Tag Archives: gender and sexuality

international day of femslash!

14 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in fandom

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Idris (the TARDIS) in “The Doctor’s Wife”

A few months ago, I discovered there is such a thing in the world as an International Day of Femslash.

o_O

So naturally I had to participate, and my piece went live today over at Archive of Our Own:

Title: These Are The Days We Live Now
Author: ElizaJane
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Donna Noble/Idris (the TARDIS)
Rating: R / Explicit (AO3)
Length: 5,487 words
Summary: Idris stretches herself thin, across time, across space, threads of consciousness. Searching. A Donna Noble fix-it fic inspired by “The Doctor’s Wife.”
Tags: Loss, Memory Loss, Human/Non-Human Relationship, Pining, Dreams, Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It Fic, Homecoming

You can find it on AO3 (linked above) and eventually it will also be posted at Passion & Perfection and Shatterstorm Productions along with all the other entrants.

As part of the IDF challenge, I was paired with crumpledquill who created a fantastic video trailer for my story (squee!) which you will be able to view on her YouTube channel and as part of the IDF collections at Passion and Shatterstorm. I’ll embed it here when I can!

blogging at In Our Words: to be and to have (a wife)

10 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in think pieces

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

lesbianweddings.tumblr.com

This week I have a guest post up at In Our Words on why I wanted to get gay-married:

I’ve learned that being public about our relationship matters to me. That naming has power. I relish naming her my girlfriend my partner my future wife in conversation with others. I want (need?) everyone to know we are a social unit, and exactly what kind of unit we are.

It matters to me that bystanders be in no doubt that we are in each other’s pants on a regular basis, thank you very much, and they will just have to deal. Because the public sphere is mine as much as theirs, and I’m not backing down from making promises to be and to have before witnesses. By just being who we are, building a life together, we change the meaning of marriage – I believe for the better. And that’s an act to be proud of.

So as a queer feminist and historian, I see marrying my fianceé as both an intensely personal act of commitment and also a deeply political act: inventing the future we’re hoping for. Becoming Future Wife’s Wife is a material statement that we have the right to act on our desires, to form families that work for us, and to name our relationships with the rich weight of history behind us, if that language feels right to us.

You can read the whole thing over at IOW. It was a surprisingly difficult piece to keep on focus with, and I’m still not entirely satisfied with the end result — but I learned some stuff about how I think and feel writing it, which is always the ultimate goal! That, and encouraging others to reflect as well. So I hope folks find it a thought-provoking read.

booknotes: love the sin

05 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , ,

It’s frankly been awhile since I read a book on ethics or theory that expanded my brain so that it felt like it was slightly too big for my skull (aka getting intellectually hot ‘n bothered), but in the past ten days I’ve actually read two of them! The first was Janet R. Jacobsen and Ann Pellegrini’s Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (New York University Press, 2003). The second was Julie Stephens’ recently-released Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory, and Care (Columbia University Press, 2012), which I’m going to review next week. Both are slim volumes that tackle complex issues of embodiment, identity, the relationship between public and private, between citizens and the state, and ultimately the way in which we understand individual persons in relation to collective cultural and political spaces.

Reading Love the Sin and Confronting Postmaternal Thinking back-to-back brought out a lot of resonances. Both books are critical of the way in which individuals have been constructed in the modern liberal democracy. They ask hard questions about who counts as a full and worthy citizen under the laws and policies of such democracies (particularly in the United States). They point to ways in which the mid-twentieth-century rights movements — especially the gay and lesbian liberation movement and mainstream feminist movement — have been undercut and co-opted by a majority hostile to their more radical re-visioning goals. This is due, both works contend, at least in part because of the narrow “rights” rhetoric these movements have depended upon. In Stephens’ work, we see how the language of feminism has been deployed in order to shore up a neoliberal notion of citizen-as-worker, while political ethics grounded in care and connectedness (“mothering”) are erased from the collective memory and public discourse. In Love the Sin, Pellegrini and Jacobsen argue that notions of liberal “tolerance” and a reliance on innate/natural (“born this way”) justifications for non-normative sexual orientation have unnecessarily compromised our ability to advocate for a robust freedom-of-practice in the public realm.

While I have persistent reservations about Stephens’ framing of the maternal (which I’ll get to in next week’s review), I was thoroughly seduced by Jacobsen and Pellegrini’s passionate and articulate advocacy of “freedom” as a more expansive, humane, way of framing the question of sexual citizenship — and other types of citizenship — than the notion of tolerance. “In a situation framed by the rhetoric of tolerance,” they write,

It becomes impossible to distinguish between the perpetrators of racism or homophobia or misogyny (this list is hardly exhaustive) and the objects of various forms of discrimination. Rather, when the situation is characterized by tolerance, the public is not expected to take a stand against injustice, but merely tolerate both sides of the “conflict,” which is supposedly between opposing groups of people who are circumscribed outside of those who constitute “the public” or “the American people” writ large (59).

Drawing on media coverage of gay and lesbian activism and of violence motivated by anti-homosexual bigotry, Jacobsen and Pellegrini persuasively show how tolerance encourages the same us/them thinking that can lead to violence, despite liberal claims that tolerance is the way out of the hate that leads to violence. For to “tolerate” those who are different from you implicitly assumes alienation, “the other,” a distance between queer folks, for example, and “the public.” The public “tolerates” the homosexual, which means the homosexual is outside of the group. Therefore, as much as we’d like to believe tolerance is our answer to violence, it offers no escape:

Tolerance disavows violence and those who commit heinous crimes, but along the way it offers no exit from the us-them logic that structures hate and tolerance in our society. It also gives us no logical exit from the mandate to tolerate those who hate. (p. 65)

Jacobsen and Pellegrini go one step further and argue that we are further hobbled by the notion that our claims to toleration of homosexuality are grounded in the fact that one’s sexual orientation is supposedly hard-wired and therefore immutable:

Characteristics that are taken to be immutable, such as skin color or sex, will be tolerated. But when traits or behaviors are taken to be discretionary and volitional, people can be asked, indeed compelled, to change their behavior and assimilate to the dominant norm … Gay identity may be protected by the courts … but ‘homosexual conduct’ certainly is not (94).

