Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Psychics in Silicon Valley (February 5) "While it’s incredibly easy to do this with a single believer and even more so with a crowd of believers like those in the audience at a show (because any “misses” might be “hits” for someone else in the crowd), I’ve actually managed to do this even for skeptics who KNEW I didn’t have magical powers, knew that there’s no such thing as magical powers, but were still choked up because suddenly they were envisioning their own dead father standing there saying that he’s proud of them. It’s really convincing."

2. This extremely useful chart about dinosaurs.

3. Chinese Scientists Save Patient Using Pig Liver Outside the Body (February 9)

Also from Sixth Tone: As Services Expand, More Foreigners Seek Treatment in China (February 13) "'This was his only chance but no hospital in Mongolia could perform the procedure on an infant,' his mother, Khurelbaatar Nasantogtokh, told Sixth Tone."

How Chinese Millennials Are Reimagining Weddings (February 13) "From mountaintop elopements to music festival photoshoots, young people in China are transforming weddings from family obligations into personal statements about values and autonomy."

4. A daughter reexamines her own family story in 'The Mixed Marriage Project' (February 10) "And so many of them would say, 'I found out that I had to live in a colored neighborhood. I had to leave my white neighbors. I had left my family in order to marry this Black man and move into the Black Belt. I now couldn't even tell my employer my address, because if they found out my address, they'd know I must be living with a Black man.' Why else would a white woman be living in the Black Belt?"

5. It's a dangerous complication of pregnancy — but a new drug holds promise (February 14) Hey this is really cool- a new drug that treats pre-eclampsia in pregnancy. I had pre-eclampsia during my 2nd pregnancy, and as I understood it, it's very dangerous and there's no cure except to not be pregnant- hopefully you are far enough along in the pregnancy that you can deliver the baby and the baby will survive. If this new drug is able to treat it, that would be great news! Still very early though, so we shouldn't get that excited yet.

6. Kansas City illustrator turns library checkout cards into tiny works of art. She only gets 'one shot' (February 13) "A few decades ago, checking out a library book meant writing your name on a lined, 3-by-5-inch card that a librarian then stamped the due date on."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Kidney transplant recipient in ICE custody is finally getting meds, wife and attorney say (February 9) "A kidney transplant recipient from Minnesota now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Texas is finally getting some of the his life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife and his attorney. But they say federal authorities still are not giving him the correct dosage and full regimen of the medications."

2. Hating the Game (February 8, via) "The Post's framing only makes sense if, as is often the case, the demand of white bigotry is being accommodated. You can be one of the most popular figures on the cultural landscape and it won't matter; if white racists don't like you, you're controversial and polarizing."

3. Former ICE Facility Worker 'saw people laying in feces' at Baltimore Detention Center (February 6, via)

4. 13 of the most questionable redactions from the Epstein files (February 10) "The draft indictment is particularly notable because it includes three co-conspirators that prosecutors apparently considered charging. The co-conspirators are described as being employed by Epstein, but their names are redacted."

5. DHS's investigation of a man who emailed a DHS lawyer is over — but not the concerns it raises (February 11) "This all began when Jon Doe, the pseudonym used to identify the man, wrote an email asking the DHS lawyer to “err on the side of caution” in addressing the asylum case described in The Washington Post article that Doe read."

6. The Children of Dilley (February 9) "Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl, named Susej Fernández, who had been living in Houston when she and her mother were detained. 'I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center,' she wrote. 'Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live.'"

7. 5 things to know about the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security (February 14) "During two congressional hearings this week, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection told lawmakers their agencies would likely not see significant impact on their enforcement operations since both agencies received more than $70 billion from Congress last summer as part of the GOP's massive tax and spending bill."

8. DHS says immigration agents appear to have lied about shooting in Minnesota (February 13)

9. Pride flag raised again at Stonewall National Monument in NYC after removal by Trump administration (February 13)

Blogaround

1. Carnival of Aces Round-Up: Sexual Healthcare (December 18) "As an adolescent and young adult, the messaging I heard was that these tests are very important, but that messaging seemed to take it for granted that all women are sexually active.  The messaging also claimed that the tests might be uncomfortable but wouldn’t be painful.  However, lots of women, especially in the asexual community, have never had sex.  And (as can be seen from the various posts about vaginismus), many women do find pelvic exams very painful."

2. Our Wedding, From The Woman Who Loves Zooey Zephyr (December 18) Congrats to Erin Reed and Zooey Zephyr!

3. Even if Voters ‘Get What They Asked For’ it’s More Likely to Cause a Fascist Death Spiral Than a Lesson Learned (November 18, via) Yeah... there's this narrative in response to the election, that in some sense it's right that people who voted for such a bad president will now have to live under such a bad president. And, some forms of this narrative go so far as to say they'll see how bad it is, and they'll see how wrong they were. 

I personally found this a little bit comforting at first, but I shouldn't have, because if you think about it for a few seconds, it totally falls apart. The ones who will suffer the most from the orange antichrist's presidency are NOT the people who voted for him. And yeah many of his voters will be worse off too, because he doesn't actually have any good plans for how to decrease the price of groceries, but they're not going to suddenly realize "oh we were so wrong to vote for him." 

January 6 happened, you guys. I really thought that would be the end of his popularity. I really thought that when he took a stand against the peaceful transfer of power- which, I learned in school, was one of the key things that makes America great- when he tried to overthrow the US government, for no real reason, just that he wanted to be president... I really thought he would be done after that. I really thought everyone would realize how bad he was right then. But no, here we are 4 years later. Did everybody forget about January 6? "They got what they wanted" isn't going to show these people how wrong they were, if January 6 couldn't do it.

4. Donald Trump and His Allies Don’t Really Care What Kind of Leftist You Are (December 11, via) "Being 'the right kind' of progressive or feminist or socialist can easily become its own goal, rather than winning concrete victories that match the values and goals behind these labels."

Yeah... after the election, I received so many emails from every liberal/social-justice organization I've ever donated to, and overall it made me really uncomfortable. The emails were all like "We're going to do everything we can to FIGHT against Trump" and yeah if that's true, then it's great, I want to support that- but is it really true? Are they just using this moment to get more donations and collect more names for their email lists? *I* don't know how to fight him, but suddenly every single organization is confidently assuring me that they're going to do a stellar job of it, if I just send them money? 

I'm really unhappy with this situation because we need to all work together to fight against the orange antichrist, but I can't trust that all these organizations "on our side" are really doing that- they might see it as an opportunity for themselves to profit off their donors who are scared and therefore more willing to give money.

And, I mean, if they're "just using this moment to get more donations" that's not necessarily a bad thing. If they are truly committed to fighting him, then they will need money, and now is a good opportunity to fundraise. That's not a bad thing.

I guess the issue is, different people have different opinions on what strategy to use to fight him, and just because some organization emails me to say "we're going to do everything we can to fight him" doesn't necessarily mean that their strategies are ones that I think will be effective and I would want to support.

Personally, the kinds of strategies I want to support are: 

• Directly working with people "on the ground" who are in danger because of conservative policies- ie, helping trans people in red states get health care, providing resources for immigrants to help them get housing and jobs, etc. I like this because it's local organizations who really understand people's needs and how to help them in practical ways.
• Lawyers challenging those policies in court. I like this because during the orange antichrist's first term, we did have a lot of success in the courts delaying or blocking his anti-human policies.

