What about marital sex?

There is so much written about fundamentalists and premarital sex, purity and so on. There is also much about purity within marriage in the sense of “don’t read romance novels”, “be available” and so on. And recently I started to wonder… what about actual sex in marriage? What about that??

Now, I’ll admit that I have not been married to know about sex in fundamentalist marriages first hand. I was also not sat down by my parents to have “that talk” about what’s ok in bed once you’re married. I figured I would put together a little series of posts in which I want to look at some debated things in the conservative Christian marriage beds. Not to lecture you, but to ask you to think with me about some things. I hope, if you are not shy about it, you can share some ideas/input/experiences with effects of fundamentalist teachings on married sex/whatever comes to your mind!

My first interest in this issue was raised by “Meet Mr. Smith”. This is a Ludy book that I actually bought after I moved here. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know why it stuck out to me.

Now there is this one little note that got my attention. There’s a question and answer section, and one question was whether oral sex before marriage was ok. Of course it is not, but let me quote what they say about oral sex in general:

You will not find oral sex among the beautiful expressions of physical intimacy in God’s perfect pattern, as outlined in the Song of Solomon. So if you are wondering if oral sex even after marriage is appropriate, let that be your guide! We can never improve upon the way God designed a man and woman to express their love – our own methods will only warp and degrade it. (p. 184)

What the Ludys do here is basically formulating an overly lengthy euphemism for “no”. So, let’s get past that awkward moment of pity for both of the Ludys (cough) and into some serious questioning that passage.

First off, I call wrong theology on this one. Actually, I call a lack of proper reading skills. Song of Solomon 2:3: I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. I know there are more hints in it, but I do think this very clear example settles my case. Let’s be honest here: What else could the fruit possibly be? His tongue? Maybe. But considering the overall metaphorical language of the book, I highly doubt a relatively harmless formulation would find its way in.

Now besides oral sex being mentioned in the SoS, there’s another problem: They refer to it as “our own methods” which “warp and degrade” sex. And that is exactly where my train of thoughts comes in.

I figure that kissing is beautiful and God-intended (otherwise, what’s the fuzz about that first kiss?). You kiss people you love. Have you ever had a child? If yes, have you kissed the tiny little feet? The precious little fingers? Their noses when they sleep? Yes? Do you have a wife or a husband? Have you ever kissed him or her on the forehead? On the neck? Kissed his or her fingers, or even her breasts? Yes? I suppose none of that is sinful. So… where in the bible do I find that ominous passage which areas of a loved person’s body I may kiss, and which one are off-limits? Is there such a thing as a nono-area?

You might argue that kisses from love are different from kisses which cause lust (which is essentially what oral sex does). But then would French kisses in marriage which cause lust not be sinful? Kisses on the neck as foreplay? And again, you could possibly argue that oral sex is not just “kissing” but involves more “action”, well, do French kisses still not count?

Either way, the point I’m getting at is that I have a feeling which tells me that there is an imaginary red area on our bodies, and that is our genitals. Everything within that area counts as sinful if it is kissed. And here’s where the “warped” part comes in: Are you seriously, seriously and with a straight face, going to tell me that this pattern of a “red area” is not a warped view of sexuality? Do you want to make me believe that God designed us with non-kissable areas on our bodies?

On a side note: Oral sex is probably cleaner than touching an elevator button. Especially if you just showered. So don’t even try.

Just for the giggles: When I spell checked my post, I realized I had called the book “Meet Mr Sith”. Freudian slip? Maybe. But definitely worthy of a cookie for all the Star Wars fans among you!

If you can’t be good enough, make others look bad.

D’you remember those times when you were a kid, playing with your friends and siblings, and you were really good at one thing but the other kid wasn’t, and then they did something to stop you from being so good at it? Like that one time where your sister got angry that you could ride your bike much faster, and pushed you off? Or when your sister said that the cake didn’t taste good when it was the best you ever made? Or even just when your little brother came and destroyed that lego building you made?

Well I remember those times (and the badly scraped knees!) and today, I can laugh about it. We were kids. That’s how we were. I did it too. One time, in my teens, my sister and I cooked marmalade and we put some ‘creative’ herbs into it. And it ended up tasting so good that Dad told us it was the best ever. And when my sister said that it was her idea (which it was), I jumped in and told her off for lying – it was supposedly our idea. She didn’t say a word, and I got some praise from Dad.

Yes, I lied. I made my sister’s efforts smaller than they really were in order to make myself look better.

That’s what kids do. And some adults. But when adults do it, we usually think it’s bad character.

