Bare Marriage

Episode 247: Ask Sheila and Rebecca Anything! We Tackle Your Questions

August 22, 2024 • Sheila Gregoire • Season 8 • Episode 247

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Sheila and Rebecca are answering your questions today! We covered how to find a new church when you feel like church has let you down; how to start your sex life well; what to do when people don’t think purity culture was harmful; and so much more! And we throw data and nuance into the mix too.

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Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.  And it is the end of summer just about.  And I am joined by my daughter, Rebecca, today.

Rebecca: Hello.

Sheila: It’s been a terrible week.  

Rebecca: Truly one—yeah.  It’s been a bad one. 

Sheila: It’s been a bad one.  And so we thought we would just do something this week where we answer a bunch of your questions.

Rebecca: Really easy.  Really fun.  

Sheila: Yeah.  You get to know us a little bit better, and we do a special ask because we’ve had a week.  Before we do that, I do want to say thank you to our sponsor for the podcast which is the Kingdom Girls Bible.  It’s a NIV Bible specifically made for girls 8 to 12.  But honestly, I think it’s awesome.

Rebecca: It’s really sweet.

Sheila: I don’t think it needs to be restricted to girls 8 to 12.

Rebecca: No.  It’s really lovely, and they’ve done such an amazing job with the artwork.  And it’s just a nice Bible.  I remember when I was—I’ll tell you a quick story because this is about your getting to know us.  When I was in junior high, my mom got me a Bible.

Sheila: Let me just show you.  Here is the woman of Endor.  For those of you who have not heard of the woman of Endor.  But in the Bible, they have over 400 pictures and stories of different women that appear in Scripture so that girls see themselves in the story.

Rebecca:   Yeah.  Because I was going to say, I got a Bible from you when I was in junior high that made me so angry.  And it was kind of the typical idea of a girl’s Bible from back then.  And up until literally this Bible came out where all the parts of it that made it be about for girls is there were quizzes about what’s your shopping style and are you boy crazy and how to be a good—should you date?  It’s all about boys and shopping and make up and looks, and I actually wrote blog posts about it when was 14 being like this is the most vapid thing ever.  And I actually tore everything out of the Bible that wasn’t just about the Bible and almost every single thing that was added to the Bible was torn out.  So 12-year-old me would have been thrilled to have this Bible instead of what’s your shopping style.  Are you a Deborah or a Rachel?  It was the most bizarre thing.  So this is eons better than what any of us had when we were kids.

Sheila: Yeah.  It is.  What it really wants girls to do is see that there are so many women in the Bible even though we often gloss over their stories.  And two of my favorite women are shown here.  These are my heroines, okay?  Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives in the book of Exodus who saved all of the Jewish babies and defied Pharaoh.  And yeah.  It helps girls see themselves in the story, and it has all kinds of other amazing parts.  So we will share the link to that in the podcast notes.  And, of course, thank you to our patron group, who has been the rock for us this week.  And why don’t we share what happened to us?

Rebecca: Okay.  Which one of the things?  Let’s start—

Sheila: Well, let’s share the personal one first.

Rebecca: So Vivian had an accident.  My two-year-old daughter.  She had an accident, and she broke her leg.  And so we spent 10 hours in the ER on Wednesday just figuring out—getting X-rays, figuring out what we were going to do.  Are we going to splint it?  Are we going to cast it?  Are we going to stay here, go to a different hospital?  And it ended up being a super minor fracture but still doesn’t even—if you’re in the fracture category, you’re already in for kind of a bad time.  So we were dealing with that.  And so now I have an immobile two year old for three to four weeks. Honestly, she’s doing really well.  She was born to be a princess bossing her brother around to get her stuff.  But that was what happened on Wednesday. 

Sheila: And in the middle of all this—actually, it was while you were in the hospital, you found out that this happened.  So on Tuesday, my Facebook business profile got hacked.  And we could see it happening in real time.  We could not get Facebook to pay attention.  But they got it.  They never had my passwords.  I never clicked on any phishing email.  I think this is, honestly, a Facebook security glitch.  All I did was add my actual email to my business profile.  And suddenly, multiple people started showing up on my business profile.  And we couldn’t get them off.  I was taken out of my business profile.  And so we had about two days where we were afraid the page was going to disappear and get hacked.  Our Facebook page, which has almost 100,000 followers that I’ve been building since 2008.

Rebecca: And then while we were in the hospital and I was waiting to hear if my daughter was going to get shipped to a more intense hospital, the page was taken.  Yeah.  So that was a bad day.  

Sheila: So our Facebook page is—has been taken over.  And they’re posting really awful stuff.  But we have set up a new one.  And so this is our big ask.  Please, everybody.  We lost 100,000 people, but we’ve already got—at the time that we’re recording this, we’ve already got about 7.5K.

Rebecca: Which is pretty astounding because we’ve been working on it for 48 hours.

Sheila: Yes.  Less than 48 hours.  So 7.5K, which is great.  But we would love to drive those numbers up even higher.  And I just think you know what?  Maybe God is actually going to do something amazing with this and bring us all kinds of new followers.  People who haven’t heard of us before.  If everybody says, if everybody shares, “Hey, this amazing author that I follow, this amazing podcaster, her Facebook page was hacked, please follow her new one,” we’re probably going to get new people.  And so please, please, please follow the new page.  It’s called Bare Marriage Official.

Rebecca: There also is another small blessing with this.  Is that the people who did hack the page and take it they changed the name immediately which means there’s still only one Bare Marriage.  And that means that they’re not posting this stuff under our name which is great.  So if you search Bare Marriage on Facebook, the one that is us is us.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And it still looks the same.  It’s got the same banner.  It’s got the same picture of me.  But please go take a look.  We did put a link in the podcast notes for that.  Please, please, please share it.  And one of the big things that we realized this week too is one of the reasons this didn’t hit as hard is because we have really big social media followings on Twitter as well, on Instagram as well.  We have a really large email list, and we have, of course, you all on our podcast.  And so we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.  But what that means, please people, is if you love our podcast, please make sure you’re following us in at least one to two other places.  Because if something ever happens, then you’ll still be able to find us and we’ll still be able to have you which is really important for us.  So make sure you’re following us on Instagram or Twitter or Threads or wherever but especially, if I could choose any one thing that you could follow us on, it would be our email list because—

Rebecca: And, for anyone who likes me, the email list is kind of the only place that I exist because I’m on the podcast every now and then.  But the newsletter is every week I put out an article that’s only for the newsletter subscribers.  It’s 100% me.  I write it.  People seem to really like it. 

