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Can there be a “sex positive” version of the high-control religious sex and gender ideologies we’ve explored in recent episodes? What about individuals, most notably women, who find tremendous sexual fulfilment within this framework and the institution of marriage it affirms? Do they stand as evidence that critiques of this system are misplaced? And what about the dozens of Christian sex manuals that affirm the aim of both male and female sexual fulfilment and pleasure? Are all of these evidence that there can be a “sex positive purity culture?” Check out this episode to hear Dan’s response to this points, and to hear why he believes a truly sex positive version of this sex and gender ideology is a myth.
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My name is Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Co-host of Straight White American Jesus and host of this series, It's in the Code, which is part of Straight White American Jesus.
As always, I want to thank all of you for listening.
All the emails, the insights, the information, the feedback on episodes, everything that you do.
You can reach me, Daniel Miller Swaj, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Look forward to hearing from all of you.
I've got a couple.
Calls out for ideas, if you have them, of first questions you were not allowed to ask in church.
If you're on Discord, there's a thread about that that you can post there.
If you want to email me and put it in the header, questions I wasn't allowed to ask, I'll know to look for it.
I'm kind of collecting some information on that for some upcoming episodes.
As well as those of you who've had encounters with people, basically apologetic encounters, people's arguments for why God has to exist or why it's irrational not to be a Christian or some such thing.
If you want to send me those also.
Again, in the header, you can just put like anti-apologetics or something.
These are some things I'm thinking about.
As always, all of you who support us in so many ways, thank you.
Subscribers in particular, thank you.
If you find value in this, you find value in what we do, and you'd be willing to consider subscribing, you're not a subscriber yet, would ask that maybe you would give that some thought.
But as always, I thank all of you for listening in whatever context that is, and I apologize that I just have not had time to get back to everybody, but value your insights and feedback so much.
Particularly as we continue this series.
I've called it We've Got to Talk About the Sex Stuff.
We've been looking at basically the understandings of sex and gender within the subculture of high-control, conservative American Christianity.
And I've gotten some great comments and feedback from you, a couple episodes upcoming that I think will be shaped by those.
This episode is shaped by feedback that I got about this.
And also, folks, remember the, I think it was like seven episodes going through...
That card from the church bulletin.
Some feedback I got from that really got me thinking about this.
So I want to dive in.
Episodes have been going a little long, and I think this one's not going to be any different.
Again, just a warning if you've got maybe young or particularly sensitive listeners in the car, and this content may not be appropriate for them, so just let you know that.
One of the things that has emerged, right, at this point, and the topics that we've talked about...
Is the way that the gender and sex ideology within high-control Christianity is structured around male sexual primacy.
And again, within a normative cisgender heterosexual framework.
And I want to be clear, in these episodes, I end up talking a lot about men and women and male and female.
And I'm not a supporter of a gender binary.
Those of you who know me and listen to other episodes and know where I'm coming from know this.
We're going to have some other episodes that get into queer-related issues.
But within this framework, the framework of this high-control religious ideology, there are only two genders, men and women.
It's heteronormative, it's cis-normative, etc.
And so that's the language that I'm using because I'm sort of operating within that framework, okay?
But that framework is totally based around male sexual primacy.
It's focused on properly and directing and regulating men's aggressive sexuality.
We talked about the inherent sexuality of men.
Even women's inherent sexuality is fundamentally, you know, it's relational, it's nurturing, it's about reshaping masculine sexuality.
Women, understood here as wives, are to be submissive and sexually available to men as their husbands.
Penis and vagina sex.
And I did have somebody who asked, like, why do you always say penis and vagina sex and not vaginal sex?
Because in my view, vaginal sex could mean lots of different things.
So penis and vagina sex.
That's why we don't want the kids listening.
The act that is arguably most popular with straight men, and I don't want to argue with people about that, I'm just kind of throwing that out there, that act is envisioned not only as the primary sex act, but as normative.
That's what sex is supposed to be.
That's like the goal of it.
And the entire purpose of sex is focused on that act.
Sex as procreation, the entire purpose of it makes that particular sex act sort of the normative sex act.
And the culmination of the sex act is the male orgasm.
So everything is built around the primacy of male sexuality.
And what disappears here, and I've had lots of discussions about this.
I mentioned that I've gotten some feedback or some comments and emails about things.
Part of that is this, but I've had discussions about this with people for years, men and women.