As they point out, this is hardly simply a problem for left-progressive causes, such as gender or sexuality. The notion that only immutable characteristics are protected, not behavior, means that an Orthodox Jew can be asked to cut his hair, or a Muslim woman asked to remove her headscarf, in order to keep their job. It means that Christians are not protected from being fired for refusing to work on Sunday.

How, then to get ourselves out of the (violence-enabling) cul-de-sac of identity-based tolerance? This is where Jacobsen and Pellegrini’s theorizing takes what I think is a paradigm-expanding turn. They argue that rather than a framework of “human rights,” social justice movements around sexual expression (and potentially other things) would do better to argue on the ground of religious freedom. Essentially, they argue that sexual freedom is analogous to the freedom of religion in that both are practices that express core values, and that not just beliefs but also individual expression of belief deserve protection, in public as well as private.

This shift frees us from the interminable question of what “causes” sexual variation, which — while theoretically interesting —  is actually ultimately unhelpful when it comes to determining what is lawful. Grounding rights claims on the basis of one’s inclinations being “natural” will do little to answer critics who (quite rightly) point out that human beings are not compelled to follow every inclination without thought, and that our ability to regulate impulsive behavior is, in fact, part of what makes us human. Just because something is “natural” doesn’t make it “right” in the moral sense — since morality is a human creation, and deeply embedded in time and place. As Jacobsen and Pellegrini write:

An important virtue of the paradigm shift we are advocating [from identity-based “rights” to freedom to live out ones values] is that it does not force us to finally settle the question of what ’causes’ homoesexuality. In the end it just does not — or should not — matter how an individual came to be homosexual, any more than it matters how heterosexuals became heterosexual. Rather, homosexual life and experience are to be valued, are in fact sources of value. (98).

This shift also helps us to combat arguments to the effect of, “It’s okay for homosexuals to practice their lifestyle as long as they don’t flaunt it in front of me”:

Free exercise does not depend on the boundary between public and private that protects liberal freedom. In a liberal democracy, some people are allowed to live lives freely in both public and private; others are allowed freedom only if they keep significant aspects of their lives private and privatized; and still others … are not allowed even the protections of a ‘private life.’ But if ‘free exercise’ and ‘democracy’ are to mean anything at all, everyone must have access to life both in public and in private (106).

I see productive parallels here with discussions of ability and access, about what it means to work “toward restructuring our public life so that everyone is included in categories like ‘the general public,’ ‘the public at large,’ or ‘all Americans’ ” (72). The majority culture has a strong normative power — sanctioned by the language of “tolerance” — to enforce their own notions of civility, rather than practice radical acceptance and lovingkindness toward those whose behavior as well as identity challenge their notions of propriety. The perennial (and perennially heated) “debate” about children’s behavior in public spaces comes immediately to mind for me: because children are constituted as “other” in our society (as non-workers they are understood as future/potential citizens, but not full participants in their own right), we feel entitled to ask that their behavior meet our own criteria of acceptability, rather than ask how we might re-formulate our public spaces to better serve them. The same could be said for the elderly, the non-English-speaking, the mentally- or physically struggling.

Angus Johnston has a powerful post on this subject, in which he writes:

Here’s my secret: my kid doesn’t actually behave as well as I do. Sometimes she whines. Sometimes she has to be reminded to to keep her voice down, or not to run. So yeah, when I take her to the Museum of Modern Art, we do impose on other patrons, at least a little.

And you know what? A little imposition on other patrons is okay. I’ll apologize sincerely to anyone she disturbs, but I’m not going to apologize for her presence. Because MoMA is her space as much as it is mine.

My [cognitively disabled] sister whines in public sometimes, too. Sometimes she gets overwhelmed and cries. Sometimes she raises her voice. (Running in museums is not an issue with her, I’m happy to say.) If we say that my daughter shouldn’t go to museums because she might whine or cry or raise her voice, then we have to say that my sister can’t go either — and one of the best days I ever spent with my sister was the day that we visited a MoMA exhibit of design for people with disabilities. MoMA is my sister’s space as much as it is mine.

You can (and should) read the whole piece over at Student Activism.

The basic point both Jacobsen and Pellegrini are making here is that in the framework of “tolerance,” in which we tolerate non-Christians, non-straight folks, children, the disabled, in “our” public square is that through the mechanism of toleration we are perpetuating the hierarchy in which some people are more entitled to freedom of expression than others.

“The public” — understood to be the white, male, economically self-sufficient, heterosexual Christian (I’m sure that’s not exhaustive, but you get the idea) — “tolerates” those of us who diverge from that which feels comfortable to. But that toleration is conditional on our normative behavior. Jacobsen and Pellegrini remind us that such conditional acceptance is, well, otherwise known as being an entitled asshole.

I encourage anyone who cares about effective social change toward a more egalitarian, inclusive world to read Love the Sin. Even if sexual freedom isn’t your issue, per se, the framework Jacobsen and Pellegrini lay out is an effective one for any area where the personal and political intertwine.

Related Read: If you’re psyched by the ideas Love the Sin outlines, be sure to check out Kenji Yoshino’s Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Random House, 2006) which explores the legal side of these “freedom of expression” issues.

rambling thoughts on identity, relationships, and fan fiction

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in fandom

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

warning: navel-gazing ahead!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we, as a culture, conceptualize identity — particularly sexuality as part of identity — and how it relates to our real-life experiences in relationships: how our understandings of self shape the possibilities we see for relationships, how relationship experience shapes our notions of identity, and what stories we tell each other about how sexual identity and relationship inform one another.

These aren’t new thoughts for me, but being engaged to Hanna — planning our marriage, talking to other people about the cultural and personal meanings of marriage — brings me back once again to the twin topics of identity and relationship. Being engaged — actively defining our relationship to the outside world — also prompts me to notice more keenly the stories we tell, as a culture, about sexual identity and relationships. In this instance, the way in which sexual identity and relationships are theorized in erotic fan fiction (which, many of you know, I read regularly and passionately).

