Blogaround

1. Trip.com Offers Employees 50,000 Yuan Subsidy for Each Child Born (June 30) "China is grappling with a significant decline in its birth rate and the subsequent challenges posed by an aging population."

2. Don't use AI detectors for anything important (June 30) "All these AI versions are rated as more likely human-written than my original unaltered text."

3. Amos and Acts (June 30) "The fascinating thing about the passage Brueggemann highlights here is that the book of Amos was written a very long time before the book of Exodus was. Amos 9:7 presents one side in an argument about the meaning of the Exodus, showing us that both sides of this argument existed centuries before the book of Exodus itself was written. Amos is one of the oldest books in the Bible — possibly the oldest — so the tension between the two sides of this argument date back to the very beginning."

4. The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. (June 29) "Obviously, my parents were horrified. Obviously, they pulled me out of that school the next year and put me into a predominately Black public school. Obviously, I learned that not everything white people say is true. But Thomas is the guy who never learned: He never figured out how to disregard what white people say about us. Learning how to ignore white folks and their stupid racial theories while living your full life is pretty much the final test towards emancipation, and it’s one that Thomas seems to have flunked for his entire professional life."

5. Death of Coco Lee Triggers Public Discussion on Depression in China (July 7) [content note: suicide]

6. Rating Articles About Twitter Alternatives (July 8) "Rating: written for the kind of person who'd be shocked to learn about the concept of a fursona"

7. The universe is humming with gravitational waves. Here's why scientists are so excited about the discovery (July 3, via) Cool!

8. Let's Talk Emotional Labour of Birth Control (July 10) Wow, is this really a thing, a man claiming that he doesn't want to wear a condom, so he expects his partner to take birth control pills which cause a lot of problems for her? I guess this makes me glad I'm asexual- I do have sex, but if I had to take birth control pills in order to do it, I would NOT, it is NOT worth that trouble. (Though I'm guessing a lot of this is women being coerced by societal expectations- it's not about women feeling like "I really really want to have vaginal sex, I want it so much that it's worth taking birth control pills that change my body.")

I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense

Image text: "Love yourself." Image source.

[content note: this is about patriarchal Christian men talking about sex. first paragraph is sexually explicit.]

So, on March 1, The Gospel Coalition posted some, uh, Christian patriarchal smut, about how a man pouring out his semen during penis-in-vagina sex is the ultimate example of generosity, and a woman allowing it is the ultimate example of hospitality, and this shows us the gospel, and Jesus also penetrates the church. (Yes really, that's what it said.) This was, uh, quite possibly the most WTF thing I had ever heard, and I wrote my response here: This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read. My entire Twitter feed was full of people talking about TGC's article. It was such a terrible article.

Anyway, on March 6, Denny Burk (a big-name complementarian Christian) published a post, saying that he didn't agree with the explicit sexual language in TGC's article, but still, a correct Christian approach to sex should place a higher priority on procreation than on pleasure. Here's the excerpt that has people mad, from his post Taking a Dog by the Ears [archive link]:

The egalitarian rejection of asymmetry necessarily backgrounds procreation and foregrounds pleasure and physical climax. Physical climax becomes the necessary focus of egalitarian sex because it’s something that, at least in principle, can be mutual. This is the entire point of books like The Great Sex Rescue. Perhaps there is a place for focusing on such things, but when you do it to the exclusion of procreation, you turn sex into something that’s finally selfish and small, because it’s focused only on the couple, and not the bigger world that together they can create.

UGHHHH.

So, he's saying, sex is supposed to be about procreation, first of all. We shouldn't focus on pleasure, that would be "selfish and small." By some WILD COINCIDENCE, men's orgasms are a key part of this "procreation" aspect, but if we want to say "women's orgasms are just as important as men's", well, that's selfish and small. If procreation is the most important, men get to have orgasms, and women get to throw up a hundred times and get all their internal organs smushed during pregnancy. Just a total coincidence that it worked out that way. Not misogyny at all.

(As an aside: I gotta say, I was very surprised to see Burk saying sex has to be about procreation. I've never heard that idea from anyone in evangelical culture [complementarians like Burk are part of evangelical culture]- isn't that more of a Catholic thing? In my experience, evangelicals are like "there's this stereotype that Christians think sex has to be just for procreation, with the lights off and get it done as fast as possible, but that's not right! Actually sex is a beautiful gift from God and it's supposed to be fun!" Though, to be fair, I don't think Burk is saying that literally every time you have sex, you have to have the possibility of getting pregnant, you can't use birth control- I don't think he's saying that. I think he's saying something more along the lines of, you have to have sex in a way that resembles the way that people get pregnant, though you don't have to literally not use birth control etc. Similar argument to how anti-gay Christians say marriage has to be a man and a woman, because that's where babies come from, and then people respond by asking "so, you wouldn't allow an infertile straight couple to get married? You wouldn't allow a straight couple that's, say, 60 years old get married?" and the anti-gay Christians respond, "well it's not like *every* couple has to literally be able to have babies, but they have to at least be different genders, to point to the idea of having babies." I am very curious about whether he believes, as many complementarian men do, that a wife should do oral sex or a handjob on her husband when her vagina is not available [having her period, just gave birth, etc] because men "need" it. That would not be consistent with the idea he's presenting here, that sex should at least have the appearance of the kind of sex that leads to pregnancy.)

Ugh, okay. Ugh. Usually my approach is to present some logical arguments about why some idea is right or wrong, but I'm not going to do that here. Instead, I just want to talk about why this makes me so mad.

Okay, so, here's why it makes me so mad: There's no way to argue against this "selfish and small" idea, from within the evangelical ideology that I used to believe. It's a whole logically-consistent system, where one of the foundational axioms that it's built on is that we can't just enjoy things because we want to. That would be "selfish." If you're doing something that makes you happy, you have to have a more holy-sounding reason than just "it makes me happy, and that is a good thing in and of itself." No. That's "selfish." Maybe even sinful. 

Your happiness can only be a byproduct of obedience to God. You seek God first, you obey God, and as a result, you have a happy life- but of course that's not the motivation, that would be selfish, of course the motivation is that we obey God's rules simply because it's the right thing to do and we love God so much, and then as a cool side-effect, it makes us happy.

It really is an entire system where people are not allowed to listen to their own feelings and their own desires about what they want. You're not allowed to pursue what you want unless you have a sufficiently religious-sounding reason why it's what God wants you to do.

So... why would female orgasms matter, in that system? Simply because a woman wants to have an orgasm... no, that's not a good enough reason. That's "selfish and small." And for cis men... I mean, they do have a "good enough reason" why they need to be having orgasms, it's because it's necessary for pregnancy. But cis women... sure it's fine if the orgasm happens as a side effect of your very godly hetero having-sex-in-the-way-God-intended, but you can't prioritize it.

My point is, the reason this makes me so mad is that you can't argue with it, from within that system. Makes me feel trapped, just thinking about it.

All you can do is fall into depression, and then go to therapy, and have your therapist tell you over and over that you have to accept yourself, you are good enough in yourself, you can't base your self-worth on anyone else's opinion (not even God's). Until you finally believe it. 

And then you come out of it mad as hell. When you realize for the first time what they took from you. You weren't allowed to want what you want. You weren't allowed to feel your feelings. You weren't allowed to enjoy things simply because you enjoyed them. You had to be suspicious of everything that made you happy, because it might be a sin.

Scene from "The Avengers" where Bruce Banner says, "That's my secret, Cap... I'm always angry" before turning into the Hulk. Image source.

This isn't about orgasms. (I'm asexual.) This is about an anti-human ideology where you have to "put God first." Has to be in this order- "Jesus, others, yourself." You can't just be happy. You can't just pursue what you want- you have to make yourself believe that "God called me" or whatever.

I'm angry because Denny Burk said "selfish and small" and I know I have no answer that would mean anything at all from an evangelical perspective. It's an ideology that does not consider human happiness to be an inherently good thing. The only good thing is following God.

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Related:

Christianity and "Selfishness": Here are the Receipts 

I Deserve God's Love

Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks) 

Honest Lent: "Seek First God's Kingdom" Doesn't Work If You Have Autism

On Telling My Chinese Husband What I Want For Christmas

Pregnancy and Depression

A sad raincloud. Image source.

I recently announced the birth of my son, Square Root! Here's something I wrote when I was 25 weeks pregnant.

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I guess I want to throw a disclaimer on this... I think my experience being pregnant was harder than average. Everyone is different! So if you are thinking about getting pregnant, don't let me discourage you; it probably won't be as bad as what I'm describing here.

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Being pregnant is THE WORST. I love my baby, but this is just THE WORST.

