stress, including the death of a child. We need this connection. Despite the fact that our sex life has never been fantastic, I'm not ready to be in a sexless marriage.

My first thought when I was reading this was, if the lack of erection is the problem, well there are sex toys you can buy which can serve as a replacement. But actually, I don't think that's the problem- it seems like the actual problem is the husband isn't really interested in participating in sex at all, even though it's really important to the wife. So if he's not even motivated enough to try harder to get an erection, he's likely also not motivated enough to use a sex toy to make his wife feel good.

But here's a thought experiment: Suppose you were having this problem, and I came along and said "well there are sex toys you can buy to serve as a replacement" and your reaction was "NO, absolutely NOT." First of all, okay, then don't do it, it's just a suggestion- this is all about figuring out what *you* want, and if you don't want to use a sex toy, then you shouldn't use a sex toy. And second, the fact that you are strongly rejecting my suggestion is actually a very useful thing- it gets you one step closer to figuring out what you actually want. See, now we have a bit of information that we didn't have before: in your opinion, there is something about using a dildo which is incredibly *different* than if it's your partner's actual body, and that difference is very important to you. Great, this is extremely useful information! Now ask yourself, specifically, what about it is the key difference, for you? If you can articulate an answer to that question, you're well on your way to being able to communicate with your partner about what you actually want, and from there you can work out something that can work for both of you.

It shouldn't just be one partner saying "I want sex" and the other saying "I don't want sex" and concluding there's just nothing that can be done. (Or, concluding that the "I don't want sex" partner is the one in the wrong, like "The Great Sex Rescue" is doing in scenario 1.) "Sex" can be so many different things. Intimacy can be so many different things. There is plenty of opportunity to find overlap in your preferences, and exclude the aspects that you don't like.

Now, I should say here that I'm a sex-favorable asexual. Most aces are not sex-favorable- they may be sex-indifferent or sex-repulsed instead. So maybe I'm portraying this too optimistically, and in reality it may be the case that sex-repulsed/ sex-indifferent aces won't be able to find a way to be compatible with a partner who wants sex. I personally don't know- feel free to leave a comment if you are sex-repulsed or sex-indifferent.

I definitely don't want anyone to take this to mean "see, aces CAN find a way to be okay with having sex" and then try to pressure someone into sex based on that. No, that's not what I said. I said that if you really get into the specific details about what you do or don't like about sex, and what kind of intimacy is meaningful to you, you are likely to find some workable overlap with your partner. I didn't say that overlap is necessarily sex.

My view on this is influenced by what I've read from the kink/BDSM community about using checklists to find interests that you and your partner have in common, and plan your "scene" based on that. It's a very logical idea- you have a list of a whole bunch of elements which may or may not be included in the actions you do with each other, and for each item on the list, you can mark yes/no/maybe. Then you compare your list with your partner's, and make a plan- anything you both marked "yes", you definitely do, and if there are some things that one person really wants, and the other person doesn't care one way or the other, then yeah sure include those too. Etc. And the things on the list can be "adventurous" sexual things, but they could also be mundane things, like, to what extent do you want to keep some of your clothes on? Do you want the lights on or off? Do you want to cuddle?

(But... for people from an evangelical background, who are taught that it's "sinful" to think deeply about what you want, and express those desires and expect people to care about them... yeah, I know my advice here isn't possible, if you're coming from that mindset. So. That's the real problem.)

Even though I've never literally filled out such a list, or done BDSM stuff, this is basically the framework I'm using. It makes so much sense! Which specific elements are important to you, and which do you want to avoid- and I don't mean just sex itself, I also mean things like, maybe there's some other kind of intimacy that's important to you, like you want your partner to read a novel out loud to you, so you can both enjoy it together. If that's important to you, then your partner should treat it as a high priority. Society expects people to treat sex as a high priority if their partner wants sex- well, how can Partner B expect sex from Partner A, while not making any effort to do the kinds of intimacy that Partner A values? Why does society treat Partner B's "need" for sex as more real?

Anyway, I wasn't intending to make this post "here's my advice for how to make an ace/allo relationship sexually compatible" because I think that's more complicated and difficult than what I'm presenting here. I just want to give advice for some of the scenarios in "The Great Sex Rescue," where people don't seem to have even attempted to ask themselves the questions "What do I actually want from sex? Which aspects of it are important to me?"

"The Great Sex Rescue" is basically saying, [this is my paraphrase, not an actual quote] "If you're married, you have to have heteronormative PIV sex, and if there are issues that are stopping you from having heteronormative PIV sex, you need to work through those issues, and then you need to have heteronormative PIV sex, this is a requirement if you are married." Which, ugh, no. Why on earth do you need to have sex, just because you're married? Why on earth do you need to have PIV? Why? There's no reason why it has to be that way. Now, if you *want* it to be that way, then yes, that would be a reason, that would make sense. So figure out what you want.

