We Need Queer Theology

A rainbow, with the text "We're here, we're queer." Image source.

Last week, The Reformation Project published a post called Reform vs. Revolution: Distinguishing Affirming Theology From Queer Theology. A lot of queer Christians are unhappy about this; I am also unhappy about it.

Basically, it's a post (along with an embedded 1-hour youtube video of a talk by Matthew Vines) about why their organization does NOT support queer theology, but does affirming theology instead.

And I'd like to also share this link, which is a response from Billie, a trans woman: The Reformation Project and Queer Theology. Her response is definitely worth reading.

Okay let's talk about this, starting with:

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Who is Matthew Vines/ What is The Reformation Project?

Matthew Vines is a gay Christian. I first heard of him around 2012, when he posted a very long youtube video (which went viral) where he presents a biblical argument for acceptance of same-sex marriage. In 2015, he published a book called God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships [affiliate link]. And he started an organization called The Reformation Project, to advocate for inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church.

I haven't read "God and the Gay Christian", but I watched his viral video, back then, back when I was evangelical and trying to do the whole "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing. It influenced me a lot. The approach it takes towards reading the bible is thoroughly evangelical, which is how it was able to convince me. And by "thoroughly evangelical," I mean viewing the bible as the inerrant authority over our lives. We have to obey the bible, whether we like it or not, whether it makes sense or not. And therefore, we need to spend a lot of time very carefully studying ancient Greek and Hebrew words, to be really really sure we can figure out what the biblical writers were saying- we need to do this because we are required to follow the rules they wrote for us, those thousands of years ago.

Vines's argument, in that 2012 video, is about carefully analyzing the specific bible verses which mention homosexuality, as well as other bible verses which he also feels are relevant to this issue. Painstakingly going through different possible interpretations of Greek words, bringing in historical references about ancient Roman culture/ ancient near-eastern culture and how they viewed homosexuality, and so on, and finally arriving at the conclusion that, in our modern society, same-sex marriage is acceptable and blessed by God.

That's how you need to make the argument, if you're talking to evangelicals. And back then, it was definitely what I needed to hear.

But, as I've said on my blog many times, I now view this as a really weird way to read the bible. Like, we need to spend a lot of time studying ancient Greek words, to find out if we're allowed to treat gay people decently. Come on. You shouldn't need to do that- you should just treat people decently regardless of what the bible says. 

Like, oh, good news everyone, we spent an incredible amount of time studying ancient Roman homosexual practices, and we've come to the conclusion that you actually ARE allowed to accept your gay friends. Phew!

Come on.

You shouldn't need to read the bible to figure that out. You should just be able to see with your own two eyes how good and life-giving it is when queer people are accepted for who they are, and how harmful it is when they are required to repress themselves.

So- and this is something I've said a lot in my review of "The Great Sex Rescue"- I believe it can be a very helpful and valuable first step, for people coming from an evangelical background, to present arguments like "The bible wasn't actually saying [oppressive teaching that evangelicals believe]. It was saying [something much more just/feminist/inclusive]." It's a first step, but I hope that after that, people can move past that kind of thinking. Quit being bound by what the bible says, and trust your own God-given conscience to tell you what's loving and what's not. The bible is wrong sometimes!

Anyway, I haven't been following what Vines has been up to in recent years. Maybe he has moved beyond that evangelical way of reading the bible, the "same-sex marriage is okay because I studied a lot of ancient Greek words."

Oh. No. Oh. Well we can look at the statement that The Reformation Project put out, along with the embedded video where Vines gives a talk about why he opposes queer theology. Oh. Has he moved on from that evangelical way of reading the bible? Nope, he hasn't.

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What The Reformation Project has to say about queer theology

(The article itself is pretty short- I'm getting most of this from the embedded video.)

Vines explains that "queer theology" doesn't just mean "queer people doing theology" or "theology that is inclusive of queer people" or something along those lines. No, it specifically means queer theory being applied to theology. And queer theory is a specific field of study which isn't simply about accepting queer people; rather, it's about questioning all of society's rules about what's "normative" and what's not. It's about breaking down boundaries, questioning lines that society has drawn about what kinds of behaviors are okay or not okay.

And, yes, he's right, that's what queer theology is.

He gives a lot of examples which are shocking and/or offensive. Queer theologians saying that the Trinity is like an orgy. That anonymous sex is an example of hospitality. Etc.

And he says, no, this is NOT what Christians believe. This is NOT what most LGBTQ Christians believe. He says The Reformation Project opposes queer theology. They do affirming theology instead. (I suppose "affirming theology" is that evangelical-style "we've studied a lot of Greek words and we've concluded that same-sex marriage is okay." Yeah I'm not here for that.)

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Here's what I have to say about queer theology

In 2018, I published a blog post reviewing the book Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick S. Cheng. My post was called Queer Theology (is not about being right), because that was how I made sense of what the book was saying: It isn't about "here's the correct interpretation of the bible", but instead, "here's a loose analogy between the bible and queerness, if you feel it's meaningful then good for you, but you don't have to believe it if you don't want to."

Coming from an evangelical background, I had obviously been expecting the "here's what the bible Really Means" kind of approach. Instead, the book "Radical Love" was a bunch of extremely flimsy analogies like "the Holy Spirit is like gaydar" (???????? what on earth).