I deal with it in my work.
Again, I'm a trauma resolution coach with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
I talk about this and work with it with clients.
I've received feedback from listeners, as I say, what disappears here is an emphasis on female sexual pleasure.
And this can take really extreme forms within this subculture.
At its most extreme, there are women who enter marriages not even being aware that sex can be pleasurable, possibly not even knowing that women can experience orgasm, that that's a thing, that there is such a thing as a female orgasm.
And this is not an unusual experience for many women coming out of this subculture.
Sex is something to be endured.
Sometimes it's okay, but it's not great.
But other times it's comfortable.
Sometimes it's even painful.
Their bodies are not ready.
They don't know how to be ready for sex.
Their bodies have never learned how to do that.
There's no desire there.
And they endure sex because men want it.
And because as women, they are to submit to their husbands.
They are to be sexually available to their husbands.
They submit to it because the Bible commands it and says that people should be fruitful and multiply and that men and women shouldn't separate from one another, husband and wife and so forth.
They do it because it's necessary for childbirth and the family and children is the goal of Christian marriage.
There are reasons that they do this.
Within that framework, women who do experience and desire sexual pleasure can be denigrated for doing so.
As we've talked about in other episodes, part of the reason for this is that having sexual appetite...
Goes against their essential sexual nature in key ways.
I've also been reading the recent book.
It was edited by Gillian Anderson, the actress.
It's called Want, and it's a collection of anonymous female sexual fantasies.
And there's one of them in there that really struck me because the person writing it, again, it's anonymous.
She notes that she is a Christian woman in a Christian marriage and was chided by her husband for being too focused on sex.
She says, you know, I could have sex twice a day.
And he would be happy just never having sex.
And she's actually accused by her husband of being selfish, for wanting sexual gratification, as being too focused on sex, as not being spiritual enough, and so forth.
It also highlights, by the way, the myth that men want sex all the time, that male sexuality is always voracious and consuming and so forth.
We're going to revisit that in a later episode as well.
The point is, within this framework, it could be a really negative experience for women.
And these points raise a consideration.
That's why I bring these up.
When I teach about this, talk about this and say like religion, gender, sexuality class or something like that, or when I talk about it in context like this, the question that comes up is why would anybody other than cisgender straight men affirm this?
Why would anybody but them buy into this?
It's easy to see why men buy into this.
They're the winners.
And there are a lot of reasons to this to go beyond this episode, not the least of which is just that it is situated as a system ordained by God and therefore beyond question.
I talk about authority and social control and coercion in this series all the time, and that is a part of it.
I've also talked about in other contexts that women are socialized into this system.
There are women who identify with the essentialized femininity of high-control religion, and that includes the sex and gender roles.
But there's another reason why women in particular, my focus today is really on women, buy into this system.
And that is this.
A lot of Christians, even within high-control contexts, also recognize this disappearance of female sexuality, of female pleasure, of female sexual fulfillment, and they reject that disappearance.
That is to say that within this framework, there's a kind of countercurrent within that challenges, in certain ways, this sex and gender ideology.
Now, not in every way, okay?
But what I would refer to this as is the vision of, I'm going to call it a sex-positive purity.
If we think of so-called purity culture as the totality of this sex-gender system within high-control religion, there's a countercurrent.
That I'm calling the sex-positive purity movement.
And it's basically the claim that this movement can be positive and affirming of sexuality, and particularly of women's sexuality.
Now, I think this is a myth, and we'll get to why.
But I want to lay this out because this is a stream, and again, this is coming from feedback and conversations with folks.
This is a dimension that I think most people are not aware of.
And what this current within the subculture basically says is, That within the framework of a monogamous, lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, that framework stays, okay?
But that within that framework, anything goes sexually.
And while the primary purpose of sex may be procreation, we've talked about this, this will also affirm that there are lots of other purposes, including the sexual fulfillment and pleasure of both partners.
And this particular model, I think, also can be much more affirmative of female sexual desire and appetite.
So this is a stream that says God's intent for sex is the pleasure and fulfillment of men and women.
And if both partners don't experience this, then a couple is not experiencing sex as God has intended it.
This is a model that, in certain ways, wants to re-emphasize or prioritize That missing dimension of female sexual fulfillment and female sexual pleasure.
Okay?
