Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. A third of kids want to be a YouTuber. Is that a problem? (November 10) "Except this whole thing is silly, because kids do not actually want to work these jobs more than other jobs."

2. How Online Privacy Has Been Championed by Dreamwidth (November 23, via) "In other words, the stated rationale for many of these laws as pro-privacy consumer safety laws is contradicted by Dreamwidth’s very existence."

3. Viola Ford Fletcher, oldest survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre, dies aged 111 (November 25) "Nobody was ever held accountable for the violence and deaths and efforts to rebuild the neighbourhood were stymied by city officials."

4. In a new book, Rep. Jim Clyburn highlights the Black politicians who paved the way for him (November 25) 

5. ‘Do You Want Help?’: Inside Orange County’s Bet on Voluntary Mental Health Care (July 17) "It could take 20, 30 or 40 visits before a client accepts a bottle of water, let alone a prescription for antipsychotic medication, but Orange County officials say this is the only way to build trust with a population that is paranoid and distrustful by nature, or has had very real traumatic experiences of being forcibly treated or hospitalized in the past."

6. Watch China's Shenzhou 22 rescue ship arrive at Tiangong space station (video) (November 25) "Shenzhou 22 is an unprecedented mission for China — an emergency flight mounted on a short timeline to help out three astronauts who have been "stuck" on Tiangong for the past 10 days."

I try to keep informed about any stranded astronaut news. If there's ever a stranded astronaut news story and I miss it, please send me a link.

7. NZ Right-Wing Government Bans Puberty Blockers: "Sacrificing A Generation Of Trans Youth" (November 20) "'By pinning the resumption of prescribing to a UK trial result expected in 2031, the Government has effectively sacrificed a generation of trans youth. They are demanding a level of evidence for trans healthcare that they do not demand for hundreds of other treatments routinely used in paediatrics,' said civil rights organization Rights Aotearoa in a press release." Hopefully this gets challenged in the courts.

8. You don't want to date multiple people who are monogamous with you (November 27) "Your four wives are constantly sabotaging each other to try to cement their positions as your favorite."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Judge's ruling on feds' use of force in Operation Midway Blitz accuses Border Patrol's Bovino of "outright lying" (November 21) "The judge wrote body-warn camera video showed agents 'shoot pepper balls and tear gas at them without any apparent justification,' in direct contradiction to an agent's report claiming 'protesters were becoming increasingly hostile.'"

2. The kingdom of heaven is like: As immigration enforcement surges in North Carolina, Chicagoans share advice, whistles (November 18) "Enriquez said his group met virtually with several dozen political and nonprofit leaders in North Carolina last week. On the agenda were the whistle campaign in Chicago and the “magic school bus,” a volunteer group that escorts children of parents who fear being detained during school pickups and drop-offs."

3. Judge tosses Comey, James cases after finding prosecutor unlawfully appointed (November 24)

And related to that: “Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.” (October 20) "When I received the 1:20 p.m. connection request on Signal—an encrypted messaging service that many journalists use to communicate with sources—my first reaction was that the user identified as “Lindsey Halligan” couldn’t actually be Halligan."

4. Pentagon investigates Sen. Mark Kelly for telling troops to refuse 'illegal orders' (November 24) ??? Not sure what there is to "investigate" here. 

5. Donald and the sexist, offensive, blatantly illegal, brazenly unpresidential week (November 22) "Those with the ability and power to push back on Trump’s crude authoritarianism make us all better off when they actually do so. It works."

6. Trump signs Epstein bill he once labored to kill (November 19) 

7. Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens (November 26, via) "Their interview last week was going smoothly, he said, until three ICE agents walked in and informed them that Ms. Paul, who was holding her infant, was under arrest."

Okay as a US citizen married to a non-US citizen, I have some feelings about this.

They're just trying to deport as many people as they can. This has nothing to do with setting up an immigration policy which is actually fair and reasonable. 

The Bible and Polygamy

Lego scene of Leah telling Jacob to have sex with her slave Zilpah. From the Brick Testament.

[content note: In the world where the bible was written, there wasn't really a concept that women should have a choice over whom they married and/or had sex with. A lot of what is discussed in this blog post is not really consensual- or rather, it's hard to say, because they didn't have the concept of consent.]

In my post The Bible and "Purity", I presented the idea that, contrary to what I had been taught in purity culture, it is *not* true that the bible teaches it's a sin to have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage and that this rule is the same for both men and women. Instead, what we see in the Old Testament can be better explained like so:

Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc. 

So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman." 

If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.

But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.

In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.

Here's the follow-up post about polygamy.

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There's a lot of polygamy in the bible. A lot of male bible heroes who have multiple wives and "concubines."

The way I've always heard Christians talk about polygamy in the bible was like this: Yes, there is a lot of polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing. The bible always shows that it leads to problems, like a man unfairly favoring one wife over the others, the rival wives being jealous, all kinds of family drama. Yes, there is polygamy in the bible, but it's OBVIOUS that the bible is teaching us that God doesn't want it to be that way. In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve- marriage is supposed to be 1 man and 1 woman. Even though many many people in the bible did not follow God's plan for marriage, it's clear that the bible portrays that as a bad thing. It's clear that the bible is teaching that polygamy is a sin.

I disagree with this. I do NOT interpret the bible as consistently portraying polygamy as a bad thing. In ancient times, people viewed it as a positive thing for a man to have multiple wives- it was a sign that he was rich and successful. And some of the biblical writers also thought this way- there are bible passages about a man having multiple wives which make a lot more sense if you read them with the assumption that this was a sign of success rather than a sin. 

There are many many bible stories that show problems caused by polygamy. Even so, I don't read these as meaning that the biblical writers believed the entire concept of polygamy was always bad, and no one should ever do it. In some cases, the bible portrays the problems as not necessarily being caused by polygamy itself, but by other issues. And in other cases, there are aspects of the situation which are portrayed positively- I read this as saying that even though there are some common pitfalls you have to watch out for, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad and wrong.

And, when the bible gives rules related to polygamy, it never comes right out and says "polygamy is a sin, don't do it." It gives rules for how a man should treat his wives fairly if he has multiple wives. And there are certain circumstances where the bible commands that a man should not have many wives- but this only applies to men in those circumstances, not all men.

Buckle up, I have receipts. We're going to look at polygamy in the bible, and we're going to see that it's NOT consistently portrayed as a bad thing.

I hope you woke up this morning and said, "I want to read 10,000 words about polygamy in the bible."

Blogaround

1. Voyager 1 Is Back! NASA Spacecraft Safely Resumes All Science Observations (June 14, via) "After more than six months of long-distance troubleshooting—Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and any signal takes more than 22.5 hours to travel from our planet to the spacecraft—mission personnel have finally coaxed Voyager 1 to gather and send home data with all its remaining science instruments, according to a NASA statement." This is so cool!

2. Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic (June 14, via) What the actual ****?! 

If you followed my blog during zero-covid, you know I was really unhappy with how western news organizations were covering the situation in China. (See: WTF, CNN? and Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media.) This article is about a disinformation campaign that the US created in the Philippines, because China exported vaccines to the Philippines and other Asian countries. So, a different thing than what I was mad about, but it makes me wonder if the biased news reporting on China was more deliberate than I thought.

3. Environmental impact of LLMs (June 16) "This comparison is unimpressive on its face, because a bottle of water is very obviously not that much?"