Sheila: Sometimes you read it to me first going, “Am I going too far with this?”  

Rebecca: And sometimes you’re like, “Yeah.  You can’t put that paragraph in there.  Oh my gosh.”  And I’m like, “All right.  That’s fair.”  Maybe someday I’ll just post all the stuff that you’ve told me I’m not allowed to post, but we’ll see.  But it’s something where—we get so much good feedback from there.  We have, I think, about 20,000 people, who, not only receive, but open it and read it every single week.  It goes out to way more than that.  But anyone who does any email marketing knows that.  But I think it’s been really fun also for me to get to write a little bit there and have my voice there as well.  So if you want more snarky Rebecca or the kinds of things that I often talk about on the podcast, there’s a bunch there in the newsletter list.

Sheila: And also people say to me, “How can I find out where you’re speaking, Sheila,” and, honestly, the best place is the newsletter because if you’re signed up, you will hear when we’re doing speaking events or events in general.     

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: So we will put the link on how to sign up to that in the podcast notes too, and please follow us on a couple of other places.  And please, please, please join us on our new Facebook page.  Do that right now.  Even just pause this podcast, go and get the link to Facebook, and follow us on our new podcast page because—yeah.  You know what?  We just want to be encouraged.  It’s been a terrible week, so we would just really like to be encouraged.  So thank you for that.  And I do want to say.  We already said it, but I want to say it one more time.  Our patron group has just been amazing.  When we lost the Facebook page, at least we knew that we had 500 people in our Facebook group who are so totally on our side and who just went—who just went to battle for us and got all their friends to join the new Facebook page.  And that was really encouraging to.  And so you know what?  It’s $5 a month minimum.  You can give more than that if you’d like.  And you can be part of our community behind the scenes.    

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Sheila: Yes.  Where we asked for prayer for Vivian’s broken leg earlier too.  

Rebecca: Poor little Vivy.

Sheila: Yes.  So there you go.  All right.  Would you like to do some questions know?    

Rebecca: Sure.

Sheila: I put these out on my Instagram stories.  I said ask me anything because I am so brain dead we cannot prepare an entire podcast.  And we like doing questions.  We haven’t done these in awhile.  

Rebecca: Well, and also, I think, a lot of times the AMAs kind of us allow us to talk about a lot of different topics at once and point you towards where we’ve spoken about this before.  So yeah.

Sheila: So here we go.  So first question, ready?  What is the number one thing that couples should know before intercourse for the first time?   

Rebecca: Women can orgasm.  And they should.

Sheila: Women can and should orgasm.  Yes, indeed.  

Rebecca: I really think that that’s the—if that was the number one change, which is that her orgasm is the goal versus just getting it done, I honestly think that would make a big difference.  I think the big thing that we’ve said to a lot of people is that if you’re trying to figure out sex as a couple for the first time—maybe you’re on your honeymoon or something.  If the goal is to make each other feel good versus the goal being to have sex, you’re going to have sex.  Your body is designed when it’s super aroused to want to do the do.  Okay?  So if you focus more on arousal and her orgasm through whatever means you want, frankly, it’s going to happen. 

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And I think it’s a really good rule to maybe even not have intercourse until you figured out her orgasm piece.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  I think just going based on arousal patterns, which I, looking at all of the research, would struggle to think that orgasm—that intercourse first is the best way to follow her arousal patterns.

Sheila: Yes.  And we have some amazing new stats on this that I am so excited to share with you.  We’re not going to do it yet.  It’s part of our marriage book.  We have a big box on this, on who orgasms when, if you wait for sex for marriage, and how lopsided it is.  Seriously.  It was even worse than I thought.

Rebecca: I bet you women have five orgasms to every one orgasm that the husbands have.  I bet you that’s what we found, right?  

Sheila: And this is why we have to change the way we’re doing the honeymoon.  And so that book, The Marriage You Want, is coming out in March.  Keith and I cowrote it.  It is the marriage book we wish we had that we just—we said if you’re going to write about marriage from the ground up, build something healthy, what’s it going to look like?  And it looks nothing like Love and Respect.  It looks nothing like The Excellent Wife or any of the marriage books that we so often look at.  It’s just based on evidence.  It’s based on emotional health.  It’s based on everything we know about mental load, emotional labor, et cetera.  And I’m so proud of it.

Rebecca: Also just common sense.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yes.  You can preorder it now, if you go on Amazon.  We’ll be doing a big push for preorders soon, but that is coming out.  And we will have a lot of stuff about first time you have sex.  But I will say in our books—let me just grab them.  The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex and The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, which should be the bridal shower gifts, people.  If everybody got these books when they are engaged, in 10 years, nobody would need The Great Sex Rescue.  And that is our goal.  But in these books, we talk a lot about how to do sex the first time so that it puts you on a good trajectory.  One thing I will say is I totally agree with you that what I would say is women’s orgasms exist and should happen.  It’s so hard though to give that same message if someone has been married for 12 years and hasn’t had an orgasm because it’s like you don’t want people to feel like they’re failing.  But you really need to get there.  And that’s why you can give that message when they’re just starting out, when they haven’t got any bad habits yet.  But it’s really hard to undo bad habits, and there’s so much baggage with women feeling they’re broken and internalizing obligation sex messages.  

Rebecca: Well, and then performance anxiety as well.  If you’re like, “Well, we’re trying to figure this out, and now I feel like there’s so much pressure.”

