It's in the Code Ep 121: “Reigning In the Beast: Male Sexuality”
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Conservative, high-control American religion conceives of only two genders (male and female), and understands human sexuality as inherently heteronormative—women are sexually drawn to men, and men are sexually drawn to women. But within this overarching understanding, men and women are perceived as expressing radically different sexualities. Within this world, how is male sexuality understood? What are its defining features? And what are the dangers that come with this way of perceiving male sexuality? Take a listen as Dan offers his thoughts on these and other issues in this week’s episode.
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY The 2024 elections are upon us, y'all.
And no matter what happens, there's going to be a lot to process and a next chapter to prepare for.
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On November 22nd, we'll be talking about Christian extremism and the 2024 elections at the San Diego Convention Center.
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As always, I want to begin by offering a welcome and to say thank I want to begin by offering a welcome and to say thank you for It's In The Code, a series that is part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name, as you probably know, is Dan Miller.
I'm a professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College and thrilled, as always, to be with you.
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Let's dive into this week's episode.
So we've been doing this kind of series within the series.
Just started last week.
And I'm calling it more or less, you know, we've got to talk about the sex stuff.
Talking about high control Christianity in America, American conservative evangelicalism and so forth.
I have so many people who reach out with so many topics and thoughts and questions and clarifications about issues related to gender and sexuality and so forth.
And so I'm putting together a series to just take a deeper, kind of more organized and collected dive into a range of those issues.
Introduced that last episode.
If you haven't had a chance to listen, go back, take a listen to it.
Where we're at this week is what I want to talk about is what I'm calling reigning in the beast.
And what is the beast?
The beast here is male sexuality.
I want to talk about male sexuality as envisioned and experienced within these contexts.
And I want to begin with some overarching things to think about.
The first is that within this context, it is completely cis-normative and hetero-normative.
So, what does that mean?
It means that there's no space for queer folk, and we're going to talk about that in a later episode.
Queer identity as it relates to all these issues.
But what it also means is that I'm going to use terms like male and female sexuality here, and I don't like those terms.
I don't like the gender nature of them.
I don't think there is anything essentially male or female about particular kinds of sexuality or sex acts or what have you, okay?
But in this context, talking about a subcultural world in which there are only two genders that have a place, and sexuality is simply male or female.
It lines up with gender.
I'm going to use that language, and I'm going to use it sort of in an unqualified way, because otherwise we just never get to kind of say anything, okay?
So I want people to understand this is not intended to be normative on my part.
This is not intended to be exclusionary.
But it's just part of the discourse within these spaces.
And also, fair warning, not too much in this episode, but as we move forward, just be aware that if you've got people in your life, kids or others, that maybe you're not ready for them to have, you know, or to hear discussions that can be pretty explicit and frank about sex and sexuality, this may not be the series to use when you're in the car line.
Okay?
So let's dive in here.
I think overall, I think more attention when we talk about high-control religion, when we talk about American evangelicalism, when we talk about Christian nationalism, when we talk about purity culture, and all those kinds of things, I think that there has been more attention paid overall to conceptions of femininity and sexuality within.
And I think there's lots of good reason for that and great scholarship, and I benefit from it, I teach it, I value it.
It's not intended as a criticism.
But it is intended to point out that I think over the recent years, there has been increasing attention that has been given to operative conceptions of masculinity and sexuality within these circles.
I will say that I think male sexuality, the sexuality of cis hetero men, is still something that doesn't get the same attention as some other dimension.
Okay?
And so I want to start with some reflections about male sexuality, since I think it's still a developing area in an area that people don't think about as much.
And the key overarching point, again, and I've talked about these things in the past, I'm not going to dive deep into this, but a key overarching point within this conservative, high-control religion is that men and women have innate, normal, and fundamental distinct sexualities.
And we're going to talk about female sexuality in the next episode, okay?
Okay.
Men and women are normatively understood, as I say, as cisgender and heterosexual, but within this framework, they are fundamentally different.
They have defining sexualities.
It is part of what we call the gender essentialism of this model.
And understanding these differences, I think, is crucial for understanding this movement.
It's crucial for understanding so much about the sexual and gender dynamics within American high-control religion.
And so we're going to spend some time today talking specifically about male sexuality and what it's taken to be distinctive about it.