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Mental health bias on asexuality, non-monogamy, and BDSM (June 20) "This article summarizes prior research on mental health provider bias for three groups–aces, consensual non-monogamy (CNM) practitioners, and BDSM practitioners–and suggests avenues for future research."

4. US sues Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions (June 17, via) "The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the 'annual paid monthly' subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars."

5. Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality (June 18) Awesome!

6. China to include Australia in visa waiver programme, Premier Li Qiang says (June 18) Good news if you're Australian and want to visit China.

7. Gilead’s twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV succeeds in late-stage trial (June 20, via) "None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the lenacapavir shot contracted HIV." Great!

8. Maybe They Should Post The 10 Commandments In Mega-Churches? (June 20) [content note: child sexual abuse] "I’m not sure what even the slickest or sleaziest 'crisis management' firm can accomplish here."

9. Hey What If We Let People's Undocumented Husbands And Wives Stay In America? — Joe Biden (June 18) Support all immigrants!

10. Hundreds of Muslim pilgrims died in heat-stricken Hajj (June 21)

11. Pascal's Wager Triangle (June 17) "In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case."

The Great Sex Rescue: Lust

Distracted boyfriend meme. A guy is walking with his girlfriend, but he is turning his head to look at another woman, and the girlfriend looks exasperated. Image source.

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

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We now come to chapter 5 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link]. This chapter is about the way that evangelicals talk about "lust."

The chapter starts out with an anecdote about a wedding that Gregoire and Lindenbach attended, where the couple wrote their own vows:

But at the end of the vows, we turned to each other with surprise. They forgot something important-- "forsaking all others." It was just an oversight but, nevertheless, that is a rather crucial promise. We're supposed to expect that our spouse will be able to say, in the words of the 1950s jazz group The Flamingos, "I only have eyes for you." Despite the stretch marks and the baby weight, despite the expanding middle and the receding hair, despite the years and the wrinkles and the fading health, we want to know "I am yours, and you are mine, exclusively and forever." That's safety. That's acceptance. That's love.

That's what we all dream of.

But is that all it can ever be-- just a dream?

Umm. Okay. You know some people are polyamorous, right? 

And some people aren't interested in marriage.

Like, it's literally not true that "we all dream of" having 1 lifelong monogamous partner.

I find it quite weird that the chapter about lust starts out with an anecdote about monogamy. Setting it up like lust and monogamy are opposites. Just seems like a really weird framing to me. 

And actually, later in the chapter we will see that their solution to lust is to respect people and recognize that they are entire human beings and not sex objects. (And yes, I agree with this solution.) So actually, this chapter ultimately says that respect is the opposite of lust. So why does the chapter start with a little story about monogamy?

I would say there are 2 separate issues here:

1. You're lusting after some random person, objectifying them, imagining that they are just a sex object that exists to play out your fantasies- this is a sin against the random person.
2. Your desire for this random person becomes such a big deal to you that it actually threatens your relationship with your actual partner- this is a sin against your partner.

I don't necessarily see why problem #1 would lead to problem #2. Yeah, sure, sometimes it would, like if someone cheats on their partner. But problem #1 is bad just by itself, without bringing concerns about faithfulness to a monogamous relationship into it. 

And, also, being attracted to other people is fine, that's just part of life for most people, it's not "lust", and I don't see it as having any relation to whether or not you're keeping your commitment to monogamy.

At this point, I think it would be helpful for me to bring in some concepts that are talked about a lot in the ace, aro, and polyamorous communities. ("Ace" means asexual spectrum, "aro" means aromantic spectrum.) Okay, so, there are several different types of things that may or may not be present in a relationship:

1. Sexual feelings/actions
2. Romantic feelings/actions
3. Being life partners

Mainstream society says that you're supposed to do sexual things with exactly 1 person, you're supposed to do romantic things with exactly 1 person, and you're supposed to have a partner that you're committed to for life, to support each other through all of life's ups and downs, and that these all have to be the same person.

I'm really glad we have ace, aro, and polyamorous people to question this! It doesn't have to be that way! You could be married to someone and not have sex at all! You can date someone even if you don't understand what romance is! You can have a long-term committed relationship that isn't sexual or romantic at all! You could be married, and your spouse is your committed life partner and you have sex with them, and also you have sex with other people sometimes. Many possibilities!

It's all about knowing yourself and knowing what you want. What do you want, in terms of sex, in terms of romance, in terms of having a committed life partner?

For myself, maybe my answer is boring because I'm in a monogamous marriage and I do have sex with my husband. But, even so, I feel rebellious because I'm not following the definition of monogamy that I learned in purity culture- because when I'm attracted to some random person, I don't repress it. I just enjoy it for what it is, but obviously I know it's just some feelings and nothing real is going to come of it because I'm monogamous. 

And it doesn't threaten my relationship with my husband, because marriage is about choosing to be together, and being committed to each other- it doesn't mean we never have feelings about other people. We are 2 separate people with our own complicated lives, and we choose to live together, to support each other, to share our money, to raise our child together, all these very standard marriage things- and that's not threatened by having occasional feelings about other people, because those feelings are a totally different thing than the day-to-day reality of building our lives together. And yes we do have feelings of attraction for each other, but my point is, our relationship is so much deeper than that, and if there exists someone who's more attractive than my husband, well, so what? That doesn't threaten my marriage because my marriage is so much more than that.

Purity culture always made such a big deal about how it would be SO TERRIBLE if you compared your spouse to other people... for example, if you had sex with someone else before marriage, then when you're married and you're having sex with your spouse, you'll always be comparing them to your ex, and that would just be THE END OF THE WORLD or something... It feels so shallow to me now. Why would any of that matter? Our marriage is so much more than that.

All right we'd better move on because we're only a half page into this chapter and I've already written this much.

So, this chapter is about lust. One of the most popular Christian books on the topic of lust is "Every Man's Battle" which erases ace men right in the title, so you know it's gonna be bad. The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" also think it's bad; this chapter is basically about the harm that is caused when people buy into the "Every Man's Battle" ideology.

"The Great Sex Rescue" sums up "Every Man's Battle" this way:

And what was this battle that every man was fighting? Lust. Every man struggles with it, every man is tempted by it, every man must fight really, really hard to overcome it.

Oh and also, remember how I said this "every man's battle" ideology acts like ace men don't exist? Well it also acts like gay men don't exist, because it's only talking about men lusting for women. It's also not great for bisexuals, because if the solution to lust is that men and women can't have close friendships with each other, then by that logic, bisexuals aren't allowed to have any friends at all.

The book "Every Man's Battle" features really over-the-top descriptions of men ogling women, masturbating near nonconsenting women, obsessing over breasts all the time, and it frames it like all of that is completely normal, this is just how God made men, and men need to fight the battle by treating women as threats and avoiding them. Gregoire has a really good blog post summing up just how bad this book is: A Summary of Issues with Every Man's Battle (with download).

Gregoire and her co-authors point out that this "every man's battle" ideology sets the bar so incredibly low for men. Like it's expected that men aren't able to treat women as people. Like men will inevitably see women as nothing more than sex objects- so instead of sex objects to fantasize about, men need to see them as sex objects to avoid.

