First, this is profoundly important and well written. It is a vital conversation to the work of sex trafficking recovery and sexual trauma recovery for victims. Our baked in evangelical permission of male sexualization must be addressed.
To that end, I noticed a couple places where you conflated sexual arousal with sexual desire. This confusion could muddle up what needs to be addressed in a man--namely, what happens in his heart (desire and how he acts on it) versus strictly what happens in his body (arousal). As Emily Nagoski, Dan Allender, and others have pointed out, arousal cannot be assumed to be an indication of desire (arousal non-concordance). Concordance is higher in men than women but still only 50% in men while 10% in women.
For example, you said
"It’s not surprising that someone raised in this context where girls are encouraged to think of themselves as protecting men around them from having sexual feelings (including children to adults) would arrive at a place where he was totally unable to separate female bodies from male arousal – including, but not limited to, a context in which a woman’s body was visible because she was for sale to him."
Arousal may be more autonomic than desire. As Nagoski puts it, "Genital response is specific to sexually revelant stimuli--regardless of if those stimuli are appealing." To be clear, the story of Hutchinson involves violation and abuse, a lot more than simply a body response. He joined his heart to lust and harm. I agree he seemed to clearly have desire (more than body arousal) and followed it into harm.
That one phrase, "Second male voice: I don’t know how wise it was to grab that girl’s boobs, though." has always been uniquely disturbing. The usage of the word "wise" is so Christinese. The whole circumstance isn't wise, especially as more information about the operation has released. Nothing about OUR had been wise to begin with. As such, this event and it's entire proceedings were never even close to the concept of wisdom. Not to mention it's just a seriously stupid thing to say. I wish there was more disgust in the quote, but I guess that's reserved for its readers.
I was hoping you would go there. Thank you for going there. This is exactly what I think, too, and few people will dare go there in the privacy of their own minds, let alone publicly.
>If you’re going to go to a place where women and girls are being exploited, and you’re not ready to die for their sake, you should not be there.
The people who go in need to be crusaders, warriors of divine conscious. Lawful Good men, of deep control. Recruitment should be strict, formal, and ideally following a hardcore cadre. We need Paladins. (1e paladins, for those in the know.)
If there's a risk of death for refusal, pair up the front man with a strike team. I don't care if a trafficker dies as a result of this, maybe it'll convince the survivors to get real jobs. Preferably in prison, but just about anything else will do.
The rules on modesty reminds me of when I was studying to be a paralegal. There was a discussion about laws that ban “lewd and lascivious” behavior as they do not clearly define a prohibited activity but leave it up to a completely subjective standard. The professor joked that the definition of “lewd” was “anything that gave the judge an erection”.
Men need to own their own struggles with lust and not seek to own women. Burkas were designed purely to protect men from themselves and their own failings.
I'm reminded of an anecdote told by Callum of the Lotus Eaters (British news website) when he was adventure touring Taliban Afghanistan. Their taxy driver saw a UAE female journalist in a slightly more revealing--can just see a bit of curve--and the man was aroused/shocked by that "immodesty."
This is a very good, interesting piece. I do, however, quibble with the title. The problem here is not hypersexuality; the problem is abuse.
Hypersexuality can and should happily coexist with ethical behavior. Implicating hypersexuality instead of unethical behavior is bound to go sidewise, because hypersexuality is a fact of many people’s lives that is unavoidable, barring often unwarranted and unwanted medical intervention. The challenge is to help people live sexually ethical lives, not deny or suppress the heights of their sexual desire. We must channel that hypersexuality into ethical expression, not cauterize it.
Doing the latter will just make the situation for the most vulnerable worse.
"If you have a choice between doing the wrong thing and saving your life, picking your life is the wrong choice for anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus"
so if a woman is coerced into sex, is it still rape, or is she responsible for giving in for whatever reason?
I would have written this section very differently if the interviews said, "my brain shut off, I was terrified, I just did it." Making the ethical choice is often not available in a high adrenaline environment. The way the report reads is much more "I made this choice because it seemed like the safest option." I think that's different.
Second part: consciously assaulting someone is not the same action as being assaulted. When someone is assaulting you, you don't have a choice of what happens. They do. Fight/flight/freeze/fawn instincts take on (and as I said, if that had been described in this situation I would have read it very differently), and at any rate, "fight to the death" is not a choice victims really get to make. They don't get to pick what someone much stronger than them does. The assailant does.
ok that makes sense. i wasn't trying to justify him, i was just wondering about these kind of situations because christians who recant under torture are considered condemned but its different for women who say "ok ill do it" to avoid something. thank you.