There’s a lot of fic out there in which character X discovers they are attracted to character Y who is of the gender they didn’t think they had the hots for and ohmygod identity crisis ensues! This is a plot/relationship narrative that — just like any other dramatic tension — can be handled really well or handled really poorly. But I’m less interested in the deftness, in this instance, than I am in the assumption that experiencing desire for someone of an unexpected [insert identity characteristic here] stops the desiring character in their tracks because their feelings of attraction don’t match up with their self-understanding.

On the one hand, I completely understand that sometimes, falling in love “against type” so to speak precipitates re-evaluation of who you thought you were or what it is you understand yourself to desire. I won’t lie: falling in love with Hanna required (or at least prompted) me to think more seriously than I had before about how my sexuality worked. I’ve written about this in the past (see here, here, and here). Sexuality is one thing in the singular, another thing in the relational.

So, yeah, there was adjustment.

But here’s the thing that I’ve been thinking about lately: my sexual identity in the abstract was most urgently important before Hanna and I were actually in a relationship. I worried about how to convince her with evidence that no, really, I thought she was hot. I worried about what might count as evidence of same-sex desires in the past (which, in turn, could be brought forth in support of a pattern into which Hanna-desires fit neatly, rather than being the exception to the rule). I worried about whether I was worrying too much about marshaling the evidence and therefore reading back into my personal history sexualized feelings that hadn’t been there at the time (“did I like her, or like- like her?”).

Basically, I worried a lot.

There was massive angst.

I wrote my own life into an angsty, identity-crisis fic to which, appropriately enough, there was ultimately a solution in the form of sexytimes.*

Here’s the “on the other hand” thing, though. The moment — and I’m talking the moment — we touched in a way that undeniably conveyed to each other “I want to get in your pants as quickly as possible”?

Worry totally gone.

In that moment, I had absolutely all the evidence I needed that whatever-and-whoever-the-hell-else I might be interested? I was interested in Hanna.

End of story.

Well, okay, not totally end of story. ‘Cause within that story I got to think a lot about what sex meant to me, and what I enjoyed, under what circumstances, the space between fantasy and real-world interaction, all of that. It’s an ongoing conversation. And a really hot one.

(Have I mentioned intellectual stimulation is a turn-on for me?)

But the question of identity became kinda … irrelevant. Actually, super-irrelevant. Because no matter what I chose to identify as, whatever I called myself, in whatever contexts I named myself, in practice I was Hanna-sexual. As in, sexually attracted to Hanna. All the other attractions I may or may not have moved into the realm of “theoretically interesting but not that practically relevant.”

Because I could have said I was doorsexual and still when I put my hands on Hanna I would have wanted her.

And in my book, experiential evidence trumps theory every time.

So when I read these fics in which character X is enjoying sex with character Y — and I mean seriously enjoying sex — yet simultaneously freaking out because this isn’t sex they should be enjoying? I think about the issues we’ve created for ourselves by imagining that sexuality and sexual identity is the quantifiable, identifiable, constant thing.

That we can, that we should, understand what we want prior to actually having it, prior to coming across it in the wild, this beautiful, breath-taking being in our path. Prior to knowing and being known, in that moment of intimacy, of home-coming (or, conversely, that moment of escape-from-the-body, of clarifying distance; sex is, after all, what we make and want of it).

What I’m saying is: Aren’t we simply what we are?

And if we stumble into love, into desire, into oh god you feel amazing under my hands and please never stop touching me there does it really matter so frickin’ much to our notion of the self whether or not the body, the person, in question is the same shape as the last body, the last person, who felt this way under, within, around us?

At what point in our history did the body of others become so central to the constitution of ourselves? Because that’s how the think of sexual identity these days — it’s about the self, yes, but it’s about the self in relation to the bodies that one finds desirable. It constitutes the self in some pretty fundamental ways but pre-emptively narrowing who we imagine ourselves capable of getting down and dirty with.

As I type this, my internal antagonists are arguing with the words on the page, pointing out how much all of this is colored by my subjective experience of fluid, person-centered sexual attractions, and my claustrophobic reaction to closing doors of possibility when there’s no imminent need to do so. So obviously this is only my own particular reaction and all, but really … why do we make it so difficult for ourselves?

Wouldn’t it just be easier if instead of an existential crisis, falling in love with an unexpected person was more like, “Oh, you mean I like this too? That’s cool.”

*Someday, maybe I’ll write it into an actual smutty fic. Hanna and I keep threatening to do this in turns, but so far neither of us has made the time to follow through and do it.

first thoughts: david blankenhorn’s evolving stance on marriage equality

23 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in think pieces

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Prominent anti-marriage-equality theorist David Blankenhorn (a key expert for the supporters of Prop 8 in California, author The Future of Marriage) has recently gone public with his decision to support same-sex marriage as a way to strengthen the institution of marriage overall. He writes in his statement at The New York Times that he hopes this decision to support the right of same-sex couples to marry will re-orient the discussion away from the morality of homosexuality per se and toward question of how society provides for dependent children, and how we can best stabilize existing love relationships. He writes, in part:

I had … hoped that debating gay marriage might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive recommitment to marriage as an institution. But it hasn’t happened. With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage. But either way, if fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage over all, I think we’d have seen some signs of it by now.
So my intention is to try something new. Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

There’s a lot going on in this statement and I won’t pretend my first response is comprehensive. But here are a few “first thoughts.” Continue reading →

‘the act of marriage’ live-blog: abortion bonus post (the end)

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10, ch 11, ch 12, ch 13, ch 14.

