Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Chris and Beth Bruno host conversations at the intersection of psychology and theology. This podcast is powered by ReStory Counseling.
00:13
Thanks for joining us today on the ReStory Podcast. My name is Beth Bruno, and I lead our strategic initiatives at ReStory Counseling, a Colorado-based counseling center of therapists, story work coaches, and spiritual directors. This month, we've been in a series called The Remnants of Purity Culture. And chances are, if you are white, American, evangelical, who grew up in or around the 90s, you know exactly what I mean by that term.
00:42
Well, I am so pleased to bring you the voices of two of our StoryWork coaches, Michael Kramendyk and Lisa Russell, who are really leading us in these conversations. You can catch them in a webinar on the remnants of purity culture over at restory.life/webinars, or listen in on Michael's episode last week with Zachary Wagner, author of the newly released Non-Toxic Masculinity, where they talk about the impact of purity culture on men.
01:12
Well, in this episode, Lisa interviews Sheila Wray Gregoire, who is a friend of ReStory. She's one of the expert interviews we have in our Thrive Marriage Lab, where she's talking to couples about her research in.
01:26
all of this that she writes about. In her newly released book that she co-authored called She Deserves Better, Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up, Sheila dives into some of the research that she and her daughter and friend and co-worker, both millennials, did with 7,000 evangelical women. She is also the founder of BareMarriage.com.
01:55
a website dedicated to changing the evangelical conversation about marriage and sex and cohost of the podcast of the same name. This conversation with Lisa is so good. Listen in. Let's just start off. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why you're so passionate about this issue.
02:19
Okay, well, I started blogging in 2008 as a mommy blogger. So I was doing, you know, parenting, housework, organizing. And the more I talked about sex, the more my traffic grew. So I kind of became the Christian sex lady, which is weird. You know, nobody grows up thinking, I want to be the Christian sex lady. But that's what my blog became. 2012, I wrote The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex. I wrote 31 Days to Great Sex. I was writing all this stuff, but how to have great sex. And everyone still had the same problems. And I'm like, huh.
02:49
Well, that's kind of pathetic. And then one day everything changed for me in January of 2019 because I read the book, Love and Respect. People were debating it on Twitter. I had it on my bookshelf, but I'd never read it. And I was trying to procrastinate. And I thought this is a great way to procrastinate. And I hadn't read a lot of other evangelical books about marriage and sex, because I was always afraid of plagiarizing. And I was like, they love Jesus, I love Jesus. We're all saying the same thing. And I read this.
03:16
And it was like a nuclear bomb went off in my living room because I realized we are not saying the same thing because he was saying that if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don't have. The need is for physical release. If he doesn't get it, he'll come under satanic attack. And there wasn't a single word about women's pleasure or intimacy. So that started. Yeah, it was disgusting. Like women don't need respect.
03:43
No, absolutely not. Because respect is all about him having a hierarchy and authority. It's gross. So my team and I, which consisted of my daughter and Joanna Swatzki, who are both millennials, they were both young moms, we decided to do the biggest research project that's ever been done in evangelical women's marital and sexual satisfaction to find out, to actually measure the effects of these teachings on women's sexual pleasure and rates of sexual pain. And that became our book, The Great Sex Rescue.
04:12
which was out two years ago. And that was great. It was received really well. So many people told us, I feel so seen, I feel so validated. But then they also said, now I don't know what to do with my kids, because I grew up with all this toxic crap. I don't want to pass the toxic stuff on, but then what do I tell them? And so we did another research project, because we're just that insane. We surveyed another 7,000 predominantly evangelical women to learn about their experiences in youth groups and as teens in church.
04:41
to find out how those experiences and how the things they were taught impacted them long-term. And that's what became our book, She Deserves Better. So that's kind of a long story to say how we got here. And it gives such a picture of your personal passion, too. Right? Yeah. That you desire for something different, not just for you and your daughters, right? But for women.
05:10
We've just done we've done so much harm. Like evangelical women have twice the rate of sexual pain, if not two and a half times the rate of sexual pain is the general population. That's it. This is our problem. We have a bigger orgasm gap. This is our problem. Which leads me to my next question of like what I mean, you surveyed, is it 27,000? 32,000 if you include everything.
