Heavy sigh. This feels very accurate. And your comment near the end: "The subtitle of this book is how sex can explain 'almost anything.' What appears to be absent from the list of things sex can explain is women having sex." (!!!)
Laura, you are honestly one of my favorite writers right now. I so appreciate how you’re able to explain all of the underlying Christian cultural assumptions that I never had words for. Re: women faking orgasms, I would also add that it is not out of the realm of possibility that many Christian women know so little about their body that they don’t even know they’re not having orgasms. There’s such heavy belief in sex being “different” for men, that I can see women believing that yes, this experience of sex and closeness, even without a real climax, is what “orgasms” feel like for women. I know a few women who are like “I think I’ve had an orgasm, but it doesn’t feel like that, it’s fine I guess, men seem to enjoy them a lot more” etc…and it’s like oof.
This is a thing I didn't get into because I wanted something for which I would have to go compile anecdotes, get permission to share them, and then work them into the argument.
I think that is exactly the case. I know multiple women who spent the first few years of being sexually active thinking they were having orgasms and only realized later they weren't.
Here, in a reply to a reply, where very few people will actually see this, will I admit in writing on the internet that this is me. And my husband is a good man who cares about my pleasure. We just didn't know! Now he knows what the goal is, and makes it a priority every time.
100%! It’s so hard to know what you don’t know, and in an overarching environment that discourages sex education, doesn’t prioritize women’s pleasure, and devalues women’s’ personal experience of their body, this kind of thing is primed to happen, even for women with caring partners. You are definitely not alone in that.
It takes some time for sperm to reach an egg and to form a zygote. Different sources cite different numbers: some speak of minutes, but others of 7 hours or more at a minimum and conception can sometimes happen days after sex. In other words, by the time the third party is formed out of that union between the first and second parties, the party (so to speak) has probably been long over. In that sense, the third person is never part of the experience, not even as a zygote. That may be a detail, but it is relevant to the imagery used, I think.
Yes! Thank you for pointing this out as well :) I remember reading a book years ago (during research for a freshman college paper) where the author pointed out that we tend to talk about and think of conception as an instantaneous moment when really it’s a messy process where the line between “living being” and “pre-living-being” is fuzzy. The book had little at all to do with the conception/abortion debate, and conception itself was being used as a physical-world illustration for the “fuzzy logic” processes that have since produced our “smart” tech devices. But that bit from the book really stuck with me and keeps reminding me that the created universe is far more messy than we humans generally make it out to be!
It becomes painfully real when going through fertility treatment too. Sure we can get a zygote, but will it implant? And if it implants, is it in the right place and will it thrive? And if it thrives, will it result in live birth? It's so confronting and frankly astonishing that humans even manage to procreate at all.
I see what you mean about “painfully real.” (Talk about all the parts of the process we never think about, let alone never make their way into books like this!) Thanks so much for sharing this personal perspective. Helps it be more real on my end now, too.
Laura, I appreciate your writing so much. This makes it make so much more sense. I get the sense of you and I had fairly similar upbringings (white, conservative evangelical) and everything you write is just spot on to explaining the subculture
Genuine question: I wonder if the word “ideally” suggests that they view the “human climax trinity” as the “pre-fall ideal.” Like the fact that women don’t typically climax through penetration is a result of the fall, like cancer is or something. It seems that their thinking is “Because the trinity is three in one, and the word ‘in’ makes me think about PiV intercourse, then the ‘ideal’ intercourse must image the trinity meaning both male and female orgasm at the same time and the egg is there ready for the semen to become a baby.”
Obviously I’m not compelled by this, but it does seem to explain the fact they raise this image of intercourse as the ideal and also view contraception as marring that image. There’s a lot wrong with this line of thinking, one of which being the female anatomy—designed by God—doesn’t easily lend itself to this ideal, so there’s that.
I can see how this theological idea might underlie or flow from the neat tidy package-deal idea of mutually-timed PiV orgasm.
Of course, this ideal would never go so far as to suggest that “ideal” sex happens only during the fertile window. That’s taking it a bit too far, even for this “sex explains everything and everything explains sex” attempt at theology! 😆
That brings us to consider two separate issues: the gestation period and menopause.
Is the pre-fall gestation period only a month? And we're popping out babies every cycle?
And ... we have an infinite supply of eggs for forever, which means no menopause?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to not experience the worse aspects of the menopause transition. But if the ideal is women to cycle every month for eternity... so men can keep oh-so-generously depositing semen and experiencing God... Ummmm no, that's not ok.
