Concluding Thoughts on "The Great Sex Rescue"

Person reading a book. 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 I've been doing this blog series on The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link]. I finally got through the entire book; this post will be my overall thoughts on it.

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Sex is supposed to be good (this is SO DIFFERENT from what Christian marriage books teach)

There are a few ideas that I've sort of thought about before, but this book really helped me see them more clearly. Here's one of them- the idea that sex is supposed to be good. The more I think about it, the more I'm astonished at how wrong the message I got from other Christian marriage books was. Those books talked about sex like women aren't likely to enjoy it, but have to do it anyway because "men need it."

Well, actually, let me clarify. Christians DO walk around announcing that sex is a beautiful gift from God, that it's so amazing, it's your reward for "staying pure" till marriage, etc. But basically what they mean is this: Sex is PIV [penis-in-vagina], and if you do everything the right way, God's way, then PIV will be amazing/ mindblowing/ "beautiful gift from God"/ etc. Women, if you're doing PIV sex but you're not experiencing it as this amazing thing, well you must be the problem. Keep on doing it, according to this set of rules (you have to have sex every 72 hours, have to make sure it's a perfect experience for your husband, etc), and hopefully you'll be able to get yourself into the right mindset where you can enjoy it.

It's all about forcing yourself to conform to someone else's rules. And if you do that, and you still feel like it's not working, well you're the problem, must be that you still aren't following the rules correctly.

But actually- and I think I was able to figure this out because I'm queer- that's not how sex should be at all. It shouldn't be about following rules about the "correct" way to do it. Instead, each person should figure out what their own desires are, and communicate that to each other, and together they can invent some sequence of sexual or intimate actions that will be enjoyable for both of them. And it shouldn't be biased toward PIV. It should be whatever you and your partner want.

It's astounding to me how completely different this view is from the view that I got from Christian books. I used to think that I couldn't say what I want, because what if it was something my [male] partner didn't want to do, and it ruins the mood for him when I suggest it? I had this assumption that sex is PIV, and if I prefer something else instead of PIV, well, mayyyyybe if I have a partner who's kind enough to humor me, maybe he'll agree to it, but he doesn't have to, it's just a silly thing that's not a standard part of sex. I shouldn't inconvenience him with it.

Conforming myself to someone else's rules, trusting that someone else would know what's right for me.

But the reality is, sex can be such a good thing, when you figure out what you want, and you do that, and you delete all the things that are painful or unpleasant for you. (I'm asexual so I also recognize the possibility that you delete all the sexual aspects- if that's what you want, that's great for you.)

What was all that nonsense about "wives have to do it anyway, even if you don't like it, even if it's painful"???? If it's painful, don't do it! Figure out something that both of you enjoy! It should NEVER be about being required to do something you don't like- what the f***????

One of the main messages of "The Great Sex Rescue" is that it's harmful when we teach that wives are required to have sex, even though they won't like it. And instead, we should teach that yes it is possible for women to enjoy sex. This is really important; I'm glad "The Great Sex Rescue" is saying this.

I go further than "The Great Sex Rescue" though- because this book still says you're required to do PIV. That's one of the things that has frustrated me as I've been writing my blog posts reviewing the book. I don't think we should conceptualize sex as being centered on PIV. It should be whatever the people involved want it to be.

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Marry a man who's decent or an abuser

I've talked about this before, in my review of "Shiny Happy People." Basically, girls who grow up in purity/complementarian ideology are taught that men are... how shall I put this... men are biologically incapable of treating a woman with kindness and respect if she is not following the rules for her gender role. For example, if a woman is dressed "immodestly," men won't respect her, they will objectify her, and maybe rape her. If a wife doesn't have sex with her husband enough, or doesn't "submit" to him enough, he will be angry with her and won't treat her well. Maybe he'll even cheat on her, men are just like that. It's not *her* fault that he cheated, but actually it kinda is, because she should have known that men are like that, and that he would cheat if she didn't satisfy his manly needs.

So if you grow up in that ideology, and buy into it, and then you marry a man, there are 2 possible things that can happen:

1. You marry a man who's a decent human being. He treats you as an equal. He supports you and respects you. He doesn't expect that you'll sacrifice the things that are important to you, in order to "submit" to him. If he feels that there's a problem with your sex life, he talks to you about it like an adult rather than going off and cheating. If sex is painful for you, he cares about that and doesn't want to do anything that you don't like.
   And the result is that you're amazed that a man can be like that. You were taught that this isn't possible, that there are literally no men who are like that.
2. You marry a man who's an abuser. He criticizes you and says you're not good enough because you don't "submit" to him all the time like a good wife should. He says you have to have sex even if it's painful, that's just the way it is, that's what God said. He gets angry at you, mistreats you, and says it's because you don't "respect" him enough, because you don't "submit" enough, because you don't give him enough sex- it's your fault.
   And this all feels totally normal to you. You were taught that this is what men are like. This is what marriage is. ("Marriage is hard.")

This is so wrong. So many Christian marriage resources say that women should expect this kind of behavior from men. !!! This is so wrong! Men can be better than that- and should be held to a higher standard than that. I really did not know this, back when I was a good evangelical.

