That’s What SHE Said…

I’ve haven’t written any posts for a few months. There’s been too much going on…starting a new job, training for some distance running events, grad school, a huge upswing in COVID, trying to be a somewhat decent parent during the midst of all of that….

But I’ve been chewing on something for a while, and now is the time to get it all out in a post. As a warning, this piece is, per the title, going to be about sex. This is the kind of post I would have been mortified to consider writing even just a few short years ago. Now, however, talking about things that feel real and authentic from my perspective seems more appealing than trying to avoid some momentary embarrassment. Still, here’s your chance to bail if you so choose, before I dive on in.

Still here….OK! Final word: this is totally written from a straight girl’s perspective. I totally get and value that there is a spectrum of sexuality and that love and relationships exist in countless forms. But, I don’t have the experience or wisdom to speak to much of them, so I’m just gonna talk about what I know. Also, this is probably going to be a perspective that isn’t common to everyone. I grew up as a conservative Christian, which had a huge impact on the way I approached life for decades, but I think some of the dynamics and things I talk about here will resonate past religious circles.

I do not at all guarantee this post will flow in any linear path; it’ll more likely be a hodge podge mosaic of all of my swirling thoughts, feelings, and convictions about this topic at this point and time in my life. This might be a multi-post series eventually, and yes, there will be sarcasm, and a bit of hyperbole, just to try and get my points across.

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I spent the better part of my adult life hating sex. Seriously. I used to tell my therapist from almost 15 years ago that I would prefer a good slice of key lime pie any day over a roll in the hay. Sex was the biggest disappointment. It was built up in my childhood as something that girls should save themselves for; we were told that that under the umbrella of marriage it would be a gift and amazing and totally worth the wait.

That was not my experience. By any means. I remember thinking early on in my marriage, “Wait, you mean I read all those stupid I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Lady in Waiting, and other similar books and I believed hook, line, and sinker that “staying pure” would be a good thing and well worth the wait?”

When I think back on the stories that I was fed and believed, I want to throw up a little in my mouth. Not because the people that told me the stories were ill-intentioned, and not because the fact that I was a virgin until I got married at 25 saved me from alot of heartache and potential STIs that can come with sexuality commenced in youth. No, I’m angry because sexuality and relationships were framed for me and so many like me in ways that only covered us in shame, a sense of inferiority, and the beliefs that we as women owe something to our male partners. And when you come to sex with this kind of framing, it’s no wonder that it might not seem so great. Sex is clearly physical, but for so many women, it is very, very much a head game as well.

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There is a thread that I see running through much of our culture, even our “advanced”, Western American culture. This dynamic, or pervasive belief, is the idea that somehow the sexualtiy of girls belongs to their fathers or the men in their lives.

You know that tired old cliche story about dads threatening to meet their daughter’s first boyfriend at the door with a shotgun? Or they might sit up waiting on the front porch, looking as threatening as possible, when the couple returns from a first date? We often romanticize this kind of behavior, and talk about how Daddy is being protective of his little girl. Men still frequently ask fathers for permission to marry their daughters, and fathers still admonish men to “take good care” of those same women.

Nope, nope, nope. This may be a form of protectiveness, but the root of this is in the idea of ownership, that girls belong to their daddies until they are given to another man in marriage, and the idea that women need to be protected by men from the other men in their lives. I literally can’t stand this. Have you ever seen a dad sit out on the front porch with a shotgun after his son comes back from a date, wanting to warn the girl his son went out with that she’d better not try anything? That would never happen. And I’ve never heard of a girl asking a woman permission to marry her son.

I was listening to an episode of the You Made It Weird podcast a while back where Pete Holmes interviewed Hannah Gadsby. (By the way, if you have not been introduced to Gadsby, stop what you’re doing and go watch her Netflix specials Douglas and Nanette on Netflix. She is fabulous.) Somewhere toward the end of their conversation, Pete and Hannah were discussing female sexuality, and how some men cringe or change the subject or get defensive and want to pull out their shotguns when the subject comes around to their daughters’ sexuality. They try to avoid their daughters recognizing their sexuality for as long as possible, and then they try to be in a position where they get to approve or disapprove of the man that their daughter engages sexually with. Super strong ownership tendencies there. Bleh.