Mmm. This has given more food for thought. What I keep coming back to is how human of us it is to rush things (reaching for the forbidden fruit right away for example, also the way that Jesus was constantly being pressured to usher in the kingdom immediately) . . . and how God seems unashamed to take His time. At the very first He created seasons, set in motion the long dance of the stars, and blessed concepts such as springtime and harvest. The idea of short pre-fall gestation cycles and this notion of how male “generosity” *could* look if things were different -- this sounds more like fallen humanity’s half-cocked conception of the proper way to run a world (puns unintended but appreciated). God frequently invites us into experiencing Him through the regular (long!) cycles of the world He created -- planting and harvest, Sabbath and fallow years, not to mention when He Himself took on human form and waited till “the fullness of time” to settle the score for us all.
Again I want to thank you Laura for this series. I'm reading every word.
I'm composing a poem about the whole BU mess and what we can learn from it. When I publish the poem at my blog, I will be citing your series.
I can understand you thinking that the text's foolishness and ignorance deserves to be laughed at. However, for myself, I cannot laugh or even crack a wry smile about the text. This is because I am a survivor of terrifying sexual abuse, and Butler's text re-traumatises me when I read it.
Thank you for pointing out the history of how the clitoris has been ignored and misunderstood. What a litany of injustice! And all because men's sexual pleasure is prioritised, and women are coerced and shamed into complying with that script.
Having faked orgasms many times in my earlier life (I'm divorced and chaste now) I can testify to the truth of your hypothesis that women don’t want to tell men they’re not having orgasms. I didn't want to tell because a) I wanted to please my partner and not hurt his feelings, and b) I was ashamed of not having orgasms from penetration. Only once in my life did I orgasm from PiV sex. All the rest of my sexual experience has been clouded by intense shame: shame that I can't orgasm, shame for faking orgasm, shame for not telling my partner I was faking orgasm, shame that "my sexual wiring is fused beyond repair".
I now (cognitively) understand that my sexual wiring was fused because of the sexual abuse that happened to me when I was a child and a young adult. But understanding that doesn't take away the trauma that my body remembers. So, I am deeply, viscerally, re-traumatised when I read flowery fancies from Josh Butler like this: "Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber.... He came to the marriage-bed of the Cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up to the torment in place of his bride, and joined himself to [her] forever."
You may wonder why I read anything from Butler, now that I know he re-traumatises me.
I read it in order to write about it for my blog readers, many of whom are victims of sexual abuse in childhood and abusive marriages. My readers are helped by my writing, by me exposing the lies and injustice they have been subjected to. By me validating their experiences.
I know you've written more than could ever be expected on this book, so this one's not an ask of you:
Can someone document all the errors in basic anatomy & physiology, reproductive systems, and reproductive biology? There is so very much wrong, even aside from ignoring the clitoris.
The first quoted text here says the third person is present at the moment of orgasm. But how can that possibly be? The egg and the sperm don't connect at the point of orgasm. There isn't even a zygote at this point, much less a growing fetus.
"It would also be a plausible reading that... a lot of unserious people didn’t think through the implications."
YUP. If you read the replies and listen to the podcasts of people desperately trying to defend this book or "make it work", this comes through over and over again.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention how disgusting it is to even think about an orgasm for a baby, whether born or unborn. I think that Josh Butler should seriously examine whether or not he and Josh Duggar are soulmates who should be sharing a prison cell. If Butler isn't absolutely disgusted by his statements on embryonic or fetal orgasms, he needs to tie that millstone around his neck and jump into the Mariana Trench, just like Jesus *commanded.* If he does have a conscience, he needs to retract his book and statements and demand that the publisher correct his statements.
And I echo what everyone else says about how fertilization that leads to implantation does NOT occur at the moment of ejaculation. For one, it takes minutes for a sperm to beat it's way through the protective defenses of an egg. For two, if the egg is in the vagina, it's not going to implant even if it does get fertilized because it's just going to slide right out with all of the semen and other bodily fluids. I have NEVER heard of an ectopic pregnancy in a vagina! For three, fertilization can occur up to 5 days after ejaculation in the case of very, very, very healthy sperm in a uterus with low immune system activity. That's right, the "hospitable" uterus' immune system will attack both sperm and fertilized eggs and both will need to successfully defend against the attacks for pregnancy to occur.
Another thing that no one has mentioned is how pre-flood people mentioned in the Bible apparently didn't have children until they were 100 years old. Something very odd is going on in those chapters of the Bible. Did they just not hit puberty until age 75? Can you imagine being a fertile woman for over 100 years???