The first trimester was a parade of throwing up. Waking up in the night to throw up. Throwing up before breakfast. Throwing up if I haven't eaten protein recently. Throwing up after eating, sometimes. Gagging when I smell other people's food. Gagging when I walk past someone smoking a cigarette on the street. And the doctor said morning sickness should stop sometime around week 14, and yes indeed, around week 14 it got much better. Now I only throw up in the morning before breakfast, instead of like, all the time.

In the evenings I have heartburn. The WORST heartburn. So I've been taking 2 Tums before bed- only 2, because I need to ration them. Too hard to buy Tums in China, but I managed to get a mostly-full bottle from an American friend.

I also have been drinking a lot of almond milk, to help with the heartburn. But I kind of stopped because I'm just so tired of drinking almond milk.

The worst part is that every single damn day I have to somehow eat a whole bunch of protein every meal. This baby demands protein all the time. And at the same time, there are so many foods that I just CAN'T STAND the smell of. Can't stand to even think about food sometimes, because it makes me sick. But the baby demands protein. And every single day I have to solve this problem, try to figure out what I can eat.

For the whole first trimester I avoided tuna. Because, I read somewhere that fish is good for the baby's brain, but I read somewhere else that fish has mercury which is bad for the baby. So I avoided it, just to be safe. But then I broke. Because tuna is one of the only sources of protein I actually like. I tried so hard to not eat tuna, but I ... just ... can't ... live. Baby demands protein and I can't force myself to eat ham sandwiches anymore, I just can't.

So now I'm eating a tuna sandwich almost every day. It makes a massive difference for my mental health- now lunch is solved, and the daily struggle to figure out what kind of protein my body can eat is that much easier. I don't know if it's okay for the baby... at first I was carefully reading labels to figure out exactly which species of tuna it was, whether it's the kind with more or less mercury, but ... I gave up. I just can't.

Breakfast is a bagel, two hardboiled eggs, and milk. Except now instead of 2 eggs, I switched to 1 egg plus part of a protein bar. I just can't stand hardboiled eggs anymore. But they're so cheap, and the protein bars are expensive, imported from somewhere. But I just can't.

It's just so hard to eat every day, and it's just so hard to get off the couch and do the things I'm supposed to do. And ... and so I noticed that sometimes I start to have depression symptoms.

I've had depression before, and I learned how to pay attention to my emotions and identify what my emotional needs are and communicate about them. So I know that for me, when there are things I'm supposed to do (like get out of bed in the morning, or wash the dishes, or shower, or whatever) and instead of doing them I just want to sit around for a period of time of indeterminate length- that's a depression symptom. It's not "I will take a break for 10 minutes and then I will do the thing"; it's "every time I feel like I should get up and do stuff, I just have this giant mental block and I just can't, and that can drag on and on for who knows how long, and I'm stuck." Which is not healthy because then nothing ever gets done, and then I just feel worse.

So... I wouldn't say I "have" depression, but I am at risk for it. Sometimes I tell Hendrix "I feel like I'm getting depression." So I think it's so important for me to recognize the symptoms and tell Hendrix what I need him to do to help me so it doesn't continue to the point where I actually "have" depression.

Like sometimes I say "could you tell me to go get a shower?" and then he's like "honey, if you go and shower, then you can have ice cream after." Which is so nice and gives me the motivation to actually go do it.

Or I tell him I need him to stand there and say nice things while I wash the dishes. Or I need him to come rub my back when I'm trying to sleep. Or I need him to help me make a decision about what to have for dinner. Or I just want him to listen while I complain.

And he always does these things, to support me. Well, except that he has to work 8 hours a day (and I do too) so he's not *always* available. (And to be honest, I'm really struggling with how much I should ask him for help and how much I should just try to deal with it myself. How do I know if I'm asking for "too much"?)

Anyway I want to blog about this because somewhere around 14-23% of people experience depression symptoms during pregnancy, but usually no one talks about it. (And I'm at a higher risk because I've had depression in the past.) I guess people don't talk about it because it's expected that you should be happy about having a baby and how empowering it is to bring new life into the world or whatever ... and ... yeah while that's all true, it doesn't prevent the depression symptoms. I love my baby even though they're not even born yet. I've wanted a baby for a long time. The depression stuff isn't related to that. 

(The whole thing just makes me even more pro-choice, but that's a topic for another post.)

So... yeah that's the situation now. I sometimes recognize that I have depression symptoms, and that means I need to take action right away to keep it from getting worse, so I communicate with my husband about what I need him to do to help me. And he's great, he's such a sweetheart and he does whatever I ask him to. So hopefully this is good enough.

Captain Marvel, Boundaries, and Why I Don't Go To Church

Scene from "Captain Marvel", where Yon-Rogg is training Carol to fight, and her fist is glowing with energy as she looks at him with determination. Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Captain Marvel"]

I loved the movie "Captain Marvel" so much! This post is full of SPOILERS from this point forward, so, you have been warned.

In this movie, our hero lives on an alien planet (the inhabitants are called Kree) where she does military training and goes on secret missions. But she has no memory of the part of her life before all that. And the movie is about how she discovers who she really is. She finds out that she is NOT a Kree; her name is actually Carol Danvers, and she is a human from Earth, who used to be a pilot in the US Air Force.

Also, she discovers that the Kree ideology, which she had been fighting so hard to uphold, was actually violent, imperialistic, and wrong. She was taught lies about the Skrulls (which is another race of aliens)- she was taught they were terrorists and Kree need to fight them, but later she finds out the truth is that Skrulls are victims of war, who are living as refugees scattered around the galaxy, just trying to survive.

My FAVORITE SCENE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE is near the end, when Carol is fighting Yon-Rogg, a Kree that had been a mentor to her. She is extremely angry with him because he lied to her about everything (and actually he's the one who kidnapped her from Earth in the first place). He tries to stop her by saying she needs to fight without any weapons, without using photon blasts from her hands- just like what he used to tell her when he trained her. He says she should fight him without weapons to "prove" that she can.

And she says "I have nothing to prove to you" and blasts him with a photon blast.

YES!

YES! I was so happy. I was like "Boundaries!" Because I believe in boundaries morality now, and one aspect of that is you don't have to play by other people's rules. Just because somebody says "you need to do XYZ" doesn't mean it's actually true. You don't have to change yourself to fit into somebody else's idea of what you're supposed to be.

And this is why I'm so glad I don't go to church anymore. It's so incredibly healthy for me, not being involved in Christian culture at all.

Because, I'm a Christian, but I know that good evangelicals have been trained to label someone like me as a "fake Christian." I used to try so hard to present my beliefs in a way that would prove to them that I really do love God and the bible and I really am a real Christian, that I didn't "fall away" because I'm "selfish" and "just want to sin." I know that if I use language like "feminism" or "mental health" or "I deserve good things", those are giant red flags which immediately get me branded as a "fake Christian." So instead I tried to use evangelicalese, terms like "legalism" and "the gospel is good news" and "by their fruit."

I tried so hard. I kept trying various churches and churchy small groups, tried so hard to play by their rules and find Christians who would accept me. It didn't work. Instead, I would just get so nervous every time. I would be sweating, with my heart racing, rehearsing things over and over in my head so I could say them in just the right way... trying so hard to push the discussion in a more feminist direction and correct some of the anti-human Christian-supremacist ideas that people were sharing, while still staying within the confines of their opinion of what a "real Christian" believes.

And I realized, back then, that I was starting to develop depression symptoms because of this. I was trying so hard to make myself into something they could accept, and I saw that it was going to lead to depression.

And eventually I realized, I don't need their approval. I don't need Christians' approval, and I don't need God's approval. I know I'm a Christian, and that's all the approval I need. So I stopped trying to go to church. I stopped trying to prove myself to them. And wow. Wow. That was SUCH A GOOD DECISION. No depression anymore. Everything is so much better, now that I'm not spending so much emotional energy trying to gain acceptance from people that are never going to accept me.

(Note: In my case, this is what cured my depression. Oh, and also I went to a lot of therapy. Everyone is different, so please don't interpret this as "this is what you have to do to quit being depressed, and if it didn't work then you should feel bad about yourself and it's your fault" or any of that nonsense that ignorant people are always saying about depression.)

And I could give a lot of examples like this, related to church and getting accepted by Christians. LGB Christians are always asked to explain how they can "reconcile" their LGB identity with the bible- like they gotta play some kind of bible-verse-go-fish game, like they have to explain their whole personal life to any random Christian who is "concerned" about their "sin." No. You don't have to play by their rules.

Or when I've been in a Christian small group and some man says something about how he doesn't agree with how this or that church "lets" women preach, and the group is supposed to treat that like it's an okay opinion for Christians to hold. Like we all have to be polite and respectful while we tell him we disagree. No, I don't play that game any more. I will not attend a church that acts like sexism is fine if the bible says it.