Unless…

Well, unless they are the husbands of patriarchy. Then, of course, making others look smaller in order to appear stronger is normal behavior.

I recently posted about feminism and that it makes me an individual. Those ladies who are against feminism argue that this is exactly the point why feminism is to blame for everything that’s going wrong between men and women. Women trying to be good at something they’re not supposed to be good at.

You are not supposed to be good at anything men are supposed to do well. Because that, my friends, makes men act like silly crybabies. It makes them start lying, cheating and drinking, makes them treat you bad and leave you for that hot secretary (who, by the way, has a mischievous smile reserved just for him, Hi Debbi!).

Like Libby recently pointed out, feminism isn’t about being more powerful than men, it is, in its core, the claim that women are good at things they supposedly could naturally not be good at. It is the permission to develop the talents you have, no matter which area they’re in. It’s not about being better, it’s about being good at something, whatever it is.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, how can I consider a man a strong man when he feels threatened by the fact that I’m better at, say, fixing a car? For me, a strong man is not anymore a man who is only strong when I serve as his weak counterpart, a contrast figure, so to speak, which has no other purpose than proving that the man next to me is strong? No, I am not a contrast figure. I am not the natural anti-hero in the sense that I’m worse at everything my man wants to be good at.

Here’s the deal: I really am worse at things my boyfriend is good at. But that’s not because I act like it, that’s because it’s true. And the things he’s good at aren’t all ‘manly’ things. He has a much better sense for style and clothing. He is great at cleaning. He is better at fixing the car and he is better when it comes to socializing. I, on the other hand, am better at memorizing things. I am a better driver (he agrees with me on this one!). I am better at spending money and I am better at cooking. And I’m sure if you heard those things in a gender-neutral way, you couldn’t 100% decide who is the man.

A man isn’t a hero when I make him a hero. He doesn’t need me to glare with wet, empty-of-will eyes at him 24/7, he doesn’t need me to smile at him like a dork and praise him every time he manages to get dressed properly and completely on his own. A man is a hero because he can accept that I am one too (at least in his eyes). And he doesn’t automatically feel castrated when I’m good at things. Actually, I was recently called a heroine. For being good at something patriarchy tells me I shouldn’t be good at. A man who is a hero doesn’t hesitate to call others the same thing.

What is feminism to me?

I recently read a rage-filled fundamentalist post on women’s right to vote (and that women should not have that right) and I secretly thanked feminism for allowing me to be an individual in this society – or any society really.

So what does feminism mean to me? Does it mean “Yay I get to wear pants”? Sure, but that’s really just a side-joke.

It means my husband cannot quit MY job when he thinks I don’t do enough housework. He does not have the ability to cage me at the home and to rob me of my means to make money both for me and for my children (and potentially for him). It means that I will not suffer from the fact that I have no job experience, resulting in the fact that I have only two life choices: Divorce and poverty, or an unhappy marriage. It gives me the security that I have abilities which people are willing to pay money for.

It also means that I can get higher education. I can study at university in order to improve my market value and in order to improve my knowledge. It gives me a chance to decide what and who I want to be. It gives me the security that when everything is lost, my education will still be there.

It means that I can vote. I can vote for the candidate with the best program, the greatest vision, who shares my opinion or, yes, the candidate I find physically attractive. That’s how it is. It means that my opinion will count even if my justification for these opinions is based on superficial issues like looks. I’m not saying this is a good call, but that’s how it is: You cannot chose whether you like an opinion or not, you’ll have to live with others having them.

It means also that I can own things, buy things, make contracts and be a liable person by law. I do not disappear in the existence of my husband once I say “I do”. I am still allowed to exist as a person of my own. This is why I despise people who say things like “Mr and Mrs John Smith”. There is no Mrs John Smith. There might be Mrs Jane Smith.

Feminism means that my body is mine and nobody else’s. Not my husband’s. Not my child’s. MINE. I can do with it as I please. I can pierce it, draw on it, take it where ever I want. I can sleep with whom I want, at any time, or not. It protects me from being raped by my husband without appropriate punishment. It protects me from being forced to do things I do not want to do.

Feminism in its core gives me individuality at the core. It makes me a person with dreams, rights and a future. Feminism makes me human. It makes me – me, just as I want myself to be.

When the patriarchs express that feminism is evil, it is not the feminism they hate. It’s not the pants and the rights they hate. It is precisely the individuality.

