Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life, and your marriage.  And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.  

Rebecca: Hello.  Hello.

Sheila: Becca, we are here to do something today that we haven’t done in awhile, and I’m actually kind of excited about it.  We are going to have this big discussion that’s going to span all kinds of different things, and we’re going to wrap it all up in the end.

Rebecca: It’s like one of the original Bare Marriage podcast episodes.  We haven’t done these in awhile because life—guys, you’ve seen.  If you’ve been around for the last few months, we’ve had a lot going on.  We’ve had a lot of exciting stuff going on.  There’s been a lot of big projects happening.  And as a result, we just haven’t gotten to do this as much.  

Sheila: I know.  We relaunched our Whole Story puberty course.  Dad and I were putting the final touches on our marriage book, and we’ve been doing all the copy edits for that.  And we’re really excited.  That is coming out March 11, I believe, and you’ll be able—you’ll hear about joining the launch team in January.  So if you want to be part of that, make sure that you are signed up to our email list so that you don’t miss the notification.  I will put the podcast—I will put the link in the podcast notes for that.  But we have had a lot going on.  And I also feel like as we’re coming up to the end of this season of the podcast—I think we’ll go probably until one or two weeks before Christmas.  But we’re coming up—a little less than a month to go.  We’ve just had a lot of interviews this season.  Great interviews that I’ve really enjoyed.  But then I’ve missed this.  

Rebecca: Uh-huh.  Me too.

Sheila: And so I’m actually really excited about in the New Year when your father—when Keith and I—my husband—it’s hard to talk about this when my daughter is here.  But you know what I mean.  The person that I am married to.  When we’re launching our new book, we have so much to talk about, and so the podcast is mostly going to focus on us again.  And that’s actually going to be kind of fun.  I’m looking forward to it.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Absolutely.

Sheila: So before we start our big ramble, which is going to be awesome today, thank you to our patron group, who is our safe space online in our Facebook group.  When we have big projects, they’re the ones who are there for us.  And they fund us.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And so many of our big research projects have been done because of the patron group and how you guys have given us that opportunity.    

Sheila: Yeah.  And for a year, we’ve also been the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation where you can give and get tax deductible receipts.  And as the year end is coming up, please think of us.  

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  I’m doing a big meeting with Joanna next week sometime about one of the projects that the Bosko fund—the funds from the Good Fruit Faith Initiative through Bosko is helping to do, so that’s exciting.  There’s stuff happening with that as well, and it’s really helpful.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we’re going to have a lot to announce even next—in two weeks, I think, we’re going to make some big announcements.  So that’s great.  But today I want to talk about something that happened on Twitter.  Actually before we even get to that, this just shows how rambling this podcast is going to be.  I have so many pieces that I want to connect.  Let’s start with where we’re going to end up.  Okay.  Gisele Pelicot.  An amazing woman in France.  Keith and I talked about her a couple of weeks ago on the podcast.  Just horrific, horrific case where her husband drugged her and then invited people to come and rape her without her knowledge.  And something like over 80 people in this small town took him up on it.  And there’s now dozens and dozens of men on trial for rape in France.  But what is really neat about Ms. Pelicot is that she has said, “Look.  Shame has to switch sides.  I should not be the one feeling the shame.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  They did.”  And so she asked for everything to be televised even for the videos to be shown in court where the journalists could see them.  So anyway, I just have so much respect for her.  She’s over 70 years old.  I think maybe she’s just like I don’t give a care anymore.  We are going to—

Rebecca: We are going to finally see some justice here.

Sheila: Yeah.  If I’m going to go through this, I’m going to make sure it counts for something.  So much respect.   But I want to take that idea that shame must switch sides, and I want to look at some of the messages that have been given to those of us who are calling out the pornified view of sex that’s in the evangelical church.

Rebecca: Yeah.  So should we define pornified view of sex for anyone who might be new to the podcast?

Sheila: Yes.  Why don’t you do that, Becca?  

Rebecca: Okay.  So a pornified view of sex is one—I think this is Andrew Bauman’s definition, right?  Because he started with—

Sheila: It depends on what you’re going to say.  The phrase, I think, is his.  But yes.

Rebecca: Okay.  Well, we’ll see.  Andrew might chime in and be like, “I disavow that.”  I don’t know.  We’ll see.  The pornified view of sex is, in essence, something that sees a person or sees beauty or sex or something wonderful to consume and use and hoard and have versus a relational opportunity to meet as souls.  Do you know what I mean?  Do you see how there is a difference there?  There’s sex.  That’s a meeting of souls, right?  And then there’s sex where one person uses another person, or it’s degrading.  Or it’s about what can I get out of this versus a natural out flowing of love and affection.

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  Very good.  And so we don’t want that.  We do not want pornified views of sex.  We don’t want sex to be a taking.  We want sex to be something that you are experiencing in all its fullness together.  And that’s why we wrote The Great Sex Rescue.  That’s why I’ve written The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex.  That’s why we have our orgasm course, our libido course.  That’s why we have a marriage book.  And I said all that because I want that to be the backdrop.  I don’t think there’s anybody in the Christian world who writes about sex more than we do.

Rebecca: Yeah.  I would struggle to think of anyone who writes—especially exclusively about sex.  You do a lot about specifically this.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  So this is our jam.  All right?  Anyway about a month ago, I read a news story that I was totally flabbergasted and just appalled by.  So there is a pastor, Gabe Mills, who is at the Journey Church, which is a mega church in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  All right?  And he was arrested because in a church meeting he picked up the phone of one of his parishioners, got into the phone, scrolled back through the photos, and I think he had to scroll back about a thousand photos until he found some nude photos that the wife had sent to this guy.  So private photos.  And he air dropped them to himself.

Rebecca: Ew.

Sheila: So the pastor aid dropped nude photos that this guy had on the phone of his own wife, and he air dropped them to himself.  And he got arrested.

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s not like this guy was sharing photos of his wife.  He didn’t know it was going on.  This was totally non consensual with anyone involved.  

Sheila: Right.  Now to the church’s credit, I think as soon as they found out they fired him.  So that’s great.  But then after he was arraigned for this one thing, he was immediately rearrested for—because there was a second count.  And who knows how many other counts there’s going to be?  Where someone else came forward and said, “Yeah.  He did that to me too.”  So this is a guy, a pastor, who is going through people’s phones and finding the pictures that their wives sent them privately.

Rebecca: Yep.  Exactly.  He’s just stealing naked photos.  Icky, icky, icky.

Sheila: Icky, icky, icky.  So I made the point on Twitter that this is why I was so upset about Gary Thomas and Deb Fileta’s book, Married Sex.  Because in it, they pressured women to send nude photos, and they gave all the reasons why this wasn’t really a bad thing to do and that it would be empowering and good.  And we’ll go into what they said later.  Okay?  In a minute.  And I said, “No.  This is why I spoke out so firmly because even if you have a great marriage, when photos are out there, you don’t know what’s going to happen to them.”

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Well, when it comes to anything with sex, the main thing that we have to talk about is consent, right?  Specifically informed consent.  So if you’re out here telling someone, “Yeah.  Send sexy photos,” you’re allowed to.  And you’re not telling them the risks.   Then it’s not actually informed consent, right?  That’s the thing.  We are not here to tell you what you should or should not do.  There’s freedom in what—you’ve heard all the verses, right?  Do what you want, guys.  I don’t care.  But you shouldn’t be throwing your head—hiding your head in the sand about the risks. 

Sheila: No.  Exactly.

Rebecca: You have to be considering—okay.  Wait a second.  There are really creepy people out here.  Is this something that is worth the risk?  What would happen if this got out to me?  How would that affect me?  How would that affect our marriage?  How would that affect all sorts of different things?  You have to think about these things because that’s called informed consent.

Sheila: Yeah.  And revenge porn is a thing.  

Rebecca: It is.

Sheila: There were so many people on my blog and Facebook page over the last few years who have said—one particular woman I’m thinking—she said, “I had to pay $15,000 in lawyer’s fees to get the photos back from my ex husband.  And I still don’t know if I really have them back.  I have the phone back.  But he still could have kept them somewhere.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  They could be on a hard drive somewhere.   It’s just terrifying.

