Archive for the 'Sexual ethics and transformation' Category

Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 04, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness, Divorce, Memories and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 16 Comments

I got an email yesterday, asking me about advice for dating again after a divorce. It’s a post I intend to get to next week.

But something in the query reminded me of an another question I’d been asked by a mentee of mine. The mentee asked “Since you got sober and had your conversion, have you ever come really close to slipping back into old behavior?” The answer I gave dovetails with that of what one does after a divorce. I’ll share a story.

It was summer 2002. My third wife, E., had told me she didn’t want to be married to me anymore. E and I had met online (Matchmaker.com) in January 2000; she was finishing her doctorate at Fuller Seminary, I was 18 months sober and falling in love with Christ all over again. She had never been married before. I was eager to build a life with someone who shared my faith, shared my values, and was willing to accept a very troubled and turbulent past. E and I moved quickly; we were engaged within weeks and married in early 2001.

As I’ve written before, my third wife and I had terrific intellectual and theological compatibility. We also had very little physical chemistry. I saw that as a plus. I had grown mistrustful of “heat” with another person — in my experience over the course of many years and many relationships, the most intense sexual relationships were invariably the most unhealthy. I ought to have known better, but at this stage of my recovery, I equated heat with danger. I thought of the line I’m too lazy too look up (but I think it’s from one of the translations of Medea), the one in which a Greek chorus prays for a “small fire” of love, just enough to warm a house — but not a big fire, which will invariably burn the house down. Having burned down many houses, as it were, I was ready for something different.

My third wife did me the great favor of leaving me. We were not cruel or unfaithful or dishonest. We were incompatible in a very basic way, a way that could not be overlooked. She was unwilling to settle for kindness and conversation alone; she wanted passion, and that was something we could not generate. She promised me that I would thank her someday for leaving. I have done so. She is remarried, as am I. I hope that her new marriage is joyous.

In any case, back to 2002. I was heartbroken when E left. I also experienced a brief crisis of doubt. I doubted God. I doubted the wisdom of staying sober. The perfect narrative of fall and recovery had been shattered; I wasn’t supposed to get divorced again, not now that I was sober and faithful. In my mind, I had done “everything right this time” and still things hadn’t worked out. And as a consequence, I began to flirt with the idea of going back to old behavior. I don’t mean drinking again — that option wasn’t on the table. I meant returning to casual promiscuity.

I moved out of the home E and I shared in early October, 2002. I had rented a small apartment a few miles away. And I had a date lined up for that first weekend with a woman I’d known for years. To heck with celibacy again, I thought; I’d done that as a healing tool before. What I wanted was new skin. I was in danger of going back to a pattern I’d stayed away from for many years.

But I never went on that date. The day before I moved out, one of my favorite students, Katie, came to my office. Katie had taken a few of my classes, and regularly visited me in office hours. Katie had been “out” for quite some time; she had been in the first gay and lesbian history course I had taught at PCC. Katie had been dating her girlfriend, Jackie — whom I knew vaguely but who hadn’t been my student — for about six months.

Katie was in tears. She told me that Jackie had been chronically unfaithful to her. Jackie was sexually compulsive, she said, hooking up with and having nearly-anonymous sexual encounters with both men and women. Jackie kept pledging to stop — and kept breaking those promises. She had begged Katie to stand by her, and Katie had tried, but was now at wits end. “I’m ready to leave”, Katie told me. “But I was wondering if you would be willing to reach out to Jackie. I know your story, and I know you went through some of these same issues. I trust you, Hugo, and I was wondering if you could take Jackie to some meetings and see if you could help her.” Continue reading ‘Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies’

“I’ll show you!” Of fidelity, reciprocity, drunkenness, and fear

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 10, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness, Memories, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

I got a note from a former student of mine last week. Sophrosyne writes:

I know it has been a while since I’ve spoke to you, but I am going to lose my mind or at least it feels like it. I have been dating this man for seven months and two weeks ago I made the mistake of driving drunk. This is an extremely sensitive issue for him because three years ago he lost a girlfriend (she got hit by a drunk driver while driving) and a best friend (similar scenario). I know it was a terrible mistake to make, it was something I’d never done before and am quite sure I will never, ever do again. I didn’t get caught or into an accident, and that is a miracle. But my boyfriend found out anyway.

Ever since the incident he has been very upset with me. He has remained in the relationship, but I feel that he is being very disrespectful. He has been hanging out with past lovers and ex-girlfriends, spending lots of time with them on the phone and in-person (something he had agreed not to do when we got together.) I don’t know what to do or think. He tells me he loves me, but I feel like I am being punished. I made the decision to give him one month as of February 1st to either try to forgive me and move forward or I will walk away from him.

I feel like a fool for tolerating his behavior, but at the same time I did make a mistake. In his mind, he feels that driving drunk is worse than cheating. I need advice…I am having difficulty sleeping, eating, studying, just functioning. I don’t know what to do.

Soph gets that she made a mistake, one that could have had deadly consequences. Since she gives her word it was a one-off, I don’t know that there’s much more that can be said about her drink driving incident.

Many years ago, when I was much younger and far more willful than I am now, I behaved similarly with a girlfriend of mine. “Ethel” and I had met in a sober living house, and despite warnings from those who knew our fragile state better than we, we embarked on an instant and intense relationship. We ended up spending eighteen months together on and off, moving into our own place when we were both thrown out of the sober living situation. As it turned out, I had an easier time getting sober than she did (though this was long before my last relapse in 1998). While I began to put weeks and months together, Ethel had a hard time staying clean for more than a few days at a time. For the first time in my life, I found myself in a co-dependent relationship with an addict whose disease was, at least in its obvious manifestations, worse than my own. I drove home from school each day, my stomach in knots, wondering if Ethel would be sober — and if not, in what condition she and our little apartment would be.

