Concluding Thoughts on "The Great Sex Rescue"

Person reading a book. Image source.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Marry a man who's decent or an abuser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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About being a sex-favorable ace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Maybe this was always about men having power

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

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

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

Some of my posts related to that:

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

5/25/2022 Blogaround

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

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Wrapping it up

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Sex Rescue: Last Chapter

A pile of books. Image source.

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

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

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

I want to talk about this quote from page 233:

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

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

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

This comment is SPOT ON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And also this:

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

Two things to say about this:

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

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

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

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

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

Related:

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

Blogaround

1. Deciphering Dunhuang (December 2) "Compared to official histories like the 'Twenty-Four Histories,' which only record the political activities of emperors and generals, the Dunhuang manuscripts are mostly original records and archives, not pruned by ancient historians. They preserve many materials that would otherwise have been filtered out by historians, allowing us to understand the social life of ordinary people in ancient times. For example, humorous poems, perhaps written by copyists when they were bored."

Also from Sixth Tone: China’s Delivery Workers Are Hiring… More Delivery Workers (December 7)

Reminds me of when Aladdin said, "I have servants who go to the marketplace for my servants."

2. Mike Bickle, leader of IHOP movement, accused of sexual abuse (October 29) (This IHOP is the International House of Prayer- not the pancake one.) I have feelings about this, because... when I was evangelical, the impression I had of the International House of Prayer was that it was so good and holy. Basically, the whole idea of the International House of Prayer is that people "raise support" (ie, ask all their friends for money) to go and just pray there, like it's their full-time job. Like being a missionary, except you only pray, instead of actually interacting with people to help them and/or evangelize to them. And evangelicals were always saying "prayer is the most important thing", "we don't pray enough", etc- and then here was IHOP literally living out that belief. Admittedly, it kind of gave me vibes like it was a little bit loony, a little bit too fundie for my comfort level- but I didn't see anything actually bad about it- like, yes, we should pray all the time, right? Isn't that what everyone's always saying? Here are people who have enough faith to actually do that, even though it comes across as really weird (can you imagine asking your friends for money to sponsor you to just go pray all the time?).

And... you'd think, when someone spends all their time praying and really trying to know God and align themself with God, you'd think it would be very easy to NOT sexually abuse anyone. Like, how could you do that, if you're gonna have to go face God immediately after? 

How is it possible that someone could spend so much time sexually abusing people, in an environment that's so "godly"?

I mean, now I know the answer is this: These types of conservative religious environments aren't really about following God and living out the commands that God gives us. No no no, nothing like that at all. They are about control. They are about leaders who make all kinds of rules and then claim that those rules are directly from God, and God will punish you if you don't follow them (this is called taking the Lord's name in vain).

3. Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93 (December 1)

4. Carlton Pearson, Pastor Deemed a Heretic for Denying Hell, Dies at 70 (November 21)

The Slacktivist wrote about Pearson in this 2022 post: When concordance-ism eats itself 

5. Space Typography (December 4) From xkcd. Love this.

6. This Killer Sudoku Is "Ridiculous" (December 8) 1-hour-6-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, I am really impressed by this puzzle. It's just a normal killer sudoku, nothing fancy about the rules, but wow the logic to solve it is really complex and interesting.

7. What Kind Of Future Does De-Extinction Promise? (December 6) Very good article about venture capital companies making news with claims that they are doing "de-extinction." It's always about the really glamorous extinct animals, the mammoths, the dodos, etc, while nobody seems to care that "boring" species of animals are going extinct all the time.

"But I dread the future de-extinction heralds, one where we pick and choose which species will be imperfectly reanimated, where the future of biodiversity is funded by venture capital, and where these proxy animals or even merely the promises of them make headlines while living animals' extinctions do not."

8. Masters Of Their Domain (December 11) So... apparently a lot of "accountability groups" in evangelical culture are actually all about not masturbating. I think this is more of a thing for men in evangelical culture than for women- women who "struggle with masturbation" are just told that they're freaks because women supposedly don't "sin" in that way. 

I'm a woman and also very asexual, so I did not know about this until I started reading ex-evangelical blogs. (Though yes, when I was evangelical, I "struggled" a lot with my "sinful" romantic desires- I was unable to "guard my heart" and repress my romantic desires like I was supposed to, and I had a lot of angst about that.)

"These accountability groups aren’t holding one another accountable for bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, and gentleness. They’re never about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. And they’re certainly never about loosing the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, and breaking every yoke." Yes, PREACH.

9. Panera’s “Lemonade That Kills You” Is Really a Story About Our Broken Country (December 8) "In peer nations—like, for instance, the United Kingdom—the government imposes strict and consistent regulations on the front end: It requires warning labels on drinks with more than 150 mg of caffeine and bans the sale of these drinks to children under 16. In the U.S., by contrast, the FDA barely regulates caffeine: It does not require manufacturers to include caffeine on the ingredient list of many caffeinated beverages, let alone disclose the amount of caffeine on the label."

10. Texas Supreme Court rules against woman who sued for an emergency abortion (December 12) [content note: pregnancy loss] This whole thing is so awful and tragic, and the government of Texas is just making everything worse for no reason. 

The Great Sex Rescue: Porn

"Is this a pigeon?" meme template, where it's evangelicals looking at "any amount of porn use" and asking, "Is this a porn addiction?" Source: I saw someone share this on twitter years ago, I don't have the original source, so I remade it myself here.

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

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[content note: this post discusses porn/masturbation/sex, but it's not explicit. also it discusses abusive ideology where men are supposed to use their wives as a substitute for porn]

So, we're now in chapter 6 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], the chapter about porn.

I wasn't really sure what to write about this, because I don't really know that much about porn. I read fanfiction, and some of that is porn, but I don't know anything about other types of porn. So my plan for this post is to write about some of my thoughts tangent to this, but not really address whether evangelicals are right or wrong about porn. [Editor's note: yeah, Perfect Number said that, but then look how long this post is.]

Basically, I have seen 3 main schools of thought on porn:

1. Evangelical: Porn is always bad. Your entire sex life is supposed to belong to your spouse (and if you're not married, it belongs to your hypothetical future spouse), so porn is selfish, a betrayal of your spouse. People who watch porn are always getting addicted to porn. It's a huge danger that will destroy your marriage!
2. Mainstream society: It's normal to watch porn, everyone does it. But maybe we are a little bit concerned about kids thinking that porn is sex ed, and boys assuming that their girlfriends will be totally okay with performing whatever weird acts they see in porn (and pressuring them into it because those things are seen as "normal").
3. Feminist: There is debate about the ethics of porn. Are the actors being exploited? How can you really know if the actors are participating in it consensually, or if they are being coerced? Also, if you share sexy images or videos of someone without their consent, that is NOT OKAY.