As promised on Tuesday, here is the bonus post reproducing the section in The Act of Marriage which deals with abortion. It’s notable, I think, that a Christian book on sexuality deals with abortion only in the final chapter, in a question-and-answer section, rather than having either a) a chapter devoted to the subject, or b) addressing abortion in the chapter on family planning. This may seem odd to present-day readers, who are used to abortion being one of the rallying cries of the “family values” coalition. But actually, abortion did not become a major political issue for non-Catholics until the late 70s. So the way abortion is handled in The Act of Marriage is a fascinating sliver of post-Roe, pre-Operation Rescue abortion ethics for evangelicals. I’m reproducing the text here in full, with my interleaved commentary.

ABORTION: Is it ever right for a Christian woman to have an abortion?

Note immediately how the question is framed: “a Christian woman.” This phrasing pulls the question from the realm of law and politics and places it in the realm of personal, religious conscience. Since no one can be forced to be a Christian in the United States, and whatever the LaHayes say subsequently applies only to Christian women, there is no explicit coercion — no forced birth, at least in the legal sense. Obviously, a woman could be pressured and forced on a much more intimate scale by religious community, doctor, and family — but this is not being framed as a matter of law.

A crucial issue in today’s society relates to the morality of abortion. Ever since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling granted a constitutional guarantee of privacy in such matters and left the decision to the individual woman during the first six months of her pregnancy, legalized abortions have increased at a catastrophic rate. Many opponents of abortion warned that if it were made legal, it would result in promiscuity, infidelity, venereal disease, and guilt. Who can deny the accuracy of their forecast?

On the other hand, we do start out at the gate talking about Roe v. Wade. And it’s clear the LaHayes feel the decision led to general degradation. Notice what’s not listed in the results of abortion? That’s right: murder. They’re talking about sexual misbehavior, not about baby-killing. In a lot of ways, these are still the root concerns of sexual conservatives — they’ve just learned that “baby killing” is a much more effective rhetorical move. Basically, the concerns the LaHayes list here about abortion mirror the concerns they have about secular, humanistic, “un-Christian” sexual mores in general. No more, no less.

There are two kinds of abortions — natural and induced. Although medical science cannot always tell why, some women abort their pregnancies naturally, which may be nature’s way of dealing with birth defects or other prenatal complications. Induced abortions are medically simple if performed by a competent doctor in the early stages of pregnancy.  

The way miscarriage and abortion are grouped together here,  and the accurate observation that early-stage abortions are “medically simple” and can be performed safely by a trained physician, serve to reassure the reader, to normalize the idea of abortion. This is not a passage designed to frighten or shock.

There are two reasons for inducing an abortion: (1) when such action is necessary to save the life of the mother — called “therapeutic abortion”; and (2) for the convenience of the mother because she is either unmarried or does not want the child. In such cases those making such a decision must bear the moral responsibility for their actions.

So they’re creating two distinct categories here, and it looks as if category one (“therapeutic abortion”) is deemed “necessary” and not at moral issue here — and even the second category, abortion for “convenience” is not automatically decried.

Christians as a rule know that the Bible condemns murder; consequently, many use the sixth commandment as justification for condemning all forms of abortion. The problem is that the Bible is not clear as to when the fertilized egg becomes a person — at the moment of conception, or when the embryo develops into a fully formed human being at three to six months. If one regards the fertilized egg as just “a living cell” that has potential to become a human, it is easier to approve of some form of abortion than if he believes that the soul enters at conception.

Throughout The Act of Marriage the LaHayes are careful to differentiate between moral parameters they find support for in the Bible (homosexuality; adultery) and those which they don’t necessarily approve, but about which the Bible is silent (oral sex; birth control). They make no exception for abortion, suggesting that Biblical censure of abortion hinges on whether abortion equals murder — and notice that they leave that question open-ended!

We faced this problem initially when a mother of four who thought she could not have any more children became pregnant. Because of a rare blood condition, her doctor advised, “If you do not get an abortion, the birth of this child will take your life.” If we had relied only on the sixth commandment, our response would have resulted in murder either way — the mother or the unformed child. After much prayer we counseled the couple to follow their doctor’s recommendation.

The modern-day anti-choice movement rarely, if ever, places the pregnant woman’s life at the center of the story in this way — let alone articulate the notion that two lives may be at stake here: the pregnant woman as well as that (potential) life of an “unformed child.” The abortion debate has sidelined women’s lives in the interest of focusing on what happens inside the womb, as if it were somehow disembodied from the woman who must decide (or be forced) to carry the pregnancy to term inside herself.

I think it’s also notable that the example above is of a woman who is already a parent. Often, in the anti-choice rhetoric of today, women-who-have-abortions and women-who-give-birth-and-parent are imagined as two separate populations; in this instance, they are found (as they most often are) in the same person.

Another case involved an innocent fourteen-year-old rape victim. The crime occurred while she was coming home from school, and investigation disclosed she had never seen the man before.

Ah perfect-victim-stranger-rape, how we miss hearing about you … oh, wait.

We felt that she had been through enough trauma. Certainly a loving God would not require an innocent girl, victim of a man’s bestial appetite, to drop out of school, endure nine months of pregnancy, and inaugurate motherhood before her fifteenth birthday. We found that her pastor’s approval was very important for her mental and spiritual rehabilitation. To this day only about six people know of this tragedy, and now, some years later, she is a happy, well-adjusted wife and mother.

Again we see the melding of women-who-have-abortions and women-who-are-mothers. Yes, the approval of abortion as an option in this instance is predicated on the “stranger rapes innocent girl” trope, but these days many anti-choicers argue against exceptions for rape/incest and the life of the mother.

Still another case concerned a couple who had a retarded child and were expecting again. A chemical analysis indicated that their unborn child would also be malformed in some way. After much prayer and soul-searching, we advocated a therapeutic abortion. Admittedly, we may some day have to account to God for these decisions, but to our best understanding of the Bible and the peace we had in our hearts at the time, we have no regrets.

I find it fascinating that they hold up these decisions difficult, human decisions for which there may be no fully right answer. They may “some day have to account to God” for the way they counseled families to seek abortions, but they “have no regrets” about encouraging families to choose abortion, even when the life of the mother was not immediately at stake. Particularly in this last instance, their decision-making process included a much more comprehensive understanding of family well-being and caretaking capacity than is normally up for discussion in present-day anti-abortion circles.

