sexuality

This is what’s waiting on the other side of purity (sex + shame, an ending)

October 11, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

God prefers bad marriages to Sexual Sin; or at least that’s what I thought for twenty years.

The very institution of marriage, they said, had redemptive powers that could sanctify two people’s relationship simply by the fact of their participation in it. By fulfilling your role, you could force the pieces of yourself and your spouse into congruence, your life into harmony with God’s Plan.

Sexual Sin, on the other hand, would irrevocably break you; it would poison your future; it would fester inside you; it would make you a second-rate home for the Holy Spirit and unfit to worship God or serve the church. Sure, you could repent, but you’d still be a patched-up wreck. If you really understood the gravity of your sin, you’d be repenting forever.

Maintaining this purity for the sake of my future husband and God Almighty would be, I understood, extremely difficult but ultimately rather simple. Reaching the goal consisted of two steps: controlling my own desires, and dating only people who shared all of my views on sexuality and boundaries.

These steps had the convenient side effect of neatly excising the other party in a dating relationship from the whole purity enterprise. He would either share my utter terror of Sexual Sin—so there would be no need to talk much about it—or he’d demonstrate his unsuitability by disrespecting me, violating my boundaries, burning Bibles, or some similarly blasphemous and repulsive behavior.

That is how I ended up an adult in a relationship where we could talk about philosophy, our prayer lives, and our hypothetical future marriage, but not about our daily make-out (OK, dry-humping) sessions.

That is how I carried secret shame for months over a kiss I neither consented to nor participated in.

That is how I hid, from every friend I ever had, the same secret they, without exception, were hiding from me: that I’d Gone Too Far and I could only hope to be forgiven.

That is how I nearly broke up with a man who reads history and watches soccer, who really listens to the homeless, really listens to me, works hard, loves Jesus, and just happened to not have heard about how Jesus is obsessed with everyone’s sex life. Who neither violated my boundaries nor blasphemed the Good Lord, but asked quite a few questions that I could only half answer. It made me grumpy; I had nothing without the Right Answers.

There is an ending to that story where I go on regarding my own body and everyone else’s with suspicion; where I go on clutching my Answers, placing them between me and everyone outside my tribe; where I keep my purity and my certainty and my fear, and I lose this man who insists we discuss these things, this petulant match of mine, my husband.

The threat of shame is the very definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now I have become a story gatherer. I look for quiet moments to read the stories. I think they deserve that—and I need the time and space to pray. Every ping of my inbox represents a person on a journey, one completely unique and as familiar as my own alien skin.

Some of us write raw; some of us stuff decades of pain into little summaries so neat, only our fellow travelers might recognize the landmarks and know what scars we bear.

Often the telling of the journey is a landmark of its own; for me, the hearing is another. It’s not easy or, exactly, fun to gather these tales, but I am full of gratitude for this inbox of healing hearts. They are not pretty stories, but they are our stories, and we are claiming them for ourselves. It is not the pretty stories that turn you fierce and brilliant, not the easy answer that draws you in to God.

There’s a rumor that the only alternative to purity culture is an orgiastic free-for-all, devoid of respect and unconcerned with human connection or human dignity.

I think that belief represents a lack of imagination that’s scandalous in a group of people so enamored with a book of stories and poems.

See, when I talk about escaping purity culture, I don’t mean I want to break free of all constraints on sexual behavior. In fact, I’m asking the church to place higher expectations on all of us.

I’m asking that we learn to pray, read, think, and navigate relationships for ourselves, instead of pretending the world fits into a neat framework that will do those things for us.

I’m asking for a conversation that respects teenagers, includes single people, takes unmarried couples seriously, and encourages and challenges married people.