Or any time some random Christian on the internet pops up and asks you to justify how you can be a Christian and believe XYZ. And they'll only take you seriously if you have the same general approach to biblical interpretation as they do. Blah, nope, you don't have to play by their rules. You don't have to "debate" them.

Here's the thing, though: If you don't play by their rules, then you won't be able to earn their approval. Setting this boundary and refusing to play their games means giving up on the possibility that they'll accept you. But if they're not willing to accept you the way you are, if they want you to limit and censor and filter yourself to fit their expectations, then I would say their approval isn't worth it anyway. In my case, it was so damaging to my mental health, the way I forced myself to try to play that role, and it never worked anyway. So no, I don't try to get acceptance from church people any more. I've given up on that, and that means I get to be me and I don't have to prove anything to anyone.

In "Captain Marvel," Carol discovers her true identity, and she decides she doesn't have to follow rules made by people who have lied to her and tried to control her life. Just because Yon-Rogg says she should fight him without weapons, to "prove" that she can, doesn't mean it's true. She doesn't need his approval. She doesn't need to play by his rules. I love it.

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Related:
It Was Beautiful When Star-Lord Rejected the Gospel 
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality" 
Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways

"How Far Is Too Far?" My Story, And What I Wish I'd Known

Hercules and Meg kiss. Image source.

Christian teenagers always want to know "How far is too far?" which means "I know I'm not allowed to have sex before marriage, but, like, what exactly am I allowed to do?" Typically, youth pastors are very vague about answering this- they like to say things like "you shouldn't be asking that question, you shouldn't want to know exactly where 'the line' is just so you can go right up to it. Instead you should be focused on honoring God in your relationships." And I hate that answer. It's not helpful at all. It meant I was constantly terrified whenever I was dating someone and just *had no idea* if holding hands with him was a huge sin that would ruin my life.

I now know that the REAL ANSWER to "How far is too far?" is that you need to be aware of how physical closeness affects you emotionally, and keep the emotional closeness at a level that's consistent with how committed you are to each other and how much you believe you can trust your partner. The connection between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy is going to be different for everyone, so it's important to know yourself and be honest about what you feel, and communicate with your partner- don't assume that they connect physical and emotional intimacy in the same way you do.

Or, to put it another way: If kissing is going to make you fall in love, then make sure you only kiss someone who's worth falling in love with. But of course initially, when you have no experience, you don't know if kissing will make you fall in love or not. It's fine to go ahead and try kissing, and if you realize that it pulls you in to emotions that are way too deep and therefore not fitting to your situation, then you back off. It might hurt, but you'll be okay. No long-term harm done.

See? THAT'S the answer. But I never heard ANYTHING like that from any Christian teaching about relationships. I figured it out my damn self.

So in this post I want to talk about my own experiences with the connection between physical and emotional closeness. To give concrete examples to this principle I've given as the answer to "how far is too far."

All right. Here we go.

So my first romantic relationship was when I was a freshman in college. We will refer to my boyfriend as BF 1. (I'm straight, all the romantic interests in my story are boys.) A bit of background about what brand of purity culture I was in back then: It was a confusing and badly-defined strand of purity culture, influenced by my parents, who believe in "premarital sex is a sin, but dating and kissing are fine, those are normal things that teenagers do", and Brio magazine, which promoted the I-Kissed-Dating-Goodbye, be-terrified-you-are-losing-your-emotional-purity-because-you-have-a-crush strand of purity culture. At the time, I did not realize that they didn't agree- I thought that all Christian role models in my life believed in "the biblical view" of dating [or rather, I thought there was actually such a thing as "the biblical view" of dating], and I was trying to figure out how to reconcile all these different pieces of advice into one consistent ideology. Poor little Perfect Number, she tried so hard, but she couldn't make the pieces fit. And so she was scared. She didn't know if dating was a sin or not. She didn't know if holding hands was a sin or not. She didn't know if kissing was a sin or not. And so she was scared when she did those things with BF 1.

I dated him even though I didn't really think it was a good idea. See, he wasn't a Christian, so I knew that meant we couldn't get married; I knew someday we would have to break up. (Ahem, spoiler: I am now married and my husband is not a Christian.) I dated BF 1 because I was boy-crazy and just FULL of romantic attraction and I needed an outlet for it.

The narrative I'd been given by purity teaching was that people do romantic and sexual things because they "can't control themselves" when under the influence of "temptation." So I thought it was perfectly normal that I was overwhelmed with romantic attraction and choosing to be in a probably-sinful relationship that I didn't really think I should be in. That's how it works, right? Just like how nobody *wants* to have premarital sex, it just kind of *happens* when a couple is alone at night and they "stumble" because of "temptation." What choice did I have? If I wasn't dating BF 1, then I would just be single and boy-crazy with nowhere for all those FEELINGS to go.

And I told him that too. I told him I'm not really sure that our relationship is a good thing, and that someday we'll have to break up because he's not a Christian.

Huh. I guess I didn't treat him right. But I didn't realize it at the time. Yes, of course I learned in church that we should be kind and empathetic towards other people, but apparently when it comes to dating relationships, the rules are totally different. Instead of loving my partner, I'm supposed to view him with suspicion and fight him when he tries to "take" my "purity." I didn't think about how the things I said might hurt him, because purity culture taught me that boys don't really have feelings, they just want to use girls for sex. Especially non-Christian boys.

Anyway, I eventually decided- after a lot of prayer and worrying- that I was going to kiss him. Because I really wanted to. I was very attracted to him. So anyway, then one night we spent a bunch of quality time kissing. He used the term "making out" to refer to what we were doing, and I was terrified. Because one time I read an article in Brio addressing the question "Making out isn't as bad as sex, right?" and it said that making out was bad. I didn't know what making out was though- I assumed it was something that would feel more sexual and sinful. So I was extremely worried when BF 1 informed me that we had been making out.

See? That's the kind of fear I was working with back then. It was all about uncertainty and vaguely-defined terms, so I never really knew if I was sinning or not.

Oh, and when we were kissing, I made sure not to open my mouth at all, so we couldn't poke our tongues at each other. Because years earlier, a good Christian adult told me that was bad. I remember I asked "besides the fact that that's gross, what is the reason that one shouldn't kiss with tongue?" and she said because it "gets him going" and then it would be hard for the boy to stop.

Thinking about it now, I guess she meant it could make the guy get an erection. Ugh, this bothers me so much- if you mean "erection" you should just say "erection", not these vague euphemisms that 13-year-old Perfect Number definitely doesn't understand. She didn't know what an erection was either, back then ... so follow it up with a definition and we're good.

The point is, I made sure our tongues were NOT involved in this kissing at all, because somebody said it was bad. I didn't really know why, but I just knew it was bad.

(Oh also: It wasn't until I started reading feminist blogs that I found out this stuff about "don't kiss with your tongue because then a guy might not be able to stop himself from having sex with you" is total BS. Guys can stop. It's called "consent" and "being a decent human being" and "not being a rapist." Purity culture said that was WAY too high a standard to hold a guy to. Eff that.)

Anyway. So. We were kissing, and it felt AMAZING.

I definitely felt emotionally closer to him because of the kissing. I asked him, "Does kissing make you like me more?" He said, "Well, it makes me like you more in a physical way, but I try to ignore that." I didn't understand what he meant, perhaps something along the lines of temptation to have sex, but I hardly dared to even hypothesize in that direction. Sex was a scary, life-destroying monster that lived far far away from the normal, mundane events of my life. It was unimaginable that something so awful might be in any way associated with my nice sweet relationship with BF 1.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if he meant his genitals were getting aroused. (Ha, we are talking about erections again.) Hmm. Who knows. I certainly never ever thought about his genitals.

On a related note, it turns out I'm asexual. Yeah, the question of whether I would be interested in having sex with BF 1 never crossed my mind. But I still feared it, feared that it would *just happen* if we were alone in his dorm room.

Anyway, he said kissing didn't make him "like me more" in an emotional way, and I chalked it up to boys being heartless. Because how can someone kiss like that and not feel their heart opening up, feel an overwhelming desire to just adore and cherish their partner?

I tried to explain to him about how hugging and cuddling with an attractive boy would make me like that boy more, and BF 1 was pretty much appalled and said "so if some random guy comes up and hugs you, you're suddenly going to be in love with him?" To him, it sounded like I was so shallow, to base such big important feelings on something as superficial as physical contact. To me, it sounded like he was so shallow, to be capable of experiencing physical affection- taking a girl's purity!- without being emotionally affected by it. I wondered what the heck was wrong with him.

