"This advice isn't meant for abusive relationships"

Silhouette of a man and woman holding hands. Image source.

[content note: abuse, rape, victim-blaming]

Here's a good post from Sheila Wray Gregoire: Why You Can’t Say: “This Advice Isn’t Meant for Those in Abusive Marriages”. Gregoire has written many blog posts and books criticizing the harmful marriage advice that is constantly being promoted in Christian spaces, pointing out how this advice is often so bad, it will make an abusive relationship even worse. And sometimes people respond by saying this criticism isn't valid because the advice was only intended for normal, healthy relationships, not for abusive relationships.

(Here's a link with a bunch of examples of Christian marriage books with this kind of unhealthy advice.)

In her post, Gregoire says this response doesn't make sense, because statistically, something like 25% of the readers of these books are in abusive relationships. And people in abusive relationships often don't recognize the abuse until years later. They just read these Christian marriage advice books, and try so hard to follow the advice and fix their marriages.

This is a really good point and I'm glad Gregoire is writing about it. I want to add a few of my own thoughts here.

The World of "Pride and Prejudice" is Not the World of Purity Culture

Book cover for "Pride and Prejudice." Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Pride and Prejudice"]

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, was first published in 1813. It's a romance story, about how the fancy gentlemen and ladies of 1700's England go about partnering up and getting married.

Those of us who grew up in purity culture in the American church in the 1990's were taught an ideology about "sexual purity" and rules about dating and gender roles. This ideology was presented as timeless, traditional, how God always intended relationships to work. Like everyone has always known that these were the rules, until the sexual revolution of the 1960's- that's when all the problems started. We need to just get back to these traditions, which are straight from the bible. That's how dating is supposed to be.

So, naively, one might imagine that when you encounter writing about romance/relationships/marriage from hundreds of years ago, in a society that was greatly influenced by Christianity, it would basically match what purity culture teaches. That the rules that proper men and women followed back then should be more or less the same as the rules that purity culture is putting on us now. That the way that people in that time period viewed romantic relationships would match what purity culture tells us.

But oh goodness, let me tell you, this is very much not true about "Pride and Prejudice."

Wow, it is very much NOT TRUE that purity culture ideology is just getting back to the way that every proper and respectable person used to approach romantic relationships. Purity culture is a movement that was invented in the US in the 1990's, and its aesthetics give the appearance of being old and traditional, but it's not.

So let me tell you about 4 things in "Pride and Prejudice" that are at odds with the purity-culture perspective on relationships.

"Girls & Sex" (book review)

Book cover for "Girls & Sex" by Peggy Orenstein

[content note: discussion of porn, discussion of oral sex]

Here's my review of the book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I feel like it helped me understand some things about the way people talk about sex.

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Overview

This book is about the culture ("hookup culture") surrounding high school and college girls, in regards to sexual relationships. It's about what's expected, what's seen as normal, what they want, how they feel about it, what kinds of expectations they are facing from boys, how girls' knowledge of feminism doesn't necessarily stop their behavior from being dictated by these societal pressures, etc.

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"Pure": A Book About the Aftermath of Purity Culture

Book cover for "Pure" by Linda Kay Klein.

The book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, by Linda Kay Klein, is about adult women who grew up in purity culture. It's about the aftermath of purity culture, how people try to move on from it as adults, how it continues to affect them. The book contains stories from the author's personal life, and interviews with many people who grew up in purity culture.

I have a few quotes and observations I want to share here:

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Ignorance about sex (p 77)

We weren't allowed to know anything about what sex actually was, but at the same time, we had to make sure we strictly followed the rules about what we weren't allowed to do. Kind of difficult to know what the rules are, though, when you're not allowed to know what sex is.

The cornerstone of the purity myth is the expectation that girls and women, in particular, will be utterly and absolutely nonsexual until the day they marry a man, at which point they will naturally and easily become his sexual satisfier, ensuring the couple will have children and never divorce: one man, one woman, in marriage, forever.

For this formula to work, my girlfriends and I knew we had to follow a slew of rules. Unfortunately, none of us knew what they were. Sex was such a shameful topic that we never got real talk on what we were and were not allowed to do. It was assumed that if no one ever talked to us about sex, it would just sort of go away until we needed it. So our "sex talks" were all generic metaphors and warnings about what would happen to us if we crossed a line, which was defined differently by so many people that we were left guessing all the same. Meanwhile, we knew we would be shamed if we asked sexual questions; shamed if we discussed sexual decisions; shamed if we shared our confusing sexual feelings and thoughts; and shamed worst of all if we admitted we had already done anything sexual. So each of us guessed at what the rules might be, hoped we were right, and didn't tell anyone about our sexual lives just in case we weren't.

This is SPOT ON.

Also, purity culture makes people so ashamed of completely normal things, it causes people to hide what they're doing rather than having healthy conversations with friends about what a healthy relationship looks like. If something is wrong in your relationship, you won't be able to get useful advice from your friends about it, because you're ashamed of the fact that you're dating someone in the first place.

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The couple who couldn't figure out how to have sex (p 135-137)

Klein interviews a woman named Muriel:

Desperate to have sex, Muriel and Dmitri's engagement was short.

"We got married at 9:30 in the morning so that we could have sex early. No lie, that's why we got married early! I was excited about sex! I thought, 'I don't want to wait all day,' because sex was this huge thing! It was what everybody talked about, in the negative. But then supposedly once it was in marriage it was supposed to be this amazing celebration. This was the flip side, right? Supposedly. But during the ceremony up there, the pastor says 'you may kiss the bride,' and we kiss. Our teeth clanked. I was like, 'What is going on?' We, like, sort of used tongue. It was the weirdest thing in the world. [Note: they 'saved their first kiss for the wedding.']

"There had been this whole promise: If you wait, then this kiss will be magical and divine. But oh my gosh, total opposite. I whispered in Dmitri's ear, 'Let's not do that again until we're alone.'

"There was a small reception and by noon we're in a hotel room. So we start stripping off. I see a naked man for the first time. I hadn't even seen naked pictures. I'd never seen any pornography or anything. So, naked man. And then I got to strip off. And now we're naked and this is weird and we start kissing or whatever and then I just bust up crying because this has all been way too much and I hadn't slept much the night before.

"So I take a nap. We take a nap. Then we wake up and we start trying it again. And I have no idea what hole or where anything is. We try that and Dmitri tries touching and he doesn't know. At this point I've read about the clitoris in The Act of Marriage. I know it exists, but I have no idea where it is, neither does Dmitri, and so he's, 'Does this feel good?' I have no idea. I've never let anything down there try to feel good before. So he keeps trying and I'm like, 'Is that an orgasm? I don't know.' So then he starts trying to stick it in. Again, I have no idea where. He's trying to direct. We don't get it in and then he's like, 'Well I'm kind of moved all the way here. Can you help me out?' So I start to do that, and then I'm just, like, left there. Not having done 'the sex.'

"We don't figure out sex for four months. We don't actually get it in. We keep trying. I mean, we're discouraged, but he does keep trying. Sometimes it hurts. We didn't get the idea about wetness or lubrication or any of that. I eventually figured out I had to stretch out beforehand, manually. I figured out where the hole was and I would stretch it out manually and then he would go in. It never felt sexy. Sex was never sexy. I never got off while he was in there, and even on his end, it was more like, if we did it, good, that's something we're supposed to do. But it was never 'this is so sexy, I want you.' It was just a check mark for us. I'm not sure when he gave up on trying as often."

"Did you ever talk about what you were experiencing with anybody?"

"No! Because it's embarrassing! I mean, that's just something you just don't talk about. We're married now. It's supposed to be a slippery, slippery, easy-to-fall-off-of slope. 'Where's the easiness? How's anybody accidentally having sex? How are teenagers accidentally getting pregnant? I don't know. How are they even getting it in?!'"