And I think there are different ways that we can talk about this.
But there are three ideas that capture what for me are the heart of the issue as I sort of think about this.
The first is that male sexuality in its natural state.
Now hold on to that idea, in its natural state.
I'm going to return to that language of nature here in a little bit, okay?
But in its natural state, male sexuality is overwhelming, it is insatiable, and it is predatory.
So let's just take those one by one.
What do I mean when I say that the natural male sexuality is overwhelming?
Well, what I mean by that is that it is a kind of ever-present, defining, and all-encompassing dimension of what it is to be a man.
Again, within this framework, I don't think that there's an essence of masculinity.
There is, as understood, within these high-control conservative Christian contexts.
And I think this notion that it is ever-present, that it is defining, that it is all-encompassing, I think they're captured in a lot of common stereotypes about male sexuality that we're all familiar with already.
The stereotype that men think about sex all the time.
The stereotype that every woman is viewed as a potential sexual partner.
Those of a certain age might remember movies like When Harry Met Sally, and a major part of that storyline was this notion, Billy Crystal's character, that a man and a woman could never be friends because he's always thinking about having sex with her and so forth.
This notion that this is always the way that men view women.
And I think as well, the idea that sex and desire for sex regularly intrudes into other dimensions of men's lives.
It's just it's always there, right below the surface, all the time.
But I think this captures another central presupposition about men's sexuality, this language of it being overwhelming, is that it is beyond their control.
It's the sense that men's sexuality is like a wild beast within them, sort of constantly raging and waiting to escape any confines that are placed around it.
This is a sense in which it is overwhelming.
And a man's sexuality can only be contained or held at bay for so long.
It can never be fully contained or controlled.
It's like you can rein it in, but it's always trying to get loose, and eventually it will find its release.
And that brings us to the second point, which is insatiable sexuality.
If it's a beast, if male sexuality is a beast, That is constantly seeking release.
It is constantly escaping escape.
It means that it's a beast that's always looking to devour.
Men's natural sexuality is driven by unbridled desire.
And hold onto that idea because that's going to come up Next episode, when we talk about women's sexuality.
Men's sexuality is about unbridled desire or lust.
And desire or lust for what?
For women.
Cisnormative model.
There's no space for queer identity here.
Normal, quote-unquote, male sexuality is directed at women.
And it is an unbridled desire, sort of obsessively focused on this.
And that desire can be temporarily sated.
But it will always rise back up, driving the beast to once again break free.
And I'm using this language of this raging beast because I think it really does capture the vision of natural male sexuality.
So men's sexuality is a driving force that can occasionally be slowed.
Or it could be slowed for a period, but it can never be stopped.
It can never be fully satisfied.
And that's what brings us to the third dimension.
And this is the one that would be the most controversial for defenders of the kind of conceptions of gender and sexuality that I'm critical of.
But the third dimension for me is that male sexuality is predatory.
The imagery of a devouring beast is intentional on my part.
The overwhelming, insatiable nature of male sexuality is such that it is fundamentally predatory.
And again, this is an idea of people who are like, I'm not so sure.
I mean, we've talked about men and their quote-unquote sexual conquests.
Forever.
We're aware of broader social stereotypes of, you know, increasing awareness in recent years has changed this somewhat, but it hasn't eradicated it.
The notion that men are always trying to coerce women into sex, to convince them to do things that they don't want to do, to try to get over them, to say nothing of sexual assault and all of those kinds of practices that can come with this.
I think this is the vision of male sexuality.
Men's natural sexuality is inherently predatory.
Okay, so all of that can sound pretty scary.
It sounds pretty bleak.
And it's rarely, if ever, explicitly outlined like this.
I am distilling this vision from From a lot of things.
From years of growing up in this context, from teaching about high control religion and American evangelicalism, from interviewing folks, from talking with folks, from working with clients, from lots of reading and research and scholarship.
I'm sort of distilling these out.
It's rarely presented in this way, but I think this is a fair representation of what male sexuality in its natural state is.
And here's why I emphasize that language of the natural state and why I say that that's so important, because in Christian terms, this means this is what male sexuality is in its fallen state.