Eventually, I started cheating on Ethel. My rationalization was much the same as that of Soph’s boyfriend: I was giving myself some emotional protection from hurt by seeking consolation with others. Ethel found out (when it came to covering up my infidelities, I was about as subtle as a kibbutznik at a D.A.R. convention). We had volcanic arguments. I justified my cheating by pointing to her drinking, suggesting that if she wanted me to be faithful, she needed to be sober. I insisted that I was entitled to a quid pro quo relationship (I remember that even as I made it, the argument sounded false, ugly, and hollow.) Ethel pointed out that the thought of me sleeping around was hardly an encouragement to get sober. And on it went, month after month. I “cheated at” Ethel; she “drank at” me. It was one of the more painful relationships of my life, both because I was (despite my inability to live up to any sort of commitment) desperately in love with Ethel, and because I was choking on my own sense of fraudulence and narcissism.

Soph and her boyfriend aren’t quite where Ethel and I were. But it seems clear that he too is using the “quid pro quo” argument; he too is “cheating at” his girlfriend. Soph is not chronically drink-driving (something Ethel did with alarming regularity, even after her license was suspended), but she is being punished just the same. Of course, her boyfriend’s fears are powerful, linked as they are to his own painful memories of loss. Many of us respond to fear by trying to anesthetize ourselves, which is one reason why I so regularly cheated on Ethel. Flirtation and intrigue with others outside of our primary relationship, even if physical sex doesn’t take place, is a powerful prophylaxis against getting hurt — it is a marvelously passive-aggressive response. On some level, Soph’s boyfriend probably knows that he is dodging the issue and taking the easy way out, and I suspect that stings him.

Fidelity, for the umpteenth time, is not just a promise to a partner. It’s a promise to ourselves: a promise that we are not the sort of person who will quickly turn into a liar or a cheat. Obviously, if a relationship comes to a clear and final end, then the expectation of fidelity ends with it. But while a monogamous relationship continues, part of being a grown-up is not making one’s fidelity contingent on the other person’s day-to-day behavior. If my wife is cross with me, or annoys me in some way, I am not justified in seeking sexual or romantic solace with someone who will, ahem, “understand.” The whole “I’ll show you!” aspect of conditional monogamy is not only juvenile and reflective of an incomplete understanding of what a relationship requires, it is clear and incontrovertible evidence of fear and the inability to self-soothe. Soph’s boyfriend is entitled to be angry that she drove while drunk. He is entitled to share with her his own particular reasons for reacting so strongly to the incident. And she does owe him a promise that it won’t happen again.

But Sophrosyne doesn’t owe her beau her patience while he displaces his anger and anxiety into flirtations, intrigues, or worse with his exes. Her mistake is not a justification for his abrogation of his commitment to put all of his romantic and sexual energy into her. And despite her serious error, she has not lost her right to demand that he not only bring her all of that energy, but bring her his pain and fear and his truth as well.

Of Roman generals, Tiger Woods, and the challenge of self-soothing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 03, 2009
in Infidelity, Marriage and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 19 Comments

I’m not interested in blogging the particulars of the Tiger Woods story; countless folks are already doing just that. We have a fondness for Tiger in my family, mind you; my late grandmother, who died in 1998, sometimes enjoyed watching golf on television in her final years. Woods was just emerging as a major star as she declined into her final illness, and she often mentioned to the family the pleasure she got watching him play. And so since her death eleven years ago, we’ve all had a bit of a sentimental attachment to the fellow. The only thing I’ve ever held against him is his refusal to use his considerable heft to nudge the Augusta National Golf club to admit women as members; Woods is, to my eye, excessively reluctant to advocate for social change. (And as a Cal alum, I note that Tiger is a passionate supporter of his alma mater, Stanford — and thus a fair target for derision during Big Game week.)

The issue that I’m interested in is infidelity, particularly those that come about following the arrival of a new child. We don’t know how far back Woods’ “transgressions” date (he and his wife, Elin, were married in 2004 — and their first child born in 2007), the evidence seems to be that they either began or increased in frequency after he became a Dad. Certainly, it’s a familiar story in heterosexual marriages: the husband is discombobulated by his wife’s response to the birth of a child. Suddenly, he perceives that which was rightly his has been withdrawn, transferred to someone else whose demands trump his own. Even the wealthy change diapers and nurse (the issue of breast-feeding and class has been a hot one in the feminist blogosphere); a great many women, in the first year or two following the birth of a baby, experience an understandably diminished libido.

If a man has been inculcated with the unfortunate notion that it is his wife’s job (a la the execrable Laura Schlessinger) to take care of him, he may imagine himself neglected once the child appears. That sense of neglect is rooted in a false sense of entitlement, and that latter sense can often act to justify an “affair”. Of course, it’s the myth of male weakness again — the notion that men have irrepressible needs that can only be met through sexual relationships with women. If a wife or a girlfriend (even for the excellent reason of having just become a mother) reduces her attentiveness to those supposedly overpowering needs, than the myth suggests that a “normal, red-blooded guy” is at least somewhat justified in seeking sexual satisfaction (and soothing) elsewhere.

When a Roman general was given a “Triumph” following a victory, he would be paraded through the streets, feted by the magistrates and worshipped by adoring citizens. It could, of course, all go to his head. During the parade, a slave would famously stand just behind the general, whispering in his ear memento mori – “Remember that you are mortal.” In the face of the temptations that come with fame and wealth, it may be necessary to outsource one’s conscience to trusted professionals. If I were Tiger, I’d use some of my wealth to assemble a team with whom I traveled everywhere — bodyguards whose job is as much to protect Woods from his impulses as it is to protect his person from those of others. I’d let trusted family members (including Elin, his wife) select the “accountability team”. And they’d be empowered to escort the superstar back to his hotel room lickety-split if he starts canoodling with a cocktail waitress. “Remember your vows”, these bodyguards might murmur with polite but forceful tones. If one’s own moral voice is too still and too small to be heard in the face of temptation, why not hire one or several such voices to be with you at all times? There’s no shame in acknowledging one’s vulnerabilities — just in refusing to take reasonable measures to protect oneself and one’s family from the harm those vulnerabilities can bring. Continue reading ‘Of Roman generals, Tiger Woods, and the challenge of self-soothing’

Lust and humanity, desire and dignity: some thoughts on an all-male Consent Day workshop

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 25, 2009
in Consent trainings, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity, Myth of Male Weakness, Rape, aggression and violence, Sexual ethics and transformation and Youth
. 72 Comments

I’m heading back to New York City after a couple of days in Providence. The weather, so humid yesterday, has turned wonderfully brisk and autumnal. I think of my native state, sweltering and drought-ridden and smoke-filled, and feel — almost — guilty that I’m not there with the millions of other suffering Californians. Home on Tuesday.