Sheila: “And I have no way of knowing.”  And so the pain that these women are going through is immense.  And so when Married Sex came out in 2021, I made a big deal out of this, and I said this isn’t okay.  And so what I want to do before I get to the—to what Gary said on this Twitter thread because he chimed in.  The author, Gary Thomas, chimed in.  I want to walk us through the passage.  It’s only about a page and a half long in the book.

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s not very long.

Sheila: To talk about how they handled sending nude photos.  Okay?  And, again, we are all going to get back to the shame has to switch sides.  But we’re rambling a bit.    

Rebecca: We’re setting the scene.

Sheila: We are setting the scene, and that’s actually what this passage is talking about.  Setting the scene.  Are you ready?  Okay.  “Sight can be used to create sexual excitement even when you’re not together.  Abby’s husband, Kyle, loves to receive provocative body shots texted to him.  ‘I’m careful about where I am when I open up any text from Abby,’ he says.  ‘And when she says me a picture in the middle of the day, I can’t wait to get home to her.  I’m thinking about her all day.’”  Okay?  And I want us to notice some things as we read this.  So right from the beginning, whose perspective are we hearing?

Rebecca: Exactly.  Yeah.  We’re hearing his perspective.  Yeah.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Okay.  And what we’re hearing is that he likes to open up texts of her naked in the middle of the day.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Absolutely.

Sheila: And that this is a good thing.  And that it makes her excited to get home to her.

Rebecca: Makes him excited to get home.

Sheila: Makes him excited to get home to her.  Now here’s a question.  Let’s say that you worked at an office where your male coworker was getting texted naked photos during the day.      

Rebecca: Yeah.  There are some—there are a lot of work spaces where that kind of thing is actually considered sexual harassment as well.  In essence—yeah.

Sheila: How would you like to be working with a guy who is semi aroused all day?

Rebecca: Yeah.  Or who you know is zipping into his office—because every—these guys.  They try to be slick, but you know.  “Oh, I got a text from my wife.  I’ll be right back.” It’s like okay, right?  It gets weird, guys.

Sheila: And the fact that Gary Thomas works as a pastor at a church and he’s arguing that it’s a good thing for wives to be texting photos to the—are pastors reading this?

Rebecca: Yeah.  And can I say something?  Well, can I say?  We were in a situation a while ago where I was talking to someone who was creating, in essence, ideas for married people to spice things up, right?  And he had me helping him consult to show him any red flags.  And there were some red flags.  And a lot of them were surrounding this idea that because what is dangerous or risky is sexy that’s a great way to spice up your marriage.  But the question that I had for him is wait a second.  But where is the excitement coming from?  Is the excitement coming from novelty and just curiosity?  Normal healthy things.  Or is the excitement coming from, oh, we almost crossed someone else’s sexual boundaries?  Oh, we had a quickie in our friend’s bathroom at their birthday party.  That’s inappropriate.  Because what was hot about it?  You almost sexually violated someone else, right?  Oh no.  They found out that we had sex on their bed.  Ha, ha, ha.  That’s not funny, guys.  That’s actually quite a boundary—that’s crossing someone else’s boundaries.  So if the thrill comes from the fact that you almost crossed someone else’s boundaries, I have no problem being like that’s not healthy, right?  Because that’s part of what, again, consent and boundaries is about is we don’t flirt with someone else’s sexual boundaries.  And so that’s kind of where I’m at with this where it’s like do I think that it’s wrong if you’re with friends and you get a picture you weren’t expecting like, “Oh my gosh”?  No.  I don’t think that you’ve done—but the idea that it’s this constant thing of, “Oh, I’m going to get texts while at work, and I hope my coworkers don’t see,” I do feel like—okay.  You know what?  You guys can make your own boundaries.  Absolutely.  But I get a little bit nervous that the thrill is coming from potentially harming someone else, right?  Potentially having someone else—you don’t know if you’re working to someone who is a recovering porn addict.  What if they accidentally see something, right?  You may actually—

Sheila: Okay.  Another thing that many people noticed about this paragraph before we go on to the rest of it is they’re saying isn’t this great that it makes him want to come home to her.  So he is arriving home aroused.  Who is it thought that needs to get excited about sex?  And in this story, you’ll hear that it really is Abby.  It’s not her husband.      

Rebecca: Well, because this is also a book that does normalize the idea that men want sex and women don’t.  Just saying.  Just so you are aware.  This is also—

Sheila: And in the previous page, it talks about how men are visual in a way that women aren’t.  So it’s like okay.  So she’s the one who actually needs to get going.  She’s the one who needs to be warmed up.  And yet, he’s arriving home ready to have sex right then and there, and that’s a little bit problematic especially if you’ve got little kids.

Rebecca: Yeah.  I think it’s interesting whenever there’s this goal for sex where, again, it—I’m so sorry to say it again.  But it just does have that pornified view where it does kind of read like the script for a bad 1980s porno film.  The idea where you get home, and the minute you’re home you’re ready and raring to go. 

Sheila: Yeah.  And she’s wearing saran wrap or something.

Rebecca: You enter the house erect penis first.  I don’t know.    

Sheila: It turns the door knob.  Yeah.

Rebecca: I don’t know what’s going on.

Sheila: You don’t even need a key.

Rebecca: And I know that because sex is personal—let’s, again, give the caveat.  There’s nothing wrong with being like, “Hey, just so you know.  The kids are at a friend’s house, and I’m ready.”  On your way—there’s nothing—again, have fun.  But it’s just when you’re an author writing these books you have to think about what people are like.  And we can say this because we authors writing these books.  And it’s so bizarre to know what the common problems are with people’s sex lives and to have it be, yeah.  No.  He needs to be more ready for sex.  Immediately.  She needs to do more foreplay for him.  This is the problem.  Sorry.  I need to stop giving commentary.  Let’s just keep going.

Sheila: Yes.  Okay.  So that’s what’s setting up what’s going to come.  And it’s the stuff that’s coming that I’m really upset about, but I want you to get that preamble.  So the preamble is we’re getting this from Kyle’s perspective.  Look how amazing this is for Kyle.  He gets aroused throughout the day.  And then he gets home, and he’s raring to go.  Okay.  So that’s how great it is if she texts him nude pics.  So now here we hear Abby’s perspective.  “Abby was, at first, reluctant to do this.  What changed her mind?  ‘It makes him so happy,’ she said.  ‘He works really hard for us.  And if I can sweeten his day a little bit, I didn’t want to unnecessarily deny him something as long as God is okay with it.’”

Rebecca: So first of all, she’s reluctant at first, and the reason was it made him happy which means she sent it while reluctant.  And his reaction is what made her want to do it again.  She didn’t do it because she wanted to do it.  She did it because he wanted her to do it.  That’s a red flag.

Sheila: But also who is this being written to then?  Who is this section of this book being written to?  It is not being written to women who want to send nude photos.

Rebecca: It’s also not being written to couples where it’s like, guys, if you want to be flirty, just be flirty.  Just here’s the risks, but just be flirty.  That’s fine.

Sheila: Yeah.  We actually did write to couples like that in The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex.  We said, “Look.  What about nude photos?  If you want to send nude photos, there’s nothing wrong with it.  You are married.  However, there’s a big wisdom issue.  And please be aware of all of these things before you do it.”  So we were writing to couples, who wanted to do it, and we said, “Okay.  Just think about this.”  This passage is being written to women who do not want to do it.  

Rebecca: Yes.  The examples are from reluctant women, who are only doing it because it makes their husbands happy.  This wasn’t Abby wanted to be flirty and was feeling a little silly one day and was like, “I’m going to send him a picture,” whatever.  That’s not the story here.  The story is I didn’t want to do it, but he works so hard.  And apparently, that means we owe him sex.

Sheila: Well, yeah.  And not just that—okay.  Let’s look at the reading here.  Yeah.  He works really hard, which makes it sound a little bit like prostitution.  “And if I can sweeten his—I didn’t want to unnecessarily deny him.”  If you are denying someone something, it sounds like he has a right to this.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  No.  Sexy pictures are not a right.  Cell phones have only been around for—less time than I’ve even been alive.  

Sheila: Right.  And again the book that we’re looking at here is Married Sex by Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta.  Gary Thomas is an extremely well known marriage author.  His book, Sacred Marriage, is one of the bestselling marriage books in Christian circles.  It’s been around for about 20 years.  Debra Fileta is a licensed counselor, and they collaborated on this book.  I believe this passage is from a chapter that Gary wrote, so it is not from a chapter that Debra wrote.