So it's really good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is saying men can and should be better than that. I really appreciate how the chapter on lust featured anecdotes from men who are decent human beings and are totally capable of being near "immodest" women without it being a problem. And throughout the book it says that if a man cheats, or uses porn, that's a problem with him. [Though I personally don't think using porn is necessarily bad.] It is NOT the wife's fault. And you can't fix the problem by telling the wife to have sex more- the only way to fix it is for the man to take responsibility.

It's something I've thought about before- the low expectations that evangelicalism has for men, compared to the reality that men can be SO MUCH BETTER than that- but reading "The Great Sex Rescue" helped me to see this more clearly. 

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The parts that would have been helpful (or not) to me

Years ago, I was trying so hard to figure out why my experience of sex was so completely different than how other people seemed to talk about sex. (Eventually I found out about asexuality, and vaginismus- those are the reasons.) I was looking for answers; I wanted someone to explain sex to me. Why does everyone talk about it like it's the most amazing thing ever? Am I missing something?

(And that's when I bought the book "Come As You Are," because the subtitle said it would "transform your sex life." Uh, it did not.)

So, thinking about myself back then, and the fact that this book is called "The Great Sex Rescue"... if a baby ace buys this book in order to figure out how to have sex, to what extent would it be helpful?

I would say, the most helpful parts are the parts that point out the problems with Christian teaching on marriage and sex. This was very insightful and pointed out logical inconsistencies in ways I hadn't seen before. 

And THE MOST helpful part, for me now, was the section that explained "one thing leads to another." Blew my mind. Really glad I read that, because wowwww. WOWWWW. So that's what everyone was talking about, all this time, when somehow you're kissing and "one thing leads to another" and you [accidentally?] have sex.

But, when the book offers advice on what to do instead, I felt this was very narrow and would not have been helpful for me at all when I was a baby ace. For example: For their advice on how to make sure the wife has an orgasm, the book only says that the husband needs to do more foreplay. Like the woman can't take matters into her own hands to find out what an orgasm even is- no, she just has to let her husband do some trial-and-error on her, and give him feedback on what worked and what didn't. This is so incredibly inefficient, it boggles my mind. 

The book doesn't say this, but the reality is, you need to masturbate. The fact that it doesn't say that... this is in no way a "great sex rescue" for the little ace who is trying to figure out how to have sex. Which isn't necessarily a criticism of the book- no book can address everyone's sex problems- but it's just kinda sad for the hypothetical little ace looking for answers. (And maybe also for the women reading this book who have never had an orgasm and are trying to learn how to do it- I don't see how any advice could possibly help them if it doesn't include "you should masturbate.")

(And the thing that was actually helpful for me back then was this: An Asexual’s Guide To … Best sex-ed resource I have EVER found.)

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About being a sex-favorable ace

So, doing this blog series has really reinforced to me the fact that I'm different from people who have a sex drive, and also different from sex-repulsed aces. 

I feel so mystified by the whole concept of "sex drive", and I write stuff about how I go about this *logically* like a Vulcan, and I get comments from people who point out how what I said doesn't apply to most people, because I've overlooked the existence of sex drive. I do appreciate those comments, because I know there are things that I missed (and I also like how I have my own blog and am therefore free to post whatever naive asexual insights I want to). So, uh, doing an entire blog series about sex has really helped me to see this difference more clearly.

And, on the other side we have sex-repulsed aces. Doing this blog series made me realize I don't know much about how sex-repulsed aces would feel about these things. (Well, repulsed, I guess, but I don't know much beyond that.) And maybe I've been too optimistic in the parts where I talked about what to do with the incompatibility between an ace partner and allo partner (ie, not on the asexual spectrum). Or when I talked about how sex can be so much better than how purity-culture proponents describe it. So I also appreciate the comments from sex-repulsed aces, to fill in the gaps.

Specifically, my situation was, I'm asexual but I was very curious about sex and wanted to do it [since I had found a partner who was good enough to go to the trouble], and the issue was just not really having a clue because all of it was so unnatural to me. (Also, vaginismus.) And I feel like I have to add more disclaimers, make it clear that this is not the case for most aces. Most aces don't ever want to have sex- and I support them in that. I do relate to that; there are very few situations where I feel it makes sense to have sex- it makes perfect sense to me to never find yourself in such a situation and therefore never have sex. Nothing wrong with that.

I like that "The Great Sex Rescue" covered a lot of topics and gave me a lot to respond to, and an opportunity to write about my own views on this. I remember thinking "there needs to be an ace review of this book- so I need to write it."

I was kind of worried, when I started this blog series, maybe I shouldn't do it because I'm going to write things that are ignorant and cringey. But, well, that's one of the main benefits of IDing as asexual- it serves as an explanation to legitimize my ignorance and naivety. So if people are like "why is she acting like she's so clueless about this" well it's because I'm asexual, of course I'm clueless, my cluelessness makes total sense and isn't something I need to feel ashamed about. I'm really glad the ace community is a place I can talk about this stuff without people making fun of me and saying "don't be so naive" and refusing to explain whatever it is I missed.

So the point is, if I wrote something ignorant and cringey, I do appreciate the comments that kindly point it out and explain it.

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Maybe this was always about men having power

I've been blogging about the problems with purity culture since 2012. And overall, I treat it like it was in good faith, like this system of rules was developed for us by leaders who really genuinely wanted to help people avoid heartbreak and to have good marriages, and I point out how it fails at that. But every now and then, I start to get a little suspicious that it was never about that at all. Every now and then, it dawns on me how this is EXACTLY the kind of system you would create if your goal was to ensure that powerful men continued to have power over everybody else.