Brown University’s first annual “Consent Day” was a great success, not least because of the immensely popular t-shirts (a photo here) designed by Catherine McCarthy, the student who led the organizing team for the event and who first contacted me about coming to speak. The front of the shirt is visible in the photo, the reverse includes the reminder “Consent is active, enthusiastic, and freely given.”

I gave a workshop entitled “Sex, Consent, Enthusiasm, and Stoplights: Rethinking the Language of Yes and No”. The basic thesis is familiar from this post, but I also touched on the “all men are dogs” (myth of male weakness) ethos which undergirds so much of the way we socialize modern males (and socialize women to think about them). I also brought in what my women’s studies students know as the “upside-down triangle”, which I wrote about in this post.

There was some good give and take, and some very thoughtful questions from a mixed audience of Brown students.

In the second part of the workshop, we held a male-only discussion group. It is, of course, important to do anti-rape work with both men and women. When doing survivors workshops, it’s obviously beneficial to have women-only spaces. (And yes, men can also be survivors of sexual assault, though usually at the hands of other men rather than women — which may make all-male space more problematic, but that’s another topic for ‘nother post.) But in dealing with issues around sexual consent, the topic on yesterday’s table, single-sex space can also offer an opportunity for a higher degree of safety. And I was eager to meet with at least a few of the young men who had been through the workshop to hear their thoughts and feelings.

As our hour together Thursday evening bore out, many young men (certainly all of those who, gay and straight alike, participated in our closed discussion) are frustrated by the absence of a discourse of healthy male sexuality. This was a self-selecting group; these were guys who had volunteered to participate in Consent Day activities and who identified themselves as sympathetic to feminist goals. Several were already involved in peer counseling or in campus progressive politics. They were energized and excited by the discussion about enthusiasm and consent; there were no rape apologists to be found. But the real hunger that many of them articulated very well (not surprising for Brown University students) was a hunger for some kind of validation of their sexuality as good, healthy, okay.

“I know all the things not to do”, one guy said; “I work really hard at being a good ally. But I sometimes feel that in order to be a good ally, I have to pretend that I’m asexual; my fear is that women won’t trust me as a friend if I show any sign of sexual desire.” This lad hastened to add that he wasn’t sexually interested in most of his female friends; what he’d like to be able to do is talk about his sexual feelings (as some of those friends talk with him about theirs) without losing their trust. Several of the other men in the room nodded in agreement. We talked at length about the familiar but still-powerful compartmentalization phenomenon, one in which “good guys”, those who strive to do justice with their lives and with their bodies, live a separate, secretive sexual life (usually involving pornography) that seems, at least to the guys themselves, to be something profoundly shameful.

Timothy Beneke’s Men on Rape is now out of print, but one of the many memorable lines within that invaluable text is this: “I’m not aware of any common English phrases that allow one to express sexual desire in a way that acknowledges both lust and humanity.” Beneke captured a truth about our idiom, but he also captured a truth about the way in which we see male sexuality in our culture. For a host of excellent reasons, rooted in countless painful anecdotes and our own collective witness, many of us — perhaps most of us — have a difficult time believing that heterosexual desire doesn’t invariably compromise a man’s capacity for empathy. We men can’t want sex, our culture tells us, and while still seeing the people we want to have sex with as they really are. “A hard dick has no conscience”, we say with resignation or cynical bravado. But as is so often the case, our language in this instance doesn’t so much reflect an immutable reality as it creates and maintains a distorted understanding of our nature and our potential. Continue reading ‘Lust and humanity, desire and dignity: some thoughts on an all-male Consent Day workshop’

Lust is not the problem; misappropriation is: a reply to Lady J

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 10, 2009
in Christianity, Desire and objectification, Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Masturbation and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 11 Comments

Below last Saturday’s reprint of an old post on sexuality and the distinction between self-honoring and selfishness, Lady J asks:

I still have questions about lust and masturbation and am curious about your thoughts on the matter.

In your post “Some Very Long Thoughts On Fantasy and Masturbation” you state that “Jesus continues the theme in Matthew 5:28: But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. It’s difficult to look at Scripture and continue to insist that masturbatory fantasy is harmless!”

So, what kind of fantasy is NOT harmless? Is there any? And if there is not then would that suggest that masturbation is not appropriate?

I will disclose that my fantasies consist of scenarios that are very loving and respectful. I need that even in my fantasy life. But isn’t that still lust?

Good questions, and I’ll try and answer below the fold. Continue reading ‘Lust is not the problem; misappropriation is: a reply to Lady J’

To Whom Does My Sexuality Belong? Reprinting an Oldie on Faith, Masturbation, and the difference between selfish and self-honoring

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 05, 2009
in Christianity, Masturbation, Reprints and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 16 Comments

I wrote this post about self-sacrifice and sexuality in 2005, and saw that Lady J linked to it this week. It accurately represents my thinking about sexuality, and I stand by it now. Here’s most of the post as it appeared four years ago:

When I say "I want the women with whom I work to see their sexuality as theirs", I am not encouraging them to use that sexuality recklessly, abusively, or self-destructively.  What I am arguing is that our sexuality is a gift from God, a gift with more than one purpose: Christians are indeed called to honor God with their bodies, but we are also called to take our own delight in living as embodied creatures.   Pleasure is part of God’s gift; to receive and to give pleasure can be honoring to God.  All Christians believe this; conservatives believe that pleasure should be limited to heterosexual marriage, while progressives believe in a more liberated and inclusive ethic, but we are united in our conviction that God intends us to have sexual pleasure, and that experiencing and sharing pleasure can be profoundly honoring to our Creator!

My body is a gift to me from God, and I am called to use that body as I believe He would have me use it.  That’s not the same thing as saying "my sexuality does not belong to me".   I said:

"it doesn’t belong to their fathers, their future husbands, the leering boys in math class or the older men at the bus stop.  It doesn’t belong to the church, or to MTV, or to the magazines, or to their peers, or to their parents."