Yeah no I think this is important and emphasizes the issue with their perspective. I agree with the spiritual maturity before doing this part and spiritual maturity in general but everything around that I feel like doesn't cohere with anything else they're saying.
They focus too much on victim-oppressor language and categories that ends up giving incoherent positions. The difference is certainly we are aligning ourselves with God. Not that there's a patriarchy or victim and then there's a Bible and Jesus and we should align ourselves with victim oppressor language before we spread God's Word. Any of that behavior is despicable but it's not going to be found in some secular ethical framing or at least not in any full distinction.
She condemns “hypersexuality” but sort of ignores porn being an issue to focus solely on modesty culture from a particular perspective meaning they're not interpreting hypersexuality from a biblical perspective.
I would like to add another perspective to this as well. There’s a significant difference between an SA victim and Paul’s situation here, one being that most SA victims are generally pounced on, they had no idea this was going to happen to them and are often attacked or forced and/or lose the fight early on, he was neither. He also walked into the situation fully knowing what he was getting into by choice, with the intent on saving people. If you have to violate people in order to save them, maybe you shouldn’t be the one saving them. You came in with high ideals, but apparently you don’t hold them so dearly as to be willing to pay a price for them, they aren’t so dear to him. The other difference is an SA victim is generally having the act done to them, and they weigh whether or not their life is worth the abuse that is about to happen to them. Not doing the act of violation themselves. That is a completely different situation. And in conclusion, Dr. Robinson is absolutely correct. Not violating someone is always worth dying for. I’d rather die on my feet for something I believe in and find true, than to live on my knees giving in to evil men and violating my conscience.
What does giving in look like? Women are generally physically weaker than men, so despite her physical resistance, she may still be forced to physically engage in this act entirely against her will.
Though the Church has an example of a saint in Maria Goretti, who was murdered by her would-be rapist because she resisted, telling him this is against God. She was stabbed and died over the course of a few days. On her deathbed she forgave him. She is considered a martyr. And yes, she was a child (11, if memory serves).
"If you decide to put yourself in a situation where you have a choice between assaulting a child or dying, maybe you ought to just die."
Wow. As the kids say nowadays, based. Very Based.
Great as usual. Also, subscribed to the Apocalypse Here channel on youtube after reading your last post, and I love it!
"picking your life is the wrong choice for anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus. "
"Until we have dealt with these issues in ourselves, maybe we ought to leave the rest of the world alone."
Very well put.
Pulling no punches and speaking powerful truth -- thank you for this article.
First, this is profoundly important and well written. It is a vital conversation to the work of sex trafficking recovery and sexual trauma recovery for victims. Our baked in evangelical permission of male sexualization must be addressed.
To that end, I noticed a couple places where you conflated sexual arousal with sexual desire. This confusion could muddle up what needs to be addressed in a man--namely, what happens in his heart (desire and how he acts on it) versus strictly what happens in his body (arousal). As Emily Nagoski, Dan Allender, and others have pointed out, arousal cannot be assumed to be an indication of desire (arousal non-concordance). Concordance is higher in men than women but still only 50% in men while 10% in women.
For example, you said
"It’s not surprising that someone raised in this context where girls are encouraged to think of themselves as protecting men around them from having sexual feelings (including children to adults) would arrive at a place where he was totally unable to separate female bodies from male arousal – including, but not limited to, a context in which a woman’s body was visible because she was for sale to him."
Arousal may be more autonomic than desire. As Nagoski puts it, "Genital response is specific to sexually revelant stimuli--regardless of if those stimuli are appealing." To be clear, the story of Hutchinson involves violation and abuse, a lot more than simply a body response. He joined his heart to lust and harm. I agree he seemed to clearly have desire (more than body arousal) and followed it into harm.
Thoughts?
That one phrase, "Second male voice: I don’t know how wise it was to grab that girl’s boobs, though." has always been uniquely disturbing. The usage of the word "wise" is so Christinese. The whole circumstance isn't wise, especially as more information about the operation has released. Nothing about OUR had been wise to begin with. As such, this event and it's entire proceedings were never even close to the concept of wisdom. Not to mention it's just a seriously stupid thing to say. I wish there was more disgust in the quote, but I guess that's reserved for its readers.
I was hoping you would go there. Thank you for going there. This is exactly what I think, too, and few people will dare go there in the privacy of their own minds, let alone publicly.
>If you’re going to go to a place where women and girls are being exploited, and you’re not ready to die for their sake, you should not be there.
The people who go in need to be crusaders, warriors of divine conscious. Lawful Good men, of deep control. Recruitment should be strict, formal, and ideally following a hardcore cadre. We need Paladins. (1e paladins, for those in the know.)