As I was reading this chapter, getting more and more frustrated with it, I thought to myself, "This is basically saying, 'Instead of being required to have sex because men need it, you're required to have sex because you have to as part of being married.'" And then, lo and behold, I get to the end of the chapter, where there's a little summary, and it literally says this:

Instead of saying, "You need to make sex a priority because your spouse needs it," say, "Sex is vital to a healthy marriage. Make it a priority so you don't miss out on God's blessings for both of you."

Oh COME ON.

Anyway. So. Well that's chapter 8 of "The Great Sex Rescue." I'd like to say, in my opinion, being queer is about figuring out your own identity and what you want. Knowing yourself. I'm so glad I'm queer.

---

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

Related:

Vaginismus Is Not A Problem, In And Of Itself

Miss me with your "we are all sexually broken" hot takes. I'm asexual. 

Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality 

Reasons 

And this link (via redbeardace): WANT/WILL/WON’T LIST (specifically written for aces)

Blogaround

Merry Christmas everyone!

-----

1. Power Banks: How Businesses Are Leading the Charge (December 20) An article about the little vending-machine-type things where you can rent power banks from, to charge your phone, at various little stores in Shanghai. I live in Shanghai, and yeah I think it's great how power banks are available to rent everywhere. And very cheap too- I can charge my phone for an hour or however long, for just a few yuan (about 1 dollar).

Also from Sixth Tone: As China Shivers, a Hot Debate Over Risks of Food Delivery (December 22)

2. Most people don’t realize how much progress we’ve made on climate change (November 27, via) "On the one hand, that’s not yet good enough to meet the target set in the Paris agreement. On the other hand, climate policies and clean technologies deployed over just the past eight years have already erased a full degree Celsius of global warming from the future world in 2100."

3. Journal Club: Gender Detachment (December 21) "Almost all of them, when asked, provided a specific gender identity label, but when prompted, described feeling detached from their gender."

4. Love Songs (December 20) Very useful graph from xkcd!

5. Missions, Race, and Me (November 14) "White American Christians were organizing and raising money and literally building corporation-like entities and taking months-long ship voyages and even dying of malaria in some places—oh and seriously abusing their own children but I’m not even going to get into that—to go and “serve” non-white people elsewhere in the world while AT THE VERY SAME TIME, IN THEIR VERY OWN COUNTRY, LITERALLY THEIR VERY OWN FOLK were lynching black people and generally doing everything they possibly could to disenfranchise and pillage and steal and discriminate against people of color of all kinds and generally behaving like really sh*tty human beings with very few exceptions."

6. Christian College Recovers After Campus-Wide Sex Week (December 19) "Those of you who don’t have personal life experience within the white evangelical subculture might think that the phrase 'Holy Sexuality' is a little bit cringe-y, but let me assure you that for those who have lived within this subculture, that’s not the case. It’s incredibly cringe-y."

One thing I will say, though, is that in this article and in a lot of other articles I've seen criticizing Christopher Yuan, Yuan's statement that "the opposite of homosexuality is holiness" is being misrepresented. (I have seen him speak in person, a loooong time ago, and even back then he was using this catchphrase. Back when I was an evangelical I thought it was very profound.) I've seen people on the internet assuming that he means "straight people are holy" and being mad about that- but that's not what he means. What he means is, for people who "struggle with same-sex attraction", the point isn't to become straight (because being straight also leads to sexual sin!), the point is to become holy. Like, it's okay if you're still not straight- but you definitely can't ID as gay! If you're not straight, you just have to repress your sexuality and try to be "holy" instead.

So, uh, I very much disagree with Yuan. But also I just wanted to point out that criticizing him for saying that straight people are automatically holy is a misinterpretation of what he's saying.

7. Finally, The EU Is Banning Fashion’s Dirty Secret: Destroying Unsold Goods (December 7, via) "The question of what happens to these unsold goods if they are not destroyed is yet to be answered. 'Will they be shipped around the world? Will they be reused as deadstock or shredded and downcycled? Will outlet stores have an abundance of stock to sell?' asks Grogan."

8. We were personally victimized by James Somerton (December 13, via) "So a combination of the fact that the projects you pitched to us that were allegedly in process, that allegedly had two Asexual characters, are just gone — you’re not working on them — you’re supposedly working on something else new and shiny, but the only thing you’ve actually done that you’ve told us that costs money is you’ve moved to a big city? What on earth?"

Also related: This 1-hour-42-minute video from Todd in the Shadows, I Fact-Checked The Worst Video Essayist On YouTube (December 4) Wow, I am very impressed by how much time Todd spent fact-checking. 

Blogaround

1. First Amendment protects satanic display in Iowa, but GOP lawmaker took abuse for saying so (December 12, via) Yessss, Representative Dunwell is saying that he *personally* does not like the satanic display in the Iowa State Capitol, but by law we have freedom of religion and that means the government cannot and should not decide which religious displays are okay and which are not. This is my favorite part: "The display is an inanimate object that has no real power in and of itself. We have nothing to fear."