God was quite deliberately NOT on the list of things to which the body ought not belong! (Sorry for the double negative.)   I think it’s quite possible to teach young men and women that their bodies are their own, gifts from God to be used to honor God; by the same token, their bodies do not belong to the culture, their families, or their peers.

*************

On a related topic, here’s a lengthy, thoughtful, Christian argument against masturbation at Bonnie’s blog. (You may need to scroll down).   She’s making an argument that may be similar to Chip’s (though Chip, I don’t presume to know your stance on masturbation).   It’s difficult to summarize her argument fairly, but here’s a key section:

Sexuality is a valuable treasure, a great gift. We give our very best gifts – our figurative gold, frankincense, and myrrh – to God. In so doing, we give our sexual gold, frankincense, and myrrh to our spouse. We do not “spread the wealth” around; to do so is to cheapen its worth and dilute its significance as well as to make a mockery of the gift itself and the covenant of marriage. Adultery isn’t referred to as “cheating” for no reason; adultery cheats a spouse of what ought to be theirs and theirs alone. Autoerotism also cheats one’s spouse (current or future) out of a portion of one’s sexuality.  (Emphasis in the original; it’s Bonnie’s call to use "autoerotism" as a synonym for masturbation.)

Masturbation is a provocative subject.  I share with Bonnie the belief that in healthy, monogamous sexual relationships, I ought to do all that I can to share my sexuality with my partner.  For many couples, that may mean making the decision not to be sexual except when they are together; refraining from masturbating thus allows sexual desire to build for one’s beloved.  I’ve known of more than one relationship where one partner regularly masturbated and then professed little interest in or energy for sex with the other; that, I think, falls well short of the mark for "sharing" and "giving"! Other couples may come (pun somewhat unintended) to different agreements about solitary sexuality within the context of their relationship.  I don’t think there’s a "one-size fits all" answer here.  The key thing is to be clear and honest, with the other’s pleasure and delight one’s foremost concern.

I don’t intend to turn this post into a paean to masturbation.   Though there is much to disagree with in Bonnie’s post on both theological and psychological grounds, at places she makes very good sense.  But I am interested in rejecting the notion that if our bodies belong to God and to our partners, then they do not also belong to ourselves!   Here, I’ll take the "both/and" stance: our bodies are intended both for God’s purposes and for our own pleasure (indeed, more often than we realize, these may be congruent!); our bodies are intended both for our spouse’s delight and for our own.

Ultimately, when it comes to sexuality, I think far too many people fail to distinguish between what is selfish and what is self-honoring.   Selfish sexual expression is anything that robs another person of their dignity, their value, and what is rightfully theirs. Adultery is selfish, and even masturbation can be selfish when and if it deprives one’s partner of one’s entire energy and excitement.  But as created beings, whose bodies — like all creation — are fundamentally good, we are right to honor ourselves.   On the one hand, self-honor doesn’t mean narcissism; even when we delight in our own bodies, we are giving thanks to the Creator who gave us our flesh.   And it’s worth pointing out that self-honor need not always be the same as self-denial!  When we eat to satiety, and delight in the taste of rich foods, in a very real sense we honor both our bodies and God’s gift of sustenance.  When we explore and enjoy our bodies sexually, we are similarly honoring both the gift which was given and He who gave it.

It’s no accident that so many people call upon God at the moment of orgasm!   When we do so, wittingly or no, we are perhaps giving thanks and praise to Him for the extraordinary gift of our sexuality.   As spiritual people, as believers, we must avoid twin pitfalls: on the one hand, we must be leery of a secular ethic that devalues sexuality and sees it as something to be squandered; on the other, we must be equally leery of those who, with the best of intentions, wish to too narrowly limit the time, place, and manner of sexual expression.  We must always approach our own sexuality with a sense of awe and responsibility, and if we do so, we will neither use it recklessly nor unreasonably constrain it.

Of hypocrisy and hairshirts and John Ensign: a reply to K-Lo

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2009
in Christianity, Infidelity, Politics and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 14 Comments

Kathryn Jean Lopez, who will soon be leaving the National Review Online for other, yet-to-be-named pastures, has a piece up this week about John Ensign (the latest in a long line of GOP senators whose public pronouncements proved to be wildly at odds with his private predilections) and the nature of hypocrisy.

We on the left, you see, frustrate K-Lo with our suggestion that Ensign’s infidelities undermine the case for the traditional and limited marriage franchise, a case near and dear to both the senator and the arch-conservative pundit. K-Lo wants us to know that Ensign’s inability or unwillingness to remain faithful is a private failing that ought to have no bearing on the public discussion about the meaning of marriage. She writes:

A politician’s failings do not render the beliefs to which he subscribes morally impotent. Facts remain. Marriage is a cornerstone. Under a bastardized and unfortunately widespread understanding of hypocrisy, it is “hypocritical” for someone who is not a perfect person to ever make a statement grounded in conscience, morality, or natural law. Presumably, then, all Christians should throw out their Book. The Bible is and always has been directed to sinners. And, save for the star of the show, the preaching comes from sinners, too. Christ warned Peter in Gethsemane, “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” In Romans, Paul said: “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” Men (and women) believing something and falling short has a long history.

I agree with all but her third sentence in that paragraph. The history of marriage, as any scholar will tell you, is less cornerstone than constantly shifting sand. And cripes, enough already with the idolatry of marriage; calling it the “cornerstone” — a term with Christological significance — is sloppily inaccurate at best and blasphemous at worst.

K-Lo is right that a politician’s failings do not make the beliefs to which he subscribes morally impotent. For example, think of Barack Obama’s struggle with smoking. As someone who has proved supremely self-controlled in so many areas of life, it is striking — and humanizing — that he has been unable to kick the nicotine habit entirely. But his own addiction doesn’t mean that he can’t hold a strong position in favor of regulating tobacco; indeed, his sense of his own weakness gives strength to the argument that this is a dangerous substance deserving of greater regulation. He has pointedly not called for a ban on smoking either.

