Donate to Formerly Incarcerated People

Clip-art image I found for prisoner reentry- it shows 2 clip-art people getting out of prison and starting to walk down a road that leads to a cute house, but there is a barrier on the road. Image source.

So, I read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [affiliate link] (my review is here) and now the question is, what should we do about it? The book says that meaningful change can't happen through gradual steps- the entire system needs to be overturned. This is true, but, for now there must at least be some small things we can do to help.

One specific issue is helping people who have been in prison to re-enter society. And there are charities that are working in this area, so, let's donate to them.

I have to say, personally, this felt weird to me. Donating to help people who are in a bad situation because they committed crimes. Aren't there plenty of other charities I could donate to, to help people who are in need and did not commit crimes?

It's like... I seem to have this bad psychological hangup about charity, where I only want to give money to people who are "perfect victims." And I'm sure it's not just me- this must be a really common thing, because ads for charities always emphasize how innocent and helpless the starving children are- like needing to portray the recipients of charity in the most extreme ways, to try to get more money from the donors. Like they're one-dimensional people who don't have anything to do besides be sad about whatever problem the charity is meant to fix. And I feel like there's something really wrong about this... like a mismatch between donors' impressions of what giving to charity means, and the actual reality. Because in reality, recipients of charity are real people with complicated lives, who have made good and bad decisions- just like all of us. But if the donors saw that, then they wouldn't donate money. 

Or maybe it feels like there's a difference between charities that help with problems that could happen to anyone (illness, natural disaster) vs problems that are just the result of living in poverty. Like, I don't think people wonder if cancer patients "deserve" medical treatment. But if your problems come as a result of your poverty, people will ask why you didn't make better decisions with your money.

Anyway, as Michelle Alexander says in "The New Jim Crow," it's an oversimplification to say "well they shouldn't have committed a crime." The system of policing and mass incarceration is designed to set people up to fail- specifically targeting black people. And people who re-enter society after finishing their time in prison deserve to have a fresh start, but the system makes it difficult for them to get the resources and support they need. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to donate to charities to address this problem, but here we are, it's a real problem, and they deserve help.

So anyway, I've googled a bit and rounded up these links. Please share more links in the comment section, if you know of other organizations helping people in this area.

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Some organizations I've found by doing a quick google (I searched "charity for formerly incarcerated people"):

Legal Services for Prisoners with Children

The Fortune Society

Prison Scholar Fund

Refoundry

A New Way of Life Reentry Project 

The Lionheart Foundation

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Related:

"The New Jim Crow"

Recurring Donations

The Great Sex Rescue: Down With Gender Roles!

Image text: "Dads: If I have a daughter, I'm not playing dressup. Dads after having a daughter:" and it's a picture of Thor with his hammer but his armor has turned pink and has Hello Kitty on it. Image source.

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

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We are now in the second half of chapter 2 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link]. This section is about how you shouldn't let gender roles dictate your marriage. Just be yourselves, instead of being what a woman "should" be or what a man "should" be.

Here's an interesting finding from our research: Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic also feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.

Does this mean that it's wrong to have a breadwinner and a stay-at-home spouse? Nope. All three of us writing this book specifically chose careers that would allow us to be home with our kids. But when we unquestioningly buy into traditional gender roles, we create a strange dynamic in marriage in which we view each other as categories rather than people. We are all made with unique strengths, giftings, and callings, and these do not always fit with traditional gender roles. When a couple makes decisions based on who God created them to be versus who gender roles say they should be, it allows them to live in God's plan for their lives while feeling known and valued. Trying to live up to gender roles can mean that we're not fully ourselves; we're wearing a mask, and sometimes that mask doesn't fit.

Okay, 3 things I want to say about this:

First: Yes! I agree with all of this!

Second: Wait, isn't this obvious? Why does this need to be said? The bar is on the floor. 

Third: But, sadly, yes, this DOES need to be said. For women coming from a conservative Christian background, they really have been taught that there are certain things that women have to do, and certain things that men have to do, and God said so. (This ideology is called complementarianism- the idea that men are women have different roles that "complement" each other. And therefore women can't be pastors, or something.) Yes, seriously, this is a real ideology... "biblical manhood" and "biblical womanhood" and people really do buy into it. I bought into it, because I was taught that this is what Christians have to believe/ this is what the bible says. (Later, I discovered that actually yes, there do exist Christians who believe in equality between men and women. Thank you Rachel.)

So yes, I'm glad this book says that you should be yourself, rather than trying to force yourself into a role based on your gender. Because that literally is something that the evangelical church is teaching, and it needs to be addressed.

Relatedly, this is one of the main reasons I'm glad I don't go to church anymore. Because in churches, you meet people who believe women can't be pastors, and other misogynist nonsense, and you're supposed to act like that's a perfectly fine opinion for a Christian to hold. They're just doing their best to follow the bible, and we have to be respectful of that. Oh BLAH. I am NOT HERE FOR THAT. (For more on that, see my post The Church is a Safe Place for Awful Beliefs and Samantha Field's post the pitfalls of the middle ground.)