Also, I want Josh Butler to address his theology of the body that he stole from the pope. Does he agree with Trad Cats that you should stop having sex if a wife is not in the fertile time of the month or has reached menopause? He certainly seems to be very opposed to barrier contraception. Is he opposed to any type of family planning? Has he even read the Pentateuch and the rules regarding menstrual and post-natal impurity and the ramifications for what he is teaching about male sexuality and how that applies to the church? Is he personally in a time of ritual impurity such that he must remove himself from contact with other Christians until his impurity is cleansed?
Lastly, has Josh Butler and his team ever gotten sex ed from a non-porn source? I think that the Christian sex advice business up until Gregoire et al has gotten all of their "knowledge" from porn or other people who received that information second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand from porn. Either that or they reached between their cheeks and pulled the "facts" out from where the sun don't shine and we know that only feces is what comes out of there.
I want to thank Josh and his editors for being so very brazen as to provide me with all of the clear evidence I need to prove that evangelical fundamentalism / Churchianity is just phallus worship dressed up with flowery Christianese language. I knew it before because of tirades that pastors would have about men needing sexual pleasure and how obtaining that male sexual pleasure is much, much, much more important than obeying God's commandments about sexual morality....but this is on paper until he burns every single copy and destroys every server and computer and camera with screenshots and photos!
Laura, this reading feels so right on so many levels. Particularly the level at which well-intentioned humans blunder into things we don’t fully understand (but think we do!). How human of us!
As Chris Voss says in *Never Split the Difference* -- “no matter how we dress up our negotiations in mathematical theories, we are always an animal, always acting and reacting first and foremost from our deeply held but mostly invisible and inchoate fears, needs, perceptions, and desires.” This is true of our negotiations with others and it’s true of so many other ways we interact with our lives. What seems to be calculated and careful is so often the opposite. And of course, reveals what we truly believe (whether we realize we believe this way or not!).
Thank you for finding and bringing out the real-life humanity in this situation :)
Heavy sigh. This feels very accurate. And your comment near the end: "The subtitle of this book is how sex can explain 'almost anything.' What appears to be absent from the list of things sex can explain is women having sex." (!!!)
Laura, you are honestly one of my favorite writers right now. I so appreciate how you’re able to explain all of the underlying Christian cultural assumptions that I never had words for. Re: women faking orgasms, I would also add that it is not out of the realm of possibility that many Christian women know so little about their body that they don’t even know they’re not having orgasms. There’s such heavy belief in sex being “different” for men, that I can see women believing that yes, this experience of sex and closeness, even without a real climax, is what “orgasms” feel like for women. I know a few women who are like “I think I’ve had an orgasm, but it doesn’t feel like that, it’s fine I guess, men seem to enjoy them a lot more” etc…and it’s like oof.
This is a thing I didn't get into because I wanted something for which I would have to go compile anecdotes, get permission to share them, and then work them into the argument.
I think that is exactly the case. I know multiple women who spent the first few years of being sexually active thinking they were having orgasms and only realized later they weren't.
Here, in a reply to a reply, where very few people will actually see this, will I admit in writing on the internet that this is me. And my husband is a good man who cares about my pleasure. We just didn't know! Now he knows what the goal is, and makes it a priority every time.
100%! It’s so hard to know what you don’t know, and in an overarching environment that discourages sex education, doesn’t prioritize women’s pleasure, and devalues women’s’ personal experience of their body, this kind of thing is primed to happen, even for women with caring partners. You are definitely not alone in that.
Just want to chime in to say: thank you.
Funny, erudite, clever, charming: your writing is a gift.
Crying. Laughing. Crying.
This article was phenomenal. Instant subscribe. Keep up the good work.
Your use of the word "elide" ... *chef's kiss*
It takes some time for sperm to reach an egg and to form a zygote. Different sources cite different numbers: some speak of minutes, but others of 7 hours or more at a minimum and conception can sometimes happen days after sex. In other words, by the time the third party is formed out of that union between the first and second parties, the party (so to speak) has probably been long over. In that sense, the third person is never part of the experience, not even as a zygote. That may be a detail, but it is relevant to the imagery used, I think.
Yes! Thank you for pointing this out as well :) I remember reading a book years ago (during research for a freshman college paper) where the author pointed out that we tend to talk about and think of conception as an instantaneous moment when really it’s a messy process where the line between “living being” and “pre-living-being” is fuzzy. The book had little at all to do with the conception/abortion debate, and conception itself was being used as a physical-world illustration for the “fuzzy logic” processes that have since produced our “smart” tech devices. But that bit from the book really stuck with me and keeps reminding me that the created universe is far more messy than we humans generally make it out to be!