Within high-control Christian religion, and we've talked about this before, again, I'm not going to go too deep into this aspect of it, but human sexuality is created by God, So it's good, but it has been marred by human fallenness.
So basically, it's expressed in damaging and sinful ways.
So what I'm describing is what I think a lot of conservative Christians would call male sexuality in its natural or fallen or unredeemed state.
So taken on its own, it is dangerous.
It is bleak.
It is threatening.
So what's required is that natural or fallen male sexuality has to be redeemed.
And part of what this means, then, is that for the Christian man, sexuality has to be resisted in its natural drives, and it has to be reshaped and redirected.
Resist and redirect.
Those are the two key words for me.
And this is what it means, to use the Christian terms that they might use, if we're talking about men's sexuality, this is what it would mean to bring that under the lordship of Christ, to bring it into or sort of under the umbrella of a broad, encompassing Christian existence.
So that's the aim.
Men's natural or fallen sexuality has to be redeemed, it has to be resisted, it has to be redirected.
What does that look like?
Well, the resistance part is straightforward, and if you want the model of this, go look at like Edward in Twilight.
And I use this analogy all the time, and people are often like, why?
That's kind of weird.
It's not that weird, especially a series written by a Mormon author, and I think incorporates a lot of Of these kinds of visions of gender and sexuality.
But Edward is constantly having to restrain his desire for Belle.
Why?
Because it will consume her if he doesn't.
He will destroy her.
Now, obviously, in the series, it's because he's a vampire and he'll give into his bloodlust and so forth.
But I think this is just a perfect illustration of what unbridled male sexuality is, if not properly restrained.
And of course, the Christian story here is that a man on his own can't restrain his sexuality.
He needs God's help.
He also needs the help of women.
Going to get to that next episode as well.
But he needs the help of God.
So it has to be resisted.
But it also has to be redirected.
How?
Well, instead of letting the beast run free, a man's sexuality is redirected toward one woman in a lifelong monogamous sexual relationship.
It's sort of corralled within marriage.
His virility, another sort of crucial aspect of masculinity, is redirected to the creation of the family and the ruling of domestic life.
This is why.
We did the series a while back on that card in the church bulletin, and Young Families was on there.
The idea is that this redirection means men should be married, they should be married at a relatively young age, and those marriages should result in children.
All of this is part of the reshaping and the redirecting and the corralling of men's sexuality.
And then another piece of this is that those sexual energies become the driving force of other dimensions of fundamental masculinity, such as work, such as leadership, protection of the family, all of those kinds of things, those things that are presented as the quintessential marks of the so-called alpha male, all of those are the kind of reshaped, redirected sexual energy of the redeemed Christian man.
So this is why the Christian man is the family man.
This is why the Christian man is the leader.
This is why the Christian man is the protector.
He's the soldier, or he's the guy who's got a closet full of guns in his house to protect his family, or why he's into sports and violence and blood sports and things like this.
All of that is part of this redirected, reshaped, redeemed sexual energy.
So that's what all of this means, okay?
And we could dive further into that.
And if you're curious about, like, emailing, people will be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
How does being successful in business, you know, relate to redirected sexual energies?
And we could talk about that, okay?
But here are the key takeaways for me, because we've got some other things I want to hit here.
The first is, again, that the redemption of male sexuality is a departure from what comes naturally.
Natural male sexuality is overwhelming.
It's predatory.
It's all-consuming.
We've talked about that.
So its redemption is a move away from what comes naturally.
And it means that Christian men are essentially taught to fight their natural sexual urges, to resist them, remain with one partner, be monogamous, be a protector instead of a predator, and so forth.
So here's why that matters.
Again, the idea that redemption of male sexuality means departing from what comes naturally.
Here's what that matters.
To put it in Christian terms, men will sometimes fail at this task, at this resistance and this redirecting.
They will stumble.
That's the Christian term.
They will stumble.
They'll stumble when they cheat on a partner.
They'll stumble when an unmarried man has premarital sex.
They will stumble.
And that's a moral failing, no doubt.
Within the Christian world, that's a moral failing.
The man has done something he should not do, but he has failed by doing what is most natural to him.
It's like a regression back to the mean in a certain way.
He has failed morally.
But his moral failing is to do what comes naturally.
He has not thought his nature sufficient.
