Evangelicals have a horrible history of blaming rape victims. We saw it during purity culture where losing your virginity--whether consensually or non-consensually--was lumped into the same category as being "impure." We saw it in Eric and Leslie Ludy's book When God...
The Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think talk, just published an article claiming that religious people have better and more frequent sex. They published an article in the Atlantic explaining their findings, and a larger 62-page report on their...
Sometimes I say things on interviews much better than I say them on my own podcast! Because we talk about the evangelical take on sex on the Bare Marriage podcast ALL THE TIME, when I address it on our podcast it's usually because of a very specific issue. We look at...
Today I'm going to intoduce you to Dawn, The Minimal Mom! And there's a story behind it. Dawn has a huge platform where she's shared info, tips, and inspiration for becoming more minimal and oganized to be able to enjoy life more. But along the way she got divorced,...
Ever felt like God was your pimp? I know that's an inflammatory statement, but I've heard this sentiment from so many evangelical women that we've interviewed in our research, or from comments and DMs. When sex is something that is degrading, painful, or makes you...
"Sure it was harmful--but it was still an improvement!" Or was it? That's the pushback that I often get when I critique evangelical sex and marriage books. I'll show that the book contains harmful teaching, and people will say, "well, yeah, but it's still better than...
The strangest thing about watching Netflix’s Death of a Pastor’s Wife is how familiar it all feels. Our family has been attending an Anglican Church since COVID ended. We haven’t been in a typical evangelical church for over 7 years. We left because of trauma and...
Evangelicalism has huge double standards of sexual expectations in marriage. One of the things we tried to drive home in The Marriage You Want is that the biggest killer of marriage is entitlement. When you think you're owed something from your spouse without you...
Let's look at how specific discipleship materials actually enable marital rape. But first, a bit of background. Last week on my Substack I re-ran a post I wrote a few years ago on this blog about the two kinds of marital rape (here's the Substack post and the original...
Recovery from obligation sex begins with understanding autonomy and consent. It begins with understanding it was never God's will for one person to use someone else's body for their own pleasure/emotional coping mechanism, without consideration of what this was doing...
This time we're looking at lust & sex in For Men Only! It's Part 2 of our deep dive into the book For Men Only by Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn, and we saved the sex & lust & libido stuff to this podcast, because Rebecca had a lot to say. If you remember, the...
In Christian marriage advice, sex is supposed to be deeply intimate--until it's not. Here's what happens: Before marriage, Christians are told that sex is deeply intimate. That it bonds you together. That as you get closer and love each other more, you're going to...
It's moving day for me! We're leaving our house of 19 years and heading to our new place! So I wanted to share something different today. So many people send me their stories (and I'm so touched and honoured!), and this woman's really resonated with me because I know...
Are women visually oriented? What we usually hear in the church is that God made men to be visual (the Every Man's Battle authors say that God made men to receive sexual gratification through the eyes). Women, on the other hand, just aren't. We aren't visual at all....
Women have a harder time enjoying sex--so why is the mental load left to her? Today on the podcast we play a bunch of clips of different pastors/speakers that show all the different ways that the mental load & emotional labour for sex are so often placed on...