As many of you know, I’m on a self-imposed hiatus of sorts to get a handle on all of the stress in my personal life. But I read Aaron’s fantastic post, It’s Just Sex, last week and I knew I had to respond.
If you haven’t read it, please go do so. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. When I reached the end of the post, I had two thoughts. First, it highlights the chasm between the experiences of boys or young men and those of girls or young women. Second, there’s a big and important thing that Aaron doesn’t say–and I’m glad of it.
What struck me first is that there are enormous differences in the way Christian culture treats boys and girls. Specifically these two things:
. . . the lust machine that men are.
and
You just don’t talk about “sexual sins” unless you were at the yearly men’s retreat, having a night of emotional confession and healing.
Girls and women are never even told we have a sex drive, let alone that we might be “lust machines.” We are not the do-ers, we are the done. Receptacles for male body parts and fluids. Pressured to “give it up.” Heck, this doesn’t even come just from Christian culture. It’s virtually everywhere.
We women also don’t get to bravely cry over our porn-watching or masturbatory habits at the annual retreat. When we sob out our stories of our sexual misdeeds, it is always in the context of how impure we are for letting a penis near our flowering garden of womanly virtue. Whether we slept with one man or many, it’s about having robbed our husbands or future husbands of the privilege of dibs on us. We call ourselves “bad girls” if anyone has had access to the magical VaginaLand, regardless of the circumstances.
If we ever do talk about a “lust problem,” it’s usually a few giggles over barely-smutty romance novels (or mockery of Fifty Shades of Grey). We women obviously don’t ever touch ourselves or watch porn or read something dirtier than a Harlequin book. And it’s never about the sex, either–it’s about how, once again, we are robbing our men of their divine right to own our orgasms.
Returning to Aaron’s post, the good news for women actually comes in what he doesn’t say.
He doesn’t say
- he “ruined” the girls and women he fooled around with and had sex with.
- “it’s just sex” applies only to men.
- his wife’s history had a vast, negative impact on him (or the other way around, for that matter).
These are good and important things. That he never once goes there means we can read his story freely, with the full understanding that it is meant to apply to all of us. A healthy ethic is not based on which set of anatomical parts we possess but on how we treat and care for those around us.
I think my favorite part of the whole post is
I don’t mean to diminish or minimize sex. It’s something special for sure, but let’s not turn it into the unicorn of human experience. Let’s not elevate orgasm into esoteric, spiritual realms.
It reminds me very much of what Rabbi Schmuley Boteach says in this piece (the context is actually the homophobic statements of Phil Robertson, but it applies nicely here, too):
The essence of an ethical violation, as opposed to a religious infraction, is injury to an innocent party. This is not the case with two unattached adults entering a consensual relationship that is not based on deception or lies.
He also says (again, regarding homosexuality, but it fits):
There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is a prohibition on homosexual relations. Another is an obligation to have children. I tell gay couples all the time. “You have 611 commandments left to you. That should keep you busy. Now, go give charity, honor the Sabbath, put a mezuzah on your door, keep a kosher home, and pray to God three times a day for you are his beloved children and He seeks you out.”
My mother maintains that one day I will feel shame, regret, and embarrassment that I wasn’t a virgin when I married, that I couldn’t offer him “the gift of myself”.
I was 28 when I married my husband. He was 33. We’d been living together for months, and we’d been faithful sexual partners since that part of our relationship was born out of a strong mutual friendship.
He didn’t want me to be a virgin – he liked that I was sexually confident, and could tell him clearly what I liked and didn’t like.
I certainly didn’t want him to be a virgin – when he compares me to the other women he’s had sex or made love with, I come out right at the top. If there had been no others, he might have no idea that I suit him so well, and there’d always be that question…
There’s something else, too. When I was 24 and 25, I lived with a man who had spent years lonely and hoping for someone to love and be loved by. He was a sweet, caring, funny, and wonderful man, and I loved him fiercely and passionately for the 11 months and 6 days we had, before he died of cystic fibrosis.
I can’t imagine a situation where it would be wrong to have shared myself – body, mind, and soul, with someone who needed those things in the last days of their living. We were happy, and he needed that. And, in the nature of our love, I learned something of what it is to give selflessly, and to be gifted with another’s selflessness. Those days have made me a better wife, mother, and person than I was before I knew him, and my only regrets are about the times I was unfair to him.
There seems to me to be a fundamental flaw and insult in the thought that virginity is equal to self – as in, “You didn’t give him the gift of yourself.” I have never denied my husband myself – but I am so much more than my genitals and my sex drive. I am also my history, and my feelings, and my thoughts, and my quirks. I am a whole person, indefinable.
We’re well into our seventeenth year of marriage, my husband and I, and we are still faithful, still happy, still enjoying sex with one another, still both perfectly okay with the fact that we’ve both also had sex -and enjoyed it! – with other people.
And I still don’t feel ashamed or guilty about not being a virginal bride.
I loved this post, Amy. I tend to look within myself, rather than to the Bible, as a guide to my choices in life, but I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a deeper understanding that women are not intended only to be the repositories of whatever men want to put in them, and that we ought not to enjoy our own bodies for our own reasons.
I have a son and a daughter – and I want them both to treat themselves and others with respect and kindness.
Ack! I’m sorry I missed this. Yes, yes, yes–this exact thing. I was (more or less; story for another day) a virgin when I got married, but I didn’t feel like that was all I had to give to my husband. And what about those who have lost a spouse and then remarried? Are they not able to give everything to another spouse? There’s a logical disconnect there.
I finally got around to reading Aaron’s post—I especially liked how he compared purity culture to worshiping @ the asherah pole–cause that’s exactly what it is—no doubt many Christians would be shocked to hear that. But it’s true
It was such a good, refreshing read. I loved that part too, for the same reason.