Now, I reflect on my own experience, and this wasn't sort of explicit, necessarily, but this is more consistent with the kind of conservative Christian context that I came out of.
It was taken for granted that Christian sex, as the only legitimate expression of sexuality, was intended to be great sex for both partners.
If God was going to limit all expressions...
Of human sexuality to one context, it was going to be mind-blowing.
It was going to be awesome.
That's what God wanted.
God created sex.
God created orgasms for both men and women.
Women had the added benefit of the possibility of multiple orgasms.
God gave men and women bodies that could experience sexual pleasure in many ways.
All of these were part of God's design for sex.
That's the context I actually came out of.
And within that context, this is what sex was supposed to be.
It's what's promised.
For those who save themselves for their spouses.
And we can get into purity culture and the promises of purity culture and how those don't pan out, and we'll talk about that some.
But this was the narrative.
And this isn't just me.
I'm not unique in this.
You can look around online.
You can find numerous contemporary sex guides for Christians that emphasize these same principles.
You can find podcasts about this.
You can find blogs about this.
You can find those resources.
So why am I talking about this?
Why does this matter?
It matters because there are Christians who come out of this Christian subculture, and they have that experience of sexuality in marriage.
They do have mind-blowing sex with their marriage partners.
They have fulfilling sex lives.
They have great mutual connections with their spouses.
They have, in other words, kind of the whole deal.
The promise worked.
So there are, in other words, Christians and Christian women coming out of this subculture, For whom it worked.
It works for them.
And I think there are two reasons why it's important to recognize this.
I'm an academic, and I'm an analytic, and there's always this sort of analytic purpose of just like, oh, this is a thing lots of people don't know about, so let's talk about it.
And that's a part of it.
I think that this current is largely unknown outside of these religious circles.
As an evangelical, and after I left evangelicalism, and as a scholar of religion, I have heard people claim, I don't know how many times I could possibly say, That religious conservatives are anti-sex.
And I often am in the position of having said, well, it's a little more complicated than, like, what do you mean by anti-sex?
Because there is this current within that that says, again, within that framework of heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong marriage, anything goes.
Sex should be awesome.
Okay?
And so one reason is just to know that that's there, but it's also important because that's a caricature.
And if you encounter somebody who's advocating this kind of Sex-positive purity model, and you come at them with the, it's all terrible and there's no room for feminine desire and all this kind of stuff, they're going to be like, what are you talking about?
There's no reason I should listen to you because you clearly do not know my experience or my tradition.
That's one piece.
The second, and it follows from this, kind of carrying that forward, is that if you engage with this world, if you engage conservative Christians coming out of this, you'll encounter those, and I think, again, most notably women, Whose experience coming out of the sex-gender system has been sexually fulfilling and positive.
And for them, when you come out with these criticisms, they're going to say, that doesn't line up with my experience.
Where are you getting that from?
It's going to seem unfair.
It's going to feel like a caricature.
And part of the reason is, of course, that all of us live our lives and the only experience we have is our own.
So if you are somebody coming out of this culture and it has always worked for you and the sex has always been great and, you know, maybe you waited for marriage and you've only had sex with one part and you don't even have a comparison either.
But the sex you have is satisfying, it's fulfilling, you're happy, you love it, you love your partner, and so forth.
It's going to seem strange when somebody comes at you with some of the things we've been talking about for weeks.
So when you engage these folks the way that we've been doing, you'll be seen as uninformed at best and unfair at worst.
And what I want to think about is, not just this exists, but what's the significance of that?
Because I can hear this question.
Does the fact...
That high control religious ideology and sex and gender, that there are people who really benefit from this, for whom it really works, does that invalidate the kinds of criticisms I've been making?
Does this view really amount to a sex-positive articulation of that sex and gender ideology?
Is it really sex-positive?
The Christians will tell you it's the only truly sex-positive model.
It's the only model that truly appreciates human sexuality.
Set that aside.
I call it sex-positive purity culture.
Every time in my notes, that's in quotation marks.
Is it really?
And my answer is that it's not.
That this is not a sex-positive model at all.
And my argument is that the sex-gender ideology of high-control American Christianity simply cannot be redeemed.
It is an unredeemable project.
There is no way to sanctify it and make it better.
So if I'm talking with one of these defenders, if I'm encountering one of these folks, and I have, I've had these discussions, what do I say?
How do I approach it?
Here are my thoughts.