I remember one time I told BF 1 about an advice column I read in Brio, where somebody wrote in to say "I was worried my boyfriend would break up with me, so I had sex with him, but he STILL broke up with me, can you believe it" and the answer from the Brio writer was "yeah see this is why you shouldn't have premarital sex, because boys can't be trusted to value it the way they're supposed to." BF 1 was baffled- I think he even laughed- why would this girl think that having sex would make her boyfriend not break up with her? Why would those things be connected at all? Again, I chalked it up to boys being heartless.

Because purity culture taught me that the correct way to connect sex and love is this: Sex means lifelong love and lifelong commitment- ie, marriage. That's what sex is. That's what sex means. And if anyone disagrees with that- like, for example, if they are fine with having sex with someone they don't intend to stay with forever- then they are a BAD PERSON.

But I now see it doesn't have to be that way. Sex can mean different things to different people. You can't assume anything about how it will make your partner feel or what it will mean to them, and that's why YOU HAVE TO COMMUNICATE. TALK. Nobody is a "bad person" because of the emotions their body does or doesn't produce during sex. (Or kissing, or cuddling, or whatever.) COMMUNICATE. Keep your emotions and expectations grounded in reality.

Anyway, back to my story about me and BF 1 and our kissing. So, the kissing felt so sweet and perfect to me, and it felt like we would be together forever. It really felt like that. But my mind said whoa whoa whoa whoa, this is not right, we can't be together forever because he's not a Christian.

So a few days after our first kiss, I put a stop to it. I knew it wasn't right. It made me feel things that weren't true.

And that was a good decision. See, this is what I mean about "the answer to 'how far is too far' is to keep your emotions matching the reality of the situation."

But let me tell you something. If it weren't for the "I can't marry a non-Christian" issue, I would have 100% believed that, because of the way we kissed, it meant we were going to get married.

Wow, how naive and ridiculous, right? Like, over here in reality, marriage is a HUGE BIG DEAL, a huge decision that will affect you for the entire rest of your life, and you have to spend time thinking about it rationally before you make that kind of decision. But in purity culture, marriage is always the next logical step after any romantic or sexual closeness. The alternative would be breaking up and losing part of your heart, and that's too scary to think about. So if it weren't for the "I can't marry a non-Christian" thing, it would have felt perfectly logical to me that kissing would so easily indicate that this is "the one", my "future husband."

So anyway, I told BF 1 we can't kiss anymore. So we didn't. A few weeks later (for unrelated reasons) he broke up with me. The relationship had lasted about 3 months.

So what do I wish I had known back then? I wish I knew how to handle my attractions better- surely there must have been something else I could have done besides getting into a relationship I didn't really think I should be in. I wish I knew that boys have feelings- I saw him as a leech trying to steal my "purity" and therefore I didn't care if I hurt him. Well, I did care, I am a human with empathy and if someone is right in front of me looking sad, my heart cares about them. But on an abstract, theoretical level, nope I definitely did NOT believe I should care about my boyfriend's feelings. (Or rather, I believed that complementarian nonsense about "men need respect, women need love" so I suppose I did care about "respecting" him. But that's all.)

I wish I wasn't so scared about everything. I wish I could have just tried those things- dating, holding hands, kissing- and evaluated my emotional reaction to decide if they were right for my situation or not. I wish I knew that it won't be the end of the world if I accidentally do something that's a bit more physically close than what I'm really ready for. If it's too much, I can just back off, no harm done.

I wish I knew that you can't communicate "we're going to be together forever" with only a makeout session. It has to be in actual words. I wish I knew it's okay if the two partners don't have the same emotional response to their physical intimacy.

I wish I'd had good enough sex-ed that I could have figured out I was asexual, but haha, I don't think that even exists. Well, we can dream.

But when I stopped kissing him because I knew my emotions didn't match reality- that was the right decision.

Moving along with the story. After that relationship ended, I re-dedicated my life to Jesus and went looking for answers about how dating is supposed to work. No more of this wishy-washy "I don't know if it's a sin or not so I'm just scared" stuff. I read purity-culture books and listened to Mark Driscoll sermons, oh god. And I was so happy because I got my answers. (Extremely conservative answers...) I built up a logically-sound purity-based ideology. It said I can't date until God says so. And if I'm dating, I need to show as little affection as possible, only the bare minimum required to gain enough information to decide if I can marry this person or not.

That's where I was for several years, but then thank Lady God for bloggers, I found some people on the internet saying "hey do you think maybe it's kind of harmful that we are teaching kids they are chewed-up gum if they have sex?" And I started to take small steps out of purity culture.

I started dating a guy we will call BF 2. I started dating him even though I did NOT get explicit approval from God. I decided I don't believe in that anymore. I decided that even though I don't have God giving me a guarantee that this guy is "my future husband", he was a good enough guy that it would be worth it to at least try it out. No longer was I letting baseless fears about "but what if we break up someday" stop me. Because yeah, I had realized my whole purity ideology was about fear.

And yes, I stand by that. It WAS a good decision to start dating him. Based on the information I had at the time, it totally was worth it to try it out.

I remember how much of a big deal it was to do tiny little affectionate things that brought me no closer to making a decision about marriage. I remember I used to text him every night to say goodnight, and he would text back to tell me how cute I was. It made me happy. I no longer thought of it in terms of "I am losing emotional purity" and "my purity is the currency I used to buy information on whether or not I should marry him." I just did sweet things for him just because I liked it.

But we didn't kiss. We never kissed. Because I was terrified- what if kissing is bad? What if purity culture was right about that? What if it ruins my life?

We never kissed. And I was so scared, so worried as I agonized over that choice. I wasn't overwhelmed by "temptation" or unable to "control myself"- so that meant we shouldn't kiss, right? Better safe than sorry? If we can avoid it, we should, right? Just in case it's bad.

When I moved to China, I was a little bit relieved that I no longer had the option of kissing him. I no longer had to think about maybe making a different choice.

So our relationship lasted about 1 year. At the beginning it was good, but at the end it wasn't. He didn't treat me right, but I didn't really have the tools to recognize that. I tried everything to fix the relationship. I tried to manipulate him into being a better partner. Occasionally he would kinda-sorta act like a good boyfriend, and it made me so happy, but it never lasted.

I didn't know that if one partner is no longer interested in being in the relationship, it's not really possible for the other partner to fix it. That's just not going to work in the long term. Maybe it was because of all that church teaching about how a wife can get her husband to change- submit more, pray for him, and so on, and he'll magically turn into a good husband. Or church teaching about how we should build friendships with people so we can "share the gospel." How we should pray for God to change other people so they give up their beliefs and agree with ours instead. Basically a lot of teaching about how to manipulate and pray for people so they start acting the way we think they should act. I didn't know about boundaries.

And I was taught in church that, when people divorce, there is sin on both sides. Which makes it sound like, if one side does the right thing, they can singlehandedly change it into a healthy marriage and stop the divorce.

Basically, BF 2 was acting like he didn't want to be in the relationship anymore, but he never actually said that out loud. I didn't *get* that a problem like this is not really fixable. Sure, maybe I can get him to at least act nice occasionally, but is that what I really want, in the long term?

I wish I knew more about breaking up, so I could recognize when it was the right time to do it. I wish I had some healthier teaching about breaking up. Not that purity-culture stuff about how it's the Worst Thing Ever and will Ruin Your Life. Or testimonies about "God is telling me I need to break up with my boyfriend" after a Christian conference. I want actual practical tips about how to tell if the relationship is not going to get better.

I didn't think of it in terms of "he's not treating me right." The only narrative I had about "not treating her right" was when "a boy is having sex with a girl but he doesn't love her." Our relationship was so pure though- we didn't even kiss! That meant it was a healthy relationship, right?

I also wish I had known that just because the beginning of a relationship was good, and your partner is really great and supportive during a hard time in your life, that doesn't mean it's right to stick with them FOREVER. It might be good for a while, but then at some point it's time to break up, and that's not a bad thing.

Towards the end of my relationship with BF 2, I was taking more and more steps out of purity culture, and embracing my desires. Sensual attraction, in this case. I was like, I like boys, I want to touch boys, I want to kiss boys- and for the first time in my life, I didn't repress it. I knew I couldn't, like, actually go kiss someone, because I was still in a long-distance relationship with BF 2. But in my own mind, I was honest about how I felt and what I wanted. And that felt good.

There was this guy, let's call him Creepy Guy. I was very attracted to him. He knew I had a boyfriend. He kissed me, without my consent, and oh god I wanted so much to kiss him back, wow I wanted it so much, but I told him no, because I had a boyfriend. We were alone in his apartment, but it never even crossed my mind to worry that he might rape me. Because he was hot, and I thought rapists were unattractive. FORTUNATELY, he was not a rapist. I told him to stop kissing me so he stopped. But then we sat around for a while and talked. And I think about that now, and I'm like, ugh he was so creepy, why didn't I just leave immediately... but when you're in the situation, it's hard to recognize what's happening.