Through these experiences we have developed the following opinion on the subject.

Once again, the distinction between Biblical truth and the LaHayes’ (albeit pastorally-authoritative) ethics.

We oppose abortion for all personal or selfish reasons, but accept therapeutic abortion in those rare cases in which a Christian doctor, minister, and the girl’s parents prayerfully agree that it is in the best interest of either the mother or the unborn child. If a girl or woman is immoral and becomes pregnant, she should bear the responsibility for her actions by giving birth to the child.

Slut shaming in all its glory!

If she is a minor, we recommend that a Christian couple who desires a child be found and the child be adopted immediately after birth; the man involved should pay all necessary expenses plus room and board for the girl during her pregnancy. We do not believe that a forced marriage is always a solution, for it depends on the two people’s ages and whether one is an unbeliever. We have observed that unless the couple is mature enough to marry, they start out with so many strikes against them that marriage becomes a tragic mistake following an unfortunate sin. Better that they confess their sin in God, then responsibly do what is best for the unborn child (235-237).

They don’t articulate it in so many words here, but I think it’s telling that — in the mid-1970s! — they’re still assuming that an underage teenager will be sent to an unwed mother’s home for the duration of her pregnancy (why else the need for “room and board”?). And while this is obviously far from a liberal-progressive position on teen pregnancy, I appreciate the changing mores that allowed the LaHayes to encourage their readers not to pressure teens into shotgun marriages before the baby was born, in fact suggesting that “what is best for the unborn child” may, in fact, not be a childhood spent in an unhappy household.

So there you have it: fundamentalist, evangelical Christian abortion ethics, circa 1976. If only we could make our way back to even that narrow window of opportunity!

‘the act of marriage’ live-blog: ch 14 (questions answered, from a-to-zed)

19 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10, ch 11, ch 12, ch 13.

Can you believe we’ve reached the end? After this week’s installment, you should know everything you need to know about sexual intimacy in Christian marriage, and I should be fully equipped to be an Adequate Lady Spouse to my Future Wife.

The final chapter of The Act of Marriage is an FAQ chapter, “Practical Answers to Common Questions,” from Abortion to Temperament with lots in between. I’m actually going to reproduce the response on abortion in full Thursday, in a separate post, because I think it’s a fascinating window into evangelical Christian abortion ethics circa 1976. I think it will contain some surprises for those used to late-twentieth-century anti-choice plan-B-is-murder hardliners. Don’t worry! There’s still plenty of slut-shaming. But there’s no discussion of whether or not abortion should be legally accessible, and the pregnant woman herself doesn’t disappear from view as is often the case in current-day discussions of whether a fertilized egg has rights independent of the person in whose womb it might grow to term.

But first! For a whirlwind tour of Christian sexual ethics, from A-to-Zed (I get 0-10 points based on my level of agreement with the LaHaye’s stance):

Abortion. “Is it ever right for a Christian woman to have an abortion?” Yes, sometimes. As long as she’s not seeking an abortion for the wrong reasons. (More on this later.) [4]

Adultery. Assumed to be morally wrong* but something which a) is probably the wife’s fault on some level for not meeting her husband’s needs, and b) something for which the wife must forgive her husband, provided he “repents” and cuts off all contact with the lover. And yes, the husband is the presumed guilty party. [5]

Birth Control. As discussed in previous posts, birth control is considered morally sound to limit family size, as long as couples do not outright reject parenting. Couples are counseled to be intentional about how many children they can care for, and how many pregnancies the mother can healthfully sustain. [8]

Communication. Communication around sexual matters is deemed essential in marriage, though readers are counseled not to speak of any previous relationships (“some perverted”) with their spouse. [8]

Counseling. Counseling is advised, as long as it is obtained from a minister or Christian therapist. [5]

Dating. Young people can date, but should seek out Christian partners, and refrain from sexual activity except with their “life’s partner” for their body is a temple of God. Oral stimulation may or may not count as “sex” but is “much too intimate for unmarried people” (245). [2]

Ejaculation. Delay, delay, delay, and make sure your wife comes first! [0]

Fantasy. Fantasizing about anything other than your spouse in a sexual context is lust and therefore sinful. Don’t do it. Avoid “suggestive” material and pray. “Bring your mind into obedience with Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) and cast down all evil imaginations” (248). [0]

Foreplay. Desirable, especially among women. “Haste makes waste … certainly applies to lovemaking” (249) and the clit and the breasts definitely deserve some attention. [5]

Fornication. See “Adultery.”

Free Love. Damages spiritual and physical health, is too impersonal, creates “unfair and unnecessary comparisons” (250), causes feelings of guilt, isn’t free, and is, in fact, WRONG. “God’s standards are not flexible” (251). Living together prior to marriage decreases marital satisfaction. At the same time, parents are urged not to cut ties with children who are living in sin. [1]

Frequency. “Whatever rate of frequency brings joy and fulfillment to the two of you is ‘average’for you” (253). [10]

Frigidity. Is a psychological condition caused in daughters by cold, distant fathers. Can be overcome with God’s help. [1]

Genitalia. A range in size and appearance of genitalia is normal, clitoral stimulation is central to women’s satisfaction, Christian women shouldn’t bother to get breast implants (“you need to accept yourself as God made you”) and if you have trouble reaching orgasm after hysterectomy it’s a psychological not physical problem.** [5]

Homosexuality. Is a sexual perversion. Childhood exploration of one’s own genitals is normal, and should not be punished.*** We don’t know what causes homosexuality, but likely a combination of factors – though not single-parent families. Conversion to Christianity is the only power to redeem a person from homosexual sin. [0]

Impotence. See chapter ten.