Rebecca: I don’t think so.  Yeah.  Because they seem to go back and forth in chapters, and the footnote that they add—we’ll talk about that later.  Yeah.  We will talk about that.

Sheila: Well, we’ll talk about the footnote later.  And Debra’s chapters do seem, on the whole, to be a lot healthier than Gary’s.  So anyway, all right.  So here we go back with Abby.  “She took the question to her women’s Bible study where the opinion was mixed.  The most common objection was what if it leads to him doing porn.”  Okay.  So here’s a woman who is reluctant to do this.

Rebecca: And who goes to her girlfriends.

Sheila: So she goes and asks her women’s Bible study.  Here is just a little bit of a heads up.  If someone truly wants to do something, they do it.  On the whole, they do it.  Okay?  And so if a friend ever comes to you and says, “Hey, is God okay with me doing X or Y,” don’t answer whether or not God is okay with doing X or Y.  Ask her if she really wants to because it very much could be that she is desperately trying to get an out.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And you know what?  It also could be that she’s like, “Hey, is it okay if I send sexy photos?”  And then she’s like, “Because I sent four last night.  And I hope this is okay.”  And in which case you’d be like, “Well, why are you asking?”  “Oh, well, I don’t know.  I got kind of carried away.”  No, honey.  There’s not a sin issue.  It’s a wisdom issue here.  That’s where you have that conversation, right?  Versus you can say, “Hey, well, I mean there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, but you don’t have to.  There’s also nothing wrong with not doing it.  Lots of couples don’t.”

Sheila: Yeah.  So investigate.  If a friend ever asks you, “Is it okay to do something,” just realize that in abusive relationships, coercive relationships, often they are being pressured to do something.  And they’re being told, “God says that you’re supposed to obey me.  Or God says that everything is fine.”

Rebecca: Or even if it’s not abusive.  It’s also just sometimes people are emotionally immature.  Sometimes people are just like, “Well, I don’t know.  I want a sexy pic.  I want a sexy pic.”  And it’s like, “Okay.  Well, I don’t want to send one.”  “Okay.”  And they kind of pout.  And then she feels bad.  It’s not necessarily that he’s trying to enact power over her as much as he’s just being a little bit immature sometimes when you don’t get what you want.  

Sheila: So it is okay to just not answer the actual question but get to the root of the question because that’s actually probably more important.  Why is she asking?  And is this something she wants to do?  Okay?  All right.  So here she is.  Her Bible study group is saying, “Well, what if it leads to him doing porn,” which I think is an extremely valid question.

Rebecca: I think so too.  

Sheila: Because guess what?  Porn does treat women like objects.  Sex becomes about using someone for your own gratification rather than actually experiencing you in relationship.  And so if a guy is used to that and would rather look at his wife as a photo than experience her, this is a problem.  This could very easily be a problem.  It doesn’t automatically.  But it could be.

Rebecca: Even if it’s not rather using her as a photo than a person, it’s also—you’re allowed to just realize that you know what?  At the end of the day, the idea of what is porn—it—the actual definition of porn is pretty much content that is created in order to sexually arouse and titillate, right?  Naked photos are a form of pornography.  That is just truth.  If someone sends your naked photos without your consent, what is that?  That is non consensual distribution of pornography.  And that does not mean that it’s, again, a sin for spouses to send photos to each other.  That’s not what I’m saying.  What I’m saying is let’s not pretend that it’s not something it is because I think that is an important conversation.  If you are with someone who has had porn problems in the past and they’re trying to detox their brain from that way of seeing sex, you’re not going to do it with a bunch of wife porn.

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  And I’m sure that’s what Gary is about to say, right?

Rebecca: Unfortunately, I know what he says.

Sheila: Okay.  Here is how he answers that.  “Consider the Latin philosophical dictum, abusus non tollit usum, which roughly translated means abuse doesn’t negate the proper use.  Just because something can be abused doesn’t mean it can’t be used.  In Abby and Kyle’s case, the texting is creating intense desire for his wife, not for other women.  And it hasn’t led him to seek out porn.  It also becomes all day foreplay so that when Kyle comes home at night he’s ready to go.”

Rebecca: Okay.  I have a couple thoughts on this.  First of all, the idea that you need all day foreplay in order to not look at porn is so exhausting.  I’m sorry.  If a dude needs to be—okay.  I don’t want to get—we’re about to talk about how people say we’re not willing to get graphic.  Can I be really graphic for a second?  If a dude needs to be at half mast all day thinking about his wife in order to not want to watch porn, that’s just exhausting.  And this is what we mean by the pornified view of sex because women, in society at large and in pornography, have typically been—our role is to be on display, right?  Our role is to be pretty things to look at.  I  mean we even—you even see that in even just kids’ clothes, for pity’s sake.  And that’s not in a sexual way.  That’s more just genuinely this idea of girls are socialized to be objects to admire, right?  Whether it’s at age 4 or age 24 or 34 or 44, wherever, and in a way that boys are not.  The idea that you have to be on display constantly—that is just exhausting.  You never get to rest.  You never get to just be a person.  You always have to be a sex person.  

Sheila: And, again, the goal is so that when he comes he is ready to go which I don’t know that that is actually a good, necessarily, goal.  Why is that so important?

Rebecca: Why is that the goal?  But, again, that’s the pornified view of sex, right?  It’s like what is a good marriage.  A good marriage is one where people exist—it’s just so bizarre.  And it’s hard to put words to why this is so bizarre because people who don’t understand why it’s bizarre will not understand why it’s not quite bizarre.

Sheila: Because you can still be totally hot for each other without wanting to jump each other the second he comes in the door because it might be actually more appropriate to talk and say, “Hey, how was your day?”  It might be more appropriate for him to spend time with the kids. 

Rebecca: It also just might be something where you are allowed to be a person with complex needs and feelings.  And yeah.  Shocker.  You might actually really enjoy sex but not need to be constantly thinking about it.  And the idea that you need to fulfill some weird fantasy of the constantly sexually available sex doll, in essence, in order to have a hot enough marriage, it’s not true.  And that’s, I think, what I want to say.  There’s so much pressure put on people because of stuff like this to act pornographic, to act like this hyperbolic, exaggerated sexuality that is not necessarily always the case in relationships.  And we’re not saying that you can’t be all over each other too.  That’s obviously a thing.  But there’s also this level where you’re not allowed to have seasons of life in a lot of these books.  You’re allowed to have times when you are just kind of bunnies.  Going at it, right?  And you’re allowed to have times where you’re like, “Yeah.  And now we’re in a rest period,” where maybe you’re super stressed about stuff.  Maybe there is big stuff at work happening.  Maybe you have—maybe you’re pregnant.  There’s stuff going on.  Maybe your dad is sick.  There might be just stuff.  And you’re allowed to not constantly be—

Sheila: Yeah.  This is actually a big point we make in our marriage book.  And we had an article about it awhile back.  How sex is allowed to reflect what’s going on in your life.  It doesn’t have to be the same thing no matter what is going on in your life.  And we hear that in so many marriage books.  I remember Intended for Pleasure told women that in the postpartum period they had to make sure that they gave their husbands sexual release at the same frequency level as they did before pregnancy, right?  Because he can’t possibly not have ejaculations at the same frequency.  Or we hear people talking about how you need to get back to this really hot sex life even when you have babies or else you’ve lost something, and it’s like maybe you’re just allowed to be parents.    

Rebecca: Maybe this is just a temporary time.    

Sheila: Yeah.  Where you still have sex but it might not be five times a week or three—like it used to be.  But that’s okay.

Rebecca: But I think that’s the big difference.  But that’s one of the things that I find so hard about a lot of these Christian sex books that we’ve read is that it’s like the goal is just that hot sex happens.  The goal is not to create the kind of marriage where hot sex is a natural thing that is going to come from it.

Sheila: Exactly.  Exactly.  Because here you have this reluctant woman, who doesn’t want to do this, but is doing it because she doesn’t want to unnecessarily deny him.  And God is not actually telling her no.  And now he comes home, and he wants to jump her right off the bat.  And it doesn’t say whether she wants to jump him.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And maybe they are assuming she does in which case point, but—  

Sheila: There’s absolutely nothing mentioned about how she feels about it.  It’s only how Kyle feels about it.  Okay.  Now what’s interesting too here is that Gary never mentions the reality that many, many, many Christian men are trying to stop using porn.  We found an instance rate of about 50% of married evangelical men are still using porn at some rate.  A lot of it is just intermittently or rarely, but they’re still using pornography.  And Gary and Debra, when they did their survey of couples who joined their Facebook page, they actually had an even higher rate.  And so they had two-thirds of couples—now their survey, obviously, was a lot smaller than ours and et cetera.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And also—yeah.