05:40
I mean, this is a massive study, lots of research went into this. What were some of your, I know there's so much that you found from this. What would you say some of the main bullet points are of what you found in your research? I think in general, anything that takes away agency from women is toxic. So anytime we say, you know, a wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it.
06:08
or a wife should have frequent sex to keep her husband from watching porn. So anytime we take away agency and we say, it's not about what you want. Someone else has the right to use you or you need to do something so that you don't get hurt, which is essentially a coercive message that hurts women. And when we looked at teens, again, similar thing. Anytime you tell a girl that she is responsible for the way a boy treats her, you do great harm.
06:39
what would you say are the major impacts of that harm? Yeah, so we had several outcome variables that we were looking at specifically was she deserves better. Because if you look at purity culture, which existed, and this is roughly from 1995 to 2015, I mean, it's still there. We all know it's still there. They've just changed the wording. And in many churches, it was there before 1995, but it just kind of became mainstream mid-90s. The only thing that mattered was
07:09
is she a virgin on her wedding day? So that was the thing that the church was trying to get everybody to do, be a virgin on your wedding day. And they didn't really care about much else. They might say they did, but their teachings didn't show that they cared. What we did was we took, we said, let's just back the truck up and ask, what is it that we really care about? I have two adult daughters, both in their twenties, who are both married. One of them is my co-author, Rebecca Lindenbach. She's also the co-host of the Bare Marriage podcast with me.
07:39
But I can tell you that on their wedding day, whether or not they were a virgin was way less important to me than thanking God that they were marrying good guys. Because what I really wanted was to know that they were safe, that they weren't gonna be abused, and that they were gonna have a good marriage. And they both chose really well, they're both really good guys. And so our question is, what if there are things that matter more than just virginity on your wedding day?
08:09
Like what if we look at marital and sexual satisfaction long term? What if we look at the likelihood of marrying an abuser? What if we look at your long-term self-esteem? Self-esteem gets a really bad rap in Christian circles, but self-esteem simply means saying, I know that I have value. I know that my opinions and feelings matter. Not that they matter more than anyone else's, but they do matter. And when women feel like I matter that has tremendously good results.
08:39
in terms of relationships, mental health, ability to keep a job, ability to get a good job, all kinds of things. And so this stuff is really important. It's not just important, it feels crucial. And if we're not naming the harm that the purity culture fostered here, like we're continuing to perpetuate it, right? I love that you brought up
09:06
how likely we are to marry an abuser. Unfortunately, in my counseling room, and I know my coworkers and, you know, name a therapist who hasn't seen this right now, but is, if you have grown up in the evangelical church and have been raised in this purity culture, there's a high likelihood that you can marry an abuser. Were you finding that in your research?
09:36
And yeah, so that's the case. Yeah, most definitely. And we found a lot of things are correlated with marrying an abuser. Basically, the more that girls internalize toxic teachings, and the more that they feel like I take up too much space, the more likely they are to marry an abuser. So let me give you two weird ones just as examples. And then we'll talk about more of the ones that you might expect. Okay. Being embarrassed of your period. Wow.
10:06
Huge, huge. That's one of the biggest jumps of likelihood of marrying an abuser. And you wouldn't think so. But here's what happens when girls grow up in families where they don't talk about your body changes, where they don't talk about puberty well when you can't talk to your mom or your friends about your period because it's something you need to keep secret, it's really embarrassing, you tend to feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with me.
10:32
You know, I and often you don't have words for what's happening to you. And you just feel a lot of shame. And when girls feel that way, they're more likely to marry people who also think there's something fundamentally wrong with them. Whereas when girls are confident, they're less likely to put up with that kind of bad behavior, and they're more likely to know, no, I deserve better than this.