Love. “No Christian should endure marriage without it … [and] every wife has the right to expect to be loved to orgasm” (267-68). [8]

Marriage Adjustment. “Slam the divorce door, which is not a live option for Christians” (268).^ [0]

Masturbation. “Is it wrong for a Christian to masturbate?” No acceptable (see “Fantisizing”), even following divorce or widowing, or if your spouse fails to satisfy during intercourse. [0]

Menstruation. It’s not sinful or unhealthy to have sex during menstruation, but a husband should follow his wife’s lead. [10].

Oral Sex. The Bible is “completely silent” on the subject, but “we suggest it should be limited to foreplay” (276) and never be demanded of a partner who dislikes it. [5]

Orgasm. Simultaneous orgasm is likely to occur, even for couples with “excellent” love-making skills only sixty to seventy percent of the time, women will need manual manipulation of the clit to come, and there is nothing wrong with women who desire (and enjoy) sex and orgasm. [5]

Orgasmic Failure. See chapters 8-10.

Petting. “Petting is just a sophisticated term describing illicit foreplay by the unmarried and it is dangerous” (280)^^ [0]

Positions. “Any place that is mutually agreeable and does not betray your privacy is acceptable” (281). [10]

Privacy. Put a lock on your door, teach your children to respect parental privacy, and avoid having them see you naked. [8]

Romance. Even pastors on a tight budget should not feel guilty about planning and saving for an “overnight honeymoon” on occasion with their wife. “If your first objective is to seek the kingdom of God, there is nothing wrong with your third or fourth objective being a decent salary to live on” (282).^^^ [5]

September Sex. Couples can enjoy sexual intimacy throughout their lives. [10]

Sex Drive. It isn’t wrong for a woman to have a higher sex drive than her male partner. [10]

Sex During Pregnancy. Is not contra-indicated. [10]

Stimulation. Vibrators are dangerous as they might “establishing an appetite for a level of stimulation their partner could not provide naturally” (287).  [0]

Television. Is a distraction and a “thief of love.” [2]

Temperament. In which we suddenly learn about the sex drives of Sanguines, Cholerics and Melancholics. [??]

IN SUM: Adequate Lady-Spouse Metric

Chapter 14: 137/290 possible points = -153

Chapter 13: -190
Chapter 12: -29.5
Chapter 11: -35
Chapters 8-10: 0 (n/a)
Chapters 6-7: -62
Chapters 4-5: +30
Chapters 2-3: -33
Chapter 1: -50

Cumulative ALSM Score: -522.5

–> Basically? I’d totally suck at being a fundie Christian wife. It’s a good thing that’s not what Hanna’s looking for!

*An assumption I also share, since I take “adultery” to mean a situation where one person cheats on the rules of the primary relationship by having sex with a third (or more) parties without the consent of their spouse. NOT COOL.

**I didn’t bother to look up how much the LaHayes could have known about hormonal issues related to hysterectomies, so they may or may not be responsible for the mis-information here. But aside from the physical recovery from abdominal surgery, and lingering scar tissue, hysterectomies alter your hormones and can alter one’s ability to experience orgasm, and/or how you experience arousal.

***This may seem like a strange observation to place here in the Q&A, but there are still people today who argue that masturbation equals homosexuality because it’s sexual intimacy with a body the same sex as your own er, exactly the same as your own, er, is your own.

^Like with abortion, it’s note-worthy to me that the LaHayes are arguing for Christians to abide by a separate morality from non-Christians, rather than framing any sort of political agenda concerning divorce law. Rather than argue people shouldn’t be allowed to divorce, they simply counsel Christians it’s “not an option” to people of faith.

^^This might tie with “children fulfill the psychic design of your mind” as Best Phrase Of The Book.

^^^Leaving one with the question, of course, what should the second objective be?

‘the act of marriage’ live-blog: ch. 13 (time-out for evangelism)

12 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10, ch 11, ch 12.

Welcome back! Now for the chapter you’ve all been waiting for … the obligatory time-out for evangelism! Some of you may have been assuming that since the entire thrust of The Act of Marriage narrative is that a) the readers of the book are overwhelmingly Christians and b) being Christian means you’re gonna have awesome God-boosted sexytimes, that the text needs no explicit shout-out to repent and be saved. After all, you’d be preaching to the choir, and for anyone who doesn’t already know the words to the hymn you’ve got the best sales pitch ever: BETTER ORGASMS.

Oh, but you would be so wrong. Because Christians can never be saved enough. This was a major theme of the fundamentalist evangelicalism I encountered during my thesis research: individuals who had repented and been “saved” face continual pressure to recommit to Christ out of fear that their born-again experience was somehow less-than (think Jesus Camp). Putting the fear of God into those already in the fold is part-and-parcel of any proselytizing among fundamentalist evangelicals. And given that Tim LaHaye is, first and foremost, a minister, means that this remains a key aspect of his modus operandi:

Unless [the] God-shaped vacuum [in every person] is filled by a personal relationship with God, man is condemned throughout his lifetime to an endless treadmill of activity in an attempt to fill it (219).

This chapter is full of infographics arguing that people without Christ in their lives will be full of guilt, fear, purposelessness, emptiness, confusion, and misery.* In contrast:

When Christ controls one’s life, that person seeks to do those things and think those thoughts that please the Lord, who in turn will grant that person an abundance of the joy, love, and peace which guarantees the happiness every human being desires … When [Christ] directs a person’s nature, that person’s clean thought patterns will produce good feelings and in turn turn engender the physical responses that everyone wants (230). 

As Hanna points out, this makes Jesus sound like the worst micro-managing boss ever. It also makes Jesus sound like a drug you might find in the stash of your buddy who sells pot out of his back garden.

Which, I suppose, if praying is what does it for you — why not?**

There’s a couple of things going on here I want to comment on, before we move onto the final, Q & A chapter next week (the final chapter! can you believe we’ve made it through the whole book?!).

I think it’s really intriguing — and particularly evident in this chapter, since this is the chapter that’s basically selling Christ as an awesome trip — that the LaHayes feel the need to sell Christianity as the path to the good life and that the “good life” doesn’t just mean the absence of hellfire and brimstone (the afterlife is, actually, noteably absent throughout The Act). The argument to being/becoming Christian isn’t “if you don’t accept God you will BURN IN HELL,” though I’m sure most of their target audience received that message loud and clear in other places. No, the message in The Act is be/become Christian and you will have “good feelings” and “the physical responses that everyone wants” (read: ORGASM).