!!!!!! This! Oh my goodness, this. This is SO MUCH like my experience trying to have sex for the first time. I totally bought into this ideology that once you are no longer constantly holding yourself back from having sex, once you step over the purity guardrails and allow yourself to do whatever you want, you'll just naturally fall into this powerful vortex of the amazingness of sex, it will feel so good, it will change your whole life, you don't even have to think or do anything, it just happens and it's so amazing (but ill-advised if you're not married, because it is so powerful and life-changing).

And then... what actually happens, if you're like me and you're asexual af, is you decide "okay we are gonna have sex" and then you think, well in the movies the first step seems to be kissing, so let's do that, and then you do that and then you're not sure what's supposed to happen next, should be something about putting our genitals together, but... that's so weird...? And everything slows to a stop and you're just extremely confused instead of having this mind-blowing, life-changing experience.

Like Muriel, I also was genuinely confused about how teenagers get pregnant. Just could not make heads or tails of anything- how my experience of sex was in a different universe from the way everybody else talked about sex. I even asked doctors for help but they were useless. When I discovered asexuality, that was the first time I found people talking about sex in a way that actually felt real. Same for when I heard about vaginismus- finally people talking about what sex is really like, how difficult and confusing it is. (Based on what Muriel said, it sounds like she had vaginismus.)

I'm lucky- I did not have that experience on my wedding night, I had that experience long before we got married. I'm so glad we didn't wait till marriage. And I'm so glad I slowly broke the purity rules little-by-little, rather than trying to go from zero to PIV [penis in vagina] sex immediately, like Muriel did.

The thing about manually stretching the vagina, to prepare for PIV sex, yeah I also discovered that. That was the method I used, when I had vaginismus. (I no longer have vaginismus- let me tell you, wow it makes a world of difference not having vaginismus. It *actually is* easy to have sex now that I don't have vaginismus. Unbelievable.)

What really strikes me about this excerpt from the book is, Muriel and Dmitri had this mindset like there's some specific thing they're supposed to do, as a married couple, and they're trying as hard as they can to figure out how to do it, and feeling ashamed for having trouble with it. They weren't viewing sex as something that was for them, that they could figure out in their own way, based on what felt good for them.

Like it was a specific series of steps, which no one explains to you because it's supposedly "natural", and then when you're confused about what the steps are supposed to be, you feel like something is wrong with you.

I'm queer now- which means I view sex as something that people can choose for themselves. People can make an informed choice about which parts of it they want or don't want. Make it something that makes sense for you.

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"Freaking out" when attempting to have sex

Klein talks about how, when she tried to have sex with her boyfriend Sebastian, she would panic and "freak out." For people who are trying to leave purity culture, the psychological effects are so strong- the fear is engrained so deep- if you have sex, horrible things will happen. (I also experienced that fear- I eventually decided that I no longer believed it was a sin to have unmarried sex... but actually doing it was an entirely different thing- I was still terrified. Eventually I decided to "face my fear"- after we finally had PIV sex, and it didn't ruin my life, and didn't change me into a completely different kind of person, wow I felt so much better. No fear any more.)

Here's a quote from p 198:

Sebastian and I did eventually have sex, though it was, in his words, "a brief and bungling affair." Both virgins, neither of us wanted to call this our sexual debut. In time, Sebastian and I broke up. In the years that followed, he got a new girlfriend and says he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious. ("Thanks man," I rolled my eyes at him.)

OH my goodness, this is so real. He "was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious."

SO REAL.

People who date people who grew up in purity culture are taking on a very hard task. I have "freaked out" many times about extremely mundane aspects of dating, and how I was so terrified that I was "bad" and "impure" because of what I had done. As an example, 17 years ago, I was dating a guy, and one time I called him "my wonderful dear" and then I had a whole emotional crisis about that because I didn't think I was going to marry him, and then what would my "future husband" think about the fact that I had actually said out loud that a guy who wasn't him was "wonderful"? What would my future husband think about me having expressed my feelings for another guy? Was I going to regret this forever?

(Please note, that was 17 years ago, and it has no effect on my life now. I am married, and my husband cares 0% about what I did or did not do with some other guy 17 years ago. Purity culture really had me believing that whatever silly misadventures I had in dating in college were going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I cannot express strongly enough how NOT TRUE that is.)

And on and on. Every guy I have dated, I have burdened with this emotional baggage about how I fear I'm being so bad and impure and sinful. 

"he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious." I feel that so much.

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People who want casual sex

Here's something I learned from this book: There are people who genuinely want to have casual sex without a relationship. This can include men, women, people of whatever gender. They actually legitimately want that. They look at their current life situation and think about what they want out of sex/relationships, and they feel that what they really want is to have casual sex.

I really never thought about that before.

I knew that many people are having casual sex, but I never knew that could be, like... like an intentional choice. I thought it was like, "I wish I could be in a real relationship, but I have to settle for casual sex instead" or "I met this very hot person and I don't know what came over me, everything moved so fast and we had sex." I really never knew it could be a clear-eyed rational choice that made sense with one's current priorities and life circumstances.

Some of the people interviewed in this book talk about how their vision for their sex life is to have casual sex, but they have such a hard time getting there because of all the psychological hangups they have from purity culture.

Fascinating!

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Respecting everyone's journey

Klein interviews a huge range of people, who all have difference experiences in terms of what happened to them after growing up in purity culture. Some of them got married, some didn't. Some had unmarried sex, some didn't. Some are still Christian, some aren't. Some are queer. One interviewee said something about "sometimes I wonder if I'm a lesbian." One interviewee is a trans man. 

And the book never makes any judgments about if their choices and identities are right or wrong. The book simply respects everyone and lets them tell their own stories. (Klein even says she tried to include some people who benefitted from purity ideology, but she couldn't find any who were willing to be included in the book, so MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.)

Let me tell you, it was SO REFRESHING to read this after reading "The Great Sex Rescue." Oh MY GOODNESS. The way that "Pure" simply acknowledges the existence of queer people, because it makes sense to mention queer people in a book about the effects of purity culture- just talking about being queer like it's a normal part of the range of human experience. SO DIFFERENT from "The Great Sex Rescue", which so glaringly refused to mention anything about queer people existing. The way that "Pure" is totally fine with people being Christian or not. So different from "The Great Sex Rescue", whose main point was "conservative Christians teach that God wants us to do sex and marriage in this way, but actually, that's wrong and harmful, actually God wants us to do sex and marriage in this other way."

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Conclusion

"Pure" is a book about the practical effects of purity culture on people's adult lives. Klein interviews many people who grew up in purity culture, and they talk about how they felt about it, the choices they made since then, and the ways that purity culture still affects them.

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Related:

I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage

God, Soul Mates, and International Marriage

Clipart image of a person with a bunch of complicated paths to choose from. Image source.

So here's a question: If "God has a plan for your life", is it possible that this plan involves marrying someone from a different country?

When I was evangelical, of course I believed "God has a plan for your life" and this plan includes 1 specific (opposite-sex) person you're supposed to marry. God has destined a soul-mate for you, supposedly. (This whole "God has a plan for your life" idea causes evangelicals an incredible amount of anxiety because they have to constantly worry about if they've made the wrong decision and accidentally gotten off track for the plan.)