Sheila: Anyway, but they had two-thirds of the couples that they surveyed are using pornography, and he never mentions it here.  He says you’re not even allowed to worry about that.  It’s not even an issue.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Well, just because it could go bad doesn’t mean that it will go bad.  Well, just because—we do a lot of things though because they—we avoid a lot of things because they could go bad because that’s the wise thing to do.

Sheila: And the number of women who have said, “Yeah.  I was told to use porn to stop my husband’s—or I was told to become porn to stop my husband’s porn addiction, and it doesn’t work.”   And heartbreaking, heartbreaking stuff that we kept hearing on our Facebook page.

Rebecca: Exactly.  

Sheila: Okay.  Let me read the next paragraph because this is the one that I keep quoting in my Fixed It For Yous.  Okay?  “Shortly after they got married, Izzy did a boudoir photo shoot for her husband, Scott.  The photographer was a woman.  Scott calls the photos awesome and says they draw him towards Izzy again and again.”  And here’s the important sentence.  “With those pictures seared in his mind, his sexual interest is centered on Izzy, and, neurologically, he’s less likely to be drawn to other women.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  It’s just bogus science.  It’s not true.  It’s just not true.

Sheila: No.  It isn’t true.  But what he’s saying here—what Gary is saying here is you send nude photos so that your husband won’t look at porn and won’t lust after other women. 

Rebecca: And I want to do a little pop quiz for the listeners.  What do we call it when we cajole someone into engaging in a sex act that they originally did not want to do under either threats or bribes?  What’s it called?  *music*  What is coercion?

Sheila: Coercion.  Yeah.  This is coercion.  This is sexual coercion.  And what’s really awful is that the book is doing it because the book addresses women who are reluctant.  And then it breaks down every single argument that they could have against it.  So you don’t want to do it?  Well, it makes him happy.  You wouldn’t want to unnecessarily deny him.  He works so hard for you.  Your Bible study group, well, a lot of them said it was okay.  Just because—

Rebecca: And the only reason that the Bible study group said to not do it is totally debunked.  It doesn’t even matter anymore.  So there’s no reason not to do it according to the Bible study group.

Sheila: And it will stop your husband from watching porn.

Rebecca: Yep.  And so if you don’t do it, you’re kind of at fault for him keeping watching porn because you had this option right there that you unnecessarily denied him.  

Sheila: This is really terrible especially when you parrot—which is what I did on that Twitter thread—with what we now know happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a pastor got a hold of those—of Abby’s photos basically.  Okay?  A pastor got a hold of Kyle’s phone and looked at pictures of Abby.  All right?

Rebecca: Again, informed consent is necessary.  If you think that saying the risks makes you be anti sex, then you’re not pro sex.  You’re not sex positive.  You’re just anti consent.  

Sheila: And then he does have a footnote.  It is a footnote.  It is not in the main text.  And it says this.  “Note that some counselors strongly object to this advice insisting that it’s too dangerous for a wife to put photos of herself like this anywhere lest they fall into the wrong hands.  There are ways and apps to guard against this.”  Again, we’re going to tell women that their concerns aren’t valid because, hey, there are ways against this.  “But, husbands, if your wife isn’t comfortable with this, please don’t pressure her.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  So the book will do that for you.  So, husbands, you don’t need to.  But it’s funny.  Even the footnote where they have a very valid concern is just brushed off.  Obviously, these women just aren’t doing enough security even though there is no good enough security.  That is the thing.  If you are going to do this, you need to be okay with the risks.  That’s just it.

Sheila: Yeah.  So this is a problem.  And I’ve been talking about this for several years now.  It comes up every now and then.  And it came up again with this case in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that here we have a book published by Zondervan, put out by one of the best selling marriage authors—

Rebecca: In 2021, by the way.

Sheila: In 2021.  This was after The Great Sex Rescue was published.

Rebecca: And this was after—

Sheila: And after he had read The Great Sex Rescue.  

Rebecca: Well, and after there had been so many things in media about naked photos being leaked.  This isn’t one of those books from 2004 when everyone got their first smart phones or something.  I don’t know when smart phones came out.  But you know what I mean.  This isn’t from way before people knew better.  This is in the last four years.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  And so revenge porn is a thing, has been a thing.  There are revenge porn laws going up everywhere because this is a thing.  And yet, he said this without talking to any women who have been hurt by it.  And seriously, I put one post up on social media, and I’m inundated with hundreds of comments of women, who tell me how devastating this was to their marriage.  Again, if you’re in the kind of marriage where it wouldn’t be devastating and you really want to do it, we are not saying it’s a sin.  We are simply saying, hey, have wisdom.  And don’t ever coerce someone into it.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Informed consent.  Know the risks.  Know the risks.

Sheila: Informed consent.  Okay.  So I put this up on Twitter about the Kenosha thing, and Gary Thomas actually chimed in.  Okay?  He doesn’t get on social media very often anymore.  But he did chime in, and he said this.  “Here’s what I actually said,” and then he quotes his footnote.  Okay?  “Note that some counselors strongly object to this advice.”  All right?  And then I replied, “This was in a footnote.”  And I had screenshots of this as well.  And he explains why—he says it was entirely his doing to put the footnote there because I’ve always wondered if an editor forced him or maybe Debra Fileta forced him.  I’ve kind of liked to think that maybe Debra Fileta put her foot down and force him.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Because she is the counselor. 

Sheila: But he said no.  It was entirely his own initiative.   But he just didn’t want to interrupt the advice to wives, so he put it in a footnote instead of in the main text.  

Rebecca: So we didn’t want to interrupt the advice that was systematically destroying every single boundary that this woman could possibly put up with the very necessary risks to know in order to have informed consent.  So we put the risks that you need to know for informed consent later on where she could easily skip over them or where the coercion had already finished by the time that she knew about the risks.

Sheila: Exactly.  Right.

Rebecca: No.  That’s not acceptable.  As someone who did a lot of research, I’ve had to take a lot of ethics courses.  I’ve had to do a lot of ethics stuff.  Informed consent is very necessary.  And if you are worried that someone might not get the message if they know the risks that means that what you’re trying to get them to do is unethical.  That’s actually something we’re taught.  If you’re worried that them knowing the real risks of what’s going on will make them not do your study, that means your study is likely unethical.  Same thing happens here.  If you’re like, “Yeah.  I could tell the women that abusive husbands might do revenge porn.  Their kids might find it.  What happens if they die and their sister has to go through their phone?  We could talk about that, but then that might get in the way of the advice,” that means that you are anti consent.  That does not mean that you’re sex positive.  That means you’re anti consent.  And I need that to get into people’s brains.  Being truly sex positive does not mean that we don’t think there’s any downsides to any sexual acts.  Being sex positive does not mean that we put a false positive spin on sex.  What it means is that you actually are for people having good consensual sex, but it has to be consensual.  This is not rocket science.

Sheila: And this was not consensual.  So a woman chimed in in this Twitter thread and explained what happened to her and gave her story that was quite traumatic.  And Gary’s response was, “I totally agree that this won’t keep a man from lusting after other women.”  Well, then why did you say it, Gary? 

Rebecca: No.  No.  No.  He can’t even say that because you said that with these pictures seared in his brain he was neurologically going to focus on his wife.  You can’t say that you agree that it won’t stop him from lusting after other women.

Sheila: Anyway, but he says, “I totally agree that it won’t keep a man from lusting after other women, but I won’t shame the wives who believe doing this has enhanced their intimacy with their husbands.”  And that’s what I want to talk about today.  That one sentence.    

Rebecca: He won’t shame the women.

Sheila: He is claiming that the reason he gave this advice is that he doesn’t want to shame the women who want to do it.  

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Yes.  What a saint.     

Sheila: And as we keep talking about this, it’s clear that—and he has said this in other contexts too that he thinks we are shaming by coming out against this.  By coming out against the way they wrote it that we are somehow shaming.