Jesus: A Really Good Fuck. Maybe the brides of Christ were onto something?

No only will Jesus/God give you a really good time in bed, but he’ll also give you and your partner together a super-awesome roll in the hay, which makes Jesus/God sound like something between a sex therapist and a congenial fuck buddy:

When Sara accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior in my office that day, she cancelled their divorce proceedings and went home to become a loving, submissive, gracious wife … within ten weeks [her husband] Sam also came to the saving knowledge of Christ, and they have enjoyed a compatible relationship for many years (232).

This sells Christ not as “Lord and Savior” in the Biblical sense — though obviously that is the ultimate end goal, saving souls — but rather as a means to an end: a “compatible relationship” between husband and wife (and perhaps every-other-Thursday also the Son of God?). Such a pitch effectively twines together a prosperity gospel ethos with a reconfiguration of sexuality as something with positive spiritual possibility, even outside of the context of procreation. And both of these themes became absolutely central to late-twentieth-century American evangelical culture. Sexual conservatives, to this day, will argue (either in psuedo-scientific or blatantly theological terms) that Christians who remain chaste until marriage and lead a Christ-centered sexual life thereafter will experience the best most satisfying sex there is.

Maybe they do? Who am I to judge. But I’ve been disqualified from that particular club since age eleven, when I met my friend J’s offer (made in the backyard tree house, if I remember aright)  to help me “accept Christ into your heart” with a blank stare, so.

And then there’s the whole premarital lesbian (albeit monogamous) slut thing. I’m pretty sure I get demerits for that.

IN SUM: Adequate Lady-Spouse Metric

-50 –> not accepting Christ into my heart at age eleven (or at any age thereafter)
-50 –> believing the spiritual vacuum can be filled with other-than-Christ shaped religion
-20 –> engaging in premarital
-20 –> lesbian sexytimes
-20 –> and not regretting it
-30 –> and not turning to drugs and/or alcohol as a result

Chapter 13: -190 points

Chapter 12: -29.5
Chapter 11: -35
Chapters 8-10: 0 (n/a)
Chapters 6-7: -62
Chapters 4-5: +30
Chapters 2-3: -33
Chapter 1: -50

Cumulative ALSM Score: -369.5

*Before you ask no, there is no data to back this up — it’s simply assumed to be self-evident FACT.

**Hanna also pointed out, because she’s smart like that (I’m not really just marrying her for the lovely ass), that spiritual/religious/metaphysical life is an important part of meaning-making for most people — even if it’s important because you’ve consciously chosen not to prioritize it. I don’t think the LaHayes are terribly mis-guided to encourage people to consider their spiritual centering … I only think they’re wrong to argue that only Jesus and/or the evangelical Christian god will suffice.

‘the act of marriage’: ch 12 ( d) none of the above)

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10, ch 11.


Finally! The chapter you’ve all been waiting for (I know!): the Christian sex survey. Convinced through anecdotal evidence and a belief that believers must do it better, the LaHayes set out to gather empirical data to support their thesis.

Why do Christians do it better? I mean, we all know why feminists do it better: the less hamstrung by notions of oppositional, binary gender roles, the more real people can be. And the more real we can be with our partners — the less compelled we feel to follow a specific script for sex — the better off we’re gonna be. Less shame, more gain. But why would being a member of one religious community — particularly one which, historically-speaking, has a rocky relationship with human sexuality — lead one to better sex?

Well, the short answer is because folks like the LaHayes believe that being a Christian makes everything better. It’s sort of an exercise in circular thinking: Why does Christianity make things better? Because life is better when you’re a Christian.

The slightly longer answer is that they believe that they believe “a Christian’s relationship with God produces a greater capacity for expressing and receiving love than is possible for the non-Christian” (195). They argue that Christians, with their greater capacity for love, do not have “an obsession with sex, they do not need dirty stories*, pornography, or artificial stimuli to motivate them toward each other” (195). Basically: God gives you the capacity to love; everyone else is faking it.

To assess the state of Christian marital relations, the LaHayes asked participants in their Family Life Seminars (sexuality education for Christian adults) to fill out and return written surveys on their sexual experiences — think The Hite Report for Christian couples. They amassed 3, 377 responses (from 1,705 women and 1,672 men) and chapter twelve offers us a look at the results. In comparing their own results to that of a contemporary Redbook survey of 100,000 women they conclude that “Christians do enjoy the sublimities of the act of marriage more than others in our culture” (197).

I can’t reproduce the survey results in full, here, but a quick word about demographics and then some of the questions and responses. The couples they surveyed (and yes, they were all married) were the average age of mid-to-late thirties, had been married 7-15 years, and had 2-3 children. forty percent of the women and sixty percent of the men were graduates of four-year colleges, and nearly forty percent of the men had attended graduate school (I suspect a high proportion of seminarians). Forty percent of the wives worked part- or full-time outside the home and over sixty percent of the men were working in “professional or managerial” positions. In short, these are middle to upper-middle-class families. The survey doesn’t ask about race, but I’d say it’s safe to assume a majority white demographic.

The majority of couples married after a courtship lasting 6-12 months, but fifteen percent courted for 3-5 years before marriage. Reading was the main source of sexuality education before marriage, and while the majority approached marriage with “anticipation” of sexual activity, roughly twenty percent of both men and women were “apprehensive” about sex as they headed toward tying the knot. About a third of respondents (slightly lower for women, slightly higher for men) had engaged in “occasional” premarital intercourse, though the LaHayes are quick to point out that these numbers could include people who had “not yet received Christ as their Lord and Savior” (200). Almost forty percent of couples used birth control pills as their preferred form of contraception. While only about one quarter of wives reported having reached orgasm on their first night of lovemaking, seventy-seven percent indicated that they “regularly or always” experienced orgasm making love at the time they filled out the survey.

