Feeling Unsatisfied: Part 6 and Conclusion of Beautiful Union

Can I be done, please?

Photo by James Forbes on Unsplash

In the last sections, we have discussed five core elements that make Beautiful Union unworkable as a theological book about sex.

1. The thesis of sex as an icon is not controlled, and this thesis is not reliably defended or applied in the text.

2. The argument style depends on free associations with minimal interpretive controls. Either the controls are the pre-existing beliefs and experiences of the team that produced the book, or they are created from exegesis of biblical passages. However, this exegesis depends on a poor understanding of biblical interpretation and the use of languages.

3. The book is slippery in its deployment of definitions and values, presenting a false face of mutuality in sex while redefining “generosity” and “giving” in sex to include only male self-gratification 

4. The book thinks that women orgasm from penetration at the same time that their male partners do, and displays no awareness of the clitoris or the ways in which women actually do have orgasms during sex.

5. The book diminishes the role of women in reproduction while elevating men’s. 

These problems are pervasive in the book, and a significant overhaul of the book would be required to correct this. As it exists, the book demonstrates limited awareness of biblical scholarship, a mixed capacity for defining and sustaining an argument, and almost no awareness of female sexuality. These are substantial barriers to overcome in order to write a book about the theology of sex.

In the spirit of charity, though: is there anything I liked about this book?

If You Can’t Say Something Nice, Get a Substack

So what’s not bad in this book?

Well, a fair amount of it isn’t, actually. I like that Beautiful Union repeatedly insists on the love of God for creation. I really like that the love of God for humanity, and the goodness of God, are pervasive themes in this text. I wish this was true in more writing like this. I like that it affirms the value of human bodies. I like that it proclaims grace for all people regardless of where they have come from and what they’ve done. I like that it insists that sexual sin, particularly infidelity, is not worse when women do it. I like that it repeatedly acknowledges asexual and single people. This is all good. 

It’s not the worst possible book you could write about sex. It could have been much worse. There are sentiments in this book that are undeniably positive.

I don’t like that there are only five paragraphs on purity culture and one of them was written by Katelyn Beaty.

The problem is that these nuances sit weirdly alongside the general argument of the text. For example: if all of life and human history is governed by the sex that unites all people, isn’t there actually something tragic about single people? If sex is most fully pointing us to God at the moment of conceiving a child, why does most sex miss the mark? Why is there menopause? In an unfallen creation, would women have babies every time they have sex for their entire lives?

So I think the primary thing I would say about the presence of these nuances is this: Beautiful Union just doesn’t want to go where its arguments are leading it. It doesn’t want to insist that men are above women/divine and women are low/earthy. It doesn’t want to insist that people without children are not experiencing the fullness of sex in their relationships by virtue of not creating children. It doesn’t want to insist that there is something divinizing and sacralizing about the presence of a penis – any penis – inside a woman’s vagina.

That’s all totally understandable. But shouldn’t that have been a hint that the arguments themselves are wrong? If you can’t follow the logic of an argument without getting somewhere catastrophic, and need to head off the catastrophe at the pass by saying “please don’t follow the logic of this argument” – isn’t it a bad argument? 

Digging to the Root: Does Sex as an Icon Work?

I want to return to a point that I made in the first two sections of this book: namely, the thesis of the book (sex as an icon) and the argument style. There are three paradigmatic argumentation styles in this book.

Argument style A:

1. Sex points us to God

2. This is a thing God is/does

3. Therefore this what sex is like

Argument style B:

1. Sex points us to God

2. This is what sex is like

3. Therefore this is what God is like

Argument style C

1. Sex points us to God

2. This is a thing God does

3. Therefore this is what sex should be like

These first two arguments are not deliberately employed to endorse abuse or exploitation in this book. However, as we have argued, this book has no interpretive controls to prevent this argument style from becoming ridiculous at best and disastrous at worse. This is the thing that requires the repeated insistence not to take the arguments to their logical or possible conclusions. In order for this to work, the argument itself needs to be redefined to include strict methodological controls or needs to be reworked entirely.

As it stands, the traits of sex or traits of God that are seized upon are totally arbitrary or reflect the biases of the team behind the book. Sex, as it is depicted in this book, is entirely uncoupled from women’s experience. Accurate biological models for reproduction have been banished. Use of commentaries to curb biblical interpretation, when it happens at all, are minimal. Instead, the attributes of sex are culled from the blinkered experiences of the production team.

In the third case, the experiences of the production team, which they have now handed up to be associated with God, now become prescriptive. This is how we end up in the ludicrous situation where in order for sex to be successfully executed, semen must touch the cervix, but female pleasure is not necessary.

The reason why is because if semen represents the presence of God, and the vagina/uterus reflect the temple, then the icon of sex is not successfully executed unless semen enters the uterus.