Rebecca: Anyone who has listened to this we’re like all like, dudes, if you want to get freaky on the phones, go for it.  Okay?  Just be careful.  Know your risks.  No one is saying don’t.  We’re just saying don’t give people false premises.  Don’t coerce them without informed consent.

Sheila: Exactly.  Exactly.  Seriously.

Rebecca: If you think that that is shaming, then you have to—get a sex therapist and understand consent.  

Sheila: Every week about 15,000 people listen to the Bare Marriage podcast.  That’s a lot of people hearing our message that is changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage.  But you know what?  If you haven’t read The Great Sex Rescue yet, you are missing out.  Maybe you feel like you don’t need to because you’ve heard it all here.  But trust me you haven’t.  There’s a super powerful punch reading it all at once.  And the graphs and the charts are amazing.  I have talked to so many couples whose marriages got on track after reading The Great Sex Rescue.  And right now you got no excuse.  None.  It’s less than $10 on Amazon.  I have no idea why.  Sometimes they just lower the price for no apparent reason.  But the paperback and the Kindle are both under $10.  And I don’t know how long that’s going to last.  So if you haven’t read it yet, you should.  And now is a great time to stock up.  Buy some of your pastor, your women’s ministry leader, your sister, your small group leader, even your mother.  Buy some for wedding presents because together we can change that conversation because The Great Sex Rescue truly is life saving.  But I do want to—I want to explore now about this statement that he made.  So I’m going to start by Ngina, our friend Ngina, at Intentional Today who is awesome.  She wrote a post about this which I will link to, and I’m just going to read part of her post.  Okay?  She says, “Last night on X, Gary Thomas responded to Bare Marriage ‘s critique of him pressuring women to send nudes to their husbands.  He said, among other things, that he was not going to shame women who decided to send pictures to their husbands.  As in, that was his explanation for saying that a wife’s pics makes the man less likely to lust after other women.  (He did also say that it’s not always a good idea, but his illustration went in the opposite direction.  ‘See, it’s a good thing!’  And the context was women who were uncomfortable doing it.  So, to defend himself, Gary is saying that pressuring women to do something they don’t want to do is just him being an excellent, non-shaming guy.”

Rebecca: Yes.  Exactly.

Sheila: “As Sheila pointed out, the flip side of that is that those of us who have a problem with what he says are the ones shaming women.  Here was my response to Gary.  ‘Just because a couple reported a practice as non-harmful doesn’t mean it should be recommended or given a nod.  And you do so in this book.  There’s tons of research showing how harmful this is.  Why is it so hard to listen to the majority lived experiences and the data?’  Once we know better, we’re supposed to do better, not defend better.  Women, it’s okay to expect better from authors especially the popular ones because those are often the ones lining our church bookstores and recommended reading lists.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  Ngina, she’s great.  Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah.  She really is.  And I want to read a couple of comments that were—because I shared this post.  So here’s just three comments from other women.  Some on Ngina’s post and some on mine.  So Misty R., who we know well—yes.  She says, “Interesting how he’s trying to flip the script.  First he uses his book to shame women into sending their husband nudes.  And then he insists he won’t shame women for doing the thing he shamed them into doing.”

Rebecca: That’s exactly it.  Way to go, Misty.

Sheila: Emily J. said, “’But I won’t shame wives who think this increases intimacy.’  DARVO King.  Literally no one was shaming them, but my guy wanted to look like a hero instead of just admitting he was wrong.  So he made that part up.”

Rebecca: Well, that’s exactly it.  No one was saying, “Ew.  You shouldn’t have sent photos.  Isn’t that such a horrible thing?”  It was like a, oh, this has risks.  Make sure you know the risks.  Don’t coerce women into doing something risky without telling them the risks.  And don’t coerce them.

Sheila: And this is DARVO.  What Gary is doing is DARVO.  He is reversing victim and offender, and he is attacking.  And many women brought that up.  And Jane L. says, “So it’s your fault if your husband lusts after other women because you didn’t send him nude photos of yourself, but I’m not going to shame you for causing this grave spiritual harm to your husband.”

Rebecca: Yes.  Exactly.  No.  It’s just such a messy situation.  And this is the problem is I feel like these guys have learned that you can just use the word shame and, oh, this is a good way for me just to stop conversation and critique.  This is an easy way for me to get out of this conversation without actually having to grapple with the subject matter, right?

Sheila: Yeah.  I am just simply going to—yeah.  If someone is coming at me and saying that something I said was bad, I am just simply going to accuse you of being ashamed of sex, and you’re a prude.

Rebecca: But, again, when you have this view of sex that is a pornified view of sex and the pornified view of sex is seen throughout Married Sex in many different areas, some areas not.  The book is so hit or miss with different areas of it, but the pornified view of sex really is—I found it throughout anyway.  My personal opinion reading it.  You know that because you were part of the group text of me reacting as I read it.  Some day that should be one of our perks for our patrons.  Can I just say?  Every now and then we should just release the group texts of when I read things.  I should go back every now and then just like, “Release the texts.”  No.  Anyway but what I was going to say is when you see the pornified view of sex going through there, consent is actually inherently threatening to a pornified view of sex because a pornified view of sex is I should get whatever I want, right?  But consent is we’ll do whatever is good for us.  Right?  Each of us gets to have a veto.  And also you don’t have to have a veto because in a truly consensual relationship someone doesn’t want to do things that you don’t want to do.  That’s, I think, why these guys react so strongly and feel like we’re shaming people because what we are saying is, “Hey, consent matters.”  And they’re like, “ But wait a second.  That actually challenges my whole view of what sex should be.”  Because in my view of sex, it’s something where he’s getting promised this thing all day.  And he gets to live out this sexual fantasy every day with this manic, pixie, dream girl wife, who is waiting for him wearing nothing but an apron.  But that’s in all these books too, which I’m like—if you want to do it, go for it.  

Sheila: Yeah.  They do.  They cook naked which is weird.  What about grease splattering?

Rebecca: If you want to do it, go for it.  No.  But this is my thing.  If you want to do it, then go for it.  But why is this being held up as the pinnacle of Christian sexuality is, in essence, just being as hot as you can which, again, flow naturally from good relationships, right?

Sheila: Yeah.  Which we’re going to talk about in a minute.  Remember?  We’re rambling here.  Okay.  I have something else.  We’ve got to move on because we’re going to take too long.

Rebecca: Okay.  Okay.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.

Sheila: Okay?  All right.  So here we had Gary Thomas addressing the fact that people are coming at him saying, “Hey, you’re coercing us into sending nude photos by saying, ‘No.  I’m just trying not to shame people.’”  And then the argument would be that we are shaming people by coming after him for this.  And this is actually a common critique that has been used in other circles.  And so it reminded me of something, and I want to bring that into the conversation.  So we haven’t talked about Josh Butler in awhile.      

Rebecca: No.  No one has really talked about Josh Butler in awhile which is great.

Sheila: No.  And I know I’m going to open an old wound, but it will be good.  Okay?  We won’t do it too long.  But if you may remember, Josh Butler came out with this horrible book.  I don’t even remember what it was called.  

Rebecca: Beautiful Union.  

Sheila: Beautiful Union.  That’s right.        

Rebecca: Not a bad book title.  The title was good.  

Sheila: No.  Which really got slammed because they released an excerpt of it.

Rebecca: And it was wild, guys.

Sheila: And I am going to read part of the excerpt so that you guys understand why we critiqued it.  

Rebecca: Well, not just we.  By we, we mean everyone on Twitter.  By the way, this was—I will say.  Sorry.  This was such a uniting moment for the church.  The conservatives hated it.  The liberals hated it.  

Sheila: Everybody hated it.

Rebecca: People, in different countries, hated it.  This was a big uniting moment.

Sheila: Yes.  So this excerpt is from Beautiful Union.  “Christ penetrates his church with the generative seed of his Word and the life-giving presence of his Spirit, which takes root within her and grows to bring new life into the world.  Inversely, back in the wedding suite, the bride embraces her most intimate guest on the threshold of her dwelling place and welcomes him into the sanctuary of her very self.  She gladly receives the warmth of his presence and accepts the sacrificial offering he bestows upon the altar within her Most Holy Place.”

Rebecca: I’m sorry.

Sheila: Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  No.  “At a deeper level, generosity is giving not just your resources but your very self.  And what deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?”

Rebecca: Okay.  Now some of you might be thinking, “Okay.  That’s a weird excerpt.”  But no.  The whole chapter was this.  

