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| Image text: "What does the Lord require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8" Image source. |
Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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So we come to chapter 11 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], titled "Just Be Nice." Here's what it's about:
After tackling these issues [from the previous chapters], though, we were still left with a handful of scenarios from these books that didn't fit neatly into any one harmful teaching. In trying to figure out where to slot them into the book, we realized that they shared a common denominator: following these pieces of advice meant looking less like Jesus.
As we start to wrap up this book, we want to point us back to Jesus's example of serving, not being served. And the answer is shockingly simple: please, please, people, just be kind.
Wow, I think this is a really good way to put it- "following these pieces of advice meant looking less like Jesus." A lot of the things that Christian marriage books tell women they have to do- would Jesus tell women they have to do those things? If a husband tells his wife she is required to have sex with him even if she's in pain, is he being like Jesus?
"The Great Sex Rescue" says we should understand sex "through the lens of the cross." I don't really like using "cross" language for sex... I mean, I understand that their point is that it should be about loving and serving each other, like Jesus did, but, man, Jesus' death on the cross was the ultimate extreme example of loving people, to the exclusion of his own feelings/desires/pleasure/life, and sex should NOT be like that. Isn't most of this book about how it's wrong that women were taught that we need to endure pain, and not care about ourselves, and women are taught that sex should be about making a sacrifice for the sake of your husband's pleasure...?
Having confidence that what I want matters, and being unwilling to have painful sex, and believing that I should stand up for myself and insist that it be a good experience for me or else I'm not doing it- uh, that is nothing like what Jesus did on the cross. But that's what sex should be. (And these are all things that "The Great Sex Rescue" has argued for in previous chapters.)
Okay so my point is, this metaphor doesn't work for me. I get that they're saying sex should be about loving and serving each other, but I just don't think the cross is a good metaphor for this, because sex should also be about feeling good and getting what you want.
Moving along, one of the examples given in this chapter is period sex. Most women don't want to have sex when they're having their period, and some Christian marriage books tell wives it's their responsibility to come up with some workaround to satisfy their husbands' "needs" anyway. (ie, she has to give him a hand job- something along those lines.)
"The Great Sex Rescue" responds by saying this:
Let's think this through. Is it kind for a man to ask for a hand job when his wife is unwell? How unwell does she have to be before it's not kind anymore? How crampy does she have to be for her physical well-being to take precedence over sexual expectations? Do we really believe that the kindness that flows from the Holy Spirit working in our lives would ask an exhausted, torn apart postpartum woman for a hand job?
On the one hand, this is a great point. When someone is in pain, how about you care about them, rather than burden them with more tasks they have to do?
On the other hand... the Christianity I used to believe in really was like this. Give and give and give until you literally can't any more- that's what I believed God wanted me to do. This excerpt from "The Great Sex Rescue" is asking rhetorical questions- "How crampy does she have to be for her physical well-being to take precedence over sexual expectations?"- they're not trying to actually identify where to draw that line, but rather showing how ridiculous the whole thing is... but... But back when I was a good evangelical, "on fire for God", I really did think that way. I really did ask myself questions like that, and take them extremely seriously... I tried to lay down my life, as much as I could, and only do the bare minimum for myself- isn't that what it means to be a Christian?
It really says something about the God I used to believe in. We believed that God will keep asking you to do harder and harder things, to give of yourself in ways you didn't think you could handle, "but he will give you the strength to get through it"- instead of, like, sometimes you need to stand up for yourself and protect yourself by saying NO. Keep giving, keep sacrificing, and if you ever think that something you need is a higher priority than something that you could do to serve someone else, well you're selfish and sinful.
So glad I don't believe in that kind of Christianity any more. And it's good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is telling women that it matters if sex is enjoyable for them- they shouldn't just do everything their husband wants and totally ignore their own desires.
(See also: Gregoire's "Fixed It For You" blog post where she takes this quote "The most difficult time for this man was during his wife's period, because she was unavailable to him sexually" from the book "Sheet Music", and changes it to "The most difficult time for this woman was during her period, because she was bleeding from her vagina." Blew my mind when I read that. The idea that we should care about the wife when she's not feeling good, instead of asking her to do more things- so astonishingly healthy, I was shocked.)
And then there's this really good quote:
One woman, commenting on this pressure to have sex while on your period, said this:
I honestly feel like a lot of men want only the positive aspects of our bodies (i.e., the parts that make them climax) without any of the drawbacks. Those drawbacks are everything from normal aging to menstruation to the difficulties of childbirth and the effects those have on our bodies and psyches. Being hot, young, and not on your period or not pregnant is an incredibly short time in a woman's life, and I have no idea why young men contemplating marriage are not told in the most blunt of terms that being ready for marriage and sex means accepting all of those changes.
Yes, well-said.
The next part of this chapter is about taking care of your health, as a way to show kindness to your spouse because it could affect their enjoyment of sex.
First, the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" call out Christian leaders who tell women they need to make sure they continue to look as attractive as they did when they got married. This is ridiculous and not realistic. Like, you are marrying a person, with a real body, which ages- and pregnancy and childbirth also change a woman's body, that's just a fact. "The Great Sex Rescue" points out the double standard where women are required to look attractive for their husbands, but no one really tells men they have to look attractive for their wives.
Next, "The Great Sex Rescue" says that it actually is a problem for a couple's sex life if the man gains too much weight. It means there are certain sex positions they might not be able to do, they can't really get close enough to physically stimulate the woman in the ways she needs in order to orgasm, and the man has less "usable length."
I hadn't heard about that before, and I don't really have an opinion on it. (My first thought was maybe they can use a sex toy to make up for those problems. I'm always trying to engineer a solution; I'm helpful like that.) I guess I'll just say that I think you should take care of your health because it's good for you. I don't really think your partner's sexual satisfaction should be the reason you take care of your health. That just strikes me as a bit odd.
But yes, I totally agree about the double standard- women are expected to look young forever, even though that's not actually possible, and there's not really an equivalent expectation for men.
Overall, the point of this chapter is that you should basically be a decent human being in your marriage. When having sex, both partners should have a mindset of loving and serving each other. Be kind- and this sounds like common-sense stuff. (Also, as the rest of the book says, your own pleasure matters. It shouldn't just be about serving your partner; it should be about both of you being equals.)
It reminds me of this post by the Slacktivist, Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly … In Bed, which addresses "the intrinsic oddity of trying to talk about 'sexual ethics' as something separate and distinct from, you know, just plain ethics." Yes, he's absolutely right. "Sexual ethics" shouldn't be about rules for when and how and whether to have sex. It should be about treating each other right, similar to how you should treat people right in all other areas of life.
So the message of this chapter is "Just Be Kind" and I like that. It shouldn't be about gender roles and how much the wife has to give and sacrifice because men's "needs" are so important. It should be about just being a decent human being toward your spouse.
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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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