That's my thinking right now, but I am interested in learning about other strategies that might be effective- leave a comment if you have an opinion on this.

5. Protecting the Rights of Syrian Refugees (December 19) "Within twenty-four hours of the regime’s overthrow, nine European countries suspended asylum applications from Syrians."

6. Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam (December 22) [23-minute video] I remember seeing some youtube videos where Honey was advertised, a while ago- apparently a LOT of youtubers have done ads for this. They described it as a browser extension which finds coupon codes for you when you shop online- and it's free, there's no catch, you get free money. I remember thinking it sounded suspicious that it just gives you free money and there's no catch, but I couldn't figure out what was actually going on.

So, it turns out, here's what's shady about Honey:

• The way they make money is by getting the affiliate commission from the sale. (If you don't know what "affiliate commission" is: If you're a blogger or youtuber or whatever, and you share a link where someone can buy something, it could be an affiliate link, which means that if people click it and buy the thing, *you* get a cut of the money. [I do this here on the blog.] So what Honey is doing is replacing a cookie with its own cookie, so it will get the commission- possibly taking the affiliate commission away from whoever posted the affiliate link in the first place.)
• Also, Honey claims that it will always find the BEST coupon code for the buyer, but this is NOT true. Turns out, Honey makes deals with online stores about which coupon codes Honey will give to customers. In this way, it discourages the customers from searching for better coupon codes- Honey assures them that they're already getting the best price. Extremely shady!

(And I haven't used Honey, but my browser has a built-in tool that finds coupon codes, so now I'm wondering if that one that I use is equally shady.)

6. Biden commutes most federal death row sentences to life in prison before Trump takes office (December 23) 

Wedding Traditions They Don't Have in China

Maroon 5 playing at a wedding. From the music video for "Sugar." Image source.

The topic for the February 2024 Carnival of Aros is "The Meaning of 'Romance' Across Time and Place." I haven't written for the Carnival of Aros before, because I am totally the opposite of aromantic, but I'm an American living in China, married to a Chinese man, so I have some things to say about this one.

So, as I said, I'm the opposite of aromantic. In college I used to dream about the kind of wedding I wanted to have, because I had SO MUCH romantic desire, and wanted to find one magical romantic partner I could be with forever to fulfill that romantic desire, and I viewed the wedding traditions as important symbols of getting those desires fulfilled. 

Fast forward a few years, and I got engaged to a Chinese man (Hendrix). We had our wedding in the US, so we did all the American wedding traditions that I wanted, but we live in China so I had the chance to talk to Chinese people about Chinese wedding traditions, and I've attended weddings in China, and the traditions are very different! It was sort of surprising to me, how these traditions- which I viewed as big important romantic milestones that I couldn't live without- just totally DO NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. They have different traditions instead.

In this post I'll list a few of the traditions that were very important to me, and how they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT in China.

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Getting engaged

So, Hendrix proposed to me with a diamond ring and big romantic gesture, just like the American traditions say you should do. It was great! Very happy with that!

When I told my friends in the US, they were all like "How did he ask???!!!" expecting to hear a grand romantic story- and yes, I told them the grand romantic story. And my relatives were calling on the phone, telling him "welcome to the family!"

Then when I told friends in China, none of them were like "How did he ask?" And Hendrix's family members didn't really act like anything was different.

Nowadays in China, because of influence from western countries, people do propose to their girlfriends with a ring and romantic gesture. But this is kind of new thing; it's not at all an established tradition in Chinese culture- seems like the older generation doesn't have much of a concept of it.

No, in China, instead of getting engaged, I would say the sort-of equivalent thing is getting the marriage license.

See, in China, getting the marriage license (ie, getting legally married) is a completely separate thing from the wedding. What?! I was shocked when I found out about this. In the US, the wedding is the event at which you get legally married- that's the definition of a wedding. In China, this is not the case!

We ended up getting our marriage license in China (because of immigration reasons that made more sense than doing it in the US) and then having our wedding in the US. I was a bit worried... if my relatives knew that we were already legally married, would they think our wedding was not "real"?

I remember asking a Chinese friend how you define which day is your anniversary- since the day you get legally married is different than the wedding day. She didn't seem that concerned about it. She said you can decide for yourself which one is meaningful to you. She said she felt like, getting the marriage license was about just you and your partner, and then the wedding is something you do for your family, so for her, getting the marriage license was more important.

And since I was raised in purity culture, which made a big huge deal about how you can't have sex till marriage, I was super confused about "how do you know when you can have sex?" Is it when you get the marriage license, or is it after the wedding itself? (Fortunately I quit believing in "purity" and decided we can just make our own decision without having our wedding be the way we announce the world that we're about to have sex, eww.)

And the day we got our marriage license, Hendrix's relatives took us out for a fancy dinner. See, turns out that's the "welcome to the family" moment, from a Chinese perspective. Not when you get the engagement ring. (There are also Chinese traditions about the bride and groom's family negotiating about how much money the groom's family is going to give the bride's family, but we didn't do any of that.)

I remember a Chinese friend asking me about getting engaged and what it means in US culture, and he asked, "Do some people get married without getting engaged first?" And I interpreted that to mean if a couple just goes and elopes without telling anyone- and their family and friends would probably be unhappy about not being invited to the wedding. But actually I don't think that's what he was asking. I think he wasn't aware that it's not really possible to invite people to your wedding without being engaged- like, if you're planning a wedding and sending out invitations, you ARE engaged. He was probably thinking you get the marriage license, then you plan the wedding, then you have the wedding- and getting engaged sounded like an unnecessary step before that.

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The wedding dress

In US culture, shopping for the wedding dress is a big deal. Finding that one perfect dress- THE dress. And then there's a tradition that your partner isn't allowed to see the dress until the wedding day.

In China it's totally different.

First of all, at Chinese weddings, the tradition is that the bride wears a bunch of different outfits. The traditional color for weddings is red, so basically she wears a series of different red dresses- but now that China is borrowing [the appearance of] some traditions from western culture, many brides add a white dress to the mix too. So there's not like a "THE dress" - you wear a bunch of dresses, and I don't really know what the romantic/emotional significance of it is.

And here's what really shocked me: In China, the couple gets their "wedding photos" taken as a completely separate thing from the actual wedding itself. Really, "wedding photos" is not the right translation of "婚纱照"- I would translate it as "wedding dress photos." Because these are NOT photos from the wedding, they are photos of the couple wearing wedding clothes. This is something that's done before the wedding.

Totally shocking to me, because, what about the tradition that your spouse can't see your wedding dress before the big day? (Yeah, not a thing in China.) And also, the dress that the bride wears in the photos isn't even THE dress. You go to a photo studio and pick from the dresses they have there, and you wear that in the photos, and that has no relation at all to the dress(es) you actually wear on your wedding day. (In fact, I've been to weddings in China where they show a slideshow of photos of the couple, and these "wedding dress photos" are part of the slideshow- making it really obvious that they were taken beforehand and aren't photos from the actual wedding. This is completely normal in China.)

I remember when I found out about this, it made me feel like the wedding photos in China were "fake." Because it's not your actual wedding day, and that's not your actual wedding dress. But it's not "fake"- it's just that they have different traditions for this.