Pete made the comment during this episode that he doesn’t want to be that kind of dad when his young daughter grows up. He WANTS his daughter to have fulfilling, authentic sexual relationships with whoever she chooses without being bogged down or enslaved by male “overprotectiveness” or ownership. He also mentioned he just didn’t want to come across creepy by saying any of that, to which Hannah replied that it was not creepy at all as long as he personally didn’t get involved. I agree. 😀

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When I was growing up, I wanted to have a rodeo career and own a big ranch. The response I was given to this dream? Well Julie, You’d better marry a rich cowboy.

What the hell? This and other responses I got to similar ideas taught me that 1) certain dreams would never come to fruition on my own because I”m a girl, and 2) I need a man to take care of me.

I grew up in the Church and this thread ran very strong through it, it usually didn’t matter which denomination I was a part of at the moment. It was very, very clear to me that a woman’s status and citizenship advanced when she married. Married a man, that is. All the church singles group would talk about how amazing it was to be single and how you can do so much for the Lord as a single, and hustle while you wait, etc. But yeah, I could see right through it. Married women in the Church are much more esteemed. And if you start popping out babies, even better. And woe to those women who get divorced…you will fall right through the status floor and spend quite a while trying to crawl back to the level you were as a fresh, unmarred single virgin.

I grew up hearing the message from so many fronts, even if implicitly, that I needed to get hitched. I needed someone to take care of me, to rein me in, to make sure I didn’t do anything too harebrained. And because also….the only way you could legitimately have sex without pissing off God is to do so when you’re married.

So, I got married a couple of years out of college…and it was a disaster.

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When I was in high school and college, purity culture was going strong. At superficial glance, purity culture seems good and all. Don’t have sex until you’re married, keep yourself out of compromising situations, etc, and you won’t end up with an STI, an unexpected pregnancy, and you can maybe minimize some of the emotional heartache that comes with the end of romantic relationships.

I was a strong adherent to purity culture all through this time. It made alot of sense to me during that period of my life, but part of the reason it made alot of sense was that it served as a GREAT coping and defense mechanism against my own body and personality shame. I grew up as the black sheep of my family, and while I liked almost all of my peers, I got along so much better with people that were at least 10 to 20 years older than me. Not in weird ways; it was just that I wasn’t interested in the same kinds of things that interested my age group. I was also a little terrified of God and a little terrified of boys my age, and latching on to purity culture teachings gave me a great way to avoid wondering why the male gender was not knocking down my door….or at least even waving much through the window.

I bought into the purity ring ideal, and wore a simple gold band on my left ring finger from my senior year in high school until I was 25, when I gave it to my dad at my wedding. Sorry, but I”m throwing up in my mouth a little again. My sexuality was not my dad’s business. At all. (To be clear, my dad did not force a purity ring on me…it was my idea at the time based in my own insecurities and struggle to please God and whoever else I thought I needed to).

It was as though I thought I had achieved some great feat by staying a virgin and handing over the gold ring on my wedding day….. It wasn’t a great feat. It was actually a really simple accomplishment because I grew up being made to fear sexuality and it’s power, to be ashamed of my own body, to stifle my own sexual energy, and to protect myself as I struggled to deal with with the trauma of sexual abuse that occurred during my childhood. But staying a virgin until you find a man to marry doesn’t fix any problems. And if anything, I believe purity culture absolutely sets marriages up for failure, puts more expectations on marriage and romantic relationships than is necessary, and has contributed to the perpetuation of rape culture in our society.

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The way we read and interpret the Bible has a HUGE influence on the way we view women. Growing up in a conservative tradition that tended to read the Bible quite literally, women were viewed as the ones who fucked up pretty bad in the beginning, and were then relegated to trying to make it up for the rest of time by being the “helpmeet” for men and by having babies. As a woman, you’d be top notch if you were a virgin, and though you might drop a bit in status after losing that state of being, you’d come back up a bit if you proved to be an honorable wife and mother.

I’ve heard Proverbs 31 stated so many times as an ideal to live up to that I can’t stand it. Because it’s telling women….be this perfect female…the one who is super organized, and eloquent, and crafty, and all the other things that I am not. I’m a spaz most of the time. I have ADD. I would not necessarily say I am eloquent. And crafty…..I missed getting that gene. The Proverbs 31 women is put together, genteel, responsible. And she is prized for that. But she is not the ONLY type of amazing woman.

What about all of us women who are wild inside? Who want to attempt epic or outrageous shit? Who have tried really hard to live according to the ideals and conservative rules of others, but doing so kind of killed us inside? I’m SO FREAKING grateful for Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed, released this year, that gives all women permission to be “whatever the fuck they want to be”, to live according to the drive that is within them and not according to society’s demands and beneath a patriarchal culture’s burdens.