That actually happened twice- two separate occasions, with two different guys, so we will call them Creepy Guy 1 and Creepy Guy 2. Forcing kisses on me, when they KNEW I had a boyfriend. And also when I texted with them, the way they talked to me was creepy too- as if I owed them something. Creepy Guy 1 kept asking me if I was having sex with any guys. I knew it was none of his business (no thanks to Christian accountability groups where it's completely normal to pry into people's sex lives...) but he just seemed so sad about it, so I told him the truth, which was that no, I was not having sex with any guys. I didn't tell him I had NEVER had sex. I didn't tell him I never even kissed BF 2.

But at the time I didn't really realize they were creepy because they were both SO HOT and I was really attracted to them, and I was having a lot of problems with BF 2 so I was kind of starved for attention, and also discovering my own desires and no longer bound by the rules of purity culture but not really sure how to construct an alternative. (Well, actually I had read a lot of feminist stuff about rape culture so I was able to see some of the signs of creepiness, but I had no idea what to do about it.) It was a confusing time.

Anyway. I'm including Creepy Guys 1 and 2 in this post about "how far is too far" because they did kiss me, and in purity-culture ideology, that's important. Over here in reality, it was non-consensual, so it's not my fault, it doesn't "damage" my "purity", it doesn't really have anything to do with me, it's just them making a decision to be creepy.

In both cases, I really wanted to kiss them back, but I made the right choice and said no, because I was loyal to BF 2. He didn't deserve my loyalty, but we were still technically in a relationship, so there ya go.

I guess what I want to say is, this is a post about my experiences with the connections between physical and emotional intimacy. The kisses did not deepen my romantic/emotional attractions toward Creepy Guys 1 or 2. I remember afterwards, both times, thinking about how I wished so hard I could have kissed him back, but I was sure I had made the right decision. Because I had a boyfriend. If I didn't have a boyfriend, I totally would have kissed whatever hot guy wanted to kiss me, because I was working my way out of purity culture and that's what I wanted.

I just wanted to kiss boys but not really be in a relationship. And I now believe that's a completely valid thing to want. We'll see in a minute that it wasn't really suitable for me personally, but it's totally fine if that's what someone wants and does.

So I finally sent BF 2 an email to say we were broken up. I knew he wasn't going to reply to it, because he hadn't replied to anything I'd sent him in a long time. And indeed, he didn't reply.

Looking back on it now, did it matter that I never kissed him? What if I had? Do I regret not kissing him? Well my first thought is "he didn't DESERVE my kisses" which is 100% true... but he didn't deserve a lot of the attention and affection and love I gave him. Kissing wouldn't have been different. Or, let me put it this way: Purity culture would see it in terms of things we did (holding hands, hugging on the couch in a sitting position, saying "I love you") and things we didn't do (kiss, do anything sexual) as if those two lists tell us everything we need to know about the relationship. As if moving "kiss" from Category B to Category A would be a HUGE CHANGE in the nature of the relationship. But it wasn't like that. There were other issues that were way more important.

So I really don't think it would have made a difference if I had kissed BF 2. I was already very emotionally attached to him, and kissing wouldn't have deepened that; it was already deep. And I don't regret not kissing him either, because, as I said, I now see that he didn't deserve it.

I wonder if it would have made a difference in my reaction and feelings about Creepy Guy 1 kissing me. When that happened, it had been 5 years since I'd kissed a boy. 5 years is a long time... Would it have been different, if I had kissed BF 2 fairly close to when that happened? Would it have made it easier or harder to say no?

Eh, it's been 5 years since I broke up with BF 2, and 10 years since BF 1. Whatever the status of my "purity" back then, how much of my "self" I "gave" to them, it just doesn't matter now. Purity ideology made me so terrified of all those "how far is too far" decisions- terrified because I really believed it was going to follow me for the rest of my life and it would mean I couldn't *fully* love my husband... I'm here to tell you that's a load of bullshit. I kissed BF 1 10 years ago. Who the hell cares? It doesn't affect my marriage at all. Why would it? It's ridiculous that I even have to say that.

Let's get back to the story. I told BF 2 we were broken up. The next day, another guy told me "I want to kiss you" and I let him.

We spent a bunch of quality time making out on my couch. (And used our tongues. Because we wanted to.) Then I went to work the next day and I missed him. And I was like, oh no, I wasn't supposed to miss him. I just wanted to make out with boys for fun. I didn't want to like, actually date any of these hot guys.

Ugh, I kissed him and I caught feelings from it.

He was SO into me. He SO wanted to be in a relationship. We had known each other for about 1-2 months. I definitely thought he was hot, but there were a lot of hot boys in my life. I wasn't really planning on getting into a relationship again, until after we made out and I suddenly, unexpectedly wanted to date him. I told him I would need some time to think about it.

So I spent maybe 1-2 weeks thinking about it. He was living in a different city, so we just talked online during that time and did NOT kiss or anything.

See? That was a good decision. It turns out I'm not able to just make out with a hot boy without developing romantic feelings for him. Some people are, and that's totally fine, but it turns out I am not. But it was fine to kiss him because I didn't yet know that about myself. It's fine to try it out and see what my emotional reaction would be. And then when my emotions were much different than I expected, I took a step back to think about "is this actually a person that's good enough for me to date?" Sure, I was sort of biased at that point, but I was still able think about it in a healthy way and make a good decision.

I decided, yes, he was good enough. So he became BF 3.

Or... maybe you know him as Hendrix. Reader, I married him. <3

So I told him yes we are now boyfriend and girlfriend. We immediately started sleeping together whenever he came to visit. By "sleeping together" I mean literally just sleeping together; I never use the term "sleep together" as a euphemism for sex because that's just ridiculous. Sleeping and having sex are such incredibly different things, it BOTHERS ME SO MUCH how people use language that implies they are the same. As an asexual, I have A BUNCH OF OPINIONS about this.

So right from the beginning of our relationship, whenever he visited me, we slept together. With clothes on and not doing anything sexual.

I chose to sleep with him because it was sweet and warm and comfortable. When I was in purity culture, of course I believed it was a sin to sleep with one's romantic partner- even with clothes on and not doing anything sexual. It was a sin because, as I was told, "don't be so naive, everyone who's sleeping together is having sex." Apparently, if you sleep in the same bed, the temptation will be too strong, so you'll definitely end up having sex, even if you don't intend to. Again, as an asexual I have Some Opinions about this.

I wanted to sleep with him, and it felt good, and he wanted it too, so we did. As simple as that. Just doing things because I want to do them, not overthinking it, not spending all my time and emotional energy trying to puzzle out "is this a sin or not?"

Well, I say "simple as that" but the reality was not simple. Intellectually, I believed [unmarried] penis-in-vagina sex was a sin but everything else was not a sin... but I still had so much shame and guilt because of all the internalized purity beliefs. We very gradually started doing more physical things- touching genitals through a layer of clothes, then seeing each other's genitals, then touching directly, then stimulating them, then stimulating enough to get an orgasm. But at every point along this progression, I felt so much shame. While I didn't count any of that as "sex" (I only counted penis-in-vagina as "sex", which is, uh, a bit silly) it was still definitely "impure" and "sinful" under the rules of purity culture. It was sexual even though it wasn't sex, and so for my entire life I had believed it was dirty and should only happen after one gets married.

So I would feel so bad, and I would tell Hendrix "no we can't do X anymore", where X was whatever new sort-of-sexual thing I was experiencing for the first time in my life, so we would stop doing X for a day or so. But I would feel like "okay, this is ridiculous, I no longer believe X is a sin. I like X, so why should I let this shame hold me back?" So then we would do X again.

We cycled through that a bunch of times, with different values of X. It was hard. I loved being with him and I loved everything we did together [though I now realize that I loved it for reasons that had nothing to do with sexual attraction], but the shame was overpowering. Those of you who are longtime readers of my blog know about how that shame caused me to have depression back then.

So coming back to our question of "how far is too far": Sometimes I would choose to stop, because of the shame, and sometimes I would choose to say yes, because it felt good. And all of those were good decisions. Even though I felt that logically I shouldn't feel shame because I don't believe any of this is sinful, that emotion was still real, and so it was worth taking into account when I made those decisions.

Basically, see how the physical intimacy affects you emotionally, and make changes if necessary.