But while a politician’s failings do not mean he forfeits a right to speak out on issues, his failings aren’t incidental to his politics. K-Lo is wrong to suggest that Ensign’s fall from grace is completely unrelated to his views on marriage and sexual matters. It is axiomatic, after all, that we rail and splutter with the greatest indignation against those things we loathe inside ourselves. Those who combine great political power with an acute consciousness of personal sinfulness are particularly dangerous because of the overwhelming temptation to displace their own shame on to others. Private spiritual frailty is turned into an all-too-public club with which to beat those who, in the eyes of a guilt-ridden senator, live openly at odds with traditional morality; the zeal with which he wields that club is fueled by his own awareness of how far he has fallen from the mark. The flame of self-reproach kindles the fire to burn the heretics; the Inquisitor usually wears a hair-shirt.

Self-reproach is not only a right, it is a responsibility; people — especially, in our culture, men — could do with a good deal more self-examination. If we don’t like what we find, we need to go to therapy or confession or a Twelve Step program to heal and to grow. What we don’t get to do is to externalize that self-reproach into a sanctimonious defense of the traditional values we ourselves lack the capacity to follow. This doesn’t mean that the privately virtuous have more of a right to be judgmental, of course. But as most of us have come to find, those whose private virtue is deep and genuine are, as a rule, particularly disinclined to condemning others. And as the cases of Larry Craig, John Ensign, David Vitter or any in the legion of powerful men whose public commitment to biblical values was radically at odds with their intimate lives have shown, the reverse is true as well.

The form and content of kisses

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2009
in Movies, Sexual ethics and transformation, Theater, Youth and Youth ministry
. 16 Comments

One of my former youth group kids, “Holly” contacted me last week. Holly’s 17, an aspiring theater actress, and just landed her first lead role in a summer production. She has a boyfriend, Ferdinand — and Ferdinand isn’t happy about the part Holly’s taken. In one scene in the play, Holly’s character needs to kiss her “husband”; it’s an indispensable part of the show. Ferdinand has been in a funk ever since he found out Holly was going to do the show, and until he relented last week, threatened a break-up if she went ahead with her plans to take the role.

Holly and I talked on Friday about her relationship, the problem of ultimata, and what it meant to play a part on stage. This little quarrel raises some important issues about trust and fidelity, of course, but also about the vital distinction between the form and the content of a physical act. (I blogged at length about “form” and “content” in this post about faith and sexuality from July 2008.) To be concerned with form is to be concerned with a particular act, like kissing; to be concerned with content is to be concerned with what that act signifies to the two people involved. These aren’t mutually exclusive concerns, of course, but understanding the distinction is vital, as I explained to Holly.

For example, touching another person’s genital region generally has the form of sexual intimacy. At the same time, there’s a world of difference (one does rather hope) between the way a woman might be touched by her OB/GYN and by her lover. Even if both doctor and boyfriend (or girlfriend) touch her vagina in an act of similar form, the content of the touching is radically different. Even Ferdinand, surely, doesn’t object to Holly seeing a physician. Anyone who’s been to the doctor intuitively grasps the form/content distinction.

Another example lies in art: in a figure drawing course, one is often required to draw a a picture inspired by a live nude model. In our puritanical culture, where the body is so often concealed, steadily gazing at a naked human being has the form of something sexual. But the content of the act (drawing from a nude figure) isn’t sexual; the concern of the student artist is usually something like “How the hell am I going to get that calf muscle right?” and not “Oh my goodness, I’m so turned on right now.” That doesn’t mean sexual arousal can’t happen in a figure drawing class — it may. But sexual arousal can come in any number of unexpected ways and in unexpected places. It would be unreasonable, I think, for a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse to say to their beloved “I don’t want you taking a studio art class where you draw naked people”, just as it would be unreasonable to say “I don’t want your doctor touching your private parts.” Form and content are, in these instances, distinct.

And the same, of course, is true in Holly’s situation. Those who have little experience with acting may marvel at the apparent ease in which movie stars portray passion on the screen; one reason why actresses in particular (Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, etc.) win Oscars after making films in which they did explicit scenes is because we marvel that anyone, particularly a woman, could so expertly separate form and content. (Winslet, whose husband is the director Sam Mendes, has talked often about the inability of some folks to accept her ability — and her spouse’s — to separate the brilliant realism of her “form” from the content of her heart.)

An actor is as much a working professional as a doctor. Each may be called into close proximity with the naked flesh of another human being as part of their professional responsibilities.. Obviously, Holly isn’t a professional actress yet, and she isn’t doing a nude love scene: she’s merely kissing an actor on the lips. Everyone will stay clothed; it will be at most a PG-rated act. But Holly, who is head-over-heels in love with Ferdinand, is quite clear about her own ability to distinguish between the form and the content of what it is that she will do. And it seems as if her beau is slowly coming around to seeing things her way.

Of course, in a romantic relationship one generally wants form and content to go together. When we make love with a partner, for most of us the goal is to have the thoughts in our heads and the feelings in our hearts be radically congruent with what we are doing with our bodies. Though that isn’t a universal ideal, it’s certainly a widespread desire. For many of us, monogamy is also an ideal. We don’t want our partners being sexual with other people. But we need to understand what Kate Winslet understands: not everything that has the outer appearance of being sexual really is.

When two actors feign passion, their on-screen or onstage kisses and caresses are no more authentically sexual than a pelvic exam down at the women’s clinic. That doesn’t mean co-stars can’t fall in love with each other; they often do. But when two teenage actors in a summer stock production embark on a romance, it’s usually because the experience of working together on something each believes in so passionately is itself a powerful aphrodisiac. Onstage kisses are hardly the cause.

Of iron, copper, and fighting fair: some thoughts on men and conflict in romantic relationships

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 04, 2009
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Men and Masculinity, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 13 Comments

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day; she and her boyfriend of several months are “taking a break” from their relationship. He’s in his early thirties, she’s in her late twenties; in different ways, each carries the “baggage” of family, faith, and previous lovers.