It's not about putting forth logical arguments to support doctrines which you then expect everyone to be convinced by. It's about questioning for the sake of questioning- why would God have to be male? why would sex in marriage be more moral than sex in other contexts? what if Jesus and Lazarus were lovers? etc. You don't have to agree with any of this stuff- but the act of questioning is itself valuable.

And yes, there were A LOT of things in the book "Radical Love" that I very much did NOT agree with. (Many of the same things that Vines mentions in his talk- he included a bunch of quotes from "Radical Love.") And I found it to be not inclusive of aces. There were parts that were very sexually explicit, there were parts that assumed that emotional intimacy is necessarily sexual, there were parts that made analogies between sex and religious concepts- and I'm way too asexual to understand what those analogies were trying to say.

But my takeaway was, Cheng wasn't saying that we have to agree with all those things. He's saying, for some queer people, this is a way they interact with their Christian faith, and, good for them. 

And it's good that people are doing this work, questioning the things that society views as normative. It's good that queer theologians want to take things farther than just "gay people can have monogamous marriages, just like straight people" which is where The Reformation Project is.

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Why I'm not happy with The Reformation Project's statement

To me, it's not a problem that The Reformation Project is taking an evangelical approach toward bible interpretation. I mean, it's a problem in the sense that it's a really bizarre way to read the bible and/or figure out morality- but hey, I understand that's how evangelicals think. Vines seems to be evangelical and thinks that way. (To clarify, I don't actually know if he identifies as evangelical. But watching his embedded video, I feel like, I actually really like him, he's the best kind of evangelical.) Sure, okay. It's good to have some queer people in that space, making those kinds of arguments in ways that will matter to an evangelical audience.

As I see it, the problem is that they're putting out a statement specifically to say that queer theology is bad and they don't agree with it. Like, why? Why even bring this up? Why not just keep doing what they're doing, and let queer theologians keep doing what they're doing too? Why not just accept that we're all advocating queer inclusion, and we use different strategies which enable us to reach different audiences?

It comes across like he's saying "don't worry, evangelicals, we're not like that." Like some evangelical Christians are going to read about queer theology and then they'll think all queer Christians believe those things, and OH NO we can't have that. We have to make sure evangelicals know we're the *good* gay Christians. (I've seen people on twitter calling this out as being about respectability, and, yeah, it does come across like that.)

Weirdly, this comes back to what I was saying about the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" in my post What do we do with Christians who are never going to accept queer people?: "You need to throw queer people under the bus, in order to be seen as a good evangelical." Weird, because Vines and the Christians at The Reformation Project are queer- but they're making this statement specifically to separate themselves from other queer people who are seen as going too far.

Not cool. 

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Related:

Queer Theology (is not about being right)

What do we do with Christians who are never going to accept queer people? 

It Doesn’t Actually Matter What Jesus Said About Divorce

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And (under the "Read more") some insightful tweets responding to The Reformation Project's statement:

Blogaround

1. Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project (via) "In response, the Campaign for Southern Equality has launched the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project (STYEP), a new regional effort which provides rapid response support directly to the families of youth who are impacted by anti-transgender healthcare bans in the South. Through STYEP, and in close partnership with state and local organizations, we are providing grants, patient navigation support, and accurate information to impacted families to ensure that youth can access the care they need and deserve, even in the face of oppressive laws."

2. At a Loss for Words (2019, via) Wow this is WILD- apparently there is something called the "three-cueing method" for teaching kids to read, and it tells kids that when they come to an unfamiliar word, they shouldn't ACTUALLY READ THE ACTUAL WORD, they should use other incidental information to kinda guess what the word could be (picture, first letter of the word, etc). !!! WHAT!

The article is from 2019- maybe the situation is different now? Anyway the article says that instead, kids should be taught phonics. I guess that's how my school taught it when I was little- I remember spending a lot of time on how this letter makes this sound (or sometimes makes this other sound, etc) and how combinations of letters together would make a certain sound. I guess that's phonics. Mostly, though, I didn't need to use the "sounding it out" strategies, after memorizing how all the words are spelled. I just sometimes can't remember the spellings of "choose" and "chose" and so then I have to think to myself that the "oo" makes an "oo" sound and the "ose" has a silent e at the end that causes the single o to say "O".

3. Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot (February 17, via) "Air Canada 'does not explain why customers should have to double-check information found in one part of its website on another part of its website,' Rivers wrote."

4. Death, Lonely Death (February 19, via) "Voyager kept going for another 34 years after that photo.  It’s still going.  It has left the grip of the Sun’s gravity, so it’s going to fall outward forever."

And more about Voyager: NASA's interstellar Voyager 1 spacecraft isn't doing so well — here's what we know (February 16)

5. Reflecting on interdisciplinary journal clubbing (February 21) "While some of the [ace] journal club participants have backgrounds in social science, more broadly, we’re experts of a different sort, in that we’ve been directly experiencing it and have been discussing it with other people who directly experience it. We can tell when an argument doesn’t ring true, or if there are additional factors that the authors ignored."

6. "A man will say he's a feminist but he doesn't wipe the counters": Lyz Lenz on the beauty of divorce (February 20) "So who does that work when he 'forgets?' It was me, always me, coming in and being hit with the smell of rot and garbage. Sometimes it would fall, and there would be trash on the floor. We would have these fights and he would say, it's just a bag of trash, let it go. I cannot let it go. You show complete disregard for me as a person because you're not thinking about who has to do this."