Sheila: Yeah.  So let’s just get this right from the ground up.  I think that would be so much better.  Okay.  Here’s another one.  Do you want to read it?  

Rebecca: Sure.  What to do if you’re scared of going to the doctor for painful sex?

Sheila: You know what?  There’s not an easy answer for—there’s not an easy route to this.  Sometimes life is hard.  

Rebecca: This might sound really weird.  But you can also ask if you could bring a sister or a friend to hold your hand or your husband.  Some places might not allow you to bring your spouse because they might be—screen you for abuse.  But you might be allowed to bring a support person or have someone there for the actual examination, but then they might want to talk to you privately as well.  But you can ask.

Sheila: Yeah.  And here’s what I think people need to understand too is we talk a lot about vaginismus here because it’s a big part of our research.  We know that evangelical women suffer at two to two and a half times the rate of the general population.  We found an instance rate of 23%.  And vaginismus is a sexual dysfunction disorder where the muscles in the vaginal wall contract or become super tight which makes penetration really painful, if not impossible.  The thing is that’s not necessarily the only reason you could have pain.  It is the main reason, but you could also have a hymen—a really thick hymen—that isn’t broken.  

Rebecca: Perforated.

Sheila: Yeah.  Perforated hymen.  You could have lichen sclerosis, which is sort of an autoimmune disease which can really affect that.  There’s other forms of sexual pain.  While the go-to treatment for vaginismus would be a pelvic floor physiotherapist—and, honestly, doctors are—I’m married to a doctor, so I can say this.  But they’re notoriously bad at treating some things because they weren’t trained in it.  This isn’t their specialty.  It is pelvic floor physiotherapy’s specialty.  So a doctor might be able to tell you, “Yep.  That’s just vaginismus.  You can go to a pelvic floor physiotherapist.”    

Rebecca: I would actually argue a pelvic floor physiotherapist might be more able to tell you if you should go to see your doctor.  

Sheila: Yeah.  That’s actually true.  Maybe the pelvic floor physiotherapist should be the first—

Rebecca: From personal experience from seeing them, they’re so knowledgeable about—especially if it’s postpartum.  That’s where a lot of this stuff starts up for a lot of people.  Or even just regular—if you’re like, “I don't know.  We’re just kind of newly married, and stuff isn’t working.”  Go see someone who specializes in women’s health issues, and they might say, “Yeah.  No.  This is not a physiotherapy issue.  This is something where you probably just need to get some medication that will work.  Or you should see a dermatologist or something like that.”  They actually do know a lot of that too.  It doesn’t hurt to have two opinions.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  I would totally second that.  I would also say—just picking up with the postpartum thing.  Many women don’t have pain at all, and then they have a baby.  And we’re looking at rates of around 35% sexual pain postpartum.  And in that instance, evangelical women aren’t necessarily worse off than the general population.  We found about equivalent.  It’s just the primary sexual pain.  But you can get pain disorders if you had tearing.  You had scar tissue, and it didn’t heal well.  There’s all kinds of reasons.

Rebecca: Even if there was nothing quote unquote wrong with the delivery.  Even just the muscular trauma that does happen can cause your pelvic floor to kind of reset in a not healthy way or start to have tightening in some areas.  So the good news is if you are someone who has secondary pain the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people get full recovery very quickly.

Sheila: Yeah.  We did do a podcast probably about two years ago now with a pelvic floor physiotherapist.  And I will link it in the podcast notes so that you can listen to that.  The other thing I want to say on this one is a lot of times vaginismus—what we found in our survey—a big cause of it is the obligation sex message because women don’t feel like they have agency over their bodies.  And that was my story because I had vaginismus.  And going to a doctor, who then told me that they were going to have me sit with my feet up in the stirrups while they touched me and then with a mirror and I touch—it’s like okay.  I don’t have agency anymore either.  And that’s one of the reasons why sometimes going to a physician can be so scary because your whole thing is I just want agency over my body.  And now the physician isn’t giving you any either because I have to get naked.  And that’s where pelvic floor physiotherapists are really good at handling that because they get it.  They get it.  Yeah.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  That one good?

Rebecca: Yep.

Sheila: Oh, and we do cover sexual pain a lot in The Great Sex Rescue.  So yeah.  Mm-hmm.  Speaking of our study in The Great Sex Rescue, here is another question.  Is there a need for a new field of study for sexual issues in the evangelical circles, Rebecca?

Rebecca: I mean, yeah.  I think we’re filling a lot of that need, but it would be great if we’re not the only ones.  We aren’t the only ones either which is so great.  Awhile ago we put out a call for people who were interested in publishing research to work with us so that they could publish under—they’d get to have published papers under their name using our data set.  And our data set would also then just have more and more kind of peer-reviewed juice behind it.  And we got so many people who are now working with us who are amazing researchers in their fields who are looking at sexuality in evangelicalism.  So I think that this is expanding.  I think that it’s necessary because of the health risks and—that we have found to be in evangelical culture.  And I’m hoping that stuff is going to change as more awareness happens.  And so if you also want to help with that, the best thing you can do is give people The Great Sex Rescue.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we also are raising money to keep doing this, to keep funding more studies.  So you can give.  If you are in the U.S., you can get a tax deductible receipt through the Bosko Foundation.  We are the Good Fruit Faith Initiative.  And we will put the link to the podcast notes. But the Bosko Foundation—or the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation managed to fund a bunch of our scholarships so that a lot of people are working on this.  And we have some really good news for that to share with you probably in a couple of weeks.  Maybe a month.  On the podcast.  We’ll see.      

Rebecca:   Yeah.  Probably.  We’ll see.    

Sheila: Okay.  Body image issues when the wife weighs more than the husband.  