In the Bible, it sure seems like male sexual energy is considered good, but female….not so much. And when we read the Bible in certain ways, we compound that sentiment. I think this is seen strongly in the emphasis on the Virgin birth. I don’t personally believe in the Virigin birth…it’s not something I’ll really get into an argument about, but the idea of a virgin having an immaculate conception is kind of boring to me. To me, it again objectifies women. Women are best in the pure state, not marred by having sex. Women have things forced upon them without them asking and they are honored WHEN they accept it without fuss or argument. Men don’t lose their holiness or saintliness or whatever by having sex, but women do.

The story of the virgin birth also feels to me as though some humanity is stripped from the beginning of the person we know as Jesus. I know alot of people will vehemently disagree with this idea, and that’s totally fine. But I also find it interesting that only two of the Gospels mention the Virgin birth. So, either it was folklore added on to the stories over the decades following Jesus’ death, or it wasn’t necessarily the whole point or crux of the Jesus story in the first place. And virgins don’t only appear in the Bible. They’ve been magical mermaids appearing in religious texts and stories for thousands of years. Anyway, my whole point about the Virgin Mary is that when the story is told that way, it seems to me like she was raped by God. Sounds like a familiar story that happens regularly to women, except for the God part. Sorry if I just pissed off half of Christendom and ruined Christmas….but this is how it feels to me.

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There is a teaching that I think I first heard from the Dalai Lama or another Buddhist teacher. It goes like this: Learn the rules very very well, so you will know how to break the rules very very well.

I followed the rules my entire life. All the way through adulthood and an 11 year marriage. And this is what I have concluded: Sometimes following the rules to a T every single time doesn’t get you jack squat.

Since getting divorced 4 years ago, I’ve started breaking rules. Oh come on, don’t get too excited, people, I’m probably still one of the most boring people you’ll ever meet. Maybe more than anything I have begun to break the internal rule structure that has dictated for decades how I live my life….that has held me entrenched in insecurities and shame. But now that I know alot of the rules so freaking well, I often know which ones can be broken and when. And for the rest of the time….well, I’m much more prepared to deal with the consequences of breaking rules because I’ve learned that living a perfect, pristine life does not always equate to a happy, contented life. (It helps when you let go of the Christian literal hell narrative, too).

When I was married, as I mentioned before, I HATED sex. I felt sick and repulsed during sex, unless I had alot of alcohol in me. I would try to avoid so many situations in my life that my husband would interpret as an opening to initiate sex. It was a constant stress, for 11 years, and it was a relief when he was on business trips. Not because he is a bad person, but because it was time when I could finally let my guard down and relax.) The worst part of it all was that my issues with sex were all made out to be MY fault. I was frigid, I was not being a submissive wife, I wasn’t in touch with myself, etc etc. A Christian counselor I saw early on in my marriage told me that it was God’s will for me to keep having sex with my husband while I was working through my issues with it, because the Bible says you can only stop having sex for a while if you’re setting aside time for fasting and prayer. And of course, I heard the usual spill about Christian sex from countless sources: women need to have sex with their husbands whenever they [the men] want it, “it only takes 5 minutes, ladies”, if you don’t keep your husband happy he’ll have ample reason to stray and look elsewhere, it doesn’t matter if you’re not attracted to your husband or you’re creeping from memories of your own sexual trauma…this is your responsibility as a wife. Fuck that shit.

Here’s the problem: I married young because unconsciously I knew it would improve my status as a woman in multiple circles of my life, I had lingering insecurities about whether or not I could in fact care for myself long term, and hey, you never know how many guys will come knocking at your door so it might be smart to take up the first promising guy that comes along. (Spoiler alert: ladies, don’t do this….don’t settle for something that looks good on paper if your heart is not completely convinced).

Now this probably sounds like absolute common sense to everyone reading this: it’s probably way more smart to get into a long term relationship with someone that starts YOUR tractor than just the person who impresses the other people in your life. You’re the one that has to live with that person, not all the onlookers in your life.

But this is what I did. I married someone that made logical sense, that gave my parents that sense of security about not having to be concerned anymore about what Julie would be up to next, someone that was safe and steady and was a “good” Christian. I married him without having sex with him, without having sex with anyone prior, wanting so badly to improve my status and feel like I really belonged in this world. I mean, after all, isn’t that what I had been taught from the Bible since my childhood? That I needed to be legitimized since I was so unfortunately born as a female?