We went and got photos taken in China when we got our marriage license. We wore the traditional red clothes that the photo studio provided. My mother-in-law also wanted me to do photos wearing a white wedding dress, but I totally refused. I can't be wearing a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day and it's not my wedding dress- that would be a lie! The only reason I would ever do that would be maybe if I was shopping for dresses, trying on different ones, sending a photo to my sister to get her opinion- but beyond that, no, no way am I letting anyone see me in a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day.

So we just did the photos with the red Chinese clothes, and that was fine.

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Dancing

Dancing is my FAVORITE part of weddings. But in Chinese tradition, there's no dancing at a wedding at all. To some extent, for Chinese weddings that are more "westernized", they kinda-sorta add some dancing to it- the bride and groom have their first dance on stage, and the bride has the dance with her father, on stage- but it's basically just a performance on the stage, not something that you eventually get all the guests to join into. There's no dance floor, there's no hours and hours of everyone dancing.

Really surprising to me, because dancing with everybody was one of the things I looked forward to the MOST (and our wedding was in the US, we had a DJ and dance floor and everything, it was great) but in China it's just not a thing at all.

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And there are so many other wedding traditions which are completely different in China- I just discussed these 3 here because these were the ones that were most surprising to me, because they were extremely meaningful to me but just aren't part of Chinese tradition at all.

I'm writing this for the Carnival of Aros because it shows how romance is so culturally constructed. To some extent, there are things that will be the same in all cultures- most people have romantic feelings, most people fall in love- but the specific ways that those feelings manifest is super-dependent on the unique cultural symbols of romance, and those aren't universal at all. I spent so much time dreaming about my first dance at my wedding- there are cultures where people simply don't do that, because they don't have a first dance. They may have similar romantic feelings to me, but it doesn't cause them to dream about their first dance. It comes out in other ways.

So if you're aromantic and don't care about romantic traditions, well, whatever, billions of other people don't care about those specific traditions either. And even if you have romantic feelings, that doesn't mean you have to care about roses or diamond rings or whatever. All these things are just cultural symbols- there's no intrinsic reason they need to be viewed as "romantic."

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Related:

Getting Engaged Isn’t Exactly a Thing in China 

My Chinese Marriage License

Wedding Posts Round-Up

Blogaround

1. Reach, Throw, Row, Go (January 18) "A lesson in 'How to Save a Drowning Person' that started with an argument for Why You Should Want To Do That would meet with a kind of puzzled anger." It's about this: Feds demand Texas stop blocking Border Patrol agents access to border 

Also from The Slacktivist: We Don’t Live In ‘Bubbles’ (January 25) "Heck, if Chester A. Arthur had even said something so completely stupid in such an arrogant tone, then that’s all he’d be remembered for today. Historians would refer to President Arthur as 'the magnets guy' instead of just as, um, one of those guys who came between Grant and Teddy and probably won’t be on the final."

2. The Lives of China’s Hidden Workers, Through Their Own Camera Lens (January 25) "Instead, it is narrated by the people Sun calls the documentary’s 'co-directors,' from truck drivers and construction workers to fishermen and rice farmers — typical users of Kuaishou, which is more popular in China’s smaller cities and countryside than rival platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok."

(One quibble there: Tiktok is the international version of Douyin. Not the other way around.)

Also from Sixth Tone: Endangered Xizang Cattle Cloned For the First Time (January 30) "The latest national survey of livestock found only 19 Zhangmu cattle and 39 Apeijiaza cattle left in the country, with just one breeding bull remaining. According to Xinhua, the breeds are considered strategic resources for the country due to their ability to live on the snowy plateau at altitudes of more than 3,500 meters."

3. China, Singapore agree visa-free deal for travel stays of up to 30 days (January 25) China keeps adding more countries to the list! Great news for people from Singapore who want to travel to China.

4. American Family Radio Drops Alistair Begg Following Controversial Remarks About LGBTQ+ Weddings (January 24) "After confirming that the woman’s grandson understood that she doesn’t affirm his choice to marry a trans person, Begg said, 'Well then, okay. As long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony. And I suggest that you buy them a gift.'" Oh look, pastor Alistair Begg, who very much believes being trans is wrong, advises a grandma to go to her grandson's wedding to a trans person. Apparently this is not good enough for American Family Radio- what if someone thinks that attending the wedding means Grandma thinks being trans is okay? We can't have that!

Remember when I said that being evangelical means you have to throw queer people under the bus? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

5. Alabama man shook violently on gurney during first-ever nitrogen gas execution (January 27) [content note: death penalty]

6. From Scrooge McDuck to Zacchaeus to 21st century wealth inequality (January 29) "For far too long we’ve sequestered Zacchaeus inside a children’s song."

7. Brittany Watts, Ohio woman charged with felony after miscarriage at home, describes shock of her arrest (January 26) [content note: miscarriage] New details about how the hospital did not give her the medical care that she needed.

8. Uranus and Neptune are actually similar blues, 'true' color images reveal (January 5) Cool!

9. Red Lake considers a future without blood quantum (2023, via) "It's really not our traditional way. And in fact, it's a tool that was meant to divide our people to eliminate our people."

Blogaround

A white cat with a strawberry on its head. Image source.

1. The Problem With Rape Kits (posted March 8) [content note: rape] Oof, this is hard to read.

2. Battle lines form over social justice: Is it gospel or heresy? (posted September 6) "Statements that dismiss social justice send a message that the ongoing marginalization many minorities still experience and struggle against is of no concern to their fellow Christians. Or to God."

3. The New Hip Churches are Fooling Google. They Pop Up as “Gay-friendly” — it’s a Hoax. (posted September 17) "Ask the lead pastor “Do you perform weddings for gay couples?” If the answer isn’t, simply, “yes,” … if it begins with a lengthy prelude like “Now that’s complicated issue, let’s step back for minute to unpack it,” you have your answer: NO."

4. Pando, the Word’s Heaviest Organism, is an Ever-Growing Witness of an Ancient Earth (posted September 18) Cool!

5. Pixar Theory: How Dante being an Alebrije EXPLAINS everything! (posted September 6) "It resolves every single piece of plot convenience in the entire film."

6. Is it a Sin to Take Showers? (posted September 23) "[INITIATE YOUTH PASTOR VOICE] But teens lemme get real with you. Isn’t that how sin works, amen?"

7. Pastor: Christians Should Skip the Weddings of Couples That Had Premarital Sex (posted September 25) Well would you look at that. John Piper seems to think everyone's unmarried sex life is his business. This is my surprised face.

8. Somebody DIED, Pat Robertson (posted September 15) "The mind boggles at just how lacking in compassion someone must be to think that any god would rather spare some business buildings than a dozen lives and thousands of homes." And THIS is why I don't pray any more.

Blogaround

Lena Waithe at the Met Gala, wearing a giant rainbow flag cape as part of her Catholic-themed outfit. Image source.

1. What does the life of a mother mean to you Governor Bryant? (posted March 29) [content note: anti-choice politics that literally threatens women's lives] "I ask the politicians of Mississippi how sick must a pregnant woman be after 15 weeks to have an abortion in your state because I read your law and I don’t know?"

2. Which House Was Hagrid In? | Harry Potter Theory (posted May 1)

3. James H. Cone, Founder Of Black Liberation Theology, Dies At 79 (posted April 28)

And this post from 2015: Why James H. Cone's Liberation Theology Matters More Than Ever

I recently wrote a blog series reviewing Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree." American Christians should all read this book.