So here we come to a central problem. Even if sex is an icon, it’s surely not just an icon. Sex is also a real thing people do that has actual consequences. It’s remarkable that when Butler discusses birth control in his appendix, he remains quite positive about it as long as he is considering the practical effects and benefits of birth control. It is only when he returns to icon language that he starts to resist it. The fact that the model of birth control he ends up arriving at (NFP) is 1) of mixed effectiveness and 2) extremely burdensome for women even if it is successful doesn’t even enter into the equation.

And of course, the idea that in order for sex to point us to God, it must fulfill some temple ritual analogue where semen enters the uterus is itself a claim that requires defense.

So sex isn’t just an icon — and even if it is, the way sex is defined, and the way it connects to God, must be done in such a way that it represents people other than men and what they want. It’s striking that the language of true sacrifice for husbands is not really explored in this text, despite its prominence in the foundational passage of Eph 5. The text describes Josh Butler’s grandfather as sacrificially loving his wife in ch. 4 (which is good!) but there isn’t much exploration of what that really looks like. At any rate, the insistence on male ejaculation of sacrifice doesn’t give us much hope that these terms have really been thought through.

Can this book be fixed? Hard to say. There are paragraphs that aren’t inherently wrong. As we have said, though, the problem is the method. If sex can interpret all of reality, how? If Christian theology can interpret sex, how? I think there probably could be a book that takes the central idea of reading sexuality as an icon, but it would need significant work. A closer insistence on Christology, and attending to Jesus as a husband of the church who seeks her good at the expense of his own, would probably be a good place to start.

On Mob Violence

Why did I do this? Why the hell did I do this?

I have now written a deranged number of words in a near fugue state about this book, and they weren’t originally prompted by the book itself. About two months ago when the first chapter exploded like an orgasming sunset on Twitter, I think it was nearly unanimous that the method of the book does not work. We discussed it, we agreed. It doesn’t work. As I have argued extensively, the problems that were at the beginning have been carried through to the end.

But then came the backlash, and the insistence that what had happened with this book - the robust criticism, culminating in Joshua Butler not only leaving the Keller Center but his pastorate - was not right. At the heart of this, the real culprit was the critics. The problem wasn’t simply the book - which, to this day, I have never seen someone defend in detail (defenses seem to include mostly the insistence on reproduction, which as we saw in the last chapter, is still flawed, plus drawing attention to the nuancing bulwarks in the book, which we’ve argued above are also flawed). The problem was the women - and it was almost entirely women - who read this chapter and thought it was bad. The problem was 1) we needed to read the whole book (which I have, they were right) and 2) that we were a mob that was motivated by squeamishness about sex, about reflexive distaste for this book, and that had been given too much power by being allowed to have a say in this at all.

Is this true? Is the problem that I, and my fellow Christian women who don’t appreciate this book, are prudes? Is the problem that we don’t think Christians should talk about sex?

Well, look at my works, ye mighty, and despair. Can anyone reasonably accuse me of being afraid to use the words “semen” or “clitoris?” After writing a five part engagement with this book, do I seem unwilling to think about sex and theology? I have defended restraint about sexual language in the church before, but not because I am not willing to discuss sex, but because of the extent to which sexual frankness in male-dominated spaces benefits men at the expense of women. Which is exactly what happens in Beautiful Union.

What about the “mob” idea? Did I go off half-cocked with only a passing understanding of what this book is about? Isn’t reading the whole thing, repeatedly, exactly what the backlash told us to do? Didn’t I do that? What part of this review looks underconsidered?

The Conversation About The Conversation

By May 2023, Butler has found himself in the midst of a debate I don’t think he ever meant to be: not just about a book he wrote, but about the discussion of that discussion, and the discussion about that discussion about that discussion. 

At the heart of all these discourses, the book and the backlash and the backlash-backlash is really just one question:

Do women ever say anything worth listening to?

The first round of the discourse, the production and promotion of Beautiful Union, answered that question with a resounding “no.” The text of Beautiful Women is quite clear: women don’t have anything to say that anyone needs to hear. Nothing women say is worth listening to enough to make it into this book. Women’s experiences of sexual pleasure aren’t worth relating. Women’s experiences of sex trafficking and sex work (i.e., charging for “hospitality”) aren’t worth listening to. Women’s experiences of reluctance to have sex, which lumps all feelings of shame, unfulfillment, and physical pain, under the heading of “inhospitality,” aren’t worth listening to. Women’s orgasms are subsumed under the heading of men’s orgasms - they happen in the same way, at the same time, in a way that gratifies men - just the way men like it. Women don’t have anything to say. They are one half of all heterosexual sex, and they have nothing important to say about the subject at all. The absence of women’s voices and experiences in this text is striking.

The answer in the backlash was even clearer. Women’s voices in the text were not relevant because we do not personally know the author. It was a mistake for TGC and the Keller Center to take women’s experiences on board. Women do not have access to pastorates or megaplatforms as men do; thus, their answers are from personal blogs and social media, which are chaotic and vicious and should not receive attention. Women don’t say things worth listening to.