(Also, I think that same-sex couples have an advantage here, because they don't necessarily have predefined "roles" that they are supposed to force themselves into. Though to some extent those roles do get re-created in gay culture- for example, the idea that a gay man has to be either a "top" or a "bottom" and that apparently means something about what role he has in the relationship.)

The next section of this chapter is about gender hierarchy- ie, the idea that the husband has to be the "leader." Yes, really, this is another thing that complementarian Christians teach, and back then I totally bought into it because I didn't realize I had other options. 

(Do you EVEN KNOW how much time Christian college-age girls spend parsing the finer points of "the man has to be the spiritual leader"? Debating questions like "Is it a sin if the girl is the one who makes the first move, to ask the guy out?" [The answer I heard was, maybe it's not a sin but it's a bad idea- if your relationship is going to lead to marriage, then at that point he will need to be "the leader", and if he can't even be the "leader" of the first step, then that's not a good sign.] Figuring out ways to carefully drop hints to indicate interest in dating a guy, because we're not "allowed" to just tell him directly. Asking yourself "could I submit to his leadership?" when trying to decide whether to date someone. Believing that being more devoted to Jesus makes me less able to find a compatible husband, because where am I gonna find a guy who knows the bible better than I do? Ughhh let's just stop all that and communicate honestly like healthy people. [Spoiler: I married a non-Christian and I'm SO GLAD for that.])

I believed that the wife was supposed to "submit" to the husband. I believed that a good godly husband would not abuse this power- yes, he holds the final decision-making power in the marriage, and he would be able to overrule his wife's position, but in general he shouldn't do that. That would only be in a worst-case scenario, when they've been discussing something over and over and still can't agree. In all other situations, they should make the decision together.

That's how it was explained to me, back then. And I've heard people say, that in the ideal case, complementarian marriages are functionally egalitarian. ("Egalitarian" is the "opposite" of complementarian- it means the husband and wife are equal, and don't have to force themselves to follow gender roles. [Note, however, that this is still in the context of hetero marriage- egalitarians may or may not affirm queer people.]) In other words, the couple says they believe "the husband is the leader, and the wife has to submit" but in the actual practical reality of their marriage, they always make decisions together- they never have a situation where the husband pulls rank.

So at best, complementarian marriages are egalitarian, and at worst, the husband can abuse the wife as much as he wants and the church will just tell her she needs to "submit" more. 

Anyway, yes, complementarian ideology is BAD. Gregoire and her co-authors are explicitly taking a stand against it.

Love & Respect, for instance, claims that "to set up a marriage with two equals at the head is to set it up for failure. That is one of the big reasons that people are divorcing right and left today." A common thread among all these books is that marriages without a tiebreaker are doomed to fail because relationships need someone to be in charge.

Yes, really. Popular Christian marriage resources really are teaching this. They say the idea that you can be equals and always make decisions together is just impossible, absurd, it would never work. Yes, really- and I used to believe that because they said it came from the bible, so I thought I had to believe it. (Fact check: No it does not, and no I do not.) They said there's no way a marriage can work unless the man is the leader, and I couldn't really make sense of what that would look like in reality, and it didn't seem right, but I thought "well these people are married and I am not, so I guess they know what they're talking about, and my intuition on this is wrong." 

I'm glad I quit believing that, well before I got married. And now it is so GOOD and LIFE-GIVING for me to see people on the internet (for example, Dr. Laura Robinson on twitter) talking about how ridiculous it is that these complementarian men really can't imagine a relationship working unless one person has power over the other. Like, what on earth? Doesn't this say more about them than it does about the objective nature of marriage?

Also, can I say something about power dynamics here? There should be a class in school where they teach high school kids how to avoid signing contracts which are unfair to them. You know, the things you need to know about how the real world works. If someone presents a contract for you to sign, and the contract says that this other party holds a ton of power over you, and they tell you oh don't worry, they are nice and wouldn't really do those things to you, even though the contract says they totally can- YOU RUN. That is a HUGE goddamn red flag. 

For example, when I was getting ready to move to China, I read a lot of people's stories on the internet, about how they moved to China to teach English, but their employer turned out to be shady, and the employer kept their passport "for safekeeping" and was able to exploit them, being an immigrant in China, unable to speak the language, and without access to their own passport. DO NOT let your employer keep your passport. Like, yeah I'm sure if you say you're not willing to let them keep your passport, they will be all sad about "you don't trust us" and how you're being a bad person for implying that they would abuse that power... RUN. A reasonable person will understand that you feel unsafe with that kind of power dynamic. An abuser would act like you taking common-sense steps to protect yourself is a personal attack on them.