(I'm sure there are other perspectives out there, but these are the 3 that I've seen.)

I guess my opinion is somewhere near the "mainstream society" view. (But obviously it's not true that "everyone" watches porn.) I don't really know enough about the feminist arguments to have an opinion there, though I suppose that is something that would be worth learning more about. (Though obviously yes, if it's not consensual that's NOT OKAY.)

But, I feel that behind each of these 3 points of view, there's this sort of background assumption that yes, we have all seen porn, we understand why it's enticing, we are familiar with what it's about... which is why a lot of the discussion about porn feels off, to me, as an asexual.

I do appreciate that "The Great Sex Rescue" asks this question: "How old were you when you first saw porn (if you have)? Did it affect how you saw sex? Did it affect how you saw yourself?" They allow for the possibility that some readers are so extremely sheltered that they've never actually had any real-life experience with porn at all. As an asexual, I appreciate that.

(And yes, "The Great Sex Rescue" definitely matches that "evangelical" view of porn I described above.)

Generally I think evangelicals' entire ideology about sex is wrong, so I lean toward the "evangelicals are totally wrong about porn and it's actually no big deal" side, but I really don't know enough about it to actually make an argument for that.

So I want to reframe this by talking about 2 different motivations for doing sexual things:

1. For yourself. For your own curiosity/ enjoyment/ satisfying your sex drive. (Apparently sex drive is a real thing, idk, I'm asexual, don't ask me.)
2. For your relationship with your partner. For your emotional and romantic intimacy with your partner. To express love to each other. To enjoy being with them.

(And sure, there are other possible motivations too, like having a baby, but let's keep it simple and just talk about these 2.)

In my opinion, both of these motivations are valid. And each person might prioritize them differently. Perhaps sometimes, you just want it to be about feeling good yourself- and that situation would correspond to using porn and masturbating. And sometimes, you want it to be about your partner, and so you have sex with your partner in a way that is loving and putting a high priority on making it a good experience for them. (Sex with a partner can be a combination of reason 1 and reason 2.)

(And in this post, I mention "using porn and masturbating" together because it seems like, from the way most people talk about them, those things go together????? But this is not intuitive to me at all.)

And I'm oversimplifying it here, but my point is, there's a time and place for both of those motivations. Or perhaps you're only interested in reason 1 and don't care about reason 2, and therefore you just masturbate and don't need a partner. Or you're not interested in anything sexual, for any of these reasons at all. Also fine! Where we run into trouble, though, is if you want to have sex that's always reason 2 and never reason 1. 

Yeah, evangelicals- including the writers of "The Great Sex Rescue"- believe that reason 1 is NOT a valid reason for doing sexual things. No. It can never be about you- that would be selfish! Masturbating is selfish and sinful because sex is supposed to be about your spouse, and you're taking that away from them (whether they exist or not) and using it for your own pleasure!

Back when I was evangelical, I believed masturbating was cheating. And watching porn was cheating. (And even if you're single, masturbating is still cheating, on your "future husband.") I don't remember if I ever heard anyone directly use the word "cheating" to talk about this, but they definitely say things like "betrayal" and "he invited hundreds of women into our bed."

Some quotes from this chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue", to show you what I mean about these writers believing reason 1 is NEVER an okay motivation for sex:

[In the "Every Man's Battle" books] There is no depiction of God's design for sex as an ultimate, personal knowing of each other rather than just intercourse during which she feels like a receptacle. It is just accepted that men can't experience sex the way God intended.
...
You can't defeat porn by simply having a husband transfer his lust and objectification to a "safe" source-- his wife. You defeat porn by rejecting the kingdom of darkness view of sex, that it is only about taking and using someone to meet your needs, and adopting a kingdom of heaven view of sex: that it's about a mutual, passionate knowing and sacrificial serving.

"The Great Sex Rescue" is criticizing evangelical resources like "Every Man's Battle." Let me sum up these different sides, as they relate to reason 1 and reason 2:

Evangelical resources about how men can "fight" lust and porn, like "Every Man's Battle": These resources talk about sex like it's only reason 1. Men have needs, and it would be wrong for men to use porn, and therefore the wife is REQUIRED to have sex with the husband to take care of his "needs." Instead of dealing with his reason-1 type of desire by watching porn and masturbating, he needs to deal with it by using his wife. So it's still reason 1, it's still selfish and all about him and not any awareness about "maybe you should care about if this is a good experience for your partner." Use your wife the same way you would use porn.

(It reminds me of the way that Josh Duggar reportedly had sex with Danica Dillon, a sex worker. She says he was violent and she was scared. I feel like... in evangelical/ purity ideology, men are told "you've been working so hard holding yourself back, and then when you're married you can finally stop holding back and just follow your desires and have everything you want, this is your reward from God" and there's no "you have to pay attention to how your partner feels." [And wouldn't that logic apply to both a wife and a sex worker? You paid for her, what reason could there be to put any restrictions on your behavior toward her?] It raises some scary questions about how he treated his wife.)

"The Great Sex Rescue": This chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" criticizes evangelical resources like "Every Man's Battle" for telling wives they need to have sex to treat their husband's "addiction" and prevent him from watching porn. The writers of "The Great Sex Rescue" talk about how NOT OKAY it is that they don't seem to care at all about the wife's pleasure, and how they're making it her responsibility to keep her husband from watching porn. And telling women that sex is about being used as a substitute for porn. Rather than about, you know, love. In other words, "The Great Sex Rescue" says sex should always be with your spouse, never on your own, and when it's with your spouse, it has to be reason 2, not reason 1.