Rebecca: I mean this is so hard when we’re raised to, in essence, believe that you deserve to be loved if you’re small, right?  I think the first question that I would have for people who have massive body image issues when they weigh more than their husband is is this because of something your husband said or what society said.  Because I will be—I know a lot of examples in just culture and real life where the wife is like, “Oh, I feel so horrible.”  And he’s like, “Yeah.  That’s a woman.”  So I guess my first question would be you have permission to be loved how you are.  And if you’re married to someone who is like, “I think you’re hot.  Just let me think you’re hot,” then just let him think you’re hot.  Okay?  Maybe this is a great way to kind of unlearn the negative conditioning that you were given in grade 7 and grade 9 and grade 11 and at 25.  This is maybe an opportunity where your marriage and your relationship can be something that heals that inner child.  That’s really what I would say.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I also think you know what?  The idea that a woman’s body is going to look always perpetually 22 is so ridiculous.  We have babies.  Our bodies really change when we have babies.

Rebecca: And even if we don’t have babies, the hormonal changes that women go through throughout their lives are very different than the hormonal changes men—

Sheila: Yeah.  I’ve gained 10 pounds in the last year, and I really think it’s menopause.  There’s no other reason for it.

Rebecca: That’s exactly it.  Is women’s bodies fluctuate in a way that men’s bodies just simply don’t and the same way hormonally.  Obviously, every individual is different.  But you also can give yourself grace because if you’re asking something of yourself that is biologically not how you’re wired that is setting yourself up to fail.  So yeah.  That’s really what I would say.

Sheila: And also you have a right to enjoy your body and having great sex can let you enjoy your body which can help you love your body more.  If you have such body image issues that you don’t feel like having sex, it’s like you’re letting those issues steal from you the joy that you could have in your body which is just—and I know that’s not easy.  I know I’m making it sound super easy.  And I know it’s not.  But just keep telling yourself truth.  And yeah.

Rebecca: That you deserve to be loved.  You deserve to take up space and that you deserve—especially for the women whose husbands don’t have a problem.  And this is most people, I think.  Allow yourself to believe what your spouse says about you.  If they’re telling you actually, those voices in your head are wrong.  I think you’re beautiful.  I love you the way that you are.  I love that you have a giant butt.  You get permission to believe that voice.

Sheila: I like big butts, and I cannot lie.  Yeah.

Rebecca: Exactly.  You have permission to listen to that voice, not the negative one in your head.

Sheila: And if your husband is getting on your back because you’ve gained 10 pounds and you’re now 125 instead of 115—and I’ve had a lot of emails like that.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  That’s true.  Gosh.

Sheila: That’s a him problem.  That’s not a you problem.  And that is something that you need to talk to a therapist about.  That’s something that isn’t healthy.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.  No.  That’s horrifying.  

Sheila: Okay.  Do you want to do dating now?  Or do you want to do church now?

Rebecca: Let’s do dating.      

Sheila: Dating.  Okay.  We have two dating questions.  And thank you, again, to everyone on Instagram who answered.  I know we’re not getting to everybody’s questions, but I just chose the ones I thought Becca would like.  How do you a vet a guy in the dating process?  Are there quality ones out there?  Please tell me there are I think is what she was trying to say.  And how do we tell?    

Rebecca: I mean I think a really big one that’s often undersold is their friends and peer group.  When you know a guy’s friends, you know him to a certain extent.  And this goes for women too, right?  When you know who someone is around, you know that, oh, so they attract this kind of person.  Hmm.  Everyone around this guy is a total butt and makes stupid jokes and crash jokes and is super irresponsible and lazy and kind of misogynistic.  And it’s like, man, he’s such a good influence for his friends.  Is he?  Or is he just showing off for you?  And then in 10 years of marriage, this is who he really is.  Because in general, people who are good people tend to have good people around them, right?  People who are selfish, immature, and lazy tend to repulse people who are not.  So if he’s constantly surrounded by people who you cannot stand, who you think are just actually kind of bad people, who are really immature, who he becomes a worse person when he’s around them, that, to me, is a massive red flag.  And I think that it’s really easy to act like someone different when you’re on dates and you’re on your best behavior.  But if you can really just become a part of the social group, not just hang out with his friends sometimes—no.  No.  No.  No.  I am part of this now.  And you can see if you fit or not.  That can be helpful. 

Sheila: Yeah.  I have a couple of big things to say on this.  First of all, there are—there’s some really good techniques if you’re doing online dating of weeding people out.  We’re not going to talk about those right now.  We might do an entire podcast on it at some point.  I don't know.  

Rebecca: Get someone who talks about this to come on.  Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because there are actual techniques, and I know so many people who have married from online relationships.  And they’re really good.  Now some haven’t work, but that’s true of every relationship.  But online can really work.  But yeah.  You do need to be picky.  And I would just say with online let everything hang out at the beginning.  Because if it’s not going to work, you want to know that quickly so that you can get on with other people.  So if there are things that are nonnegotiable, let them know up front.  But I think a couple of things about in person.  And one is to pick up on what you were saying, Becca.  Social groups matter.  Most of us who marry marry someone through a friend of a friend, or it’s part of your broader social network.  So the bigger social network you can get the better.  And sometimes I think we’re so focused on finding someone to date that we ignore just growing your social circle.  

Rebecca: Well, especially since even if you do get married or if you don’t get married, that community is going to be a lifeline no matter what.  Making friends and being a part of a larger group and having people you can text if something happened and people you can call if all of a sudden—you’re like, “Well, my apartment has black mold, and I have to move on Tuesday.”  Having those people is so important.  And it’s not less important when you’re married either.  So it’s not a bad idea no matter what to really focus on community.  And then when you find a community that you really fit in— 

Sheila: Someone has got a brother or cousin or—hopefully.  So work on that.  The other thing is don’t let your whole relationship be dates.  Go grocery shopping together.  Make a meal together.

Rebecca: Do life as much as you can.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Clean out your garden in the spring.  Or something.

Rebecca: And I think the big thing that I’ve seen a lot of people do really, really well is just, in essence, once you’re dating it becomes a I just—we swap—we just go to each other houses and hang out and do nothing too, right?  Where it’s like what do you do on a daily basis.  Do I fit in this?  Rather than, oh, and then we have an outing where we are doing this.  We have an outing where we are doing that.  Just making sure that you’re just comfortable always being there because, if you get married, hey, heads up.  That’s how it’s going to be.  