Gregoire et al point out that one of the biggest problems is how attraction is conflated with lust. There's nothing wrong with being attracted to someone. There's nothing wrong with noticing. And they say that instead of fearing that every attractive woman is a threat that will pull men toward the sin of lust, men can simply notice a woman is attractive and then "Think nothing more of it and go on with your day." I like how their approach has no fear. Instead of fear, it's confidence that men can "defeat lust." (I personally can't tell you if lust actually works that way, because I'm asexual, lololololol.)

There are a few anecdotes in this chapter about men whose experiences are very different than what "Every Man's Battle" says:

The first chapter of Through a Man's Eyes [another book similar to "Every Man's Battle"] explains the battle that men face on a daily basis with sexual stimuli all around them: trying not to look at billboards on the drive to work, trying to bounce their eyes from the barista's chest, worrying that a female coworker in a tight blouse might sit directly across from them. In the book, we read the "Jack breathes a sigh of relief" when a coworker's skirt doesn't ride up too high, and "the next few hours are tough" because another attractive coworker is in high line of sight.

My (Sheila's) husband works in an almost all-female setting (he's a pediatrician; his colleagues are female, the nurses tend to be female, and the parents bringing in their kids tend to be female). Did he experience this level of stress all day? After reading that chapter, I asked him. He laughed. I asked again. He made another joke. I got rather perturbed that he wasn't taking me seriously.

"Wait," he said, "you're saying that there are guys who are stressed to go to work because they might lust? That's crazy." But could I believe my husband? The book told me all men struggle with this, but they don't know how to explain it or are afraid to confess their struggle to their wives.

And this story, from Chris, a commenter on Gregoire's blog:

As someone who grew up in the Every Man's Battle / purity movement era, I've been working on resetting my brain for a few years now. So many years of struggling daily to just avoid looking. The Bible says His burden is easy and His yoke is light, but spending every part of every day spending energy to make sure I didn't look at an attractive woman is the opposite of easy and light.

I was forced to confront my wrong thinking while on a vacation in Europe. The first day on a topless beach in Spain was excruciating. I was giving myself a migraine constantly bouncing my eyes but having nowhere to bounce them to. I was definitely not enjoying the beautiful beach nor enjoying time with my beautiful wife. 

Near the end of the first day I realized this was no way to live. I remembered your writing about focusing on the whole person without making them into a sexual object.

I talked to my wife and explained all this to her... With some fear and apprehension, I looked up at a beach full of [breasts] and started to talk through the process of not making them there for my sexual gratification. The rest of the trip was so relaxing and enjoyable, and I had such a good time with my wife on the beach. Since then, I can see an attractive woman and not become aroused.

I think Chris's story here is very important and powerful. It completely disproves some of the main foundational beliefs of purity culture- that men are overwhelmed by lust and can't control themselves, that women need to cover up and can't possibly expect a man to respect them if they aren't covered up, that a woman showing her body in public is inherently dangerous and is an attack on men, etc.

There's also a very good anecdote in the book about a husband who doesn't "struggle with lust" but his wife totally buys into the "all men struggle with lust" ideology, and so she's always paranoid that he's looking at other women, and that this is a threat to their marriage. She doesn't take him to swimming pools, she won't let them be friends with other couples if the wife is attractive, etc. Yeah, this is really messed-up. (And also, this is an example of lust getting conflated with concerns about commitment to monogamy, and I think that needs to be questioned. If your husband is attracted to other women, that's his own business and doesn't affect his relationship with you. Right? It only becomes a problem if he gets it in his head that he should actually take actions to go have romantic/sexual experiences with another person.)

I'm just thinking right now about how much energy I would have to spend worrying every day, if I thought my husband being *somewhat near* an attractive woman was a dangerous thing that threatened his love for me and commitment to our marriage. Wow, so glad I'm not doing that! He can talk to other women, he can meet up with a woman alone, whatever. I trust him. I also meet up with guys alone sometimes. I'm so glad it hasn't even occurred to me that that would be a problem. (No Billy Graham rule here!)

Moving along, the next bit of "The Great Sex Rescue" says that these books about lust claim that they want to help women understand men better. That women need to understand men's "struggles", or something. But, the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" found, in their survey of 20,000 women, that women who believed in the "all men struggle with lust" message had lower levels of marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. There are a bunch of stats here; I'll just copy one of them: Women who believe "all men struggle with lust" are 79% more likely to agree with the statement "I engage in sex with my husband only because I feel I have to." This is so messed-up.

And there's this quote:

"Men seem like untrustworthy pigs whose minds and thoughts just go wherever they want," [Brenda] commented. "Is nothing sacred to them? As women, do we trust men after reading this? ... I feel that if anything ever happened to Fred, I'd never remarry because I would have very little trust in men." -- the wife of an author responds after reading her husband's words in Every Man's Battle

Yes, really. The "Every Man's Battle"'s author's wife says she's disgusted by what she "learned" about men from reading that book. Ya know, the more I'm out of purity culture, the more I realize that a lot of the things that Christian leaders teach about sex, marriage, dating, etc are not objectively true facts about how God Says This Is How It Works For Everyone, but actually just their own individual weird hangups. "Every Man's Battle" says this is just how all men are, and that's normal and women shouldn't expect men to be decent human beings, but actually the reality is, the authors are just describing themselves. Yikes.

I'm glad I didn't read "Every Man's Battle" back when I believed in purity ideology. I would have totally believed it, because what do I know, I'm not a boy, and one of the core tenets of purity culture is "women just can't possibly understand what men are going through." It's been really good and life-giving to me now whenever I see men on the internet just completely shocked by what evangelicals say "all men" are like- immature, no self-control, obsessed with sex all the time, incapable of respecting attractive women, self-esteem so fragile- I love to see men, especially non-Christian men, just so completely shocked at how wrong this is, how insulting, such a low view of men. Men are better than that, and should be held to a higher standard than that.

"The Great Sex Rescue" has an anecdote along those lines too:

[a blog commenter is talking about her husband who recently became a Christian, and had no idea that men supposedly "all struggle with lust"]

He has only recently become aware of the lust issue within the church, and he has been appalled. Most of his friends have generally been women-- he even had a best woman instead of a best man at our wedding-- and most of them are quite attractive. But even as a non-Christian he told me he didn't lust after them. It was far too disrespectful.

It is crazy to him-- and me-- that even as a non-Christian he could control himself, but the church treats this as an insurmountable obstacle for men who are indwelled with the Holy Spirit! He has told me that the easiest way not to disrespect women is to view them as people. If a non-Christian could figure that out, what is giving the church so much trouble?

I'm not a fan of the prejudice against non-Christians here, the idea that obviously Christians should be more moral than non-Christians. I say there's nothing wrong with being non-Christian, or Christian, or whatever religion, or non-religious. And I'm glad my husband is not a Christian- for one thing, he doesn't have all the purity baggage I have... But I appreciate this anecdote because of the contrast between how much of a big deal Christians make this, an "insurmountable obstacle"... and the non-issue it is for people outside the church.

Anyway, yeah, "The Great Sex Rescue" says the solution to lust is to respect people. To remember that the attractive people that you happen to see are whole people who have their own lives- they don't exist to be sex objects for you.

Here's their advice for men:

How Men Can Fight Lust:

The key to fighting lust is to see women as whole people rather than potential threats.