And reading "The Great Sex Rescue," well, this is one of those times I start to wonder. Maybe purity ideology and complementarianism were always about men having power. Maybe when Christians said this is what's best for me, because it's God's plan for me to follow my God-given gender role, and that's the most natural and that's what will lead to the best life for me... I mean, obviously I know they were wrong, but maybe they didn't even believe it either. Maybe they made that up to give men power over women.

The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are basically coming at it from the same direction I have been- viewing it as, the claim is that if people follow these rules, they will have good marriages and good sex lives, so let's analyze that claim and point out why it's just not true. But also I think these authors are like me, in that occasionally we can't help but wonder if powerful men just made up these rules to maintain their own power.

Some of my posts related to that:

In Some Alternate Universe, I'm Writing a Post About Masks and "Causing to Stumble" 

5/25/2022 Blogaround

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches

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Wrapping it up

Overall, I'm glad I read this book. I enjoyed it, even though there were many parts which frustrated me because they were so narrow/heteronormative.

Gregoire and the other authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are doing very good work. On their blog, they are always getting comments from straight women in bad marriages, straight women who are abuse victims, straight women who are divorced... Straight women who have been blamed and rejected by the church. It's really good how Gregoire's blog and books are able to help these straight women so much. I genuinely do believe it's good that Gregoire and her co-authors are there doing that work.

At the same time, though... you publish a book in The Year Of Our Lord 2021 about how Christian teaching on marriage/ sex/ gender roles is harmful, and the book doesn't say ANYTHING AT ALL about the fact that these teachings are harmful to queer people? That's WILD. That's just WILD, to have that not mentioned in the book at all. To pretend everyone is straight and cis and allosexual. And I know a big part of it is because this is how evangelical culture is- if you say anything positive that acknowledges the existence of queer people, you get cancelled. But still...

So I think it's important, when we talk about this book, that we call out how it is narrow and not inclusive of queer people. Yes, for its target demographic of straight cis allo Christian women, it's really helpful, but it needs to come with a warning. And if you're queer and don't want to read this book because you just can't deal with Christians who pretend queer people don't exist, well, yeah, I totally understand that. Definitely don't read it then.

Okay, those are my thoughts~ I'm glad I read this book, it has a lot of good things to say, and also a lot of places where I disagreed, which gave me a chance to talk about my own asexual opinions.

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

Blogaround

1. Every Source for The Chosen's "Anointing the Passover Lamb" Goes Back to the Same Person (July 8) The most bonkers part of this is the possibility that this really is a historical tradition, but it was lost to time and nobody wrote it down, and then some time around 2010 we find out about it because Jesus himself reveals it to some pastor. Which, if you're evangelical and you have a "personal relationship with God" then that is totally a real thing that could happen. But also, if it did, what on earth would we- other Christians who didn't hear from Jesus personally- do with it? There's not really any reasonable mechanism by which Jesus could reveal this true information, out of the blue in the year 2010, and have it recognized as real. Or, I guess maybe if Jesus revealed the exact same thing to a whole bunch of people at the same time? Maybe?

2. HSDD was not the beginning nor the end (July 18) "It was an obscure diagnosis, and in all my years I have not heard even a single anecdote of an ace getting diagnosed. And that’s not to say that aces didn’t have issues with psychologists. Ace-competent mental health care is a broader issue that extends beyond a single diagnosis, and continues to be a problem long after DSM 5."

3. Beam of Light (July 15) From xkcd.

4. Baidu’s Robotaxi Stirs Up Controversy (July 22) 3-minute video about Baidu's driverless taxi, in China.

5. East Vs. West (July 21) "We can’t see that from here, but from over there — from, say, some airport in Beijing — we’d have the perspective to view that connectedness and kinship as an indisputable and wonderful fact. We’re not strangers — we share the same continent." As an immigrant in China, I can 100% confirm this.

6. Wednesday Was 'Mass Deportation Now!' Night At The RNC, Everything Totally Excellent For Sure (July 18) What on EARTH. As an immigrant, this is what scares me the most about the Republican party platform right now. I mean, I'm an immigrant in China so it doesn't affect me, but I understand what it's like to work so hard to build a life for yourself in a foreign country, and how traumatic it would be if that country suddenly decided you were bad and needed to be deported.

Support all immigrants.

7. I Want A Popsicle!: A Story about Dealing With Anger (July 23) "A bilingual children's book for AAPI families written by a psychologist that teaches children how to manage their emotions." This sounds really cool!

8. Women athletes are being abused, and the helpful media aren't helping. (June 5) "This trend punishes those who are skilled, who are excellent, who are fast, who are strong. This trend punishes those who gain notice, gain visibility, within a small community or on a national stage."

9. Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would (July 23, via) "The finding is a measure of the extent to which many, many users hate TikTok and Instagram — even though they feel compelled to use them. To make clear the bizarre nature of his finding, Bursztyn drew the the conference’s attention to another product, a refrigerator. Could you imagine, he asked, 60% of refrigerator owners saying they wished fridges didn’t exist?"

10. When Modesty Rules Make Drowning More Likely (July 24) "I did not do this personally, but it was normal in my fundy circles for girls to swim in ankle length denim skirts."