Sheila: The whole thing is like this.  

Rebecca: This is the whole thing.    

Sheila: He doesn’t actually really talk about clitoris, ejaculation, penis.  He doesn’t words.  He just says altar, most holy place, offering.  

Rebecca: I think that you could make an argument from here that the threshold of her dwelling place would be the labia majora.

Sheila: The cervix?  Okay.  Maybe.

Rebecca: Or just the vulva in general.  We don’t know because he doesn’t use actual words.  We don’t know.

Sheila: Right.  The most holy place is like—

Rebecca: The most holy place.  I think that’s the cervix because it’s the offering upon and within—I don’t know.  This is—    

Sheila: No.  To me if he pours out his presence upon and within his wife, it really sounds like he’s talking about ejaculating on her.    

Rebecca: Oh yeah.  Ejaculating on her face or her stomach.  Yeah.

Sheila: Which is a porn staple.

Rebecca: Again, again, and once again, these are things we’re just—because they are in porn—just because I know people get very, very concerned.  And we have a lot of people who are ex purity culture, and so they have the trigger of, “Did I do something wrong?”  No.  You didn’t.  No.  You didn’t.  But we’re saying is it’s weird to call the Holy Spirit a man ejaculating on your face.  

Sheila: Yes.  It really is.  Okay.

Rebecca: Or on your stomach or anywhere.

Sheila: It isn’t okay.  And this is why the Internet went crazy and why his book didn’t do well.  Okay.  This was not okay.  And we’ve done podcasts about this.  It’s such a weird book.  

Rebecca: My favorite thing is this guy—so everyone was saying this is weird.  And, again, not just us.  This was such a beautiful uniting moment.  And it almost healed America.  And so then he goes on these podcasts, and he talks about how people are just not comfortable using frank terminology—

Sheila: No.  We’re going to get to that in a minute.  But I want to read to you what Juli Slattery wrote about the outcry.  Okay.  And there’s a reason I’m doing it in this order.  So Juli Slattery endorsed the book.  And then when all the outcry started on Twitter, several people who did endorse the book pulled their endorsements, and they said—

Rebecca: Yeah.  Especially a lot of them said, “I didn’t even read it.”

Sheila: I didn’t even read it which was interesting.  Whenever I endorse a book, it’s because I read it.  Okay?  But many people endorse them without reading it, and they apologized.  And they withdrew their endorsement. But Juli Slattery did not.  She actually had him on for two podcasts.  I couldn’t pull clips from those two podcasts.

Rebecca: Because they’ve been deleted?  

Sheila: Because she has since deleted them.  And she did a podcast with Dannah Gresh where they talked about Dannah’s new views on modesty.  And I listened to it, took notes on it when we were writing She Deserves Better, and then when I went back to get the actual clips for the book, she had deleted the podcast.  And I couldn’t find it anywhere, so it’s not in She Deserves Better.  So she does this a lot.  She’ll put out podcasts, and then she deletes them.  Or maybe it’s not a lot.  Maybe I just happen to find the only three she’s ever deleted.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Maybe it’s just the controversial ones.  

Sheila: Yeah.  But anyway I wrote an op-ed by—for a Christian magazine in the UK about Beautiful Union.  And Juli Slattery is quoting from that op-ed in what she says here.  So I’m going to read this to you.  Okay?  “One popular Christian podcast host described it this way.”  So she’s talking about me because she’s about to read my words.  “’Somebody wrote an article that took the metaphor of Christ and the Church and compared it to a husband having sex with his wife, and the entire world collectively went ew.  And it was universal.  The whole world of Christianity rose up with one voice and said, ‘This is icky, and we don’t like it!’”  Okay.  So that’s quoting from me.  And now this is Juli.  She says, “That is a response I’m quite sure I would have had a decade ago.  Comparing sex in any way to the holiness of God would have sounded offensive and even sacrilegious.  We have a Christian history of being squeamish and silent on the topic of sexuality.  The only ways the subject has historically been handled is in hushed tones, judgmental pronouncements, and lewd joking.  The truth is that we don’t know how to talk about sex, so we have just ignored it or considered it a base part of our humanity that God wants nothing to do with.”

Rebecca: So what’s really funny is Juli didn’t mention it was Mom.  That it was Sheila when she quoted that because—

Sheila: Nobody would have believed it.

Rebecca: Well, the thing is if she’s trying to say that you will only speak about this in hushed tones, I’m like—I literally just made a half mast joke on this podcast with my mother.  Okay?  I’m sorry.  We’re talking about vulvas, clitoris.

Sheila: And that’s the thing.  Josh Butler did not say vulva or clitoris.  He didn’t talk about the female orgasm.  We talk about this stuff so frankly.  Josh Butler did not.  Josh Butler did this in a creepy way.

Rebecca: Well, we did this—a study on this actually.  We did a focus group for Great Sex Rescue.  Which if you’ve read Great Sex Rescue, you may have seen it.  But we actually asked a bunch of women.  We read them a bunch of excerpts from books that talked about sex and explained the mechanics of sex.  And so many of them use euphemisms.  Do a happy little dance with his fingers when they’re talking about clitoral stimulation.  We’re like what?

Sheila: Or no.  Kevin Leman called the clitoris your—what is it?  Your tender little friend.

Rebecca: Tender little friend.  That’s right.  A happy little dance on your tender little friend.

Sheila: And he called the penis Mr. Happy.

Rebecca: It was so bizarre, right?  And universally when we asked women to rank what they thought the best excerpt was, it was always ones that used actual language.  For example, the clitoris is a small knob of nerve endings that is found approximately this far above the urethra, which is here by the way.  And your urethra is different than your vagina.  Using the actual terms is better than your special flower.   God made your special—your most holy dwelling place upon which your husband will penetrate and spew Holy Spirit upon the temple.  It sounds weird. 

Sheila: Yeah.  Imagine if your gynecologist walked into the room and said, “So what’s happening with your most holy place today?”

Rebecca: I think I said that—didn’t we say that in She Deserves Better?  Because we were joking about that.  And I said because people are so afraid of using the real terms.  And it’s like no.  It’s weirdly sexualizing when we don’t use the right terms.

Sheila: Yeah.  But here what Juli is doing is she’s doing the same thing that Gary did which she—when people are criticizing Josh Butler because we don’t like his pornified way of talking about sex and a lot of the critique of Josh Butler was that it was very dismissive of sexual assault because he was comparing a man’s ejaculation to a generous offering.

Rebecca: Yes.  Which is one of the funniest, funniest accidental jokes of all time.

Sheila: And when a man ejaculates, he said that was his ultimate act of self giving.  It is a—anyway, so—

Rebecca: The number of Twitter jokes about that.  Honey, I have a sacrificial offering for you tonight.  This will take a lot out of me.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Two minutes.  

Rebecca: So funny.

Sheila: So people are making very pointed critiques.  And the critiques, by and large, were not ew.  Ew, you are using too much language.  You’re being too frank.

Rebecca: People weren’t like ew.  Sex.

Sheila: Yeah.  They weren’t like, “Oh, you’re being too frank about sex.”  They were, “Oh, you were being seriously creepy about sex.”  And they were being—you’re being seriously creepy about the analogy of Christ and the church.  Because what Juli says is, “We’re really just,”—and she’s talking specifically about me here because she’s critiquing me.  That we really don’t like talking about the analogy of Christ and the church, which is so funny because in The Great Sex Rescue, in The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex especially, we have an entire chapter talking about this.

Rebecca: Well, and also again, the reason she could not link that it was you or actually cite—say who she was quoting was because everyone knows that you do talk about this.  This is the thing.  Whenever you see someone making a claim and there’s not a link to where that came from or they don’t mention who they’re quoting, you should ask why because usually it’s because they’re trying to bluff.  They don’t actually have a defensible position.  Right?  This idea of these people aren’t comfortable talking about sex and theology.  We have an entire category on our blog called the theology of sex in marriage.

Sheila: Yeah.  You can look it up.  I have a post called The Theology of the Clitoris.  Okay?  We have no problem with that.

Rebecca: Well, also a lot of the people who are really freaked out by Josh Butler’s book and who are like what is—why are we comparing semen to the Spirit?  I think—yeah.  They were also fine with Aimee Byrd’s book on Song of Solomon, right?  Which talked a lot about this.  And everyone is kind of saying, “Why did we need Josh Butler’s book when Aimee’s book just came out?”