And then an update on that: If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine (December 15) 

2. Laudatory categories (December 13) "In politics, people are quite committed to the idea that their own political ideology is the good stuff, and the stuff that isn’t good doesn’t count."

3. Real vs Artificial Christmas Trees: Which is Killing Us Faster? (December 15) "Overall, those are the reasons why most sustainability experts say that a real tree is better for the environment than a plastic tree." Yes, really great to have actual numbers to attach to questions like this. I think people's tendency is to think "real trees are wasteful because you only use it a few weeks and then throw it away, artificial trees are sustainable" but that's not *automatically* true- you have to do the math. 

I saw a similar site recently which calculates whether your carbon footprint is bigger for using disposable or cloth diapers for your baby- it depends on a lot of factors! Reusable is not automatically "more sustainable."

And I've also seen discussion in some mom groups about "I bought a big sack with my child's name on it, to put her Christmas gifts in so we don't need wrapping paper. Wrapping paper is so wasteful." Well, I don't know if buying a bag that you use for many years is actually better or not- you have to do the math. Depends on how many years you use it, and how much wrapping paper (and what kind of wrapping paper) you would have used otherwise, etc.

4. Meghan Trainor gets candid about painful intercourse and vaginismus diagnosis (April 27) "I thought that every woman walking around was always in pain during and after sex. I was like, ‘Doc, are you telling me that I could have sex and not feel a single bit of pain?’" Oh my goodness that's so real. 

I missed this news when it happened back in April. Glad to see more people are talking about vaginismus.

Also this: Meghan Trainor’s comments about painful sex helped me realise I had vaginismus (May 10)

5. Greedflation: corporate profiteering ‘significantly’ boosted global prices, study shows (December 7, via) Recently I've heard people talking about "greedflation" which means companies are raising prices and causing inflation just because they want more profits and not because their costs are actually higher- and to me this explanation doesn't add up. Wouldn't the market correct for that? If that's really what's happening, wouldn't it create an opportunity for other companies to swoop in and set their own prices more reasonably, and attract all the customers away from these "greedflation" companies? So I didn't really believe that "greedflation" was a real thing.

(Also this seems to be a US thing. It's not happening in China. So I don't have direct experience about it.)

Well this article has some actual data to back it up. Specifically, the actual numbers show that profits have grown much faster than wages and other business costs. So, I guess there is something to this "greedflation" concept- though I still feel like there's a lot that doesn't add up. Why is this happening *now* specifically, when surely companies would always like to raise their prices and get higher profits? (Like this is talked about as if suddenly these companies had this amazing idea that they had totally never thought of before, "hey let's raise prices for no reason, just because we want to.") And why isn't the market fixing the problem on its own?

(Maybe in the long run, the market will fix this, but in the short term this happened because of the societal disruption caused by the pandemic?)

6. How Can This Sudoku Be Real? (December 11) 1-hour-19-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, very interesting ruleset. I like this one because you have to spend a lot of time thinking about what's even possible under the ruleset, before you can even start the sudoku.

7. More Chinese Fathers Helping, Yet ‘Widowed Parenting’ Persists (December 18) "The data shows a significant disparity in caregiving roles: About 80% of children are dropped off and picked up from school by their mothers or grandparents, while only 7% primarily receive this support from their fathers."

And these ones also from Sixth Tone:

Amid Rescue Efforts in Quake-Hit Gansu, a Race Against Time and Cold (December 19) 

Meet Rural China’s ‘Wonder Woman’ (December 19)

8. The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. (November 22, via) "Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of 'divisive concepts' about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers."

9. Jonathan Majors Guilty of Harassment and Assault (December 18) [content note: domestic violence] He's the actor that plays the villain Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- but, not anymore.

10. Thailand to legalize same-sex marriage (December 13, via) Great!

11. They just won a $148M verdict against Giuliani. Now they’re suing him again. (December 18) "Three days after a jury delivered the massive decision over Giuliani’s false claims that the pair engaged in fraud in the 2020 election, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss filed a new lawsuit Monday seeking to block Giuliani from repeating those allegations — as he repeatedly did during and after last week’s trial."

12. A nation where there is no refuge to seek (December 19) "The sick and cynical strategy that opponents of reproductive freedom will use is definitely going to be to blame doctors for failing to perform medically necessary abortions, while refusing to at any point withdraw the threat of prosecution."

Also from Lawyers, Guns, Money: Exceptions to abortion bans are a fraud (December 12) "'I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all,' said Duane."

That happened to me too

Cover page for the "Ace in the UK Report." Image source.