At the beginning of this review I said that I was taking this on to excuse any other person from the work of reading this whole thing, and assure them that the critiques made about the first chapter are in fact consistent. But now, I find the work of reviewing this to be almost performance art. I have sat at this computer and written this in defiance of a narrative that calls me a mob. I am not a mob. I am not cancelling anyone. I am not attacking Butler personally, and indeed have been at pains throughout this to spare him any personal accusations. And I still think this book is bad.

I have read every page of Beautiful Union. I have engaged its arguments, practically. I have written nearly 15,000 words about it. I have read more of this book, and responded to it more, than any critic of “the mob” I have encountered. I have spoken about sex in public as frankly as Beautiful Union does. I defy you to call this prudishness. I have jumped over every last damn bar the defenders have put up, not because I care about this book (I don’t!), but because I am so incredibly tired of this insistence that women have nothing to say. It’s never said in so many words. It’s always presented in barriers we have to clear. I cleared them. The mistakes that were in the first chapter are in the whole book. The whole book is flawed. Let my clearing of the bars suffice for every other woman who has criticized that first chapter. I have read their critiques. I have read the book. The critics are correct. We are right. We are all right.

Have I engaged this book line by line? No. Have I appreciated the kindnesses it pays to women where it does? Yes. Do I still think it’s bad? Yes. A hundred times, yes. A good paint job can’t save a house with a bad foundation. This is nuance. This is not attacking. This is what reading is. I have dedicated more time and attention to this book than any other book in the last year that wasn’t written in German, and I just defended a dissertation. I read it.

What I have done is engaged the macrostructures and major themes of this book as carefully as I know how. There may be something in this text worth preserving. I will not be the one to say. But what I have done is taken this book as I have it, and I invite anyone to demonstrate that I have not pulled out the primary motifs like bones from a fish and found them all to be rotten.

I know people will not read these reviews because I’m coming at this from an unapologetically feminist perspective, who insists that women deserve as much of a place in theology as any man. I know that people won’t read this simply because I’m a woman. I know they will read these reviews and ignore them because I am a woman. I know that when I write I am graded by men for reasons that have nothing to do with the content of what I am saying: they say I’m ugly, they say my voice sounds weird, they say my tone is wrong, they say I should be nicer, they speculate about my marriage. In this way, I suppose there’s a real possibility that in the widest public circle, Josh Butler and I are alike. We’re both held up to scrutiny, though the field of my spectators is not nearly so large.

And yet, we’re not the same. I’m really not anything in the public sphere, for one thing. I do get listened to, but I don’t get listened to the way Josh Butler does. A lot of this simply owes to the time and work Josh has put into producing content and putting it into the public sphere, and I don’t intend to erase that work. It is work, and he’s done it, while I have spent most of the last few years in a hell of my own devising trying to write a dissertation. But our spheres are not the same, and never will be. I have a blog, he has a book deal. I had a six-person student ministry, he had a megachurch. He gets criticized, I get ignored. Josh is treated as an expert, I get people sending me DMs that they plan to reveal their jaw-dropping evidence that I never got my doctorate (it’s a broken link, it’s literally always a broken link). 

And I am among the least of these, as far as public women are concerned – such that it is ridiculous for me to even attempt to put myself among their number. I can name a dozen women with more experience, more accolades, more platforms, more publications, of sterling character, of flawless faithful Christian bona fides, who criticized this book’s methodology accurately and fairly – who still get worse than Josh Butler and I put together. They, surely, are not like Josh Butler. They are nothing like Josh Butler, not least in their qualifications as scholars and academics, but in the resistance they face when they attempt to voice their knowledge in public.

It sucks for Josh. I know it sucks for Josh. Fame is, above all, a fickle bitch. 

But it sucks for the women most of all. 

And to be vulnerable, I want to be like them, among the list of women who have something to say and say it. I would like to believe I am capable of it. But the grim reality of their public position, and the public hatred they get, will always make me wonder if it is worth the attempt.

In the end, I supposed my complaint is rather a childish one: it’s not fair. It’s not fair women’s expertise is as good as amateurism, while men’s amateurism is as good as expertise. It’s not fair that women’s thoughtful criticism is as good as harassment while men’s harassment is as good as thoughtful criticism. It’s not fair that women’s collective knowledge is as good as an individual whim, while men’s individual whims are as good as collective experience. It’s not fair that women prioritize men’s feelings and reputation while men sideline women’s pain and safety. When we are weighed on the scale, you men and us women, each one of you outweighs ten of us. Your voice is louder than five of ours. When you get the floor, you have it for an hour; when we get it it we’re turned away before we get there. And there is nothing I can learn, nothing I can write, nothing I can achieve, nothing I can do, that will make me valued the way the smallest and loudest of you are.

And that’s terrible.

But you know what’s even worse?

The exegesis of scripture in the book Beautiful Union.

This series had an unexpected afterward, which can be found here.