As far as the connection between physical and emotional intimacy with one's partner, I don't remember any times in my relationship with Hendrix where I felt like "I feel very emotionally close to him and this might be a problem because the actual reality of our relationship isn't really at that level." Except, of course, right at the beginning when we kissed before we were dating and I caught feelings from it. I guess from the beginning of our relationship, we were very committed to each other, and it just kind of grew in a gradual and healthy way and everything worked out. (Or, I was just winging it and doing what felt good in the absence of any actual rules...?) There weren't any moments where I discovered some huge character flaw of his and thought "ohhh that's quite a red flag, am I sure I want to be so emotionally close with somebody like that?"

And then eventually I decided I no longer believe unmarried sex is a sin. But I was still terrified and decided we weren't going to do it, just in case purity culture was right and it would ruin my life. And then eventually I decided nope, I am done living terrified of this decision over whether to have sex, it's time to just face my fear and do it and prove that it doesn't ruin my life.

(Wow, what an asexual reason to have sex...)

So we finally did have sex- before we were married, before we were even engaged- and that ended the shame and fear once and for all. It didn't "ruin my life"; I didn't feel any different, except that I wasn't afraid anymore. Awesome!

Penis-in-vagina sex didn't make me feel closer to Hendrix. It felt just as intimate as the other stuff we had already been doing. It didn't change our relationship- it just changed my own emotional state by making me not afraid any more. That's all. I guess for other people, sex does make them feel more emotionally connected to their partner. But not for me. Which is fine, everyone is different. Actually in my view, it seems there are some necessary steps that you need to take before it's possible to have sex- like being naked or partially naked together- and it's those things that feel the most intimate to me. Not the actual having of the sex. I mean I could take it or leave it.

(And to be honest, I'm really curious about how other people feel about that- if you compare "being naked with a partner" vs "being naked with a partner AND ALSO having sex with them", which one is better, which is more intimate, etc. And also, having sex with some random hot person sounds good in theory but do you realize that would mean you have to show them your genitals? So like... surely one-night-stands don't actually exist in reality????? I mean I know that they do but like I just can't wrap my ace mind around it...)

What do I wish I had known, when I started dating Hendrix? Ha, well some basic sex ed would have gone a long way. I wish I had known what genitals I had. I wish I had used my hand to feel around "down there" and get a sense of the basic layout of things. But I was far too "pure" for that.

I felt so rebellious when I took a small mirror and looked "down there" for the first time. Was that before or after I showed it to Hendrix? I don't remember. I don't remember if Hendrix saw my vulva before my first time seeing it. Kids, don't do this. Don't be this pure. I wish I was familiar with my own body before I tried to share it with someone else. I regret that.

I wish I believed my body belonged to me. Not "my future husband."

I also felt quite rebellious the first time I bought condoms. I had absolutely no intention of using them for sexual purposes- I just bought them as a way to rebel against purity culture. Just to "be naughty." (Wow, what an asexual way to "be naughty." Buy condoms and then don't have sex. ~Wild~ ) Because I felt that the act of purchasing condoms was dirty and shameful, and I wanted to grab that feeling by the throat and face it head-on and defeat it. Maybe it helped that I was in China... news of my purchases at some random Chinese grocery store is never going to make it back to my nice Christian friends in the US. I wish I wasn't so scared of condoms, so horrified by their mere existence. Over here in reality, condoms are GOOD and IMPORTANT for HEALTH REASONS. I wish I had adult role models who told me that.

I wish I hadn't been so terrified of everything related to sex and genitals. I wish I had friends who just talked about sex like it was a normal part of their unmarried lives and not a big deal, and I wish I could have understood that- while at the same time I would also need to understand myself as asexual. I wish I had known that living with one's [unmarried] partner is totally fine and normal- and some of my friends even saw it as a big relationship milestone and congratulated me, can you believe that? When I felt so much shame and I didn't want to say it out loud.

I wish, when I first went to the doctor for help with depression, I could have just opened my mouth and said I live with my boyfriend and that's why I have depression. I couldn't say it. I couldn't bear to say it to anyone, because surely they would judge me and think I was dirty. Surely the doctor would say, well yeah, you're not supposed to live with your boyfriend, so of course you're feeling the emotional consequences of that *sin*. (Note: Ha. Nope. When I finally said it to my therapist, not only did he not think it was "dirty" at all, but he assumed that when I talked about starting to work my way out of purity culture several years before, he assumed that I started having sex back then, and didn't bat an eye at that. Well LOLOLOLOLOL nope when I told him all that, I was still firmly terrified of the very concept of me having sex.)

I wish that, when I was a child and good Christian adults told me that living together is a sin because every couple who's living together is having sex, and I said "well couldn't they just be living together but not having sex?" and they said "don't be so naive"... I wish somebody had challenged that. I wish that, when a Christian "friend" "confronted me about my sin" of living with Hendrix "and sleeping with him", I could have had some other thought spring to mind besides "I can't try denying that, she'll never believe me and I'll end up looking even more sinful- nobody would ever believe I could be living with my boyfriend and I've never had sex." Yeah, we lived together for a while without having sex. I was dealing with all that purity-culture shame and fear, and also it turns out I'm asexual. If you don't believe me then **** you.

I wish I had known more about my own desires and attractions. But in purity culture I couldn't explore that, couldn't think "so what kind of person do I find hot? and what do I mean by 'hot'- like what specific physical acts would I want to or not want to do with them?" That would be lust. I wish I could have explored that. I wish I wasn't trying to figure out a healthy way to deal with my attraction to boys who are not my husband DURING MY FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE- ugh, that should have been a skill I figured out a long time ago, but instead I just repressed it back then (and thought that marriage would magically make all those other attractions go away. Spoiler: it doesn't).

I wish... oof, I don't know if I wish this or not... I wish I had figured out I was asexual... or... do I wish I had known I was asexual before dating Hendrix? What if I thought it meant I wasn't good enough for him, or I wasn't going to enjoy doing sexual things with him? What if I thought it meant I shouldn't even try?

I'm blogging about all of this to show what I mean about the connection between physical intimacy and emotions in a dating context. That connection is going to be unique for each person, and they might even experience it differently at different times in their life or in different situations. So the important thing, the #1 thing, is to know yourself. Check in with your emotions and see how they are affected by the physical closeness with your partner. If your emotions end up in a place that it's not healthy to be in (for example, if you feel like you're totally in love and will definitely marry this person but actually you've only known them for a week) then remind yourself of what the actual reality is and adjust your acts of physical intimacy so they produce emotions that better match that reality.

Yes, I realize this is easier said than done... when you're infatuated with a specific person it's hard to truly convince yourself "no, this is not a healthy thing to do." But there's no alternative. Nobody else is qualified to run your love life. Sure, you need role models and general advice about what healthy relationships look like, but nobody can tell you what your desires are and what's important to you.

It's probably not possible to do this 100% perfectly. Perhaps you'll realize you've gone "too far", like I did when Hendrix and I first kissed and then I had *feelings* for him. But that's FINE. That's not something to fear, it's not something that will ruin your life or damage your "purity." (I don't believe purity exists anyway...) Just make the necessary changes, and it might hurt emotionally, but it's okay. How can you learn your own emotions and desires without some trial and error? Everyone is different, so you can't rely on other people to tell you what you feel.

There was something kinda-sorta like this in purity culture. They said "don't do X because it will make you feel Y" (for various values of X and Y). Yes, I agree that the key is in the way physical actions in a dating context affect one's emotions, BUT you can't tell other people how something is going to make them feel- you can't assume that. Everyone is different. Everyone needs to figure this out for themselves. And so I tell my story here in this blog post to show a concrete example of what it looks like to "figure this out." Perhaps some readers will feel the same way I did about some parts. Perhaps not.

I stand by this answer. This is THE ANSWER to "how far is too far?"

This post focused on just the physical part of those relationships, but I'd like to make it clear that that was DEFINITELY NOT the most important aspect. There were other issues and problems and emotions and happiness and growth going on with each of these relationships. Purity ideology talks as if the most important measure of a relationship is "how far you went" physically. That's ridiculous. That's nonsense. Yes, in my experience the physical part is an important component of the relationship (though that may not be true for everyone) but it's nowhere near being the most important thing.

Like... the idea that I could write you a few lists of all the physical things we did in each of these relationships, and that you could learn anything meaningful from that information alone... that's absurd. It's laughable. But that's the entire focus of purity culture. How far? How far? As if that's the only question that matters. Try to keep the physical aspect as low as you possibly can, and that's the #1 predictor of how good your future marriage will be. How on earth did I use to believe that? WTF?

I focused on all the wrong things, back then.