(And, can I just say, in mainstream secular society, I've encountered the idea that if a straight man prefers porn rather than having sex with an actual real woman, he is a pathetic loser. Like, dude, what the hell is wrong with you, you've got an actual wife or girlfriend, naked and consenting, and you'd rather just watch porn by yourself? And that it's normal to watch porn, everyone does it, but obviously "the real thing" is better. I don't agree with this view because I don't think we should judge people as "pathetic losers" based on their sexual preferences [and also this is tied up with the idea that being able to attract and pleasure a sexual partner is an indicator of how awesome a man is, and being a "virgin" is bad]. I don't agree with it, but I believe it's very very useful to know that this perspective exists. If you're coming from an evangelical background, where the assumption is "yeah men all have this weakness where they get addicted to porn and then they don't want to have sex with their wife, so wives have to step up their game to keep their husband interested"- no, that's not some axiomatically-true assumption about how the world works. No. Many people see it QUITE DIFFERENTLY. Many people believe that if the husband prefers porn, that's a problem with him. He is the one who is a loser, and it has nothing to do with his wife's sexual skills. Mind-blowing, if you're coming from an evangelical/purity background.)

And I would say, both "Every Man's Battle" and "The Great Sex Rescue" are too narrow. ("Every Man's Battle" is worse though!) How about, sometimes it can be reason 1, and sometimes it can be reason 2? Both partners should discuss their desires as related to reason 2, and come up with something that works for both of them. For reason 1 motivations and how you handle them, that's your own business.

Or, actually, it's not exactly true that "that's your own business." A couple should discuss with each other the question "what is our definition of cheating?" Evangelicals seem to just assume that porn and masturbation are cheating, but personally I think that's not a very realistic place to draw the line.

If you have discussed it with your partner and agreed that watching porn is cheating, and then you discover that your partner is watching porn, of course that's a betrayal. Of course you would feel upset about that. But it's not because porn is inherently bad- it's because of the broken promise. The dishonesty.

I feel like it's realistic and healthy to allow people to masturbate and use porn, and that's fine and it's not cheating. That's my own opinion, feel free to draw the line in a different place. If a porn habit starts to cause problems in your relationship with your partner, well, you have to stop and think about what your priorities are, and what kind of relationship you and your partner agreed you want to have, and then make changes that will help you reach those goals.

What I think is completely unreasonable, though, is that evangelicals have drawn the line such that ANY sexual activity AT ALL that is solely for your own enjoyment is NOT OKAY. CHEATING! They say that every single sexual experience you ever have, in your whole entire life, has to be with your spouse.

(I've told this story before, but here, I'll tell it again: I read an fanfic about 2 characters in a kinky dom/sub relationship, and the dom character said to the sub character, "you are not allowed to masturbate, you are not allowed to have orgasms without me." And it was presented like a kinky power-dynamics thing, that is not the norm but some people may choose to do it because they find it exciting. And I was SHOCKED, because in purity culture I was taught that that's just what every normal marriage is supposed to be like. Like of course it's normal that no one masturbates, and all orgasms must occur in your spouse's presence. And people who aren't married shouldn't be having orgasms at all, ever. This fanfic showed me no, that's not normal, that's a kinky dom/sub thing- "normal" would be that everyone is in charge of their own body and can masturbate if they want. See, this is why I say that reading fanfic porn has been helpful for me.)

This is not reasonable, even for me, an asexual, who never had any interest in sex in and of itself, but cluelessly saw it as nothing more than a means to have romantic, loving experiences with another person. I definitely believed there was no need to do any exploring on my own, no need to have sexual experiences that were just for myself, because that would be SELFISH and BAD, and that's not what sex is SUPPOSED TO BE. It's bad if you want sex for the sex. You're supposed to want sex because you love your partner.

So... when we started having sex (before marriage!) and I was completely clueless... it didn't go well. Purity culture said that a man would appreciate how clueless I was, because that meant I was pure, and I hadn't had any sexual experiences that weren't about him, and that's the way it should be... No, it wasn't a good thing that I was clueless.

And you know, people say "when a man and woman love each other very much..." then sex happens... well it's not true. It doesn't happen naturally for me, because I am asexual af. Like, we love each other, hooray... okay but now we're supposed to do something with our genitals???? Why????? How??????

So when I read in "The Great Sex Rescue" that sex is supposed to be this beautiful mutual intimate connection, and it should never be anything else... this doesn't work for me. Because I can't get to the "beautiful mutual intimate connection" if I don't even know what the hell I'm supposed to do- the mechanics of it- and if I don't even know how my own body works.

My point is, you need to masturbate.

(Obviously you don't "need" to masturbate- some people live their lives without having sex at all, and without masturbating at all. That would be fine! What doesn't work is thinking you're going to have sex successfully with another person, if you don't have any experience masturbating.)

This is something that's really important to me, and I think this should be one of the key pieces of sex ed we teach to teenagers: First, you have to figure out the individual ("selfish") aspects of sex, for yourself. Figure out your body, your desires, your interests, your overall goals. (And perhaps you figure out that you're ace and never want to have sex at all- that is a valid answer.) And then, you can decide on whether you'd want to share those experiences with another person. Under what circumstances, and what would your motivations be, and how would you like it to happen, and what are you hoping to get out of it.

And I'm not saying you literally have to fully complete the first step before moving on to the second step. I'm not saying you have to know everything there is to know about your own desires, before you can have sex with another person for the first time. No, there can be some overlap in this process. Maybe your experiences with other people help you figure out what you want. But my point is, figuring out sex for yourself is a crucial step, a prerequisite to having a good sexual relationship with another person.

And obviously, if you are involving another person, you have to care about how they feel, and make sure you pay attention to their needs and make it a good experience for them. (Even if your motivation is reason 1, you still have to care about how your partner feels. You don't "use" your partner.) But you'll be able to do that much better if you're coming from a place of confidently knowing what you want and how your body works, rather that just having no idea what the **** is going on.

Anyway, let's get back to some of the things that this chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" says. 

So, this chapter talks about some physical problems caused by porn use- for example, a man being unable to get an erection when having sex with his wife. Like he's not able to just have sex with her- the only way he can get it to work is by watching porn. Like I said, I don't know very much about porn, so I can't comment on how likely this scenario is- but I feel like the reason it's a problem is because the husband's approach to sex is not meeting the wife's needs. She wants sex to be a certain way, but he's not able to do that because porn has gotten him into the habit of doing sex a different way. The problem is the mismatch, not the porn itself.

Because, imagine this: Suppose there is a couple where 1 partner is asexual and the other partner is not, so they decide that what works for them is that they will never have sex with each other, and they can individually use porn or masturbate if they want. Or, maybe they decide they will have an open relationship, or some sort of arrangement like that. Yeah, most people wouldn't be okay with that. *I* wouldn't be okay with that. (I really want to emphasize this: If you are not okay with having an open relationship, then be confident and don't let anyone talk you into it. Know yourself. Just because it's a valid relationship structure for some people doesn't mean you have to be willing to try it yourself. No. If you're not okay with it, then stand firm and absolutely refuse.) But for some people, depending on their feelings about sex and the role they want it to play in their lives, this works for them. And if it works for them, that's great. 