Sheila: Yeah.  So see how they live.  Are they capable of cleaning up after themselves?  And if they’re not, are they capable of learning and are they excited about learning?  

Rebecca: Yeah. Exactly.

Sheila: So those are some things I would say.  Okay.  And to go along with that one, someone asks, “When I’m on dates with men, what are some questions I can ask to sus out church misogyny?”  Ask them who their favorite authors are.

Rebecca:   Well, I think that’s hard because it depends on what kind of genres they read and all this different stuff.  I think that there’s no one answer.  I’m going to be honest here.  I think anyone who talks about how they want a wife—there’s major red flags, but I’m not sure there’s green flags, right?  Does that make sense?  So it’s like there’s the one where it’s like what are you looking for in a wife.  Well, I’m looking for someone to obey me, to clean my—to do your traditional—if they use any words like traditional, it’s probably a red flag because guys who are open to a stay-at-home mom situation aren’t going to be like I want a stay-at-home mom.  If they want a stay-at-home mom situation, we have to ask why.  Ask bigger questions, right? 

Sheila: Yeah.  Now there’s nothing wrong with saying I want a parent to stay at home, or I want our kids to be cared for by parents as much as possible.  But if it’s only the mom, then that’s an issue.

Rebecca: Exactly.  It’s like, no.  If I make half the amount of money that you make and you make double, you still have to stay home because otherwise I will feel like I am small man.  No.  That’s a red flag, right?

Sheila: That’s a red flag.  Yes.

Rebecca: So that’s what I mean.  There are some red flags where it’s like if he believes that women are not able to lead or if he would feel uncomfortable with a woman teaching him something, those kinds of things.  But the problem is on dates just—I don’t think that’s the best time to figure this out because they’re on their best behavior.  They know the buzz words.  You’re just going to have to watch.  I do think that seeing what kind of church they go to does help.  There are lots of people who go to very, very sexist churches who are not, themselves, sexist.  But also that is something that they then have to prove a lot more. 

Sheila: Yes.  And there’s a lot of people who haven’t though it through.  This is the thing.  If you grow up in a sexist church, a lot of men are like, “You know what?  I want to get married, and I want to be such a good, spiritual leader.”  And they mean that in the best sense of the word.  They mean—

Rebecca: These are typically the men who read Great Sex Rescue and realize I am free.  I get to just like my wife.  I don’t have to anxiously worry about how I’m failing my family every 20 minutes.  Those are those men.  The ones who grew up in a super fundamentalist church or super sexist church and just kind of believed I want to be a good person.  But gosh.  This sounds horrible.  

Sheila: Yes.  Exactly.  And then we get emails from people—from guys, who say—I got one this week.  A woman sent me a picture—a screenshot—of the text messages from her husband.  And he said, “I have listened to three and three-quarters episodes of Bare Marriage, and I’m wrecked.  I am just wrecked.  We have done this so wrong, and I’m so sorry.  And I want to change.”  There’s guys like that out there who would change if they just heard the right message.  And so it’s like just because someone wants to be a spiritual leader doesn’t mean they’re a misogynist.  They might have just grown up—

Rebecca: That might be the language of their church culture.

Sheila: Right.  But the real question is are they willing to learn from a woman.  Are they willing to talk about these issues?

Rebecca: How do they react to the Bare Marriage podcast?    

Sheila: Yeah.  How do they react to our podcast?

Rebecca: I will say a lot of people who are dating use us as a litmus test, and it seems to work pretty well. 

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  So there you go.  Okay.  Here’s a quick one.  “Have you talked about Intended for Pleasure?  We read it 20 years ago, and I don’t remember what I’m hearing now.”  

Rebecca: So here’s the thing.  What this person has accidentally done is told us that they have not bought our book.  They have not read our book because we do, in fact, talk quite a bit about Intended for Pleasure in The Great Sex Rescue.  So if you are interested in hearing direct quotes from Intended for Pleasure and our discussion about that book, you should buy The Great Sex Rescue for a very fun time.

Sheila: Honestly, it is such—I don't know if this will still be true at the point where this podcast goes live.  But for the last three weeks, Great Sex Rescue on Amazon has been $9 in paperback.     

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s so cheap right now.

Sheila: That is as cheap as I can buy it for as the author.  So this is super cheap.  This is an Amazon thing, so I have no idea when it’s going to end.

Rebecca: Yeah. They don’t tell us.

Sheila: But if you are listening to this, go to Amazon right now and see.  Because if it is still that cheap, pick up a whole bunch because you’re going to want to give them out like candy.

Rebecca: But if you want to know what we said about Intended for Pleasure, that’s our answer.  Buy our book because we worked hard on it.  We wrote our critiques well in there.  And it’s there.

Sheila: And we also have our rubric with a score card of all the books we talk about in Great Sex Rescue.  And so you can download that rubric.  If you want to see specifically all the things about Intended for Pleasure and Love and Respect and Power of a Praying Wife and For Women Only and everything, I will put the link to our rubric in the podcast notes too.  Okay.  Shall we do a couple on churches?  

Rebecca: Sure.

Sheila: All right.  Here’s a woman who says, “How can we help those we know who have wound up stuck in a cult?”  And I think this is coming out of our podcast last week with Bethany Jantzi when we were talking about some of the cult like elements of so many evangelical churches especially when it comes to marriage.  