It becomes painfully real when going through fertility treatment too. Sure we can get a zygote, but will it implant? And if it implants, is it in the right place and will it thrive? And if it thrives, will it result in live birth? It's so confronting and frankly astonishing that humans even manage to procreate at all.
I see what you mean about “painfully real.” (Talk about all the parts of the process we never think about, let alone never make their way into books like this!) Thanks so much for sharing this personal perspective. Helps it be more real on my end now, too.
Laura, I appreciate your writing so much. This makes it make so much more sense. I get the sense of you and I had fairly similar upbringings (white, conservative evangelical) and everything you write is just spot on to explaining the subculture
Oh Laura, yes.
I really think the whole first chapter makes sense read through this light.
Genuine question: I wonder if the word “ideally” suggests that they view the “human climax trinity” as the “pre-fall ideal.” Like the fact that women don’t typically climax through penetration is a result of the fall, like cancer is or something. It seems that their thinking is “Because the trinity is three in one, and the word ‘in’ makes me think about PiV intercourse, then the ‘ideal’ intercourse must image the trinity meaning both male and female orgasm at the same time and the egg is there ready for the semen to become a baby.”
Obviously I’m not compelled by this, but it does seem to explain the fact they raise this image of intercourse as the ideal and also view contraception as marring that image. There’s a lot wrong with this line of thinking, one of which being the female anatomy—designed by God—doesn’t easily lend itself to this ideal, so there’s that.
I can see how this theological idea might underlie or flow from the neat tidy package-deal idea of mutually-timed PiV orgasm.
Of course, this ideal would never go so far as to suggest that “ideal” sex happens only during the fertile window. That’s taking it a bit too far, even for this “sex explains everything and everything explains sex” attempt at theology! 😆
That brings us to consider two separate issues: the gestation period and menopause.
Is the pre-fall gestation period only a month? And we're popping out babies every cycle?
And ... we have an infinite supply of eggs for forever, which means no menopause?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to not experience the worse aspects of the menopause transition. But if the ideal is women to cycle every month for eternity... so men can keep oh-so-generously depositing semen and experiencing God... Ummmm no, that's not ok.
Mmm. This has given more food for thought. What I keep coming back to is how human of us it is to rush things (reaching for the forbidden fruit right away for example, also the way that Jesus was constantly being pressured to usher in the kingdom immediately) . . . and how God seems unashamed to take His time. At the very first He created seasons, set in motion the long dance of the stars, and blessed concepts such as springtime and harvest. The idea of short pre-fall gestation cycles and this notion of how male “generosity” *could* look if things were different -- this sounds more like fallen humanity’s half-cocked conception of the proper way to run a world (puns unintended but appreciated). God frequently invites us into experiencing Him through the regular (long!) cycles of the world He created -- planting and harvest, Sabbath and fallow years, not to mention when He Himself took on human form and waited till “the fullness of time” to settle the score for us all.
“Ummmm no, that’s not ok.” Agreed!
Again I want to thank you Laura for this series. I'm reading every word.
I'm composing a poem about the whole BU mess and what we can learn from it. When I publish the poem at my blog, I will be citing your series.
I can understand you thinking that the text's foolishness and ignorance deserves to be laughed at. However, for myself, I cannot laugh or even crack a wry smile about the text. This is because I am a survivor of terrifying sexual abuse, and Butler's text re-traumatises me when I read it.
Thank you for pointing out the history of how the clitoris has been ignored and misunderstood. What a litany of injustice! And all because men's sexual pleasure is prioritised, and women are coerced and shamed into complying with that script.
Having faked orgasms many times in my earlier life (I'm divorced and chaste now) I can testify to the truth of your hypothesis that women don’t want to tell men they’re not having orgasms. I didn't want to tell because a) I wanted to please my partner and not hurt his feelings, and b) I was ashamed of not having orgasms from penetration. Only once in my life did I orgasm from PiV sex. All the rest of my sexual experience has been clouded by intense shame: shame that I can't orgasm, shame for faking orgasm, shame for not telling my partner I was faking orgasm, shame that "my sexual wiring is fused beyond repair".
I now (cognitively) understand that my sexual wiring was fused because of the sexual abuse that happened to me when I was a child and a young adult. But understanding that doesn't take away the trauma that my body remembers. So, I am deeply, viscerally, re-traumatised when I read flowery fancies from Josh Butler like this: "Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber.... He came to the marriage-bed of the Cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up to the torment in place of his bride, and joined himself to [her] forever."