10:57
So when girls are embarrassed of their period, they tend to be very, they tend to have a lot of problems with confidence. You know, so we wouldn't think that's a big one, but like, seriously, just don't make your period a big deal. If you have daughters, it's okay to have the pads showing in the bathroom. You know, you don't need to announce to everyone, Hey, I'm on my period now, but like, it shouldn't be something that needs to be kept secret. I love that you're saying that because
11:25
More often than not, this comes up in the counseling room all the time, our stories regarding starting our periods and menstrual cycle and where we taught how to use a tampon versus a pad, we're even told what was happening. I mean, I have so many clients that have sat on my couch that were mortified that they were dying because they didn't know why they were bleeding all of a sudden at 14, 15, 16 years old. Yeah.
11:50
Or they were taught that if you use a tampon, you take away your virginity and stuff like that. There's a lot of weird teaching. So that's a weird one. Here's another weird one that you wouldn't think about. Okay. Girls talk too much. We measured the belief, do girls talk too much? So we asked women when you were a teenager, did you think girls talk too much? And as an adult, do you think girls talk too much? When women believed as a teenager that yes, girls talk too much, far more likely to marry an abuser.
12:19
And yeah, the idea that women talk too much is a really good measure. Other surveys have found this too. It's a really good measure of something called internalized misogyny, which is when women ourselves think there's something fundamentally wrong with me because I'm a woman. And so I don't matter as much because I'm a woman. And so when women believe girls talk too much, what they're really saying is, we are a bother.
12:48
and our voices are a problem. And if your voice is a problem, it means your thoughts and your opinions are a problem. And so you're likely to marry someone who doesn't necessarily honor your voice or your opinion. And that's just a dangerous situation. Interestingly, you're also, this is kind of a weird one. If you believe girls talk too much as a teenager, then when you're an adult, you're likely to do way more of your share of the housework. So you're much more likely to have a very uneven distribution of labor in your marriage.
13:17
Oh, gross. Because again, you just think I am a bother, and so it's OK for me to take on more of the tasks because I don't matter as much, whereas he does. And so I can't burden him with this. So basically, I'm glad that I talk too much as a teenager, right? Just say it. No, but the funny thing is girls don't actually talk too much. This has been something that has been taught widely. You're from Colorado, right? So you're home to James Dobson. OK.
13:47
Well, James Dobson wrote a book called Love for a Lifetime and in that book, he claimed that women say 25,000 words a day compared to men's 12,000. Gary Smalley copied that. He said women say 50,000 compared to men's 25,000. Other people said 12,000 compared to men's 7,000. Like the numbers kept changing and I might have the numbers wrong. It might have been Dobson who said 50,000, but it's that idea. People kept...
14:14
throwing out these numbers where women said twice as many words a day as men. And Dobson took that to mean ladies. When he gets home from work, he's already said all of his words today. Whereas you haven't. And so you just want to talk at him, but don't leave him be. He doesn't want to hear from you. And so this was the marriage advice that was given. I remember when I started teaching at family life marriage conferences, I taught this too. Well, guess what?
14:42
Scientists have actually looked into it. Women and men say statistically the same number of words a day. There is no difference. Mic drop, Sheila. There is no difference. The only time there's a difference is when you have a mixed group of people in a meeting-like situation. And in that case, men say far more than their fair share. And women don't speak up until there are at least 80% females in that group. Interesting.
15:10
So it's not that women talk too much. It's that our girls need permission to speak up. Yes. I mean, the theme that I'm hearing is really that our agency has been stolen and buried so much. And with the agency comes our voice, which kind of leads me into this idea of consent.
15:39
Tell me more about what you guys found in regards to consent and how this purity culture message has fostered sexual abuse and the perpetuation of it. Yeah, so this is a really sad one. So we found that only 26% of women said that when they graduated high school, they had a robust understanding of consent. So most Christians do not understand consent as teenagers.
16:09
And when we looked at it, it really seems like during purity culture, the church largely stopped teaching about consent and only taught about abstinence, how you're not supposed to do it. Cedarville University, which is a very conservative university in Ohio, got in trouble last month for their consent language that they were trying to teach. And one of the things they said is that as a Christian university, we shouldn't
16:36
have to talk about consent. And it's really awkward to talk about consent, but we're required to because of Title IX. And so the thought is, because the Christian ideal is don't have sex before you're married, then we shouldn't have to talk about it. But the effect of that, when you combine it with the messages that both boys and girls were being given about how boys get out of control, was to make girls feel responsible for their own date rapes.