And as always, I will welcome your insights about these, especially if you're familiar with this world or this articulation, okay?
The first thing to say is that the positive experience of those who are shaped within the restrictive and abusive dimensions of this ideology, it doesn't change the fact that they're restrictive and abusive.
You know, another way to say this is just because, and we're going to talk about this in later episodes, just because somebody maybe isn't traumatized or doesn't experience a lot of adverse effects from the context out of which they came, doesn't mean the context out of which they came may not have been abusive or coercive or controlling.
It doesn't change that context.
The mere fact that some people come out and feel okay doesn't change what the context is.
And that goes beyond other things, deeper critiques of high-control religion and so forth, okay?
But the second big reason, the overarching reason, is that I affirm sexual autonomy.
And high-control religion, even in its most so-called sex-positive articulations, simply does not.
It does not affirm autonomy.
It does not allow for any kind of sex that doesn't fit the confines of the straight, the cisgender, and the monogamous.
Don't come at me.
Defenders of sex-positive purity culture and tell me that you affirm sexual autonomy if it's this one narrow band of sexual expression, of gender expression, of expression of care for others.
Only the right kind of bodies expressing the right kind of desires in the right kind of relationship are actually affirmed.
Everything and everyone else is still condemned.
They are still on the outside looking in.
Okay?
That's the first point.
The second point for why it doesn't affirm autonomy is that even within the framework of a cisgender straight married couple, there are still issues about autonomy.
Because somebody will say, well, yeah, but within that framework, anything goes.
I've used that, anything goes.
But that's usually not quite the case.
They'll tell you this, but you dig in or you read some of these online sex manuals or books written by Christians, and while other sex acts might be granted an affirmative value, vaginal sex is still, Ultimately, normative.
That's what it's about.
It's about that.
And an added issue, some of these manuals, especially the older ones, to be fair, they'll affirm women's sexual fulfillment, they'll affirm women having orgasms and so forth, but they get weirdly focused on making sure that women reach orgasm through vaginal stimulation.
Rather than clitoral stimulation, and it's weird.
It's a really, really weird, as in super creepy kind of discussion.
But again, that limits autonomy.
It's a very normative vision of what sex is supposed to be.
Another element in which it still reigns in the autonomy of folks is that those who don't plan on having children are criticized.
Almost always, it is still situated within the framework of the purpose of sex as procreation and the demand that Christians need to have families.
And there are still, they'll say anything goes, but there are still acts and practices that are quietly ignored or ruled out explicitly.
That is, you look at these discussions and often it's just a kind of silence.
There's just a bunch of stuff they don't talk about.
They don't come out and say you can't do these things as a good Christian.
But they don't tell you anything about them.
They don't talk about them.
Sometimes they'll talk about things, say this is really controversial, and then they just move on.
Sometimes they will say these things can't go.
And there are things that explicitly they'll reject.
Right?
So things like BDSM and kink.
Polyamory, obviously.
Porn use.
You can check out the previous episode on the sort of porn fixation within this ideology.
Masturbation is like an area that is like super controversial and often not brought up.
The use of sexual fantasy.
Insofar as sexual fantasy is almost always going to be defined as lust, unless you're fantasizing about your existing partner or something.
There are all kinds of things that simply don't have a space within that model.
And they're not always explicitly condemned, but the silence speaks volumes.
So those are all reasons why I think that sexual autonomy is still not affirmed, even within the so-called sex-positive purity movement.
There's one more fundamental denial here.
And this is in the central operating code of high-control religion.
One more reason why it's a religion that simply cannot affirm human autonomy.
And this is because the core teaching of high-control Christianity is that we are not autonomous beings.
That's the core teaching.
Its entire theology is built on the notion that we are sinful and fallen and have to submit ourselves to divine commands and dictates.
High-control religion is fundamentally about obligation.
Which means that even in its most supposedly sex-positive articulations, sex within this subculture is also ultimately about obligation.
There's no room, for example, certainly within a married context, for people who are asexual or aromantic.
Can't happen.
And it's ambiguous whether or not there's an appreciation of asexuality or aromantic folks.
Who aren't married, if that's even understood as a legitimate way to be in the world.
Okay?
Sex within this subculture is ultimately about obligation, and that's really problematic in relation to issues like consent, a core component of autonomy, right?
So, for example, for all of their supposed positivity...
Most of these Christian sex manuals, and I have not read all of them.