And... yeah I've said this in previous posts... "The Great Sex Rescue" feels to me (as a queer person) like it's presenting a view of sex which is very narrow, and saying this is the only correct way to view sex. Sex *has* to be in a monogamous hetero marriage, and it *has* to be about intimacy and connection with your partner. It feels extremely narrow- but at the same time, I recognize that my solution- both partners know themselves and know what they want and confidently advocate for that- is just not realistic for women from a conservative Christian background. 

See, if you're evangelical, which of these comes across as a stronger argument?

1. "The Great Sex Rescue" says a husband not being able to get an erection because he used porn too much is a problem because he is required to make sex a pleasurable and intimate experience for his wife, because that is what sex was DECREED BY GOD to be.
2. Me, Perfect Number, saying "if the husband isn't able to have sex with his wife, that's not a problem in and of itself, it's only a problem if having emotionally-intimate sex with him is really important to her, and yes, if it's really important to her than she absolutely should stand up for herself and say 'this is not working for me' and they should take it very seriously and come up with a plan that works for both of them."

I understand that for women with a conservative Christian background, who have been told their entire life that it's selfish and sinful to want things... they can't ask for what they want, they can only argue "we have to do this because it's the correct way that God designed."

It's sad, it's really sad, is what it is. And I hope that people coming out of that kind of background can eventually get to a place where they believe that their emotions matter, their desires matter, in and of themselves and not because of whether or not they're following God's rules or something. And maybe to get there, they have to go through a phase where they come up with biblical arguments about "actually if you really interpret the bible correctly, it says you should do these things"... but eventually I hope people get to a place where it doesn't matter what the bible says, or what God says. 

You matter, because you're a person, and that's enough by itself. That's enough, by itself, to say that you deserve to have people care about how you feel and what you want, and you shouldn't be forced into things you don't want.

Anyway, here's another thought I just had: I think I've figured out what the actual problem with porn is, that evangelicals are always mislabeling as "a porn addiction." The actual problem is, for some people, porn exploits some of their natural psychological quirks and causes them to develop bad habits, which then mess up other areas of their life. (For example, a man who wants to have a healthy sexual relationship with his wife, but his experiences with porn cause him to have certain assumptions and behaviors during sex which make it not possible to have the kind of positive experience they both want to have.)

This is similar to how people can get stuck wasting so much time on social media sites, because of the "infinite scroll." The design of the social media feed exploits human psychology, to cause people to develop the bad habit of spending way too much time on there.

Or, another example, perhaps fast food restaurants are very convenient, and that causes people to develop the bad habit of eating too much fast food.

These are things that, because of human nature, will inevitably happen to a certain percentage of people. Not everyone- there are plenty of people who just use social media a normal amount and don't want to waste hours and hours on it every day.

So, overall my view on porn is, you should be a mature adult, and recognize if it's causing problems for you, and then take action to change your habits. I want to say, the existence of porn is not a problem in and of itself, and using porn is not a problem in and of itself, but it can become a problem for some people. And instead of scaremongering like evangelicals do, claiming everything is "a porn addiction", how about we be mature adults who can honestly evaluate our own lives and identify our bad habits and do the work to change those habits.

(And perhaps this is an argument for why teenagers shouldn't have access to porn- because they actually aren't capable of doing the "mature adult" thing and being aware of whether it's having harmful effects on their lives.)

At the same time, though, maybe I shouldn't put all the responsibility on the individual, who needs to "be a mature adult." If something is designed to exploit human nature in a way that causes people to develop bad habits, shouldn't some of the blame be on the thing itself (and/or the companies making money off it)? (Wait do people make money off of producing porn? I guess? Maybe I'm too ace to talk about this.)

So... hmm. If it is the case that porn commonly does cause people to develop bad habits/ unhealthy ideas about sex, then we should do something to address that. And not just say porn is always bad and it will destroy your life, etc, like I always heard in purity culture. (Fun fact, I tried watching porn, and my overall feeling was just complete bafflement that *this* is what Christians had been warning me about all these years, that it's so DANGEROUS and it's going to ensnare me and RUIN MY LIFE... I'm like... so... it's people having sex for no reason? I don't get it?? Why would I want to watch that??? This is what y'all've been scared of, all this time????) I don't think it's possible to ban it- so instead, we should teach people how to have a healthy attitude towards it, how to recognize if it's causing harmful effects in their lives, how to get rid of bad habits, etc.

But like I said, I'm asexual so I can't speak to questions like "How likely is porn to cause problems for people who use it? How hard is it to quit?" etc. So I really have no idea about the practical aspects of this. Probably I'm wrong about some of the things I've said in this post.

But here's the main point I want to make: "The Great Sex Rescue" says sex has to always be about having a mutual loving relationship with your spouse, and it's wrong for sex to ever be something you just do by yourself, for yourself. I very much disagree with that. I think your sex life and your sexuality belong to you- not your spouse, not anyone else- and you have to figure out yourself first, and after you've built that foundation, then you can decide whether you want to involve another person. Even in marriage, your sex life is for you first, and then you choose to share it with your spouse. (And also you should discuss how you define "cheating" and then don't break that promise.)

"The Great Sex Rescue" criticizes books like "Every Man's Battle" for telling men to use their wives as an alternative to using porn- and yes, I agree with "The Great Sex Rescue" here. Having sex with a person is a completely different thing than using porn. You can't expect that you can easily substitute one for the other. (And that's really cruel to the wife... Christians basically telling wives that the only way a husband will enjoy sex with her is if the wife makes it a similar experience to what he gets from porn- rather than having sex because they both want to and they love each other and he wants her to genuinely enjoy it.)

My opinion is, there's a time and a place for both. It depends on your motivations and what you're hoping to get out of it. You have to figure that out for yourself. But "The Great Sex Rescue" says no, there's not a time and a place for both- sex ALWAYS has to be about loving your partner. This feels so incredibly narrow to me.

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I wish I had a link to an article about the problems with the way evangelicals view porn (thinking *everything* is "a porn addiction")- there must be some ex-evangelical/ ex-purity-culture person/ queer Christian who has written about that. I do have a few links to some short threads on twitter which point out this problem though: this one from @emilyjoypoetry and this one from @emilykmay.