Fundamentalist christianity cannot survive in an environment where there is individuality. Everybody must conform to rules and values for it to work. Everybody must submit, men and women alike. Those who do not submit are those who risk the system. Kids who talk back. Women who work. Men who have feelings. Individuals outside that perfect, Pearl-esque set of rules. Conform or be damned. Conform or suffer. Conform or die. Individuality? Uncheck that box as soon as possible. Die to yourself and move the remaining empty shell by the rules of the great puppet-master. Get on the stage and play your role, and by all means, hope it’s over soon.

I am here, reading, writing, thinking. Not because of anything the patriarchs did but because of something the feminists did. They made me what I am today. Thank you for that.

The army of stay-at-home-authors

I’m fascinated by a realisation I’ve made recently.

In order to ‘keep up’ with what’s going on and what’s new in the P/QF circles, I frequent a number of blogs to stay up to date. After all, I can’t sit here blogging about old news all day. I want to know what’s going on, and I want to be able to write about it.

I’m rather well-informed about the number of films, documentaries and books coming out, as well as blogs about new ideas in the VF/LAF/AR community, and on top of that, I like to know what’s going on in the SAHD circles. And I realized something -

The incredible obsession stay at home daughters have with writing books. I do not want to openly bash young women here, or put them down in any way, hence I’m not linking any of the young authors, but a little look around VF and similar insider pages will give you a good overview of what the young generation is doing – though I don’t think I can avoid naming the very popular names.

I find that there are two types of stay at home daughters. On one hand, there’s the daughters of large families, often lower class, whose parents have no significant higher education and who will never get higher education themselves. The working class QF. As a daughter of this social group, I grew up admiring those young ladies writing books. How did they do it? I had no time. I wouldn’t know what to write about in the first place. And even if I did,  had no skill, no idea, no anything. I simply couldn’t express what I wanted to express. I know many daughters like me, who felt writing was a dream so far out of reach that it seemed like a completely different world. But we were still involved in the young stay at home writers fad – we swallowed up those books, discussing them. They were written by young women like us, or so we thought, who went through the same problems.

This, however, was a major illusion, I can see that now. There are no books, literally, not a single one, written by a daughter who, cheerfully, goes through the same as young QF girls from very large families. They simply don’t have the time do write, or the skill. Those masses of books are written by a completely different society.

And that’s the second group of stay at home daughters – the ones from middle and upper class families, often with a significantly smaller number of children. These girls, and I’m not saying this in a negative way but rather in an observant way, have less to worry about. Their parents don’t have to struggle with finances, they don’t have to watch their 10 siblings all day, they are usually better educated or even take some college classes. Of course, some still come from very large families, but they are rare (take the Duggars). Their lives at home provide many options to learn, to observe, for example the Bauchams, who travel quite a bit, or the Botkins. Their parents are educated, providing a better home education. And at the same time, because there aren’t that many children the women have to take care of, they have much more time on their hands. Time they can use to think, to express, to write.

I’m getting the feeling that many of these stay at home daughters are actually bored with their lives. I feel like they’d love to change some things, they just can’t, being caught in an environment that tells them to spend their lonely days at home. They write not necessarily because they have something to say but because it is the only form of expression available, because they are unsatisfied with their calm lives which do not allow to go to a real college, so instead they talk about their lives and their struggles. Many of these books are about single years and how to cope with being single.

I don’t want to sound high and mighty, but the lower class daughters seem to struggle much less in this aspect. I’m not saying the desire isn’t there, but when your days are filled to the max, you simply do not have time to contemplate marriage and love all day. Some lower class daughters even fear getting married because they feel like they’d be abandoning their siblings, their parents, that they are so needed at home that everything will fall apart once they marry. In a situation like that you simply don’t spend your days dreaming of prince charming. You may spend a day dreaming of not scraping old food from the floor, though.

The fad, the dream of being an author, seems to provide something these rather educated young women desperately need: Recognition of their abilities, which they certainly have, a voice in a world that tells them they must be quiet, and outlet to make a difference when the only difference you’ll ever make is the number of children you’re able to bear. It’s a form of secret intellectuality, one that they’re not supposed to have, so they mask it with books about how to fill your empty days helping a parents who don’t really need your help.

And finally, I often feel like there is a lot of anger in those books. Sometimes, I feel like “I am miserable in my cage, so I’m explaining you how to make a cage like this yourself, so we can be miserable together” is written between the lines. The books are often full of radical, extremist views, doing nothing but putting down women who have chosen a different life, telling them how much God hates women who try to make things work by themselves.

Do we really need more books on singleness? More books on what to do with all that spare time? And, even more interesting, what does that say about a generation of young women?

The (polished) lives of others

I remember dreaming about life the way I had seen it in those P/QF books and magazines and occasional home making blogs. It’s funny because it was never that way at our house. But I always thought that one day, I would live one of those beautiful lives.