In the same way, if someone claims that "God says" the man has to have all the power in the marriage, but don't worry, if he is a good Christian man he would never do anything bad with that power- NO, JUST NO. You should never get into a situation with this kind of power dynamic. Red flags everywhere.

So, in other words, I very much agree with what Gregoire and her co-authors are saying in this section here. It is NOT COOL that women are expected to force themselves into certain gender roles, to limit themselves- when you leave that behind and just be yourself, everything gets so much better. And, it is NOT COOL that Christian leaders teach that the husband is supposed to be the "leader" in a marriage. Gregoire says that when the husband and wife are equal, the statistics say the wife will have better sexual satisfaction than if she has to "submit" and has no guarantee that any of her opinions matter to her husband. I can't really speak to that, but yeah sure, good for them.

It's unfortunate that this needs to be said. But yes, it needs to be said.

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

Related:

"Desiring God" Goes Full Toxic Masculinity 

Boundaries in Dating: Definitely Not Complementarian

Boundaries in Dating: Don't submit too much

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey will be open until June 19. Thank you to everyone who has already taken it!

2. Asexual and Aromantic People Are Often Forgotten, But God Sees Us (June 1, via) "Imagine a God who didn’t need a romantic and sexual relationship, whether in the heavens or incarnate here on earth. Imagine a God who told the church to honor singleness so that the people could be freer to serve around the known world. Imagine a God who told the church be a new kind of family that was united not by bloodlines, but by providing for and embracing the orphans, widows, the sick, the abandoned, the meek, and the 'least of these.' Imagine a God who made aromantic and asexual people fully human, imago dei, without being defined by the drive for sex and romance."

3. Yasmin Benoit is NYC Pride’s first asexual grand marshal & she’s ready to change the status quo (June 7) "So in the UK, if you did want to use asexuality as grounds for discrimination or grounds for access to something or grounds to escape something, you can’t. Because it doesn’t exist in society’s eyes. Technically, it’s pretty much a disorder over here."

4. Yeah this pretty much sums up my religion:

one of the beautiful things about the queer community is it does many of the things christianity should do

— Mason Mennenga (@masonmennenga) June 10, 2023

5. Pat Robertson, Televangelist Who Blamed Gay People for 9/11 and Hurricanes, Dies (June 8) Yes this is the correct way to write his obituary.

This one too: Pat Robertson Leaves Behind Legacy of Hatred & ‘Untold Damage’ (June 8)

6. The Myth of "Male Socialization" (May 19) "Especially those seen as white men. Trying to fill the function of a man. And as a result they get resentful. We get angry. We're doing all the right things, we're trying to be this thing that strips us of everything, and yet we still aren't doing it good enough. We don't see our purpose being fulfilled. We can't be who we're supposed to be. And we aren't even given the tools to express who we actually are. So we're just angry. Angry at everything." 1-hour-49-minute video from Jessie Gender.

7. One Of The Best (& Easiest?) Logic Puzzles Ever (June 4) 35-minute fillomino solve video.

8. Asexual Seduction in Some Like It Hot (June 10) "Some Like It Hot prominently features a subplot where a man seduces a woman by pretending that he's asexual. This gambit combines multiple different ploys to appeal to her, but a core part of it involves him presenting himself as passive, pitifully dysfunctional, and in need of sexual intervention. And the weirdest thing about that? It works. Because, like I said, this is a movie where people are attracted to people who don't want them back."

9. Taylor Swift - Delicate (2018) I like this song.

10. Male Passivity: Does the Danvers Statement See the Problem the Right Way? (June 13) "In the video, Crowder sits smoking a cigar while he orders his eight-months-pregnant-with-twins wife to give the dog its medication and accuses her of a lack of respect when she tries to suggest it might be better if he do it. He is the very picture of passivity, relaxing while others work around him, but do we see the Gospel Coalition or Desiring God or any other bastion of the Evangelical Industrial Complex decrying Crowder for his horrible behavior?  The silence is both deafening and telling."

"The New Jim Crow"

Book cover for "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander. Image source.

I very much recommend the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [affiliate link], by Michelle Alexander. This book was originally published in 2010; the version I read was the 10th anniversary edition, published in 2020. 

This book has had a big impact; it helped to start the Black Lives Matter movement. Personally, I think Americans- especially white Americans- should all read this. There's so much in here, so many very good points that Alexander makes, and I can't write about all of them in 1 book-review blog post. So go read the book.

In this blog post I'll mention some of the points that felt important to me- but seriously, there's SO MUCH to say. Go read the book.

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Systems of control - from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration

So, the idea is that American society has moved from one racialized system of control to another, several times throughout history. Each time one system falls, white people come up with another one to replace it.