[content note: medical trauma, vaginismus, explicit descriptions of gynecological exams]

The Ace in the UK Report was published recently, about problems that asexual/ ace-spectrum people commonly face. The whole thing is worth reading- it covers a bunch of topics- negative experiences with coming out, discrimination at work, discrimination in healthcare settings, etc. In particular, pages 24-25 are about how it's difficult for aces to access IVF- I had seen that mentioned in lists of examples of legal discrimination against asexuals, but I didn't know any details about it, so I'm glad to see this report talking about it. And page 26, "Smear tests"- that's what I was to talk about here.

"Smear tests"- or, typically I've heard the term "pap smear"- maybe "smear test" is the British term for it, and "pap smear" is what Americans call it. This is a test where the doctor has to stick a tool into the patient's vagina, get a sample of cells from the cervix, and then the sample will be tested for cervical cancer.

Many participants cited confusion and discomfort in regard to smear tests or cervical screenings. There are unclear guidelines surrounding who requires these tests, as well as a lack of support for asexual patients and those who are not sexually active or have not had penetrative sex. While cervical cancer is more common in those over the age of 25, there might also be an assumption that those over that age are sexually active and thus more likely to contract the HPV virus. 

This issue is more likely to impact asexual women and other people with vaginas, and negative experiences – as well as a lack of clarity – in this area could lead to asexual people missing necessary medical checks. 

One ace respondent said that a smear test caused her to experience “excruciating pain” that left her in tears, as she hadn’t had sex before. Beforehand, she had received a leaflet that said that the experience might be “uncomfortable.” She had told her doctors previously that she wasn’t sexually active but felt that she wasn’t believed. She was still made to take pregnancy tests, and one doctor once said, 

“You’re a twenty-five-year-old woman of course you’re sexually active.” 

As she has used birth control since she was 13 years old, she says that “every doctor” assumes it’s because she’s been having sex from a young age. When she experienced pain during her smear test, the practitioner was at a loss of what to do and “didn’t have time for it.” She felt that they were being judgemental, even after she explained why it was painful, and it made her not want to have a smear test again. 

Another respondent was told that if you’re not sexually active, then you don’t need a smear test, but she was made to have one when visiting a hospital for another issue. She says that they made a point of needing “virgin equipment” for her and that she felt judged by a nurse after admitting that she hadn’t had a smear test before because she hadn’t had sex before. Afterwards, her gynaecologist referred to her not having had sex before as her “complex history.” 

At the age of fifty-five, one participant said that she was unsure whether she was supposed to have smear tests because of her asexuality. She has asked doctors and said that even if they don’t know whether it’s needed but she often feels “pressurised” into having one. “It’s a terrible situation to be in.”

She has said that doctors “don’t know how to deal with asexuals […] We might not be getting the support that we should be getting or having the test that we should have, or they should know for sure that we don’t need to have them.”

One participant was hesitant to get a smear test because they hadn’t had sex before. Their nurse was “really concerned that I’d never had sex before,” and reportedly said“Why have you never had sex before? That’s not right,” and referred them to a psychosexual therapist. 

I ... yeah.

Yeah, that's what it's like. Especially the "excruciating pain" part.

I've blogged about how I used to have vaginismus, and how most of my experiences with gynecologists have been bad. (The "Ace in the UK Report" doesn't mention the word "vaginismus"; I kind of wish they did, because that's the keyword you need in order to find more information about what's actually going on with your body.) Vaginismus is a health condition where the vagina muscles involuntarily close it up, so that penetration is extremely painful, difficult, or even impossible. 

For me, vaginismus was connected to my asexuality, but I had never seen this talked about in terms of "this is a problem that AFAB aces may commonly have." (Oh and on top of that, at first I didn't want to blog about vaginismus because I thought it would "invalidate" my asexuality. A lot of "ace 101" resources say things like "Asexuality only means not experiencing sexual attraction- it doesn't mean there's anything physically wrong with your body. Aces can physically experience arousal and all that stuff the same as anyone else- their bodies work the same as everyone else!" And here I was with a medical problem that seemed to be connected to, or caused by, or causing, my asexuality.) I've blogged about my own experiences, and I've seen a few other aces blogging about having similar bad experiences with gynecologists, and I've had aces leave comments on my blog saying "I have vaginismus too." I have suspected there is a connection, and I have suspected that vaginismus is more common among aces than in the general population, but I can't make claims like that with such big generalizations, because I don't know, I only know my own experience. This "Ace in the UK Report" is the first time I've seen this discussed as being connected to asexuality in a generalized way.

(I mean, the "Ace in the UK Report" section about this is just anecdotes rather than overall statistics, so this still doesn't show evidence that having bad times with gynecologists is *more common* for aces. But it makes sense- aces are likely to have little or no experience with vaginal penetration, and gynecologists are approaching pap smears with the assumption that vaginal penetration is totally normal and no big deal to the patient.)

When I read this, in the report, I felt sad, for 2 reasons:

1. This was a really bad thing that happened to me, and I don't want anyone else to experience it because it was bad.
2. If it's really true that this is a more common problem for aces, then we can imagine an alternate universe where this information is more widely known, and I could have known that I was at risk for having painful pap smears/ pelvic exams, and I could have protected myself better.