Sheila: Yeah.  Because they were—Josh Butler was saying, “We need a book that goes—that’s a theology book that goes into how sex is also a mirror of how God feels about us.”  And it’s like yeah.   Aimee Byrd already wrote it.  It’s called The Sexual Reformation.

Rebecca: And by the way, it wasn’t—it didn’t compare the Holy Spirit to semen on a woman’s face or body.

Sheila: Exactly.  This is just weird, people.  So here we were.  And we were making a legitimate critique that he was minimizing women’s experiences.  He was creating a male centric view of sex.  And we are told, “Oh, you’re being shameful.”  It’s the same thing as with Gary Thomas.  We said, “Hey, you’re coercing women into sex.”  And we’re told, “Oh, you’re being shameful.”      

Rebecca: Yeah.  I do want to emphasize again.  In both settings what we were doing is saying women exist for more than to, in essence, be titillating.  Right?  Women’s experience during sex matters too.  So with Josh Butler, a lot of the critique was also like, “You can’t say that penetrative sex is Christ in the church when 30% of women experience rape at some point.”  That’s just not something that we get to do without doing massive caveats and framing it differently.  That’s just not something that is a good idea.  And if you’re someone talking about sex and you’re not considering the 30% of women who will experience sexual assault at some point, that’s not acceptable.  And what they are saying is, “Oh, you prudes.”  Right?  And same thing with Gary Thomas.  It’s like, hey, the number of women who are—you are coercing into doing something they didn’t want to do because now this big, Christian pastor is saying, “Well, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t.  And if you shouldn’t, you’re giving up all these benefits,” which, by the way, are not scientifically backed.  Again, you’re not considering women’s experience.  Sex positivity requires that we consider the experience of the person that you’re having sex with.  Otherwise, it’s just porn positivity.

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  So let’s listen to Josh Butler.  All right?  So I’m going to play a clip of Josh Butler from Preston Sprinkle’s podcast, Theology in the Raw.  So shortly after this whole thing broke on Twitter, Preston Sprinkle did invite Josh and then someone who critiqued his book and someone who liked his book.  And they had a conversation.  The four of them.  And here’s just 30 seconds of Josh defending himself.

Josh Butler: One of the biggest critiques I feel like that came out—and I’ve seen two.  It’s just kind of like—essentially like, “Ew, gross,” because of the graphic language that’s used.  And I don’t know.  I’ve kind of wanted to ask folks, “Let me see your Spotify playlist.”  I want to see what you’re actually listening to.  The Netflix comedy specials you’re watching.  But really I would say none of the imagery or the things I’ve used was nothing that my high school sex ed teacher didn’t say.

Sheila: Okay.  So again, the problem that he says is that his critics are ashamed of sex.  And he’s not using any language that your sex ed teacher wouldn’t have used.

Rebecca: Who during your high school sex ed had your sex ed teacher say, “And what deeper form of self giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out of his very presence, not only upon but within his wife”?  

Sheila: Whose sex ed teacher referred to the vagina or something as the most holy dwelling?  No.  And this is, again, the thing.  I looked—I did a word search, and I only had the excerpt.  I didn’t have the full book.  But he doesn’t say clitoris.  He doesn’t say ejaculation.  He doesn’t say penis.  He doesn’t—

Rebecca: Well, and Laura Robinson did a deeper dive into Beautiful Union.  She did buy the whole book.  And when Laura Robinson gets her teeth into something—

Sheila: And we talked about this on a previous podcast about how we’re not even sure he understands the female orgasm. 

Rebecca: And I think that it’s very, very likely that there actually is a lot of shame around this because when you have a very pornified view of sex—which a lot of people do just from socialization, it’s not because you’re trying to create one.  This is a normal thing to be socialized into having, right?  There is this disconnect between what you want sex to be because of what you’ve been socialized to want sex to be and how you know that that’s not right.

Sheila: Right.

Rebecca: And so it can be hard to talk about these things frankly when your experience and your socialized desires are not the same as what you know wholeness and goodness are.  And I think that’s often why we get into these weird situations where the Holy Spirit is accidentally called semen.  I don’t think he meant to do that.  But I think that there—we’re not used to talk about this frankly because it requires that we look at this, not as something that’s always sexy, but as something that is sex.  That can be sexy.  But an actual holistic understanding of sex needs to encompass more than just the bow chicka wow wow parts of it, right?  And they’re not willing to do that because they’re not willing to step into women’s experience. 

Sheila: Yeah.  And that’s the big problem.  Okay.  So this is from Brett McCracken from Gospel Coalition.  And I’ll put a link in the podcast notes to the whole thing.  I’ll just read a few excerpts.  But he starts by saying that he’s sympathetic to the criticism surrounding the frank language.  Okay?

Rebecca: Yes.  The imaginary, frank language.    

Sheila: Which, again, is just—yeah.  It’s imaginary, frank language, but it’s also not being fair to what the critiques were because there were multiple academics, theologians, university professors writing very, very well thought out critiques and long articles about this looking at the problems with how you can’t actually take Ephesians 5 and do this with it.  All kinds of stuff.  Okay?  But they’re saying, “No.  It’s just all about the frank language.”  And he says, “The pervasive pain around sex in our culture and in our own lives is why the discussion is unavoidably triggering.  Because sex has been defaced for so long, and in so many ways, our eyes strain to see it as anything remotely sacramental or iconic.  Perhaps the most discouraging thing of all in this episode is that it reveals just how far we have to go in this work.  I get that frank theological talk of sex triggers us.  Sex is a potent thing that, when sinfully distorted, cuts us in ways that leave deep, lasting wounds.  But remember.  Sex is a thing God made.”

Rebecca: And what I find so funny about that is that if anyone had thought for even five seconds about how sex can be triggering, Beautiful Union never would have been written the way that it was.  He’s saying that yeah.  We all know that there are people who have been hurt by sex, and it’s your—no.  No.  No.  No.  If you had thought for five seconds about how sex has been weaponized against people, the book would not have been written in the way that it was.

Sheila: Yeah.  But, again, we—what we’re doing is we’re taking people who have critiqued a male-centric view of sex and we’re accusing them of just being ashamed of sex and ashamed of frank language, which there was no frank language.

Rebecca: Also people don’t have any problem with saying sex is sacramental.  In fact, that was what most of the critiques were was that this actually is a—is perverting the sacred.  The idea that you are literally calling the Holy Spirit semen that you ejaculate onto your wife that is actually the problem.  They weren’t talking about it in the same way that Scripture does.  It was bizarre, buys.  And there were—the critiques that were coming out from theologians were exactly the opposite of what this guy says they were.

Sheila: So I wanted to come—to kind of combine these two things today because I have seen this over and over again.  That when someone comes out with a sex book or someone comes out with a hot take and women, as a whole, stand up together and say, “No.  That is gross.  That is wrong.  You can’t say that,” it is then turned back on women.  And women are accused of being ashamed or being prudes or, “Oh, you just can’t handle frank language.”  And it’s like no.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  You can’t do that anymore.  Shame has to switch sides.  You cannot put shame back on us when you are the one who was saying something with a pornified view of relating to sex.

Rebecca: When you are the one who was coercing women into sending pictures they didn’t want to do, when you were the one who was acting like the only way to have a good sex life is for her to be his sexual focus all of the time.  She’s never allowed to be off, right?  The idea that you have to be able to fulfill some weird—again, some weird 1980s porn film plot.

Sheila: Yeah.  It is.  It is weird.  

Rebecca: And this is the whole thing is when we see sex as something that’s about making sure that it’s as hot as we can possibly make it we shoot ourselves in the foot.  We’ve talked about this research before.  What I find really funny is when you look at research—what these guys want in all these books—quite frankly, it’s very obvious.  What people want is for people to have hot, frequent sex where they’re trying all sorts of new things.  And they are—

Sheila: They’re getting their freak on.  

Rebecca: They’re getting the freak on, right?  They’re having fun, right?  That’s what they want.  What they want is sex that’s so hot it’ll own the atheists.

Sheila: Yes.  Own the atheists.   

Rebecca: Own the atheists with how hot your sex is.  