17:03
And this is what we heard over and over again. And some of our books actually explicitly taught that. We opened our consent chapter and she deserves better with the story of Vera. And Vera, devout Christian, went to a youth group but was dating a non-Christian. And one day she had a migraine, she wasn't feeling well. And while she was almost blacked out, he raped her. And she knew that something was wrong but she couldn't put words to it. So she went to her youth pastor and his response was,
17:32
What did you expect dating a non-Christian? And then his wife, who was only two and a half years older than Vera, which is a problem in and of itself, took two pieces of construction paper and glued them together, pink and blue. And when the glue was dry, she ripped them apart. And of course, some of the pink paper is on the blue and some of the blue paper is on the pink. Oh yeah. And she described how when you have sex, you leave parts of you behind and parts of him will always be attached to you now.
18:02
and this is why you can't have sex before marriage. Nobody bothered to check whether that was consensual. And for years, she thought that it was her fault. But you see, it makes sense that she thought it was her fault because that's what our Christian teaching had done. Shanti Felton wrote a book called For Young Women Only at the height of purity culture. And I'm gonna share a stat with you that is not accurate because...
18:29
Her question was poorly worded, the possible answers were poorly worded, her analysis of the answers was not accurate. So I don't believe this, but her conclusion was that 82% of boys feel either little ability or little responsibility to stop in a make-out situation. And so her advice was, if you want to stop, it is safest to not even start.
18:56
100% of boys have the ability to stop. Absolutely. 100% of boys have the responsibility to stop. To tell girls that boys have no ability or responsibility to stop is straight-up rape culture. Yes, and puts so much pressure on the women to have to be the ones to not only guard their sexuality but the males. Yeah.
19:22
Because what do you expect? He's a guy, he can't help it. His sex drive, he was created by God to have a really high sex drive. And so girls, he's the accelerator. You need to be the brakes.
19:35
And this is what was taught over and over again. And we heard from so many women who had stories of date rape and they didn't know how to name it.
19:45
Because again, so much of the messaging is it's our fault. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not just who we are as women, but it's the way we dress. It's our modesty or lack thereof that incites an incursion. And it's not understanding consent. So Kay's story, which we also included in the book, you know, so she's she's with her boyfriend, they're making out and he keeps putting his hands where he's not supposed to and she keeps saying no.
20:13
and he'll stop for a minute and then he does it again. And she says, no. And after like an hour of this, she realized her no meant nothing. And so she stopped saying no.
20:24
And he raped her and it took her 10 years to realize but I never said yes.
20:32
nothing else makes my theory more than that. Yeah. Like there's also a really disturbing story that we told and this is actually by one of the authors. So this was this was in a really a best-selling book and I won't say who the author is because it's not important and we don't name her and she deserves better. But she tells a story of losing her purity at the age of 15. And the way she tells it is he was forcing his desires on her. He was doing things she didn't
21:01
Um, she felt like a deer in the headlights. You know, it was strange and she didn't want it, but then her body started to respond.
21:12
And she tells this story repeatedly as the time where she lost her purity and where she sinned. But what she's explaining is classic date rape with arousal non-concordance. Yeah. So she didn't want to, he was forcing her. She was a deer in the headlights, which is the classic freeze response, the trauma freeze response. The only thing that she says that makes it seem like she thought it was consensual was that she got aroused. So her body responded.
21:43
But arousal does not equal consent. No. And she has told the story over and over and over again as a story of her sin.
21:54
which is just re-traumatizing for her. Yeah. And as someone who deals with, and many of my coworkers are dealing with people who have been victims of sexual abuse, that is the theme. Like, well, I got aroused. So I became then a willing participant when there was actually no consent at all. Yeah.
22:23
And that's even worse for boys, especially since, you know, penetration can't happen without an erection. So when they get an erection, they think that it was their fault and it wasn't.
22:34
It makes me feel so tenderhearted for men too. I know, I know we're primarily talking about women here in your books, primarily for women and raising girls. But I can't help but like have compassion over so many of these men who grew up in the purity culture that we're told that they were basically sexual beasts and they were in controllable and
23:02
that at a drop of the hat, they could be tempted into lust. What would you say to men who have been victims of the systems and the culture and often the individuals that are portraying this message towards them? Yeah, what we saw in our survey of men that we did for our book, The Good Guys Guide to Great Sex, was that so many men conflate noticing with lusting and they feel completely helpless.