So when men fail to live out their sexual ideals, they are acting according to their nature.
Instead of acting according to their redeemed sexuality, it's like they're letting their unredeemed sexuality break through.
And what that means, in practical terms, Is that even when their behavior isn't technically excusable, it becomes understandable.
It is framed as something that we can understand, we can make sense of, which means it is forgivable.
It might even evoke sympathy in us.
It's hard to resist all the time.
Of course you're going to give in to temptation from time to time.
Give yourself a break.
It's forgivable.
It's understandable.
And that may not sound like a big deal until we understand that that vision of masculinity, that vision of male sexuality, that vision of quote-unquote stumbling and what that is, lays the groundwork for abusive culture.
It lays the groundwork for sexual assault.
It lays the groundwork for abuse.
It lays the groundwork for sexual coercion.
Because when a man does stumble, quote-unquote, I'm using that word very, you know, advisedly here, when he does stumble into abusive or coercive sexual activities, as with clergy sex abuse or spousal abuse or, I don't know, campus sexual assault, it's certainly bad.
But it's also understandable because he's a man, what more could we expect men will fall from time to time?
And because he is naturally driven by insatiable, predatory sexual desire, it only makes sense that, quote-unquote, these things will happen.
Boys will be boys.
He did the best he could, but gee, you know, it was just a bad day or a bad time in his life, and, you know, we've got to understand that this is what will happen to men from time to time.
And what that does is it invites victim-blaming.
It brings up discussions about women sending mixed signals or being obligated to provide sexual attention and so forth.
And we're going to circle back around to this and consider the same issues from the perspective of women's sexuality within this framework next episode.
But what it means is, in my view, that this model of male sexuality It means that the license to commit predatory sexual behavior is written into this model of sexuality.
It's in the code.
It's encoded.
It's part of the source code of this model of sexuality is sexual predation.
Because it has this sort of built-in mechanism and this built-in allowance for the escape of that and for the expression of that.
Which is why, in my view, this understanding can't be redeemed.
There's no fixing it.
That's why I'm very, very critical of this model of sexuality and the religious traditions that perpetuate it.
One more issue to get into really quick with that.
And this goes so obvious, excuse me, this is so obvious that it often goes without saying, I think we need to say it, that this model of sexuality is also fundamental to masculinity within high-control conservative religion.
In other words, to be masculine, to be a man, is to be defined by this model of sexuality.
So not only is this the dominant model, but if you call it into question or criticize it fundamentally, you are taken to be criticizing masculinity as such.
There's simply no legitimate way to really call it into question.
So critics of this model are often accused of opposing masculinity.
I've been told this.
I've been told by people that I hate men, whatever in the world that could possibly mean for me, because I'm critical of this model of sexuality.
So the issue is that this highly problematic conception of sexuality is equated with masculinity as such.
And for me, it's a fundamental failure of imagination of what masculinity can be, a misunderstanding and a failure to imagine what gender can be and so forth.
But it's important to understand the complete conflation of masculinity with this vision of sexuality.
This is another reason why that notion of sexuality is like ever present.
If you are in the presence of a man, you are in the presence of this kind of seething, bestial sexuality simmering below the surface.
There's more we could say about this.
But we're going to get to that more as we move along here.
There are other issues that circle around here.
Female sexuality, that's where we're going next.
We're going to talk about the understanding of these conceptions of sexuality, how they play out in things like religious trauma as we go along.
We're going to talk about queer folk.
We're going to talk about those things, so we'll get to those.
But we're out of time here.
Thank you for listening.
I feel like this is heavy stuff.
Drop me a line.
Let me know what you think.
DanielMillerSwaj at gmail.com.
DanielMillerSwaj at gmail.com.
Value your insights.
Things you think I missed.
Things you'd like me to take a deeper dive into.
This is a series that can continue to evolve.
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Thank you, as always, for supporting us.
Thank you for what you do.
Take a listen to this episode.
Pass it around to others.
Listen next week as we turn the corner to talk about female sexuality.
And in the meantime, please be well.
Don't forget, y'all, two live events coming in y'all, two live events coming in November from Straight White American Jesus.
Thank you.
One at the University of Southern California in LA with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
And then the next night at the San Diego Convention Center.
Tickets are available now and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in LA or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