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

Related:

My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life 

I Wanna Preach the Good News of Masturbation 

A Post About Masturbation

"Is it Okay for Christians to Use Sex Toys?" (An Exercise in Missing the Point)

The Great Sex Rescue: More Foreplay

A car driving around in the desert. Image source.

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

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[content note: sex, sex toys, orgasms]

I have lots to say about chapter 3 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], so this post will just be about the first part (pages 39-50). This chapter is called "Bridging the Orgasm Gap" and it starts out like this:

Which message have you heard more often in church, studies, or Christian books?

• Do not deprive your husband.
• Women's sexual pleasure matters.

When I read this, I was like LOLOLOLOL. Of course I've heard "Do not deprive your husband" and I don't know if I've ever heard Christian marriage advice that said "Women's sexual pleasure matters." ("Do not deprive" means you owe him sex, and if you don't have sex enough to meet his manly "needs", you are "depriving" him.) So yeah, this is a HUGE PROBLEM, and I'm glad Gregoire and her co-authors are pointing it out.

Let me explain what they mean by the "orgasm gap": In the authors' survey of 20,000 women, they found that 48% of women were having an orgasm always or almost always, when having sex. They found research papers that said the stat for men would be 90%. So, there is an "orgasm gap" of 42 percentage points. (Now, maybe we could ask some questions about whether it's reasonable to compare these 2 stats- Gregoire's survey respondents were mostly heterosexual married Christian women, and really the group they should be compared to is their husbands, or perhaps men from the same conservative Christian subculture. But anyway, the point is, there really is a gap, and it's a sign that women in this kind of conservative Christian subculture aren't getting what they want out of sex.) I wrote about this idea in this post last year: Here's an article about evangelical women and sex.

Before I get into all my opinions about this section (and I have many!) I want to highlight this part:

Instead of expecting that sex shouldn't take very long, we'd like to offer a new expectation: no man should be satisfied unless his wife is also satisfied. That doesn't mean a wife has to reach orgasm every single time, but the expectation should be that he does everything within his power to help her get there. Ephesians 5:28 says that husbands "ought to love their wives as their own bodies," meaning that her experience should matter to him as much as his own does.

Ooooh, what's this- taking Ephesians 5, the "wives submit to your husbands"/"husbands love your wives" passage, which has been used over and over to tell women they have to stay in abusive relationships- and interpreting it to mean a husband should make sure his wife has an orgasm? Feisty! I love it!!!!

Anyway. This chapter of the book... it keeps saying the answer is that husbands need to do more foreplay... and there's something about that that feels really off, to me. It talks about sex like it consists of "intercourse" and "foreplay", and I don't think the book ever defines "foreplay", but it seems to include: things that feel good sexually for women, things that get women aroused, things that get women ready physically so that PIV [penis-in-vagina sex] is not painful, and things that get women to have orgasms. It feels a bit odd to me that it talks about sex like "intercourse" is the part that men want, and "foreplay" is the part that women want. I don't know, maybe it's just the use of the word "foreplay" that's throwing me off here, because I certainly have things I want to do during sex but I don't conceptualize them as "foreplay". I conceptualize them as, asking for what I want. You know, because we're equals and we should both say what we want during sex, so we can make it a good experience for both of us. But perhaps if you have a husband and wife who think "sex" is just PIV, it can be helpful to introduce the concept of "foreplay" to them as a thing that is important and is separate from intercourse.

But anyway, this chapter kept saying the answer is that the husband needs to do more foreplay, and that feels to me like it misses the point. The way I see it, if they're having sex that doesn't feel good for the wife, and she's not having orgasms, there are 2 different problems it could be:

Problem 1: She has very little experience with masturbation, and little experience with orgasm (maybe she has never had an orgasm) and therefore she really has no idea about how she could go about getting an orgasm. Doesn't really even know where to start (and she believes masturbation is a sin, so she's not even allowed to "start" at all). If she doesn't even know how her own body works, then of course her husband doesn't know either. So both of them have no idea what to even do to make it feel good for her.

Problem 2: She has some ideas of things she would like to try together, but her husband doesn't want to do any of it. He says he's fine with the sex they're having, and he doesn't want to make any changes. Making sex feel good for her is just not a priority for him at all.

And my own experience (hi I'm asexual) is problem 1, so that's the lens I'm reading this through, and feeling like "he needs to do more foreplay" doesn't really address the problem at all. When I read the description of the problem, it reads to me like problem 1, but most of the concrete anecdotes in this chapter are more along the lines of problem 2- for example:

Charlotte from one of our focus groups told us something similar. When she started wondering if sex could feel good for her, too, she began to read some sex books about different techniques to try. When she talked to her husband about it, though, he shut down. He already knew how to have sex, he said. She just needed to catch up. 

Hey, Charlotte read some books and got some ideas of things to try! Good for her! (Though I'm sure that conservative Christians would say that reading such books is a sin- they are probably "secular" books which say that it's okay to have sex outside of marriage, OH THE HORROR- and honestly I don't know Gregoire's position on that, which worries me.) 

("OH THE HORROR" should be read with heavy sarcasm. I had sex before marriage and it was a good decision for me.)

I'm going to talk about problem 1 first. (I also don't think "he needs to do more foreplay" is really the solution to problem 2 either, but we'll get to that.) So. Problem 1. Well let me just come out and say it: The solution for problem 1 is that she needs to spend some time masturbating, so she can at least know what feels good, and what an orgasm is, and get some ideas of things that feel good. And then, she should instruct her husband about how specifically she prefers to have him involved in it.

Or, alternatively, since I'm asexual I'll say this... perhaps she realizes that she doesn't actually want sex at all. Which is totally a valid thing for her to feel, but it may mean she is not sexually compatible with her husband, which is a whole different problem, which aces talk about a lot but I personally can't speak to. Yeah my perspective here is a sex-favorable ace perspective. What if someone figures out they're a sex-repulsed ace, after they get married? That would be a completely different thing than what I'm writing about here. If any readers have experience along those lines and want to leave a comment, that would be great.

But anyway, my point is, if you want to have sex, you need to have experience masturbating. And it weirds me out SO MUCH that this chapter in the book doesn't say that- it just keeps saying the husband needs to do more foreplay. This book is for women coming from a conservative Christian background- they definitely were taught that masturbating is a sin/ masturbating is selfish and therefore bad/ masturbating is cheating. Yes, I really believed that masturbating was cheating on my husband, because all of my sexual experiences are supposed to belong to him, supposed to be centered on him, supposed to flow naturally from my love for him.