7. Supreme Court Ethics: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (February 22) 30-minute video from John Oliver.

8. The Reformation Project and Queer Theology (February 24) "But to take revolution permanently off the table is—I don’t see how to avoid this conclusion—to chose the system over the wellbeing of individual marginalized people and that strikes me as contrary to the Way of Jesus."

Matthew Vines and The Reformation Project put out a statement that they do "affirming theology" rather than "queer theology." I am not a fan of this (and I'll probably write my own post about it). Here's a really good response from Billie, a trans woman.

The Great Sex Rescue: Obligation

Stock photo of a woman picking up laundry from the floor while a man sits there doing nothing. 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 part of chapter 9 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], pages 162-178. This section is about obligation sex- when a wife feels that she is obligated to have sex with her husband, because "men need it," and that is more important than any of her needs or desires.

I'm really glad to see "The Great Sex Rescue" speaking out against "obligation sex"! It's a very bad teaching, and it's EVERYWHERE in evangelical marriage ideology.

This section starts off by talking about the authors' focus groups, where they talked to women who had been harmed by the "obligation sex" message:

Almost all of them said that their husbands never gave them the obligation-sex message themselves. Their husbands didn't see sex as something they were owed or entitled to take, but instead as a gift for them to share together. Their husbands saw the importance of honoring their wives' no-- they just never knew she didn't feel free to say it! Each of these husbands empowered their wives by saying what they had been thinking all along: "You are allowed to say no, and in fact, I want you to say no if you're uncomfortable, because I don't want sex to be something you don't want to do."

Yeah, this is very real. Women are the ones being taught this "obligation sex" ideology in church, and a man might not even realize this teaching exists or how much of an impact it is having on his wife.

And... yes, I agree with the advice that men should explicitly say that they don't want their wife to feel she is forced to have sex- but I think it's more complicated than that. It's very likely that a woman from an evangelical background simply won't believe her husband when he says that. She may interpret it as "he's saying that if I can't fake like I'm enjoying it, it ruins his experience of sex- so I need to do a better job of faking my enthusiasm." Or "he actually thinks 'you're obligated to have sex with me, because of my manly needs, and if you don't do it good enough, you're not holding up your end of the deal' but he's a good person and he knows he can't say that out loud because it sounds rapey." Or "he wants to be the kind of loving partner who is okay with not forcing me into painful sex, but he underestimates the reality of his manly needs- even though he says it's okay for me to say no, he doesn't realize that that's not sustainable for him in the long term, that it's just not going to work."

Yes, evangelical women have been taught for their entire lives that "this is how men are." Then they marry a man who turns out to be a way better person than that- and it's just unbelievable. (Or, alternatively, they marry an abusive man, and they believe that's totally normal, that's how men are.)

From an asexual perspective: Yes, this is something that is debated in the ace community and/or debated by people who may or may not be supportive of aces. Some people argue that "if you're ace and your partner is not, then your partner *needs* sex, so you need to 'compromise' and have sex with them." It's a very similar argument to the Christian ideology about "men need sex, and women JUST CAN'T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND, because women don't really like sex- so a wife is obligated to have unwanted sex with her husband."

I basically already gave my opinion on this in the previous post- basically, my advice is DON'T have sex if it's a bad experience for you. Just totally refuse. Draw the line there. If it's a positive experience, that's great. If it's a neutral experience, that's also okay- I know that's the reality that some aces are in, and it's not necessarily bad. And also, you have more options than just "have sex" or "don't have sex"- you should discuss with your partner what kinds of sexual or intimate actions you want to do together, to create a good experience for both of you. (For example, if PIV [penis-in-vagina] is painful, then don't do PIV. If you want your partner to give you a non-sexual massage, well definitely tell them that, and add that in to your "scene.")

But... speaking from personal experience, I didn't actually believe "if PIV is painful, then don't do PIV" was an actual option. It just didn't seem possible, that I could be in a hetero relationship, where we love each other, where we've already had sex (so there aren't any "purity" concerns), and I just refuse to ever do PIV.

And I took on the challenge of learning how to do it, how to work with my vaginismus (though I didn't know at the time that it was vaginismus), and I'm glad I did that because it led to me understanding my body better. But at the same time, one of the motivating factors was obligation- "men need it"- and I wish it hadn't been that way. Anyway, it's complicated, but that's what happened in my actual real life, and I don't have a tidy conclusion about "this is what I should have done instead."

Moving along to the next section I want to quote from "The Great Sex Rescue":

Sex is not the only need in the marriage relationship, and sometimes other needs must take precedence.

Much current teaching, though, elevates his need for intercourse above any of her needs. ...

The message that "whatever you are feeling doesn't matter, you need to have intercourse with your spouse" erases you as a person. It says that who you are, including your wants, desires, and feelings, doesn't matter. Then sex, which is supposed to be this deep knowing, becomes something far different. It's saying, "I don't want to know you, because your needs and desires are actually unimportant to me. I only want to use you."

Okay, yeah, this is a good point. Generally I don't agree with anyone saying that "sex is supposed to be" this or that, because everyone has their own life and it can mean different things to different people- so I would put this differently, but yeah.