The key thing here, I would say, is that just because one system of control becomes outlawed, doesn't mean that society believes in equality between white and black people. And this was something I totally never *got*, when I learned about this in school- and I wrote about it when I reviewed "The Cross and the Lynching Tree", in this post: Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem. Slavery ended, but a significant percentage of white people believed it would be just wrong for black people to have equal rights, so they came up with something else to control black people- Jim Crow. And then, similarly, when Jim Crow ended, well, you weren't allowed to say racist things directly, but you could talk about being "tough on crime" and "the war on drugs" and create a new racialized system of control in that way.

The United States has never really repented of slavery and Jim Crow. We just... pretend they don't matter any more. And that's why a new racialized system of control- mass incarceration- came to exist. In the book, Alexander says we can't solve this problem with little gradual steps. It requires a total overhaul of the whole system. The United States needs to really face the reality of this, and make it right.

So, what exactly do we mean by "mass incarceration" being a "racialized system of control"? In some urban areas in the US, the majority of black men are under state control- this includes prison or probation. And it's not just about spending time in prison- the real problem is that people who have a criminal record are then excluded from participating in society. They become part of an invisible underclass, and it's perfectly legal to discriminate against them. If you have a felony conviction, it's nearly impossible to get a job. Or have access to education, or public housing, etc. In some states, people who have a felony conviction can't vote, or need to pay a paperwork fee to get their voting rights reinstated- Alexander calls this a "poll tax," like the poll taxes that black people had to pay during Jim Crow.

Also, people with a felony conviction can't participate in jury duty. I was surprised to see jury duty being mentioned so many times in the book. In my experience, Americans don't like getting summoned for jury duty, because it means you have to miss a few days of work. I often hear about people trying to come up with some excuse so they don't have to do it. But here in this book, Alexander keeps saying that this is a right that's being taken away from many black people due to their criminal record. That "a jury of their peers" is very important- and it's wrong that people who actually have experience with the problems of the legal system are excluded from being on juries.

So this is the real issue- people are being separated into an "undercaste" based on race.

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Colorblind

Now, of course, people will ask, how is this a "racialized" system of control? The law is colorblind. Well, yes, but police have a lot of discretion in terms of how they enforce the law. Statistically, white and black Americans use illegal drugs at similar rates, but black people are arrested for it much more often, and receive harsher sentences than white people.

Also, Alexander says that, for the system to be perpetuated, it does need some black people to be successful. This racial system of control relies on the fact that people don't notice it's a racial system of control- therefore it requires that some black people are successful. (Similarly, some white people are also jailed and suffer in the same ways that black people do.) The system relies on the idea of "colorblindness."

And therefore, Alexander says we cannot achieve real justice by being "colorblind." Go read the book- she makes a lot of good points here.

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But they're criminals

I'm glad that this book addressed the "but they're criminals" argument. Yes, so... there are some innocent people who get arrested, and it's easy to get people to have sympathy for them- but the majority of black people in jail for drug-related crimes really did commit those crimes. Obviously there are arguments to be made about how it's not right to put people in jail for non-violent crimes, or how getting involved with drugs one time shouldn't mean you can never get a job ever again- but, yeah, at the end of the day, it's going to be hard to get the public to care about this, because "well they shouldn't have committed a crime."

So, yes, they shouldn't have committed a crime. But the whole system is set up to make people fail. (And it punishes black people for their failures more than white people.) That's the problem.

This is a difficult thing, and it makes it hard to get public opinion on your side. Makes me think about how the Black Lives Matter movement specifically choose the slogan "Black Lives Matter"- I remember seeing an article years ago that said we should NOT use arguments like "he was one of the good ones." Because the idea behind Black Lives Matter is, people don't deserve to get shot down on the street by police for some little minor crime. It's not about if the person is perfect/ has a criminal record/ whatever.

In our society now, people talk about "criminals" like they're a completely separate type of people, who don't deserve anything good. That's what Alexander means when she says this is an "underclass" and it is legal to discriminate against them.

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Some outrageous things

So, there are some things about the police system that are just so outrageous they should make everyone angry.

For example, the book talks about police and "consent"- ie, courts have ruled that "a reasonable person" would know that if a police officer asks them to do something, they have the right to say no, therefore it's fine if police stop you for no reason at all and search you- as long as they kinda phrase it as a question and you kinda are too scared to say no.

There have been court cases where police searched people and found drugs, and the people who had drugs try to argue in court that this evidence should not be allowed, because the police violated their rights when they stopped them for no reason and searched them. Yeah, like I said, it's hard to get public opinion on their side here, because they really were doing illegal things and they're arguing that they shouldn't get in trouble because... the way they got caught wasn't valid??? 

But as I see it, that's not the actual issue. The issue is that police are stopping and harassing black people for made-up reasons. Most of these people were not doing anything wrong, so they don't get arrested or anything- but still, very traumatic to get harassed by police like that. It's not okay- but it's not something that's going to become a high-profile legal case. The ones that become actual legal cases in the headlines are the people who really were guilty of something. So... so that's the difficult thing, in terms of getting society to see that this is a problem. 

