Steve Arterburn and Fred Stoeker ignore abuse victims in Every Man’s Battle.
They never talk about the reality of sexual abuse, or acknowledge that a man’s lust and sexual behavior can deeply injure women. Instead, they portray the victim when men lust as the man himself–he feels shame and loses his purity.
I talked about this recently, but I wanted to expand on it today using a few examples from the book Every Man’s Battle. I shared one on Facebook yesterday, and it blew up, so I thought it was worth showing them both to you today. Many people said that they knew Every Man’s Battle was bad, but until they saw the excerpt from their own eyes, they had no idea how horrifying it was.
To set the stage, here are a few Fixed It For Yous I’ve done of one of the authors, Fred Stoeker, ignoring the reality of date rape:
You can see that he phrases sexual assault as “pushing against the boundaries of our girlfriends”, to obscure what he’s really talking about. He paints it as not actually that bad, because he refuses to think about the experience from the point of view of said girlfriend.
But we see this in even more horrifying ways in Every Man’s Battle itself.
Example 1: Every Man’s Battle Ignores the Reality of Statutory Rape
In this passage, we hear a story about a man, presumably in his 30s, married and the father of 3, grooming a 15-year-old girl for rape. Note all the language that he uses to minimize what was done–he talks as if she participated fully, and he was hardly to blame because she was a “knockout” who “looked more like 20.”
What’s striking here is that they only narrate the story from the perpetrator’s point of view.
We never hear how she feels. Usually in books like this all names are changed, so we can’t identify who it is, but they gave him a name and not her. He is the only one who is personalized here, who we are invited to care about. And what happens?
Kevin jokes with her sexually, dares her to do sexual things, that escalate to having intercourse. He describes this as completely consensual.
But the girl immediately told her parents who now want to press charges. This was rape, on so many levels. It was statutory rape because she was 15; it was unwanted because she immediately told her parents; and it was abuse of power because he was an adult leader at her youth group. This was rape-rape-rape. (All rape is horrific, but I just want to show that they had absolutely no excuse in ignoring the reality of what was happening here).
The book, though, never actually calls him a rapist–just announces in panicked tones that the parents are going to have him charged with rape. It never talks about the harm done to the unnamed girl, just the devastating consequences for him because he got “out of control” and “somehow” had sex with her.
And look how Stoeker and Arterburn frame this whole encounter: it’s in a passage about “lurking at your neighbour’s door”, and going somewhere you shouldn’t be. It frames statutory rape of a minor as the same thing as infidelity with a married friend.
This is absolutely horrifying.
Example 2: Exhibitionism and Masturbating to Your Sleeping Sister-in-Law
Then there’s this example of “Alex” masturbating to the sight of his sleeping sister-in-law.
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Exhibitionism is actually a crime.
The authors say that Alex masturbated out in the open to the sight of his sister-in-law. We don’t know the age of this sister-in-law either, but I get the sense she’s likely a teenager (she’s falling asleep on the floor).
I have so many questions about this! How do we know she stayed asleep? I can imagine a girl waking up to hear what he’s doing and pretending to still be asleep!
How do we know this didn’t escalate to anything else? Joseph Duggar was recently charged with sexual abuse of a minor for assault on his 9-year-old sister-in-law, according to news reports. And perhaps I’m just too Canadian for this, but when I hear of a man masturbating to his teen sister-in-law, I just think Paul Bernardo/Karla Homolka murdering Karla’s sister Tammy.
But how do they frame this? He participated in “visual gratification” which led to him defiling the marriage bed. So his sin was against his marriage bed, and presumably against his wife. But the sister-in-law? She’s completely absent from the discussion. She was asleep, after all. No need to talk about her! She was just the object.
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Throughout all of their Every Man books, Arterburn and Stoeker ignore crimes and ignore victims.
The word “victim” rarely appears in their books, and when it does, the man is usually described as a victim of a woman wearing tight clothing or seducing him. In their book for teen boys Every Young Man’s Battle (one of the most horrifying books I’ve ever read, far worse than the one for adult men), they narrate multiple date rape examples without ever naming them as date rape.