I’d have a pantry filled with homemade juices and marmalade and sauces and relishes. I’d have a beautiful, antique and yet modern kitchen. I’d have a great view from my kitchen windows, and I’d wear a beautiful apron. I’d be… hm. One of those fairytale housewives, I guess.

My life would be quiet, relaxed. I’d be busy decorating a beautiful home, not really worrying about money and how to get by. My husband would be thrilled to see my newest crafty decoration idea and I’d have people come over for tea, who would praise my exquisite taste and the heavenly homemade biscuits.

My living room would have one of those open fire places and no TV in it, a beautiful sofa and a large bookshelf with old books – funny enough, that shelf was filled with books I wasn’t encouraged to read. But hey, who cares, they were only decoration anyway. They would show my guests how polished my education was, how knowledgable and ‘classical’ I was. After all, those classics are the center of a good education!

Yes, people would be impressed by my family and me. After tea, the female guests would offer to help me in the kitchen, but I’d say no. I’d offer them to come to the kitchen with me anyway, and then I would show them the many jars filled with strawberry-vanilla-lemon jelly and blackberry-cherry marmalade and tomato relish (my secret ingredient was a red, sweet apple). They’d look at the jars and go “How on earth do you manage?” and I would just smile and say “Oh, you know, I just can’t stand not using up the things we grow in our garden.” (just to point them to the fact that I had a rich garden). I would fill up the plates with more biscuits, different kinds, and gracefully fly back into the living room, or the dining room. There’d be fresh flowers everywhere. And the women would ask me where I got this and that, where my antique teacups were from, and I would have a different story about everything, an amazing, magical, filled with adventure story.

And yes, my kids. How well-behaved they were, and how clean and neat and obedient and whatnot. How tidy their rooms were, how tidy the house was, how lush the gardens! Yes, I was truly the Proverbs 31 woman.

At the end of the day, my tall dark and handsome husband, who made assloads of money doing something real godly, would put his hands on my shoulders and gently kiss my neck and whisper that I was truly the wife of his dreams and no other even came close to me.

Yes, I would enjoy those moments that made me feel so superior to everybody else. I would brag about it, discreetly, a constant, charming smile on my face, my beautiful hair naturally falling perfectly on my shoulders, my dress so polished and modern. My beautiful husband and kids, my beautiful self, my beautiful home. Oh everything would be beauty. And I would walk past the other P/QF trailer trash and show them that if you REALLY had God in your life, you could be the same. No, they weren’t as godly as I was. They weren’t. I was the true picture of what God did for his followers. Yes, I was better. Better than all of them. I was more sacred, had more godly beauty, more blessed. And they would know, and they’d crawl back into their messy holes and beg God for forgiveness for whatever they had done to deserve less than me.

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Thinking back, this makes me despise myself. I always dreamed to be one of those women. You know them, they are in every church. Except, back then, I was the trailer trash girl, crawling back into her hole and into her messy life, wondering why God didn’t give us the money and space we needed, why it was always too much for us to do, why, no matter how hard we tried, we could never have the fancy china and the old books and the crafty ideas.

I was filled up with rage because God didn’t keep his promise. And then we were there, left in the dark, looking at those polished lives of the woman who were truly graceful and blessed.

We were the ones envying gardens and staring at the beautiful kitchens. We were the ones to be gifted that strawberry-vanilla-lemon jelly, with a pitying smile and a “I got more than we can eat!”, or that tomato relish, with a wink and a “A big, ripe, red apple is the secret ingredient!”.

I was the one of the sideline, knowing that they were better, and hoping that I’d join them one day.

It’s not just purity that’s turned into a contest. It’s all of it. Who’s the purest, who has the most godly, most proverbs-31 house with the beautiful stuff in it, who has the best husband, who has most blessings from god.

I was despicable. I’m happy I’m out of that pressure. I don’t have to despise anybody anymore – not the poor P/QF families who think that they don’t need all that stuff to be happy (but actually, they do), not the families who can boast with their blessings of beauty and craftiness and tidiness. I pity them, even. Because both sides are never satisfied. Both sides are striving to show everybody what God can do by hoarding up blessings, both in form of children and of possessions. They think they are beyond materialism, but they aren’t. In fact, they sell it as “Godly, beautiful, set apart feminine lifestyle”.