Here's how I would put it:

When I was a teenager, and I heard about controversy about teaching sex ed in school... Well yeah, basically my understanding of sex ed was "we don't want you to have sex, avoid it if possible, but if you do have sex, at least use a condom." The background assumption was that it's so easy to have sex, so obvious how to do it, and of course we all desire it, so there's no need to actually talk about any details about how to do it- we only need to talk about how to NOT do it, or how to minimize the risk of pregnancy and STDs.

Years later, as a feminist, I found a whole different concept of what "sex ed" is: There's so much to learn and discover. There's so much potential for pleasure. Your body belongs to you, and it's good and wonderful to explore your body and understand your body. Go read about all sorts of things: orgasms, masturbation, sex toys, BDSM, etc. Maybe you'll find something you want to try. 

Instead of "don't have sex, but if you do, at least use a condom," it was viewing sex as a variety of potentially-positive experiences which could enrich your life, if you have access to good information about how to do them in a way that's enjoyable and healthy. (And a VERY IMPORTANT part of that is learning about CONSENT.) Like a positive thing to learn about, rather than a negative thing to avoid as much as possible.

And, yeah I'm asexual, so I understand if some aces aren't really interested in learning about any of that. That's fine- don't let anyone pressure you into reading about stuff you don't want to read about. And, of course there's a difference between reading vs seeing images vs actually doing things. And a difference between intellectual curiosity vs fantasy vs actually desiring to do something in real life. 

(I'm a sex-favorable asexual; I would be interested in hearing from sex-repulsed or sex-indifferent aces because they probably have a different perspective on this.)

Anyway. As I've said in other posts about "The Great Sex Rescue," the way I view it now is to know yourself and know what you want, and communicate with your partner to invent some sequence of intimate/sexual acts which are going to be a good experience overall for both of you. It should be positive and enjoyable. It should be about saying what you want, and believing that that matters.

And then I think back to how marital sex was presented in the Christian marriage books I read, years ago... how extremely negative it sounds to me now. Like "yeah you're a woman so you won't really like it, but just remember that you really love your husband, and that should give you the strength to power through this painful experience." [That's my paraphrase, not a quote from anywhere.] Like sex was this one specific thing- not something you could have your own preferences about, and customize to fit your own desires- and wives must do it even though it's not enjoyable. And that's what marriage is.

("The Great Sex Rescue" definitely talks about how sex can and should be so much better than that, but doesn't give any useful practical tips for how to get there- only that the husband should do more foreplay. They don't say women should masturbate to figure out what feels good. They don't say sex doesn't have to be PIV. They don't say you can maybe try sex toys. It's just "he needs to do foreplay" and that's it. So, I don't find that useful.)

Good Christian girls are taught that that's what sex is. But since I'm queer, I've found out that sex can be so much better than that- when it's something that you choose, something that you make the way you want it. And the farther I get from that ideology, the more I'm shocked at how extremely ****ed up it is. How bleak a picture they paint of sex- even though they also say it's "a beautiful gift from God" and if you follow all the rules correctly (be straight, don't have premarital sex, etc) then your sex life will be perfect.

You know I don't like it when people say "sex is supposed to be" whatever, but: sex is supposed to be a good experience that you create together with your partner. Not something that some authority figure sets the parameters for, and then you're required to do it to be a "good wife", even though you won't like it. Oh it can be so much better than that.

Okay, I realize this blog series is supposed to be my asexual take on "The Great Sex Rescue," and this stuff I just said about "sex can be so much better than that" probably doesn't sound very asexual, but yeah that's how I really feel, so there it is. Obviously if you're ace and you don't want to have sex at all, I totally support that. I support everyone knowing themself and figuring out what they want, and confidently believing that their feelings and desires should matter.

So, back to "The Great Sex Rescue." This section is mainly about the idea that men's "sexual needs" are more important than any need that a wife may have, and there are a bunch of anecdotes along those lines. I'll highlight a few things from these anecdotes:

Rebecca Lindenbach, one of the co-authors of the book, talks about how she experienced pain during sex for a long time after giving birth. Her husband supported her and gave her the time she needed to heal, and didn't pressure her into sex. When she pressured herself into sex, because of her concerns about his "needs", he said "I'm not interested in anything that causes you pain" and he didn't consent to sex then.

Here's a good line about Lindenbach's husband, Connor:

In fact, as he says, he never even viewed it as "his" sexual needs that were put on hold, but "our" sexual needs.

Yes, this is what men should do. If sex is painful for your partner, then don't do it that way. Find some workaround that you both can enjoy, and/or just don't have sex for a while.

Conservative Christian marriage ideology teaches that it's not possible for a man to love like that.

Here's a section from another anecdote, also about a woman who had postpartum sexual pain:

[content note: her husband is coercive and doesn't care about her pain]

My husband has a very fundamentalistic view of the Bible, and I think he would like me to suffer through the pain and fulfill my duty for his sake. ...

It is interesting to me that when it is my body that got injured during birth (pelvic organ prolapse) and my body that now experiences pain during intercourse-- he acts as if he is the only one hurting. I know he loves me, but I feel so objectified. The fact that my husband wants me to have sex with him despite intense pain disgusts me, and I really question who I chose to marry.