23:33
because the lust message has been given so much, right? Don't lust, don't lust, you can't lust. You can't even look at a woman, bounce your eyes. But we never really taught what lust is and noticing a woman is not lusting. Being attracted to a woman's figure is not lusting. You know, you can notice a woman is beautiful and then think nothing more of it and go on with your day. But when we teach 12, 13, 14-year-old boys who are just starting to get sexual feelings that when they feel that
24:03
reaction when they see a beautiful woman that they have already sinned. We're condemning them to a life of absolute helplessness. They're going to feel helpless. No wonder we start blaming all the girls around them because they're like, I am helpless if there is any female around me. And so they need to wear burqas basically, even though that doesn't work either. But we need to have a better understanding that noticing isn't lasting.
24:33
Yeah. And it is totally possible for boys to learn to respect women and girls. And having sexual feelings is normal. And by the way, girls are attracted to guys too. Well, that's something else I've, you know, just been thinking about and, and that often comes up in our counseling sessions too, is that there's the stereotype that women don't want sex that we aren't aroused.
25:03
And even in some of your research that I was flipping through in your book, like, um, it took, um, many years for a lot of women to realize that they can even climax. Yeah. I mean, it's so heartbreaking. And then we wonder why there's so many, um, there's so much conflict in the marriage bed right now. Well,
25:29
I think it was 40% of women didn't realize that the female orgasm existed until after the age of 19. So if you think about that, assume that most girls learn what sex is by 9, 10, 11, that means that they went through half their life knowing that men could orgasm, but assuming that they wouldn't.
25:51
So the assumption is that sex is about the man, not about the woman. And then you get married and that's a, that, that that sets you up for expecting that sex isn't going to feel very good. And so then if he rushes through, when you feel nothing, you don't realize, Hey, we just need to slow down and figure this out and figure out what feels good for me. You just think, okay, this is just something I have to endure. Yes. Yeah. It just,
26:20
covered in shame too. Like I shouldn't almost like this idea of like I shouldn't even be aroused. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's shameful in itself. Yeah. Or you think I'm supposed to like this and I don't so there must be something really wrong with me. Yeah. You know, because everyone says sex is a gift and I don't see what's so great about it. Right. I often think about how much our
26:49
sexual interactions, that there is, there's no way to separate it from our own embodiment or disembodiment. And so I think so many of us just based on my experience and who I'm walking with right now, there's been such an exiling of parts of our body and our sexuality and arousal that is
27:15
that had to be shut off and cut down so early on that now, we don't know how to actually integrate and be fully embodied, especially regarding sex. We definitely found that the idea that boys will push your sexual boundaries, for instance. So you know, boys are going to push girls, you need to be the gatekeepers. When women believe that they have a much harder time getting aroused once they marry.
27:44
So when you believe that as a teenager and you can you can just picture her right so 16-year-old you you're you're making out with your boyfriend in the basement or whatever and he's having a good time right he's enjoying himself and what's going on in your mind is is he getting too excited where are his hands do I need to stop him yet do I need to stop him yet do I need to stop him yet so you're not really there at all
28:11
you're just several women explained it to us like they were spectator ring or they were judging that they were it's like they were outside their bodies looking in at what was happening to try to judge what was happening to see whether or not they should stop it yet. And then when they got married, they had no idea how to inhabit their bodies, because they bore the entire responsibility for stopping this when it got too heavy.
28:36
It's devastating. The ripple effect, for sure.
28:42
I not meaning to monkey jump, but I feel like I can't not talk to you about this idea of modesty and women being the stumbling block and so even in my own story, I was sharing the other day on a webinar that we did that I was in a high school show choir. And we had this partner and we were rehearsing. And just I mean,
29:11
innocent. It's high school show choir. We're not like bumping and grinding at all, right? Although I did kind of like that R. Kelly song a little bit, secretly, don't tell God about that. But I noticed that he was getting aroused and he had an erection. And I was mortified growing up in the evangelical church and in purity culture and everything else.