It took me 11 years to learn to say no. No to having sex when I didn’t feel like it or want it. No to believing that in some weird Biblical way my body belonged to my husband. No to all the voices who had told me my entire life that you are required by God to stick with one man forever unless he died or was unfaithful. No to all of the voices who thought they had any right to offer me opinions about my sexuality in the first place without me asking for them. And NO to resigning myself to stay in a loveless, miserable marriage without the hope of ever experiencing good, completely mutual agreed upon, and loving sex.

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I, like countless other women, am sick of being ASSUMED upon.

People assume women were asking for it because of how they were dressed. People assume women were asking for it because they were flirty. People assume women were asking for it because they were out alone too late at night. People assume women were asking for it when they weren’t brave enough at the moment to fight for themselves.

And I hate it…really hate it…when people read the Bible assuming that the women in the stories did something wrong first.

Like John 4, and the woman at the well. Jesus meets a woman getting water at a well in town in the heat of the day and asks her to give him some water. I swear to God, I’ve heard a billion sermons on this text, and every time a man preaches about it he talks about the fact that this woman has been married multiple times, is now just living with a man, but it’s all OK because Jesus is forgiving and he’s going to show that harlot slut of a woman something that will make her happier than going from man to man. (Did you notice my sarcasm and hyperbole here?)

Has it ever occurred to people that maybe it was NEVER this woman’s authentic choice to be with ANY of these men? That she lived in a culture that didn’t always give much credence or rights to women, and that maybe it was husband after husband that treated her unjustly, divorcing her and passing her down the societal food chain until all she had left was to shack up with a final man just to try and survive?

Or what about the story from Mark where the woman caught in adultery is thrown at Jesus’ feet and he refuses to condemn her? Maybe it’s because he knew that she was forced into a marriage when she was but a child, and maybe, just maybe despite that she had found love with a man and for the first time in her life was able to be intimate with someone who saw her and valued her for who she was as a woman and not just a baby factory and piece of property. Maybe….when the text said Jesus was writing in the sand while the crowd waited for him to condemn the women…he was spelling out “Good on you, girl!”

************************************************************************************* I am happy to announce, that amazing sex REALLY DOES EXIST.

Many of you laugh, but you guys….for years I thought it was seriously some kind of made up conspiracy. to get people to watch movies and TV or buy stuff. Or that men were the only ones who had it good. Or maybe it was only for the super hot girls and women, a category of which I do not and have never belonged.

When I got married I was SO depressed and underwhelmed by sex. I read all the books, went to counseling, listened to seminars, did all the things you’re supposed to do in a good Christian marriage to liven up one’s sex life. Didn’t work….unless I was a little drunk. And how great does that make a girl feel to have to be shnockered to enjoy sex? Feels pretty crappy I’ll tell you.

The biggest thing that saved me in how I approach my purpose for being as well as my sexuality was letting go of this idea that God will send people to hell, or that Jesus died on the cross as a way to create forgiveness for all of my screw ups. When I came to the realization that God isn’t mad at me and was never mad at me or anyone, and that the idea of hell and sin as we often define it no longer makes sense to me, I was able to question everything else that had ever held me back in life. Sex being one of them.

I started believing, a while before I got divorced, that we as humans are much more judgy about who each other is sleeping with than God is. And I started questioning the hell out of purity culture. I once knew a pastor who refused to marry couples until they had had a really good makeout session and still felt great about the experience and each other afterwards. Nowadays, I feel the exact same way about sex. For most people, I don’t think you should even consider getting married unless you’ve had a good roll in the hay with the other person and are still inspired to go back for more.

I know what you’re all wondering….you’re sitting there trying to imagine exactly who and how many people Julie has had sex with since getting a divorce. Well, sorry, some details I will keep to myself. Not because I’m concerned about being viewed as a prude or a slut anymore, but because my sexuality is entirely mine to talk about, and the details of it are MY business, not everyone in the world’s.

But I will say this….I am everyday grateful that I walked away from a relationship where I was shamed and belittled for my issues with sex, where I as a woman was yet again expected to fix the problems, where I was responsible for my partner’s purity and ability to stay loyal to me. I’m grateful that I have since met men who have bent over backwards to avoid objectifying me, who are not threatened by my sexuality but rather embrace feminine energy, and who have been willing to show me that sex can be so so so much better than a piece of key lime pie.

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