So... what is Gregoire's stance on masturbating? I can't figure it out, and it worries me SO MUCH. There's this bit on page 45- "Is this gap simply because women don't orgasm easily? Nope! Research shows that when masturbating, women can reach orgasm in under ten minutes." (They cite a research paper here- this is unrelated to their own survey of 20,000 women.) I don't know how to take that. Does it mean "masturbating is a normal thing that people (for example, married women) do" or does it mean "we're not saying you should actually do this, but it's useful as a data point to prove that it's at least theoretically possible for someone to bring a woman to orgasm in a reasonable amount of time, so your husband shouldn't use that as an excuse"?

All this talk about "he needs to do more foreplay" and not saying anything about a woman actually taking the time to figure out by herself what feels good/ leads to orgasm... it feels so wrong to me. It feels like these authors are saying *I'm* not allowed to figure out how my body works, I have to wait for *my husband* to figure out how my body works. There's something really passive about it that just feels totally wrong.

And, okay, let me tell you something else. I'm autistic. Autistic people often have sensory sensitivities- this means that there are certain sensory stimuli that we just CANNOT STAND, and other stimuli that we LOVE. And for each autistic person, the specific stimuli in each of these 2 categories will be different. It means autistic people can be very picky about how people touch us.

So, here's how it works, if the wife has no experience with masturbating and no clue what would feel good, and she's autistic: So, the husband tries touching "down there" with his fingers. It doesn't feel good for her, so she says "no." Then he tries touching in a different way. It doesn't feel good, so she says "no." And repeat. What if this happens 10 times, and none of them feel good for her? Then what? Does she tell him to just keep trying different things, with no real reason to believe that they're actually making any progress at all? Do they just give up and try again another night? Does she pick which of the 10 was the least bad, and tell him he can do that one?

There's just no way through it, if she's not allowed to masturbate.

It's like, when you're doing a group project, and you assign each person a task. Everyone is supposed to do their own task, and then come back to the next meeting, ready to collaborate and make progress on the next steps they need to do together. What if someone never does any tasks by themself, but only attends meetings? How is anything going to get done? You have to try things out yourself and come to the meeting prepared with some ideas of things that you and your partner can do together.

So when I read this section of the book throwing shade at the idea that "she needs to catch up"- hey, maybe she actually does need to "catch up." If it's problem 1, and if she's not allowed to masturbate, and it has to be her husband doing all the work to figure out how her body works, I just... I mean I'm sitting here writing this post just shaking my head because I can't put into words how much of a bad idea this is. It's just ... they're just never going to make any progress on this at all. If I hadn't masturbated, I would have had to just entirely give up on the whole idea of ever having PIV sex. It was just so unworkable for me back then. (I also had undiagnosed vaginismus, so, there's that.)

(If it's problem 2, on the other hand- if she comes to the meeting prepared with some ideas, and he refuses to work with her- that's an entirely different problem.)

And another thing I recommend: She should try using a sex toy. She can start with a magic wand vibrator for clitoral stimulation. (Disclaimer, different things work for different people- I know there are some people with vaginas who don't find this type of toy useful.) I know some people think there's something "wrong" about using sex toys, like you shouldn't do it because it's not the "right" way to have sex or something- okay, if you believe that, that's fine, but at least at the beginning, when you don't even know what orgasms are, a sex toy can help you at least figure out what you're even trying to do.

And also, if you don't want to use a sex toy because it's not "natural"... Honey, you've been married how many years and you're having sex with this guy and you've never had an orgasm? You need to realize that orgasms are not "natural" for you. If they were, then they would have happened already. It is not going to happen unless you deliberately set out to make it happen. Don't just sit there and wait and have faith in this ridiculous idea that sex is "natural" and orgasms are "natural." Seriously. When I realized I'm ace and therefore sex is not "natural" for me, that's when I was able to start actually doing the work of learning it. That's when I was able to start actually making progress.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with using a sex toy. Use it every time if you want. Why make extra work for yourself?

It's like, if you're standing at Point A, in a large outdoor area, and you are supposed to walk to Point B. And you ask, "Where is Point B?" And someone tells you, "I don't know, but you'll know it when you see it." How are you ever going to find it? You don't even know what direction to go. If you had to find it just by walking, you'd have to walk all over the place. It would take forever. How about you drive a car? Just to figure out where Point B even is. You drive a car, you can cover a lot more ground and find Point B much faster. And then, once you know where Point B is, next time you may choose to walk from Point A to Point B.

Or, if she's not even allowed to masturbate, then in this metaphor she can't walk, she can just sit in a wagon and her husband can drag her around, asking her "Is this Point B? Is this Point B?" dragging her all over here and there, taking forever, and nothing looks like Point B to her.

Just drive the car!

So, my point is, first of all, she needs to masturbate. And then after that, the next step is she needs to instruct her husband on what she wants him to do. The way I see it, she wants him to participate, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has to be the one who actually directly stimulates her genitals. Imagine a spectrum: 

• On one extreme end of the spectrum, you have the man doing all of the woman's genital stimulation, while she tells him what to do. 
• On the other end of the spectrum, she does the genital stimulation herself- the whole process, all the way to orgasm, and he gives her encouragement/affection by cuddling her, complimenting her, etc- whatever way she tells him she wants him to show support for her.
• And then in between, there are varying degrees of how much he is stimulating her genitals vs how much she is stimulating her own genitals. 
• But the important thing is, the entire spectrum is about him participating and showing that he cares about her getting an orgasm- and it's about her telling him which forms of participation she wants from him.

The "he needs to do more foreplay" idea from Gregoire et al is just one endpoint of this spectrum. I guess? Well, maybe it's not even a point on this spectrum at all, because what I see from the book doesn't necessarily match my "she knows what she wants, and she tells him what to do" idea.

It suddenly occurs to me that maybe my model here does not really fit how other people think about sex? Maybe it only applies to me. I definitely view it as, like... here is a process, here are the steps in the process, some of these steps are interchangeable and we can decide which ones we want to include on any given night, and there are some overarching goals like "both of us have an orgasm" and some smaller concrete goals like "I want to do this position and that position." Kind of approaching it with a plan... I like to have a plan. I like to have control over things. (I'm really curious about if other aces who have sex also have this kind of view? Is it because I'm ace? Is it because I'm an engineer...?) Whereas, other people talk about sex like it's more... natural and spontaneous... and like you both are discovering it together, open to whatever surprises might come up... 