The fella — I’ll call him “Gordy” — is a bit overwhelmed by the gal, “Calliope.” Gordy, apparently, does something that I very much remember doing in relationships when I was younger: retreat in the face of intense emotion, particularly in the face of a woman’s anger. Many young — and not-so-young — men feel overwhelmed by what seem to be the superior verbal and emotional skills of female romantic partners. When a man has grown up learning not to display feelings, or to talk about them, he may end up feeling a bit as if he’s a first-year French student suddenly plunged into a conversation with fluent native speakers. He hasn’t got — or he feels he hasn’t got — the vocabulary with which to keep up. This isn’t because of testosterone, of course, or some inherent aspect of the human brain; it’s the hangover from growing up with the “guy code”. And the guy code, followed rigidly, leads to a kind of learned emotional helplessness.

I’ve been over this ground before in the three posts in the male transformation series. The three posts from the autumn of 2007 explain aspects of the problem — and the solution — in considerably more detail. But what I want to focus on today is Gordy’s need to “take a break” from the relationship, and the reasons that seem to undergird it. It’s entirely possible, of course, that “wanting a break” is code for “I really am tired of this relationship, and want to get out for good, but lack the courage to say so directly.” But from what I can tell, there’s something else at work. Gordy doesn’t want out; he has fallen in love with Calliope and wants to be with her. He also finds her — the complete package of Calliope-ness — to be more than a little overwhelming. He’s not calling an end so much as he seems to be calling for a time-out.

Let me say again (though my MRA critics don’t hear this) that I don’t think women are always blameless when heterosexual relationships go south. Women have their own lessons to learn — and in the case of sexist acculturation, it might be more apt to say that they have their own lessons to unlearn. But I write much more often about what men can and ought to do because, well, I’m a man. I’ve lived 42 years in a male body, and while I don’t pretend to be a professional relationship expert, I’ve lived a bit — and thought a lot — about the ways in which culturally constructed masculinity undermines our collective happiness and our ability to function intimately with other human beings. And so I focus more on what men can do, respecting the reality that women have had plenty of experience being told how to behave by the males in their lives. Continue reading ‘Of iron, copper, and fighting fair: some thoughts on men and conflict in romantic relationships’

Of Popes and Playboys and Pueri Aeterni: Some thoughts on Hugh Hefner and the theology of the body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 11, 2009
in Christianity, Porn and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 48 Comments

Through Dawn Eden’s blog, I found two interesting links: the first to a Nightline story about Christopher West, a popular evangelist for the “theology of the body” teaching now sweeping the church; the second, to a post by Father Angelo Geiger in response to West’s television appearance. The headline out of West was his comparison of Hugh Hefner to John Paul II, and this:

“I love Hugh Hefner,” said West. “I really do. Why? Because I think I understand his ache. I think I understand his longing because I feel it myself. There is this yearning, this ache, this longing we all have for love, for union, for intimacy.”

Father Geiger is concerned, and explains why. I’d never visited his site before, and I appreciate some aspects of his post, particularly his willingness to proclaim that asking women to cover up is not the right solution to the problem of male objectification of women. The padre gets props for this:

…men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves. I think too much attention paid to controlling women’s fashions… just leads to a kind of negative preoccupation with sexuality that does err on the side of prudery.

Nicely put. But then the priest goes off the deep end:

A more exalted view of human sexuality is needed and a preoccupation with the sinful nature of inappropriate sexuality should be avoided, but in this age when men have been so feminized and have so often recoiled from duty and consoled themselves in soft and lazy sensuality, they do not need to be encouraged to think about sexuality more, they need to be encouraged to mortify themselves, to be men, to be soldiers for Christ…
Hefner has been sleeping with multiple partners for his whole career. His playmates are exactly that, and he has never grown up. The man, now in his eighties, is sleeping with women that are barely legal. Hefner is quoted as saying “The interesting thing is how one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people.” That’s the fact and those fantasies are concupiscence run wild and fueled by a soft and effemninate indiscipline and by a very sophisticated and gnostic rationalization. God forbid that the association of John Paul II and such a “playboy” should end by promoting a religious version of that effeminate gnosticism.

Bold emphases are mine, of course. Geiger has completely — and bizarrely — misread Hefner, both in his assertion that the permanently be-robed octogenarian is a gnostic, and that his sexual exploits are somehow evidence of effeminacy. (Most Christian gnostics were radical dualists, rejecting the idea that Christ had ever been incarnate and exhibiting a hostility to the way of the flesh.) Hefner’s life is, in many ways, wrapped up in a rejection of the Protestant work ethic (with which he was raised) and with the rigid straitjacket of American male adulthood, characterized by a strange blend of self-sacrifice and frantic acquisitiveness. For Hef, the title of the magazine gives it away: “Play, Boy!” The opposite of play, of course, is work; the opposite of boy, is not “girl” or “woman”, but “man.” Continue reading ‘Of Popes and Playboys and Pueri Aeterni: Some thoughts on Hugh Hefner and the theology of the body’

An apology to my progressive evangelical friends

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 26, 2009
in Christianity, Marriage, Sexual ethics and transformation and Virginity
. 16 Comments

Reader Dan Whitmarsh gently points out the errors of painting with too broad a brush. In this post, yesterday, some of my words were chosen poorly. I gave the impression that all those who believe in abstinence before marriage are committed to an anti-feminist agenda. What I ought to have said is that the organized purity movement — with its rings and balls and pundits and bad comparisons of the sexually active to used chewing gum — is fundamentally reactionary and anti-feminist. But not everyone who believes in pre-marital chastity endorses the tactics, the rhetoric, and the broader cultural goals of the purity myth peddlers.

I left the Mennonite Church USA and the blogging team at Christians for Biblical Equality because my views on sex outside of marriage were at odds with the agreed principles of these two organizations. (I described my — amicable on all sides — departure from those outfits here.) I’ve known a great many folks whose commitment to radical gender egalitarianism and to economic justice is profound and real — but whose persistent sense that Scripture confines genital sexual activity to heterosexual marriage alone is also profound and real. These are not the sort of folks who marched in favor of Proposition 8, mind you, nor are they the sort who would be caught dead comparing a teen who has pre-marital sex to a rose whose petals have been plucked. They generally know that pelvic morality is never a “salvation issue”, as we say around the shop. But — often with reluctance and ambivalence — they will not go where the Bible, tradition, and their own sense of God will not permit them to go. I think they are fundamentally wrong in their hermeneutic (they feel the same way about me), but that doesn’t mean I lump them in the same basket with the noxious “True Love Waits” crowd.