Yeah... it wasn't just that "a bad thing happened", but that I had no framework to even understand what had happened. Because of purity culture, I thought "I've never had sex [or, later, 'I've only had sex with 1 person'] and therefore there can't possibly be anything wrong with my body. Everyone starts out inexperienced and this is the best-case scenario, their body is pure and perfect, and then having sex with lots of people is what causes problems." And I thought that even though there's no reason *I* would need to know anything about my own genitals (because I'm a "good girl"), the doctor would surely understand all of that, they would know how pelvic exams are supposed to go, because they're a doctor.

Approaching it with those assumptions, I couldn't imagine there was anything wrong with me, or anything wrong with what the doctors were doing, and therefore my conclusion was that pelvic exams and pap smears are just supposed to hurt like hell. That's the way it is.

(I know I've mentioned this on my blog before- one day I happened to be reading Planned Parenthood's web page about pelvic exams, and it said it's not supposed to hurt, and I was just COMPLETELY SHOCKED. That was trauma- finding this out after I had suffered through it multiple times, and thought it was normal, and it turns out it's not, and I deserved better.)

But even though I didn't have a framework to actually understand what was happening back then, part of me still knew that it was right for me to respond by taking steps to protect myself, rather than just naively wandering into a doctor's office and letting them do whatever they wanted. I started to set boundaries. First, I decided that if a doctor hurt me or did not respect my consent (though I wasn't able to put it into those words), then I wouldn't go to see that same doctor ever again. Later, I decided to always bring my husband with me. And so on, gradually building up a methodology where I prioritize my ability to give informed consent- and revoke consent if necessary.

It wasn't until after I gave birth vaginally and then discovered that sex wasn't difficult any more, that I was able to see the whole picture. That's how I figured out that I used to have vaginismus- I was only able to figure it out once I no longer had it, because the difference was so huge, it made it so obvious that something had been very wrong before. Suddenly, my experience of sex started to be similar to the ways I had heard people talking about sex... they talk about vaginal sex like it's something that women desire, something that feels good for women, and I had always been so completely boggled by that. I had always wondered, "why doesn't anyone talk about how you need to very very carefully insert the penis at a very exact specific angle because if you get it wrong, it will hurt so bad you have to just give up on sex and try again a different day?" and other things along those lines. I guess for most people who have a vagina, that hasn't happened to them. The things that defined my entire experience of what sex was- apparently for most people, those things just do not happen.

(I say "see the whole picture" but actually there are still some parts where I'm missing information. I really would like to know how patients normally respond to pelvic exams, and what the doctor is expecting to happen. [And why they always act so completely confused when I initiate a conversation about consent before allowing them to do anything. I don't actually use the word "consent" because that would come across too confrontational; I say stuff along the lines of "if it hurts, will you stop?" and they act like they never in a million years expected anything like that to happen. WHICH COMPLETELY PROVES HOW NECESSARY IT IS TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION.] I want to know what is taught in gynecologist school about consent, pain, and vaginismus.)

Anyway, here's what I want to say. My advice. What you need to know before your first gynecologist visit. If you have no experience with vaginal penetration, then maybe it will all be fine, or maybe it will be painful. Since you have no experience, you don't have the information to know which way it will go. Definitely do some investigating on your own, so you can find that out. [Explicit description follows] Put lube on your fingers and try to put 2 fingers in your vagina. (If you don't know what lube is- it's also called "personal lubricant" and it's in the same section of the grocery store where condoms are. Probably called the "family planning" section or something like that, near the pharmacy. Here's a link to one such product. Oh and also, if you end up using A LOT of lube, then you should wipe it off when you're done and also go to the bathroom and pee, so you won't get a urinary tract infection.) If you're able to do it without an issue, then probably the doctor's appointment will be fine. If you can't do it at all, you're going to have problems with the doctor. If you can do it after spending a lot of time very very carefully trying it- well, this is okay, at least you know it's possible, but this is still going to be an issue at the doctor's because the doctor isn't going to be that careful, they just charge in as if vaginal penetration is no problem for you at all. So you will have to have a serious talk with the doctor first, and not let them do that. Make them do it in a careful way.

I wish I didn't have to write this kind of explicit stuff on the internet- but if I don't tell people this, then who will? And I feel like maybe I'm being too negative about doctors- hey, maybe your experience will be totally different from mine, maybe you'll have a doctor who prioritizes consent and knows vaginismus is a real thing. But... yeah I hope it doesn't come to this, but my advice is to be prepared to have to protect yourself. Even to the point of leaving without doing the exam at all, if the doctor doesn't take these concerns seriously.