Blogaround

1. Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Donald J. Trump vs United States (July 1, via) "Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity."

2. Texas’s Abortion Ban is Killing Babies (July 3) "But the people most at risk, in my opinion, are people who DO want children. Because while abortion in the early weeks and months of pregnancy is now safe and easy, pregnancy remains a very dangerous condition. You may be able to detect a nonviable fetus early and fly somewhere to get an abortion if you can afford it, but even a well-off woman can experience an emergency and simply not have the time to get somewhere they can access decent medical care. In an emergency, a pregnant person will need to go to a local hospital, and in Texas a doctor will be forced to decide how much risk they want to take on. Is the woman close enough to death to perform an abortion? Should we roll the dice and hope she lives? Personally I wouldn’t want to bet my life on a doctor prioritizing a fetus over me."

Yes. This. When I was pregnant, I was following all the news stories from the US about wanted pregnancies which had gone horribly wrong. It's so heartless, the way these "pro-life" politicians treat women. Imagine being pregnant, and you love your baby already, and then you find out the baby has some terrible medical condition and is very unlikely to survive, and you spend so much time researching it, trying to see if there's any hope, and finally you come to the terrible conclusion that the least-bad option is an abortion- and then you have to FIGHT for it, fight for something you don't even want, you wanted a living baby but that's not an option, and these "pro-life" politicians act like they love your baby more than you do, like you're the one being bad and immoral, on the worst day of your life when you are finally able to get the abortion.

Makes me so mad.

(And also, if you just simply don't want to be pregnant, that's a valid reason to get an abortion too.)

3. ‘The Political Violence Of Herod’ (July 15) "Voter suppression and voter intimidation is political violence. Forcing women to carry health-threatening, nonviable pregnancy is political violence. Deporting 20 million people is political violence. Declaring some presidents to be above the law is political violence that endorses political violence."

4. LLM error rates (July 16) "If you expect LLMs to have god-like reasoning skills, or to magically know things they were never taught, it’s not going to work. If you expect them to perform well on a task that realistically speaking requires 99+% accuracy, they don’t do that. But if the LLM is trying to complete a task that would otherwise be done humans, we’re also extremely prone to error, so there must be some level of error tolerance. In this case the LLM doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to do better than our sorry human asses."

5. China’s Visa-Free Policies Spark Tourism Spike (July 16) Cool! China has been expanding the list of countries whose citizens can enter China without a visa.

Also from Sixth Tone: China’s MBTI Obsession Has Gone Too Far, Academics Say (July 17) "Users are swapping tips on how to game tests during job applications, and some companies have even begun advertising MBTI tutoring services to help job seekers align their answers with employers’ expectations." Oh geez.

6. United Airlines expands China-US routes with more direct flights (July 17) This is good news for immigrants like me.

7. This tweet

plastic surgery used to make me uncomfortable, but then someone I loved had terrible dysphoria about her small breasts & wanted implants. I said surgery couldn’t fix emotions. But I was wrong! She’s been fine & happy fifteen years on. It helped me understand gender affirming care https://t.co/VArLlB5tWJ

— 🌈Dr. Frizzle (@Swilua) July 16, 2024

Plus the next one in the thread

If you feel miserable in your body and it’s making it hard to live your life and there is something you can do to fix it, why is that bad?

— 🌈Dr. Frizzle (@Swilua) July 16, 2024

This is interesting to me because I grew up evangelical, and in that culture people are always talking about how if there's something you really really want, and you feel like you can't live without it, and you feel like it would solve all your problems, well that's never true. Evangelicals say that the truth is only God can satisfy our desires- if you finally get that thing you really really want, it still won't be good enough, you'll still be unhappy and desiring even more. You're making it an idol. The only solution is to learn to truly be content in God, to truly believe that none of those other desires really matter. (Philippians 4:12)

Fast forward to when I became an adult, making adult decisions about things like my job and where I would live, and- get this- when I made changes to improve my life, it really did make things better! Like "wow I'm so glad we don't live in that old apartment any more." Being much happier every single day because of a life change. Wow! Is it supposed to work that way? Wasn't I just supposed to "be content in God"? (See: In Which John Piper Doesn't Tell You To Find A New Job and I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.)

So this tweet is about getting breast implants- as a cis person, not for transgender reasons- and how it really did improve someone's life. To be honest, I've always wondered how it worked getting breast implants, because in pop culture it's always talked about as a joke. I wonder, do you go to the doctor and say you want bigger boobs, and the doctor is all wink-wink-nudge-nudge-giggle-giggle, like the wedding dress consultants on those reality shows talking about making "the girls" look good? ("The girls" means one's boobs.) Or is the doctor very professional about it and talking frankly about what exactly you want? And what would you even say, in a frank conversation about how you want your boobs to look?

Anywayyyy just linking the tweet here because the idea of breast implants genuinely improving someone's mental health (and not related to transgender reasons) is something I haven't thought about before.

8. Brooks Falls Brown Bears Low powered by EXPLORE.org (started streaming June 21, via) This is a livestream of a bear cam in Alaska. I love this!

The Great Sex Rescue: Last Chapter

A pile of books. Image source.

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

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Here's the last chapter of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], chapter 13.

This chapter is basically a summary of how they decided to do the survey about the effect of Christian teaching on people's marriages, and some general advice moving forward.