The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" say this about the above anecdote:

How did we get to a point where the husband thinks he is biblically justified to expect her to "suffer through the pain" to "fulfill my duty for his sake"? Maybe because books have intimated exactly that when they give the obligation-sex message with no caveats.

Yes, they are exactly right. This is exactly what Christian marriage books teach- wives need to have sex with their husbands. Even if you don't want to, even if it's painful, men need it, so you have to. Of course this results in horrible situations where a woman is in extreme pain and nobody cares about her, they only care about if her husband is having enough orgasms.

And even as I read these stories, I feel like... I've internalized this obligation-sex ideology so much, that I'm not even confident I can argue that a man's "sexual needs" are NOT more important than a wife's need to not be in pain. I ... I'm not a man, what do I know... what if it *is* true that a man's need to have an orgasm is more of a big deal than women's sexual pain? That's what all the good Christian role models said- how can I claim that they're wrong, since I don't have the experience of being a man? How can the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" argue for that?

I mean, it's misogynist bullshit, is what it is, and that is really obvious... and yet... this is what I've always heard from Christians, and I've internalized it to the extent I'm like "but how do we really know it's wrong?"

Ugh.

Anyway, another anecdote from the book. This one is from a woman with a high-risk pregnancy, who was ordered by her doctor to be on bed rest, but she's concerned about her poor husband's sexual needs. And, yeah, the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" point out how ridiculous it is. Everyone's first priority in this situation should be the pregnant woman's health, and the unborn baby's health. The husband's "sexual needs" don't even come close to that level of importance. But women in this ideology feel like they have to put their own health at risk, and their unborn baby's health, because "men need it." It's so ****ed up.

Then there's a section about the "do not deprive" verses in 1 Corinthians 7, which are some of the key bible verses that are always used to argue for this "wives are required to have unwanted sex" ideology. The book already addressed these verses in chapter 3, so I won't go into a ton of detail here, but I like this quote:

Can you imagine any other area of life in which God would tell a person, "You have the right to use someone else for your own gratification, even if it causes physical or emotional pain"? Or in which he would tell a woman, "It pleases me when your husband acts selfishly toward you"?

PREACH!

So, that sums up the second part of chapter 9 of "The Great Sex Rescue." Basically I agree with what the authors are saying here. It's extremely messed-up that Christian marriage advice teaches that women are obligated to have unwanted sex because men's "needs" are SO IMPORTANT.

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

Related:

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

He Just Loves Me (a post about Sex, Pregnancy, and My "Wifely Duty") 

6 Ways Purity Culture Did NOT Teach Me About Consent

Let me tell you about a fanfic that reminded me of my marriage

So this is new

Blogaround + Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese dragon, with the text "2024 Happy New Year." Image source.

Happy Chinese New Year! New year's eve was on February 9 this year, and February 10 is the first day of the year of the dragon. 龙年大吉！

Some links related to Chinese New Year:

1. 3 Surprising Things From This Year’s Spring Festival Gala (February 10)

And here's the video of the French song mentioned in the article: 法语音乐剧首登春晚！《巴黎圣母院》选段《美人》太动听 「2024央视春晚」| CCTV春晚

2. 舞蹈《锦鲤》搭配周深的《大鱼》演绎生命的灵动与绚烂 「2024央视春晚」| CCTV春晚 (February 10) Video of the goldfish dance performed at the Chinese New Year gala. The dancers fly around on cables, very cool.

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And links about everything else:

3. Psychology of a Hero: ALADDIN (February 7) 25-minute video from Cinema Therapy. "Aladdin's best self is the one who helped the street urchins and who promised to set Genie free, but then out of fear of losing everything, he rescinds his promise to Genie, he lies to Jasmine, and he just keeps hurting people."

4. 'Obviously Sudokus Only Use Integers'... Hold My Beer!! (January 16) 1-hour-18-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, this one is amazing- it needs algebra. My favorite part is when Simon tries and fails to remember the word "epsilon"- "Oh gosh I used to be all over that stuff when I was young." So relatable. 

5. Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Deliver Gripping Performance Of "Fast Car" | 2024 GRAMMYs I posted about this last time, but here's the full video.

6. Eyesores or Heritage? Shanghai’s Ubiquitous Laundry Racks (February 13) "Walk around any corner in Shanghai and you will likely see these clothes racks, especially outside traditional lane houses and high-rise condos built in the 1990s." This is so real.

7. Banana Prices (February 9) xkcd comic.

8. Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture, and Her Disturbing Third Marriage (February 6) [content note: abusive marriage] "Domestic abuse addles the brain. A victim may begin to believe she deserves this kind of treatment, that she could perhaps stop the abuse by her own efforts—if only she were better, prettier, smarter, holier. Through this lens, I have begun to understand the complexity of this elderly woman whose livelihood depended on her teachings about marriage and whose theology shifted so that it matched her reality of suffering, obedience, and surrender. Perhaps she feared the consequences of divorce on her career or reputation."

9. Georgia Senator Vows to Protect Girl, But Then Runs Away After Learning She Is Trans (February 17) "That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to 'talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.'"

Wedding Traditions They Don't Have in China

Maroon 5 playing at a wedding. From the music video for "Sugar." Image source.