The issue is, if a court rules that it's fine for police to stop and search whoever they're "suspicious" of, that will lead to more innocent black people being harassed by police.

Another outrageous thing: Because of mandatory minimum sentencing, innocent people plead guilty, to avoid going to court. Yeah, so... imagine you are innocent, and then you get charged with a crime that has a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years in prison, if it goes to court and you're found guilty. In this situation, people may decide to take a deal where, instead of going to court, they plead guilty and get a much lighter sentence, because they don't want to take the risk of going to court. (And then, because they have a criminal record, they won't be able to get a job, etc... They're permanently stuck in the "invisible undercaste.")

This is just ridiculous, and everyone should be angry that this is happening. 

Also, sometimes people plead guilty because they just don't have any resources to deal with going to court, can't take any time off work- their life circumstances force them to take the option that will get things done the fastest.

And then people lose their job, and then get evicted from their home because they have a criminal record, then lose custody of their kids because they don't have a home- and they might not even be able to stay at a relative's home because the relative could be evicted for associating with someone who has a drug conviction. It's just outrageous how something like this can totally spiral out of control and mess up everything in a person's life.

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If you've ever applied for a job, you should know this is real

Even though this system of control is "invisible", well... Have you ever applied for a job, and the application asks if you've ever been convicted of a felony? Have you ever needed to get a "no criminal record" when you applied for a job? Then there's no excuse for not knowing that this "invisible undercaste" exists. 

In my experience, this stuff about getting a background check or getting proof of "no criminal record" is just an annoying bit of bureaucracy. It's sort of taken for granted that you don't have a criminal record, and it's just kind of tedious getting the actual document that proves it. 

But... does the average job applicant ever stop to think "but what if you do have a criminal record?" and realize that this underclass of people exists? If you do have a criminal record/ felony, then most companies (almost all companies?) would reject you just based on that.

There's a weird mismatch here... People need jobs in order to get money to live, and to feel like they are doing something important in life. But companies don't hire people for those reasons; companies hire people who fit the requirements of the specific roles that the company needs. It's weird that, in order to have enough money to live, you need to be chosen by an employer as the best candidate to do whatever task they need done. Yes, from a company's point of view, maybe it makes sense that they prefer not to hire people with a criminal record, because maybe those people will get in trouble again, and the company doesn't want to deal with that. (That's the intuition, but you'd need to find some actual statistics to find out if it's really true or not.) But then, how will those people get money so they can live? How is this supposed to work?

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Conclusion

Like I said, this book makes a lot of very good points, and I can't cover all of them here, so you should go read the book. 

The entire system needs to change.

And, black lives matter.

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Follow-up post: Donate to Formerly Incarcerated People

Related:

Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem 

Reading US History Inerrantly

Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)

Shanghai is having a 2nd covid wave

COVID-19 virus. Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Hi readers! In my previous covid update, Just some thoughts about masks (May 3), I said that nobody has covid here, and I don't even think it's really necessary to wear masks. Well, a week or so after I published that, the situation changed. We started hearing about people getting covid. Someone's friend-of-a-friend got covid. Several people from my job got covid. My son's school notified us about kids at the school getting covid. This has been going on for several weeks. People getting covid, here in Shanghai.

So yeah, I said in the previous post that I don't wear a mask at work- well, for the past few weeks, I *have* been wearing a mask at work. It's a normal surgical mask, not an N95, because I don't like wearing an N95 for 8 hours a day, but the surgical mask doesn't bother me, so, whatever, I can wear that.

So far, me, my husband, and son haven't had covid. Yay. But our biggest area of risk is at his school, because the kids don't wear masks, and don't really know how to keep their germs to themselves.

Anyway, that's the whole update. Here's an article from SHINE about it: Second wave of COVID-19 sees mainly mild cases (May 19). But remember, we don't believe what SHINE says. We remember the total bullshit propaganda they were publishing during the Shanghai lockdown.

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is open until June 19~

2. How Mae Martin Is Reshaping the Way Trans/Non-Binary Individuals Are Viewed in Comedy (April 21) Cool!

3. The Politics of Nothing: Visualizing Wasteland and Restoration in Terra Nil (June 4) "As I wrote about in Who Gets To See The Future, arid lands have long been viewed by colonizers as 'wasteland,' and this is a view with devastating ecological implications. To see land as 'wasteland' is to see it as worthless and disposable. In practice, this means viewing it as an always-appropriate site for everything from uranium mining to nuclear detonation."

4. How Scooters Caught China’s Urban Planners Off Guard (June 6) "In 2022, there were 350 million scooters in use in China, compared to approximately 230 million private cars. Some industry insiders believe that the true number of scooters may be much higher, as smaller cities rarely bother to register the vehicles even though they are one of the main forms of local transportation in the country’s vast interior."