4. Carnival Of Aces: My Story Of Failing At Doing The Straight Thing (posted April 30) "I spend weeks dodging questions from straight relatives about how the day compared to my dream wedding. I don’t tell them the only dream wedding I ever had was my wedding. I don’t tell them the only dream wedding night I was allowed to have according to the things they taught me as a child was a nightmare."

5. Disability in Animation: Finding Nemo (posted 2014) [content note: spoilers for "Finding Nemo"] "At the same time though, it becomes clear that he does think there’s a lot of stuff that Nemo can’t do, and he’s not really letting Nemo figure out for himself what he can and can’t do. Now, that’s not a great attitude, and it’s not necessarily how you should handle a kid’s disability, but it is good that the movie shows it. Because while it may not be the right attitude, it’s a very common one, and the entire rest of the movie is basically spent deconstructing it."

6. Ace Survivors as Rhetorical Devices (part three): The One True Narrative of Sexual Violence Against Aces (posted 2015) [content note: sexual assault] "Other narratives are less politically useful, and so aces who don’t know if their (a)sexuality was influenced by trauma, asexuals who were assaulted as children, aces who were assaulted for reasons entirely unrelated to their asexuality, aces who were assaulted by other aces, aces who have been assaulted multiple times or who have experienced multiple forms of sexual violence, etc. are shoved out of the way."

7. Visiting Disney World is the Modern Version of Making a Medieval Pilgrimage (posted 2016)

8. And the 2018 Reader Survey will be open until June 9~ go ahead and take the survey if you haven't already~ Thanks!

We did a dirty thing. We prayed at her wedding.

Bride and groom cake topper. Image source.

Back when I was in college, 2 of my friends- let's call them Angela and Adam- got married. I was there at their wedding, tagging along with another couple, let's call them Harvey and Helen.

Here's what you have to know: This was back when I was a Real True Christian. I was a leader in our campus Christian group, and Harvey and Helen were leaders too. The three of us were good evangelicals who believed the correct things, went to the correct kind of church, and worked really hard at the things that good Christians are supposed to do.

Angela was a Mormon. I had never met any Mormons before, but I knew the correct Christian teaching on it: It's a cult, it's evil, it's not Christian at all, haha let's make fun of Joseph Smith and his magic glasses. (You see, they are not real Christians because they don't use the correct jargon when talking about the Trinity, or something like that.) But then I met Angela, and she said Mormons are Christians.

I was all about evangelism back then- I loved to talk to anyone and everyone about religion. And as I talked with Angela about Christianity, it seemed like she basically believed the same stuff I did. About Jesus, about having a relationship with God... She didn't drink coffee or wear shirts that showed her shoulders, and she often said she was a "daughter of God" which isn't exactly the language my church would have used- but those were just superficial things. It seemed to me like the deeper, more important beliefs- the way she prayed, the way she related to God in general- were more or less the same as me.

I asked other Christians (including Harvey and Helen) about Mormonism. They told me all sorts of bizarre beliefs that Mormons supposedly had- apparently after you die, you become a god and control your own planet and have a bunch of wives, or something. I took this information and went back and asked Angela's Mormon missionary friends about it. Kind of as a way to prove they were wrong and I was right... but my heart wasn't really in it. Sure, maybe they have some weird little beliefs, but did that really matter? They really seemed to be committed to God in pretty much the same way I was.

I didn't know what to think. The correct Christian belief was that Mormonism is a cult and they are not Christians- the other student leaders reminded me of this. I knew it was the "right answer" that a good Christian like me should believe. But Angela was my friend, and she said she was a Christian, and she seemed pretty Christian to me. Eventually, I believed her.

Then she started dating Adam, who wasn't religious. I was immediately negative about it- he was going to be a bad influence, he was going to make her faith weaker, it's bad to be unequally yoked, you know, the standard Christian responses to the idea of dating a non-Christian. Eventually, though, Adam did become a Christian- specifically, he became a Mormon. I was negative about that too- was his faith really genuine, or was it based on his feelings for Angela instead of his relationship with Jesus?

(Please note that Adam never showed any signs of being a bad person or treating Angela badly. My one and only objection to their relationship was that he might not be committed to Jesus enough. Because in the ideology I followed, that's all that mattered. I didn't learn anything about healthy relationships or how to recognize red flags.)

And I told Angela this. I told her I didn't think it was a good idea to date a non-Christian. I remember at some point after Adam became a Christian, I somehow got into a conversation with the two of them about how I didn't approve of their relationship. They didn't seem to share my concern; they said everything was fine. And now I regret what I said, I regret the way I judged other people's personal lives- but that was what I was taught to do, as a good Christian.

Angela told me about how they were making plans for the future, how she decided to change her major so she could graduate earlier and then they would get married. I was carefully neutral in my response. I cared about her as a friend, but I didn't want to ever give the impression that I had any positive feelings about her dating Adam. You know, "hate the sin, love the sinner." When they got engaged, I was also carefully neutral. Saying things like "Wow!" or "That's a big deal!" or even "That's exciting!" but nothing that meant I thought their relationship was a good thing.

So anyway, I ended up at their wedding, along with Harvey and Helen.

And we did a very bad thing.

After we had eaten dinner and danced a little bit, the three of us were just sitting around, and we decided to pray for Angela and Adam. I can't remember any details about who prayed for what- except this one: Helen prayed that someday, Angela and Adam would find Jesus.

Wow, I feel dirty just thinking about that. I was there, I was part of that prayer, ugh, what a dirty thing to pray. Basically, Helen was saying, "God, you and I both know that Mormons aren't real Christians. I hope someday you help Angela and Adam realize that they're wrong and I'm right." Such a nasty nasty prayer. What a low and dirty thing- to claim that Angela and Adam didn't know Jesus, and more than that, to fold your hands and bow your head and come right into the presence of God and say it.

I would never have prayed something like that. I knew it was the "right answer", I knew that as a good Christian, I was supposed to believe Mormons aren't Christians. But I didn't really believe it. I knew Angela. She was a Christian. I had tried to believe the "right answer", I had tried to find huge problems with her beliefs, but I couldn't. All the differences were about superficial things, it seemed. At the time though, it wouldn't have occurred to me to question any of the "correct Christian beliefs"... I guess I basically believed Angela and Adam were Christians, but I wasn't confident enough to say it out loud.

But there was Helen, so totally confident that Angela and Adam weren't Christians- and that God agreed with her that Angela and Adam weren't Christians. It makes me sick.

We did a very bad thing. We prayed at their wedding.

Actually, I do remember one good thing I did at their wedding: I decided not to be negative about their relationship anymore, to stop judging them. I found Angela and told her, "I'm so happy for you guys, you look so happy together!" That was the first time I ever said anything good about their relationship, the first time I ever hinted that maybe it was a good thing that they were together. I decided it wasn't my job to police people's relationships and tell them whether I approved or not. I decided to just accept reality- that they are married and that they're happy and this is a good thing.

I'm telling this story to show you this is what we did, as good Christians. This is what I thought was normal. Judging my friend's relationship choices because her boyfriend wasn't the "right" religion. Insisting that someone's not a real Christian, even when they tell you they're Christian, even when they regularly attend church and bible study, even when they pray, even when they tell you all about their relationship with God. Because we know other people's lives better than they know themselves. And talking to God as if it's obvious that God agrees we're right and they're wrong. Nasty, nasty prayers.