I want to talk about this quote from page 233:

The problems we have discussed in this book can be summarized in this woman's comment:

In our first months of marriage I would beg my husband to slow down, and he never would because he was afraid sex would stop and he would be left hanging. Several years ago, in tearful post-sex frustration, I explained to him that he left me feeling that way every time we had sex. I saw a light bulb go off, but he quickly put it out, saying, "We'll just have to work on catching you up," rolled over, and went to sleep. Nothing ever changed. My husband had multiple partners before marriage and I was a virgin. So he really thinks he's a great lover and I just don't appreciate him. I tried to explain his attitude is killing our sex life, but he thinks my lack of interest is killing it. I love my husband and sometimes I do want sex, but when I think about how he's going to jump straight to intercourse and I'm going to be left disappointed, why put myself through it? How different would my marriage be if the marriage classes we took taught him he's responsible for making sex feel good for me? Instead he has learned that I owe him sex, our sex life is bad because we don't have sex every three days, and if he chooses to to have an affair, it's my fault for not giving him enough sex. Oh, and it's my job to make him believe I enjoy sex even if I don't. How can a wife even begin to combat all this bad teaching and be heard?

Our call to the evangelical church is that our resources should lead women like this commenter to feel protected, not dismissed, and should lead men like her husband to feel convicted, not validated.

This comment is SPOT ON.

The thing that strikes me about this is, her husband feels like he's good at sex, and the problem is with her. This way of thinking is incomprehensible- there's no such thing as being "good at sex"/ "a good lover" in a general sense- it's a concept that's inherently connected to the specifics of what your partner wants and how your partner feels. ie, being "a good lover" is mostly about listening to your partner and doing what feels good for them.

But, I mean, Christian marriage teaching says you are supposed to have sex in marriage, and sex is PIV [penis in vagina], so then the couple goes ahead and does PIV, and the man likes it and the woman doesn't... Like, of course they're going to conclude the problem is with her. How could it be a problem with her husband? He is indeed doing PIV, therefore he is doing sex correctly, but she is not reacting with positive emotions, therefore she is doing sex incorrectly. Right? 

The problem is this overly-simplistic idea that sex is PIV (and that men don't have to put in any more effort beyond that). We should actually be teaching people that sex is something you and your partner design together, and the point is to be a good experience for both of you. And it doesn't have to be PIV. And you should masturbate to figure out what feels good physically for you, and then incorporate that into your sex life with your partner. I believe the masturbating part is very important because it's *just* physical without any relationship aspect; I think it's important for women to know that sex is supposed to feel good *physically* for them- it's not just "it feels good for my male partner and I like seeing him happy."

(Okay because I'm asexual I have to put a caveat on that- some asexuals choose to have sex mainly because it feels good for their partner. Which is fine, if it's an informed choice. What's not fine is if you've convinced yourself you're happy with sex that doesn't feel good physically because you've been taught your whole life that the wife is required to give her husband sex, and women don't really like sex, and you've never even heard of female orgasms. Not cool! At least read up on masturbation and orgasms before deciding you're fine having sex that only feels good for your partner.)

And another thing about this comment from the book- this woman was taught that she is required to have sex with her husband even if she hates it. Here's a thought: How about we tell people to just completely refuse to have bad sex? Imagine if everyone thought that yes of course it's a totally normal and reasonable reaction for her to just refuse to have sex because her husband isn't listening to her or caring about how it feels for her. But instead the church is teaching that yeah women should expect sex to be unpleasant but they have to do it anyway.

It's so wrong, and the farther I get from that ideology, the more I'm astounded at how wrong it is. Like, sex can be such a good thing, but this ideology ruins it by saying it has to be PIV, and if you don't like the way your husband does PIV, well too bad, you have to do it anyway, that's what it means to be a wife.

So I'm really glad that this book, "The Great Sex Rescue," exists. So much Christian teaching about sex and marriage is very harmful, and we need to fight against it.

Moving along, this chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" tells us that we don't need to believe things just because they're in a Christian book. We should use discernment- if something sounds wrong, maybe it IS wrong. You don't have to believe it.

I love that they said this- this is really important. When I was a kid, I really did believe that there was one correct "Christian view" of every issue, and that good Christian leaders all knew the correct beliefs, and if a Christian book said something, then it must be right. (And I read A LOT of Christian books back then.) It was interesting for me, in college, reading some atheist books and having the mindset that "I don't agree that this book is correct"- reading much more carefully and critically than I had ever read a "Christian" book... And before that, I had been afraid to read atheist books because I was warned that I might be "led astray"- ie, our minds are weak and we might be deceived into believing thing that aren't true, so we must totally avoid listening to anyone who doesn't agree with our beliefs. Unlike Christian books, which (I believed) you can just simply read and accept because the authors are trustworthy and have the correct Christian beliefs.

The advice that this chapter gives to pastors and ministry leaders is similar: Take a look at what marriage resources your church is promoting, because many of the popular Christian marriage books are bad. What books do you have in your church library? What books does your church use in small group meetings? Some pastors recommend books without having read them, just assuming that they must be good because they're bestsellers written by Christians. Don't do that! Some of those books are really harmful!