To my friends on the evangelical left whose commitment to social justice and full inclusion for women is real, but whose commitment to marriage as the only licit venue for sex is also real, I apologize for having implied that you were indistinguishable from the “rascals on the right.” I may still believe you’re short of the mark, but you’re a lot closer than those whom Jessica Valenti so rightly excoriates.

Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 09, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Flirting, Memories, Physical affection, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 19 Comments

I’ve worked with a mentee of mine for about a year who, while immensely bright, struggles with some sexual compulsivity issues. (Yes, this mentee is also in therapy; I’m not overstepping my role.) “Kelly” read this old post of mine about flirtation, and brought the subject up with me last week. Kelly asked: “How do I go about unlearning flirting? It’s like second nature to me, and it gets me in so much trouble.” I gave Kelly some tips, and thought I’d roll them into a post.

First off, I realize that when I talk about “unlearning flirting” it raises an obvious question: why would someone want to unlearn such a pleasurable and innocent pastime? For most people, flirting (once they figure out what it is) is exciting and pleasant; it offers an opportunity for thrilling little boosts to one’s self-esteem without great risk. It makes a lot of people feel just a bit more alive. Then again, the same might be said for alcohol. Some of my friends can take one or two drinks and stop; my experience over many years was that I couldn’t. I tried for years to drink in moderation, and failed spectacularly — all of my growth in the past decade or so has come since I became completely sober. No half measures for me in this area of my life. Kelly is someone also struggling with chemical dependency, but the primary addiction seems, to my experienced layperson’s eye, to be sexual compulsiveness. It is something with which I am all too familiar from my own life — and it is something which led me to conclude that at least for me (I speak for no one but a select group of my fellow addicts), flirtation was unhealthy and destructive.

I’ve written before about flirting, but never in detail about how I “unlearned it.” It was more difficult to do than quitting drinking, but for my recovery, just as essential. And the first step, of course, was acknowledging that flirting (or as I called it in Twelve Step programs, “intriguing” - used as a gerund) was making my life unmanageable. I was good at it, if by good we mean able to elicit positive responses from the folks with whom I flirted. I wasn’t always looking for sex itself (though I rarely turned that down); rather, I was looking for validation. The addict in me cared far more about ego gratification than about orgasm; knowing that I had aroused interest or desire was usually sufficient to satisfy me. At times, sex itself became a rather tedious, obligatory postlude to what had really mattered, which was getting the reassurance that someone wanted to sleep with me, or was at least interested in me on a physical/romantic level. It took me a while to realize that this was what I was doing; it was much more flattering to think of myself as a hyper-libidinous (if decidedly nerdy) Don Juan figure than to acknowledge the truth that I was just pathetically insecure, trading on chemical attraction and all of its attendant rituals to get the attention I craved.

I made an inventory of what I did when I flirted. I’d been practicing flirting since eighth grade, and over many years I’d developed a “bag of tricks” that tended to serve me well. (Parenthetically, these tricks were hopelessly ineffective in certain other countries. Traveling through Italy one summer when I was twenty, I gave up early on — whatever “game” I had had been developed with North Americans very much in mind!) Flirting was about words, of course, but also glances and the gentle but insistent erosion of normative physical boundaries. I realized I changed my voice, very slightly, and tended to hold a gaze just a second or two longer than the American standard. I leaned in towards people, affecting shyness or boldness based on what my intuitition told me would work. And I remembered the cardinal rule that my uncle Wolfgang had taught me when I was about ten: “Hugo, if you want to be popular, remember to be interested in what other people tell you. Even if they bore you, remember a few things that they say and ask them questions about what interests them. They will be fascinated that you find them fascinating.” I’ve never forgotten that last line, and it was the foundation stone on which all the little tricks were built. Continue reading ‘Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”’

Of food and sex, and how Mary Eberstadt gets both history and ethics quite wrong

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 02, 2009
in Christianity, Food, Sexual ethics and transformation and Veganism
. 20 Comments

Lots of folks in the right-wing blogosphere are excited about this lengthy piece by Mary Eberstadt: Is Food the New Sex? It appears on the Hoover Institution’s website as part of their “Policy Review” series, and it seems an unlikely fit for a center more associated with promoting a staunchly conservative perspective on foreign affairs than on issues like, well, food and sex. The piece got a boost in attention after George Will made it the subject of his column last week.

Eberstadt’s piece is long, and perhaps convincing to those who don’t know their history a bit better. Her basic thesis: as recently as the 1950s, Americans were resolutely non-judgmental about what they ate, and deeply conservative about with whom they had sex. In the last half-century, Eberstadt opines, that moral calculus has been reversed. We now, to be vulgar, care more about what we put in our mouths than whom. Eberstadt offers us a hypothetical “Betty”, a thirty year-old housewife from the Eisenhower era, and “Jennifer”, a thirty year-old single woman from our own time. She summarizes their views thus: Betty thinks food is a matter of taste, whereas sex is governed by universal moral law; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse.

Eberstadt thinks that this isn’t a good thing, and is perhaps evidence of a deep inconsistency on the part of modern men and women, at least those modern folks with the sufficient resources to be discriminating about what it is that they eat. (If you are fond of snarky remarks about vegans, the slow food movement, and others who practice ethical consumption, you’ll love this piece. Otherwise, be warned, our Mary is rather tediously middle-brow in her evident contempt for those who are deeply concerned with what we eat.)

There’s a lot wrong with Eberstadt’s piece. First of all, her history is off. She imagines the 1950s as an age blissfully unconcerned with calories and weight, and writes as if dieting emerged sometime during the Sexual Revolution of the subsequent decade. As any student of the discipline known as “body history” knows, she’s off by decades. The first diet books hit the American market at the end of the First World War, in response both to the dramatic fashion changes emerging from France (the new, slim, sleek designs of Paul Poiret, the grandfather in a convoluted way of the flapper dress) and the sudden uptick in the availability of excess food for the majority of Americans (thanks to various technological changes, refrigeration not the least important.) Eberstadt would do well to read Joan Brumberg, our pre-eminent historian of the flesh; see her Fasting Girls and The Body Project.