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As I am writing this, I’m sitting on my made bed, covered  in h&m sheets (I love them!), a room filled with stuff that was gifted to me, that I fixed up. That doesn’t quite fit, is always a little off. Now, I will go into my old but homely kitchen, take two cups out of the shelf – two different looking ones, because we do not have two cups of the same design on that shelf – and make a cup of coffee with my good old-fashioned coffee machine. One for me, one for my roommate. And then, who knows. Maybe we’ll just go shopping. Because, fortunately, we do not have a garden to harvest, jellies to cook, or cookies to bake. No, we are free of all those pressures – at least for today.

I hear the new cafe has amazing cookies. Maybe we’ll try those.

why would someone want to keep their courtship secret?

As I went over my blog stats, I saw this question pop up in the search engine list. I thought it was kind of self-explanatory, but obviously not everybody understands why a courtship might be kept secret (in certain groups/families).

First off, not every girl (or family) feels the need to keep a courtship a secret. As you can imagine, some girls are so happy about being courted that they just can’t keep it to themselves. Openly talking about courtship is something you’ll see in the more “liberal” groups of the P/QF movement. It’s especially important to differentiate between P and QF here – strictly patriarchical families are more likely to keep it secret than families with a strong emphasis on the QF theologies.

And yes, there are families who aren’t patriarchical but live quiverfull. Others again are full-blown patriarchical families, but don’t believe in the quiverfull theologies (aka NFP and sometimes condoms are allowed, but it’s the man who decides when the wife will get pregnant).

The thing is simply that the patriarchs feel very much like they have to use the (successful) courtships of their daughters to show off how well they filtered potential suitors before hand. A failed courtship can imply that the father did not pick well and this might reflect back and his authority and leadership skills – at least in the public eye of the movements. Of course this isn’t true for every case, but the motto is usually “better safe than sorry”.

And it’s not just the fathers. In very strict groups, a girl turns into “damaged goods” faster than you might think. Even a failed courtship might label her as damaged goods and have a negative influence on the range of future suitors. It’s all about the “value of the bride”.

Imagine you’re in a store for soft pillows. The shelves are full of soft, handmade, expensive pillows. Lots of people come in to buy pillows. Now, some pillows might have attracted more customers in the past – they look a tiny bit “touched”, there might even be a little stain. They’ve never been slept on (no pun intended), but one or the other customer already picked it up to inspect it more closely. Now, if you do want a flawless pillow, you won’t even buy the “inspected” ones – you’ll go for the ones in the back, the ones nobody ever inspected, fresh from the storage room – if possible still wrapped in plastic.

It works very much like that in strict courtship movements. If a girl has one, or, even worse, more than one, failed courtships, there’s something “wrong” about her. A girl breaking off a courtship is something rather “wild”. The idea is that the girl will certainly like the man her dad picked out because, well, her dad knows her best. If you hear of broken courtships, the general idea that comes to mind is that the guy broke it off for some reason (or the dad, which then would be kept secret again because dad doesn’t pick “the wrong guy”). The girl’s value decreased with every courtship she goes through. She’ll be labelled damaged, easy to get, high maintenance and so forth. And simply because of that, it’s so much easier to keep courtships secret until the day of engagement.

Mother-Son relationships: “You’re raising a wimp!”

There’s so much material on father-daughter relationships in the fundamentalist groups these days as well as plenty of material on the issue of “emotional incest” within the purity movements. In short, a very close father-daughter relationship is supposed to make the girls grow up to be pure princesses who will not sleep with any man, won’t end up as drunk drug addicted teen pregnant sluts and will make awesome wives, simply and only because they stayed absolutely pure.

While there is this strong emphasis on the value of a very close father-daughter relationship, there is another emphasis on mother-son relationships. These aren’t considered to be as beneficial to the developement of sons – actually, quite the opposite. A strong, involved mother will rather turn a son into a wimpy little boy who will never be able to be “manly” in any way. This attachment to their mothers will turn into something they can’t cut off. They’ll never be able to “leave their parents” because his mother will be more important than his wife. Yes, those sons will turn into men who cry because their wives call them losers. They will cry when they realize they made a terribly wrong decision. They will cry for every reason a woman is typically supposed to cry.

I remember how my parents encouraged us daughters to seek their help and support for every problem we had. The emphasis is on their. They believed a daughter needed both parents’ care to grow into a good woman. Their were both equally important. For my brothers, however, things were a little different. Asking Mom for help was discouraged – they were supposed to come to Dad with everything. A lot of times, Mom wasn’t even informed when something was wrong with the boys, she wasn’t asked for advice or anything. My Dad would just go ahead and work out the problems by himself, telling Mom only after everything had been worked out that there was a problem to begin with. It’s not uncommon at all that Mothers almost push their sons away in order to make them grow into strong, manly men. A mother can’t even do much with a son! The daughters she can involve in her daily life. They can help her clean, care for the babies, cook and do laundry. Boys can’t do that. Boys must do things boys do – play in the garden, make something, play knight and dragon. Mom doesn’t have time for it and even if she did, she would probably prefer to spend some girl time with her daughters. Too much time spent together makes boys way too attached to that first woman in their lives.