1. When you are passing by a woman, instead of bouncing your eyes, look her in the eye, give a quick, friendly nod, and turn away.
2. When you are with a woman, look her in the eye, and engage her in conversation. Ask her opinion about different topics.
3. Don't live a sex-segregated life. Join groups where women are in leadership roles or where women's opinions are considered.
4. Identify women in your life from whom you can learn, whether it's advice about work, parenting, finances, etc. Make it a practice to consult women as well as men when you are making a decision.

Yes, basically I agree with this, but also, wow the bar is on the floor. Why do these things even need to be said? Just act normal, don't act all jumpy and scared of sex every time there's a woman nearby. Women are people, just treat us like people.

So, yes, the bar is on the floor, but also, these things really do need to be said, and I'm glad that Gregoire and her co-authors are saying them. Because, wow, when I started reading her blog, and reading these kinds of messages... this is unlike anything I'd ever heard from Christians. Really. 

(And here's a fun little bit of my history: In 2012 I was thinking about these topics, and I wrote a post called Isn't dating the opposite of avoiding lust?. It addressed the idea that, if I'm supposed to avoid "temptation," then doesn't that mean I shouldn't date someone that I'm attracted to? If we're dating, spending a lot of time together, doesn't that make it likely that I will lust? How can I justify putting myself in a situation where I'm likely to sin? And the answer I gave was, no actually, this way of thinking is all backwards- because when I'm attracted to someone I don't know well, I view him kinda one-dimensionally, like his being attractive to me is his most important characteristic, and that sounds much more likely to cause "lust" than actually getting to know someone by dating him. Kinda interesting to me to realize I was writing about that in 2012, but also I had NO IDEA I was asexual, and I was using words like "hot" and "lust." Looking at it now, I know what I meant by those words, but now that I know that I'm asexual, I realize those words mean something different to most people, so I wouldn't write it that way now. And also, the last bit of the post, where 2012-Perfect-Number gives advice to before-2012-Perfect-Number, "Don't be so afraid. God gives us freedom." ... like wow yeah, that's so real.)

And "The Great Sex Rescue" has a few anecdotes from women about how they were treated by "good Christian men" who refused to even look at them or talk to them. Men who are good and godly and therefore won't take the risk of being anywhere near a situation that could lead to sexual temptation. This is not cool, and it leads to women feeling like they are dirty just for existing. (And, this is NOT how Jesus treated women. Jesus met women and talked to women and connected with their spiritual questions and emotional needs and so on, even in situations where society said it wasn't proper for a man to talk to a woman, and even when the women were sex workers. No Billy Graham rule here.)

The next section is about modesty, because modesty is the other side of the coin. Men are taught "you have to fight lust" and women are taught "you have to be modest, to help men fight lust." Yeah, I have blogged a lot about modesty, and I agree with the criticisms that Gregoire and her co-authors write here. I especially appreciate the quotes from Focus on the Family's "Brio" magazine, because I also read "Brio" when I was a teenager, and it influenced me to follow purity culture. Gregoire's co-author, Rebecca Lindenbach, says this:

My curves made it impossible to dress according to some people's modesty standards without going back a few centuries. My body became the problem. And Brio reinforced this idea that my body was dangerous with messages like these: "If a guy sees a girl walking around in tight clothes, a miniskirt or short shorts, you might as well hang a noose around the neck of his spiritual life."

Yeah, not cool how modesty ideology says female bodies are inherently dangerous and sinful.

And I'm glad to see "The Great Sex Rescue" mentions "The Modesty Survey" and Shaney Irene's excellent blog post from 2013, Why The Rebelution’s Modesty Survey Was A Bad Idea. Yeah, "The Modesty Survey" influenced me a lot... I guess it was so bad, that it caused me to obsess over it and worry and try to make it make sense, which led to me realizing the entire concept of modesty is bad and needs to be thrown away. So.

Some of my posts on modesty:
The Story of Me and Modesty - This is the post where I talk about how "The Modesty Survey" affected me.
August 20, 2022 Blogaround - I also wrote some opinions about "The Modesty Survey" here
Modesty is Causing Women to Stumble
The Male Equivalent to Modesty

I also love Laura Robinson's take on modesty: Women Are Never Going to Cover Themselves Enough to Get Men to Shut Up About Us 

Anyway, there's 1 more section left in this chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue", and it's about how evangelicals teach that "men are visual" and women are not, but actually that's not always true. There are women who are visually stimulated to have sexual thoughts, and there's nothing wrong with that, and it's NOT COOL how the church acts like these women don't exist.

I definitely agree with the point that Gregoire and her co-authors are making there! But I don't have any personal experience to mention because I'm asexual. 

Anyway, that sums up chapter 5. Overall, I agree with what the authors are saying in this chapter- the way that evangelical culture treats "lust" is harmful. Teaching men to see women as threats, to avoid women rather than risk falling into "lust", teaching women that all men are like this and we can't really expect a man to get his head out of the gutter and interact like a normal human being, and that goes even more when women are wearing "immodest" clothes- ugh, yeah, all of this is so incredibly messed-up. I agree with "The Great Sex Rescue"'s answer to this: respect, and treat each other like people rather than potential sex objects.

Still, I think this chapter falls short because it doesn't say anything about gay men or asexual men, and how they are erased by this "all men struggle with lust [toward women]" ideology. And also, that weird bit about monogamy at the beginning. Actually, I think the conversation about lust could benefit by clearly untangling the parts about "are you objectifying random people?" from the parts about "are my spouse's feelings of attraction to random people a threat to our marriage?"

---

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

Related:

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

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

BREAKING NEWS: Purity Culture Adherents Completely Miss the Point

Miss me with your "we are all sexually broken" hot takes. I'm asexual.

Blogaround

A drawing that shows Jesus carrying a sheep which is the colors of the trans flag. Another sheep says, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold it right there! He wasn't lost. We kicked him out!" Jesus answers, "I know. And I found her." Image source.

1. In China’s Weight Loss Camps, a Dangerous Obsession With Numbers (June 13) [content note: disordered eating, fat shaming] "Boards displaying the daily weight of each participant were prominently displayed throughout the camp, emphasizing the significance placed on weight as the primary measure of success."

2. One True Ace Pairing: Wreck-It Ralph (June 16) "Ralph and Vanellope’s relationship, which is very much a friendship, is just as well developed and well explored and given as much attention (if not more) as any romantic relationship in similar movies (including the romantic pairing in the same movie, Felix and Calhoun, whose relationship was played for laughs anyways)."

3. I Entered Mr Universe - With No Training (June 5) A video from Max Fosh, a youtuber who does all kinds of ridiculous things, bluffs his way into so many weird situations, seems to have way too much confidence for his own good. My husband and I are fans of his videos- they are also posted to his channel on the Chinese video site bilibili.

4. Direct-mail fundraiser Pat Robertson is dead (June 19) "The most successful 'radio evangelists' were/are — like 'televangelists' and like Pat Robertson — people who primarily used the platform as a tool for raising the funds needed to expand the outreach of the platform. Actual 'ministry' or 'evangelism' in this model is always, at best, a secondary concern."

And this tweet:

i don’t believe in hell but it will feel like hell for people like pat robertson when they encounter the love of god for the first time

— Mason Mennenga (@masonmennenga) June 8, 2023

5. Massachusetts town adds polyamory protections (April 6) Cool!

6. The Ones Who Walk Away from Ocabos: What #whySBC really means (June 20) "Others weep in confusion. They don’t understand that everyone knows the child is there. They think that if they can only raise awareness, force the people of Ocabos to understand, then everyone will reject whatever foul force allowed the imprisonment and abuse of that child."

7. A tale of two vessels lost at sea (June 20) "On a superficial level, these two events at sea speak to the vastly different worlds in which human beings live: some getting to pursue and even die for their dreams and passions; some driven by extreme life circumstances into cruel, anonymous deaths."

8. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is fighting a losing battle against the site's moderators (June 20) "Moderators of many of Reddit’s most popular subreddits, however, began revolting after it became clear that the company wouldn’t merely target the biggest artificial intelligence firms but also smaller developers like Apollo, which makes an alternative mobile app experience of Reddit, and third-party moderation tools they depend upon to monitor their communities."

9. First in the nation gender-affirming care ban struck down in Arkansas (June 20) "'Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the State undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,' the ruling reads. 'The testimony of well-credentialed experts, doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care in Arkansas, and families that rely on that care directly refutes any claim by the State that the Act advances an interest in protecting children.'"

And this quote from later in the article: "The court found three of the state's witnesses had been recruited at a meeting of the Christian advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom held specifically to gather witnesses trained in various fields that would be willing to testify in favor of laws passed that limit transgender care." Ewww gross, how will I explain ADF to my children? (I used to support ADF- they are an offshoot of Focus on the Family. And their entire schtick is bearing false witness against queer people made in the image of God. Eww.)

10. You may have grown up evangelical in the 90's if you saw a trailer for the new Marvel movie "Secret Invasion" and then you couldn't get this song out of your head:

[content note: video shows Jesus' crucifixion]

Michael W. Smith - Secret Ambition

Blogaround

1. Powerful Sichuan Quake Leaves a Trail of Deaths and Destruction (September 6)

2. Top 6 Mistakes in the Academic Field of Asexuality Studies (September 6) "The 1% number is how many of those British residents reported no sexual attraction, not how much of the world’s population identifies as asexual."

3. On the Condemnation of Gray Areas (2014) "Even if we presume that gray zones are invalid as a basis for a label, think about the effect these adamant proclamations could have on nervous, uncertain newbies who’ve just learned about asexuality and aren’t sure how well it describes them: if there’s no buffer zone, no midway space, no gray area, then they could (and do) feel pressured to be on high alert for any brief glimmer of sexual attraction in their lives as if it’s a game changer, and to stress over which of their physical attractions could be construed as somewhat almost sexual, and then they feel obligated to treat a few dubious outliers as grounds for another full-blown identity crisis as they once again question and fret over and wrestle with how best to label themselves."

OMG this is SO REAL! When I was first trying to figure out if I was asexual, it helped me A LOT to know that "gray-asexual" was also a thing, also part of the ace community, also queer. That even if I'm not 100% sure that I've never ever ever ever experienced sexual attraction (and how could I be sure, if I can't even figure out what it is?) I can still "count" as part of the ace community. To be honest, that's still kind of how I view gray-asexuality- it's for asexuals who worry that they're not "allowed" to id as asexual because they can't prove with 100% certainty that they've really never experienced sexual attraction. (This is just my opinion- I am sure that there are gray-asexuals who view it differently- so don't necessarily take my word for it...)

4. Polyamory: Never a One-sided Deal, even in Mixed Relationships (Guest Post) (2013) "I don’t deny there must be some mixed couples like this as well, where the ace partner is completely comfortable with the sexual partner’s other relationships but doesn’t need multiple partners themself. If it works for them, that’s great. However, my point is this (or any other) arrangement should be discussed and agreed on by both parties, not decided or assumed by one of them."

5. 9/7 Flashback: Steve Strang, genocidaire (September 7) "It’s important that this horrific, indefensible garbage — published in God’s name — not be forgotten or memory-holed. Charisma did this. Steve Strang did this."

6. Some links about Kiwi Farms- I had heard it mentioned here and there on the internet but didn't know what was going on, so I was glad to find a few articles that gave an overview:
The takedown of Kiwi Farms is basically another 9/11, Gender critical transphobes explain (September 5)
As Kiwi Farms struggles to stay online, transphobes hail it as “one of the last free places on the internet” (August 25)
Campaign pushes Cloudflare to drop trans hate site (August 25)

Wow yeah, glad that site was taken down.

7. Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers! (2020) This is a VERY LONG blog post about the agricultural work of common farmers in ancient societies. I'm sharing it here because of the part where it explains that their first priority was minimizing risk, rather than running their farm in the most efficient way possible- to modern readers, it may look like these ancient subsistence farmers made bad decisions, but really in their situation, those were good decisions because their first priority had to be reducing the risk of starving to death.

"So what do our farmers do during a good harvest to prepare for a bad one? They banquet their neighbors, contribute to village festivals, marry off their sons and daughters with the best dowry they can manage, and try to pay back any favors they called in from friends recently. I stress these not merely because they are survival strategies (though they are) but because these sorts of activities end up (along with market days and the seasonal cycles) defining a great deal of life in these villages. But these events also built that social capital which can be ‘cashed out’ in an emergency. And they are a good survival strategy. Grain rots and money can be stolen, but your neighbor is far likelier to still be your neighbor in a year, especially because these relationships are (if maintained) almost always heritable and apply to entire households rather than individuals, making them able to endure deaths and the cycles of generations."

I wonder if some of this is also true for people now who live paycheck-to-paycheck. Like the idea that there's a network of people- your family, friends, neighbors- who all need financial help from time to time, and even though it's not great to be in need and have to rely on other people (because sometimes you won't end up getting the help you need), "investing" your money in the social relationships in this network is a better strategy than squirreling away 5 dollars here and there into your own savings account like the financial advice people say.

I am probably oversimplifying here- if anyone has more insight or links to other articles along those lines, go ahead and leave a comment about it. :)

8. Collections: The Practical Case on Why We Need the Humanities (2020) "And it should come thus as little surprise that these skills – a sense of empathy, of epistemic humility, sound reasoning and effective communication – are the skills we generally look for in effective leaders. Because, fundamentally, the purpose of formal education in the humanities, since the classical period, was as training in leadership."

YES! Agree with all of this! When I was in school, I was only interested in math and science, and didn't think history/literature/etc mattered at all. Now here I am spending hours and hours every week writing this blog about religion and feminism and life as an immigrant in China- what changed? 

Back in school, I thought history was about memorizing names and dates and places- I remember sometimes the students would ask "What's the point of learning this? When will we ever need this? What kind of job can you get from studying history?" (And I remember some adult said "you can become a history teacher" which struck high-school-Perfect-Number as a very nonsensical "turtles all the way down" thing to say- and I now see that it was a pretty bad answer. There are much much better answers.)

No, here is the real reason why people need to study history: It's not about memorizing which army general was in which war 100 years ago. It's about having a big-picture awareness of how a society functions, because we make decisions in the present about what kind of society we want to live in. We need to learn from history, or else we will make the same bad decisions that societies made in the past.

An example from science: Sometimes I see news articles about how an AI was developed to classify this or that, to make decisions on this or that, and people treat it like this AI is somehow intrinsically correct and objective, and sees a deeper truth that humans wouldn't be able to see, just because it's "scientific." Umm, no. Science is not "objective"- it is shaped by the biases of the scientists who set up the experiment, who chose what dataset to feed into the neural net, etc. Back in the day, they were doing science to "prove" that black people weren't as intelligent as white people. (I say "back in the day", but actually the NFL was still trying this bullshit in the year 2021.) We have to know that history, to make sure we are not doing the same things. (I was going to say "make sure we're not making the same mistakes" but calling scientific racism a "mistake" is letting them off too easy.)

An example from religion: I was an apologetics nerd, back in the day. Knew all the steps to logically reason from one belief to another. I had a whole logically-consistent evangelical Christian ideology. But I never asked the questions, "Where did this ideology come from? How did it develop historically?" I never knew that white Christians who supported slavery and segregation, back in the day, also had a whole logically-consistent Christian ideology about that- which looked scarily similar to my own. I mean, YIKES. We need to know that history. 

And, more broadly, I only recently realized that the United States has never really repented of our sin of slavery and racism. Yes, slavery was made illegal in 1865, yes, the law says it's illegal to discriminate by race- but that progress was made mainly because black activists kept pushing for it, little by little- it was NOT because the white majority recognized that we had committed a terrible, monstrous sin, and repented of it. So if you ever hear someone say "slavery was such a long time ago, why can't they just get over it", well, that's why. We need to know that history, because it shapes the decisions we need to make for justice and equality today.

9. Ocean Park animals have their cake and eat it (September 10) Love this! Zoo animals in Shanghai were given "moon cakes" for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) which was on September 10 this year.

10. The middle school boys thought their teacher was a ‘creep.’ So they tracked how he treated the girls. (September 9) "They had tried talking to adults about what they heard and saw. None of the adults listened or took them seriously, the student told the Globe." These boys did the right thing. Teach your sons this.

If your relationship isn't seen as "Marriage", not sure what green card options you have

A man and woman hug each other as they are reunited at an airport. Image source.

The topic for March 2022's Carnival of Aces is "Which protections do we asexuals need in law?" so I wanted to talk a bit about immigration. I am a US citizen, living in China, and my husband is a Chinese citizen. We are currently in the process of applying for a US green card for him.

It's interesting, how the US green card system is set up to privilege one certain kind of family structure: couples who are monogamous, heterosexual, living together, in a sexual relationship, possibly having kids together. (I put "heterosexual" in the list because, even though same-sex marriage is legal in the US, it is not legal in China, so the options for an American/Chinese same-sex couple living in China are more limited. I guess they would have to go to another country [could be the US, but need to apply for the right visa first] to get married, and then after that, the Chinese partner could apply for the US green card.)

And, lucky for us, my husband and I do fit that family structure. And we have a kid. So nobody in an immigration office is going to question us and say our marriage is fake. But I know a lot of asexuals aren't interested in that kind of relationship. Don't want to get married, or don't want to have sex- but do want to have deep, committed, life-partner-type relationships. I have seen asexuals blogging about wanting that kind of relationship, which society would call "roommates" but it's every bit as real and loving as a marriage. Or an asexual who wants to live with a married couple and help them take care of their kids. Or an asexual in a poly relationship.

So as a US citizen, you find someone or someones that you want to spend your life with, and if they are from another country, then you can help them get a US green card if your relationship is what society would call "marriage." But if your relationship structure is something else, then I am not sure what options you have. If you look at this webpage, about eligibility for a US green card, in the "Family" section it's all like, spouse, adopted child, parent, to a lesser extent there are also green cards available for siblings but there's a longer wait time, and so on. ... There's no, uh, "non-sexual partner" or anything.

Well, let's say you're two asexuals in a non-sexual non-romantic life-partner-type of relationship, and you decide "let's just get a marriage license anyway, for the legal benefits, even though we don't view our relationship as marriage." Well, you also might run into problems applying for a green card. It's not enough to have a marriage license- you also have to have evidence that your marriage is "bona fide." Things like, photos from your wedding, rental contracts that show that you live together, joint bank accounts, having children together, letters from friends that say you are really a couple, etc. (You don't need all of those, but those are examples of the sorts of things they want to see.) Basically evidence that you have the sort of relationship that society calls "marriage" and you're not just getting a marriage license to commit immigration fraud.

I honestly don't know how realistic it is for this hypothetical asexual couple- I haven't done research into that, because it's not the situation I'm in. Maybe it's possible to get a spouse green card with someone you're not having sex with, but I don't know. I have heard anecdotes about being questioned about your sex life at the visa interview, though I don't know how common that is. I'm sure it won't happen to us because we literally have a child together.

I know they want to put limits on what kind of relationship is eligible for the green card because they can't just let anyone and everyone immigrate in... I guess... but those of you who read my blog know I am very pro-immigrants. I am an immigrant in China; I know what it is to have your right to stay in the country dependent on some bureaucracy nonsense that HR is supposed to be helping you with but they're not taking it seriously- no one should have to feel that anxiety. 

Growing up in the US, I always totally believed that I could go live in any country I wanted, believed that everyone could do that. And then, as an adult, I found that was an extremely extremely privileged perspective. Yes, if you have a US passport, you can go to lots of countries. Yes, if you are a native English speaker, then you can get a job teaching English, even if you don't really have any teacher qualifications- I certainly wasn't qualified enough when I started teaching English in China. (I am now a software engineer in China instead, which is way better for me.) But if you don't have those things? For a lot of people in this world, they can't just go galivanting around to wherever, solely because of what citizenship they hold. It shouldn't be that way. I wish everyone could live wherever they want. I support all immigrants.

There are always Americans saying "well they should get in line"- but for most people, there actually isn't even a line (ie, there isn't even a legal option available to them at all, to move to the US). John Oliver did a good segment on this- he is also an immigrant. But if you're married to a US citizen, then lucky you, there is a line you can get in, to get a green card and the right to live in the US without worrying you'll be kicked out because of the whims of whoever your visa is dependent on (most likely your job). And the "married to a US citizen" line moves along pretty efficiently and reliably. From talking to other women in my same situation (living in China, married to a Chinese man) it seems like the green card process takes maybe 1 year.

But for asexuals who aren't in a "marriage" relationship but have a partner or partners they want to live with, that's not an option. I don't necessarily have a solution for that (lol, well, actually my solution is "let in wayyyyyyy more immigrants"). Realistically it would be something about adding additional types of relationships that would be eligible for a green card. But still, who would define that? How can you set criteria to determine "you have an important enough connection to a US citizen that you should be allowed to stay in the country"? That is very tricky, maybe even impossible. I'm not sure if it can really be changed. But the way it works now puts a lot of asexuals at a disadvantage.

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

Related:

US Immigration and the Definition of Marriage 

On Immigration and Double Standards

Paperwork for My Immigrant Baby

Blogaround

1. There Is No Line (from the January 2020 issue) "To qualify for this visa, you will usually need a bachelor's degree (or training that's equivalent to a bachelor's degree) considered necessary to perform the 'specialized and complex' job you're being hired to do. No bachelor's degree? No problem—assuming you're a fashion model 'of prominence.'"

2. So, somebody called you a Unicorn Hunter? An informative article about the problems with "unicorn hunting" (when a couple decides to try opening up their relationship by looking for a magical person who wants to be equally involved with both of them).

3. The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors (posted January 3)

Queer Theology (is not about being right)

"Radical Love" book cover. Image source.

So I recently read the book Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology, by Patrick S. Cheng. Let's talk about it.

First, Cheng discusses the terms "queer" and "queer theology." "Queer" can mean a few different things: It's an umbrella term for LGBTQIA identities, but it's also about challenging societal norms. Cheng constantly uses the terms "erasing the boundary" and "dissolving the boundary" throughout the book, and that's essentially what "queer theology" is to him. For example, one could say that the existence of trans and nonbinary people erases the boundary between the binary categories "male" and "female."

This "dissolving" of "boundaries" is a good thing, he says. It's what "radical love" is, and it's the point of Christianity:

[page x in the Introduction] Radical love, I contend, is a love so extreme that it dissolves our existing boundaries, whether they are boundaries that separate us from other people, that separate us from preconceived notions of sexuality and gender identity, or that separate us from God. It is the thesis of this book that the connections between Christian theology and queer theory are actually much closer than one would think. That is, radical love lies at the heart of both Christian theology and queer theory.

Radical love is at the heart of Christian theology because we Christians believe in a God who, through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, has dissolved the boundaries between death and life, time and eternity, and the human and the divine. Similarly, radical love is also at the heart of queer theory because it challenges our existing boundaries with respect to sexuality and gender identity (for example, "gay" vs. "straight," or "male" vs. "female") as social contructions and not essentialist, or fixed, concepts.

I like this because it is so far beyond what Cheng refers to as queer "apologetic theology" (page 27). "Apologetic theology" means making an argument that yes, it IS possible to be Christian and LGBTQ- challenging traditional teaching about "biblical marriage" and such. Personally, I am SO OVER queer apologetic theology. Yes, it was a phase I had to go through, because I used to be a "the bible is clear" evangelical. I had to go through all the arguments about the "clobber texts" and discover that there are ways to 100% support LGBTQ people while also believing the bible is inerrant.

But I'm so OVER that now and I'm not really interested in those discussions anymore. I now believe we should listen to people and believe them when they talk about their own personal lives and their own needs. That's how you love people- not by carefully parsing through ancient Greek vocabulary, as if you're not allowed to treat people with respect until you can find an interpretation of a bible verse that gives you permission. To me, it no longer matters if the bible says queer identities/behaviors are sinful. Whatever. The bible is wrong sometimes.

And Cheng's book isn't about apologetic theology. It goes so far beyond that, and I love that. Instead, it's about drawing connections between Christian doctrines and queer experiences. The book goes through tons of different Christian concepts- God, the Trinity, creation, Mary, atonement, the Holy Spirit, sacraments, etc- and gives examples of how queer people can relate to them, or how these Christian concepts are about "dissolving boundaries."

For example, the doctrine of divine revelation is like coming out. It dissolves the boundaries between divine and human, between the powerful and the weak, and between knowing and unknowing. (pages 44-48)

Some of his examples are quite a stretch, though. Page 102 says the Holy Spirit dissolves the boundary between sexuality and church, because the Holy Spirit guided Troy Perry to found the Metropolitan Community Church in 1968, specifically as a safe place for queer people. Like... okay... so... this one very specific event is being used to support the idea that, in general, the Holy Spirit dissolves the boundaries between sexuality and church? That doesn't really follow.

And page 101 says, "In a way, the Holy Spirit is like gaydar; it helps direct us to radical love, whether divine or human." ... what? The Holy Spirit is like gaydar? Lolololol what? This is a very shaky analogy.

But, really, the point of queer theology isn't being "right." This isn't about giving well-supported arguments to convince people that this is the correct way to understand certain doctrines. That's how I did theology back when I was evangelical, but that's not how the theology in this book works at all. Instead, it's about making analogies and giving examples to draw connections between Christian ideas and queer experiences. It's about how queer people can find meaning in these Christian concepts- not about the "correct" interpretation of various doctrines. So perhaps some of the analogies in this book are meaningful for you, and some aren't. That was the case for me. Gave me some interesting stuff to think about, but it's totally okay that I completely disagreed with some parts.

The book isn't saying "This is the RIGHT thing that you need to believe." Instead, it's "Here are some interesting examples of how queer Christians connect their faith and their queerness."

(And actually, the New Testament writers also did this "drawing connections that didn't necessarily make logical sense" thing. For more on that, see my blog series reviewing "The Bible Tells Me So" by Peter Enns.)

Note, however, that "queer theology is not about being right" is how I would put it, and I can't say whether Cheng would agree with my wording. I use this wording because my background is evangelical and so when I read about theology I expect the writer is trying to say "here is the correct thing Christians should believe" and so I need to realize that's not what Cheng's book is supposed to be, or else the whole thing would make no sense. (Because wow, some of these analogies are so flimsy, I really hope he's not claiming they are all literally absolutely correct and every Christian should believe them.)

And it's a good thing the book isn't trying to force me to believe these things, because there is A LOT in here that is NOT inclusive of asexuals. A lot that assumes everyone likes sex, or connects pleasure with sex, or assumes that an extremely emotionally intimate relationship is necessarily sexual.

Here are some examples:

[page 58] For Althaus-Reid, the Trinity needs to be understood as an orgy, which breaks down the privileging of binary or pair-bonded relationships. Initially, the Trinity appears to be an example of "restricted polyfidelity" in which the three persons of the Godhead are themselves in a closed, or faithful, sexual relationship. However, Althaus-Reid argues that each person of the Trinity has her/her [sic???] own closet of lovers and "forbidden desires" (for example, Jesus' relationships with Mary Magdalene and Lazarus), which in turn results in the death of the "illusion of limited relationships."

When I read this, I was like, "HEY! Just because the 3 members of the Godhead know each other completely, that necessarily means that their relationship is sexual? Two out of three DON'T EVEN HAVE PHYSICAL BODIES, how can you project the concept of sex onto them? WTF this is so acemisic I WILL FIGHT YOU." But then I realized, it's not saying the Trinity is a polyamorous sexual relationship, it's saying you could think of it as that, if that's meaningful to you. It's just an analogy, and so it's not perfect. There will be a point where the analogy breaks down.

[page 108] Kathy Rudy has written about how anonymous sexual encounters actually can be a form of hospitality and welcome to others. ... As such, this ethic of hospitality should be the overriding norm for all issues, including sexuality. As a result, certain sexual acts- including anonymous or communal sex- would not be forbidden per se, but rather measured by the degree to which the actions are welcoming or hospitable.

Uhhhhh... like... I mean, if that's what you're into, that's fine for you, and maybe it's good and meaningful to draw a connection between anonymous sex and a virtue like hospitality, as a counter to all the judgment you usually get from the church ... but wow to me that all sounds HORRIFYING. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope I am SO not having "anonymous sex."

[page 115] One way in which the saints break through radical love is by breaking through erotic boundaries. Donald Boisvert, a gay religious studies professor at Concordia University, has written a provocative book, Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints, about his homoerotic experience of the saints as an openly gay man with a Roman Catholic background. Although it might at first be surprising to connect the saints with same-sex erotic longing, there are in fact strong connections between sainthood and queer desire. Although Boisvert's own same-sex desire was expressly forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, Boisvert's practice of venerating saints opened up a space for him in which such desire was encouraged and led to an "erotic fixation" on the saints from an early age.

Umm... okay... your kink is not my kink... but your kink is okay...

[page 101, immediately after the gaydar bit, actually] As Sarah Coakley, the Cambridge University theologian, has noted, there is an [sic] fundamental connection between the desire for God in deep prayer and the desire for another person in sexual passion. Indeed, Coakley argues that "in any prayer of the sort in which we radically cede control to the Spirit there is an instant reminder of the close analogue between this ceding (to the trinitarian God), and the ekstasis of human sexual passion."

Yeah, there were A LOT of places in this book where it was talking about theology and such and I was following along, no problem, and then SUDDENLY it just became EXTREMELY SEXUAL and I found myself way too asexual to even figure out what it was talking about. Like, if it says desire for God in prayer is like sexual desire, I'm like... trying to remember how allosexuals view sexual desire so I can try to figure out what on earth is being communicated with this analogy.

In other words, there were a lot of parts in this book that were very sexualized and dependent on the audience having a certain understanding of what sex is like (what it means, what emotions are associated with it, etc). As an asexual I was like, WTF????? (And isn't queerness all about questioning societal norms about sex and relationships? I might even say, good thing we have aces to help us "dissolve the boundaries" between emotional intimacy and not having sex. "Dissolve the boundaries" between sex and disinterest. "Dissolve the boundaries" between being an adult human and not having sexual attraction.)

Overall, I was very interested in the concept of queer theology as presented in this book. It's about finding connections between Christian doctrines and queer experiences. It's not about proving anything rigorously or making a case for "here is the correct interpretation of this Christian concept." They're just analogies. And it can be really good and meaningful to make analogies between our own queer experiences and these religious concepts. But if a particular analogy is not useful for you, that's totally fine. It's just an analogy, of course it's going to break down somewhere.

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Related:
Either Matthew Was Dishonest, Or He Wasn't Writing an Apologetics Book
Jesus Takes the Bible Out of Context
We Need Queer Theology

A Post About Masturbation

Putting a wedding ring on new spouse's finger at the wedding ceremony. Image source.

So I want to write about this article on Desiring God about masturbation. It's called If Your Right Hand Causes You to Sin, because of course it is. The article is from 2016 but I saw it being discussed on Twitter recently, and you all know God called me to blog about crap from Desiring God.

The article is quite long so I won't respond to the whole thing. I just want to talk about this part:

2. God purposed that all righteous forms of sexual expression be for the marriage bed. Masturbation removes sexual expression from its only God-intended context.

Sexual expression manifest in orgasm is a good gift of God (1 Timothy 4:2–5) that men and women are to enjoy only in the context of marital intimacy (Genesis 2:23; Song 8:4–6; 1 Corinthians 7:2–3; Hebrews 13:4). When people reach orgasm outside the covenant-confirming act of lovemaking in marriage, the act becomes solely self-seeking, divorced from its purpose of creating intimacy. Sexual expression through orgasm should be an overflow of a desire for a spouse, not merely for a feeling or experience.

• “[Liars] forbid marriage . . . that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Timothy 4:2–5)
• “Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. . . . Do not deprive one another . . . so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” (1 Corinthians 7:2–3, 5)
• “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” (Hebrews 13:4)

So wait wait wait. Let's see if I'm understanding this: God wants you to only have orgasms if your spouse is there participating.

...........................................................why...?

What is this business about "Sexual expression through orgasm should be an overflow of a desire for a spouse, not merely for a feeling or experience"? Like, this writer just completely made that up. Who made him the expert on everyone else's orgasms?

In this culture of "sexual purity" (which Desiring God is a part of), sex and love are connected in only one way. Sex (and anything involving orgasms or anything sort-of sexual) is something you do with your spouse, of the opposite gender, to whom you are committed for life, monogamously. That is, apparently, "God's design" for sex. Because sex means love, and sex means lifelong commitment, and marriage means sex. There's no acknowledgement that maybe sex could mean different things to different people.

I love my husband. And I am interested in learning about my own body through masturbation. And those two things just aren't in conflict. Like, why would they be? They're two completely unrelated things. Masturbation doesn't take away from my love for my husband- it has nothing to do with him at all. (Well, except in the sense that if I understand my own body better, then we will be able to have sex together better.) Just because we're in love and I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with him, why on earth would that mean that he needs to be present every time I stimulate my genitals?

Like why does genital stimulation need to have anything to do with love?

Yes, I grew up in that culture, I know the reasons that Christians say masturbating is bad. Because if you get good at masturbating, then maybe you won't be interested in having sex with your spouse any more. And if you don't have enough sex with your spouse, then you two will feel like you're not close. Blah blah blah. Sure, it's possible that could happen in some cases- so if you find yourself in those cases, then take a step back and figure out where you went wrong and what you need to do to get your marriage healthy. But that's no reason to teach that masturbating is bad for EVERYONE in ALL CASES. I'm tired of being afraid of my own goddamn body, and I'm angry.

Why, in "God's design," is "sexual" supposedly synonymous with "lifelong love and exclusive commitment"? Why would a certain physical action always have the same emotional and symbolic meaning, to everyone? Why?

Many married people have had sex with an ex before they got married, and they're fine. Some couples (who are having sex- not that it's any of your business though) choose not to get married, even though they are committed to each other. Some people have casual sex. Some people are polyamorous and have sexual or romantic relationships with multiple partners, and do so in a healthy way that relies on honest communication between all the partners involved. Some married couples don't have sex at all, maybe because they're both asexual. Or maybe they don't have sex with each other because one spouse is asexual, but the allosexual (non-asexual) spouse has sex with someone else.

And all of those examples about relationships aren't even related to masturbation at all. You can just masturbate by yourself, no matter what your relationship structure is. It doesn't have to "mean anything" about your love for your partner(s).

Like, there are a lot of ways to mix and match sex, love, and commitment. How on earth could it be possible that those things would map to each other in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY for every person in the world? Above all, we need to value consent, respect, and honest communication.

And I'll conclude by saying this: I very much recommend masturbation. I see no downsides at all- it's just a thing one does by oneself, it doesn't have the emotional vulnerability risk factor that partnered sex does, and you can learn about your own body. I wish I had started a long time ago, like maybe when I was a teenager, rather than believing that masturbating was sinful and being terrified of it. I personally use a magic wand sex toy like this.

And maybe that's "too much information" but I am saying it here because I spent all those years not allowed to talk about it, not allowed to have desires or even curiosity, too scared to even think about the existence of my genitals. No one should have to live like that and I'm ****ing angry. I want to preach the good news of masturbation to all the church kids. 

Especially the aces. Because they're the ones most likely to actually be able to keep the rules about abstinence and no masturbation. They're the ones who are likely to remain ignorant about their own genitals, because they don't learn it through "falling into temptation" and beating themselves up about it like other kids. I feel so sad for all the good pure baby aces out there who believe they're so godly and that someday they'll be rewarded with mind-blowing awesome honeymoon sex. (And speaking of asexuality- I want to make it clear that some people just aren't interested in masturbation or sex and THAT'S ALSO COMPLETELY 100% FINE AND NORMAL. I personally am very interested even though I don't experience sexual attraction.)

All right. Anyway, the point is, that Desiring God article believes that God intends for orgasms to only ever happen in the presence of one's spouse. Which is just so absurd. So laughably ridiculous. My favorite part was how the writer couldn't even find bible verses that said anything like that- the examples given are along the lines of "marriage is important, and don't be sexually immoral." Apparently, figuring out a reason why masturbation is "sexually immoral" is left as an exercise for the reader.