You may wonder why I read anything from Butler, now that I know he re-traumatises me.
I read it in order to write about it for my blog readers, many of whom are victims of sexual abuse in childhood and abusive marriages. My readers are helped by my writing, by me exposing the lies and injustice they have been subjected to. By me validating their experiences.
Amazing work, Dr Laura.
I know you've written more than could ever be expected on this book, so this one's not an ask of you:
Can someone document all the errors in basic anatomy & physiology, reproductive systems, and reproductive biology? There is so very much wrong, even aside from ignoring the clitoris.
The first quoted text here says the third person is present at the moment of orgasm. But how can that possibly be? The egg and the sperm don't connect at the point of orgasm. There isn't even a zygote at this point, much less a growing fetus.
Good request, Emma. I can’t be that someone, but maybe someone else can. 🙂
The crime novel 💀
That “ideally” is very revealing.
Thanks for all of this.
"It would also be a plausible reading that... a lot of unserious people didn’t think through the implications."
YUP. If you read the replies and listen to the podcasts of people desperately trying to defend this book or "make it work", this comes through over and over again.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention how disgusting it is to even think about an orgasm for a baby, whether born or unborn. I think that Josh Butler should seriously examine whether or not he and Josh Duggar are soulmates who should be sharing a prison cell. If Butler isn't absolutely disgusted by his statements on embryonic or fetal orgasms, he needs to tie that millstone around his neck and jump into the Mariana Trench, just like Jesus *commanded.* If he does have a conscience, he needs to retract his book and statements and demand that the publisher correct his statements.
And I echo what everyone else says about how fertilization that leads to implantation does NOT occur at the moment of ejaculation. For one, it takes minutes for a sperm to beat it's way through the protective defenses of an egg. For two, if the egg is in the vagina, it's not going to implant even if it does get fertilized because it's just going to slide right out with all of the semen and other bodily fluids. I have NEVER heard of an ectopic pregnancy in a vagina! For three, fertilization can occur up to 5 days after ejaculation in the case of very, very, very healthy sperm in a uterus with low immune system activity. That's right, the "hospitable" uterus' immune system will attack both sperm and fertilized eggs and both will need to successfully defend against the attacks for pregnancy to occur.
Another thing that no one has mentioned is how pre-flood people mentioned in the Bible apparently didn't have children until they were 100 years old. Something very odd is going on in those chapters of the Bible. Did they just not hit puberty until age 75? Can you imagine being a fertile woman for over 100 years???
Also, I want Josh Butler to address his theology of the body that he stole from the pope. Does he agree with Trad Cats that you should stop having sex if a wife is not in the fertile time of the month or has reached menopause? He certainly seems to be very opposed to barrier contraception. Is he opposed to any type of family planning? Has he even read the Pentateuch and the rules regarding menstrual and post-natal impurity and the ramifications for what he is teaching about male sexuality and how that applies to the church? Is he personally in a time of ritual impurity such that he must remove himself from contact with other Christians until his impurity is cleansed?
Lastly, has Josh Butler and his team ever gotten sex ed from a non-porn source? I think that the Christian sex advice business up until Gregoire et al has gotten all of their "knowledge" from porn or other people who received that information second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand from porn. Either that or they reached between their cheeks and pulled the "facts" out from where the sun don't shine and we know that only feces is what comes out of there.
I want to thank Josh and his editors for being so very brazen as to provide me with all of the clear evidence I need to prove that evangelical fundamentalism / Churchianity is just phallus worship dressed up with flowery Christianese language. I knew it before because of tirades that pastors would have about men needing sexual pleasure and how obtaining that male sexual pleasure is much, much, much more important than obeying God's commandments about sexual morality....but this is on paper until he burns every single copy and destroys every server and computer and camera with screenshots and photos!
Laura, this reading feels so right on so many levels. Particularly the level at which well-intentioned humans blunder into things we don’t fully understand (but think we do!). How human of us!
As Chris Voss says in *Never Split the Difference* -- “no matter how we dress up our negotiations in mathematical theories, we are always an animal, always acting and reacting first and foremost from our deeply held but mostly invisible and inchoate fears, needs, perceptions, and desires.” This is true of our negotiations with others and it’s true of so many other ways we interact with our lives. What seems to be calculated and careful is so often the opposite. And of course, reveals what we truly believe (whether we realize we believe this way or not!).
Thank you for finding and bringing out the real-life humanity in this situation :)