And maybe someone is reading this and saying "I'm just a sweet innocent girl, and here's Perfect Number telling me to *gasp* put my fingers in my vagina, that's so rebellious, so sinful, there's no way I could do that." First of all, it's not rebellious or sinful- it's your own body, why would you not be allowed to do that? And second, okay, if you don't want to, then you don't have to do it- I very much understand that. If you don't want to, then there's no reason you would ever *need* to put something in your vagina. But here's the important bit: If you've never done it to yourself, definitely don't let someone else do it to you. If you're not willing to put fingers in your vagina (you can wear disposable gloves if that makes you feel better) then that's fine- but cancel your gynecologist appointment too. Don't go in there not knowing if vaginal penetration is painful for you or not. Don't do that.

Okay let's run through a couple other misconceptions that someone (me) might have. Maybe you're like "well of course there's no reason that *I* would have to know anything about my own genitals, because I am pure, I am a good girl, and of course the doctor is an expert in this so they will totally understand what's up with my body." No, this is not how it works. The doctor is an expert in vaginas *in general* but if your situation is very different from the average person, the doctor might not handle it right at all. And, by the way, not having any experience with vaginal penetration IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE AVERAGE PERSON.

And... I was "pure"... I thought "so what if my experience is different from the average person? It's because I'm morally superior. We're not SUPPOSED to have sex before marriage." And that meant it was impossible for me to consider the idea that being "pure" could be a problem.

Continuing on with the misconceptions that someone (me) might have: Maybe you're like "well, when my partner and I attempt to have penis-in-vagina sex, it's really confusing and difficult and I feel like there must be something I'm not understanding about it- but of course for the doctor it won't be like that, of course the doctor will totally understand how to put something in the vagina in a way that's not painful." You're like "well it's just because I didn't have good sex ed, I am having trouble figuring out how to have sex, but the doctor went to school for this so it will be fine." You're like "I don't even let me partner put his penis in, *I* put it in, because my partner doesn't know how to do it in a way that's not painful, but for the doctor that won't be an issue, surely the doctor will know how it works." Uh, no, this is all completely backwards. If you have a partner, and you're in a long-term sexual relationship with them, and they've taken the time to really care about you and understand you, AND they can't even figure out how vaginal penetration can work for you in a non-painful way, then a doctor (who is a stranger to you and who assumes this is not an issue at all) DEFINITELY will not be able to do it either- and they'll do a much worse job than your partner.

(Or, in other words, earlier in this post I said if you have no experience with vaginal penetration, then you don't know if it's painful for you or not- well if you DO have experience with vaginal penetration, and your experience is that it's always painful, well yeah then you can be certain you will have problems with gynecologists. Sorry I have to tell you that, but that's the truth.)

Wish I didn't have to write about this on the internet!

Anyway. I don't know if I'm really capable of giving good advice about this, because I only know my own experience. I have no idea if other girls and/or people with vaginas will face these same problems and traumas... I have no idea if my advice applies to other people besides me. But I just... I can't not talk about this, because these are the things *I* needed to know back then, and there was no one to tell me.

For me, this is related to my asexuality. And the "Ace in the UK Report" suggests that it could be a common issue for other aces too. That's... that makes me feel bad, because I don't want anyone else to experience the trauma that I did. So... so that's why I have to talk about it. Even if you have vaginismus, that shouldn't mean that doctors need to physically hurt you. Know your body and protect yourself.

---

Related:

On Gynecologists and Angry Turtles

Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus

Vaginismus Is Not A Problem, In And Of Itself

Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality 

How Pregnancy and Childbirth Changed My Asexuality (or, actually, A Post About Vaginismus) 

And a post from blogger thethreepennyguignol: TMI: Vaginismus, Me, and Why We Need to Talk Abut Female Sexual Dysfunction

Blogaround

1. Deciphering Dunhuang (December 2) "Compared to official histories like the 'Twenty-Four Histories,' which only record the political activities of emperors and generals, the Dunhuang manuscripts are mostly original records and archives, not pruned by ancient historians. They preserve many materials that would otherwise have been filtered out by historians, allowing us to understand the social life of ordinary people in ancient times. For example, humorous poems, perhaps written by copyists when they were bored."

Also from Sixth Tone: China’s Delivery Workers Are Hiring… More Delivery Workers (December 7)

Reminds me of when Aladdin said, "I have servants who go to the marketplace for my servants."

2. Mike Bickle, leader of IHOP movement, accused of sexual abuse (October 29) (This IHOP is the International House of Prayer- not the pancake one.) I have feelings about this, because... when I was evangelical, the impression I had of the International House of Prayer was that it was so good and holy. Basically, the whole idea of the International House of Prayer is that people "raise support" (ie, ask all their friends for money) to go and just pray there, like it's their full-time job. Like being a missionary, except you only pray, instead of actually interacting with people to help them and/or evangelize to them. And evangelicals were always saying "prayer is the most important thing", "we don't pray enough", etc- and then here was IHOP literally living out that belief. Admittedly, it kind of gave me vibes like it was a little bit loony, a little bit too fundie for my comfort level- but I didn't see anything actually bad about it- like, yes, we should pray all the time, right? Isn't that what everyone's always saying? Here are people who have enough faith to actually do that, even though it comes across as really weird (can you imagine asking your friends for money to sponsor you to just go pray all the time?).