One of the things about the 1920s is the emergence of what we might call the “moral language of food.” For the first time, as Brumberg’s exhaustive study of girls’ diaries has shown, young women begin to use words like “good” and “bad” to describe their eating habits. It’s in the 1920s, and no later, that we see the emergence of phrases like “I was so bad today” (to refer to an experience of eating something fattening) or “I’ve been good all week” (to refer to having adhered to a strict diet for several days.) Of course, to be entirely fair, it’s in the 1920s that we first see a secular moral language for eating. Any medievalist knows that centuries ago, rich and flavorful foods were given up as acts of penance, and a willingness to subsist on as little as possible (Catherine of Siena is a fine example) was seen as a mark of virtue, particularly for women. For medieval Christians, a disdain for the pleasures of the table was a sign of holiness. This wasn’t just a rejection of gluttony, but of carnal joy itself. (And surely Eberstadt recognizes the double meaning of carnal, which is an ancient one.)

Eberstadt thus makes the mistake that conservatives have been making since at least the Reagan Administration: looking back fondly at the 1950s with the stunningly false assumption that that genuinely anomalous decade represented America as it had always been previously. There may indeed have been women like Eberstadt’s “Betty” running around in 1959. But there weren’t many Bettys in 1929, or 1729, or 1329. Continue reading ‘Of food and sex, and how Mary Eberstadt gets both history and ethics quite wrong’

“Sin boldly”: against the trap of the “emotional” affair

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2009
in Favorite Posts 2009, Infidelity and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 22 Comments

A friend of mine with whom I’ve had many conversations about feminism and older men/younger women relationships wrote me a note last week about a close acquaintance of hers, a young woman of 21 who is having an “emotional affair” with a man of 44.

I’ve blogged enough lately about age-disparate relationships, and I intend to do much more writing on the subject. Today, I’m interested in writing about this strange and troubling beast called the emotional affair, a phenomenon enormously abetted by modern technology.

I’m not treading on new ground when I remark that when it comes to love and sex, humans are generally very good at deceiving themselves. We are particularly good, as a rule, at justifying certain kinds of betrayals because they don’t meet our own contorted and legalistic definitions of what constitutes genuine infidelity. The paradigmatic example, of course, is that of Bill Clinton. A great many of us believed, and still believe, that our 42nd president was absolutely sincere when he denied an adulterous relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he had constructed for himself a moral calculus in which only intercourse constituted authentic infidelity. In 1998, as the nation watched the Clintons’ all-too-public agony, a great many folks were challenged to think about their own little webs of deceit and justification. If the politicians we elect are mirrors for our best and worst aspects of ourselves, then President Clinton — a man of extraordinary gifts and extraordinarily banal frailties — reminded us of our own capacity for duplicity.

Most people have no trouble labelling oral sex with an intern behind your wife’s back as adultery. Bill Clinton is easy to admire, and easy to ridicule. But lesser men than he — and a great many women too — have shown a similar capacity for self-deception. And we are particularly prone to this sort of self-deception when it comes to affairs that don’t have a physically sexual component. For those of us who define fidelity in terms of what actions we don’t undertake with other people, it’s all too easy to slide into an emotional affair.

For the purposes of this post, I’ll define an emotional affair as a non-physically sexual relationship characterized by mutually intense psychological intimacy, accompanied by words or gestures that traditionally are reserved for one’s romantic partner. That’s a vague definition, of course; emotional affairs are notoriously difficult to define. (One thinks of the perhaps apocryphal Potter Stewart remark about knowing obscenity when he saw it.) The slipperiness of the line between “good friend” and emotional “lover” allows those involved in these affairs a great deal of plausible deniability, both to themselves and to those around them. “We’re just friends”; “It’s totally innocent”; “You’re reading too much into this” are the sorts of things that can be said with genuine sincerity in response to suspicious queries from others. Continue reading ‘“Sin boldly”: against the trap of the “emotional” affair’

“Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed”: some thoughts on relationship, libido, having children, feminism, and so forth

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2009
in Favorite Posts 2009, Links, Marriage, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 8 Comments

Amanda Marcotte has a short piece up at RH Reality Check on women and libido. For such a brief post, she manages to touch on two separate but interlinked issues: one, the problem with pathologizing low female libido; two, the root cause of widespread “lack of interest.” Here’s the marvelous final paragraph:

It’s an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don’t seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it’s merely the symptom of a larger problem–that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I’m sure. But in order to do that, we’d have to treat male domination like a problem to be solved, and since few people really want to do that, instead we’re left with articles that note women’s lack of libido, but carefully resist asking why.

That’s spot on.

The great sex therapist, David Schnarch, writes in his Passionate Marriage (the best sex advice book for couples in long-term relationships I’ve ever seen) that we do well to avoid the question “Why doesn’t my wife (or my husband, or my bf, gf, what-have-you) want to have sex with me?” The whole structure of the question, Schnarch says, misses the point. It assumes a strong libido is the default setting in any romantic relationship. Rather, we should ask “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?” And also “Why do I really want to have sex with him or her?”

This can be shaming, of course, if not asked rightly. Schnarch doesn’t want his patients following the “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?” with a sigh and an “After all, I’m unattractive, it stands to reason that they should have no reason to want me.” Buit it is a reminder, as I’ve written many times, that sex is never obligatory. The “I will” of the wedding day is not a blank check to be cashed daily, weekly, or monthly by whichever spouse has a higher libido. We ought to be answering Schnarch’s question not with “Because she’s my wife and it’s her job” or even with “Because we’re in love, and people in love are supposed to fuck a lot.” We ought to be answering it by having an honest discussion with ourselves (before we have one with our partners) about what it is sex means to us, what makes us in the mood, what we see as the purpose of sex in our lives. Continue reading ‘“Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed”: some thoughts on relationship, libido, having children, feminism, and so forth’