The topic for the February 2024 Carnival of Aros is "The Meaning of 'Romance' Across Time and Place." I haven't written for the Carnival of Aros before, because I am totally the opposite of aromantic, but I'm an American living in China, married to a Chinese man, so I have some things to say about this one.

So, as I said, I'm the opposite of aromantic. In college I used to dream about the kind of wedding I wanted to have, because I had SO MUCH romantic desire, and wanted to find one magical romantic partner I could be with forever to fulfill that romantic desire, and I viewed the wedding traditions as important symbols of getting those desires fulfilled. 

Fast forward a few years, and I got engaged to a Chinese man (Hendrix). We had our wedding in the US, so we did all the American wedding traditions that I wanted, but we live in China so I had the chance to talk to Chinese people about Chinese wedding traditions, and I've attended weddings in China, and the traditions are very different! It was sort of surprising to me, how these traditions- which I viewed as big important romantic milestones that I couldn't live without- just totally DO NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. They have different traditions instead.

In this post I'll list a few of the traditions that were very important to me, and how they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT in China.

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Getting engaged

So, Hendrix proposed to me with a diamond ring and big romantic gesture, just like the American traditions say you should do. It was great! Very happy with that!

When I told my friends in the US, they were all like "How did he ask???!!!" expecting to hear a grand romantic story- and yes, I told them the grand romantic story. And my relatives were calling on the phone, telling him "welcome to the family!"

Then when I told friends in China, none of them were like "How did he ask?" And Hendrix's family members didn't really act like anything was different.

Nowadays in China, because of influence from western countries, people do propose to their girlfriends with a ring and romantic gesture. But this is kind of new thing; it's not at all an established tradition in Chinese culture- seems like the older generation doesn't have much of a concept of it.

No, in China, instead of getting engaged, I would say the sort-of equivalent thing is getting the marriage license.

See, in China, getting the marriage license (ie, getting legally married) is a completely separate thing from the wedding. What?! I was shocked when I found out about this. In the US, the wedding is the event at which you get legally married- that's the definition of a wedding. In China, this is not the case!

We ended up getting our marriage license in China (because of immigration reasons that made more sense than doing it in the US) and then having our wedding in the US. I was a bit worried... if my relatives knew that we were already legally married, would they think our wedding was not "real"?

I remember asking a Chinese friend how you define which day is your anniversary- since the day you get legally married is different than the wedding day. She didn't seem that concerned about it. She said you can decide for yourself which one is meaningful to you. She said she felt like, getting the marriage license was about just you and your partner, and then the wedding is something you do for your family, so for her, getting the marriage license was more important.

And since I was raised in purity culture, which made a big huge deal about how you can't have sex till marriage, I was super confused about "how do you know when you can have sex?" Is it when you get the marriage license, or is it after the wedding itself? (Fortunately I quit believing in "purity" and decided we can just make our own decision without having our wedding be the way we announce the world that we're about to have sex, eww.)

And the day we got our marriage license, Hendrix's relatives took us out for a fancy dinner. See, turns out that's the "welcome to the family" moment, from a Chinese perspective. Not when you get the engagement ring. (There are also Chinese traditions about the bride and groom's family negotiating about how much money the groom's family is going to give the bride's family, but we didn't do any of that.)

I remember a Chinese friend asking me about getting engaged and what it means in US culture, and he asked, "Do some people get married without getting engaged first?" And I interpreted that to mean if a couple just goes and elopes without telling anyone- and their family and friends would probably be unhappy about not being invited to the wedding. But actually I don't think that's what he was asking. I think he wasn't aware that it's not really possible to invite people to your wedding without being engaged- like, if you're planning a wedding and sending out invitations, you ARE engaged. He was probably thinking you get the marriage license, then you plan the wedding, then you have the wedding- and getting engaged sounded like an unnecessary step before that.

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The wedding dress

In US culture, shopping for the wedding dress is a big deal. Finding that one perfect dress- THE dress. And then there's a tradition that your partner isn't allowed to see the dress until the wedding day.

In China it's totally different.

First of all, at Chinese weddings, the tradition is that the bride wears a bunch of different outfits. The traditional color for weddings is red, so basically she wears a series of different red dresses- but now that China is borrowing [the appearance of] some traditions from western culture, many brides add a white dress to the mix too. So there's not like a "THE dress" - you wear a bunch of dresses, and I don't really know what the romantic/emotional significance of it is.

And here's what really shocked me: In China, the couple gets their "wedding photos" taken as a completely separate thing from the actual wedding itself. Really, "wedding photos" is not the right translation of "婚纱照"- I would translate it as "wedding dress photos." Because these are NOT photos from the wedding, they are photos of the couple wearing wedding clothes. This is something that's done before the wedding.

Totally shocking to me, because, what about the tradition that your spouse can't see your wedding dress before the big day? (Yeah, not a thing in China.) And also, the dress that the bride wears in the photos isn't even THE dress. You go to a photo studio and pick from the dresses they have there, and you wear that in the photos, and that has no relation at all to the dress(es) you actually wear on your wedding day. (In fact, I've been to weddings in China where they show a slideshow of photos of the couple, and these "wedding dress photos" are part of the slideshow- making it really obvious that they were taken beforehand and aren't photos from the actual wedding. This is completely normal in China.)