29:40
my first instinct was, what did I do wrong? I did something wrong. I was just doing my dance moves. I was just doing what I was supposed to do in show choir. And I went home and I'm sobbing and sobbing and luckily I had great parents that I could talk to about this and they kind of giggled and were like, oh my gosh, it's not your fault. But the messaging didn't actually come from my parents. It came more from this.
30:09
you know, subculture of Christianity, youth group, mainly conferences that I went to, True Love Waits, all the things that I just sat in my room and begged God to forgive me because somehow I made this guy, this high school boy, lust and get an erection while we were dancing.
30:39
stories like this. And this idea that women have been such a stumbling block for men and what we carry and the impact and ripple effect even now into our 30s and 40s. What are you noticing? How would you speak to that? Yeah. So let me give you the data and then I'll share a few examples. So we measured four different iterations of the modesty message in our book She Deserves Better.
31:09
So we looked at boys are visual in a way that girls will never understand. A boy can't help but lust if a girl is dressed like she's trying to incite it. Girls have a responsibility not to be a stumbling block to the boys around them with what they wear. And a girl who dressed them modestly is worse than a girl who doesn't. So looked at all those things and all of them are terrible, long-term, just terrible. If you believe the ones, especially about the boys, the boys ones seem to be the worst. So if you believe, you know, boys can't help but last, boys are visual.
31:39
You are 68% more likely to marry an abuser. You're 52% more likely to experience sexual pain or vaginismus, which is a sexual pain disorder where the muscles of the vaginal wall contract involuntarily, and that makes penetration really painful, if not impossible. And evangelical women suffer at a rate of two to two and a half times the general population, which is huge. We found about 22.7% of women.
32:08
and the church experience this. So the modesty message is highly correlated with it. Because women are feeling my body is dangerous. My body is betraying me. My body is a problem. My body can make me vulnerable to men. And by the way, men are gross. Men are only going to want me for my body. Men aren't going to see me primarily as a person.
32:31
And so our view of men and sexuality is also really warped. And it's just like your body saying, why would I want to do that? I need to protect you from this thing, which is dangerous. Yeah. And that's what our body is trying to do. Now it's more multifaceted than that. There's many physical reasons why. Like I was a ballet dancer for years. I think that contributed to my vaginismus because I wasn't holding my pelvic floor properly. So it's a very multifaceted thing.
32:59
But if someone's listening and you do have vaginismus, please get counseling and see a pelvic floor physiotherapist and read The Great Sex Rescue. Hallelujah to all those resources. But let me tell you what our resources told girls about modesty. And I'll start with one of the worst ones, which was Secret Keeper Girl by Dana Gresh. It was a curriculum and a convention and a conference all across North America aimed at girls eight to 12.
33:28
Hundreds of thousands of girls went to these events over the years. And in that curriculum, she had what she called her raise and praise test. So she said to girls, raise your hands. And if any of your belly shows, if your shirt rides up and your belly shows, that's bad because bellies are intoxicating. She then had a conversation that moms are supposed to have with their daughters.
33:52
And the mom is supposed to say, do you remember what intoxicating means? It's like when you're drunk and get out of control and God made our bodies to intoxicate men, but you're only supposed to be intoxicating to one man. And so we need to cover up to make sure we don't intoxicate anyone else too early. If you think about that though, what Dana Gresh did was she told girls as young as eight that their belly
34:21
has the ability to make a grown man get out of control.
34:26
Terrifying. I mean, it's tough for them. And nobody freaked out. How did nobody freak out? I don't even understand. Yeah. No, we supported it. And actually they made a lot of money on that. They did? Yeah, the capital. They still are. Oh yeah, yeah. It's been rebranded to True Girl now, but they still are. Yeah.
34:51
intoxicating bellies. I mean, the shame of our bodies so early on as early as eight. And the feeling that not only is your body dangerous, but men are dangerous. I mean, it puts you in such a bind. And normal men are dangerous. So what this essentially does is it tells girls to ignore red flags. Because if they're in a relationship with a man who objectifies them,