But then, in college I dated a guy who was an international student from China. (I am American and went to college in the US.) Let's call him Xin. I was starting to rebel against purity culture, and I did something extremely naughty: I made the decision to start dating him even though God hadn't told me that I was supposed to. Yes, super naughty and rebellious, and I had a lot of guilt about it. Purity culture teaches that you can't date someone just because you want to- you should only date 1 person, ever, in your entire life, and it needs to be the person that God "planned" for you. You can't date someone just based on your own choices and feelings; no, you need to ask God. Because really, how are you going to know if it's the person you could marry, if you haven't even dated them yet? No way of gathering enough information to know that, without compromising your "purity"- therefore, the only way is to get God to tell you the answer. (Or, in some subcultures of purity ideology, your parents would do most of the work of deciding which potential partner is good enough to marry, before you date them.) And if you end up not marrying them- if you *gasp* break up- well that would be THE WORST THING EVER. You lose so much of your purity. Your God-picked spouse might not even want you anymore, after that.

So I was dating Xin, a guy from China, and one thing that worried me SO MUCH was that I felt this couldn't possibly be "God's plan." Imagine the incredible number of steps God would need to plan out in order to bring me and him together. First, Xin would need to decide he wanted to go abroad for college. Then he would need to choose where to go. After he chooses the US, just think about how many universities there are in the US. And all the factors that would go into picking 1 of them. And then, from my side, there were all the factors that went into me picking which college to go to. And then, once we're both there, God would have to arrange for us to meet. We met because I had suddenly taken an interest in studying Chinese, and I was going to meetups for international students.

It's just... A LOT of steps. Each step could have gone in SO MANY different ways, which would have led to us ending up THOUSANDS OF MILES apart, and never meeting each other.

So how could something like that really be planned?

It made more sense to me to imagine that "God's plan" would be something like, I marry a white guy with a pretty similar cultural background to me. Each step in that "plan" would be something that's fairly high probability- an American chooses to go to an American university, a white student has a friend group/ dating pool which is mostly white students, nobody suddenly develops an all-consuming desire to learn a foreign language, and so on.

Or rather, it depends how far you have to plan ahead. Is it like, God's making this "plan" when I'm already a college student, and the plan is that I should marry someone from China, and so God looks at the students from China who already exist at the same college as me, and then makes a plan from there? Or is it like... planned from birth?

At the church where I grew up, every year when students graduated from high school, the church had a ceremony where they would read all the graduates' names, and each one would tell what their plans were. And I always thought it was funny, roughly half of them would announce they were going to one local Christian college, and roughly half would announce they were going to the other local Christian college. I remember joking with my sister about it- every year we would tally up which college got more. (And then there would be the occasional 1 or 2 students who weren't going to either of those colleges- like me.) Like... being predictable. See, that's the kind of situation where God can easily plan way in advance, about who is supposed to marry whom. Or, say, 2 people both born to families who attend the same church- yeah, God can easily get them together.

But how can it really be "God's plan" to be with someone who was born on the other side of the world? Who for a significant fraction of their life wouldn't have even been able to talk to you, because you didn't speak any of the same languages?

The logistics of it are just a NIGHTMARE. The incredible number of tiny little decisions that need to go a certain way, in order to get these 2 people to meet each other. I just couldn't believe that anyone- not even God- could make a 20-ish-year-long plan that involved so many low-probability events, and have it actually go successfully.

Yeah if the plan is that I marry *a* Chinese person, that's one thing. That's doable. There are lots of Chinese people. But a *specific* one, picked years and years beforehand? No way, not even God could get that to work.

I remember talking to another Christian about this, back then, and she saw it totally opposite from how I did. She said, because all these little things needed to go exactly right in order for me to meet my boyfriend, doesn't that seem even MORE like it was God who had done it?

I didn't buy that, when she said it. We constantly have random encounters with people, caused by a long series of tiny decisions, each of which may have been high or low probability at the time that it happened. It's impossible to predict, but the overall statistics tell us that in general this is how it works. Probably every day I happen to meet people who are in this specific city partly because of some weird unusual event that affected the course of their life long ago. Low-probability events happen all the time, of course they do, but of course you don't know which ones they're going to be. Just like how you don't know what the winning lottery number will be, but you know it will be SOMETHING, likely something that looks like an unremarkable string of digits.

(And also, race is an aspect of this. I felt like... I'm specifically attracted to Chinese guys, is that like... bad? Is it bad to have a preference based on race? And what did God think about it? I had always imagined God to be like my white pastors and Sunday school teachers, viewing China as some faraway backwards place where they talk weird and eat weird food. My God was vaguely racist- I found it impossible to believe that this kind of God would make a plan for me to marry a Chinese guy.)

Way back then, it really had me questioning the whole idea of "God has a plan for your life." Dating a Chinese guy was so new and unexpected for me, and I just couldn't bring myself to believe that it could be something planned by God from the beginning of my life. I just couldn't.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years, and I moved to China, and started dating a different Chinese guy, and now we are married. When we got engaged, it was a very big deal to me that it was an actual choice I was making. It wasn't "God's plan" and I just passively go along with it- no, marriage is a big deal, and it was my decision to marry him. Marriage shouldn't be something that just kinda happens to you as you float through life on "God's plan"- it should be a real choice.

I don't believe in "God's plan" anymore- and I'm glad I don't. It raises way too many questions about how God could possibly make such an intricate plan work successfully, it means you have to constantly be stressed about whether any little decision you make is totally throwing you off track for "God's plan", and it means you're not allowed to make your own choices, but need to be constrained by whatever biases you imagine God has.

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Related:

In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage

Is There Choice in the Kingdom of God? 

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

On Marriage as an Immigrant in China

We're a lot better off if God has no plan

Blogaround

1. I’m a “Gray Asexual.” My Partner Isn’t. (January 10, via) "'Mainstream media rarely covers gray asexuality,' says Tristan Miller, director of the Ace Community Survey team. 'When they do, they rarely go beyond providing a definition—and the definition is often bad.'"

2. UN warns Gaza is now ‘uninhabitable’ as war continues (January 5, via) [content note: war, genocide] "He said the humanitarian community is facing an 'impossible mission' – trying to help more than 2 million people while UN staff and aid workers from partner organisations are killed, communications blackouts continue, roads are damaged, truck convoys are shot at and vital commercial supplies 'are almost nonexistent'."

3. Republicans are torturing pregnant women with lethal diagnoses.... (January 2) [content note: pregnancy loss, all of this is really tragic] 24-minute video from Mama Doctor Jones, an obgyn who grew up in Texas. She talks about her own journey to becoming pro-choice, and about the lawsuit against the state of Texas for denying abortion care to women with medical emergencies or fetal anomalies where the baby would not survive.

4. OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE THIS SO MUCH:

I was not prepared for @FlamyGrant to lead a “Testify To Love” singalong. And it was perfect. pic.twitter.com/5DybJGD5wP

— Matt Nightingale (@mattnightingale) January 13, 2024

(Some background info: Flamy Grant is a Christian drag queen, queer Christians love her, and "Testify to Love" is a Christian song from the 90s.)

5. Help A Queer Couple Rebuild Their Lives in Safety. A GoFundMe for a lesbian couple in Ethiopia. This link was sent to me by a queer friend who used to live in China and is living in Ethiopia now- she knows the organizers of this fundraiser personally. Please donate if you can!

6. Yes, can confirm this is true:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orientation is About Finding the Pattern

A set of (x,y) data points with a best-fit line drawn through them. The data is basically linearly correlated, but the fit isn't perfect. Image source.

The topic for the August 2023 Carnival of Aces is "Asexuality and Orientation." So, I want to talk about how orientation labels are about describing the overall patterns of your feelings/experiences. It doesn't mean every single feeling you've ever felt fits the definition for that orientation label. It's about the pattern.

Here's a bunch of examples. First I have examples about orientation, and then I want to talk about finding or not finding patterns in my own life, related to dating, etc.