Arterburn and Stoeker simply can’t be this ignorant. This is willful. These are conscious decisions to never, ever think about the effects of men’s acting out sexually and assaulting women and girls from the women’s and girls’ points of view. What women think and experience is irrelevant; only the men’s experiences matter.
As one commenter said, perhaps the reason they can’t acknowledge it is that to do so means acknowledging that they themselves have been rapists. They prefer to think of themselves as promiscuous, but not as rapists. That seems plausible to me.
Every Man’s Battle sexually discipled millions of men.
Millions of men got their idea of sex and what sexual integrity looked like from reading these books. As many men said on my Facebook page yesterday, they’re horrified they never saw these problems when they read the books. But of course they didn’t! They were reading books by “experts” that were published by one of the largest Christian publishers. Editors and publishers had read and okayed these words; Focus on the Family had promoted them. This was the gold standard. Who were they to question it?
And so millions of men were discipled into a sexuality that completely ignored the effects of their behaviour on women.
All that mattered was men staying pure for men’s sake.
I’m absolutely sickened, and quite frankly, I want an apology.
I want an apology from Waterbrook/Multnomah (full disclosure: they published one of my older books). I want an apology from Stoeker and Arterburn who, instead of apologizing, have disparaged us and had us threatened behind the scenes (or at least one has). I want them to publicly apologize to evangelical women.
I’m not holding my breath, of course. But it would be so healing. And until that apology comes, we will just have to keep giving examples of how absolutely horrifying their books were, because when people see pics of the actual pages, somehow it hits harder.
What do you think of these examples? Why do Stoeker and Arterburn refuse to acknowledge abuse and assault? Let’s talk in the comments.
I saw a comment on a recent post by Zawn, either on her Facebook page at zawnv or her Substack at Zawn (major language warning for her own writing and for reader comments), that said something to the effect that since it was women who paid the price, the price was acceptable.
Not acknowledging what will be life-long trauma of women is obviously an acceptable price to pay for men’s victimhood. 🙄
Exactly. So sobering.
They probably never will apologize and retract what they have written. A lot of people, both men and women, don’t want to acknowledge that their actions have harmed others even if they have been confronted with concrete examples. To put it bluntly, it’s pride and arrogance that keeps them from accepting the truth.
Yes, I doubt they will too. I would love to see publishers apologize though.
Another big problem with the first excerpt from Every Man’s Battle is that they seem to suggest the man’s actions were only horrible/shameful at the point of raping a minor. Grooming a minor, all his actions before the rape, were also reprehensible and sinful. Also, the framing of the story seems to say, “You can get tempted from time to time and sexually solicit a minor, even rape her—just don’t get caught.” It makes me sick to my stomach.
Exactly.
“suggest the man’s actions were only horrible/shameful at the point of raping a minor.”
Remember Douggie ESQUIRE of Vision Forum and his Handmaid?
Fallwell Junior’s instructions to Pool Boy?
In both cases, no Tab A in Slot B = not really sex = not really Adultery.
LOOPHOLE! LOOPHOLE! LOOPHOLE!
Every Man’s Battle appears to be a book supportive of and compassionate to men and their sexual issues. I recall Sheila sharing a response from one of the authors whose tone about her work was dismissive of her findings, as if they did not really exist, or dare I say matter to his “personal experiences” that propped up his book. My point here is the argument that is growing where men have these books and podcasts that speak to their struggles, and they feel heard and supported. When women have books (The Great Sex Rescue, She Deserves Better, For the Love of Women, etc.) and podcasts (Bare Marriage, etc.), women face scorn from men as if their platform is being stolen from them. Apparently, women are not allowed to speak statistical facts about Arterburn’s and Stoeker’s documented experiences that ridiculously created yet another “safe place” for men at the expense of stripping safety away from women. Men do not see their books and podcasts as damaging to anyone, and it would seem that they do see books and podcasts supporting women as damaging to them. We could say that the very fact that these authors do not recognize boundary pushing as sexual assault, and the willful deliberate glossing over of the female victims being groomed and/or raped are very clearly because they choose not to see these things – they choose to NOT SEE women as anything more than the problems, obstacles, and struggles for men. Entitlement, misogyny, patriarchy, and abuse in all its forms are more than fine threads woven into the fabric of evangelical churches; they are, in essence, titanium chains that are being hailed as the true character of men, and instead of training our girls about this, our girls are being trained to accept it and accomodate it. It is sickening. I hope that Rebecca will do a deep dive on Every Man’s Battle and that women continue to stand in the gap for our future daughters in this world. Until the righteous men show themselves in growing numbers, standing against this abuse of women and correcting their brothers, women will need to continue to see this as all men.