And... you'd think, when someone spends all their time praying and really trying to know God and align themself with God, you'd think it would be very easy to NOT sexually abuse anyone. Like, how could you do that, if you're gonna have to go face God immediately after? 

How is it possible that someone could spend so much time sexually abusing people, in an environment that's so "godly"?

I mean, now I know the answer is this: These types of conservative religious environments aren't really about following God and living out the commands that God gives us. No no no, nothing like that at all. They are about control. They are about leaders who make all kinds of rules and then claim that those rules are directly from God, and God will punish you if you don't follow them (this is called taking the Lord's name in vain).

3. Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93 (December 1)

4. Carlton Pearson, Pastor Deemed a Heretic for Denying Hell, Dies at 70 (November 21)

The Slacktivist wrote about Pearson in this 2022 post: When concordance-ism eats itself 

5. Space Typography (December 4) From xkcd. Love this.

6. This Killer Sudoku Is "Ridiculous" (December 8) 1-hour-6-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, I am really impressed by this puzzle. It's just a normal killer sudoku, nothing fancy about the rules, but wow the logic to solve it is really complex and interesting.

7. What Kind Of Future Does De-Extinction Promise? (December 6) Very good article about venture capital companies making news with claims that they are doing "de-extinction." It's always about the really glamorous extinct animals, the mammoths, the dodos, etc, while nobody seems to care that "boring" species of animals are going extinct all the time.

"But I dread the future de-extinction heralds, one where we pick and choose which species will be imperfectly reanimated, where the future of biodiversity is funded by venture capital, and where these proxy animals or even merely the promises of them make headlines while living animals' extinctions do not."

8. Masters Of Their Domain (December 11) So... apparently a lot of "accountability groups" in evangelical culture are actually all about not masturbating. I think this is more of a thing for men in evangelical culture than for women- women who "struggle with masturbation" are just told that they're freaks because women supposedly don't "sin" in that way. 

I'm a woman and also very asexual, so I did not know about this until I started reading ex-evangelical blogs. (Though yes, when I was evangelical, I "struggled" a lot with my "sinful" romantic desires- I was unable to "guard my heart" and repress my romantic desires like I was supposed to, and I had a lot of angst about that.)

"These accountability groups aren’t holding one another accountable for bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, and gentleness. They’re never about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. And they’re certainly never about loosing the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, and breaking every yoke." Yes, PREACH.

9. Panera’s “Lemonade That Kills You” Is Really a Story About Our Broken Country (December 8) "In peer nations—like, for instance, the United Kingdom—the government imposes strict and consistent regulations on the front end: It requires warning labels on drinks with more than 150 mg of caffeine and bans the sale of these drinks to children under 16. In the U.S., by contrast, the FDA barely regulates caffeine: It does not require manufacturers to include caffeine on the ingredient list of many caffeinated beverages, let alone disclose the amount of caffeine on the label."

10. Texas Supreme Court rules against woman who sued for an emergency abortion (December 12) [content note: pregnancy loss] This whole thing is so awful and tragic, and the government of Texas is just making everything worse for no reason. 

Christmas Music Round-up

Heyyy it's that time of year, when I make a post with a bunch of my favorite Christmas songs.

Joy To The World - Whitney Houston

 

Blogaround

1. Eid Trees, Gingerbread Mosques, and the Multiplicity of Asian American Religious Life (November 27) "As the two reports reveal, Asian Americans embrace a religious and spiritual life characterized by multiple belonging, hybridity, and fluidity, as well as a skepticism and uncertainty about applying the label of 'religion' to their beliefs, practices, and identities."

Wow, love this article because of the way it talks about religion/spirituality in Chinese culture. It puts into words something that I always kind of wondered about but couldn't quite understand, having lived in China for 10 years. See, there are statistics that will tell you "most Chinese people are atheists", and there's the idea that the communist party is "officially" atheistic- and so, coming from an American background, I'm imagining "atheism" as in, skeptical, only believe things that have scientific evidence, totally not believing in anything spiritual at all, claiming that spiritual beliefs are just completely ridiculous and nonsensical- but then I came to China and I saw A LOT of things which looked very "religious" to me. Burning paper money during Chinese New Year, to send to relatives who are in heaven. Traditions about things you should or shouldn't do for "good luck"- there are a million of these- like which holidays you should or shouldn't get a haircut, paying a baby-name expert to find out what name to give your baby to give them a good life, don't take out the trash during Chinese New Year because that means you'll also be throwing away your success in the next year, don't cut up a pear to be shared by multiple people because 分梨 [fēn lí, split a pear] sounds like 分离 [fēn lí, separate]. And so on.