We’ve hammered out weapons of fear where the world is begging to know how to love. We’ve continued to objectify instead of cultivating wonder at the beauty of others. We’ve repressed and hated bodies that God invites us to celebrate and enjoy. We could be the freedom-teachers, the wound-healers, the bearers of Good News; we could be so at home in our bodies, so careful of and open to one another, so creative in our uses of the wholesomeness that is sexuality lived in the light, that people would see Jesus in us. But we trade all that for a false sense of safety.

I don’t want a sexual ethic based on threats, lies, rigid roles or ideal scenarios. I want a theology of bodies full of wonder at the image of God; located entirely in the messy spaces of relationships with God, ourselves, and others; crystal-clear about responsibility and consent; with room for the mistakes and the surprising discoveries every single one of us has made.

I’m begging us to stop pushing young men and women into a daily-changing world armed only with a set of flimsy assumptions. We have got to get over ourselves and our embarrassment long enough to talk about how to make respectful and responsible sexual choices with a partner; how to enjoy your own sexuality without objectifying others; how to cultivate self-respect; how to encounter sexual diversity in love.

We have got to do our own work to understand where we’ve been shamed, abused, confused, lied to, or controlled.

I will not pass down my own shame to a single person more.

I will find in sexuality an invitation to the hard and holy work of being human, being a body that needs other bodies, and taking responsibility for my own place in the many ways our bodies interact. I will not fail to see the transcendent dwelling in the very yuckiest muck of our world.

I will be one calling out to others: you are a miracle of a place.

If we really believed that, maybe we could let go of purity, and trade it in, finally, for love.

The sex + shame series is on pause for a bit, but if you are still interested in contributing, do let me know. I expect to either sprinkle these in over the coming months or revive the series sometime in the future.

Whether you share with us or not, if you’ve had the thought of telling your story, I’d encourage you to do it. Taking a pen and writing it out can be so healing—even if it requires more of you than you expected.

The rest of the series is here.

what it’s like to hide your sexuality in church (sex + shame part six)

September 7, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Part six of a series beginning here.

I had been hoping to hear from some men, as their experiences with purity culture are, by and large, very different but potentially as damaging as women’s. I had not been hoping to hear a story as difficult as this one, but I am so grateful for the author’s candor and wisdom. These are the stories that get lost (or worst, dismissed outright) in the debates I wrote about last week. Thank you for taking time for this one.

I have a male assigned body, and as a young child I was sexually abused by an older, male cousin. This is the same cousin who called me a “fag” for being more sensitive and interested in books that little boys ought to be. The same cousin who worked very hard to fit within the mold of masculinity, degrading women and other men to prove his position within society.

During middle school I transferred schools, and I would not shake the outsider status until late in high school. Because I was different, I was treated poorly and called “gay.” When I found that it was difficult to look directly at some boys too long without blushing or feeling warm, I felt as though I could not admit to myself that I was in fact gay because then maybe all of their anger and resentment towards me had legitimacy. Their poor treatment of me would be justified.

In high school I became fairly involved with a Baptist Youth group. I was the first to be inducted into a secret group called “Men of Honor.” In this group we heard stories about how men’s sexual, fleshly desires ruined their marriages or lives. We discussed all sexual release out of heterosexual marriage not only as sinful but as spiritual violence—if not against another, then against yourself. Married, opposite-gendered sex was sanctified as one of the most spiritually pure acts. Sex within any other context, even masturbation, was spiritually damaging. Of all the sexual acts, however, gay or lesbian sex was the most corrupt, destroying whole families in the wake of lustful passions.

Being a survivor of sexual violence, the idea of all sex as inherently violent (spiritually at the very least) made me nauseous and uninterested all together. I did not want to hurt anyone the way I had been hurt. And I viewed my own sexuality as a destructive force that I had to protect others from—especially since I was tempted by the most violent and devastating variation. The shame was crippling, and I did not start dating until I was 23.