I remember when I found out about this, it made me feel like the wedding photos in China were "fake." Because it's not your actual wedding day, and that's not your actual wedding dress. But it's not "fake"- it's just that they have different traditions for this.

We went and got photos taken in China when we got our marriage license. We wore the traditional red clothes that the photo studio provided. My mother-in-law also wanted me to do photos wearing a white wedding dress, but I totally refused. I can't be wearing a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day and it's not my wedding dress- that would be a lie! The only reason I would ever do that would be maybe if I was shopping for dresses, trying on different ones, sending a photo to my sister to get her opinion- but beyond that, no, no way am I letting anyone see me in a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day.

So we just did the photos with the red Chinese clothes, and that was fine.

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Dancing

Dancing is my FAVORITE part of weddings. But in Chinese tradition, there's no dancing at a wedding at all. To some extent, for Chinese weddings that are more "westernized", they kinda-sorta add some dancing to it- the bride and groom have their first dance on stage, and the bride has the dance with her father, on stage- but it's basically just a performance on the stage, not something that you eventually get all the guests to join into. There's no dance floor, there's no hours and hours of everyone dancing.

Really surprising to me, because dancing with everybody was one of the things I looked forward to the MOST (and our wedding was in the US, we had a DJ and dance floor and everything, it was great) but in China it's just not a thing at all.

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And there are so many other wedding traditions which are completely different in China- I just discussed these 3 here because these were the ones that were most surprising to me, because they were extremely meaningful to me but just aren't part of Chinese tradition at all.

I'm writing this for the Carnival of Aros because it shows how romance is so culturally constructed. To some extent, there are things that will be the same in all cultures- most people have romantic feelings, most people fall in love- but the specific ways that those feelings manifest is super-dependent on the unique cultural symbols of romance, and those aren't universal at all. I spent so much time dreaming about my first dance at my wedding- there are cultures where people simply don't do that, because they don't have a first dance. They may have similar romantic feelings to me, but it doesn't cause them to dream about their first dance. It comes out in other ways.

So if you're aromantic and don't care about romantic traditions, well, whatever, billions of other people don't care about those specific traditions either. And even if you have romantic feelings, that doesn't mean you have to care about roses or diamond rings or whatever. All these things are just cultural symbols- there's no intrinsic reason they need to be viewed as "romantic."

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Related:

Getting Engaged Isn’t Exactly a Thing in China 

My Chinese Marriage License

Wedding Posts Round-Up

Blogaround

A candy heart that says "Remember U R Dust" with caption "Ash Wednesday is on Valentine's Day. You can't spell Valentine without Lent. United Methodist Churches of Indiana." Image source.

1. Differing Weights And Differing Measures (January 31) "So if, for example, you’re trying to show that 'evangelical Christians' are a fearsome voting bloc that politicians are compelled to show deference to, then you want the largest, most expansive definition of 'evangelical Christians' that you can find. That’s going to include everybody you can plausibly toss into the category, including both Pentecostals and anti-Pentecostal fundamentalists, including every faith-healer and magician, snake-handler and tent-revival charlatan you can find. It’s even going to include evangelical Christians who aren’t even white." This is SPOT-ON.

2. ‘Rage’ abortion donations dry up, leaving funds struggling to meet demand (January 28, via) "But now, the fund needs to spend between $1000 to $1500 just for people who need an abortion before 12 weeks’ gestation. If they are further along, the costs are significantly higher."

There's a time and place for one-off donations because you see something in the news and have feelings about it. Yes, that should be part of one's donation budget. But more important is to give recurring donations- make a rational decision about which organizations you feel it's important to support, and then set up automatic monthly payments to them. This helps the charities plan their budgets much better.

Also from The Hill: The dangers of spotlighting the ‘perfect’ abortion patient (January 31, via) "Unfortunately, all too often only the most extreme stories with 'good' reasons for abortion — the horrific cases of sexual violence, life endangerment or fetal abnormalities — enter public discourse to highlight the 'perfect patient' whose story is easiest to sympathize with."

3. Florida barring gender changes on driver's license puts trans residents at risk, critics say (January 30) This is really bad.

4. Study: Abortion Bans Creating OBGYN Crisis (February 2) [content note: it's about the trauma that obgyn doctors are experiencing when they're not legally allowed to give patients the healthcare they need. This is hard to read.] "You have somebody hemorrhaging with an intrauterine pregnancy with a heartbeat…I [didn’t yet] have legal coverage for that, but there’s only so many times you can transfuse somebody and they’re begging for their life before you say, ‘This is unconscionable.’"

5. “It Was the Most Violent Thing I’ve Ever Seen” (February 1) [content note: death penalty] An interview with the Rev. Jeff Hood, spiritual advisor to Kenny Smith and other death row inmates.

6. Who is Alistair Begg, and why are American fundamentalists so upset with him? (February 1) A detailed article about why evangelicals want to "cancel" pastor Alistair Begg for not being mean enough to queer people.

7. Religious trauma still haunts millions of LGBTQ Americans (January 29)

8. Outdated Jackets Get a Second Life (February 5) 1-minute-37-second video. Making old down jackets into comforters in China.