Rebecca: I would say don’t leave their daily life.  This is not right now.  This is not an ideological battle for you.  You’re not going to find a cult expert who says that you should argue someone out of a cult.  You’re not going to find one.  What you need to do is be a pillar in their life.  So that if the cult tries to make you leave, they’re going to be like, “Well, I can’t.”  Right?  You are the person who will take their kids when they have a dentist appointment.  You are the person who will say, “Hey, I made extra, and I heard you guys had a hard week.  Do you want me to drop off a lasagna?”  You are the person.  Not in a creepy way.  But in a normal, neighbor, nice community way.  You are always—love this picture.  You guys look wonderful.  Be super encouraging.  Be like I’m on your side.  I am here.  And then if they start to have questions, you’re the person that they can turn to with that.  Right?  Don’t hide what you believe.  But don’t push it on them.  And don’t push the conversations.  In fact, I would actually argue that if they try to argue with you and prove that you’re wrong you say, “Hey, I really respect our friendship.  I don’t want to get into an argument that I don’t think you’re going to convince me of.  So can we just talk about something else?”  And then if they come to you with questions—and you can say, “If you ever have questions about what I believe, I’m happy to explain it.  But I want to make sure you know that I just want to be with you.”   Right?

Sheila: And if you do feel like you want to express some sort of—if you’re really worried they’re being abused or something, the best way to do that isn’t to say, “I think you’re being abused.”  It’s to say, “Huh.  I’m noticing some things.  What do you think of this?”  Ask them questions.     

Rebecca: Or if you have the relationship because you’ve put in the work, you can say, “I love you.  I am only saying this because I’m worried about you, and I love you.  I want you to read Is It Me? by Natalie Hoffman, right?  Because I’m seeing a lot of stuff here.  And then if you ever need to talk about anything, I’m here.  I’m not going to badger you about this.  But I need to say my piece, and I would love to,”—if you have the relationship, you can have those conversations.  But I think a lot of times what often happens is there’s not the relationship there and then it’s the full attack.  Or it becomes an ideological warfare instead of remembering that the main thing that gets people out of these cults is either stuff goes really, really bad for them, or their friend group doesn’t fit with it.  So you can be there.  Be the pillow for her to land on, if it’s number one.  But also you can be the reason that number two occurs.

Sheila: Yeah.  And I would say this is a little bit different on social media.  When you’re on social media with a friend, who is in a cult, please don’t argue with them on social media.  Please do not do that.  Okay?  But if you’re in a Facebook group with 40,000 people that you don’t know in real life, by all means argue.    

Rebecca: Because that might be the person who is trying out things and who is testing and who someone else is being the friend being like I just need someone to talk some sense into this girl.  It’s different when you’re online versus your in person people.  And you have different roles based on where you are in that person’s life.

Sheila: Yeah.  Your role is not to argue with someone you know in real life.  But you might be the one who—if—when you share links to our podcast, when you share about Great Sex Rescue, when you share about Marg Mowczko or whoever else that we recommend in some of the big Facebook groups, you may be the one who gets people going on the tantrum.    

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: I have heard from so many people who were on the Facebook page of She Who Will Not Be Named who found me even on She Who Will Not Be Named because somebody was bad mouthing us.  And they wanted to see what we were saying.

Rebecca: Uh-huh.  I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of stuff that keeps She Who Will Not Be Named up at night which I find pretty funny.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  Okay.  Here is one for you.  Ready?  

Rebecca: Okay.  Here we go.  

Sheila: Is there a way to homeschool without all the fundie or fear based baggage?  

Rebecca: Absolutely.  The answer is you do it.  I’m sorry.  That’s a pedantic answer, but here’s the thing.  It is so—I’m someone—for anyone who doesn’t know, I’m planning on homeschooling my kids.  My husband was actually all—I was homeschooled growing up from you.

Sheila: Yeah.  I homeschooled you and Katie all through high school.  Yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Yeah.  I started in grade one and went all the way through.  My husband was actually also homeschooled in a secular family for six years, I think, growing up.  So this is not—homeschooling is typically kind of seen as a Duggar’s thing, right?  Where you’re doing it because the evils of the public school system are doing to infiltrate our children’s brains and then they’re all going to be not soldiers for Christ.

Sheila: They’re all going to be Marxist, feminist.  

Rebecca: Exactly.  Marxist, feminist.  Exactly.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Mm-hmm.   

Rebecca: I think my big thing to get out of the mentality of trying to keep your kids away from the evils of the public school system, which I’m sorry I’m making light of that.  But I do find it very frustrating because I’ve seen how bad that goes.  What I would say is really focus on what you’re giving your children and focus on it with your education.  Focus on how do I give my children the best education possible.  Your children do not need to be sheltered from science.  They do not need to be—even if you want to teach them something that scientists don’t agree with, if you are not teaching your child what scientists do agree with, you are now keeping your child back.  You’re going to make it harder for them to get jobs.  You’re going to make it harder for them to go into secondary studies, if they—into universities, if they want to.  So instead of doing the fundie fear based homeschooling, which is about—usually, it tends to be about I teach the Bible, not science.  And it becomes very much about a lot of culture wars situations.  Focusing on why are you doing this and doing—and finding it—focusing on why you’re doing this and having those reasons not be based on what you don’t want to happen but what you do want to happen.  And then looking for homeschoolers in your area who are secular homeschoolers is really, really great.  I have actually found that most people in secular homeschooling groups are also religious, but they’re homeschooling from a secular perspective, which is what I—I will let you know that’s what we are doing.  We’re giving our children a secular education as Christians, right?

Sheila: And that’s what I did for you too.    

Rebecca: That’s what you did as well.  

Sheila: We did study Bible.  We did have Bible as a subject.  But yeah.  Mm-hmm. 

Rebecca: Absolutely.  But our spelling curriculum wasn’t how do you spell Abednego.  Right?  And our math curriculum wasn’t like how many animals were on the ark.  So that’s the thing.  We’re doing an education that will equip them for the real world, and so look for others who are doing the same thing.  There are so many.  These groups are getting bigger and bigger.  The area where we live now had—pretty much didn’t have a secular homeschooling group when we were being homeschooled.  Now there’s a bunch of us.  We have a whole group just ourselves.  And it’s been really lovely because it’s been a great community.  So that’s what I would say is focus on what you are giving your kids instead of what you’re trying to shield them from because I will also say—this is—sorry.  This is one of my soap boxes, so I do need to say this.  If you’re focusing on shielding your kids from stuff, I have typically seen that the education is not as good because you’re focusing on what they’re not doing.  And they’re reveling in like, oh, but my kid is getting to enjoy this for longer.  And I was like okay.  That’s great.  They also need math.  They also need to know how to spell.  So focusing on what you’re giving your kids academically is very, very important and not just patting yourself on the back that they’re not getting the Marxist, feminist agenda.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And be careful what curriculum you use.  There’s a lot of fundamentalist curriculums out there.