A few example questions, and the responses:

14. Impression of parents’ sex life:

Fulfilling… 36% (wives’ response) 36% (husbands’ response)
Casual… 28% / 34%
Cold… 28% / 20%
Other… 8% / 10%

36. Minutes from beginning of foreplay to orgasm:

Less than 10… 6% / 7%
10-20 minutes … 51% / 55%
20-30 minutes … 31% / 26%
30 or more … 12% / 12%

40. How often do you have intercourse per week:

0-2 times … 61% / 61%
3-6 times … 36% / 37%
7-9 times … 3% / 1%

41. How often do you desire intercourse per week:

0-2 times … 48% / 27 %
3-6 times … 49% / 62%
7-9 times … 3% / 11%

The rest of the chapter is taken up by graphs comparing the sexual satisfaction of Christian couples (as reported in the survey) with the sexual satisfaction of the respondents to the Redbook survey. The LaHayes do point out that there is no way of knowing what percentage of those who responded to Redbook were also Christians**, but persist anyway in arguing that Christians do it better.

Wearing my historian’s hat, I find it particularly fascinating to see certain themes emerging in these chapters which today sit front and center in the Christian arguments against non-marital sexual activities. For example, the argument that non-marital sex before marriage will be destructive to the marriage relationship: “Our survey indicates quite clearly that premarital sex is not necessary and, according to statistics, may hinder sexual adjustment” (210). They also devote a section to the notion that the practice of oral sex is on the rise, “thanks to amoral sexual education, pornography, modern sex literature, and the moral breakdown of our times” (212). While the LaHayes are not particularly censorious of oral stimulation, they take pains to encourage their readers to ensure that penis-in-vagina intercourse remains the central sexual act in their relationship. All things considered, you could set this chapter up alongside the data presented in the reactionary Premarital Sex in America and — substituting anal for oral — you’d have roughly the same arguments being made, fifty years apart.

IN SUM: Adequate Lady-Spouse Metric

It was a little difficult to come up with a way of grading myself on this chapter. So what I did was this: I completed the questionnaire myself, and then gave myself two points for every instance where my answers matched the top answer for the wives, one point if it was the second-place answer, and half a point for third-place or below.

Chapter 12:
1st place answers: 24 questions = 48/48 points
2nd place answers: 11 questions = 11/22 points
3rd or below: 11 questions = 5.5/22 points

TOTAL POINTS: 64.5/94 points = -29.5

Chapter 11: -35
Chapters 8-10: 0 (n/a)
Chapters 6-7: -62
Chapters 4-5: +30
Chapters 2-3: -33
Chapter 1: -50

Cumulative ALSM Score: -179.5

*So sad! No smutty fic!

**Note that “Christian” to folks like the LaHayes doesn’t mean “anyone who attends a Christian church and/or reads the Bible as a sacred text,” but rather anyone who has had a born-again experience and/or accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

‘the act of marriage’: ch. 11 (aka "children fulfill the psychic design of your mind")

25 Friday May 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10.

If I had to pick the number-one aspect of The Act of Marriage that situated it in the 1970s, it would be the LaHaye’s attitude toward birth control and abortion. Namely, that they’re not categorically opposed to either. Let me reiterate: The best-selling protestant Christian evangelical sex manual of the 1970s was not anti-abortion or anti-birth control, even hormonal birth control (aka “The Pill”) which today has so many fundies up in arms.

Tomorrow, I’m going to be posting, verbatim, the passage in which The Act of Marriage takes up the question of abortion. I think it deserves its own post because there’s so much interesting stuff going on vis a vis contemporary abortion politics within it. But for now, we’re going to take a brief look at chapter eleven, “Sane Family Planning,” which deals exclusively with pre-conception solutions for controlling pregnancy while sexually active.

“Almost all Christians today seem to believe in limiting the size of their families” (185)

The LaHayes start out with the observation that, given the number of years the average woman is fertile, the vast majority of Christian couples are self-evidently practicing some sort of family planning strategy. And they do not disapprove — nor do they believe God disapproves. The distinction they make is not between contraception vs. no contraception, but rather between parenting and not-parenting. “Christian couples should, if at all possible, have children, they assert” (183). Intention here matters. If one is delaying childbearing, or spacing out children, or deciding that [ideal number] of children is the limit of persons your family resources can provide for, then this is an acceptable (“sane”?) orientation toward parenting.

What’s not acceptable? Deciding that your ideal number of children = 0.* Because “the chief enemy of personal happiness is self-interest” (185) I’ve honestly never understood how realizing you don’t have the resources (material, emotional, or otherwise) to be a good-enough parent is the selfish route while having little ones because they are “a tangible expression of your [marital love]” or because “children fulfill the psychic design of your mind” (I shit you not!) is the unselfish way to go (183-85). But apparently that’s the truth of things, and who am I to argue with God?**

I lose MAJOR lady-spouse points for this (I figure double ’cause I’m getting hitched to someone who’s completely comfortable with the non-parenting state of affairs. More so than I am, actually. So, you know, clearly I went the way of satanic and self-centered temptation there.

What can I say. She has a really great ass.

IN SUM: Adequate Lady-Spouse Metric Returns!

-20 –> for coming to the conclusion that the answer to the question “how many children does God want me to have?” is “Zero” and
-20 –> for getting myself hitched to a partner who believes this even more strongly than I
-20 –> plus the whole “two eggs can’t make a baby” thing, which is surely a strike against us
+15 –> still, I do agree that human being are a pretty awesome “gift of eternal creativity”
+10 –> and that even couples wanting to create babies should have access to family planning tools

Chapter 11: -35

Chapters 8-10: 0 (n/a)
Chapters 6-7: -62
Chapters 4-5: +30
Chapters 2-3: -33
Chapter 1: -50

Cumulative ALSM Score: -150

* Maths people! What would the equation for that look like … “solve for X if  x > 1”?

**See also.