Sheila: Yeah.  If we’re not allowed to watch porn, then we need to have sex that is hotter than porn.  Yeah.  Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: That’s what they want.  I have serious issues with that being the goal.  But that put aside, that’s their goal.  What does research say is the best way to get that goal?  Research says the best way to get that goal is to, in essence, focus on her experience.  We’ve talked about this research before.  But there is a study that actually found that women, who are with high orgasm partners—so men who bring them to orgasm frequently—if they have orgasms consistently, expectantly, pretty much every time they have sex, they know sex is going to be good for them, way more likely to try multiple sex toys, way more likely to try multiple positions, way more likely to communicate about their needs in bed, way more likely to just be adventurous.  All these things that these guys want they’re more likely to do when her experience is prioritized, right?  And so what they’re doing by coercing women into doing the end goal without actually building the foundation of trust and vulnerability to get there is they’re shooting themselves in the foot.  And they’re creating a false intimacy.  And they are, in essence, just making their wives into porn stars where they’re acting out something they feel they should be doing instead of it naturally happening because they’re in a safe relationship where they have freedom to explore what they want with their spouse.  There’s such a difference between telling someone, “You don’t have a reason not to do this,” versus giving them a reason to want to.  And one of them is pornified view of sex.  It really is.  When you see sex as something that she is holding back from him, that I don’t want to unnecessarily deny him, he works so hard for me, okay.  

Sheila: Ew.

Rebecca: That’s not what you want to hear.  It’s like, oh, Billy earned his allowance.  That’s icky.  Okay.  That’s not a good view of this.  We need to stop seeing women having sexual boundaries and women having visceral reactions to sexual tropes that come from a culture that sees us as usable and as display objects and as consumable items in the bedroom.  We have visceral reactions to those things and those tropes for a reason.  And that should not be where the shame is put.  We should not be teaching women to stop having visceral reaction to pornified styles of relating.  Instead we should be teaching men to have visceral reactions to those and to say, “Oh, gosh.  I didn’t even realize that I had been socialized into that.  I didn’t even realize that that had happened.  And now I am going to turn around and change,” because you can.  That’s the thing.

Sheila: And that’s actually a big part of what is happening in France.  So to get back—we’re going to come full circle now.  But one of the big problems in France has been that this idea that anyone would have sexual boundaries is seen as a negative.  Everyone is supposed to get their freak on all the time.  And so holding people accountable for coercion, for rape, has been really difficult.  And even the fact that this went so far with this many men wanting to rape her.  Okay.  And a lot of the commentary coming out of France by women writing about this is now maybe we can speak up and say, “Actually, I don’t like that.  I don’t want that.  That isn’t good for me,” because we’ve been focused so much on how to be hot that we’ve ended up hurting people because we have totally degraded sex.  

Rebecca: Yes.  And, again, the same act—we know this.  The same act can be either degrading or enjoyable depending on context.  That’s literally the difference between sex and rape.  This is not hard to understand.  The same act can be degrading or can be good depending on the context.  I don’t  understand why this is so hard for all these marriage authors to grasp.  People are not mad about the act.  People are not mad about the thing.  They’re mad about the fact that the context in this case is that women’s consent and boundaries are being ridiculed, pushed aside, or coerced away.  That’s unacceptable.  And it’s not sex positive.  They like to act like they’re these sex positive gurus.

Sheila: And they’re not.

Rebecca: You are the opposite of sex positive because sex positivity requires strong understanding of consent and requires that one person’s needs are not put above the others.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  Exactly.  And I just want to say too.  Okay.  Look.  You know what?  It is totally normal to say, “Hey, I’m kind of hot right now.  You’re kind of hot.  Let’s have a really hot day tomorrow.  I’m going to text you nude photos.  You’re going to come home.  We’re going to be raring to go.  And you know what?  It’s our anniversary,” or whatever.

Rebecca: Do whatever you want.  Yeah.  We don’t care, guys.

Sheila: Do whatever.  Do whatever you want.  That’s fine.  But to expect that that should happen every day—

Rebecca: Again, I’m tired just thinking about that.

Sheila: – that is what’s going on.  It’s like it’s not flowing organically from the relationship.  It is flowing from this pornified view of sex.  And so our plea is that we get back to actual relationship and honoring each other and understanding what sex is.  Mutual, intimate, pleasurable for both.  And we’re not going to try to own the libs by having hotter sex than porn because that’s not the goal.  

Rebecca: It’s a dumb goal, guys.

Sheila: The goal is to love each other and have an amazing marriage.  And the funny thing is if you do that you might actually end up having sex that owns the libs.  But as soon as you aim for that, you’re not going to do it.  Okay?  You got to—it’s like that is a byproduct of something.  You can’t aim for it.  As soon as you aim for it, you won’t get there.

Rebecca: I’m sorry.  I’m still just dying at sex that owns the libs.  I’m dying.

Sheila: Well, I sometimes feel like that’s what we’re trying to do.  Okay.  And I really—I just—okay.  So that’s our big meta thing that we want to say.  On a personal level, I do want to say.  Juli Slattery, that wasn’t an okay to do of my stuff because—to insinuate that 10 years ago you would have seen it like me, but now you have grown so much. And I obviously haven’t grown.  I mean that’s just a nonsense take, and I think you know that.

Rebecca: When you aren’t even brave enough to link who you quoted.

Sheila: Yeah.  For pity’s sake, I have tons of stuff about what our bodies say about theology and how God—and how sex is supposed to be an intimate knowing, and that’s why God uses language about sex to describe his relationship with us.  This is all throughout my writing.  And I have written so many books on sex.  I use very frank language.  And to insinuate that I am ashamed of sex is just not okay.  And to have people do this over and over again to us is not okay.  Okay?  But it is a trend that as soon as people get critiqued because they do have a pornified or male centric view of sex that they then accuse women of being ashamed and of being prudes.  And I just want to say, women, we don’t have to take it.  We don’t have to take it.  We can say no.  Shame needs to switch sides. 

Rebecca: You are not less sexy because you have sexual boundaries.  That’s a big message women need to hear because that is the opposite of what is being told in porn.  You are not less sexy—you are not a less good sexual partner or a less fit sexual partner because you are not ready and raring to go 365 days a year.  You are not a bad wife or a bad—or bad in bed because you don’t like positions that hurt.  You’re not a bad partner to your husband if you aren’t ready for sex at 4:57 when he walks in the door every single day.  You are not a bad person if your body isn’t the same as it was when you first got married.  You are not a bad sexual partner if your—if the things that you used to like to do you don’t like any more because things have changed.  You’re not a bad sexual partner if some weeks you want to have sex every day and other weeks you don’t want to have sex at all.  You’re allowed to be a person.  You’re allowed to have sexual boundaries.  And a healthy relationship is what’s necessary to be a good sexual partner.  It’s not whether or not you’ll perform like a monkey.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  Exactly.  And so I just wanted to say that, people.  Okay?  Way to go, Gisele Pelicot.  We are in awe of you.  Thank you for what you are doing for the world’s women and for France’s women.  And Christian authors, we’re not going to take it anymore.  Shame needs to switch sides.  And you don’t get to tell us that we’re prudes just because we want sex to be something, which is mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both.  And we believe women should matter.  So there you go.  I’m going to put links to some of the podcasts where we’ve talked about this at greater length.  The one—what did we call it?  

Rebecca: The Myth of the Magic Penis?  Is that one of them?    

Sheila: The Myth of the Magic Penis.  I think that that might be the one where we talked about Josh Butler.

Rebecca: That was just a great title.

Sheila: Or Male Centric Sex?  I can’t remember which one we did.  

Rebecca: Something like that.  

Sheila: But we’ll put a link to that.  We’ll put a link to the things that we quoted today.  And then next week Keith is joining me.  We did something that was painful.  We read Marriage on the Rock by Jimmy Evans.  

Rebecca: Oh, that’s right.

Sheila: And so we’re going to come and give a deep dive into that.  Keith and I are just going to do it ourselves.  We didn’t involve anyone else this time because Keith had a lot of stuff he wanted to say.  So we thought we’d just do it ourselves.  So that’s coming next week.  The week after that we have a big—I think it’s coming up pretty soon.  We have a big announcement that we’re going to be making on the blog, so that will be exciting.  But thank you for joining us.  Thank you for being part of our rambling conversation.  I’m hoping to have more of these again soon because I do enjoy them.  And we will see you again next week on the Bare Marriage podcast.  Bye-bye.

Rebecca: Bye.