Wedding Posts Round-Up

A Star-Trek-themed wedding cake. It has the Starfleet badge, cake toppers of a man and woman in Starfleet uniforms, and the words "Live long and prosper." Image source.

HEY DID I MENTION HENDRIX AND I GOT MARRIED THIS YEAR?

As an ex-evangelical, ex-purity-culture feminist, I figured I would have a lot of opinions about experiencing the actual reality of a wedding and all the ways it's different than the "ideal" I was taught in purity culture or absorbed from mainstream society. So I said I was going to write a LOT of blog posts about getting married. And I did.

Here's a list of all of them. (You can also find them in the "engaged" tag.)

Feminism and Traditions
We're Not Doing the Garter Thing
Kiss the Groom
Here's What We're Doing With Our Last Names
The "Groom's Cake" Tradition is So Sexist
I Do Care About the Invitations
I Don't Expect My Wedding to be "The Happiest Day of My Life"
On Perfect Weddings

Marriage in Chinese Culture
My Chinese Marriage License
Getting Engaged Isn’t Exactly a Thing in China
Giving Candy to All My Coworkers Because I'm Getting Married

Purity Culture and Breaking the "Good Christian" Rules
I'm Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
You know that whole "white dress means virginity"? Yeah, not actually a real thing.
He's Not "My Future Husband"
We Don't Need Anyone's Permission to Love
So I Gave My Fiance the "Letters To My Future Husband"
Worth the Wait?
Now that I'm engaged, I'm all like "hell no" on the whole "wifely submission" thing
I Told Them We Already Live Like We're Married
In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage
I'm dating a nonchristian and I want to marry him. Here's why I believe that's not a problem.
I Know We'll Have a Good Marriage, BECAUSE We're Not Pure
On Marriage and Knowing Each Other

What Marriage Means To Me
I'm not sure if a wedding is a beginning or an end
I Can't Write Wedding Vows Without Thinking About Divorce

I Told Them We Already Live Like We're Married

A bride and groom. Image source.

At our wedding ceremony, I read out loud this thing that I wrote. It was about how Hendrix and I already love each other and are committed to each other. We already support each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. We already live together and share everything we have. At the wedding, when we make vows, we're not promising something completely new and different; we're stating out loud the promises that already exist in the way we live every day.

It was important to me to read this at my wedding because it's extremely anti-purity-culture. In purity culture, you can't love each other fully until you're married. In terms of tangible rules, that means you can't have sex or live together until you're married. But it's more than that- there's this romantic ideal of "two becoming one" and that sort of thing, as if the wedding day marks a massive change in the very nature of the relationship. Like it changes it into a completely different thing. Before the wedding, you're not a family yet, you're not 100% committed, and then after the wedding you have fully given yourselves to each other, you're "one flesh"*, having awesome honeymoon sex that's awesome because you waited and all that.

Back when I was in purity culture, I believed this myth about romantic relationships having "phases" which were very distinct and the transitions were marked by big, obvious events. Something like this:

1. Dating: You need to "guard your heart." You should be careful about loving your partner "too much" because there's a possibility that you might break up and then that would be the end of the world. Allowable physical contact: Holding hands, hugging.
2. Engaged: It's finally okay to be in love, you don't have to "guard your heart" anymore, because there's no longer any risk of breaking up. Finally you can let yourself feel your emotions, happy emotions of love and attraction. Allowable physical contact: Kissing. DEFINITELY NOT ANYTHING INVOLVING ANYONE'S GENITALS.
3. Married: Wow finally you can fully love- share your heart, your body, your home, your possessions, your dreams. Allowable physical contact: Sex. But not anything "depraved" like porn or non-monogamy.

Different purity-culture adherents would, of course, sort the "allowable physical contact" differently between those 3 categories. (This is the subject of endless "where is the line?" discussions in youth groups everywhere.) But my point is, in purity culture I envisioned a system where there were strict rules for physical contact with one's partner, and those rules would change drastically, instantaneously on the day you get an engagement ring and on the day you have your wedding. The rules about the physical side were the most obvious part of this "three phases" perspective, but the emotional side of the relationship would also change drastically, I believed. The relationship would suddenly become a completely different type of relationship.

That's not reality though. Here in the real world, relationships grow and change gradually. People live as committed partners for several years before the wedding. Couples have discussions about whether or not they want to get married- the proposal doesn't just come out of nowhere. It's not a fairy tale where you just meet Prince Charming one day and then you're suddenly in happily-ever-after, never look back.

But even though that's not what a wedding really is, I couldn't help but feel like that's what we were pretending. I felt like a wedding is sort of a performance where you come in as two separate people and leave as a couple, as if you want your guests to believe the myth that it is a big drastic change in the entire nature of the relationship. I felt like there was this ideal we were pretending to follow, where we don't fully love each other and share our whole lives with each other until the wedding day. Like, yeah we know that's not reality, but we should be ashamed of our reality and at least put on an act.

So that's why I had to read my little reading at the wedding. To explicitly say that no, we're NOT drastically changing our relationship today. We're already committed to each other, and our wedding ceremony is a way to show the world our love and commitment- it's not somehow the cause of that love and commitment. I felt a bit weird, like I was telling everybody "our wedding's not real, because we already love each other for better or worse." But I had to do it, for me.

Probably none of the wedding guests really understood what it meant. They were probably just like "aww that's nice." For me it was a very anti-purity-culture statement, and there's no way I, Perfect Number, could have had a wedding that didn't include some anti-purity-culture statement. But I didn't mention purity culture specifically. I didn't mention sex. I did say we live together, which I know is quite the dog whistle for good church people, even though it's the most boring, normal thing for "secular" people.

It's important to me that, at our wedding ceremony, I stated that Hendrix and I were already fully committed to each other and the wedding isn't the start of that. Part of me felt weird, like I was saying our wedding isn't real, and that's not something I should admit in front of all the guests; I should at least pretend to follow the "ideal." But that's exactly why I needed to do that. I don't believe in purity culture anymore, and I don't believe the "ideal" understanding of a wedding is one where the entire relationship changes in one day.

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* As a white woman married to a Chinese man, I have some opinions about this whole "one flesh" thing. My "flesh" is very different from my husband's. Like literally a different color and not the same at all. And no matter how long we're married, that's never going to change. We're not "one flesh."

Worth the Wait?

Bride and groom. Image source.

DID I MENTION I GOT MARRIED? Such a good decision. Being married to Hendrix is great.

And now I have some opinions about "worth the wait."

"Worth the wait" is a phrase used in purity culture. It means that if you wait and don't ever have sex until your wedding day, it will be, apparently, "worth the wait."

Now let's examine this concept and see if makes any sense. First of all, it's only meaningful to say something is "worth the wait" if one also had the option to not wait, and waiting and not waiting yield two different outcomes which can be compared.

For example, let's say you are looking forward to "Star Wars: The Last Jedi", which will be released in the US on December 15, 2017. Suppose you wait and wait until that day, and you go see the movie, and you love it- would it be correct to say it was "worth the wait"? NO. Because, assuming you don't work for Disney, you had no control over when the movie was released. You had no other option besides waiting until December 15, and your ability to see the movie on that day is not dependent on anything you did during that waiting time. "Worth the wait" means the decision to wait was a good one- it makes no sense if there was no decision.