5. Stack Overflow Moderators Are Striking to Stop Garbage AI Content From Flooding the Site (June 5)

And also these posts, on the Stack Exchange site itself:
Moderation strike
Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers "Content posted without innate domain understanding, but written in a 'smart' way, is dangerous to the integrity of the Stack Exchange network’s goal: To be a repository of high-quality question-and-answer content."

6. Pat Robertson, broadcaster who helped make religion central to GOP politics, dies at 93 (June 8)

7. “Love is love” (June 8) "In my experience, some of the most passionate haters of 'love is love' are aromantics. After all, all the stereotypes of loveless people are laid directly on their doorstep. 'Love is love' is used to legitimize queer love, but at the cost of tying legitimacy to love."

If I'm Asexual, Why Am I Even Reading "The Great Sex Rescue"?

An image titled "Black Box Testing" which shows a black box with an "Input" and "Output." 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 writing some blog posts reviewing the book The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], and one of my complaints has been that it presents a view on what sex is "supposed to be" which isn't compatible with my experiences as an asexual. But, it occurs to me, that maybe some people would think it doesn't make sense for me to criticize the book for that. Maybe some people would say something like this:

Perfect Number, you're asexual, so why are you even reading the book "The Great Sex Rescue"? It's right there in the title- this book is for people who want to have sex! Why would anyone expect this book to be "inclusive" of aces? It's not reasonable that you're complaining about that, because the book is literally called "The Great Sex Rescue."

This argument only makes sense if all aces feel like, "I know I'm ace, so that means I know I don't want to have sex, so I will just blissfully ignore anyone who tries to tell me about what sex is 'supposed' to be, and that works perfectly fine for me."

This is not reality though. Let me list some of the issues:

• Because of society's general lack of understanding of what asexuality means, many aces (or rather, people who would benefit from IDing as ace) don't know that they're ace
• Because society tells everyone "you want sex" and "sex is great" and so on, many aces (and people who could be ace) buy into these ideas without really being able to question them and figure out what they actually want. They've never been given the space to actually ask themselves the question, "Do I even want to have sex?"
• Some aces are sex-favorable (ie, they do want to have sex)
• Aces who have sex have a different perspective on it than the mainstream allosexual perspective, and this can lead to aces being confused about how sex is supposed to work and/or running into other problems

Basically what all of this adds up to is, there are many scenarios where someone who is ace (or would ID as ace if they knew what it was) tries to have sex, runs into difficulties, and goes looking for help- perhaps because they believe they "should" have sex and haven't considered any other option, or perhaps because they genuinely are sex-favorable. And wouldn't a book called "The Great Sex Rescue" sound like the kind of thing that could help?

When I first started having sex, my initial feeling was being very happy because I had done the one thing that purity culture says is The Worst Thing Ever and will Ruin Your Life- and it had not, in fact, ruined my life, so I was finally free from that fear. But that was all on a very abstract theoretical level, and after a while I realized, "wait, but isn't this supposed to feel good physically?" And then I went looking for answers.

Back then, I had no way to even begin to understand the landscape of what my issues were. Looking back on it now, I see that I had 3 issues:

1. Because of my purity-culture background, I had bought into the idea that sex ed is unnecessary. The less knowledge and experience I have, the better, right? I'm so pure, therefore sex will be amazing! No need to learn anything about how it works beforehand, no need to communicate with my partner about what I like or don't like, no awareness that "what I like or don't like" was even a relevant topic. (I knew I should have enough sex ed to know how to prevent pregnancy and STDs, but nothing beyond that.)
2. I had vaginismus.
3. I'm asexual, but I thought I was heterosexual.

The vaginismus was the real dealbreaker, actually. If it weren't for that, I could have just muddled along, having mediocre sex and not realizing that I didn't actually want that. But the vaginismus made it impossible.

So I asked doctors "why is sex painful?" They all said "just relax" which is not helpful at all- if I wanted to "relax" I would just give up on having sex, because it's just confusing and painful and not at all relaxing. One doctor asked me if the pain was on the outside or deep inside- that was the most explicit question any doctor asked me- and I knew so little about my body that I didn't even know how to answer. None of the doctors had a long enough discussion with me to realize I did not even know that female arousal was a thing. That would have been good information to know!

I looked for answers in a lot of places. I discussed it with friends- floating the idea that "maybe women just don't like PIV sex" but my friends seemed to be saying that women do like PIV sex, so that made me more confused. I found information about asexuality on the internet. And I bought the book "Come As You Are" which claimed it could "transform your sex life"- alas, it did not transform my sex life. 

Back then, I imagined that there was some straightforward resource that would explain sex, and this resource should be recommended to everyone, like a one-size-fits-all thing. But now I realize, each of these different books and other resources is intended to address a specific problem related to sex. There's no book that will solve everyone's sexual problems. For example, "Come As You Are" is mainly for women in long-term relationships who want to increase their sex drive in order to have more sex. (This makes me very confused- why don't they just go ahead and have more sex, why do they need to "increase their sex drive" first???) "The Great Sex Rescue" is for married heterosexual women coming from a conservative Christian background, who have been taught an ideology which says that sex is something a woman does for a man- and the woman's pleasure doesn't factor into it anywhere at all.