And also this:

Finally, free people up to say no to harmful resources. Nobody can review every book, blog post, or radio program, but you can empower your congregation to exercise discernment. Say clearly and often from the pulpit, "Not all advice or 'Christian' instruction is actually Christ-centered. We're trying to point you in the right direction, but we can't monitor everything. If you ever read or hear something that doesn't sound right to you, use your discernment. It's okay to reject it. Talk to us if you want to, but know that we do not endorse everything just because it claims to be Christian, and it's okay if you don't either."

Two things to say about this:

First of all, YES!!!!! YES, this is absolutely right, and I wish I had known this when I was a kid. Use your own brain, rather than just accepting everything that Christian leaders say. Question it!

Second: Ah, well, I can think of a very big reason why Christian leaders are not saying this. If people start questioning Christian teaching on marriage, what if they start questioning other Christian teaching? What if they start questioning you, the pastor?

Some pastors genuinely do want to help people. Some pastors want to control people. So. That's the problem.

Anyway, that's the end of the book. I have a bunch of concluding thoughts about it, so I'll write one last post in this blog series. Stay tuned for that~

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

Related:

The Great Sex Rescue: Wives Are the Ones Being "Deprived"

I Had Pre-Eclampsia

A mom and newborn baby doing skin-to-skin. Image source.

[content note: medical stuff. Childbirth is kinda gross.]

I recently announced the birth of my little daughter. Here's the story of how I had pre-eclampsia during that pregnancy.

First of all, I'm in China, and so I should mention that in China, most of the doctors work at hospitals, rather than at a separate doctor's office. So you go to a hospital for all your normal medical appointments and checkups. Just want to point this out, because in the US, if you say you're "going to the hospital", oh no must be something serious, but in China, it's not, it's just normal doctor stuff.

Towards the end of the pregnancy (after 34 weeks or so), the hospital policy is that pregnant patients should come once a week for prenatal appointments. And at every appointment, towards the end of pregnancy, they measure your blood pressure and take a urine sample. This is because they are testing everyone for pre-eclampsia- the first signs of pre-eclampsia are high blood pressure and protein in your urine.

So I went for my regular appointment, when I was 36 weeks + 1 day pregnant. (A full term pregnancy is 40 weeks.) And at that appointment, my blood pressure was high. And there was protein in the urine sample. They measured my blood pressure several times at that appointment, and had me do a second urine sample. The second one had protein too.

So the doctor, let's call him Dr. L, wanted to do more tests to find out if it was pre-eclampsia. Because pre-eclampsia can be dangerous, so, very important to do the tests to diagnose if I had it or not. He said I should collect all my urine for 24 hours, and then bring it back to the hospital and they would test that. The nurse gave me a huge bottle to collect it in. Kinda gross!

The next day, I stayed at home the whole day and collected all the urine. And the day after that, in the morning I brought it back to the hospital to get tested.

Oh also, my husband wasn't in Shanghai at that time- he was traveling. So anyway, I get back to the hospital with my big urine bottle, and the doctor that day was Dr. Z, who was very serious about the possibility that I might have pre-eclampsia. 

So yeah turns out there was definitely too much protein in the urine, and my blood pressure was too high.

Dr. Z only speaks Chinese- which is fine because I speak Chinese, and also usually my husband comes with me to the prenatal appointments, and he is Chinese. The doctors tend to like to talk to him because they can just talk to him in Chinese and he obviously understands everything. (And some of the doctors at this hospital speak English very well, some don't speak English at all, and some are at various points in between.)

So Dr. Z told me I had pre-eclampsia, and she looked it up in a dictionary app on her phone to show me the English name, because she didn't know what it was called in English. Then she told me to call my husband and she would tell him the situation over the phone. And sometimes I kinda feel like, "hey why don't they just talk to me, it's my medical status," but I really can't complain because my husband does an amazing job with this. He doesn't have the attitude like he's in charge and I can't make decisions myself. Instead, he's exactly the support person you'd want to have in this situation. He knows my medical concerns, he listens to me and takes me seriously, and he communicates those things to the doctors. Seriously, 10 out of 10.

Plus it's not like the doctors don't talk to me. When I ask them questions in Chinese, they tell me the whole situation. So that's good.

Dr. Z tells him over the phone that I will have to stay in the hospital, and I will have to get steroid shots to help the baby's lungs develop faster, and we will try to make it to 37 weeks and then deliver the baby. (At that point I was 36 weeks + 3 days. 37 weeks is the point where they figure they can deliver the baby and the baby will be healthy.) And I understood most of that in Chinese but not all of it, so yeah it was nice having my husband involved and able to talk to me about it too. And Dr. Z told him he should come back to Shanghai if possible.

Dr. Z also printed out some information in English about pre-eclampsia for me, which was nice. I had read about it before, so I basically knew what it was, but wow it's a different feeling when you actually have it. Dr. Z was really serious about it, and she kept asking me if I had headaches, or felt dizzy, or had blurred vision- which I did not. I told her I feel fine, I don't really have any symptoms. But she said I'm not fine, I will get worse if they don't treat this.

What is pre-eclampsia? Mayo Clinic defines it this way:

Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy. With preeclampsia, you might have high blood pressure, high levels of protein in urine that indicate kidney damage (proteinuria), or other signs of organ damage. Preeclampsia usually begins after 20 weeks of pregnancy in women whose blood pressure had previously been in the standard range.

Left untreated, preeclampsia can lead to serious — even fatal — complications for both the mother and baby.

