I totally agree with your theory that the team behind BU sounds very much like they don't know much about female orgasm. But the weird thing is, Sheila Gregoire is quoted in the book! Unless he read her very selectively, I don't know how he can be as uninformed as he comes across. I suppose another possibility is that he knows the information, but it doesn't fit in the interpretive grid he's built, so he's just discarding it because he has no good place for it. His views on contraception, which we got to hear on that one podcast a few weeks back, are probably relevant here, too. He might honestly disapprove of non-penetrative orgasms for women (he wouldn't be the first), and doesn't want to believe that that would mean most women would almost never orgasm.
I think likely the “gift” is the gift of his pleasure but, I’m guessing, later on really includes the gift of baby-making. Which raises a host of interesting questions, including biological ones, about defining the man/semen as the giver as though women do not “give” anything in procreation.
This is usually where forcing trinitarian lang on marriage/reproduction goes.
The generosity/ hospitality framing (and particularly the implications of a wife being inhospitable), coupled with Butler's writing on contraception, are effectively a playbook for reproductive coercion.
This was the FIRST Google answer that popped up with the search "Sex Greek Philosophy" Butler's views of sex are identical to Hesiod, Plato (and we know later Aristotle). When your view of sex is not only pagan but almost 3000 years old something is definitely wrong https://askaphilosopher.org/2014/01/28/love-and-sex-in-ancient-greek-philosophy/
Thank you for the laughs throughout your writing on this subject. Brilliant. I’m simultaneously horrified by the book and impressed by your writing, reasoning and cleverness.
Wow. This is tragicomically bad. I continue to be embarrassed for everyone involved in the choice to publish this book.
I'm enjoying this in the sense of pleasure one has from watching an expert do what they do so very well. Mike Rowe might need to expand his horizons to include literary review.
I know I'm very late here, but the thing I've been thinking this whole time and can't remember seeing anyone specifically mention is that the use of the word "hospitality" doesn't even correspond to the actual meaning of the word. Hospitality is not just receiving. The definition I just looked up says "the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers." Generosity is part of hospitality!! Hospitality is not somehow the opposite or inverse of generosity. That just doesn't even make sense. You cannot be truly hospitable without being generous. Also, I just don't understand where this masculine/feminine divide for these qualities came from. Aren't all Christians called to be both generous and hospitable? How did these become gendered qualities?
One of the things that I keep thinking about in this whole conversation is the warning of Hebrews 13 - "marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled."
I very much doubt that the author was thinking of books like this, but I do wonder about the implications of taking a sacred act between husband / wife and commercializing it, especially given ALL the other problems and theological issues with "Union".
Josh Butler has “increased full of vain imaginations” — just as Romans 1:21-23 describes.
“…their foolish hearts were blinded. When they counted themselves wise, they became fools, and turned the glory of the immortal God into the similitude of the image of mortal man”
I totally agree with your theory that the team behind BU sounds very much like they don't know much about female orgasm. But the weird thing is, Sheila Gregoire is quoted in the book! Unless he read her very selectively, I don't know how he can be as uninformed as he comes across. I suppose another possibility is that he knows the information, but it doesn't fit in the interpretive grid he's built, so he's just discarding it because he has no good place for it. His views on contraception, which we got to hear on that one podcast a few weeks back, are probably relevant here, too. He might honestly disapprove of non-penetrative orgasms for women (he wouldn't be the first), and doesn't want to believe that that would mean most women would almost never orgasm.
Thank you for this!
I think likely the “gift” is the gift of his pleasure but, I’m guessing, later on really includes the gift of baby-making. Which raises a host of interesting questions, including biological ones, about defining the man/semen as the giver as though women do not “give” anything in procreation.
This is usually where forcing trinitarian lang on marriage/reproduction goes.
The generosity/ hospitality framing (and particularly the implications of a wife being inhospitable), coupled with Butler's writing on contraception, are effectively a playbook for reproductive coercion.
This was the FIRST Google answer that popped up with the search "Sex Greek Philosophy" Butler's views of sex are identical to Hesiod, Plato (and we know later Aristotle). When your view of sex is not only pagan but almost 3000 years old something is definitely wrong https://askaphilosopher.org/2014/01/28/love-and-sex-in-ancient-greek-philosophy/
Thank you for the laughs throughout your writing on this subject. Brilliant. I’m simultaneously horrified by the book and impressed by your writing, reasoning and cleverness.
Wow. This is tragicomically bad. I continue to be embarrassed for everyone involved in the choice to publish this book.
I'm enjoying this in the sense of pleasure one has from watching an expert do what they do so very well. Mike Rowe might need to expand his horizons to include literary review.
I know I'm very late here, but the thing I've been thinking this whole time and can't remember seeing anyone specifically mention is that the use of the word "hospitality" doesn't even correspond to the actual meaning of the word. Hospitality is not just receiving. The definition I just looked up says "the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers." Generosity is part of hospitality!! Hospitality is not somehow the opposite or inverse of generosity. That just doesn't even make sense. You cannot be truly hospitable without being generous. Also, I just don't understand where this masculine/feminine divide for these qualities came from. Aren't all Christians called to be both generous and hospitable? How did these become gendered qualities?
One of the things that I keep thinking about in this whole conversation is the warning of Hebrews 13 - "marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled."
I very much doubt that the author was thinking of books like this, but I do wonder about the implications of taking a sacred act between husband / wife and commercializing it, especially given ALL the other problems and theological issues with "Union".
Beautiful Union seems to be evoking the worship of Priapus, a minor Greek god.
Content warning for the images in these two links.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus
https://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Priapos.html
Josh Butler has “increased full of vain imaginations” — just as Romans 1:21-23 describes.
“…their foolish hearts were blinded. When they counted themselves wise, they became fools, and turned the glory of the immortal God into the similitude of the image of mortal man”