Yeah, it turns out, books like this, if you just read the title, it seems to be saying the book will help everyone solve their sexual problems- but that's not reality at all. Each book is for one specific kind of sexual problem. For people with that specific problem, it may be useful. For everyone else, not so much.

It turns out what I actually needed was this (and I'm sure this isn't the first time I've shared this on my blog, and it won't be the last): An Asexual’s Guide To … This is literally the best sex-ed resource I have ever read, you guys. It walks through some possible things you can try, in terms of masturbation and sex, and at every step along the way, it stops to field questions like "but why would anyone do that?"

(And, okay, I'm oversimplifying it in this blog post- my journey to finding ace resources and deciding to ID as asexual was more complicated than that, but anyway, my point is, this is the best sex-ed resource I have ever found.)

People talk about sex like it's a black box... like... fade to black because we mustn't explicitly say what's actually happening. And because of that, resources that aim to help people solve problems that come up during sex don't really seem to acknowledge that they are aimed at only one particular type of problem. Is it because people don't talk about it enough, so the authors of these resources just aren't aware of other people having sexual problems that are different than the ones they themselves had? (I mean, this must also be true about some of the blog posts I've written with advice about how to have sex... I have a tendency to assume that everyone naturally would run into the same problems I did, and needs the explanations that I eventually figured out for myself... it's important to stop and remind myself that no, everyone is different.)

But anyway. Why am I reading "The Great Sex Rescue" if I'm asexual? Because back then I really did need help, and this is the sort of book that would have appeared helpful to me- especially because it's for women who have internalized harmful ideas about sex from Christian culture. (Yep, that's me.) As I said in my intro post for this series, this is an ace issue. I really do think that aces would seek out these kinds of books, when we try to have sex and it doesn't work- either because we haven't realized we don't actually want sex, or because we do want sex but our whole approach to it is different from other people's. (Or some kind of reason that's a combination of those.) I strongly suspect that there is overlap between Gregoire's audience and people who would benefit from hearing about asexuality.

So I don't think I'm wrong to complain about this book excluding aces. And, I have a few simple suggestions: How about instead of saying "sex is supposed to be xyz because that's how God designed everyone to enjoy sex," it could say "most women prefer sex that is xyz" or "if you want sex that is xyz, then your partner should care about that- you're not being 'selfish' for expecting him to care about what you want." How about instead of framing it like there are right ways and wrong ways to have sex, we let people figure out what they want on their own? (And not wanting sex at all is also an option.) Knowing yourself, having the confidence to speak up about what you want, valuing yourself and your partner equally- those are the guidelines we should be telling people.

---

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

Related:

Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality

Bucket List (a post about being a sex-favorable asexual) 

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

And this post from Siggy: 20 narratives of aces who like sex

Help Trans People in Red States

A map of US states, showing which states are the most risky for trans people (marked with different shades of red) and which states are comparatively safer (marked with different shades of blue). Florida is the darkest red- "Do Not Travel."

The map shown above comes from this post: May Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map, by Erin Reed. It is scary right now how many states are passing laws to ban very basic, bare-minimum things that trans people need- banning any sort of gender-affirming care for children, not letting people go to the bathroom that doesn't match their assigned gender at birth, etc.

It's like, suddenly conservatives have picked trans people as the group they are going to hate and spread nasty dehumanizing lies about. NOT COOL. What are we doing about this?

To address the "what are we doing about this" question, I've rounded up a few links for organizations that work to help trans people. You can donate to these, or click around on their websites to find other ways to get involved.

1. Central Florida Emergency Trans Care Fund 

This fund helps trans people who live in Florida access medical care out-of-state. (See this article about it: Central Florida fund will help transgender people pay to get gender affirming care out of state)

2. If you go to GoFundMe and search "transgender," a bunch of the top results are about helping trans people escape from Florida. I don't really know if it's a good idea to just give money to random people on GoFundMe, because there's no way to confirm they are actually real; also, people who can present themselves in a way that fits society's idea of a "real victim" will end up getting more money... but anyway, a lot of trans people in red states who truly do need to get out and truly do need financial help are making pages on GoFundMe. It's kind of horrifying just how many of those pages there are.

Ideally we could give money to a trusted organization that can evaluate who is truly in need- if you have any links for that, please share in the comments.

And, I know helping people move out of red states won't solve this problem. It's NOT OKAY that some states are becoming dangerous environments for trans people. We can't just act like it IS okay as long as all the trans people move to different states. No, it's not okay. Because people shouldn't need to uproot their whole lives and move, just to have basic human rights and access to health care. People don't just have money laying around to spend on moving expenses. And trans people will continue to be born in those states. What happens to the trans children whose parents don't support them?