Also from Sixth Tone: AI Game Mimicking Nosy Relatives Takes China by Storm (February 5)

9. An Ohio pastor was punished for opening his church to the homeless. He deserves it. (January 23) Okay so maybe this story is more nuanced than what I initially thought. "Imagine if there was an actual emergency in the building. A place like this would jeopardize the lives of the people inside because of these kinds of deficiencies. The Fire Chief gave Avell well over a month to fix the most serious of these problems, but follow-up checks on January 9 and 16 found '5 violations that had not been properly corrected.'"

10. Breaking bread: Houston tries to punish feeding the homeless—and fails (February 2, via) "So far, no matter how many tickets the city writes, they can’t find a jury willing to convict anyone over it."

11. Leonard Nimoy The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins FULL VERSION best quality (via) Wow, I can't believe I never knew this existed.

12. Relationship Advice (February 5) xkcd comic. !!!!! Oh my goodness, this is so real! I side-eye anyone who makes a big deal about "marriage is hard."

13. VeggieTales' cucumber star LarryBoy to get his own faith-based feature film in 2026 (February 6)

Here's what Phil Vischer has to say on it:

Apparently there's a new LarryBoy movie in development? Somewhere? By... someone? No idea who, where or how. https://t.co/62SRaYSoaL

— Phil Vischer (@philvischer) February 6, 2024

Not sure what to think of this- is it even real VeggieTales if Phil Vischer is not involved?

14. Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Perform Fast Car at the Grammys (February 6) 

UPDATE: Here's the full video: Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Deliver Gripping Performance Of "Fast Car" | 2024 GRAMMYs

Top 18 Posts From 2023

A cat looking at a laptop computer. Image source.

Hi readers! It's time for the yearly roundup post! Here are my top blog posts from 2023:

Top 5 posts by page views:

1. This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read: "Like, everyone gather around and marvel at how, apparently, women's orgasms are not on anyone's radar at all, over at The Gospel Coalition, even when they are talking about a man being 'generous' during sex. Like, my god, how do you miss that?"

2. For Rizpah (or, a post about human sacrifice in the bible): "So when I read this story in the bible, I always thought that since David was a 'good guy,' that meant Rizpah was a 'bad guy.'"

3. January 2023 Carnival of Aces Roundup: "The Advice You Wish You'd Had": Very cool hosting the Carnival of Aces!

4. Vaginismus Is Not A Problem, In And Of Itself: "She has to go to a doctor and the doctor will tell her what she needs to do to make her body good enough for a man. She has to spend her time on yoga, because her body isn't good enough for a man. She has to endure the pain of trying to push dilators in, trying to force herself to relax, hoping she can make herself good enough for a man."

5. Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue": One of the main things on my blog this year is my series reviewing the book "The Great Sex Rescue." I have a lot to say about it! It does a very good job of pointing out how illogical and harmful purity ideology and complementarianism are, but it falls short because it doesn't acknowledge queerness- and in particular, there are many parts of the book where its advice does not work for asexuals.

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And my other favorite 13 posts:

6. "Sodom and Gomorrah" is a story about living in a "bad neighborhood": "It's a story about stereotypes. God buys into the stereotypes too- killing the entire city just because a small and powerful group of men is terrorizing the streets. God kills them and their victims. God sees no difference."

7. That happened to me too: "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."

8. On believing that "prayer works": "So, it's very possible that if a white woman is missing, lots of people will see the news coverage and pray for her, but a woman of color in the exact same situation will receive little news coverage and won't have a ton of strangers praying for her. Does that mean that God will help the white woman more? Doesn't something seem wrong about this? God's actions are constrained by human society's prejudices?"

9. No One Can Take The Bible From Me: "To actually spend time caring about the victims of the bible... wow, that's something new and powerful."

10. Boundaries With Dentists: "Yeah... being required to perform your discomfort in a way that will read as 'real' to other people. This is hard to explain, but I'm autistic and I think other autistic people know what I'm talking about."

11. Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality: "And I wondered, was I not 'really' asexual, and it was 'actually' 'just' vaginismus? Now that I don't have vaginismus any more, am I not asexual any more?"

12. On Marriage as an Immigrant in China: "A divorce can be ugly and painful in ways that wouldn't happen in a divorce between 2 citizens. At the same time, the practical reality of being from 2 completely different cultures will frequently require the 2 spouses to trust and depend on each other in ways that citizen couples don't have to."

13. "Boys Can't Stop": "I couldn't comprehend this idea of 'he didn't want to pressure me'- because in purity culture, they said that boys are always pressuring girls, that's what you should expect from boys, they are all like that."

14. "To Glorify God": "This blog would be different from all my previous writing on Christianity. This blog would be about saying what I needed to say. Asking the questions I needed to ask. Even if I wasn't sure if God was okay with me asking."

15. How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People: "I can't believe I have to point this out, but that is THE OPPOSITE of welcoming trans people. Like if I had to make a list of 'how NOT to welcome trans people' those are the exact things I would put on it."

16. I used to be a young-earth creationist: "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?"

17. Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches: "That's where I learned that we can just reject the whole thing. We don't have to tie ourselves in knots trying to explain how we believe wives have to submit to their husbands, but not like, in a sexist way."

18. The Logistics of a Revival: "They had to make a decision- and it's a human decision, it's not something that happens automatically because 'God.'" (I had several posts on the Asbury Revival- here's one of them.)

So there you have it! And yes, I have tons of draft posts, and tons of ideas. Looking forward to another year of blogging~