While a daughter’s heart is supposed to belong to her Dad and her Dad only (see purity balls etc), a boy’s heart is never supposed to belong to his mother only. A boy’s heart is free, it belongs to him. If his heart wasn’t free in this sense, he would have to ask his mother for her opinion and, finally, for her approval, if he had picked out a girl he wanted to court. And that is simply impossible – a woman lacks the ability to make sound, godly decision. After all, her head is her husband, not God directly. She cannot know what God wants because he can’t tell her – only her husband can. You see where this is going – a woman is simply unable to be a mother in a spiritual sense because she simply lacks the spiritual ability and permission – and if you can’t be, shouldn’t be a “spiritual mother”, you might want to be careful about all the other ways to be a mother. A woman’s advice, care and involvement can’t do any good for a boy’s developement. At the end of the day, it will be his Dad and his Dad only who makes the final call as the head of the home. A son’s mother is degraded merely to an incubator, a feeder and caretaker for the first year of life. After that, her influence can only be damaging.

Today I found this very interesting article here. And I realized that much of it is true.

You see, my boyfriend is one of those “wimpy sons”. At first it kind of scared me, almost… disgusted me. I thought he was too attached to his mother. His Mom is a lovely Lady. She is very very quiet and calm, very emotional and very introvert. All of these character qualities are true for Daniel. He is the exact copy of his mother, at least when it comes to character and personality. He was sort of her favourite child. While his siblings had a much stronger relationship with their Dad, who is the exact opposite of his wife, he was Mama’s boy. Until today they have a very very close relationship. If he has problems, questions or anything, he will ask his mother first. Once a week they meet up to spend quality time together. They usually rent a movie, or go for pizza, or simply have a cup of coffee somewhere. It’s an important thing for both of them.

I’m sure you can imagine just how confusing this was for a fundamentalist child like me. He clearly picked the wrong parent! He should be doing all of that with his Dad. Everything else makes him a wimp.

Except that it doesn’t.

He can very well make decisions without his Mom holding his hand. He is disciplined, loving and caring, a hard worker, emotionally connected, strong in relationships, honest and protective. How could it be that he displays all of those qualities when he grew up being Mommy’s boy?

Could it be that listening to a woman’s advice doesn’t make a man soft and weak? Could it be that a child might not be focused on the parent of the same gender but rather on the parent with the same personality? Could it be that an involved mother doesn’t make a man weak but strong and appreciative of female qualities, respecting a woman the same way he respects his mother – as an intelligent human being capable of making sound decisions and giving advice that you can actually listen to?

Is Sex good or bad?!

I want to talk about a major problem I’ve always had ever since my parents put strong emphasis on the purity teachings – when I was old enough to understand that I had to “protect” my purity.

All of the purity teachings have a potential to make sex look really bad. It is something that will break your entire being, body, mind and soul. If you give it away, you will lose a large portion of everything you are to a person who eventually does not value it. Sex and everything around it becomes an enemy you have to fight.

Now, of course none of the P/QF folks, neither adults nor teens, have a supernatural power that allows them to block all their sexual desires at all times unless they’re appropriate. That’s because they’re just people (Who would’ve known?). As you probably already guesses, I had those desires too!

While you mostly dream of a faceless Prince Charming, a completely asexual one, as a young girl, these images change in your teens. Just like every other teen, I dreamed of kissing my Prince Charming and holding hands and getting flowers and so on. And further in my teens, I started wondering what it would feel like to get more kissing than just a peck on the lips. And even further, I started to wonder what having sex with him would be like. For certain periods, this Prince had the face of a boy I knew, other times he just looked like how I imagined a really attractive man (tall, dark, slightly curly hair, brown eyes…. I’m a walking stereotype!).

And all of this was a sin. I was mentally cheating on my future husband. I think it’s partially to stop young girls from these dreams that makes people teach negative things about sex. How it’s disgusting, humiliating and cheap.

And then, there were these two specific teachings which I could never manage to make sense of. Each individual teaching makes sense on its own, but combined they stop making sense to make.

First off, while sex outside of marriage is dirty, cheap, humiliating and dangerous, within the boundaries of marriage it’s sacred, beautiful, holy and good. God made sex, so it’s good. It’s the most beautiful thing about marriage. So far so good.