Here we go:

I once met a lesbian who was dating a trans man. This was confusing to me, because... "lesbian" means she's only attracted to women... is she saying that trans men are women? Uh that seems... not very trans-accepting. But thinking about it now, I don't think that's it. I think the overall pattern that describes her attraction is, she's attracted to women, and her trans man boyfriend is something of an exception to that. Or perhaps she's attracted to him because he has some of the qualities that she finds attractive in women, even though he's a man. The overall pattern of her being a lesbian is still true, but that doesn't mean every single thing in her life has to fit the simple definition of "lesbian."

Related to that, I remember seeing a post online where someone said, "I'm a lesbian, but my boyfriend was grandfathered in." (I find it HILARIOUS to use the word "grandfathered" here.) I guess she means, she already had a boyfriend, and then she figured out she's a lesbian, but she wants to stay in the relationship with him. (There could be all kinds of reasons she would choose to do that.) So "lesbian" is the term that best fits the overall pattern of her feelings/ how she wants other people to see her, but her boyfriend is an exception.

And here's a question: How do non-binary people fit into the straight/gay/bi/pan framework? If someone is, for example, a straight man, that means he's attracted to women. Is he attracted to non-binary people? Should we not use the terms "straight" and "gay" because they treat non-binary people like they don't exist? My answer to that is, most people know very few non-binary people (if they know any at all), and non-binary people's gender expression is all over the map- is it even possible to make generalizations, to find the "pattern" that summarizes your attraction to non-binary people? I think most people simply don't have enough data to find a pattern, so it doesn't make sense to use an orientation label that indicates "I'm attracted to non-binary people" or "I'm not attracted to non-binary people." If I'm a straight woman, and I'm attracted to 1 out of 100 men, and I've met 5 non-binary people and I'm not attracted to any of them, well, who can say if it's because I'm just not attracted to non-binary people, or if it's because I don't have enough data? It wouldn't make sense to draw conclusions one way or the other.

(See also this post from Siggy, Attraction to nonbinary people, and this video from Verity Ritchie, Everyone is Attracted to Nonbinary People)

Another example: In the comments section of my post Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality, sildarmillion said, "For me personally, I ID as ace, as I've only felt sexual attraction to one male person, so I could be ace and hetero for all I know, but idk, I don't feel a strong connection with the Heterosexual label, so I don't identify with that label." This was surprising to me, because I thought being a woman, and having at least 1 experience of being attracted to a man, and not any other genders, that falls under the category of straight/hetero. But for her, there's no pattern to it. It just happened 1 time, so it doesn't make sense to draw a conclusion about being straight/hetero.

Also, one of my friends, let's call her Claire, once told me that her attraction changes a lot, like one day she's only attracted to women, and a different day she's only attracted to men- I think she described this as "sexually fluid." (And later she found the term "abrosexual" and was very happy because she felt it totally fit.) Like, from day to day or week to week, her sexual orientation changes. This was very surprising to me, specifically, the idea of having a high enough frequency of data points that you can track changes on such short time scales. Wow! I very much cannot do that! I'm attracted to men, but on a typical day I probably won't meet any men I'm attracted to. (Except my husband because I live with him.) It's a really small percentage of men, and it's very normal for me to go for days or weeks without any of the men I meet being in that category. 

Really it's a super-interesting math question about how as you measure at higher and higher frequencies, any calculations you make about rates of change become less reliable because of noise. But, apparently, Claire had such a high frequency of being attracted to people, that she really could identify patterns on the scale of days or weeks. Wow! Cool!

(I can identify patterns on a time scale of years, personally.)

And, since it's about finding patterns, there could be 2 people with the same experiences, but one of them thinks those experiences show a pattern, and the other thinks those experiences are just exceptions that can be ignored, and so they use different identity labels. For example, maybe one person is bisexual, and one person is "I'm straight but I fooled around in college." Maybe it's a woman who usually dates men, but she has had a few sexual experiences with women here and there. Does she see those experiences with women as a key part of the overall pattern of her attraction? Then she might identify as bisexual. Or does she see herself as straight, and those were just small minor exceptions that don't really matter? Both interpretations are valid- it's a matter of what she feels like counts as a "pattern."

But, also, I've seen bi people who were unhappy about people labelling themselves as "straight but I fooled around in college" or "heteroflexible." The criticism was, people want to say their same-sex experiences don't "count", because they believe there's something *wrong* with being bi- so it's internalized bigotry against bi people. I think I come down on the side of "you shouldn't tell people what labels they're allowed to use" but also... maybe there's some truth to the argument that your own internal biases can have an effect on whether you identify something in your life as a "pattern" or an "exception."

Or, let's talk about the difference between asexual and gray-asexual. I think this difference is ALL ABOUT whether you personally perceive there to be a pattern in your own life or not. When I was first questioning if I was asexual, I was very concerned about how the exact definition says "no sexual attraction." What if I have had sexual attraction, at some point in my life, but I don't remember, or I didn't understand what it was? I can't prove that this never happened! How can I confidently ID as asexual? And eventually I concluded that since I can't figure out if I've ever experienced sexual attraction or not, that pretty much means I haven't- so I can ID as asexual. And also I was glad that the category of gray-asexual also exists, because then if I'm wrong and I actually have experienced sexual attraction, then that means I wasn't really that far off- asexual and gray-asexual are similar enough. It wouldn't be like... I'm a totally not-queer heterosexual person trying to invade the queer community because I want to label myself and be special.

But my point is, don't worry about "oh maybe I have had sexual attraction at some point in my life but I just didn't realize it" and think you're not allowed to ID as asexual. If it hasn't happened enough times that you can find a pattern to it, then you don't have to base your identity on it.

And what if you have experienced sexual attraction to exactly 1 person, throughout your whole life? Is that asexual or gray-asexual? Well, it could go either way, depending on whether you feel like it fits into a pattern that describes your identity, or it was just a weird thing that happened once and isn't really connected to the rest of your life. Perhaps you felt sexual attraction to 1 person, and you clearly understood that's what it was, and it feels like the sort of thing that could happen again- maybe then, you ID as gray-asexual. Or perhaps you felt sexual attraction, but the whole thing was confusing and seemed out of character for you, and you can't make sense of it- maybe you decide to ID as asexual then, because your overall pattern is being sexually attracted to no one, and this 1 experience just doesn't fit.

And maybe these hypothetical asexual and gray-asexual people actually had the exact same experience, and it's their own perspective and mental model of the world that leads them to conclude "this fits a pattern" or "this doesn't fit a pattern." Both interpretations are fine here. There's more to it than just your raw experience- it's also about the assumptions you use when you analyze your experiences to look for patterns.

(Gray-asexual can mean a lot of other things too- I recommend Siggy's post Many ways to be between.)

And I can talk about my own experiences with patterns or lack thereof. I'm straight, I know I'm straight because I'm a woman and I've been attracted to lots of guys, and not any women. Clearly a pattern. (Turns out, it wasn't sexual attraction though. It was other kinds of attraction.) Ever since I was in high school, if you asked me at any time who I'm attracted to, I could name offhand at least 1 of my friends/acquaintances and maybe a few celebrities. (Not that I would actually tell someone if they asked- that's none of their business.) Like, right now, there's my husband, and also Robert Downey Jr. (And more.)

Robert Downey Jr., as Tony Stark in the "Avengers" movies. Causing me to stumble. Image source.

And the patterns of how I'm attracted to guys have changed some, over the years. The ace concepts of romantic attraction/ sensual attraction/ aesthetic attraction are useful for analyzing that- but also, there are some other patterns I have which are more complicated. And I don't want to give details because it's my own feelings and not of interest to anybody else, but yeah I can identify patterns and see how some aspects of it have changed. But it always fit the definition of "straight."