I'm asexual, so none of this was natural. It took a long time to figure out an overall framework for sex that works for us. So this is my advice for people who want to have sex but have no idea how to have sex.

All right, so that was my advice for problem 1. But what if it's problem 2- the husband just is not willing to do anything differently, and doesn't care that sex doesn't feel good for his wife? Well, I also don't think "he needs to do more foreplay" is the solution- I think she needs to sit him down for a serious talk and say "the way we have sex is just not working for me" and maybe bring in some sex-ed resources that say "sex is not just PIV, sex can be whatever you want- the important thing is that everybody is consenting!" and stats about how women often don't orgasm from PIV alone. The outcome really depends on whether he's willing to listen, and whether he cares about the things that are important to her. 

And if he still isn't willing to make any changes, it would be totally reasonable for her to just stop having sex with him. (Not sure if I should phrase this differently- it's always okay to choose not to have sex with someone. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.) Why should she have sex with him, if he's not willing to put in any effort to make it feel good for her? I'm saying this because Christian marriage advice is always saying that women have to have sex with their husband anyway, even if he's putting in no effort to meet her needs, because "men have needs" and that's non-negotiable. I'm saying, no, you don't have to have sex with someone who isn't willing to make it feel good for you. (Suddenly I am reminded of many a reddit post from men who say "my wife stopped having sex with me for no reason" and then when you dig deeper you find that he totally refused to listen to any of her ideas about the way she wanted to have sex, and that's why she stopped...)

So... I guess then if the conversation goes well, then they can move on to "he needs to do more foreplay", though again, to me something feels off about calling it "foreplay."

All right, so basically my big issue with this section of the book is I'm coming from a "problem 1" perspective, but the book is addressing problem 2. Or, actually, some of these anecdotes seem to be kind of a mix of problems 1 and 2. Some anecdotes in this section in the book are from women who don't really know what feels good, and they want their husband to participate in the process of figuring it out, but he doesn't want to.

So... then I wonder to myself, "maybe it's okay that the book is only talking about problem 2, because I'm the only person with problem 1. I'm the only person naive enough to not even know how to masturbate." But, that's also not right, because I read Gregoire's blog, and she often gets comments from women saying "I've been married for years and I've never had an orgasm" and she offers them advice. It seems that's one of the main groups that her blog is targeting. And she never seems to tell them "you need to masturbate."

Here's an example: In a November 9, 2022 post on Gregoire's blog, When He Deliberately Ignores Your Pleasure: What to Do When Sex Has Become One-Sided, Gregoire answers a reader's comment about how the reader and her husband just really don't know how to get her an orgasm, and her husband has lost the motivation to keep trying. Gregoire's answer is about how sex is supposed to be something that both people enjoy, and a man shouldn't expect his wife to be willing to keep having sex that doesn't feel good for her. So they should take a step back and really prioritize figuring out what works for her.

In the comment section, the first comment is from a reader named Chris, who says:

In the case of the original letter writer, this is one of the few times where I would advise her to get a vibrator and learn to have an orgasm through masturbation. It’s very clear that she has not had one. This makes it extremely difficult if not out right impossible for her husband to get her there. Since her husband doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t know how to teach him. Because “there” isn’t defined. This is going to leave him wandering aimlessly around her body. Now, a man who had been married previously to someone else or a man who has had a lot of partners will have a better sense of how to guide her to this place she’s never been but not by a lot. In short, a skilled lover would struggle in this situation, and her husband is not a skilled lover. No doubt many women will respond with “oh no no, a skilled lover would have her at orgasm quickly”. No, womens bodies are all very, very, different in what brings them to orgasm. You can do something to one woman that gives her instant fireworks, but the next woman? Ya she doesn’t want to be touched that way at all. Each one is very different.

Yes! I agree with Chris! This is exactly what I've been trying to say in this post. 

But another commenter, Suzanne, replies to Chris to say "You are making this a her problem not a their problem." Uh... I think no progress can be made until she spends time masturbating... but that is a very different thing than saying he doesn't have any responsibility to care about if sex feels good for her.

And then later down the thread, Gregoire says:

Yes, we did talk to quite a few women who used toys to learn how to orgasm, but then their husbands insisted on keeping using them, because bringing their wives to orgasm themselves “was too hard” and “took too much time.” It’s one of the reasons I’m reluctant to advise using them, because I get so many women saying, “my husband prefers to just use technology rather than try to figure me out!”

I wasn't aware that this could be a pitfall of using sex toys. Gregoire has a lot of experience talking to married women about their sexual problems, so I guess it is a real thing.

But... in that kind of situation, the real problem is the man isn't willing to participate in things that are important to the woman during sex. Banning sex toys and masturbation doesn't really solve that problem, it just makes the wife's orgasms and knowledge of her own body dependent on how much effort the husband wants to put in, which seems like an even worse situation to be in, in my opinion.

And, I have some suggestions. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing with the sex toy. You could do any of the following things:

• the husband does all of the wife's genital stimulation, without using a sex toy, all the way to orgasm (apparently this is how Gregoire and her co-authors think it should work)
• the husband does things to her with his hands for a while, and then when they're ready to finish, he uses a sex toy on her, so that she can reliably get an orgasm and the stuff with his hands didn't have to have that "pressure" of whether or not it's leading to orgasm
• the wife uses the sex toy on herself, while the husband cuddles her and encourages her. (Some anecdotes in the book or the blog were from women who were unhappy because her husband would just roll over and ignore her when he was finished, and she would just masturbate by herself. I agree that most people would want their partner to participate rather than ignore them, so if that's what she wants, then it's WRONG that her husband acts like he doesn't have to care about her orgasm. So my suggestion is, she can use the sex toy and masturbate while he still participates and shows he cares about her. Him participating doesn't mean he has to literally be the one who is directly stimulating her genitals.)

See? Many options! As an exercise for the reader, you can try brainstorming other variations to add to this list. Figure out what works for you and your partner! 