Second, a wife must understand that her husband’s need for sex is much larger than her own. Refusing him is a sin. If a woman does not enjoy it, she must overcome that and do it anyway. She must act like it’s fun to satisfy her husband. She is supposed to say yes whenever he asks because her body belongs to him. It’s a “fact” that women don’t crave sex as much and that it’s not as enjoyable for them as it’s simply not a part of their design. Men on the other hand see sex as the most important thing in a relationship, so since he’s your head, you’re to submit to him, support him and fulfill his desires.

So wait a minute, on one hand it’s awesome in marriage, on the other hand you still have to force yourself?

I love spaghetti and, no joke, I could it eat literally every single day. Twice! I do not like pork and if someone put it in front of me, I’d have a hard time swallowing each bite.

It’s either awesome, or it’s not. It can’t be both a blessing and a burden at the same time. I fully understand that you might not want sex every single day, but there’s a fundamental difference between something that’s enjoyable and something that is done out of obligation.

Until this day I do not know how to categorize “sex”. Good or bad? Fun or burden? Enjoyable or obligation? I always felt like these teachers were only trying to force people into abstinence first by telling them how terrible sex before marriage is and how awesome it is in marriage, but once the women get married, you have to make clear to them that this might not be true for everyone, but now it’s too late and you have to do it any way. If you’ve been taught to view sex as something terrible for your entire life, chances are you won’t enjoy it that much. This image will stay in your head for the rest of your life, if you’re unlucky.

The “in marriage it’s great” blabber just doesn’t cut it! People are supposed to suppress all off their sexual desires, to feel ashamed for having them in the first place, until they say “I do”, which is exactly the moment where the girls are supposed to throw their clothes away, put a hot strip-show on and act like sex-maniacs. And men are likewise supposed to be able to perform at any time of the day. Going from beating themselves up over looking at a pretty girl’s butt to lusting after their wife as much as they please. Can you give me a sexual dysfunction?

I really wish I’ll be able to figure this one out in this life, because I certainly don’t want to end up like one of those wives who deny themselves every form of joy because that’s how they’re supposed to act.

Quiverful men and why they can’t leave

Libby Anne is starting to put the questions for her Raised Quiverful project together. And just now I realized that, though I read all blogs written by the people who participated, there’s one person whose answers I’m most curious about. And that person is Joe from Incongruous Circumspection. I don’t mean to insult the women who answered in any way, I dearly love reading their blogs as well and I’m curious about their answers too. I think I’m so curious to read Joe’s answers because he is the only man to answer.

It’s so rare to read about men who lived in the P/QF movements and left them. It seems as if they don’t exist! Now, you could certainly argue on a gender based foundation, saying that women simply feel more comfortable talking about such emotional topics, that they talk more anyway, and that it’s easier for them to word these things because they know their emotions better than men do.

I don’t think that’s the (only) reason. I’ve been thinking about it and this is what I came up with:

In the P/QF movements, men model Christ with all they do, and they’re supposed to possess qualities such as strength both physical and emotional, intelligence, discipline, leader skills, responsibility, self-sacrifice by working and providing and so on. Women on the other hand are submissive, meek and quiet, simple (-minded), following their husbands who, as I said, are like Christ to them. Men are leaders, women are followers.

When a woman breaks free of these structures, she certainly will face a lot of problems with the circles she’s leaving. She’ll be called rebellious, evil, sinful, worldly. But you can’t ignore what she’s doing at that point: From being a follower, she strives to be strong, self-governed, responsible. She tries to equalize herself with men and, ultimately, with Christ. While that’s negative within the P/QF communities, she’ll be respected in the ‘real’ world. She’ll probably experience a lot of positive feedback from the normal people she meets, who will tell her she was right and strong. A woman always breaks free of rather negative characteristics and adapts positive (manly) characteristics.

Do not forget that women are blamed for ‘feminine’ men. It’s not the men who give up their strength, it’s always women who take it away from them. The strong woman is feared in the movement. She is something you have to scream about, criticize and beat to show her her place in the world. It takes a lot of violence to make a woman submit – or at least try to do that.

Now, men are never blamed for a loss of their power. It’s always women who take it. Men are generally attributed all these positive characteristics and the second they reject any part of this system – watch out, this is where it gets interesting – they lose their Christ-likeness. They voluntary step down from their position of power to a lower position – namely that of a woman. They lessen themselves by rejecting the P/QF beliefs. They supposedly admit their weakness, their lack of responsibility and intelligence, their lack of leadership skills.

While a woman who leaves is strong (in the position that only men should have), a man is weak and scared, retreating into the passive position of a woman.