So I can definitely talk about the overall patterns of how I experience attraction. And crushes. Plenty of those. But you know what I don't have a pattern for? Dating. I've only dated 3 people total (1 of them is my husband) and basically the whole time I felt like I was winging it and had NO IDEA what was going on. Every exciting development that happened was a huge surprise, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react. Every relationship problem we had, it felt like a completely unique situation, and I didn't have the faintest idea about general principles for how to solve those kinds of things.

(3 people total, not counting the times I went on dates without realizing they were dates.)

Here's an example from when I was dating my first boyfriend, let's call him BF1. So, we weren't officially dating yet, but we went out and spent the whole day together, and then had dinner at a restaurant, and I asked him, "So... are we dating?" and he said "I hope so" and I said "okay good." Is that normal? Is that how it usually works? Is that what I was supposed to say? I HAVE NO IDEA!

Like, how do people ask people out? How do people know when they're "officially" a couple? I don't know! I can tell you how it happened for me, these 3 times I've been in a dating relationship, but I definitely don't feel like my experiences are "normal" or like they fit into a bigger pattern of "how dating works."

And when we had relationship problems, I didn't have any sense of "yes, this is the sort of problem that happens sometimes in a relationship, and usually it's related to this underlying reason, and you can address it by doing this." No, it always felt like the problems that came up were completely unexpected, and I had no idea how to deal with them.

But... that could be because of purity culture. Because I followed purity ideology back then, I didn't really have any understanding of what healthy or unhealthy relationships look like. It was just "if you're not having sex, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you're both Christians, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you want to date someone, you have to pray about it and find out if God says you can date them." So if there was a relationship problem, all I could do was... like... not have sex (that's easy, of course we're not having sex) and... ask God what to do. And God's answers could be ANYTHING- I had no understanding of like... a general body of healthy advice that applies to pretty much all relationships.

So anyway, back then, when I was dating other guys before my husband (and also at the beginning of my relationship with my husband) I felt that the things that happened were unique reactions to the unique situations we were in, and not at all generalizable to some "this is what dating is like" idea. And when my friends tell me about their experiences with dating, they're not like mine at all. So I don't have a "pattern" for dating.

I also don't have a pattern for "what sex is like"- I only know what sex is like with my husband, and when other people talk about sex, it isn't relatable to me at all. So I have no idea what sex is like "in general." I always wonder, how many people do you have to date, before you can make generalizations about "how dating works"? How many people do you have to have sex with, before you can make generalizations about "how sex works"?

But, actually, it doesn't necessarily have to be about your own experience with sex and/or dating. It could also be observing your friends' relationships, seeing relationships in movies, etc, and feeling like they make sense to you.

Because, here's something interesting: I *do* make generalizations about marriage. Hmm, I've only been married to 1 person, and yet I often make statements like "this is what marriage is about." How can that be? 

I think it's because, when I hear other people describing the specific dynamics of their marriage, they feel similar to things I've experienced in my marriage. Things related to living with someone for so long that you know all their little quirky/annoying/charming habits. Things like, "in a marriage, there's always 1 person who turns on all the lights in the house, and 1 person who goes after them and turns all the lights off." (This is the biblical definition of marriage.) Or, here's a little piece of advice: Before you get married, you have to find out if your partner is the kind of person who can't stop talking about what other movies all the actors are in, every time you watch a movie. Or, this is cute- the husband who gathers a whole bunch of pillows and sets them up on the wife's side of the bed, because she likes to sleep with a lot of pillows. Knowing these little details about your partner's habits, and showing them love in the way you adapt your own habits to fit together with theirs. That's what marriage is about.

And I think that is something that can generalize to most happy marriages (or even most relationships where people live together long-term). When people talk about marriage- specifically, the very deep ways that people know each other so well and care for each other, as a natural result of being together for so long- it does feel relatable to me. (I love Taylor Swift's song "Lover" and Justin Timberlake's song "Mirrors" because they're about these long-term relationship dynamics.) So that's why I feel I can make generalizations about marriage. (Unless they're talking about sex in marriage, lol I still have no idea.)

So maybe it's not just about if a pattern exists or not- it's about your ability to recognize the pattern, and that's very much based on the examples you've seen from other people, and what patterns they describe. Many queer people have had the experience of hearing about an identity label, and suddenly it "clicks." They never had a way to make sense of their experiences and feelings before, but then this identity label comes along and describes a possible pattern, and they realize, wow, I fit this pattern!

So when you're thinking about orientation and what label to identify with, you don't have to take it literally when a label says it means "only" attracted to a certain gender, or "never" experiencing sexual attraction, or any other words like that. You can identify with a label while still having a few experiences here or there which are "exceptions" to it. You look at the overall pattern of your feelings and experiences. And it's totally possible that people with the same experiences would choose different identity labels, because they may reach different conclusions about what's a pattern and what's not.

---

Related:

Labels Are Useful When You're Far Enough From "Normal" That "Normal" Makes No Sense
OF COURSE Dating is Different as an Adult 
If One Partner Doesn't Want to Fix the Relationship, Then It's Just Not Fixable 
What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus) 

And these posts from Siggy: 
An ace perspective on single-target sexuality 
Shared Experience, Different Words

Update: sildarmillion wrote a response to this: Am I Straight Though? Or, Does Orientation Matter?

Blogaround

Chinese movie poster for "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" [蜘蛛侠：纵横宇宙] Image source.

1. My 2023 Reader Survey will be open until June 19. Go take it if you haven't yet. :)

2. A week in the life of playing NEBULA in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (May 25) This is a really cool behind-the-scenes video.

3. Glasses On, China’s First Civilian Astronaut Takes a Giant Leap (May 30) "As he introduced the three astronauts, Gui, sporting a pair of glasses, instantly garnered attention online, particularly since myopia had so far been regarded as a disqualifying factor for astronaut selection."

4. Is Kissing Before Marriage a Good Litmus Test? (May 31) The answer in this article is yes, because it can help you learn whether your partner respects your boundaries, etc, which can give you an idea of whether they are a safe person to have sex with.

5. Florida’s latest Gish Gallop of legislative cruelty (May 18) "Senate Bill 254 bans gender-affirming care to all under 18 years old, and allows Florida courts to grant temporary emergency jurisdiction to a parent of a child whose joint-custody provides them with access to gender-affirming care in another state."

6. Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for 'Harmful' Responses After Firing Human Staff (May 31)

7. I love this so much:

Adding Love Liberty Disco by The Newsboys (Original Lineup) to my Pride playlist because I've claimed it as a queer anthem 🌈

— Ms. Charlotte (@charlotteirene8) June 1, 2023

And here's the song: NewsBoys - Love Liberty Disco from 1999.

8. The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (January 23) "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."

9. I saw the movie "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" and it is so good, I 100% recommend it. The artwork, oh my god, every single part was a work of art. The story! The characters! There's a pregnant superhero! I've never seen a pregnant superhero before- this is great! There's a baby-wearing dad superhero! The humor- we watched the movie in English with Chinese subtitles, and man I must have been laughing the loudest in the entire theatre, maybe some of the jokes didn't translate to Chinese. The Easter eggs! !!!! I loved it.

"Boys Can't Stop"

Racoon. Image source.

[content note: purity culture is rape culture]

Okay so I want to talk about this 2021 post from Sheila Wray Gregoire, Fixed It For You! We Fix a Survey Question So It Doesn't Enable Date Rape. Gregoire's post is addressing the idea that girls have to be the "gatekeepers" of sex, because boys can't control themselves. This is obviously a harmful idea, and I definitely was taught this and I totally bought into it, back then. I'm glad to see Gregoire's post addressing this.

Specifically, this post is about a survey question described in the book "For Young Women Only," by Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa Rice. (A book which promotes purity ideology.) Gregoire criticizes this question and the way that Feldhahn/Rice interpret the results in their book. Gregoire says this gives boys an excuse if they rape someone.