WAIT! I just thought of something! Here's a hypothesis to consider: Maybe there's some standard technique for using one's hands on one's partner's vulva/vagina/clit, and this Standard Technique works well for most people with vaginas, and that's what people are talking about when they say things like "he is a skilled lover." Hmm. Wow that would explain why people talk about things in this way. Like it just works right out off the shelf, if you have a partner who is a "good lover." Hmm. Fascinating hypothesis I have just come up with. And if Partner A is doing things with their fingers, and it's not working for Partner B, it might be because Partner A is bad at the Standard Technique, or it might be because the Standard Technique doesn't work on Partner B's body. Perhaps if either of them has experience having sex with someone else, they can have a point of comparison and they can figure out which of them is the problem, so to say. (Honestly I don't think either possibility is actually a "problem" they should feel bad about.) But don't do that, there's no need to figure out which side the problem is on, because the solution is the same either way: Partner B has to masturbate and figure out what works, and then teach Partner A the very detailed directions about how to do it. Or, alternatively, Partner B could just do it on themself, while Partner A shows affection in other ways.

All right, one more thing I want to say: A few of the anecdotes in this book are from women who say the husband loses interest in using his hands on her genitals, if he thinks it's taking too long. For example, she needs 15-20 minutes, and he complains that it's taking too long and his hands are tired. And basically, the authors' response to this is, if the husband (or wife) thinks, "this is taking too long, therefore we will just stop and the wife will just not have an orgasm" that's not okay. (I agree, this is not okay- I'm assuming that she wants to have an orgasm.) But... I kind of want to talk about how the husband feels... if he feels like it's taking too long, it's boring, he doesn't want to do it... I hope that the couple can find a way to have sex when nobody ends up feeling that way.

I really don't know how to talk about this, because the gendered double standard is so deeply internalized. Gregoire has a really good blog post about double standards here: The Double Standards of Sexual Expectations in Marriage. Every single one of them is spot-on. Conservative Christian women are taught that sex has to entirely revolve around the husband, and her job as a wife is to make every part of it a perfect experience for him. You have to have sex even if it's painful, even if you're tired, even if you've spent the entire day sitting there with a newborn baby biting your nipples- none of those are a good enough excuse to say "no", because "men need it." And you have to act like you're really enjoying it, and you can't tell him you don't like the way he's doing it, because that will ruin his manly self-confidence. And so on.

There's this double standard where women are supposed to go the extra mile and make sure the entire experience of sex is perfect for the man, even if the woman is in pain, while men aren't really expected to put any effort into caring about whether the woman is enjoying it. And so I feel like, in this context, we can't even have a productive conversation about "hey if the husband has to do things on her with his hands for 20 minutes and it's boring for him, shouldn't we come up with a solution so he doesn't have to feel that way?" I'm afraid if we even try to ask that question, it will immediately collapse into "anything that mildly inconveniences a man is not acceptable, and the wife will just have to accept that it won't be a good experience for her because that's just the way it is."

In an ideal world, it would work like this: You have 2 people, and they are equals. (Or if you're polyamorous, it could be more than 2.) Each person communicates about what things they want to do sexually. They discuss/negotiate, and come up with a basic outline that will work for both of them. This outline will include things that they both really enjoy, and might include some things that one person enjoys and the other doesn't like that much but is willing to do sometimes. But the non-negotiables are, it will NOT include anything that's painful (unless you're into BDSM and you want that), and it will not include anything that either of them hates. And, both partners will get an orgasm (unless they are not interested in getting an orgasm).

And, importantly, they should not take PIV as the "default" way to have sex. They should both say what they want, and make a plan based on that. They should NOT start out with, "well it has to be PIV, because that's what sex is, and then I guess we can add a few extra frills because the wife wants that, she's kinda needy." No. They are equals, and what matters is what they want, not anybody else's rules about how they're "supposed" to have sex. (Though yes, I do realize that I am also making rules here- nobody has to do anything that's painful, and both people get an orgasm. Hmm.)

So, for example, maybe the wife says it's important to her that they spend quality time with the husband doing things on her with his hands. And the husband says, he is okay with doing that sometimes, but not every time. So, the conclusion they reach is, sometimes he will do that, and sometimes they will use a sex toy to get her to orgasm faster. Or, maybe there is some way they could make the experience better for him, like maybe listening to music while he does it.

Plenty of options. 

What's NOT okay, though, is "the husband doesn't feel like doing this, therefore the wife is just not going to have an orgasm and that's that" or "the husband doesn't want to spend time on foreplay, so they will just do PIV when the wife is not aroused enough, and it will be painful for her." Like, the idea it's unreasonable for the wife to ask for these bare-minimum things (having an orgasm, and not being in pain)- NOT OKAY. Do cis straight men ever consent to sex where they know they might not have an orgasm, and might be in pain? Nobody expects cis straight men to do that. These are bare-minimum things. (The exception is, if they just have no idea how to get the wife to have an orgasm. It only makes sense as a "bare minimum" requirement if they have a reliable method that can get there.)

If you can have this conversation starting from a place of "we are equals", then it will work. But I worry that, for conservative Christian women, the double standard is so internalized, it's not even possible to have this "we both say what we want" conversation in a healthy way. Maybe if you're at that place, you do need to replace rules like "sex is PIV, and if the wife doesn't want to because it's painful, too bad, she has to do it anyway" with rules like "the husband has to spend as long as it takes, using his hands or mouth, to get her to orgasm." (Please note, I am NOT saying these rulesets are equally bad. The first is WAY WORSE than the second. No contest there.) But hopefully people will be able to move beyond that, to a place where they don't want to make their partner do things their partner is not into, AND they believe that- in the exact same way- they don't have to do things they're not into.

(It's like what I said in this post, about "hiding behind God" when making your arguments, because you don't have the self-confidence to argue from a place of "this is what I want, and that matters.")

I have no idea how this blog post got so long. [Editor's note: Actually she does.] I have a lot to say. See, this is why I divided this chapter into 2 parts.

Anyway, in conclusion: It feels weird to me that this chapter spends so much time talking about "he needs to do more foreplay" as the solution to the "orgasm gap." It really bothers me that I don't know Gregoire's and the other authors' beliefs about masturbation- maybe they think it's a sin? I know their audience was taught that it's a sin, and so I really think they need to address that. If masturbation is not an option, and the only solution is "he needs to do more foreplay", well first of all that would never have worked for me, and second, it feels like they're saying the wife is not allowed to figure out her own body, she has to just hope her husband will figure our her body. 

Instead, my advice is to take control, take deliberate steps to learn what feels good, and then instruct your partner about what role you would like them to play in it. It doesn't have to be that the husband is the one directly doing the wife's genital stimulation. There are other ways he can participate. Whatever works for her. 

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

Related:

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex

I Wanna Preach the Good News of Masturbation 

My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life 

Scripts