I don't want to read all of them.
If you're, like, way into these things and you want to send me examples that don't do this, feel free, okay?
But most of these Christian sex manuals build on that notion that male sexuality and female sexuality are fundamentally different, and so they still position women as obligated to meet the sexual needs of their husbands.
They'll try to soften that.
They will also affirm that men need to meet the sexual needs of their wives.
But it's usually situated within women needing to submit to the demands of God to meet the obligations to their husband.
But there's also a more general dynamic of this logic of command, right, that affects everything.
And here's my illustration.
When I teach students, I have found that no matter what you make as an assignment, because you turn it into an assignment, because you turn it into an exercise that students have to do, They will be resistant to doing it.
They will find it onerous.
I teach lots of classes that incorporate popular culture.
I've often included popular films, like films that everybody wants to watch, most people have seen, and whatever.
And as soon as you put that film in a syllabus, you're going to get students who are like, ugh, why do we have to watch that?
It could be their favorite film, but as soon as you make it an obligation, man, the magic is gone.
Folks, the same thing happens with sex.
Transforming sex acts and expressions of sexuality and embodiment into commands fundamentally stifles desire.
I think everybody knows this.
Everybody knows what it feels like to do something that should be pleasurable, that we should engage in freely because somebody kind of convinced you to do it or you feel guilty for not doing it or whatever.
But man, you want to turn the volume up on that?
Make it so that if you don't do it, you're letting down God.
It can be hard enough to settle into our bodies.
It can be hard enough to lean into sexual pleasure and experience release without knowing that we are commanded to do so, not just by the church, not just by our partners, but by God.
That if we don't experience that, we are falling short of a divine command.
The irony here is...
That the Christians who want to emphasize a sex-positive message as part of the divine design within high-control religion, as soon as you make it part of the divine design, you've made it into a command.
It's an obligation.
And I think, again, for women in particular, this is particularly heightened.
Everybody knows how problematic cultural discourses around women's sexuality and pleasure already are.
Now...
Women who can't tap into that are failing God.
So for me, these are the reasons why I say sex-positive purity, it's a myth.
It's a contradiction.
There cannot be a quote-unquote sex-positive articulation of this sex and gender ideology because it cannot allow for sexual autonomy.
And for me, part of sexual autonomy is sexual diversity.
So to be clear, If someone finds sexual fulfillment in straight vaginal sex, awesome, do that.
If a committed monogamous relationship is a configuration that opens up someone's world where they find fulfillment and meaning and value and they are happy there, awesome, perfect.
I affirm whoever you are and wherever you are in your sexuality and your embodiment as long as you have chosen that, as long as it is an expression of your autonomy, as long as you're doing it because it's what you want.
And it's where you find meaning not because you were told you were sinful or dirty or broken or condemned if you don't exercise your sexuality and gender in that way.
And here's the issue.
A radical affirmation of sexual autonomy in no way forecloses On the experience or gender expression or sexual expression of the kinds of people that I'm talking about who have benefited from this system.
But even the most high, excuse me, the most affirming high control religious articulation is still high control.
It doesn't just affirm that model of sexuality, it judges and marginalizes all others.
There is no place for queer sexuality.
There is no place for other non-normative or expansive or exploratory expressions of sexuality or gender.
There simply is no place.
And that is why I say the sex positivity, or excuse me, the sex positive purity is a myth.
That's how in those discussions I would lay that out.
I would say, hey, I'm glad all of that works for you.
And nobody's trying to take that away from you.
No matter what your pastor...
Or the apologetics person you read online or whomever says, nobody's trying to take that away from you.
Nobody's trying to push anything different on you.
You do you.
But as soon as you start judging others for their own sexual expression and gender identity, that's where the myth comes into view.
I've got to wind this up, as always.
Could say more.
Thank you so much for listening.
Again, if you're not a subscriber and that's something that you would consider doing, I would ask you to do so.
Really value your insights on this.
I know this is a sensitive bunch of topics.
I've gotten positive feedback on this.
And the reason that I was doing this series is because there were so many questions about it.
Value your insights.
Open questions that still stand out.
Other episodes that maybe we need to be thinking about.
Some things I might address in the supplemental episode when we put that together, our next one for subscribers.
Welcome all of that.
Always welcome ideas for other topics, other episodes.
I've got a running list trying to lay these things out in advance.