If, on the other hand, you work at Disney and you ask yourself "should we just throw together a crappy movie, or should we spend enough time on it so it's actually good?" then the concept of "worth the wait" is meaningful. You are making the CHOICE to have the fans wait longer, but you believe the final product will be so good that it's "worth the wait."

Continuing with this example, suppose you are a devoted Star Wars fan who dresses up as an Ewok and camps out at the movie theater 24 hours in advance so you can be the first one in to the midnight showing. Then you are making the choice to wait there for 24 hours, and the result is different than if you hadn't made that choice. (Maybe if you hadn't come and waited in line for hours, you wouldn't be able to get a seat at the first midnight showing and you'd have to watch it the next day instead.) For some people, it's worth the wait, and others are more like "ain't nobody got time for that, I'll just see it on a different day, it doesn't matter."

My point is, it only makes sense to say something is "worth the wait" if you also had the option of NOT waiting, and the result from not waiting is different than the result from waiting. It only makes sense to discuss whether something is "worth" some cost if you can compare it to the result if you hadn't chosen to pay that cost.

All right, so when we talk about if sex is "worth the wait," let me first say this: I believe I never even had the option of having sex until after I started dating Hendrix. I was sheltered and clueless and scared of the idea of sex- it was described by purity-culture teachers as something that just *happened* suddenly when people lose control of their bodies. And I was asexual and didn't know it. I dated other boys before Hendrix, but back then I viewed sex as a horrific sin that OF COURSE was not a normal thing to do with one's boyfriend. In that mindset, there was no chance I could have consented to sex.

So to me it doesn't make sense to talk about the concept of "worth the wait" as it applies to the period of my life before I met Hendrix, because back then I WASN'T choosing to not have sex. There were so many mental and emotional barriers that it's just not realistic to say that sex is a thing I could have chosen back then.

In fact, I always used to wonder what people meant when they said "it's so hard to stay pure." That statement has 2 possible meanings:

1. "Because I don't have a sexual partner, I feel lonely, and I don't like living this way."
2. "I have many opportunities to have sex, but I know I must say no to all of them, even though I wish I could say yes."

I could very much relate to Statement 1 (though, as it turns out, I don't actually have sexual attraction, though I have strong romantic and sensual attraction). Statement 2 was... sometimes it seemed like that's what people meant, when they said "it's so hard to stay pure." Like when they would talk about how very few people are able to successfully get to their wedding day as virgins. But it didn't make any sense to me. I wasn't choosing not to have sex; I couldn't imagine any circumstance in my day-to-day life where the opportunity to have sex would present itself. (I was, however, very much CHOOSING to stomp down my romantic desires and "guard my heart." But that's a subject for another post.)

I remember one time, in high school, I overheard some gossip about how so-and-so's boyfriend is cheating on her. And I was very confused- did they mean "cheating" as in "having sex with someone else"? Because, we're just high school kids, surely nobody is having sex. (As an asexual, I have to ask: Were people having sex in high school? But... how? Like I know the statistics that say yes, a lot of people in high school are having sex. But I just... can't imagine ... I'm not judging or anything, I'm just ... sex was the farthest thing from my mind back then- I only thought about it in the context of "don't do it." And not because any part of me desired to do it, but because church people made such a big deal about "don't do it.")

(No joke y'all, when I first heard the song, "Let's Talk About Sex," I was baffled at what on earth there could be to talk about. Just "we're not going to do it"- what else could there possibly be, on the topic of sex, to discuss with your boyfriend or girlfriend? I seriously could not think of anything.)

(And then when I started reading feminist blogs, many of them talked about how it's important to have sex ed in school, and I was all "yes I agree, it's good to be educated about health and your own body, we don't have to be scared of information like I was in purity culture." And then, much later, I discovered that many of these feminist bloggers believed that it was important to have good sex ed for students AS A PRACTICAL THING BECAUSE MANY OF THOSE STUDENTS WILL BE HAVING SEX. And I was just TOTALLY ASTONISHED. I had NO IDEA that one of the main concerns in the sex-ed debate was "a lot of kids will be having sex, we need to teach them how to be healthy when they do." I had NO IDEA. My opinion was more along the lines of "purity culture taught me to be scared of my own body- how about we don't teach kids that".)

(I did not mean to make this a blog post about "All the Times Perfect Number Didn't Realize She Was Asexual" but it seems that's what's happened.)

ALL RIGHT MOVING ON. For the term "worth the wait" to be meaningful, there must be 2 different outcomes being compared: one where you chose to wait, and one where you didn't. But is there a difference in your married sex if you had sex before marriage vs if you didn't?

Purity culture claims that there IS a difference. They say that if you had sex with an ex and broke up, you'll never get over it, and it will haunt you for the whole entire future of your marriage. They said when you have sex with your spouse, you'll be comparing them to your ex, and you won't be able to really give all your love to your spouse.

I can't speak from experience on this- I've only had sex with Hendrix, who is now my husband, but I have heard from people who have had sex with more than one person during their lifetime, and they laugh at the absurdity of "it will haunt you forever and you'll never get over it and you'll always be comparing."

And another thing: Sometimes purity-culture proponents phrase it as, "you're worth the wait." Like in the "Purity Bear" video. I cannot find the original (if anybody can find the original, PLEASE send me a link, that thing is a masterpiece of creepiness) but here is a remake, and believe me, the original is pretty much exactly as bizarre and awkward. (Update: Thanks so much to the reader who found a link to the original!) "You're worth the wait." Instead of "sex is worth the wait", it's "you're worth the wait"- essentially equating "you" with "having sex with you." Creepy as hell, but yes, this is totally consistent with all the f***ed-up language about "giving yourself away" as a euphemism for sex. Purity culture is full of that kind of crap. (And then they turn around and tell queer people "don't define yourself by your sexuality." Yeah, okay.)

"You're worth the wait" makes no sense. Because there aren't two different possible versions of you, one that's the result of waiting and one that isn't. Purity-culture proponents present it like it's about respecting and valuing someone, when you refuse to have sex with them- but this can't be what is meant by "you're worth the wait." If your partner doesn't have sex with you now, and then they do have sex with you on your wedding day, are they getting a better "you" than if they did have sex with you before and also on the wedding day? Isn't the "you" on the wedding night the same "you"?

"You're worth the wait" is only a meaningful statement if premarital sex literally damages a person and makes them less valuable. Not just damages their sex life, but actually DAMAGES and REDUCES THEIR VALUE AS A PERSON. (Which, yeah, actually that is exactly what purity culture teaches.)

Anyway what I want to say is, I didn't wait til my wedding day to have sex, and I'm glad I didn't. After the wedding Hendrix and I came back to the hotel room, and I was in the shower washing off the sweat and makeup and thinking "wow I'm SO GLAD I'm not getting ready to have sex for the first time right now." It would have been one more thing to think about and worry about on an already-busy day. And it would have meant that, at that point, I would have still been living under the weight of worry and fear over the questions "what is sex and will it actually ruin my life?"- thank goodness I got those resolved YEARS before the wedding. And also, turns out sex is just getting together with someone else and stimulating each other's genitals, it's not a mind-blowing amazing thing, it's just, like, exactly as weird as "getting together with someone else and stimulating each other's genitals" sounds. Also, really glad I figured out I'm asexual and, because I had sex way before the wedding day, I didn't have to spend all that time looking forward to and obsessing over something that actually turned out not to be that interesting.