My journey towards healing included reconciling my past abuse and my sexuality as two separate things—one as a traumatic event in my life and the other an irrepressible part of how I naturally receive and express intimacy, and who I share that with. Healing meant understanding sex as not an act of violence being acted out by either myself or my partner. An act of sex is instead one of many ways to express full bodied, intimate affection for someone else as another bodied creation of God. Healing also meant accepting that being gay is not all about sex, but who I want to watch science fiction anime with, who I want to share my crossword puzzle while we sip coffee, and who I want to unload to after a difficult day of class or work. Intimacy does reach beyond the physical into the mental and spiritual, but the health of that union does not hinge on gender or marriage. A healthy relationship is built on flexibility, love and trust. And healthy sex is empowering, safe, and consensual.

Is there something you’ve learned to separate from sex?

Have you heard male sexuality described as a violent force? What do we think we gain by viewing it this way?

What did you learn being gay is “about”?

5 Reasons Jesus Would Ask You to Un-Sign the Nashville Statement

September 1, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

After the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood issued their Nashville Statement on gender and sexuality this week, I tried not to care. Don’t we already know where they stand on these issues?

But I couldn’t let it go, if only because so many of my own friends carefully follow CBMW or John Piper. They are people who truly want more than anything to be faithful and loving. They don’t know or care much about the politically correct ways to say things; they might even read the statement as many commenters did—”compassionate,” “gracious.”

It was CBMW’s insistence that their position is central to the Gospel, I realized, that took my breath away with shock and a little fear. Do my friends think I oppose the Gospel? Will they think so after their spiritual heroes sign on to this sweeping declaration?

Whenever I have questions about the Gospel, I ask Jesus. Here are five things I could imagine him saying to those who signed.

The Nashville Statement is hurting people.

I know many people who might sign on to the statement with some sorrow. They worry about the state of world. They wish others didn’t have to struggle with their sexual identities. They want to have LGBT friends and serve them meals and “do life with them” until the day the friends realize how terrible their lives are and repent.

That is well-intentioned in a way, but it’s not compassionate. “Com + passion” equals suffering with. You are not with someone as long as you are drawing a line between sexual morality and sexual immorality with yourself squarely on the opposite side from the other person. You are not with someone as long as opposing a fundamental aspect of their self remains a fundamental aspect of your theology.

Instead, the language and tone of the Nashville Statement reveals that it was not written by people in real relationships with queer people. If it had, it wouldn’t use the made-up word “transgenderism” or insist at so very many points that people can change to fit “God’s design.” It would acknowledge the church’s utter failure of queer people, evident in the prevalence of depression, suicide, and self-harm among queer Christians.

It’s not Biblical.

The Nashville Statement’s conflation of beliefs about sexuality with salvific belief in the Gospel (Article X) is utterly unsupported by Scripture. Jesus never preached that fulfillment of narrow gender roles would signal the arrival of the kingdom of God.

It’s not holistic.

Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t make statements about gender and sexual identity in isolation from an understanding of sex and sexuality for straight people. In particular, it’s tone-deaf to trumpet the urgency of these issues for the Evangelical church, the vast majority of whose queer members have left, while ignoring the fact that rape culture, pornography, and abuse continue in the pews (and in the clergy) daily. This is the epitome of a plank-and-speck situation.

Likewise, a church that demands lifelong celibacy of its members is also rejecting the gospel if it does not expect to sacrifice just as heavily as the celibate members to support and include them in its life. Jesus said his followers would hate their mothers and brothers; perhaps he meant to suggest that there is no place in his kingdom for those who idolize the nuclear family.

It makes you look silly.

The Nashville Statement will not go down in history as a defining moment on par with the Nicene Creed. It may someday be a footnote illustrating how conservative evangelicalism died orchestrating a series of exercises in missing the point. The grandiosity of the name points to the hubris of the whole thing.

It reveals more about you than about God.