Any physical things that I did in a dating context in the past, they don't matter now. No, they don't affect my marriage. No, I don't think about BF 1 every time I kiss my husband. Like, WHAT ON EARTH, why would I even need to say that? OF COURSE I don't think about BF 1. Eww, why would I think about him? What an absurd thing to even talk about- but I am writing it out explicitly here because purity culture LITERALLY SAID THAT and purity culture was WRONG. Purity culture told me that if I have any physical/sexual experience with anyone before my husband, then I won't be able to love my husband fully and I'll always have those exes in the back of my mind, always comparing my husband to them. They'll always have a "piece of my heart." Wow, what a load of bullshit.

ALL RIGHT well this post has gotten super-long and I haven't even said all I wanted to say. (I might do a follow-up post, if any of you readers are interested in more on this topic?) Anyway, remember, the answer to "how far is too far" is different for everyone and is based on you knowing your own emotions and desires. You have the ability to make healthy decisions about this. Nobody else can decide "where the line is" for you.

-------------------------

Related:
I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
For This Asexual, Purity Culture Was All About Fear
They said it was about "valuing our bodies." That was a lie.

When I Grow Up

Little kid's assignment where they've written "When I grow up I want to be a mailbox" and attempted to draw something. Image source.

I've been out of school and working a full-time job for about 5 years now, and so I feel like I've been an adult for 5 years. It's quite interesting and unexpected how there's been so much change in my life during that time. Things are definitely better right now than they were a few years ago.

My job is way better. When I first came to China back in 2013, I worked as an English teacher because I couldn't find an engineering job. I had to work evenings and weekends because the students were adults who came to class when they got off work. Teaching isn't really a good job for me because it requires way more people skills than I have. But eventually I did leave teaching and get a job as an engineer- and it was really hard at the beginning, doing an entry-level R&D job as an immigrant at a Chinese company. But the more time passes, the more work experience I have to show for it, and it gets easier. I've changed jobs a few times, and every time is easier because I can tell them I now have X years of work experience in engineering.

Seriously, I never expected this. Nothing in my whole life prepared me for finding out just how different it is looking for a job when I have work experience in that field vs when I don't. Or worse, when I've been out of school for a while and teaching instead of doing engineering. That's sort of a suspicious gap to have in my career- but as time passes, the time I spent as an English teacher moves farther and farther into the past, and employers don't care about it any more.

And I work normal hours now! It's so great to have free time in the evenings and weekends so I can spend time with friends and with Hendrix. My schedule now is just so much BETTER than when I was teaching. My job is so much better. I'm doing what I actually want to do. And it makes my life better.

Then there's my apartment. Hendrix and I have lived in a few different places, and the quality of our housing situation has a big effect on how good life is. How long is the commute? How far from our home to a subway station? Does our building have an elevator? Is the hot water heater good or crappy? How big is the apartment? It's just so good to live without the constant tiny stress of having to carefully shuffle around narrow paths through shelves and boxes piled high because that apartment was too small.

I'm really happy with our current housing situation. And that makes life better.

My health is way better now too. Specifically, mental health. A few years ago, I had depression because of ... uh ... purity culture and Christian teaching on hell and all that. And now, from time to time I marvel at how completely good and wonderful it is to not have depression. I would like to give credit to these 2 things, as the reasons I no longer have depression:

1. I had premarital sex.
2. I stopped trying to go to church.

(I plan to never stop talking about this, because it's the opposite of everything I was taught in church, and people need to know.)

So, so, so good to not have depression.

And another thing that's changed is understanding myself as autistic. Now I know that sometimes I have different needs than other people, and those needs are real and I deserve to have them met, so I should politely communicate about what I need, because other people aren't going to realize it on their own. This is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than what I had always done before- when I was a little kid, I was taught that if I think I need something different from other people, that's wrong and I'm being selfish and I just need to learn to be okay without getting my needs met.

It's so good and healthy how I've been learning how to know my own emotions and needs. Really makes a lot of things so much easier.

Also I have a bunch of friends now! As previously mentioned, I'm not trying to go to church any more, so I ended up going to some groups based around common interests and hobbies and such, and met all these great people from different countries. We have a pretty cool international community here in Shanghai. And it's really good having friendships based on just having fun together and being good people, and nobody is trying to suss out anyone's religious beliefs and judge and reject them for it.

And I don't know if I mentioned it or not (lol) but I got married last year, and that's pretty awesome too. Having Hendrix in my life is great, and living with him makes me so happy because I get to be with him all the time.

Anyway, I'm writing about this- about how "being an adult" isn't just one thing, how my life circumstances have changed in a lot of ways over the past few years- for 2 reasons:

1. Because when I was a kid, I thought adults had it all figured out and they didn't change.

People always ask little kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?" It makes it sound like you can only be 1 thing. It makes it sounds like "when you grow up" is something you can just take one snapshot of, to represent the whole thing- rather than something that goes through many different phases as the years pass. Nobody ever told me you can do one job for a while, and then if you want you can change to a completely different job, and then maybe 10 years later change again. I didn't know you could live in one place for a while, then move to a different place. Uh, I don't know, maybe adults did tell me that at some point- like, I was aware of the concept of moving- but I didn't really *get* it.

As a kid, my life changed a lot- first I was in elementary school, then middle school, then high school, etc. I lost baby teeth and grew new ones. I got taller. I learned stuff in school everyday. Always getting better and better. There were milestones. There was noticeable progress. There were goals. But I thought after you graduate from college, then you immediately get married and get a job and a house, and then after that, your life just stays the same from that point on.

I assumed that when I was "grown up" I would more or less know everything. Once I got to a certain age, I would never be confused or scared again. I didn't know adults had all the same emotions I did. They always seemed so confident and unflappable.

So this whole "adulting" thing is so much different than I expected.

2. Because evangelical Christianity taught me that it's not possible for a change in life circumstances to actually make people happier.

In the Christianity I used to believe, there was always a lot of talk about how God is all we need, and we shouldn't have something in our life that's so important it becomes an "idol" and we love it more than God. It was wrong to think "I'm unhappy because I don't have xyz, if I only had xyz my life would be so much better." In my case, back in college I wanted a boyfriend- but I told myself no, a boyfriend won't make me happy, only God can make me *truly* happy. (Like, I believed it wasn't wrong to have desires like that, but I shouldn't focus on them too much.)

We were supposed to be content, regardless of our circumstances, because we have a relationship with Jesus. That's all that matters, right? And this kind of mindset discourages people from setting goals for their future, because Christians know that changing our life circumstances doesn't make us happy. And besides, if you really really want something and you work hard to get it, well, isn't it likely that thing would become an "idol"?

I can't believe I have to say this, because isn't it obvious? YES, OF COURSE there are times when a change in your life circumstances has a huge effect on your happiness on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes I think to myself, "Remember when we were living in that apartment where the window didn't really shut all the way so it was super-cold all winter? Wow, I am SO GLAD we're not there any more." There are so many examples. So many situations I've been in, in the past, where I'm SO GLAD things have changed and I'm not living that way anymore. And none of it is at all related to "God is all I need" and "being content in any and all circumstances" and "idols."

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And Hendrix and I have more goals for our future. We have some ideas about other things we want to change to make our life better, and we're working toward those things. And inevitably there will be new problems that come up in the future and change our life circumstances and affect our "contentment."

Things change, because that's how life is. And I had no idea about that before.

Blogaround

Three big fluffy shiba dogs. Image source.

1. The Harrowing Of Hell, and All Its Works (posted April 2) "This is a bit like someone reading Nietzsche’s references to the “superman” and interpreting that as him talking about Clark Kent."

2. Crossing Lines (or What I Mean When I Say, “I’m Genderqueer.”) (posted April 18)

3. Inside the Memorial to Victims of Lynching (posted April 8) [content note: photos of lynching]

4. Chilling Study Sums Up Link Between Religion And Suicide For Queer Youth (posted April 18) "In fact, lesbian and gay youth who said that religion was important to them were 38 percent more likely to have had recent suicidal thoughts, compared to lesbian and gay youth who reported religion was less important." The ax is already at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

5. Purity Culture Can Ruin the Sex Life of Christian Couples: A Therapist’s Perspective "It is also easy to be taken advantage of because it is hard to consent to sex when you don’t know what your sexual needs/desires are."

And also: How Depression & Sexless Sleepovers Got Me Run Out of My Church [content note: church being horrible about handling depression] "No one asked me about my depression, no one asked me how they could be supportive." Yes. This. When Hendrix and I started living together, I was still terrified of sex. But Christians think every couple who's living together/ sleeping together is by definition having sex. It's not okay.

6. Chase rarely lends to people of color in DC – and it’s probably legal (posted March 22) "The bank turned away 26 percent of African Americans and 18 percent of Latinos who sought conventional home purchase loans in 2015 and 2016. It denied 7 percent of applications from white homebuyers."