Wow, can you imagine if we "waited" and then had sex on the wedding night- I would have been like "wait, that's what sex is? Yeah there's no reason we couldn't have done that a long time ago. Would have saved me a lot of worrying."

(Perhaps for some people, they choose not to have sex before marriage and it is "worth the wait." It depends on the specifics of your situation. For me, "waiting" would have been terrible for my mental health.)

You know what was worth the wait though? The wedding. We were engaged for a year and a half, and that felt like a really long engagement- but it legitimately did require that much time to plan such a good wedding. We're in China and the wedding was in the US- and I'm only in the US twice a year. I needed to look at venues and get a dress, and those are things that had to be done in the US. And people had to plan for international travel, get visas, all that. And I wanted it to be in the summer instead of at Christmas (those are the only two options for when I would be in the US) because I have a bunch of extended family who are much more able to travel in the summer.

It really had to take that much time to get all this together. And the wedding was so amazing. I'm glad everything went the way it did. If we had tried to throw something together in 6 months or a year, if I had to find a dress in China without my mom and sisters, if we had to just pick a venue without looking at it first, if we had to find a different photographer (because the one we got probably would have been booked already if we were working on a shorter timescale), etc- the wedding wouldn't have been as good.

See, a wedding is the kind of thing you (in theory) only do once, and it takes a huge amount of time, money, and effort- a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Sex, not so much. I'm glad I had sex before marriage. It SO would NOT have been "worth the wait."

On Marriage and Knowing Each Other

A couple's AT-AT cosplay. Image source.

So I'm married now. And I thought married people totally know each other- but we don't. And I thought being married would mean we're perfect Christians who always sacrifice to serve each other- but we're not.

Purity culture always made a big deal about sex being the ultimate way to know someone and be vulnerable with them and give yourself to them. That was why they said you're only allowed to have sex when you're married- because if you had sex with some ex in the past, then that ex knew you in the deep way that only your spouse was supposed to know you.

And I've heard Christians talk about how if you have sex with someone and then break up with them, it's the most devastating thing ever. I specifically remember one Christian speaker who said "when someone knows every curve of your body, and then they reject you..." But that's ridiculous. As close and intimate as sex is, it's mostly about knowing someone's body. Really knowing a person is so much more than that. By having sex, you know someone in a unique way that maybe nobody else (or very few people) have known them, but that doesn't mean you know what's really important about them. It doesn't mean you know them better than their friends or family.

I can understand why many people would only choose to be known in a sexual way by someone whom they're also very close with in other ways. (That's what I choose too, being asexual and all.) But that doesn't mean having sex is somehow equivalent to being truly known, such that a breakup after having sex is by definition more painful than if you didn't have sex.

(Also I have heard pastors say "sex is the highest form of communication", which, like, what does that even mean? As an asexual, umm, no.)

Anyway my point is, coming from a purity culture background, I basically understood the phrases "you're married", "you're having sex with them", and "you know them fully" to be equivalent. But now I'm married to Hendrix and I don't know everything about him. And how could I? Even though we're married, we'll always be 2 different people, with our own independent minds.

Back when I was in purity culture and dreaming about "my future husband", I imagined that he would read my journals. Because I would be totally okay with him knowing everything, no secrets. And now I don't have a journal anymore; I have a blog, but Hendrix doesn't read my blog. It's all in English, and mostly about a particular subculture of American Christianity that he doesn't have any experience with at all. (Yes, he can read English, but he doesn't really want to spend so much of his spare time reading such a huge amount of text that's not his first language.) But I talk to him about my blog all the time. If I have feelings about something I'm writing about, I tell him and he listens. And that works. I can just tell him the things that I want him to know. He doesn't have to read the whole entire thing.

Here's another example: I've read articles where someone was writing about some childhood trauma she had experienced, and she mentioned in her article about telling her husband about it, because she had never told him before- and I was so confused. Because aren't married people supposed to totally know each other? How could the husband not already know?

But with Hendrix and I, yeah of course there are tons of things that have happened to us in the past that we haven't told each other about. Not because they're secrets, but because we just never happened to mention them to each other. Maybe at some point I'll have a bunch of feelings about something that happened to me a long time ago, and then I'll tell Hendrix, because he is so sweet and caring and I like to tell him how I feel. But otherwise, yeah sure there could be things I've never told him about, just because I don't really think about them.

We know everything about each other's daily habits. I know what kind of food he likes, what kind of clothes he wears, his favorite music and movies and TV shows and websites. All that stuff about each other's day-to-day lives, we know fully. He can often predict what I'm going to say, which is kind of annoying and kind of hilarious.

He doesn't really know what I do at my job though. I'm an engineer, he's not. I tell him about what I do at work, but he doesn't really understand it.

And actually, there are a lot of areas where my husband doesn't have the necessary background experience to really totally understand me. And that's why I need ex-evangelical friends. I need American friends. I need my family. I need math nerd friends. I need friends who make fan theories about Disney princesses. I need friends who know the appropriate things to yell at the TV while watching football. And it's a good thing that I have friends who can understand those parts of me in a way my husband can't. It's not like some kind of competition where someone is threatening my husband because they understand some particular aspect of me better than he does.

Also, purity culture led me to believe that being married would mean I'm a perfect Christian. How many times have I heard people questioning why God hasn't set them up with their designated future spouse yet, and the answer given by good church people is "God wants you to work on your own character right now. Don't try to find the right person- try to BECOME the right person."

Or that absurd advice about two people both following God so hard and that's how they end up getting together. Here are some completely awful images I've seen promoting this crap:

Image text: "A woman's heart should be so lost in God that a man needs to seek him in order to find her." Image source.

An equilateral triangle with God at the top corner and a boyfriend and girlfriend at the bottom corners. There are arrows that indicate when the boyfriend and girlfriend are moving towards each other on the bottom edge of the triangle, that's the "wrong focus" and when they are both moving up the sides towards God, that's the "right focus". Image source.

This triangle thing is telling us that when both partners are working on moving closer to God, they actually become closer to each other too. Blahhh.

Back when I was on fire for Jesus, I actually hated this kind of stuff, because it presents God as a means to an end. People would ALWAYS talk about these memes in the context of "you are sad that you are single now, but here is what you should work on in order to get God to bring your future husband to you." I always felt like they were saying I need to pretend I only care about God and don't care about getting a boyfriend, in order to fool God into giving me one.

All this advice about "don't focus on finding the right person, focus on being the right person" or "God wants to work on you more first before you meet your future spouse" implies that people who are married have already achieved perfect-Christian status. Like marriage is some kind of reward God gives you when you become a good enough Christian. Ugh. Gross. (And a lot of single people have written about how church often treats single people really badly.)

People don't get married by becoming perfect Christians. The only thing you need in order to get married is a person who wants to marry you (in some places there are restrictions on gender too) and money for a wedding. That's it. It has nothing to do with being "godly." Yes, you can make a case that it's not a good idea to just find someone who's willing to marry you- instead you should spend enough time to get to know them and make sure you're compatible- but some people do get married "too young" or "for the wrong reasons" and God doesn't stop it.