The fact is, no one reading the Bible—and especially the Gospels—for the first time would put it down and say, “that was a fascinating book about sex.” You’re revealing your own obsession with sex and the status quo. The Nashville Statement itself makes an attempt to look strong and decisive, but the preamble reveals that that attempt is just an impulse driven by fear—fear of change, fear of humanity, and most importantly, fear of those who are different.

I think if Jesus were here, he’d ask you about your own nuclear family. He would sit and his eyes would glow with yours as you told about the passion and steadfastness your spouse has shown you, the incomparable joy of raising children, how the best nights of your life were just all of you piled on a couch. Maybe he’d chime in—I have always loved how her hair catches the sun, too.

Jesus would ask you about sex. About what it meant to you to share all of yourself with someone; about what you learned about God and yourself in your own celibate seasons; about how your gender makes you who you are, places you on a team, invites and challenges you to be fully yourself.

Jesus would listen and listen and when you were done, when you had told all that made your own experience precious to you, he would wait a while. And I think he’d ask you to let go of the Nashville Statement. I think he’d say, here, let me hold that for you, and he’d promise to keep it safe.

I think if you were so sure of your beliefs and so close to Jesus, you’d be able to set them aside for a bit and listen, instead of alternately clutching them to your chest and brandishing them about. And Jesus might say:

Your love for your family is a beautiful and holy thing, a thing that makes you who you are. And my queer friends? Their gender identities and romantic relationships make them who they are, too. Precious, thrilling, and a little bit odd, with histories of mistakes and triumphs—just like everyone else.

Maybe you feel the need to police all of this precisely because your own identities mean so much to you. Is it so hard to believe that the people they love and the genders they express mean this much to others as well? That they are integral to their very being? That I made them that way?

Your family doesn’t need to be protected by rules and declarations. They need to see you model the servant leadership you talk about sometimes. They need you to wash the feet of your transgender neighbor and really hear the stories, start to finish, of the queer people who have quietly slipped out of your life. They need to see that you know how to repent and to make amends. That’s what would take courage. That’s how you would display integrity. That’s how you would be changed by imitating my love.

How purity culture feeds rape culture (sex and shame part five)

August 31, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Fifth in a series, explained here.

A common theme among people I’ve talked with is the understanding that parents or teachers meant to protect them for safe and fulfilling intimacy, though the lessons unwittingly barred them from it in one way or another. I’m grateful to all our authors for contributing to a conversation that doesn’t seek to condemn or blame, but to heal and to empower.

TW: brief description of assault

My parents were raised conservative Baptists. From the time I was a small child, my parents made sure I knew that they had only ever had sex with each other. My cousin got married when I was seven, and though I personally saw no reason for the outrage, my mom assured me that their marriage did not erase the fact they were living together beforehand. When I asked why it mattered, she said you could never be too sure that the person you were marrying wasn’t going to change their mind, and it was best to be certain before you got too close.

When I was thirteen or fourteen my dad told me that his high school girlfriend had wanted to have sex with him but he’d been strong enough to deny her, and that nice girls didn’t tempt people they cared about. Shortly thereafter Mom gave me the “boys only want one thing” discussion, where it became my responsibility to circumscribe my behaviors lest I unwittingly cause the downfall of some weak boy. They were my parents. I believed them. I wanted to do what they told me was right. So I became very careful about how and if I touched people, just in case I touched them in the wrong ways or got too close. I still struggle with this.

After high school (during which time I didn’t date) I went to a small college just far enough away that my parents weren’t involved in my day-to-day decisions. I made friends who drank and went to fraternity parties and I felt young for the first time. The parties were fun, and on those evenings, for a short while, I didn’t have to be the person who carried the entire weight of the world on her shoulders.

One evening my sophomore year I was standing in an alley between two of the fraternity houses when a group of young men came up to me. I was wearing something moderately low cut and was a little drunk. They liked the way I looked and wanted to kiss me. I clearly told them no. It didn’t matter. They kissed me and touched me for a while, and I was so afraid. In my mind it was confirmation that everything my parents said was true. While I know it could have been much worse, I remember feeling like I deserved what I got because for one evening I had felt pretty. I told some friends about it the next day. They laughed. I felt so foolish. I waited a decade to mention it to anyone else.