Here's the image that shows the survey question, from the book "For Young Women Only":

Image text:

Survey says:

Whether or not you are currently involved with a girlfriend, if you were to be in a make-out situation with a willing partner who does not signal a desire to stop, how do you feel about your ability to stop the sexual progression?

Why would I want to stop the sexual progression? 30%

Almost no ability. When the door is opened, it's just too tough to stop the fun. 18%

Some ability, but it would require a massive effort, and I might go further than intended. 34%

I find it easy to stop the sexual progression. 18%

Okay, so... first of all... uh... as an asexual I would like to know, what "sexual progression"?

I did not understand what this question meant when I first read it- though if I was seeing this back when I believed in purity ideology, I would have just nodded along like "oh yes, one thing leads to another, and then you have sex" because that's what everyone said- even though it didn't make any sense to me at all.

From reading the rest of Gregoire's blog post, I *think* this is what it means: So, when people are making out (this means spending a lot of time kissing), the natural next step is to do something kinda sexual like maybe feeling their partner's sexual parts with clothes still on (???), and then the next natural step after that is something like taking clothes off (?????) and so on, and at some point the next natural step is to have sex.

This is extremely confusing to me, because to me, kissing and sex are completely different things. Like, yes in some ways they are related- for example, the only person I want to make out with is my husband, and also the only person I want to have sex with is my husband. But the idea that making out naturally (???) leads to sex is just completely weird to me.

Especially if I was making out with someone I had never had sex with before. Like, sex is just a whole completely different thing, obviously requiring a whole conversation and soul-searching about what I want- it is very much *NOT* a natural step after kissing, what on earth.

Anyway, so, apparently, as far as I can tell, that's what Feldhahn and Rice's survey question was asking about. They asked boys, suppose you are making out with a girl. How much ability do you have to stop the series of steps that goes from there to sex?

I'm like ?????

OKAY BUT ANYWAY. Let's see what Gregoire has to say about it. (Note that apparently she accepts the idea that there is a "sexual progression" from making out to sex and everyone understands what it is. As an asexual, I squint suspiciously at that.)

Feldhahn & Rice combine the answers like this: 82% say they have little ability/responsibility to stop.

THEY CONCLUDE: “WITH A GUY, IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO STOP IT, IT’S BEST TO NOT EVEN START.”

They use words like, “a sizeable minority feel no responsibility to stop.” “Be careful.” “Be cautious.” “Watch out.”

They say, “boys needed the girls’ help” to stop.

What is this telling girls? You are responsible for stopping in a make out situation, because he can’t/won’t. If you go too far, then, it’s your fault, because you know he can’t stop.

Yes. I am glad to see Gregoire calling this out, because it is really harmful ideology. 

And, yeah, back then I literally believed "boys can't stop." (I also believed that girls would similarly reach a certain point where our desires overtake us and we can't stop ourselves from having sex- and I feared this would happen to me- but boys reach that point much much sooner than girls.)

I remember the first time I read on a feminist blog that "consent can be withdrawn at any time." (ie, if you consent to sex, but then later you change your mind and withdraw consent, your partner absolutely can and must stop, otherwise it's sexual assault.) And "just because you consent to one thing doesn't mean you consent to everything." (ie, if you consent to making out, and your partner forces/coerces you to also have sex, that's sexual assault and it's not your fault.) I was just COMPLETELY SHOCKED. Just completely, utterly shocked. I had never heard anything like that before- in fact, I had heard the exact opposite. I believed that once you start doing sexual stuff, boys lose the ability to control themselves- they really can't stop. I was just totally, completely shocked when I came across that feminist blog that said men are better than that, and it is totally reasonable to hold men to that standard. It was so unbelievable to me. I really believed "boys can't stop", just like Feldhahn and Rice say in their book.

Also, I want to stop here and mention: Asexual men exist! Purity proponents like Feldhahn and Rice say they don't, but they do!

Continuing on with Gregoire's blog post:

THE REAL ISSUE HERE IS THAT THEY ASKED BOYS ABOUT A CONSENSUAL SITUATION, AND THEN APPLIED THE DATA TO NON-CONSENSUAL ONES. THAT IS NOT A VALID USE OF THE DATA.
...
They surveyed 400 predominantly non-Christian boys, and said: (a) in a consensual situation where she wants to keep going; (b) what ability do you have to stop?

The problem is that (a) and (b) do not logically go together. What does his ability to stop have to do with her wanting to keep going?

Okay, wow, yes. They asked boys about a consensual situation, and then applied the data to non-consensual situations. I'm really glad Gregoire is pointing this out, because in my experience with purity ideology, there's no awareness of consent at all. Like, people wouldn't even notice that a consensual situation is different from a non-consensual situation.

Also, interesting that Gregoire points out these are "predominantly non-Christian boys." She's making the point that it's likely these boys don't believe it's a sin to have sex outside of marriage, and so it's likely that they'll see nothing wrong with having "sexual progression" if their partner is consenting. Therefore, it's weird that Feldhahn/Rice are using this to scare girls whose situation is totally different- for example, "pure" girls who have made it clear to their boyfriends that they are NOT interested in having sex.

Because purity culture is so oblivious to the concept of consent, there's this idea that non-Christian boys will totally coerce their girlfriends into having sex. If they don't believe it's a sin, then they have nothing to stop them, right? I remember Libby Anne wrote a really good blog post about this- Sex and Respect. Libby Anne talks about how completely confused she was when she started dating Sean, who was not a Christian and didn't believe sex was a sin, but also didn't pressure her into anything, simply because she told him she was not willing to do that. Honestly, yes, I understand how mind-blowing that is. He treated her like her unwillingness to have sex was a good enough reason on its own. He didn't care about the bible or sin or purity or whatever. He truly cared about respecting what she wanted or didn't want, and she said she did not want to have sex. And that is a good enough reason to stand on its own.

From a purity-culture perspective, that's wild and unbelievable.

Anyway, going back to Gregoire's blog post: She says that in order to get good data, we need to ask questions about 3 separate things: the respondents' own personal boundaries about sex, how they would behave in consensual situations, and how they would behave in nonconsensual situations. Here is how Gregoire would write these questions for boys:

Regardless of any past sexual experiences, which of the following statements best describes you currently:

• I am saving sex for marriage
• I do not feel I will be ready to have sex until I’m older
• I am not sure if I am ready to have sex now or not
• I feel ready to have sex now
• I am actively having sex/I am actively pursuing a sexual partner

If you were in a make-out situation with a willing partner who does not signal a desire to stop, how likely are you to want to stop that sexual progression before it leads to sex?

• Very likely – we would not have sex
• Likely
• Somewhat likely
• Somewhat unlikely
• Unlikely
• Very unlikely – we would have sex

...

If you were in a make-out situation and your partner signalled she would like to stop, how likely are you to stop that sexual progression?

• Very likely
• Somewhat likely
• Somewhat unlikely
• Very unlikely

You may notice that the first question is not ace-friendly! It assumes that respondents definitely want to have sex eventually, and the question is whether it will be now, some time in the future, or only when they're married.

Also, yeah, like I said, look at how this "sexual progression" thing is talked about in this question. Like the idea that making out leads to sex... like it just assumes that everyone knows that's how it works.

(And Gregoire seems to think everyone is straight! How odd!)