Also I've heard pastors talk about how a husband and wife love each other totally and always serve each other. I remember one Christian speaker who talked about how sometimes in the night, when she wanted a glass of water, she would ask her husband to get up and get one for her, and he has to do it because he is required to love his wife sacrificially. (She added that she probably shouldn't do that to him too much, it's kind of taking advantage of him.) Basically that's what I thought it would be like being married- but Hendrix and I aren't like that at all. Yes, we do a lot of little nice things for each other, but we don't do EVERYTHING, ALL the time. He would probably say "why can't you get your own water?"

(On a related note, I can tell you that right now our sink is full of dishes that have been accumulating for several days, and neither of us has decided to be "self-sacrificing" and "serve" by washing them. Probably when there are no more clean cups, one of us will wash them.)

We're basically the same people we were before we got married. We love each other and do a lot of nice, loving things for each other, but it's not like I'm spending all my spare time asking myself "how can I love and serve him more?" He's fine, he can take care of himself.

(Yeah maybe "good Christians" could argue that the reason Hendrix and I aren't "perfect Christians" even though we're married is we didn't follow the "rules" and do it "God's way." Hendrix isn't even a Christian. So, you can believe that explanation if you want.)

So we don't fully know each other, and we're not in some kind of "sacrificial love" utopia. Now someone might say "well you've only been married for a month, of course you're not there yet, you have no idea what marriage is really like." And yes, that's probably true. But my point is, purity culture didn't teach that this is something that you gradually get to after years and years of being together. They said knowing each other can be accomplished by just having sex one time- they didn't say it in those words exactly, but that's the rationale behind "if you had sex with some ex when you were a teenager, it threatens the entire future of your marriage." (Which is EXPLICITLY TAUGHT by purity culture.) And they taught that marriage is the reward after you become a good enough Christian- which means that at the start of your marriage, you'll already be at that perfect-Christian level.

But it's not like that, and OF COURSE it's not like that. A wedding isn't some kind of magical thing that completely changes who you are. It's a big deal, yes, but not like how they described it in church. 

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Related:
If A Wife Is Required To Have Sex, That's Not "Intimacy"

On Perfect Weddings

Bride wearing a stormtrooper helmet. Image source.

Did I mention I got married?!!! It was awesome. The whole day was so incredibly amazing and happy, and I felt like it was perfect.

It wasn't perfect though, not in a literal sense. I felt like it was perfect- and what I mean by that is, I was so completely happy about everything that I barely even noticed the things that didn't go "perfectly." I didn't have a feeling like "this is pretty good, but it could have been better if this and that had gone differently."

There was only one issue which was serious enough to be a potential crisis: My dress was SO TIGHT. I put it on before the ceremony and it looked AMAZING and I'm thinking, I can't really breathe normally in this dress. After a few minutes I felt light-headed and I'm wondering if I'm going to keel over during the ceremony. My sisters, my mom, and I did some problem-solving and figured out that if we don't zip up the back all the way, it's a lot more comfortable and I would be able to breathe. So that's what we did: I got married in a dress that had the back zipper gaping open. During the ceremony I had a white slip on under it so the hole wasn't noticeable, but then for the reception I took off the slip and my skin was showing. Several days later I'm looking at photos of me dancing and I'm like "oh it was noticeable" and my family is like "lolololol YES of course, it was a giant hole in the back of your dress, yes it was 'noticeable.'"

But the point is, we solved that problem and everything went fine and I didn't feel bad about it at all. Several of the guests reassured me that "it just looks like a keyhole back, some wedding dresses have an open back, people probably just thought it was a keyhole back," which, first of all I had never heard of a "keyhole back" so, okay whatever, and second, it kind of felt like they were trying too hard to reassure me that it wasn't a bad thing. As if they were worried I would be really distressed about it and they needed to help me feel better. (Note: I just googled what a "keyhole back" is. Uh no it didn't look like that. It looked like I forgot to zip the back of my dress.)

So we only had one thing that was a potential crisis. But for the purposes of this blog post about "perfect weddings," I'll list a bunch of other things that happened that weren't "perfect": My veil fell off several times during the ceremony, and one of the bridesmaids kept trying to stick it back on until she just gave up after the third or fourth time (and I thought it was HILARIOUS). There was an edit I made to one of the lines in the vows, a few days before the wedding, that didn't make it into the final version that was read at the ceremony. After the part in the ceremony where the parents stand up, the officiant didn't tell them to sit down, so they just stood there awkwardly for the first bit of the ceremony. Hendrix tried to put his ring on my finger at first, and I had to whisper "that's yours" at him in Chinese. We made some changes to the design of the cake, a few weeks before the wedding, but the cake that showed up was our original design instead. The DJ said our groomsman's name wrong when introducing the toasts. The song "Toxic" was not played at the reception- like how can you have a wedding where you don't dance to "Toxic"? (I gave the DJ a giant list of songs and he wasn't able to get through all of them. Not his fault.)

It feels weird to list all these "imperfect" things though, because they didn't really matter. It wasn't "perfect," but that doesn't mean it was in any way inferior or less enjoyable than a hypothetical wedding where these details had gone "right." Your mileage may vary- everybody's wedding is different, and everybody has different feelings about the importance of each part. And it's totally fine to be unhappy about something that didn't go according to plan. My point is that a wedding isn't going to be "perfect" in a literal sense, and that shouldn't be the goal anyway.

And another thing: Your wedding guests aren't the set of people you love the most in the world. Of course you want to invite all the people you love the most, but then practical things come into play, like deciding which relatives to invite, and if you invite one cousin then you have to invite all of them, and this person lives too far away so they won't realistically be able to come and we don't want them to feel like they're obligated to send a gift, etc etc etc. And then after you send out the invitations, the people who say yes aren't the people who love you the most; they're the people who are able to get themselves to that particular location on that particular date. People who live close to your wedding location, or have the time and money to travel. People who weren't busy with something else that day. Poor Hendrix, he invited a lot of people from China who weren't able to come. We didn't have a "bride's side" and "groom's side" because the groom's side would have been pathetically sparse. As for me, there were some people I wanted to see there who weren't able to come, and some friends that I haven't seen in 5 years who were able to come and I was so happy about that.

There's this ideal that a wedding is a big party with all the people you love the most, but it's really not. Some of them won't be able to come, just for their own personal reasons, and that's okay. And then there could be other people you weren't expecting, but end up making your wedding so fun with their presence. Like my cousin's boyfriend, whom we will call Kyle. He was so much fun on the dance floor, and he took a ton of great photos and gave them to me afterward. Back when we made the guest list, we weren't thinking about him at all; he was just there as a +1 for my cousin. But now I have these fun memories with him and that's great.

We're never going to get that exact group of people all together again. And that's okay. Just enjoy the moment while we can.

So was it "the happiest day of my life"? I don't know, I was too busy getting married to think about "so what about the day we got a puppy, back when I was 13, is this happier than that or not?" Why would you need to compare one happy day to another? Why does it matter which day is "the happiest day of your life"? Your wedding doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be the best in every aspect. There will be other happy days in the future. There will be other fun parties. There will be more memories to be made, and more opportunities to see those loved ones who weren't able to come to the wedding. There will be more chances to dance to "Toxic." (Full disclosure: I do this alone in my apartment on a weekly basis.) It's not like it's your only chance to throw a big fun party. There's not really anything that's exactly the same as a wedding, but that's okay.