I was 30 years old before I allowed someone else to touch me, and before I allowed myself to touch him. I was 30 years old before someone I wanted kissed me. I was 30 years old before I found someone who made me feel safe, someone who saw me and wanted nothing from me, other than to make me feel good. It was an incredible gift while it lasted.

Now, as a single person trying to figure out the world of online dating, I often feel as if it’s too late—that there was some kind of learning curve that I missed out on. While I know that isn’t strictly true, it’s something I confront every single time I go out with someone new. Will he understand? Will he interpret my inability to touch as disinterest? How do I be me while still giving off the appropriate signals? Do I know someone who will let me practice touching them? Oh god, how would I explain the need to practice? And I still feel like damaged goods. Every. Single. Time.

I know my parents did the best they knew for me, and in many ways my upbringing was wonderful. I’m a functional member of society and I’ve had lots of great opportunities. But I wish they hadn’t pushed (what I now know is) their body stuff off onto me. I wish they’d have let me be me, and, more importantly, I wish they’d have used something more than fear and shame to teach me about sexuality and intimacy.

Sexual violence is pervasive in American life (and throughout the world): half of women and at least one in five men in the U.S. will be victims at some point in their lives. Sadly, sexual violence is also becoming a theme of this series. If you’ve experienced sexual violence, know that you are not alone and that you deserve respect, autonomy, and safety. The people at the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) can direct you to those who can help you on your journey.

Today’s questions, in light of this crisis:

How does purity culture diverge from rape culture?
How does it intersect?

What does an emphasis on boundaries communicate about the way the world works?

What qualities (joy, courage, anger, empowerment) or experiences have helped you replace fear or shame in your life?

Decent Women, Sex, and Shame

August 8, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

The grass is not as soft as it looks, but cuddling in it seems to make my boyfriend happy. He is my first boyfriend, we are freshmen, and his affection for me is thrilling and overwhelming. I am certain he would do anything for me, so I am cuddling in this grass for him—though if I were to choose a scratchy patch of grass for this activity, it also wouldn’t be the university quad. In fact, when we sat down here, I hadn’t anticipated nearly this level of PDA. But my highest priority as a girlfriend is to be low-maintenance, and we’re certainly not making out like couples in movies about college, or couples I’ve seen in public parks in Atlanta and San Francisco; besides, Christian college is supposed to be a place where you have adventures, just safer and more moral ones than at other colleges. Having a boyfriend is an adventure. Spooning in public is an adventure. I put my discomfort aside. Sideways, I watch the frisbee game across the lawn; people trickle out of the dining hall; from my perspective, ants join up to follow in their wake, everyone busy. Maybe no one I know will even notice us.

Then a pair of boots blocks my view.

We scramble to a seated position and squint up at the Campus Safety officer who’s been dispatched to protect the campus from our obscenity. It is my nightmare. All the voices nagging that I was embarrassing myself are suddenly, solidly before me in this irritated young man and in the finger-wagging of the anonymous professor he says sent him. I cannot look at the officer or at my boyfriend; all I want is to scurry away like an ant and hide, maybe under a bush, the scratchier the better. I should have known better. I should have found some way to say no. Decent women do not even lay down in public, let alone with a boy. Decent women know how to make their boyfriends happy without scandalizing their professors. My face is flaring. People will gossip later, and I know I deserve it.

I don’t let on that I am this upset; pretending is something I’m good at. I make some jokes about the threat we pose to campus safety, and we take some aimless walk, as freshmen do. In the future, though, we won’t cuddle on campus. We’ve learned our relationship doesn’t belong there. We will make out in his car in dark parking lots because it seems to make my boyfriend happy. We still won’t be alone, though; a choir of voices will pull me farther and farther from my body, and I will learn every word to the single CD in his car, until the kissing involves him and a policeman and a professor and a pastor and Chris Carrabba, but not me. I will be hiding in shame.