Early delivery of the baby is often recommended. The timing of delivery depends on how severe the preeclampsia is and how many weeks pregnant you are. Before delivery, preeclampsia treatment includes careful monitoring and medications to lower blood pressure and manage complications.

Preeclampsia may develop after delivery of a baby, a condition known as postpartum preeclampsia.

In the information that Dr. Z gave me, it said the only cure is to deliver the baby. 

So that day, they set me up with an IV with blood pressure medicine (magnesium) and I just hung out there in the hospital the whole day, getting the medicine. In the evening, I got a steroid shot to help the baby's lungs develop. (The lungs are some of the last organs to fully develop during pregnancy. It's really great that medical technology has advanced enough that there's a steroid shot available to accelerate this, if you know your baby is going to be born premature. This has saved a lot of babies' lives.) They said I would have to have 4 shots, with 12 hours between each one. It hurt.

And my husband got a flight back to Shanghai that night.

The next day (36 weeks + 4 days pregnant) was basically the same. I got an IV bag of blood pressure medicine all day. I had a headache, and the doctor said it could be caused by the medicine rather than being caused by the pre-eclampsia. Also the nurses measured my blood pressure frequently throughout the day. And the second and third steroid shots.

The next day (36 weeks + 5 days pregnant) I got the 4th steroid shot. My blood pressure was okay, so the doctor (let's call her Dr. Y- every day it's a different doctor on shift) said we didn't need to be in such a hurry to deliver the baby. Maybe we would make it to 37 weeks. (But we wouldn't go beyond 37 weeks- when you have pre-eclampsia, you really can't stay pregnant. It just becomes a matter of how to balance the benefits the baby gets from spending more time growing in the uterus, vs the dangers to both the pregnant person and baby if the pre-eclampsia gets worse.)

So that day, Dr. W (there are a lot of doctors in this story) told me that we would put a string with some kind of medicine to start contractions, into my vagina. Also, it seems I've somehow figured out the cheat code to get all the doctors at this hospital to believe me about how I used to have vaginismus and I don't want people just sticking stuff in my vagina whenever. (Yeah you know all my blog posts about having bad experiences with gynecologists? Most of those were at this hospital.) I have no idea how I finally managed that, but I guess there's a note in my medical records about it now, and the doctors took it seriously, and thought up all kinds of workarounds to minimize the amount of times they would have to stick things in my vagina. Which is great! Anyway so Dr. W said I can try to stick this string in there myself. So I did that, but then in the end I did need her help to do it because I couldn't get it right. 

So for the whole day, I had contractions, but they weren't painful, and weren't very frequent, so, the baby was not born that day.

The next day (36 weeks + 6 days pregnant) Dr. Y said that the contractions had opened my cervix enough that I was ready to start inducing labor, and the baby would be born that day. So, an anesthesiologist came and gave me an epidural (which I was really nervous about). The epidural is anesthesia that goes into the space around your spinal cord, and it makes you unable to feel pain in the lower half of your body- but you're still totally awake. This is what they typically give you when you're giving birth, and it worked really well for me.

Also Dr. S broke my water using a big hook that looked like a crochet hook. The reason for breaking the water is to make the contractions come faster. Later I also got pitocin through an IV, which makes the contractions faster.

So then after that, I kind of sat around for a while. The contractions continued, and got more frequent, but I didn't feel any pain. I just watched tv and ate lunch and sat around.

Then the midwife told me I was already fully dilated and could start pushing my baby out. And I was really surprised! It felt like it happened pretty fast! Dr. S came in, and she said once I started pushing, the baby would be born within 20 minutes- and I was really surprised about that, because for my first child, I pushed for 2-3 hours. But since this one is my second child, Dr. S said it would be a lot faster.

So then I started pushing, and it wasn't even that hard, and the baby was born after 15 minutes. (Also, since this baby was born early, she has a smaller head than my first baby. Which made things much easier!)

When she came out, the umbilical cord was around her neck, and she wasn't breathing, so she was quickly handed off to a team of doctors and nurses who suctioned her face a bunch, and then she started breathing. (Yeah while I was pushing the baby out, a whole bunch of doctors and nurses came into the room, and they all have specific roles I guess, like which ones take care of me and which ones take care of the baby. They have a whole system and they did a good job.)

Then they put the baby on my chest for skin-to-skin. (Skin-to-skin means right after the baby is born, the baby will lay on the mom's chest- this helps the baby and mom to bond. Or, if for some reason the mom can't do it- for example, if she had to be put under general anesthesia and isn't awake- then the dad and baby can do skin-to-skin.) Everyone left the room except for me, my husband, and our baby, and we got some time to just hang out with her. She seemed comfortable laying on me, and also not really sure what to make of being born.

But, also, a nurse told me that my baby would have to go to the NICU. Because she was premature, and because she wasn't breathing when she came out. So after the skin-to-skin time, a nurse came and took her to the NICU. After a few minutes, they said my husband was allowed to go to the NICU and see her, so he did that. She ended up staying there about 4 hours, and they decided she was fine, so they brought her back to us then.

Oh, and then, once I wasn't pregnant any more, all my pre-eclampsia symptoms totally disappeared. The nurses continued to check my blood pressure frequently over the next few days, and it was normal.