The linked article talks about how, in East Asian culture, it's very common for people to have these kind of spiritual beliefs, but they don't feel the need to be a member of an organized religion, so then they say they aren't religious. And they don't view it as an "identity" thing. Wow, this explains a lot.

2. Add to Heart: Single Seniors Looking for Love at IKEA (November 30) "She shares that someone once introduced her to a man who was financially secure and suggested they live together, with the caveat that if one of them were to fall ill, that person would go back to their own children to receive care. 'It’s laughable when I think about it,' Nannan says. 'In other words, while I’m still mobile, I’ll be your free housekeeper, do your laundry, and cook for you. But when I get sick, you want me to go back to my own kids. Are you out of your mind?'"

3. Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies (November 29) I've seen a lot of people on the internet celebrating his death, and I didn't really know much about him, so I didn't understand why. This article goes into a lot of detail explaining it- basically he helped to start wars in Cambodia, Vietnam, and other places, which led to millions of people dying.

In China, though, he's remembered positively for the work he did to improve the relationship between China and the US: Chinese people will remember Kissinger's important contribution to China-US ties (November 30)

4. Metal singer performs "Amazing Grace" (April 7) Oh my goodness, this is incredible, I love this so much.

5. That's My King Dr. S.M. Lockridge - [OFFICIAL] (2008) [content note: images of Jesus' crucifixion] I know I've shared this before, but I love it, so here it is again.

6. China's new visa-free policy sees over 2,000 visitors from 6 countries on inaugural day (December 2) Cool!

7. How the kink community taught me that sex doesn't exist (November 12, via) "Nobody looks at me strange for having limits around certain kinds of sexual contact, and I have in fact met many asexual people in the community."

8. Healthcare is harming asexual people: In conversation with Yasmin Benoit (November 22, via) [content note: medical trauma] "Following a similar pattern, other respondents spoke about having to go through smear tests, despite being uncomfortable doing so, since the tests can be especially painful and traumatic for people that have never had penetrative sex. One respondent described facing 'excruciating pain' during the test – even though she hadn’t had sex before, she was put through it anyway by her doctors, who didn’t believe her."

9. I laughed way too hard at this (source):

10. ‘Nothing to do with it’ (December 2) "The interview gets jumbled at this point as it becomes clearer that Ron DeSantis does not know what 'empathy' means"

"The Giving Manger" (gonna try this out with my kid)

Book cover for "The Giving Manger" by Allison Hottinger and Emily King. Image source.

So I recently bought the book The Giving Manger [affiliate link] for my son. (That link is for the set that includes the book and a small manger, but I bought just the book- don't have an Amazon link for that though.) This is an activity you can do with kids during the Christmas season, to teach them to help other people.

Basically, the book is about a family where the dad made a little wooden manger and said that throughout the month of December, any time they help people, they add a piece of straw to the manger, to get ready for baby Jesus. Because Jesus said, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me"- which means that helping other people is helping Jesus. (And, full disclosure, the idea that "helping other people is helping Jesus" is one of the most important Christian beliefs to me. Like I am SO HERE for this.)

I first heard about this activity from commenter 'Becca a year ago, and then I happened to come across this book, so yeah I'm gonna go ahead and try this with my son. He's preschool-age. We'll see what he thinks of it.

My initial thought, upon hearing about this activity, was that I don't really like the idea of... gamifying morality? Like I don't necessarily think it's good to conceptualize "doing the right thing" as ... counting up individual actions that you took? It should be more about your overall attitude towards other people. Having empathy and compassion because those are inherently good things. Helping other people because you believe that a world where people receive help for their problems is better than one where they don't. That sort of thing. Not like, doing "enough" good things to reach some personal "goal."

(Related to that: Is Christianity about how you as a individual can escape hell? Or is it about participating in building the kingdom of heaven on earth? Is the parable of the sheep and the goats meant to teach us how to get to heaven, or to teach us that we should help people who are in need? If something bad happens, but nobody can claim it's your fault, are you fine with that or does it still matter to you? Is sin bad because it separates the sinner from God, or because there is a victim who is hurt by it? Is it more important to not be called a racist, or to actually change society so that people do not suffer from the effects of racism? Even the idea of "helping other people is helping Jesus" can be seen as "gamifying morality"- shouldn't you help people simply because it's the right thing to do? [I have seen atheists criticizing Christians for that reason, but I disagree with the atheists there.])

But anyway, even though I don't think that counting up good deeds is a healthy mature adult way to view morality, I guess for children you have to start there. My son doesn't really have the concept of having compassion for people in a general abstract sense. So I guess to teach little kids about morality, you have to start out with very concrete actions they can do, and there has to be an obvious and immediate "payoff" to them.

So we'll try this out and see how it goes. Merry Christmas everybody~

---

Follow-up post: "The Giving Manger" Recap

---

Related:

Square Root's Advent Calendar 

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible