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| Book cover for "The Purity Myth" |
I'm something of an ex-purity-culture blogger, so I want to read and have opinions on all the books that criticize purity culture. So I read Jessica Valenti's 2010 book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.
Surprisingly, I didn't like it.
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| "Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source. |
[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]
Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. The Pagoda Puzzle: What Can Save China’s Oldest Wooden Tower? (April 21) "First, the pagoda’s unique structure and scale make the risk of disassembling and replacing original components extremely high. It is a spatial high-rise framework, not a conventional single-beam structure. It would be extremely difficult to reset tens of thousands of rotted, cracked, and deformed components, restore the structural logic of the hidden layers, and avoid secondary damage during disassembly and reassembly."
2. Falling Leaves and Failing Arguments: Why Autumn Adaptation Doesn’t Prove Irreducible Complexity (April 21) "This is the kind of question that sounds simple but turns out to be remarkably difficult for young-earth creationists to answer consistently. Either the pre-Fall world had deadly winters and needed deciduous trees, or it didn’t and the whole system was purposeless until after the Fall."
3. Gene therapy for a rare type of deafness shows lasting results (April 22) "The results indicate that this could be a one-and-done treatment that lasts a lifetime, profoundly transforming patients' lives, Chen says."
4. Journal Club: Sexual pain in Christian Women (April 22) "In the lit review, the paper says that sexual pain may affect up to 46% of women, and that 6.2% of White Christian women report lifetime sexual pain with obstructed penetration."
5. Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS (April 23) "Despite the fact that he had an alibi and bore no resemblance to the witness’s sketch, the police were sure Flores was the second man and they arrested him. So they brought Barganier back in and an officer “hypnotized” her in order to improve her recollection, telling her that hypnosis allows her to tap into the “tape recorder” in her brain."
6. The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars (April 20) "Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They're still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgment they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones' followers to harass and threaten the families for years."
7. We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI (March 6, via) "A student praised for years for being an exceptional writer now feels like a cheater because she had to learn how AI detection works in order to protect herself from being falsely accused. The surveillance apparatus has turned writing talent into a liability."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1. The tariff refund process has begun for businesses. What about customers? (April 22) "That's because a product, like a TV, often has parts from multiple countries, and each was hit with different tariff rates. Those rates changed over time by presidential decree, which makes calculating a customer's actual cost even more difficult. Plus, the retailer likely absorbed some of that tariff expense. The tariff burden was also shared up and down the supply chain, between vendors, distributors and finally customers."
2. More immigrants are being held in detention for over a year. NPR followed one family's ordeal. (April 22) "This isn't legal. According to a decades-old federal settlement, children can't be detained for more than 20 days. But data from the non-profit newsroom The Marshall Project shows, since the start of Trump's second term, more than 1,600 children have been detained for longer than that."
And update on that: Alleged Colorado attacker's family released after nearly a year in detention (April 27) "Back home in Colorado on Saturday, two days after their release, El Gamal and her children reported to an ICE office for a required check-in. There, ICE detained them again, told them they were being deported to Egypt, and rushed them onto a plane, their lawyers said."
3. They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things (April 22) "They were taught 2 Timothy 3:16 as a promise and a contract. They were told what they could and should expect to gain from reading every word of every scripture and they were told what others would expect them to gain from it, and so what they learn — not just from this single passage, but from the entire experience of cover-to-cover reading — is to cultivate those expectations while ignoring the often-boring or confusing or unexpected aspects of the actual text itself."
This! This is exactly what it's like, being evangelical and really taking seriously the "read the entire bible" task that evangelicals are always saying we should do. You have an idea of what the bible is, and what the experience of reading it is supposed to be, and then when the actual bible itself doesn't match those expectations at all, you learn to subconsciously ignore what the actual bible is saying.
Also from the Slacktivist: Text and contexts: More Bible in the news (April 23) "That gets very antisemitic and very blasphemous very quickly, and it’s particularly dumb and dim as a reading of this passage, which involves God making a promise. See, the whole basis of supercessionism is that God’s promises are not worth diddly squat and can be revoked at any time because God is a capricious liar."
4. A chaotic White House Correspondents' Dinner, as told by NPR reporters in the room (April 26) "Just minutes into the dinner, guests heard muffled popping sounds as a gunman attempted to charge past a security checkpoint."
5. Justice Department makes it easier to deport those with DACA status (April 25) "DACA, created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation, now covers around half a million people. Starting last year, DHS officials began urging DACA recipients to self- deport, arguing that the program itself does not equate to automatically providing legal status."
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| Image text: "Are the straights okay?" Image source. |
[content note: it's about how childbirth is gross. also NSFW because I used the word "vagina" a lot]
Here in China, some women don't want their husbands to be there with them in the delivery room while giving birth, and some hospitals don't allow men to be there, because of this reason: What if the man sees how gross it is, when all manner of disgusting things are coming out of his partner's vagina (amniotic fluid, blood, a slimy baby), and then he is no longer sexually attracted to her, and never wants to have sex with her again? Wouldn't that just be terrible???
Who knows if this has ever actually happened, but it is definitely a concern I've heard from women in China.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. On “Asexual” as umbrella term (February 22) "Sometimes I hear newbies propose that there should be a separate asexual community that is *not* inclusive of gray/demi/etc. folks. I would go so far as to say that this idea is totally pointless."
2. Eliminating the Impossible (February 20) Very good point from xkcd.
3. Fix Your Hearts or Die (February 22, via) "Meanwhile men are finding out that they'd rather suffer loneliness than learn how to treat women as human beings instead of possessions, because treating a woman as a possession is domination, which means that it is seen as not just masculine, but core to masculinity. Treating a woman as a human being is gay, which is the least masculine thing of all."
4. Gaza death toll for first 16 months of war far higher than reported, says peer-reviewed study (February 18) "'The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,' the authors of the study, a team including an economist, demographer, epidemiologist and survey specialists, wrote in the Lancet Global Health."
5. Does Waiting for Marriage for Sex Increase the Chance for Painful Sex? (February 23) "Because for so many women, the first sexual encounter doesn’t happen because her body wanted it—it happened because 'time’s up.'"
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| Image source. |
Links related to the antichrist:
1. Former top general calls military's removal of trans troops a costly mistake (February 21) "I'm completely qualified to serve. I'm good at my job. The Navy has paid for me to be good at this. If we really are preparing for deployment or combat, why can't we just focus on doing our jobs and doing them to the best of our abilities?"
2. The Battle Of Minneapolis (February 22) "Think about that: You now live in a country where volunteers deliver babies at home, in secret, off the books, because mothers fear that if they go to the hospital, they will be abducted by masked, armed agents of the state while giving birth."
3. In Crackdown On Worst Of Worst Children, ICE Raids Kids Who Wrote Letters, Deports Sick Two-Month-Old (February 20) "Besides, before going on to whatever job she’ll have at a right-wing think tank, or in Hell itself, departing DHS propaganda minister Tricia McLaughlin explained to the Independent that it’s perfectly normal to dump sick infants across the border in the middle of the night, especially if you can do it before an interfering federal judge can stop you."
4. I posted a link about this same story last time, but this one is also worth reading: A Presidents' Day lesson from Philadelphia (February 17) "Instead, she wrote, 'It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves.'"
5. I Love Illinois. I Love America. I Refuse to Stop. (February 19, via) "I am begging my fellow politicians, my fellow Illinoisans, my fellow Americans to realize that right now in this country we are not fighting over policy or political party. We are fighting over whether we are going to be a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness — or one rooted in cruelty and rage." From Governor JB Pritzker.
6. UN experts condemn US executive order imposing fuel blockade on Cuba (February 12) "They expressed deep concern about the foreseeable humanitarian consequences of restricting fuel supplies to Cuba through the coercion of third States. 'Cuba is already experiencing severe energy shortages, due to previous U.S. sanctions, with blackouts lasting up to 20 hours in many areas, affecting refrigeration for food and medication, and contributing to public health crises.'"
7. Maine immigration observers sue over Trump admin "domestic terrorist watchlist" threats (February 24) "Addressing their interactions, the lawsuit put it bluntly, '[T]he message of intimidation was express and clear: Plaintiff Hilton’s lawfully protected First Amendment activity, and that of her fellow observer, would result in them having their personal data captured and being placed on a ‘domestic terrorist watchlist.’'"
8. ICE Whistle Blower (February 24) "'Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,' he said. 'Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.'"
9. We Can Beat Gavin Newsom (February 18) "If you are committed to progressive policy, Newsom is shit. If you want a Democratic leader who will relentlessly fight the right, then Gavin 'I want to praise Charlie Kirk at every opportunity' Newsom is also shit."
10. A U.S. veteran adopted an orphan from Iran. Decades later, ICE is trying to deport her (February 24) "But in the eyes of the U.S. government, the woman, who's now in her 50s and lives in California, is not American. Instead, she's an immigrant who overstayed her visa since she was a toddler and therefore, subject to deportation. She spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because she fears speaking publicly will complicate her immigration case."
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| Asexual flag. Image source. |
This post is part of the January/February 2026 Carnival of Aces. The topic is "second glance."
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[content note: it's about consenting to sex you don't like]
It's a common piece of info I've often seen in "asexuality 101" resources. "Some aces do choose to have sex, for various reasons. Like, curiosity. Or, because it feels good. Or, to please their partner."
And way back when, that was also a reason for me. But now my thinking has changed on this. Having sex just because your partner wants to is much more complicated than the breezy way it's presented in Asexuality 101. It is, quite possibly, a bad idea.
Links not related to the antichrist:
1. Whiteout: Trapped Trekkers Discover Dangers of ‘Hidden Gems’ (October 22) "As hiking and other adventure sports grow in popularity across China, enthusiasts have begun seeking out undeveloped or little-known spots, often promoted among online communities as “hidden gems.” As a result, accidents and disappearances are increasingly common, with trekking-related emergencies reported nationwide during this year’s eight-day National Day break at the beginning of October."
(Note, this is an entirely different incident than the other link I posted recently about hikers who had to get rescued from a mountain in China because of heavy snow.)
2. Shielding Chart (October 22)
Also from xkcd: Emperor Palpatine (October 20)
3. Why TERFs Don't Like Asexuals Either: An Analysis (October 25) "This is very similar to TERF explanations for trans men and transmasculine people. In fact, as seen above, TERFs believe the same process causes women to identify as both. It’s not a legitimate identity; it’s a response to misogyny, an attempt to escape misogyny by identifying out of it."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1. Trump’s Gutting Sex Ed. Here’s Why That Matters (October 22) "More than 90% said that if they had had more education on those topics, their life would be better now: they thought they would have more sexual confidence, a better understanding of their own body, a better understanding of how to be a good partner, healthier relationships, a better understanding of their own sexual health, a better quality of life, or the resources to make more informed decisions."
2. Exclusive: Trump's demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete (October 22) Oh my goodness, he's actually destroying the White House.
3. ICE keeps detaining pregnant immigrants — against federal policy (October 20) [content note: miscarriage] "While the agency said in a statement in August that pregnant immigrants are receiving sufficient care in custody, medical professionals say the conditions in these facilities can heighten the risk for complications. Limited food can impact nutrition at a vulnerable time; access to medical appointments is spotty and often not aligned with standards of care; and pregnant, postpartum and nursing detainees also face the stress of arrest and separation from their families."
4. Taylor Swift, The White House Demolition, And Pathways Of Persuasion (October 24) "An astute commenter on BlueSky put it this way: Democratic outrage over the White House demolition was 'not as strong as the [Republican] pushback against the change in the Cracker Barrel corporate logo.'"
5. NYC Public Schools Becomes Latest To Defy Trump Trans Bathroom Ban Demands, Launches Lawsuit (October 18)
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| Book cover for "Girls & Sex" by Peggy Orenstein |
[content note: discussion of porn, discussion of oral sex]
Here's my review of the book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I feel like it helped me understand some things about the way people talk about sex.
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Overview
This book is about the culture ("hookup culture") surrounding high school and college girls, in regards to sexual relationships. It's about what's expected, what's seen as normal, what they want, how they feel about it, what kinds of expectations they are facing from boys, how girls' knowledge of feminism doesn't necessarily stop their behavior from being dictated by these societal pressures, etc.
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| Clip art image of a balance scale with a female symbol on one side and male symbol on the other side. Image source. |
[content note: it's about Christians teaching that men are supposed to sexually dominate women]
This is something that flitters through my mind every now and then, and I think to myself "I should blog about that" but also "maybe no one cares because it happened in 2012." Well, Doug Wilson is in the news now, for being a pastor who is super conservative and sexist, like so over-the-top sexist, you didn't even know there *were* people this sexist... so the moment has finally come when I can blog about this.
Gather 'round, it's story time.
In 2012, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" was very popular, and the evangelical Christian blogosphere was all up in arms about it. The evangelical Christian position was, this book is BAD because it's about a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it's being portrayed as positive and exciting. (No, for the most part, evangelical Christians did not notice that it was about an *abusive* relationship being portrayed as positive and exciting. In Christian "purity" ideology, the one and only indicator of whether a relationship is good or bad is "are they having sex outside of marriage?") And also, women being interested in this book is basically the same as watching porn, which is basically the same as cheating on your husband. (Or your future husband, if you're not married.)
Anyway, in the midst of all this pearl-clutching, Jared Wilson published an article on The Gospel Coalition's website, called The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, etc. That's the original link, but the article was taken down due to the backlash. I couldn't find an archive link, but many bloggers wrote articles in response to it, and quoted big chunks from it, so you can get a good idea of what it said. I'm looking at Rachel Held Evans's post, The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination.
Here's a summary of Jared Wilson's article: Hmm, why is it that women are so interested in "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Ah, it's because women have a natural, God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. Our society has lost sight of this- feminism teaches that men and women are equal, and that sex should be based on equality and mutual pleasure. So, women don't have any proper outlet for their God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. They have this need that's not being met. And then "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes along, this low-quality sinful erotica that has all sorts of bad sinful sex, and so many women are into it. Well, this is the reason why.
To support his argument, Jared Wilson included quotes from Doug Wilson's 1999 book, "Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man." Sorry there are 2 different people named Wilson. Makes it kinda hard to follow. They are not related. Anyway. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson:
Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.
In other words, Doug Wilson believes the correct, natural, God-intended way for sex to go is that the man dominates and the woman submits. And because our society has rejected that and says you should do what feels good instead of following gender roles, well now people are all screwed up and confused and that's why they are drawn to bad versions of sexual dominance and submission.
Another quote from Doug Wilson:
When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
So yeah, Doug Wilson says it just doesn't work, if you try to have sex in an equal, mutual way. It just can't work, that's not what sex is. It needs to be "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." (Eww.) (Also, are the straights okay?)
People are trying to go against God's design for sex, but in the long run you can't. You try to escape God's design, and then you end up with all these "Fifty Shades" fans.
Okay so that was what Jared Wilson's article said. The feminist Christian blogosphere read it and was outraged. In particular, I saw people saying "yeah I knew that conservatives teach that men have to be the leaders, and a wife has to submit to her husband, but I'm shocked at the idea that these authority/submission roles would even apply to sex. Is this really what complementarians believe? Really? Even in sex, the husband has authority over the wife? Really?"
And my thoughts at the time... well, this was 2012. I had no sexual experience at all, because why would I have any sexual experience, I was a good pure girl. (Also I was in grad school, that's too young to be thinking about sex, right? ... This post is about how I'm asexual...) But everything I'd heard from purity culture said that sex was easy and self-explanatory. That if you don't do a good enough job controlling your desires, you'll just automatically start having sex, without thinking or making decisions. It "just happens," if you're in a situation with "temptation."
Yeah, according to the mythology I believed back then, sex is so AMAZING, but also shrouded in mystery- good, pure, unmarried people aren't allowed to know any concrete details about it. That would be "temptation." But don't worry, once you're in the proper God-approved situation where you are allowed to have sex, ie, on your wedding night, it will be great and you don't need to think or know anything beforehand, it just happens and it will be great.
It didn't really make sense to me, but I believed it. Yeah, it didn't make sense, because... if you think about it... in order to have sex, wouldn't you have to take off your clothes, in front of another person? Wouldn't you have to, uh, interact with a penis? All of that sounds so unpleasant. Hard to imagine any set of circumstances that could entice me to do that. But, purity culture assured me, when you're in that situation, you *will* want it. You'll lose control of yourself and you'll have sex without really thinking about it, and it will FEEL SO AMAZING but it's WRONG, it's BAD and WRONG, and will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER.
Didn't seem to make sense, but I believed it. Once you're in that situation, your body will just know what to do, and if you're married it will be the best thing ever, and if you're not married then it will feel good in the moment but will RUIN YOUR LIFE.
So in 2012, reading this article where the Wilsons perhaps inadvertently announced their own kinks to the world... I thought, what do I know, maybe sex is like that. Maybe when you're in that situation and your body just takes over and does what's natural and it feels amazing, maybe it will naturally be a woman-being-dominated-by-a-man roleplay. My whole life, everything I had heard from Christians about sex was in the genre of "this makes no intuitive sense at all, but on some level you *do* have these desires, and when you're in that situation, you *will* act this way." This felt no different. On some level, you *do* have a desire to be "conquered" and "colonized" by a man during sex. Hey what do I know, maybe that's true?
And then the bloggers that pushed back and had some very strong responses to this- many of them were married Christian women, like Rachel Held Evans. They had sexual experience, unlike me in 2012. There was something kind of surprising about it... about reasoning about sex based on one's actual experience. Normally in Christian culture, we talked about sex in terms of these big general principles, about "God's design" and "how God made women" and "how God made men" and "the biblical definition of marriage" and so on. It was like arguing over fan theories about a fictional world. Like hypothetical thought experiments. To have people say "I know Doug Wilson is wrong about sex because my own marriage is not like that"- that was a new and different thing for me.
Very interesting how Doug Wilson said, "however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party" and then a bunch of people popped up to say that yes, they had done that very thing. Sounds like it's a *you* problem!
Anyway, looking back on it now, the biggest misconception I had back in 2012, the thing that blocked me from understanding in so many ways, was the idea that people don't think or make choices during sex. Like, it "just happens," you "can't control yourself," etc. Like you're just strapped into a roller coaster car and you have no control over where it goes. When I eventually did start having sex, I was so surprised at how we needed to actually take actions to make things happen. And I was just as mentally-present as any time in my normal life, and it's just as weird as you would imagine from reading a description.
So you can choose. If you're into this BDSM roleplay stuff, you can discuss it with your partner and make a choice together about it. If you want to have an "egalitarian pleasure party", great, there are all sorts of sex acts you can choose from, so you and your partner are free to pick which ones you like, and do those- they don't happen automatically, you think about it and make a choice and then take action.
I'm kind of glossing over the role of desire and arousal here... yeah, those do affect one's thinking and one's choices. I conceptualize this in terms of how you weigh your various reasons to do or not do something- ie, you *want* to do something, for certain reasons, but also you think you shouldn't, for certain reasons- and the desire/arousal/attraction can make you weigh some of those reasons much more highly, so that in that moment it feels like a good idea. I'm probably not describing this well? But my point is, if you imagine that people don't really think or make choices during sex, because it all just happens automatically and naturally and your body just takes over- well, no, that's not how it works.
(Kind of curious about whether "people don't think or make choices during sex" is a common belief for people who grew up in purity culture, or if I just thought that because I'm asexual and couldn't imagine people would do that if they had a choice.)
I have a few things to say in conclusion. First of all, why shouldn't sex be "an egalitarian pleasure party"? Like, why would it not be what both partners want it to be, with equality between them? If it's something other than that, where they have to play certain roles and don't have a choice, isn't that obviously worse??? Second, I wish I could have told my younger self not to believe it, when Christian role models confidently announce "*these* are the desires you have, because these are the desires that everyone has"- how messed up that I believed that rather than my own feelings. And third, when someone is trying to tell you sex *is* a certain way, and it just *cannot possibly be* some other way, they're actually talking about themself, rather than big abstract overarching concepts like "God's design" for sex.
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A few links on Doug Wilson. For years, people have been sounding the alarm about how racist and sexist and Christian-supremacist his ideology is.
From Libby Anne:
It Is Long Past Time for Evangelical Leaders to Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views on Slavery and the South
Doug Wilson: Women who reject patriarchy are tacitly accepting “the propriety of rape”
Shades of Sexual Deviance: Doug Wilson and the Tale of Two Boxes
From the Slacktivist:
Evangelical gatekeepers and conservative holiness
For evangelicals, racism isn’t a dealbreaker, but feminism is
From me:
Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead
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Related
I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense
"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men
This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read
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| 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."
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| Book cover for "Pure" by Linda Kay Klein. |
The book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, by Linda Kay Klein, is about adult women who grew up in purity culture. It's about the aftermath of purity culture, how people try to move on from it as adults, how it continues to affect them. The book contains stories from the author's personal life, and interviews with many people who grew up in purity culture.
I have a few quotes and observations I want to share here:
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Ignorance about sex (p 77)
We weren't allowed to know anything about what sex actually was, but at the same time, we had to make sure we strictly followed the rules about what we weren't allowed to do. Kind of difficult to know what the rules are, though, when you're not allowed to know what sex is.
The cornerstone of the purity myth is the expectation that girls and women, in particular, will be utterly and absolutely nonsexual until the day they marry a man, at which point they will naturally and easily become his sexual satisfier, ensuring the couple will have children and never divorce: one man, one woman, in marriage, forever.
For this formula to work, my girlfriends and I knew we had to follow a slew of rules. Unfortunately, none of us knew what they were. Sex was such a shameful topic that we never got real talk on what we were and were not allowed to do. It was assumed that if no one ever talked to us about sex, it would just sort of go away until we needed it. So our "sex talks" were all generic metaphors and warnings about what would happen to us if we crossed a line, which was defined differently by so many people that we were left guessing all the same. Meanwhile, we knew we would be shamed if we asked sexual questions; shamed if we discussed sexual decisions; shamed if we shared our confusing sexual feelings and thoughts; and shamed worst of all if we admitted we had already done anything sexual. So each of us guessed at what the rules might be, hoped we were right, and didn't tell anyone about our sexual lives just in case we weren't.
This is SPOT ON.
Also, purity culture makes people so ashamed of completely normal things, it causes people to hide what they're doing rather than having healthy conversations with friends about what a healthy relationship looks like. If something is wrong in your relationship, you won't be able to get useful advice from your friends about it, because you're ashamed of the fact that you're dating someone in the first place.
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The couple who couldn't figure out how to have sex (p 135-137)
Klein interviews a woman named Muriel:
Desperate to have sex, Muriel and Dmitri's engagement was short.
"We got married at 9:30 in the morning so that we could have sex early. No lie, that's why we got married early! I was excited about sex! I thought, 'I don't want to wait all day,' because sex was this huge thing! It was what everybody talked about, in the negative. But then supposedly once it was in marriage it was supposed to be this amazing celebration. This was the flip side, right? Supposedly. But during the ceremony up there, the pastor says 'you may kiss the bride,' and we kiss. Our teeth clanked. I was like, 'What is going on?' We, like, sort of used tongue. It was the weirdest thing in the world. [Note: they 'saved their first kiss for the wedding.']
"There had been this whole promise: If you wait, then this kiss will be magical and divine. But oh my gosh, total opposite. I whispered in Dmitri's ear, 'Let's not do that again until we're alone.'
"There was a small reception and by noon we're in a hotel room. So we start stripping off. I see a naked man for the first time. I hadn't even seen naked pictures. I'd never seen any pornography or anything. So, naked man. And then I got to strip off. And now we're naked and this is weird and we start kissing or whatever and then I just bust up crying because this has all been way too much and I hadn't slept much the night before.
"So I take a nap. We take a nap. Then we wake up and we start trying it again. And I have no idea what hole or where anything is. We try that and Dmitri tries touching and he doesn't know. At this point I've read about the clitoris in The Act of Marriage. I know it exists, but I have no idea where it is, neither does Dmitri, and so he's, 'Does this feel good?' I have no idea. I've never let anything down there try to feel good before. So he keeps trying and I'm like, 'Is that an orgasm? I don't know.' So then he starts trying to stick it in. Again, I have no idea where. He's trying to direct. We don't get it in and then he's like, 'Well I'm kind of moved all the way here. Can you help me out?' So I start to do that, and then I'm just, like, left there. Not having done 'the sex.'
"We don't figure out sex for four months. We don't actually get it in. We keep trying. I mean, we're discouraged, but he does keep trying. Sometimes it hurts. We didn't get the idea about wetness or lubrication or any of that. I eventually figured out I had to stretch out beforehand, manually. I figured out where the hole was and I would stretch it out manually and then he would go in. It never felt sexy. Sex was never sexy. I never got off while he was in there, and even on his end, it was more like, if we did it, good, that's something we're supposed to do. But it was never 'this is so sexy, I want you.' It was just a check mark for us. I'm not sure when he gave up on trying as often."
"Did you ever talk about what you were experiencing with anybody?"
"No! Because it's embarrassing! I mean, that's just something you just don't talk about. We're married now. It's supposed to be a slippery, slippery, easy-to-fall-off-of slope. 'Where's the easiness? How's anybody accidentally having sex? How are teenagers accidentally getting pregnant? I don't know. How are they even getting it in?!'"
!!!!!! This! Oh my goodness, this. This is SO MUCH like my experience trying to have sex for the first time. I totally bought into this ideology that once you are no longer constantly holding yourself back from having sex, once you step over the purity guardrails and allow yourself to do whatever you want, you'll just naturally fall into this powerful vortex of the amazingness of sex, it will feel so good, it will change your whole life, you don't even have to think or do anything, it just happens and it's so amazing (but ill-advised if you're not married, because it is so powerful and life-changing).
And then... what actually happens, if you're like me and you're asexual af, is you decide "okay we are gonna have sex" and then you think, well in the movies the first step seems to be kissing, so let's do that, and then you do that and then you're not sure what's supposed to happen next, should be something about putting our genitals together, but... that's so weird...? And everything slows to a stop and you're just extremely confused instead of having this mind-blowing, life-changing experience.
Like Muriel, I also was genuinely confused about how teenagers get pregnant. Just could not make heads or tails of anything- how my experience of sex was in a different universe from the way everybody else talked about sex. I even asked doctors for help but they were useless. When I discovered asexuality, that was the first time I found people talking about sex in a way that actually felt real. Same for when I heard about vaginismus- finally people talking about what sex is really like, how difficult and confusing it is. (Based on what Muriel said, it sounds like she had vaginismus.)
I'm lucky- I did not have that experience on my wedding night, I had that experience long before we got married. I'm so glad we didn't wait till marriage. And I'm so glad I slowly broke the purity rules little-by-little, rather than trying to go from zero to PIV [penis in vagina] sex immediately, like Muriel did.
The thing about manually stretching the vagina, to prepare for PIV sex, yeah I also discovered that. That was the method I used, when I had vaginismus. (I no longer have vaginismus- let me tell you, wow it makes a world of difference not having vaginismus. It *actually is* easy to have sex now that I don't have vaginismus. Unbelievable.)
What really strikes me about this excerpt from the book is, Muriel and Dmitri had this mindset like there's some specific thing they're supposed to do, as a married couple, and they're trying as hard as they can to figure out how to do it, and feeling ashamed for having trouble with it. They weren't viewing sex as something that was for them, that they could figure out in their own way, based on what felt good for them.
Like it was a specific series of steps, which no one explains to you because it's supposedly "natural", and then when you're confused about what the steps are supposed to be, you feel like something is wrong with you.
I'm queer now- which means I view sex as something that people can choose for themselves. People can make an informed choice about which parts of it they want or don't want. Make it something that makes sense for you.
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"Freaking out" when attempting to have sex
Klein talks about how, when she tried to have sex with her boyfriend Sebastian, she would panic and "freak out." For people who are trying to leave purity culture, the psychological effects are so strong- the fear is engrained so deep- if you have sex, horrible things will happen. (I also experienced that fear- I eventually decided that I no longer believed it was a sin to have unmarried sex... but actually doing it was an entirely different thing- I was still terrified. Eventually I decided to "face my fear"- after we finally had PIV sex, and it didn't ruin my life, and didn't change me into a completely different kind of person, wow I felt so much better. No fear any more.)
Here's a quote from p 198:
Sebastian and I did eventually have sex, though it was, in his words, "a brief and bungling affair." Both virgins, neither of us wanted to call this our sexual debut. In time, Sebastian and I broke up. In the years that followed, he got a new girlfriend and says he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious. ("Thanks man," I rolled my eyes at him.)
OH my goodness, this is so real. He "was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious."
SO REAL.
People who date people who grew up in purity culture are taking on a very hard task. I have "freaked out" many times about extremely mundane aspects of dating, and how I was so terrified that I was "bad" and "impure" because of what I had done. As an example, 17 years ago, I was dating a guy, and one time I called him "my wonderful dear" and then I had a whole emotional crisis about that because I didn't think I was going to marry him, and then what would my "future husband" think about the fact that I had actually said out loud that a guy who wasn't him was "wonderful"? What would my future husband think about me having expressed my feelings for another guy? Was I going to regret this forever?
(Please note, that was 17 years ago, and it has no effect on my life now. I am married, and my husband cares 0% about what I did or did not do with some other guy 17 years ago. Purity culture really had me believing that whatever silly misadventures I had in dating in college were going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I cannot express strongly enough how NOT TRUE that is.)
And on and on. Every guy I have dated, I have burdened with this emotional baggage about how I fear I'm being so bad and impure and sinful.
"he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn't religious." I feel that so much.
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People who want casual sex
Here's something I learned from this book: There are people who genuinely want to have casual sex without a relationship. This can include men, women, people of whatever gender. They actually legitimately want that. They look at their current life situation and think about what they want out of sex/relationships, and they feel that what they really want is to have casual sex.
I really never thought about that before.
I knew that many people are having casual sex, but I never knew that could be, like... like an intentional choice. I thought it was like, "I wish I could be in a real relationship, but I have to settle for casual sex instead" or "I met this very hot person and I don't know what came over me, everything moved so fast and we had sex." I really never knew it could be a clear-eyed rational choice that made sense with one's current priorities and life circumstances.
Some of the people interviewed in this book talk about how their vision for their sex life is to have casual sex, but they have such a hard time getting there because of all the psychological hangups they have from purity culture.
Fascinating!
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Respecting everyone's journey
Klein interviews a huge range of people, who all have difference experiences in terms of what happened to them after growing up in purity culture. Some of them got married, some didn't. Some had unmarried sex, some didn't. Some are still Christian, some aren't. Some are queer. One interviewee said something about "sometimes I wonder if I'm a lesbian." One interviewee is a trans man.
And the book never makes any judgments about if their choices and identities are right or wrong. The book simply respects everyone and lets them tell their own stories. (Klein even says she tried to include some people who benefitted from purity ideology, but she couldn't find any who were willing to be included in the book, so MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.)
Let me tell you, it was SO REFRESHING to read this after reading "The Great Sex Rescue." Oh MY GOODNESS. The way that "Pure" simply acknowledges the existence of queer people, because it makes sense to mention queer people in a book about the effects of purity culture- just talking about being queer like it's a normal part of the range of human experience. SO DIFFERENT from "The Great Sex Rescue", which so glaringly refused to mention anything about queer people existing. The way that "Pure" is totally fine with people being Christian or not. So different from "The Great Sex Rescue", whose main point was "conservative Christians teach that God wants us to do sex and marriage in this way, but actually, that's wrong and harmful, actually God wants us to do sex and marriage in this other way."
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Conclusion
"Pure" is a book about the practical effects of purity culture on people's adult lives. Klein interviews many people who grew up in purity culture, and they talk about how they felt about it, the choices they made since then, and the ways that purity culture still affects them.
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Related:
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| Bible and rose. Image source. |
[content note: it's about rape culture in the bible and in purity ideology]
Purity culture teaches that this is what the bible says about sex: In God's perfect plan for everyone's lives, each person is only supposed to ever have sex with 1 person. (Or maybe 0, if God gives you "the gift of singleness.") You aren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage, and then you get married to 1 opposite-sex partner, and have sex with them, and that's how it works. Purity culture explicitly teaches that this is what the bible says.
(Or... if you're a widow then you're allowed to get remarried and have sex again, but it's not clear how this really fits into purity culture logic.)
Now, there's not *exactly* a bible verse that says "don't have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage." There are bible verses that say not to "commit adultery." There are bible verses about specific combinations of people who aren't allowed to have sex- for example, a man should not have sex with both a woman and her daughter. There are bible verses about how if a woman is discovered to not be a virgin on her wedding night, she should be stoned. There's "the marriage bed should be kept pure." There are plenty of verses about the sinfulness of "sexual immorality" but the bible never exactly defines what that is.
Of course, though, when I was in purity culture, it didn't bother me that there wasn't 1 specific verse that explicitly said "all sex outside of marriage is a sin" because I felt that was the overall message of the bible's teaching about sex, even though it didn't say it directly. I thought, it's obvious, right? That would be gross, to have sex outside of marriage- obviously that's God's opinion on things.
So that's what purity culture claims the bible teaches: Every person should have at most 1 sexual partner, total, over one's whole life, and this standard is the same for both men and women.
However, if you actually look at how people act in the real world, they're not applying this same standard to both men and women. Women get judged much more harshly for having unmarried sex, compared to men.
I believed that in theory it should be the same rules for both men and women, and it was wrong (and didn't make sense mathematically) for men and women to be judged differently. Like... if we're only talking about straight people, it's 1 man and 1 woman sinning together. How can you possibly judge the woman's actions as being more "dirty"/"sinful" than the man's? If it's so terrible that the woman is doing this bad thing, shouldn't the man be held equally responsible for participating in her doing this bad thing? I always thought, the math just doesn't work, so it makes no sense to judge women worse than men for having unmarried sex- so I tried not to pay too much attention to the double standard. Since it was so obviously nonsensical. I was sure that the rules from the bible applied equally to men and women.
Recently, because I read "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," I had a whole new realization about, umm, how to make the math work, so to speak. "Womanist Midrash" closely examines the lives of women from the bible, from a womanist (black feminist) perspective, and "The Red Tent" is a bible fanfic novel about the 4 wives of Jacob- showing what the women's side of the story of Jacob's family might have been like. These books have a lot to say about women's experience of sex, and how it would have been viewed.
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.
This isn't something that either of those books explicitly spelled out; I'm just kind of trying to summarize the overall ideology that serves as the foundation for the way women are treated in those books.
Here, let's think about these 2 different ideologies and see which one seems to match better with what we see in the bible. Is it "everyone is supposed to have only 1 sexual partner, and stay pure until marriage, and these rules are the same for both men and women"? Or is it "there are pure women and there are impure women, and it's fine for men to have sex with impure women as much as the men want- try to not be an impure woman"?
Hmm.
Why are there laws in the bible about executing a woman who's not a virgin on her wedding night, but no equivalent laws about men? Why do lots of male bible heroes have multiple wives, and the bible doesn't necessarily portray that as a bad thing* (sometimes it's even described like it's a sign of God's favor)? Why is there a list of specific relatives that a man is not allowed to have sex with, rather than one simple rule "only have sex in a monogamous marriage"?
Huh. Well that's... not great.
I really had always assumed that of course God meant that the rules for men and women were the same. Of course it would be bad for a man to not be a virgin on his wedding night, just like it would be for a woman. Right? The bible just happened to not mention that part, but of course we all know it's true, right? Right? But now I've come up with this alternative framework that fits so much better, and is also horrific and terrible.
(You could argue that the bible is "progressive" on this, in the sense that the rules given in the bible require men to treat women a little bit better than what was typical for societies at that time. Sure, you could make that argument. I personally am not interested in going down that path. I don't think we should let the bible off the hook so easily. Frankly I don't think it's meaningful that the bible is slightly less misogynist than the average stone-age person, and we shouldn't act like it is.)
Okay at this point you are probably saying, "Umm, Perfect Number, you are not the first person to come up with this 'there are 2 types of women' concept, this is called the 'virgin/whore dichotomy', ie, 'every woman is either a virgin or a whore.' How have you not heard of this?"
Well yeah of course I have heard of that, but I guess I never really *got* it? I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen anyone specifically making the connection between the "virgin/whore dichotomy" and the "double standards for men and women about having lots of sex"- how you really need both of these godawful concepts to hold each other up, or else the math clearly just doesn't work. See, it's not *really* about the actual act of having sex. It's about whether the patriarchy judges you to be "pure" and worthy of men's protection, or "impure" and deserving of whatever men do to you.
And the thing is, even though I was taught in purity culture that the rules should be the same for both men and women, there were some purity culture teachings where this ugly "virgin/whore dichotomy" sort of started to show itself. Where the purity teachings were less about "here is God's plan for how everyone can have a perfect marriage and sex life" and more about "it's okay for men to disrespect (and maybe even rape) impure women- make sure you're not one of them." Less about "here is how men and women are supposed to treat each other, how we are supposed to act, we all follow these rules and everything is great" and more about "we protect the women in our in-group, who follow our rules, while the women in the out-group are sluts who are at risk of being raped, what did they expect?"
When they talk about modesty, for example. In purity culture, here is how they talk about modesty: Women, you should respect and value your body instead of flaunting your body. If you don't respect yourself, obviously men won't respect you. D. Anderson had a very good post in 2013 about the way boys in purity culture are taught to view "immodest" women- containing quotes from these good godly teenage boys about how disgusted they are. I basically was taught that if a woman is dressed "immodestly", men are literally incapable of respecting her, unless they wear a blindfold or something I guess. There was a chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" that did a great job arguing against this ideology.
People who are really into patriarchy like to talk about how "the way it should be" is that men protect women, and feminism is the reason that you hear more about sexual assault nowadays- but what they actually mean is, patriarchy is about protecting the women who follow men's rules. And any women who find themselves in the "impure" group, well they deserve whatever men do to them. Try to not be those women. From that perspective, feminists are the ones to blame, for making women think it's okay to be in the "impure" group, and thereby causing women to lose men's protection.
Anyway...
So what do we do with the bible, then?
Well, first of all, the bible does NOT teach that it is a sin for men to have sex outside of marriage, in the general case. There are plenty of rules in the bible about specific categories of women that men are not allowed to have sex with (and also, rules against men having sex with men), ie, "do not covet your neighbor's wife", and I always viewed this as being part of an overarching "sex is only for monogamous marriage" ideology- but no, it's more like "it's okay for men to have sex outside of marriage, but not with women who, like, actually matter."
And, it's not exactly a sin for women to have sex outside of marriage- the issue is if a woman has sex outside of marriage and then dishonestly tries to present herself like she's one of the "pure" ones.
(One caveat here, I'm focusing on the Old Testament in this post, because I'm thinking about this in terms of an evangelical mindset where the bible supposedly presents one clear and consistent message regarding "God's plan for sex and marriage." But it's possible the New Testament writers weren't coming from quite the same perspective. "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent" focus on the Old Testament, specifically the Torah.)
I'm not sure I would say the bible teaches this view of sex- it's more like, that was the way sex was viewed by the people who wrote the bible. These are the assumptions they brought to it, when they wrote down rules for people to follow. None of this is explicitly spelled out anywhere in the bible- look at me, I used to be evangelical, I read the whole bible multiple times and never noticed this. The writers of the bible were not trying to say "there SHOULD be this double standard between men and women, and feminism is wrong," because they wouldn't have even been able to imagine an alternative. Just like how I was taught by purity culture that all sex outside of marriage is dirty, so I believed that the bible taught that too, and I wasn't able to imagine an alternative.
But anyway, now we know better.
I'm not going to be subtle about this; let me come right out and say it: The bible should not be the authority over our moral beliefs. Instead, we bring our own moral beliefs to the bible, and then we judge which rules in the bible are good ("love your neighbor as yourself", etc) and which ones are horrible.
Evangelicals believe that if you just have the right technique for how to interpret the bible and parse it into rules for us to live by, this process will lead to a set of rules which we would recognize as good and moral- and if they don't seem good and moral, either our understanding of morality is wrong, or we're misinterpreting the bible. So then you have to keep tweaking things until you can get an interpretation of the bible which you can accept as moral. This strikes me as terribly inefficient. How about we just use our own understanding of morality right from the start, and reject anything from the bible that is obviously terrible?
Then you might ask "well what's the point of even bringing the bible into it, then?" Well, yeah, good point. I like the bible for cultural reasons, but if other people aren't interested in the bible, that's fine. No real reason to bring the bible into it if you don't want to.
Suppose you're a modern-day advocate of purity culture, and you want to combine the bible's emphasis on virginity with modern ideas about how men and women should be treated equally, and so you come up with "nobody can have sex outside of [monogamous hetero] marriage, and the rules are the same for men and women" (ie, this is what purity culture teaches, in my experience). Sure, you can believe that. But don't frame it like you got it directly from the bible. Like you're simply reading the bible and reporting what it says. Like you're not adding your own spin on it.
I was always so sure that the purity-culture view of sex- that sex outside of marriage is disgusting and nobody should be involved in that- was just self-evidently true, was obviously God's opinion on the matter, and the biblical writers too. I didn't have a specific verse that said it, just a lot of verses about "sexual immorality" and the claim that "well, the readers of the bible would have understood 'sexual immorality' to mean having sex outside of marriage." But now I've found this other explanation... the idea that there are 2 kinds of women, and it's fine for men to have sex with "impure" women- and it's horrible but it fits so much better with what we see in the Old Testament.
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* I might need to write a whole 'nother post about polygamy in the bible, because the standard apologetics answer is "yes, there's polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing, the bible shows that it leads to a lot of problems, so you see, the bible doesn't *really* condone it" and I disagree with that.
Update: Here it is, The Bible and Polygamy
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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:
Womanist Midrash
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"
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Related:
"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical.
1. RIP Tony Campolo (1935-2024) (November 20) "It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming."
2. Journal Club: The Bedroom and the Laboratory (November 20) "This chapter discusses some of the problems with the methodologies used in sex therapy, and the clinical study of sexuality." This was really eye-opening to me. I had always assumed sexology was about getting to the bottom of the grand mystery of why people like to have their partner do things to their genitals. Turns out it's not. Turns out it's the same confusing concepts of "how do I increase my sex drive" etc.
3. D&D Combinatorics (November 22) Love this xkcd.
4. House passes bill that would allow Treasury to strip nonprofits of tax-exempt status (November 21, via) "The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday that would authorize the treasury secretary to designate nonprofit organizations as supporters of terrorism and strip them of tax-exempt status." This is worrying.
5. The Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool (via) The CDC has a little interactive tool which can recommend vaccines you may need. Cool!
6. Sarah McBride And The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Criticism (November 24) "If McBride is caving in fear (and Yr Wonkette does not think she is), that’s not McBride’s fault. That’s the fault of 200 House Dems and 200 million Americans who oppose anti-trans bullying and could choose to step up (or step up more) but don’t."
So the story here is that Sarah McBride is the first trans person to be elected to Congress, and the Republican members of Congress are being weird about it and making rules that she can't use the women's bathrooms because she counts as a man. McBride responded by saying she will follow the rules; her intention is not to get involved in that drama but to do the work that her constituents elected her for.
Some trans people and allies have criticized McBride for not fighting back. (See this post from Erin Reed.) The post I'm linking here is from Crip Dyke, who says it's NOT COOL that people are criticising McBride for this.
Yes- she is the first trans Congress person, she is going to have to deal with a lot of this kind of bigotry, and you can't expect her to respond in whatever way *you* think a perfect activist would respond. She's just 1 person. It's not fair to put all that on her. Really, this is a moment where allies need to step up and take a stand against the bigots, rather than expecting McBride to do that all by herself.
Also, initially when I read McBride's statement that she would "follow the rules as outlined", I took that to mean she would use the men's bathroom (and maybe this would be a form of protest- everyone would see how ridiculous it was that she is forced to use the men's bathroom). But then after reading Erin Reed's article, I thought maybe trans people don't really consider that a real option because of the worry of being harassed in the bathroom, and actually this means McBride is gonna have to walk all the way to wherever the gender-neutral bathroom is, and it will be a huge inconvenience for her and won't affect the Republican bigots at all. But then Crip Dyke's article talked about getting a bunch of trans people together to protest by using the bathroom the bigots apparently want them to use. So. It could go either way I guess.
7. The Sanitary Pad Scandal Causing Uproar on Chinese Social Media (November 26) "In one clip, an influencer measures the lengths of the absorbent pads inside products made by leading Chinese brands including ABC, Sofy, and Space 7, and compares them with the product sizes listed on the packaging, which refer to the total pad lengths."
Here's something really interesting about China: The lengths of pads (in cm or mm) are very explicitly advertised. Like it will be right there as part of the product name on the packaging. Zero effort is required to see "oh these pads are 25 cm, these pads are 29 cm" and so on. When you buy pads in the US... in the US I never thought about the length in inches or cm. (Assuming nothing has changed since I bought pads in the US a decade ago.) You have "long" or "super long", or you have "day" vs "night" with "night" being designed to go much farther in the back- but does anyone ever think about "well how many inches is that?" I'm sure you could find it in the fine print on the packaging in the US, but it's not big and obvious like in China.
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| 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:
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"
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"