When I was 18 I was not under the impression that making out in cars with boys you aren’t sure about is part of normal human development. My friends and I were raised in various strains of what has come to be called evangelical purity culture. We were generally under the impression that it would be, if not easy, at least fairly straightforward to arrive at our wedding days not only with our virginity, but with a record of very little physical interaction between ourselves and anyone other than our husbands. It had been impressed upon us that all physical contact beyond hand-holding had consequences for all of our future relationships, that “going too far” with the wrong boy could curse our marriages for years—and if we didn’t have good marriages, what would we have?

Now I’ve learned that making out in cars is, in fact, part of normal human development; but for me and my purity-seeking friends, what’s even more normal is feeling extreme shame about it. Whether we shut down our sexuality like we were told to, basically refusing to kiss before marriage, or we drew our lines elsewhere, we have all carried the weight of deep shock at ourselves, believing we’ve done far more than the respectable people around us. We have all sat in a church service feeling that if anyone knew, they would stage an intervention to rescue our integrity, our relationships, and potentially our salvation from the terrible things we hadn’t had the courage to refuse. But no one must find out. We might confess the sins of gossip, envy, cheating in school or spending too much, but sexual sin was another realm entirely. To do it was forbidden. To talk about it was impossible.

Now I’ve learned that the guilt we felt was not a healthy sense of regret at a genuinely bad choice. It was the inevitable consequence of a system that told women to be demure and compliant in every arena—including marriage—then made us the sole responsible guardians of that nebulous object, the “purity” of our bodies and souls. Shame was the inevitable consequence of encouraging dissociation from and fear of our bodies. It inevitably swelled like a cancer, replicating itself on all sides, feeding on itself, on the silence and fear and self-hatred it created.

Now I’ve learned that every single one of us has sat somewhere being torn apart by shame—and believing we were utterly alone.

This series has inspired me to invite you to share your stories about sex and shame, anonymously if you choose. It’s not because it’s sensationalist or cathartic to sit around and complain about our childhoods. It’s because I am coming to believe that in every place we can name our shame and fear, and then say something anyway, we are doing something to cauterize the cancer. We are learning that speaking the unspeakable is not nearly as catastrophic as we thought. We are inviting others out into the light. We might even find ways to grieve, or rebuild, or at least to laugh.

Beginning next week, I’ll publish stories about sex and shame, completely anonymously (or with your name and links if you specify). I’m hoping to hear from women and men, Christian and not-Christian, straight and not-straight. Tell us the thing you wish your 15-year-old self could hear. Tell us the thing you’re afraid of. Tell us where you’ve found healing or discovered a new sexual ethic. Tell us we are not alone.

Send your story to me at lyndseymedford[at]gmail.com, using the contact page of the website, or through a Facebook direct message. If you’re not sure where to start, grab one of the prompts below. Be prepared: I’ll probably have to edit for length or clarity. I’ll do everything I can to honor both your story and our readers.

Share a story like the one above of a specific time when a cultural norm about sex “happened” to you. What aspect of that culture does it illustrate?
How did you relate to your body as a child, teenager, or now? Tell about an event that changed this relationship for better or for worse.
Talk about a message about sexuality that has been particularly powerful in your life.
What embarrassing questions do you have about sex and sexuality? Or if you’re not Christian or evangelical, do you have questions you’re afraid to ask about purity culture?
If you met your 15-year-old self, what’s one specific thing you would tell him/her about sex? Or more generally, tell us about one thing you’ve learned as an adult about the ethics/responsibility of sex.

Thanks for being big and bright and brave with anything you want to share. I hope this conversation can be a sigh of relief, a lightened load, and a space for respectful disagreement; I can’t wait to share it with you!