Rebecca: I would argue that you should be—this is one of the shoulds that I will say.  Whenever possible, you should be using a secular curriculum.

Sheila: Like Saxon math.  And I know there’s different opinions on Saxon.  But, for instance, Saxon instead of something that—yeah.  The big thing that I always say with homeschooling is you need to be homeschooling in order to give your child more opportunities, not fewer opportunities.  And so you guys took so much piano.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Well, and the big thing too is a lot of the people who I know who are doing it from the secular perspective their kids are neurodivergent or they have learning disabilities.  And so they’re like, hey, you know what?  This kid is going to learn better in a less stressful environment, and they have the ability to do that, right?  So that’s a big one too.  Even if it’s not extra bonus things are added on, sometimes just that you’re able to do it because it’s not a good fit otherwise, right?  So there’s a lot of reasons to homeschool other than, oh no.  They might see people who don’t wear skirts.  

Sheila: Yes.  But at the same time, we are not a podcast which says you need to homeschool.

Rebecca: That was the next thing I was going to say is the biggest hurdle to getting over the fundie baggage is understanding that public school is not the enemy and understand that public school is not a bad choice.  It’s just a different one.  That’s the number one hurdle to get over.

Sheila: All right.  We have a couple of other questions about church.  Okay.  Ready?  We have actually—this was the biggest group of questions, which I was kind of surprised of when I said, “Hey, everybody, ask me anything.”  A year ago when I said that or two years ago when I said that everything would be about sex.  And now almost everything is about church.  I would say a good two thirds of my questions were about how to find a good church which is interesting.  I think our audience is like, okay.  We’ve got the sex thing down because we’ve been listening to you.  We’ve been reading The Great Sex Rescue.

Rebecca: We know it’s supposed to be good.  Okay.

Sheila: But we want to be in a religious place with people like you.  How do we find people like you in our religious place?  So here’s a question.  How do you know if a church subscribes to some of these toxic ideas on sex and marriage?  A couple of things.  First of all, what is their church leadership like?  If your church leadership is only men, that is going to tend to be a red flag because beliefs about obligation sex, about male entitlement tend to go hand in hand with the idea that men are over women and there is a hierarchy.  So if your church has a gender hierarchy, they are going to tend to also have a hierarchy when it comes to sex and marriage.  Now there are some good churches or some churches that have a hierarchy that actually teach healthy stuff on sex.  I’ve heard about that.  I heard about one church, which has put out resources on why you can still be a complementarian and read The Great Sex Rescue because so many of their people love The Great Sex Rescue.  And the church loves it, but they’re like but we’re complementarian.  So they’re trying.      

Rebecca:   Which, hey, we support people helping their congregants reading things outside of their own ideological bubble.  I think that’s great.      

Sheila: Yeah.  I think that’s wonderful.  

Rebecca: Always support that.  

Sheila: But in general, those things tend to go together.  One thing you can do when you’re trying out a new church is check out their website first.  Not all churches have great websites, but a lot of them do.  Check out what resources they recommend because you can often find under resources pages books they recommend or counselors they recommend.  If all of their counselors are biblical counselors and not licensed counselors—

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  That’s a massive red flag.

Sheila: - if the books they recommend are the books that we say are harmful, then this is a church which either is openly and deliberately teaching male hierarchy, or they’ve never thought about it.  And so they are passively teaching male hierarchy.

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  And it might be one of those things where, again, stuff like The Great Sex Rescue is a great litmus test where it’s like, hey, I saw that you’re doing some stuff that we all agreed was the best stuff 20 years ago.  But now there’s been new research coming out that shows that it’s actually not Christ like at all.  It’s not even biblical.  Would you mind reading this book and seeing if we can change what we’re recommending and how we talk about this?  A lot of people have done that, and their pastors are like this is a great book.  Oh my gosh.  This makes so much more sense.  This is always what I thought, but no one else was saying it.  Unfortunately, many of these answers are you’re going to have to stick your neck out a little bit.  Because this toxic stuff is so in the culture, a lot of people are just parroting back the culture, and they haven’t really been shown.  And also as much as I hate this fact—and I’m so sorry if this offends any pastors who are listening.  Pastors are so head in the sand about what’s actually going on in real people’s lives so often.  When you look at the kinds of books pastors are reading it’s typically very heavy theology.  It’s about the meaning of forgiveness and meaning of grace.  And that’s great.  That’s great for you.  But the average congregant who is having—who is trying—is not reading a book on forgiveness.  They’re reading the best seller evangelical self help books, which the pastors are not reading.  So you might have a pastor who is all about grace and patience and the fruit of the Spirit and who is like, oh, I guess these Christian books on marriage are what I should be shoving people’s way.  He hasn’t read them in the same way.  And I find that very frustrating, but I also understand why it happens.  But that’s a thing where if you confront the pastor with the reality that he might not know or—because I’m going to be honest.  Most female pastors I know already know this.  That’s why I’m using the he for pastor is because I have yet to meet a female pastor who is truly in the—most female pastors are well aware that there are people who don’t think that they should be pastors.  And so if you have someone who has kind of been passively doing this just opening their eyes and see if they want their eyes to be opened.  And if they’re like, oh, well, let’s just change this up because that does happen a lot.