If there's a risk of death for refusal, pair up the front man with a strike team. I don't care if a trafficker dies as a result of this, maybe it'll convince the survivors to get real jobs. Preferably in prison, but just about anything else will do.
This is a genuinely outstanding essay and an excellent analysis. Thank you.
The rules on modesty reminds me of when I was studying to be a paralegal. There was a discussion about laws that ban “lewd and lascivious” behavior as they do not clearly define a prohibited activity but leave it up to a completely subjective standard. The professor joked that the definition of “lewd” was “anything that gave the judge an erection”.
Men need to own their own struggles with lust and not seek to own women. Burkas were designed purely to protect men from themselves and their own failings.
I'm reminded of an anecdote told by Callum of the Lotus Eaters (British news website) when he was adventure touring Taliban Afghanistan. Their taxy driver saw a UAE female journalist in a slightly more revealing--can just see a bit of curve--and the man was aroused/shocked by that "immodesty."
🔥👏
Well written as usual, thank you for engaging difficult situations with nuance and an empathetic perspective.
Amen and Amen
Wow! What a powerful article!
This is a very good, interesting piece. I do, however, quibble with the title. The problem here is not hypersexuality; the problem is abuse.
Hypersexuality can and should happily coexist with ethical behavior. Implicating hypersexuality instead of unethical behavior is bound to go sidewise, because hypersexuality is a fact of many people’s lives that is unavoidable, barring often unwarranted and unwanted medical intervention. The challenge is to help people live sexually ethical lives, not deny or suppress the heights of their sexual desire. We must channel that hypersexuality into ethical expression, not cauterize it.
Doing the latter will just make the situation for the most vulnerable worse.
Thank you for writing this
"If you have a choice between doing the wrong thing and saving your life, picking your life is the wrong choice for anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus"
so if a woman is coerced into sex, is it still rape, or is she responsible for giving in for whatever reason?
So, two parts to this.
I would have written this section very differently if the interviews said, "my brain shut off, I was terrified, I just did it." Making the ethical choice is often not available in a high adrenaline environment. The way the report reads is much more "I made this choice because it seemed like the safest option." I think that's different.
Second part: consciously assaulting someone is not the same action as being assaulted. When someone is assaulting you, you don't have a choice of what happens. They do. Fight/flight/freeze/fawn instincts take on (and as I said, if that had been described in this situation I would have read it very differently), and at any rate, "fight to the death" is not a choice victims really get to make. They don't get to pick what someone much stronger than them does. The assailant does.
ok that makes sense. i wasn't trying to justify him, i was just wondering about these kind of situations because christians who recant under torture are considered condemned but its different for women who say "ok ill do it" to avoid something. thank you.
Yeah no I think this is important and emphasizes the issue with their perspective. I agree with the spiritual maturity before doing this part and spiritual maturity in general but everything around that I feel like doesn't cohere with anything else they're saying.
They focus too much on victim-oppressor language and categories that ends up giving incoherent positions. The difference is certainly we are aligning ourselves with God. Not that there's a patriarchy or victim and then there's a Bible and Jesus and we should align ourselves with victim oppressor language before we spread God's Word. Any of that behavior is despicable but it's not going to be found in some secular ethical framing or at least not in any full distinction.
She condemns “hypersexuality” but sort of ignores porn being an issue to focus solely on modesty culture from a particular perspective meaning they're not interpreting hypersexuality from a biblical perspective.
I absolutely love your response Dr. Robinson!
I would like to add another perspective to this as well. There’s a significant difference between an SA victim and Paul’s situation here, one being that most SA victims are generally pounced on, they had no idea this was going to happen to them and are often attacked or forced and/or lose the fight early on, he was neither. He also walked into the situation fully knowing what he was getting into by choice, with the intent on saving people. If you have to violate people in order to save them, maybe you shouldn’t be the one saving them. You came in with high ideals, but apparently you don’t hold them so dearly as to be willing to pay a price for them, they aren’t so dear to him. The other difference is an SA victim is generally having the act done to them, and they weigh whether or not their life is worth the abuse that is about to happen to them. Not doing the act of violation themselves. That is a completely different situation. And in conclusion, Dr. Robinson is absolutely correct. Not violating someone is always worth dying for. I’d rather die on my feet for something I believe in and find true, than to live on my knees giving in to evil men and violating my conscience.
What does giving in look like? Women are generally physically weaker than men, so despite her physical resistance, she may still be forced to physically engage in this act entirely against her will.
Though the Church has an example of a saint in Maria Goretti, who was murdered by her would-be rapist because she resisted, telling him this is against God. She was stabbed and died over the course of a few days. On her deathbed she forgave him. She is considered a martyr. And yes, she was a child (11, if memory serves).