Yes, we are planning a deep dive on this at some point! We even have the BEST title (but I can’t reveal it here!)
The books really backfire in every imaginable way. First, a conflate sexual attraction with lust and makes it sound like when a guy is feeling rouse automatically lusting. Then they convince every guy that that lust is a natural male problem that every guy has and it’s a sin they have to fight with extreme hyper-vigilance ,then they tell you need to fight it by not looking at women to fear women to look at women as threats, which ironically just makes guys more overwhelmed with a sight of women.
By recommending that guys bounce their eyes, they’re essentially making the female body, scandalous and taboo to look at , which makes guys more drawn to looking at them because of the forbidden fruit effect.
It’s been proven that when you try not to think about something, it will actually cause you to think about it even more so when a guy says I’m struggling with loss that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying not to think certain thoughts which ironically makes him think about it even more..
Also with sensation by avoidance when men. When men continuously avoid looking at women to prevent having a sexual attraction feeling or thought it will only amplify the effect that women’s bodies will have on the men.
Nothing real about viewing women as whole people, Or making clear distinctions between attraction and desire for an illicit relationship.
Exactly! Well said.
If I hadn’t already seen previous excerpts from Every Man’s Battle or knew anything about your character, I would have thought that these excerpts were part of a cruel April Fools Day joke
HAHA! I’m too tired to do April Fool’s this year! I’m still recovering from helping out my daughter when her new baby was born!
Courtney, in an Age of Extremes like today no matter how over-the-top crazy you get as a joke there will be True Believers out there twice as over-the-top, twice as crazy, and DEAD SERIOUS.
Not only was reading these books traumatizing for me, they also facilitated abuse and trauma with the boy I was dating. We turned to them for help with the lust he was dealing with. Instead of helping, they became a blight on both our lives and our relationship.
Moving through the world with the lens these books gave me—the expectation that every boy/man around me had the same perversions and predations that were so normalized, and that I was expected to accept nonchalantly and with grace—had a profoundly negative effect on me.
And by the way, the abuse/trauma didn’t end there. I married that boy.
Oh, I’m so sorry! That’s really the legacy of this teaching that so many people have to bear.
I suspect the reason they can’t acknowledge that the situations described in their books are rape and sexual assault is because that would involve accepting that their friends – and possibly they themselves – are guilty of those things.
Reading the way the authors practically salivate over their descriptions of young girls, revelling in totally unnecessary salacious detail, it seems more like a thinly-veiled pornographic fantasy than anything else. Like they couldn’t actually write the pornographic novel they wanted to, so this was the next best thing.
Reminds me of this video I saw of a Jehovahs Witness elder aimed at young men describing very detailed sexual scenarios and saying whether or not they are sin including a teenage boy’s very detailed sexual dream of a JW girl that caused him to have a wet dream among other things. It was a meme for a while among the ex-Mormon and JW communities which I like lurking in due to relating to so much from them.
This reminds me so much of that video for the same reasons. I think in another life he would be a porn director or a dark romance author if he was a woman had he not been already entrenched in the evangelical world.
I saw some of that Jehovah Witness’ literature when I was a kid and they came door to door. I got a pamphlet that spoke about premarital sex ruining your life, and the big example was Tamar being raped by Amnon. Rape and incest are down played to be just premarital sex to ruin your life especially if you’re a girl. I knew this was messed up even as a kid.
That’s my thought too.
“Reading the way the authors practically salivate over their descriptions of young girls, revelling in totally unnecessary salacious detail, it seems more like a thinly-veiled pornographic fantasy than anything else.”