7. Watch Beyonce's Full Set at Coachella 2018 (posted April 15)

8. What is Genesis About? The Big Idea that Cleared it Up for Me (posted 2017) "The Judah and Tamar story, which seems so out of place in Genesis, is a way of addressing indirectly a topic that the writer felt could not be whitewashed: David’s unjust treatment of Bathsheba and her husband Uriah."

And the follow-up post: More On What Genesis is Really About (If You Keep One Eye Focused on the Monarchy) "Isaac has exhausted his good blessing by giving it to Jacob, and so he has to scrounge up a blessing for Esau." Wowwwww mind-blowing.

9. Stopping the Deportation of Immigrants Injured on the Job (posted February 9) "Some workers were detained by federal immigration agents and deported without getting proper medical treatment for serious injuries."

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

Fear, Joy, and Disgust. (From "Inside Out.") Image source.

Hi everyone! I'm very excited to tell you today I have a guest post on Love, Joy, Feminism: I'm Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage

Some related posts you may also like:

For This Asexual, Purity Culture Was All About Fear
Worth the Wait?
He's Not "My Future Husband"
I Know We'll Have a Good Marriage, BECAUSE We're Not Pure

I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.

The topic of this post is pretty horrifying, so please enjoy this photo of a big walrus and baby walrus. Much like us, this baby walrus is good and does not deserve to go to hell. Image source.

[content note: abusive Christian theology, Desiring God]

Wow. I know Desiring God preaches all that nasty abusive theology that I used to believe, but I never expected this. It's an article from 2016 called Hope for the Unhappy Christian, and dang, it's mind-boggling how much abuse is packed into one little article.

Let's start at the beginning:

On the outside, Chloe appears to have it all together. She is single, has a career, and is fairly active in her local church. But she’s lonely, disenchanted by her career, and feels detached from her church. The shell that her peers admire conceals her discontentment and joyless Christianity.

Chloe had envisioned a different life for herself. By now, she thought she’d be in her prime, but she’s found herself in a pit of misery. She thought she’d be married, still connected to her college friends, raising a family, and mentoring younger Christian women. But her present reality disappointed her expectations. Her discontentment has led her down a dark path of sin, searching for relief, but only finding death.

All right, this sounds like depression. General unhappiness with one's life. Yeah. This is an actual medical condition. I recommend talking to a doctor, because you deserve better. You deserve happiness and a good life.

But no, the writer doesn't identify this as a health problem that should be taken seriously and treated. Instead, he says it's "discontentment" caused by having a wrong view of God. This is what I used to believe about depression- at church, they didn't use the word "depression," but the way they described the supposedly-universal "God-shaped hole" sounds exactly like the symptoms of depression to me. Yes, occasionally I heard Christians criticize the church for not believing depression is a real thing, but I never heard them question the "God-shaped hole" teaching. I never heard anyone challenge the teaching "for people who don't have a relationship with God, even when everything in their life seems to be going so well, they feel empty inside and they don't know why- it's because the only thing that satisfies is God."

It's incredibly harmful to describe symptoms of depression and then call it a spiritual problem which can only be fixed by having the correct view of God. I plan to never stop talking about this.

Anyway, next the Desiring God article tells us that people often think they can improve their mood by making big life changes- "I hate being single, so I should settle", "My spouse doesn’t satisfy me, so I should get a new one", "My job isn’t fulfilling, so I should quit", etc. The writer tells us that this way of thinking is all wrong. He says that no matter what situation people are in, they'll always find something to complain about, so the key to becoming happier is NOT changing your situation, but in changing your view of God (we'll get to that in a minute).

Okay, this is just patently ridiculous. Let me tell you something: If you're in a bad job, and you leave that job and get a new job that's way better, you will probably feel like "Wow everything is so much better now, I'm so glad I'm not in that old job anymore." If you're in a bad relationship and you get out, things will get so much better. If you feel lonely but then you make an effort to go out and find hobbies where you can meet new friends, that can also make your life significantly happier. If you are single and wish you had a romantic/sexual partner, and then you find a good one, that can make life so much better too. If you live in a tiny little crappy apartment and can't sleep because of the traffic outside your window, and then you move to a nicer home where you can relax, that can also change your life for the better. If you always think "you know, I should exercise" and then you get in the habit of exercising and you feel confident and strong, your life will be happier because of that too.

All those things may seem obvious, but I'm spelling it out because I literally used to believe that my circumstances didn't matter- only my relationship with God matters, and so I should always be able to be "content" no matter what. Just like this Desiring God article, I was extremely suspicious of any thought along the lines of "if only I had xyz, then my life would be so much better." I considered it idolatry- seeking happiness in my life circumstances rather than in God.

(When you think like this, it's very difficult to set long-term goals for your life, and you find yourself hoping that other people will fail in their own goals. Your friend says "ah I need to find a new job, then things will be so much better" but you "know" they need God and they won't *really* be happy with a new job, and really it would be better for them to stay in their sucky job because then they'll end up hitting rock bottom faster and finding God faster.)

There have been many times in my life where I thought, "Wow I'm so glad I'm doing ABC now and I'm no longer doing XYZ, wow things are SO MUCH BETTER now." Yes, that is a thing that CAN REALLY happen in people's lives. Quite often, actually. It's absurd that I actually have to make an argument for this- isn't is OBVIOUS? Isn't it OBVIOUS that if you're in a bad situation, and then things change and you get into a better situation, you'll be much happier overall? But back when I was a good evangelical, I truly believed that if I have God, I can be content in any situation, and if I don't have God, then I'll never be content, no matter the situation- so any thoughts along the lines of "if I make this big life change, I will be happier" was dangerous, borderline idolatry. And that's what this Desiring God article is arguing here.

After the article tells us that we can't find contentment by making big changes in our lives, it presents its solution: We need to adopt the correct view of God. Warning: This next part is shocking in how blatantly abusive it is:

The Christian’s unhappiness, discontentment, and view of God are directly linked. Discontentment screams, “You deserve better!” and whispers, “God is not giving you what you deserve.” The former screams are blatantly false, but the latter whispers are profoundly true. Satan is the master of mixing lies with truths.

It’s a lie that you deserve better. The statement also assumes that you know what’s best and that God’s gifts aren’t best for you. The lie leads you to believe that you’re wiser than God and interprets his direction for your life as an attack rather than a mercy and gift.

It’s true that God is not giving you what you deserve. We deserve God’s wrath, yet daily we receive new mercies. How can sickness, suffering, and other tragedies be considered mercy? By realizing that every morning we don’t wake up in hell is an example of God’s mercy toward us. Even when we’re feeling our worst, God is showing us more mercy than we deserve. There is no calamity or tragedy that we can face that is worse than the holy wrath of God. At the same time, there is no earthly pleasure that can compare to the glory that is to be revealed. This is how the apostle Paul faced suffering: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).

HOLY HELL.

To be clear: This is EXACTLY what I used to believe, and I'm very aware that this is what Desiring God teaches. But HOLY SHIT I didn't expect them to actually lay it out here so explicitly. I mean, y'all know God called me to write blog posts speaking out against the harmful theology of John Piper and Desiring God, but it's like they did my job for me. "... every morning we don’t wake up in hell is an example of God’s mercy toward us." I mean, HOLY CRAP. Yes, of course this is the logical consequence of the belief "we all deserve to go to hell," which I was explicitly taught in church. Yes, that belief leads to incredible heartlessness toward victims of tragedy. They're getting better than they deserve anyway, so they should quit complaining. This is spiritual abuse.

I mean, what can I even say? Just look at that excerpt from the article. Marvel at how completely terrible it is, recoil in horror at the realization that there are people who actually believe this crap- that there are nice Sunday school teachers who teach it to children and call it "the gospel."

It's exactly the ideology I used to hold, but I'm honestly shocked to see Desiring God state it so directly. Usually when I blog about why believing in hell completely ruins Christianity, I have to connect the dots and explain why that's so harmful, how it leads to abuse, depression, and heartlessness. Wow. They really published this. I just... wow.

So let's review: The article starts out by describing symptoms of depression but not calling it "depression"- claiming that "discontentment" is caused by having an incorrect view of God. Then it claims that our happiness is based more on our view of God than on our actual circumstances- so people who try to make changes and improve their lives are totally misguided and they'll never find contentment that way. And finally, it says that you can develop the correct view of God and learn to be content by accepting the claim that you don't deserve anything good anyway. You deserve to go to hell, and anything that happens to you in this life- no matter how bad it is- is a merciful gift from God. Isn't God so nice for not sending you to hell? Be grateful and stop feeling bad about yourself.

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Related:
"The Authority of Scripture" is One Hell of a Drug
Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks)
I Deserve God's Love

Remember, everyone, you're great and you deserve love and happiness. Desiring God is taking the Lord's name in vain.