Right now, there is an immediate need to donate money to help trans people move to different states. That is a worthwhile thing to donate to, right now. But that can't be the whole thing. We also have to fight to change the laws in those red states, so trans people don't need to move.

3. Transgender Law Center 

"Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation."

Also, on Fridays the Transgender Law Center has been posting Twitter threads of individual trans people who need financial support. Here's the thread from June 2:

It’s #FundMeFriday! We’re continuing our weekly initiative to uplift/encourage our followers to donate to trans peoples’ fundraisers. Below are campaigns you may consider donating to or amplifying. pic.twitter.com/1t9dBAja9j

— TransgenderLawCenter (@TransLawCenter) June 2, 2023

4. ACLU

"The ACLU champions transgender people’s right to be themselves. We’re fighting discrimination in employment, housing, and public places, including restrooms. We’re working to make sure trans people get the health care they need and we're challenging obstacles to changing the gender marker on identification documents and obtaining legal name changes. We’re fighting to protect the rights and safety of transgender people in prison, jail, and detention facilities as well as the right of trans and gender nonconforming students to be treated with respect at school. Finally, we’re working to secure the rights of transgender parents."

5. The Jim Collins Foundation

"The mission of the Jim Collins Foundation is to provide financial assistance to transgender people for gender-affirming surgeries."

This one is not specifically related to the problem of new anti-trans laws being passed in red states, but still a good thing to donate to.

Okay, those are the links I have. Readers: If you have more links for ways to support trans people, you can share them in the comments. Trans rights are human rights.

Blogaround

Chinese movie poster for "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" [蜘蛛侠：纵横宇宙] Image source.

1. My 2023 Reader Survey will be open until June 19. Go take it if you haven't yet. :)

2. A week in the life of playing NEBULA in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (May 25) This is a really cool behind-the-scenes video.

3. Glasses On, China’s First Civilian Astronaut Takes a Giant Leap (May 30) "As he introduced the three astronauts, Gui, sporting a pair of glasses, instantly garnered attention online, particularly since myopia had so far been regarded as a disqualifying factor for astronaut selection."

4. Is Kissing Before Marriage a Good Litmus Test? (May 31) The answer in this article is yes, because it can help you learn whether your partner respects your boundaries, etc, which can give you an idea of whether they are a safe person to have sex with.

5. Florida’s latest Gish Gallop of legislative cruelty (May 18) "Senate Bill 254 bans gender-affirming care to all under 18 years old, and allows Florida courts to grant temporary emergency jurisdiction to a parent of a child whose joint-custody provides them with access to gender-affirming care in another state."

6. Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for 'Harmful' Responses After Firing Human Staff (May 31)

7. I love this so much:

Adding Love Liberty Disco by The Newsboys (Original Lineup) to my Pride playlist because I've claimed it as a queer anthem 🌈

— Ms. Charlotte (@charlotteirene8) June 1, 2023

And here's the song: NewsBoys - Love Liberty Disco from 1999.

8. The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (January 23) "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."

9. I saw the movie "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" and it is so good, I 100% recommend it. The artwork, oh my god, every single part was a work of art. The story! The characters! There's a pregnant superhero! I've never seen a pregnant superhero before- this is great! There's a baby-wearing dad superhero! The humor- we watched the movie in English with Chinese subtitles, and man I must have been laughing the loudest in the entire theatre, maybe some of the jokes didn't translate to Chinese. The Easter eggs! !!!! I loved it.

Carnival of Aces May 2023 Roundup: Changing Labels

A rainbow of post-it notes. Image source.

Here are the posts for the May 2023 Carnival of Aces. (The call for submissions is here.) The topic was "Changing Labels." We have these 3 posts:

From sildarmillion: On Not Using Labels "I bet if I had told them I was asexual, they would have a knee-jerk reaction that asexuality is not a real thing. But when I tell them I don’t experience physical needs, they are intrigued, but they don’t think I’m making it up. Some of them even have had expressions on their face that seemed to say 'You finally make sense.'"

From Blue Ice-Tea: I'm Asexual Like Han is a Skywalker "Where exactly the line between 'Skywalker' and 'non-Skywalker' is is fuzzy."

From me (Perfect Number): Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality "Without vaginismus, I wouldn't have figured out I'm asexual. But if I hadn't figured it out, that would have been bad, because I really am asexual."

A common theme among these posts was the reasons to use or not use the label "asexual"- in what situations is it useful, what is the exact definition (and how much does that matter), etc. The reason I picked this theme for the carnival is I'm super-interested in the reasons that people choose what labels they want to use. It's more than just "do I fit this definition or not"- maybe there are multiple labels that have a definition that fits, or maybe there's some reason you want to use the label, not necessarily related to the official definition.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated in this month's carnival! And happy Pride Month!