And while a woman who leaves gets all this positive affirmation from the normal world, what do men get? Even in the normal world, they might seem weak and emotionally unstable. Even for the normal world, he loses his position of a ‘man’. And that’s precisely what I think doesn’t only keep most men from talking about their experiences, it’s also what stops men from leaving those movements in the first place.

No matter how you turn it, a woman will always be in a positive, strong position, a man will always be in the weak position. I can fully understand every man who is afraid of losing his entire manliness because of this. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t leave to preserve this manliness. But I understand what makes it so much harder to show ‘rebellious’ characteristics as a man.

Courtship – engagement – weddings (1)

It’s time for another courtship – engagement – wedding post.

There is something weird about courtship I realized. I never read anything about this particular issue and it doesn’t exist in every family, but in some (or many) it does.

Why do so many families keep it a secret when a daughter is starting to court? And it’s not like that for men – at least, not that I know of! When a man starts courting, he will say that he “has a feeling” or that “he thinks God is showing him something”. He might not directly admit “Yes, I’m courting”, but he won’t say no either. With girls, it’s different. A lot of fathers tell their daughters not to talk about it until the biggest deal breakers are out-of-the-way. Why is that?

I think it’s got a lot do with 1. the image of female purity and 2. submission of the female part in a relationship.

About the first: While evangelical circles deny that there is such a thing as a difference between purity in women and in men, we all know these differences exist. It’s got a lot to do with the image of how each gender “loves”. While women tend to get emotionally involved very quickly – and therefore give pieces of their hearts away – men love more on a physical level, physical attraction and sex are the major things a man will crave when he is in love, and not the emotional aspect of a relationship. Hence, once a courtship starts, the woman is much more likely to lose her purity and pieces of her heart while the man is only looking for sex and by that, won’t give away pieces of his heart. The emotional attachment comes much later (if it ever comes!).

And I see this as a major reason why so many families are eager to hide a new courtship of a daughter. This might go on for just a week or two, it might take months for the parents to allow the daughter to admit to it, depending on a large number of circumstances. But it is done on a regular basis.

I think for many families there’s a huge fear of  their girls being “damaged goods” as soon as she enters a courtship relationship. To avoid this, the rules on courting seem to get stricter and stricter, and likewise, the girls seem to pick up a “holier than thou” attitude that wasn’t there before.

While holding hands or even kissing wasn’t “as bad” a few years ago – many fundamentalist couples admit to kissing before getting married – the younger generations, particularly the girls who are just getting into the age of being eligable for marriage. Kissing seems totally off-limits these days and the view of holding hands before marriage is changing as well. There are plenty of people who do not hold hands these days but instead hold a stick on each end to “imitate” holding hands. If you look around in the blogosphere of this group of girls, you will find an awful lot who are against any form of physical contact before marriage – we’re talking actual marriage here, not engagement. It goes as far as even the man not putting the engagement ring on the woman’s hand – he will give the ring to her father, who then will put it on her finger – to avoid physical contact.

I find this behaviour to lead down dangerous streets. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with purity, but the fact that you would avoid every form of physical contact in a way like this goes beyond my understanding. While only acts of sexual sin made you physically impure a few years ago, we’re already at physical impurity when it comes to sliding on that engagement ring.

But back to the discussion of keeping a courtship a secret. The second reason why I think it’s kept secret was submission. This might sound strange to you at first, but -

If a women went out to tell any of her friends, anybody really, about her courtship with a man, and even if that’s all she would tell them, she would put a sort of pressure on him. We all know about expectations from your environment and as soon as you’re in a courtship, certainly thing are expected from you. While many say that a courtship might as well fail, this is hardly ever the case. A courtship is typically only allowed once the father of the girl has already thoroughly inspected the suitor. The biggest deal breakers after starting a courtship would be coming from the girl or the boy, such as not getting along or wanting totally different things, feeling different callings. But that almost never happens. Most courtships are broken for reasons such as sexual sin and rebellion.

Now, once a woman goes out to talk about her courtship, the environment expects them to get along, to make it work. A courting couple in the mind of the people is almost engaged, and engaged is almost married. The simple act of telling others about it might be understood as a way of pressuring the man into taking further steps. But, as we know, that isn’t allowed. Even in courtship, a woman is expected to submissive – let him take each and every step in the relationship, the only thing you’re really allowed to do is follow quietly. Every form of trying to push a man are understood as a sign of a lack of submissiveness. And this, in fact, can be a deal breaker for young men.

Due to the fact that my next issue differs greatly from this one, I’ll split it into another post.