Like Deep Throat Driscoll and Polishing-the-Shaft Schaap, another unwanted look into a ManaGAWD’s sexual Appetites.
“Like they couldn’t actually write the pornographic novel they wanted to, so this was the next best thing.”
Still more blatant and direct than the usual Pornography for the Pious.
Agreed. The facts themselves were disturbing enough, but the details made my stomach turn. That had absolutely no tone of repentance or remorse of past sin, it read like smut and now I feel an absolutely crushing discouragement.
I think the inability/unwillingness stems from a faulty theology in evangelical culture that all sin is against God. This teaching blinds people to see those they harm as humans who bear the fallout of this aberrant behavior. They only need fear displeasing God within their own intentions, not the physical embodied real-life results of choices. It’s part of the view of 2 separate selves – the carnal and the holy. That kind of dissociation allows for all manner of hypocrisy and inconsistency since only what’s “spiritual” matters. So the condition of their hearts, rather than the fruit of their actions, is all that matters. This they can turn their victims (who have been physically/emotionally/spiritually harmed by their actions) into the object that caused them to break their holiness, making the abuser into the victim.
My supervisor imagines himself to be so evolved in “women’s issues” but struggles with this misunderstanding. A pastor in a nearby church recently murdered his wife in the same house where their 2 children were sleeping. While my supervisor decried this terrible act, he framed the man as the victim – “he threw his life away” as the man faces life in prison for the murder of his wife. Nothing about the wife’s life being stolen from her, nothing about the children losing both parents – just sympathy for a murderer. ?!?! The real world consequences just don’t matter when you think the spiritual is separate from the physical.
Not to mention the hierarchy power aspects of these abuses…
“In this passage, we hear a story about a man, presumably in his 30s, married and the father of 3, grooming a 15-year-old girl for rape. Note all the language that he uses to minimize what was done–he talks as if she participated fully, and he was hardly to blame because she was a “knockout” who “looked more like 20.”
It’s Humbert from the original Lolita.
For real.
How did a fictional hebephile and Unreliable Narrator become a role model for Christians?
Unfortunately it seems a lot of people don’t recognize an unreliable narrator when they read one. Which, come to think, might be part of the reason why Every Man itself was able to get so popular… hmmm.
Reading excerpts and bits of these books made me want to remain single. Especially after I had been married to a man who was sexually abusive. I turned to “Cristian” books thinking they would be better and provide godly advice. Nope. This is far worse advice than any secular self-help book a licensed psychologist or counselor offered. But I bought into the “Christian” belief that secular self-help books were evil and not of God.
Thankfully, I saw through books like these Every Man series and just never read through them. I knew deep down that God would not want me to be with a man like those who the authors portrayed in these books. And thankfully, yet many years later, I have a great man.
It also doesn’t help that in our society, pedos and sexual predators who happen to be wealthy men in power are excused and still glorified because they have money, power, and penises. These authors are in the same category and just like they have written in their own words are “godless pigs” who “do not have that Christian view of sex.”
“We had sex.” There is no “we” about it. “We” implies consent. A 15-year-old cannot consent with an adult. You, adult, used a teenager’s body for sex. That is abominable.
It really is disgusting. If adults are going to be involved with the youth, males need to be with males and females with females.
This man should never have given the teenage girl a ride. One of the women should have instead.
Churches should always perform background checks when working with minors. At least they have whenever I’ve gotten involved in working in the nursery and children’s ministry.
Exactly. There are still quite a few commenters who just can’t see this.
Jumping in late. Is there any reason that “Kevin” could not apply the Billy Graham Rule to his interactions with this girl, or do these people only use that to say that women shouldn’t be in the modern workplace because then they have to be alone with men?
Can we talk about Kevin’s wife and kids? How must it feel to marry and bear children for a man who then grooms and rapes a high school girl?
Can we talk about how if sex is so sacred and having it before marriage is so horrific, then he did a great evil to this young woman, rather than helping her to arrive at her wedding as a virgin? Stumbling blocks go both ways right?