Rebecca Lindenbach is Gregoire's co-blogger, and she chimes in here:

Note from Rebecca: You may have read “For Young Women Only” and not gotten the impression that Feldhahn and Rice were talking about non-consensual situations. We don’t think that they meant to talk to girls in date rape situations, but the problem is that they fail to emphasize that these are consensual situations. They fail to mention that these are situations where she wants it as much as he does. Instead, they tell girls to “watch out” and to be afraid of boys who have little ability and feel little responsibility to stop. If a girl were to be date raped, her boyfriend could easily use Shaunti’s own words to prove to her that it was, in fact, her fault without having to look too hard at all. The caveat in the book about rape means nothing when Feldhahn has written an entire chapter grooming girls for rapists and abusers to take advantage of them in the name of “it’s just too tough to stop the fun.”

Very good point! If a girl is raped, Feldhahn's exact words here say that it's the girl's fault for consenting to making out. She should have known that boys can't stop.

And continuing on, Gregoire says this:

Note that in the original question, Feldhahn asked about the boy’s ability to stop. What does that word imply in context? To imply that a boy may not have an ability to stop the sexual progression implies that some boys can’t help but rape (even in a consensual situation, one should still have an “ability” to stop). But she asked this in the same question she’s measuring boys’ desire to stop. In doing so, she conflates desire and ability to stop sex but then talks about them throughout the chapter as if they are one and the same.

This is very important. As I see it, there are 2 separate aspects of this: First, there's the question of whether people are overtaken with desire and lose their self-control and can't stop themselves from having sex. The answer to that is, if one person withdraws consent, then the other person does have the ability to stop, and should be held to that standard. And second, there's the safety issue. We need to warn girls that even though boys can stop, and should be held to that standard, there are boys out there who are rapists and you need to be aware of that danger. (If you meet a boy like that, don't date him! There exist boys who are not rapists- date them instead.)

These are 2 completely separate issues, but in purity teaching (such as what we see in Feldhahn/Rice's book) they are conflated. Purity culture teaches that boys really don't have the ability to stop themselves from having sex, if a girl has done something that arouses the boy. And therefore if a girl gets raped it's not really rape, it's just what happens when you're alone with a boy, you should have known that, and it's your own fault for kissing him. All boys are like that, they said.

But in reality: Boys can stop, but some of them don't because they choose to be rapists, and that's never the victim's fault, but as a practical matter you should be aware of the safety concerns associated with this. I have never EVER heard purity proponents discuss this as a safety issue; instead it's what you deserve if you commit the sin of kissing a boy/ being alone with a boy you're attracted to/ wearing clothes that you think the boy will like/ etc.

And about the first aspect, the question of whether one's desires can make it more difficult to put a stop to the, uh, "sexual progression." So... yes... okay I have no idea about having a desire for sex, but I can give an example from my own experience with cuddling. So, when I was dating my first boyfriend, let's call him BF1, there were times we were sitting on the couch together, late at night, in the common area of the dorm after everyone else had already gone back to their rooms. Sitting there, cuddling. Like, enjoying hugging each other. And we would say things like "oh I should really go back to my room, it's late, I have class tomorrow", or I would think things like, "I shouldn't spend so much time doing physical things like this with him- it's taking away my purity." But we would continue to sit there and cuddle for a while. It was very hard to leave and go to our separate dorm buildings for the night.

So, I am guessing that the idea that it's "hard" to "stop the sexual progression" is kind of like that. It feels so good and you want it, but also part of you doesn't want it, for reasons that feel kind of faraway and unimportant at that moment, and you just want to ignore those things and keep going. I feel like I can kinda understand that.

But if it's someone, right there, saying "no", or your partner laying there sort of unresponsive and you can't tell if they're enjoying it or not, uh, that's a much more serious thing than some vague guilty sense that you're not acting according to some moral decision you once made. That should be a major red flag, and pull you out of the "wow this feels so good" haze.

I really wonder how consent fits into this purity-culture narrative of a couple who was working so hard to be "pure" and not have sex, but then one night they "stumbled" and somehow ended up having sex and ruining their purity. (I also talked about this question in this post about the book "Boundaries in Dating.") 

One possibility is that Partner A doesn't really know what's going on or how to respond to it, doesn't feel like they have time to even stop and think about what they want, and Partner B keeps going and having sex with them- this is sexual assault. Partner B is raping Partner A. But books like "For Young Women Only" present this as just the normal way that it goes when you start kissing a boy- they don't say it's rape, they say this is how we can expect boys to behave, therefore girls must not even start any "sexual progression" at all. So Gregoire is saying that "For Young Women Only" is WRONG about this, and sending very harmful messages.

But what if it actually is consensual? What would that look like? I imagine it's like, both partners have said that they want to be "pure", but in that moment, keeping their "purity" feels unimportant, because of their attraction and desire, and so they make the decision to go ahead and have sex anyway. But, I imagine they usually don't say so explicitly. It's consensual in the sense that they are both choosing to do it, but, they don't actually say so out loud, and they don't ask each other for consent. They can't; that would be a sin. If you actually say out loud that you are choosing to have sex, that's a much more serious sin than "oh we got carried away and it just happened somehow." Yeah, in purity ideology, it's impossible to have a healthy understanding of consent. And my concern here is, how do you really know that your partner is consenting, if you didn't explicitly ask them? Sure, if you've had sex with them before and you can understand their nonverbal consent, that's fine, but I'm talking about a situation where 2 "pure" "virgins" "stumbled" and it "just happened."

And if you know the other person doesn't want to do it on some level... how does consent work in that case? Like you know the next day they're going to feel guilty for "losing their purity", but right now they are explicitly telling you that they consent. Do you have an obligation to say "no, I don't think you really want this" and put a stop to it? Or is that even worse, because you shouldn't act like you know what someone "really wants" better than they know themself?

Another comment from Gregoire's co-blogger, Rebecca Lindenbach:

Rebecca here for a minute: frankly, it’s bizarre to ask boys who want to have sex (as many non-Christian boys do) if they would have an “ability” to stop consensual sex! Can you imagine if this question were asked of married, Christian men? I’m pretty sure that more than 90% would answer, “Why would I want to stop?” Does that mean that over 90% of Christian married men are marital rapists? Of course not. They’d most likely be answering based on the “want” in the question, not the “able.” Of course we feel out of control during really good sex, but we know that we’re able to stop (I mean, if you were having sex and a raccoon jumped through your window onto the bed, you could stop is all I’m saying.)

YES! OH MY GOODNESS. Yes, absolutely, it is bizarre that they asked boys who presumably want to have sex whether they would be able to "stop" actions that were leading to sex. Wouldn't the respondents be confused, like "why would I want to stop?" (Which is the first option that Feldhahn/Rice offer as an answer to their survey question- but honestly it reads to me like the message that Feldhahn/Rice are trying to tell girls is "wow, look how SCARY boys are, they don't even WANT to stop, OH NO.")

It totally blows my mind that Lindenbach makes a comparison with married Christian men being asked if they would be able to stop "sexual progression" with their wives. She makes such a good point! But I have never EVER heard any comparison like that- in conservative Christian ideology, being married is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION than being unmarried. There is no comparison between a married couple and unmarried couple having sex. The unmarried couple is sinning! Oh, the horror!

And also this bit- "I mean, if you were having sex and a raccoon jumped through your window onto the bed, you could stop is all I’m saying." This little aside is MORE HELPFUL than any purity book I've ever read. Oh my goodness.

Because, in purity land, I got the impression that when you're having sex, it's like you're in a weird parallel universe where everything is different. Where you're just floating along on your feelings of attraction and love for your partner. Where everything just feels so good. A bizarre parallel universe where you have a desire to play around with each other's genitals. (??? Makes no sense on the face of it, so obviously sex must take place in a weird altered reality where that seems like a desirable thing to do.) And it feels so romantic, like you're "becoming one" with your partner, like you're "giving yourself", like you're expressing your love in the most deep and intimate way.