So that's the story of how my little baby was born. She was born early, at 36 weeks + 6 days, because I had pre-eclampsia. Throughout the whole thing, I wasn't really worried... Even though pre-eclampsia can become life-threatening for both the pregnant person and baby, I didn't feel like I was that sick. I just sat around in the hospital and watched tv for several days, and everything turned out fine.

In other words, it's really good that the doctors always do urine tests to check for pre-eclampsia, for all pregnant patients in the third trimester. They really took this seriously when my results weren't normal and they started to suspect it could be a problem, and they caught the problem before it became a life-threatening emergency. They caught it early enough that they had time to give me medicine for the high blood pressure, and make a plan about how to deliver the baby so that both me and the baby would be safe and healthy.

I'm grateful to the whole medical team, to modern science for inventing the blood pressure medicine and the steroid shots, and whoever suctioned my baby's face to get her to breathe (I have no idea who that was, I was in the middle of getting stitched up). Pregnancy can be dangerous. It's really great that nowadays the medical technology is very good, and everything can work out just fine, even with something like pre-eclampsia which can potentially be life-threatening.

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Related:

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice

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Every time you ask a woman about pregnancy or childbirth she’ll go “Oh it wasn’t so bad, I was actually really lucky. All that happened was—“ and then tell the most terrifying story you’ve ever heard.

— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) January 14, 2024

Blogaround

1. Acausally Asexual (July 2) "Implicitly: if you ever identify another cause, then you’ve delegitimized your orientation, and discovered that it was never a sexual orientation to begin with. I have some issues with this, to put it mildly."

2. No Kings (July 1)

3. Standard pregnancy care is now dangerously disrupted in Louisiana, report reveals (March 19, via) "'Which is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous,' said Freehill. 'The least safe thing that we do, no matter if it's early in pregnancy or full-term at your due date, is a C-section.'"

4. Shanghai’s Metro, Through the Eyes of a Guide Dog (July 5)

Also from Sixth Tone: Chinese Cities Roll Back Pandemic-Era Tourist Site Ticketing Systems (July 8) Yeah, during zero-covid, every park or museum you went to in China required you to book tickets with your real name and id number, so they could track you down if someone turned up covid-positive nearby. It's kind of a pain! And why do they need to collect all this information on us? Glad to see a lot of places discontinuing this.

5. Call For Submissions: July / August 2024 (July 7) "I'm self-hosting the Gender Exploration Carnival with the theme of "Flags" for July and August of 2024."

6. Bracket Symbols (July 3) Very useful xkcd!

7. Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge (July 9) "Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the US found the company violated a deal meant to reform it after two fatal crashes by its 737 Max planes that killed 346 passengers and crew."

"Who Is My Neighbor?" (Kids' Book Review)

Book cover for "Who Is My Neighbor?"

I bought this book for my son, who is preschool-age: Stories Jesus Told: Who Is My Neighbor? [affiliate link].

I like this book and recommend it. It's the story of the good Samaritan. This post is my review of the book.

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My situation

My situation is, I'm an ex-evangelical Christian, and I want to introduce my son to the bible, but I have a lot of issues with most of the bible story books that are written for kids. They really misrepresent what the bible is. Reading those books, you'd think the bible is a collection of nice stories with morality lessons, but WOW IT IS NOT. The bible has so much WTFtastic stuff in it. A lot of foreskins, a lot of polygamy, a lot of genocide... 

So I want to introduce my son to the bible, but I don't want to give him the wrong idea about what it is, but what it really is is inappropriate for little kids, so, uh, we have a contradiction. For now, I guess, I can just read him some of the stories that don't have problematic elements, or some stories which have been cleaned up to turn into a children's book. But then once he's familiar with the basic outline of a particular bible story, I need to talk to him about the parts that are complicated or weird or problematic. Show him that we don't have to agree with everything in the bible, that we struggle and wrestle with the text and make our own meaning from it. It's not a series of true statements that fell from heaven and dictate our lives.

Anyway, I am a fan of the story of the good Samaritan. I think this is a good bible story to teach kids.

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The language in this book is too hard for preschoolers

The text in this book is straight-up Luke 10:25-37. It's the actual text of the bible; they didn't simplify it to make it easier for little kids to understand. For example, the first page says this:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

So I read this page to my son, and then I looked at him and I thought "well that went over his head." So I had to then give him a simpler explanation- I said "this is Jesus, and this guy is asking him a question." (I also tried to explain "inherit eternal life" but I don't think he got that at all.) And then on subsequent readings of the book, I ask my son, "Which one is Jesus?" and he points.

I actually like how the book simply uses the text of the bible, rather than changing it to something more "kid-friendly." It means that as he grows up and is able to understand more, this book will still be useful for teaching him the story of the good Samaritan. It requires me to give my own preschool-level summary of every page, as I read it to him, but that's fine. Actually, when reading books to little kids, it's good to stop and talk about the story. Ask them what they think will happen, ask them to point at things in the pictures, etc.

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My son's reaction

Well I think the part he was most concerned about was the robbers. He kept asking me why the robbers beat up this guy on the road. I said it's because they wanted to take his money, and my son was like "why?" I think he doesn't understand money yet because we pay for everything with our phones instead of using cash. 

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Conclusion

I like this book. The parable of the good Samaritan is a good story, and I'm glad I can use this book to introduce it to my son. 

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Related:

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids 

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