But, let me tell you, sex very much happens in this same reality that we live in. It's an extremely practical thing. You might feel cold. You might feel annoyed at how the blanket keeps slipping off you. You ask your partner "so, what position do you want to do?" You have to learn what method of playing-around-with-genitals works well for you. Sometimes your kid wakes up in the middle of the night and you have to stop having sex.

It's just messing around with each other's genitals, that's literally all it is. If that doesn't sound like something desirable, but you assume that when you're actually in that situation and you cross into the parallel universe, it will make more sense, well let me tell you, no, it doesn't. It really just is doing stuff with each other's genitals. In this universe.

This "racoon" comment makes me think about how totally surprised I was, when I first started having sex, and I was totally in control of my actions the whole time. Nothing happened "automatically." In fact, I couldn't even figure out how the penis is supposed to go in the vagina. (Because, it turns out I had vaginismus.) I had to spend a lot of time figuring that out. Like, thinking scientifically about it. A lot of trial-and-error. It is such a SCAM that for all these years, they had me afraid that sex was going to "just happen."

ANYWAY.

Then Gregoire says:

Rape is not a matter of inability; rape is a conscious choice. To imply that boys’ crossing girls’ boundaries is a matter of “inability” as Feldhahn and Rice did rather than as a matter of sin and abuse is highly problematic, to put it lightly.

AMEN TO THIS!

Next, Gregoire and Lindenbach have a bunch of criticism of the wording of Feldhahn and Rice's survey question response options. Yes, those options were badly written. I agree. (I won't quote all of that in this blog post- if you're interested, go read it in Gregoire's post.)

And then, Gregoire points out that Feldhahn/Rice's conclusion, "For a guy even more than a girl, making out often starts a physical drive towards sex that requires a major effort to override" makes a comparison between boys and girls, but this is not a valid use of the data because Feldhahn/Rice did not ask girls the same question!!!!!

The most similar question that Feldhahn and Rice asked the girls was this:

Many people joke that boys “only think about one thing.” This question is designed to determine whether girls think about and want that one thing as much as boys do. In your experience, if a girl and her boyfriend make out from time to time, but have not made the move to a sexual relationship, do you think the girl thinks about and physically wants sex with him as much as he probably does with her? {Choose One Answer}

• [46%] Yes, I think in that situation she’s wanting to go to bed with him as much as he wants it (whether or not she actually does go to bed with him).
• [42%] No, I think it’s probably the guy that most wants the relationship to progress to actual sex. Most girls would be fine with continuing to make out, without crossing that line.
• [12%] No, I think it’s probably only the guy that wants the relationship to progress to actual sex, and she actively doesn’t want to cross that line (even if she enjoys making out).

(Note from Rebecca: I have… a lot of thoughts about this question.)

I too have a lot of thoughts about this question.

Like, my first impression reading "if a girl and her boyfriend make out from time to time, but have not made the move to a sexual relationship" is, that seems totally fine. They probably both enjoy that and don't need it to "move" to sex (here's that weird "sexual progression" idea again). But then the question assumes that the boy wants to have sex, and asks whether the girl wants it equal to how much the boy wants it, or less than how much the boy wants it. This is so bizarre! What if the boy doesn't want to "move" to sex? What if the girl wants sex more than the boy does? What if they want it but they choose not to because of their own personal boundaries? 

ALSO WHY ARE WE ASSUMING EVERYONE IS STRAIGHT?

And, uh, there's a lot more you can criticize in this question. (Like, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out the difference between the 2nd and 3rd options.) But let's just move on instead of spending time on that.

Anyway, near the end of the post, Gregoire says this:

If a girl who had been date raped read this book, would she know that she had been assaulted? Or would she blame herself? After all, if you want to stop, it’s better not to start! Guys feel little responsibility or ability to stop. You should watch out. Be cautious. Guys need you to do the right thing.

This is rape culture. It formed the basis for a whole chapter in her book. And it was based on extremely faulty research methods.

Church, we simply must do better. Please. What are we doing to our teenage girls? And who are we expecting our boys to turn into?

I gotta say, I was very surprised to see Gregoire use the term "rape culture" here. Because, as far as I can tell, Gregoire is evangelical, and believes sex outside of marriage is a sin. I don't think I've seen people in that subculture use the term "rape culture."

Yeah, this is something that confuses me about Gregoire's post taking a stand against this purity-related date rape justification. I'm pretty sure Gregoire believes you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. And, as I see it, there's a straight line from there to "it wasn't really rape." Here's how the logic goes:

1. You shouldn't have sex before marriage
2. because your virginity belongs to your future husband, and any sexual experience you have before marriage is taking away from what's his
3. therefore if you have consensual sex before marriage, or if you are raped, both of those hurt your future husband- the difference is whether you are to blame or not
4. therefore we should carefully scrutinize the victim's actions and see if she is to blame.
5. Oh, you enjoyed the kissing? Wow that's suspicious. How could you be so reckless with something that belongs to your future husband? Really really shady to put your future husband at risk just because you enjoy kissing some other boy.
6. Therefore it was your fault. It wasn't really rape.

I'm wondering which of points 1-5 Gregoire disagrees with, since she definitely disagrees with point 6, the conclusion.

When you introduce another person (the hypothetical future husband, or, sometimes, God) who is supposedly harmed by a woman's previous sexual experiences, then it becomes a totally different thing than if it's just about the victim and her safety and her healing and her right to have her consent respected.

All right, and 1 more thing I want to say: When I was dating my first boyfriend, BF1, I totally believed boys were all like this. Boys were all heartless leeches trying to take away my purity.

As it turned out, BF1 was a decent human being who respected my consent. But I totally didn't notice, because I had completely bought into the "you can't trust boys" warnings. BF1 said he wanted to kiss me, and I said no, and then weeks later I was surprised to find that he still wanted to kiss me but hadn't mentioned it, because he didn't want to pressure me. Like, it made no sense to me. 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. And non-Christian boys, well, you should be even more scared of them, because they don't even have these beliefs about "purity" and "sin" holding them back. (BF1 was not a Christian.)

I didn't have a category to put him in. I didn't have any concept of the existence of boys capable of caring about girls' consent. Sure, I believed that if I explicitly said "no", a boy should stop, but that he would also tirelessly try to find ways to sneak around that. To pressure me, or set up a situation where I wouldn't say "no", and then he could get what he wanted.

And then, when my parents told me I could bring him home to visit for a week, I was very concerned about that. I thought, it's not a good idea, sleeping under the same roof... what if... you know... "one thing leads to another"... And BF1 was a bit horrified, like "you think I would try something???" And I tried to explain to him, no, it's not about you or "trying" something, it's like... you know... it will just happen if we're in a situation with too much temptation.

And he said, "I can control myself." Like it was so easy, he was so confident, he didn't see it as an issue at all. He was completely sure he wasn't going to accidentally rape anybody.

Then I was even more concerned because he apparently was not aware of this big terrible danger. He didn't know that sometimes people are trying not to have sex, but it somehow happens anyway, and this is how good Christians unfortunately lose their purity.

(If you're wondering- yes, in fact, he was right, it was not an issue at all.)

Anyway... 

So, to sum up: Feldhahn and Rice's purity-culture book "For Young Women Only" tells girls that boys have little ability to stop themselves from having sex, once you start making out with them. This is completely false. In reality, consent can be withdrawn at any time, and everyone is capable of respecting their partner's consent. I'm glad to see Gregoire calling attention to this and pointing out how harmful it is.

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Related:

6 Ways Purity Culture Did NOT Teach Me About Consent 

Allow Me To Showcase Some Internet People Who Know What's What About Vaginismus 

The church taught me to be afraid of my own body and my own thoughts. Here are the receipts. 

The First Time I Heard About "Locker Room Talk" Was When the Church Taught Me About Modesty