Sheila: It does.  And our Great Sex Rescue toolkit is a great way to do that.  We created a toolkit with printable downloads, or you can just email and forward them.  They’re super pretty.  They’re really well designed.  It’s like two to three to four pages explaining what is wrong with all of the different toxic teachings that we have looked at.  So there’s one, two, or three-page handout on the modesty message, one on obligation sex, one on all men struggle with lust.  So many of them.  And then also all of our one sheet downloads on the books that are problematic and how to approach your pastor and more.  So if you’re wondering on how to start these conversations, we will put a link to The Great Sex Rescue toolkit.  It’s pay what you can.  So you can get it for as little as $3.  But if you want to pay more and give us some extra cash to keep doing what we’re doing, we really appreciate that, by the way.  You can do that as well.  So put a link to that.  Okay.  Last church question.  Why continue to be a part of a church after experiencing or seeing so much hurt?  And I know you have some thoughts on this.

Rebecca: Yeah.  We’ve talked about this a lot in the patron group.  So our patrons will be well aware of our opinion on this which is, as always, we have to go to the evidence, right?  So when we’ve experienced something big, it’s very easy to assume that everything is like that, right?  And that’s a natural guarding mechanism that our brains have.  Anxiety and overblown risk assessment is actually a protective thing that our brains have developed to make sure that we don’t do dumb things that will get us hurt, right?  So if we did something and it hurt us, we are reticent to do it again.  So same thing with church.  So what we have to do is go to the evidence, right?

Sheila: Yeah.  So if you’ve gone to a church and you’ve been hurt, your brain, your body, your trauma responses are going to say it’s not worth investing in this anymore.  It’s not worth trying to find a healthy church.

Rebecca: And that isn’t something that we’re going to chastise you for.  That’s how your brain is created to do.  But what I found very helpful with a lot of this stuff is to go to the evidence.  The evidence states that religiosity is beneficial.  It just is.  You’re not going to find something that shows that religiosity is harmful.  What’s harmful is when religiosity is used to coerce or control or when it’s really tied up with conservatism.  And I don’t mean politically—just politically.  That’s a scientific term.  Conservatism which is fundamentalism, in essence.  This idea of all or nothing, rules following versus the concepts of what Christ called us to do or how to be like Him, how to follow Him, the fruits of the Spirit, what it means to bring the kingdom of Heaven to earth, those kinds of things are not in the fundamentalism.

Sheila: Yeah.  And study after study after study has shown this.  The Harvard Longitudinal Study.  It’s a really famous one now.  They started studying men after World War Two.  And it’s continued to look at their spouses, their kids, and even their grandkids now.  And religiosity is a positive force.  Church attendance is positive.  We said this a lot when She Deserves Better came out because it’s nuanced.  And I want you guys to hear this.  Church attendance is good on the whole until you internalize these toxic teachings or you get into a space which is really authoritarian, controlling, dehumanizing objectifying.  And then the benefits of church disappear.  But it’s not the church is bad.  It’s that those other things are bad, and there are spaces—religious spaces that are healthy.

Rebecca: Yeah.  There are many where it’s really more about community versus these kinds of toxic teachings.  And it can be so hard to believe that when that’s not your personal experience.  But, again, that’s why we like data so much because oftentimes our personal experience is just not indicative of the whole.  Right?  That’s just reality.

Sheila: But I mean I got through—I went through a lot of church trauma.  I find going into certain church services now very triggering.  I do.  But I also have found a church that I feel very safe in, but it’s a different kind of church.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And you might have to try a different kind of church.  We hear all the time from people.  I went to First Baptist Church for seven years, and I was massively burned.  And so then I went to Second Baptist Church, and we were there for 10 years.  And it was amazing, but then I was burned at Second Baptist.  And then I went to Third Baptist and Fourth Baptist.  We’re like okay.  So maybe there is a common denominator here, right?  If you’ve been—if you are still in this mindset that only one denomination has a monopoly on Christ, you’re still in the fundamentalist mindset.  I don't know what to tell you.

Sheila: Yeah.  And fundamentalism can exist on the left end of the spectrum too.  There’s not—it exists everywhere.

Rebecca: It exists everywhere.  But this idea that I have to go to one denomination because it’s the only one who understand the Bible.  They’re the only one who understands God.  That’s just not true.  And you don’t even have to agree with the church that you go in order to have community there.  I know that the church that I was at in Ottawa we had more denominations present at that church than any other church in Ottawa at one point, I think.  We had estimated—because no one was actually that denomination at the church except for the pastors.  And it worked great, and it was fantastic because everyone had different perspectives.  So yeah.  You don’t have to become the denomination of whatever church you’re at is just all I’m saying.  But don’t fall into this trap of believing that only one kind of church knows God because that’s just not true.      

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And church attendance—when you go to church, when you get up every week and go to church, you’re building community.  You have people around you that you feel connected to.  Your kids have an extended social group.  And a lot of us grew up in church.  And so we had that personal experience with God as a kid.  We learned the Bible.  We know what’s in the Bible.  And now we’ve been burned, and so we want to stop going to church.  But if you do, your kids aren’t going to have that experience.  And you may be able to stay close to God outside of a church, but that’s also because of the foundation that you had as a kid even if a lot of that was toxic.  You did know Scripture, and you knew God, right?  And so it is tricky.  But what we can tell you is that religiosity is a good thing, but we need to be discerning about what religious communities we put ourselves in, I think.  Okay.  Another nuanced question.  

Rebecca: Awesome.

Sheila: How do you respond to someone who says that purity culture was a good thing?

Rebecca: Yeah.  This is a good one.  This is a great one.

Sheila: This is a soapbox you get on a lot actually.     

Rebecca: This is.  I’m going to try to keep this short.  Okay?  I’m going to try to keep this short.  But here is what happens.  We, who were hurt by purity culture—I mean I shouldn’t really say we.  I wasn’t hurt that much by purity culture because I thought everyone was dumb and I didn’t listen to anyone.  But genuinely.  That was the biggest protective factor that I had was that I’m contrarian.  No.  But people who were scorned by—who were hurt by purity culture it’s easy to assume that then everyone who thought purity culture was good had no good reason.  That is not the case.  The opposite of purity culture is not sexual health.  It’s sexual hedonism.  Sexual hedonism leads to a lot of really, really bad stuff.

Sheila: Yeah.  Like the hookup culture.

Rebecca: The hookup culture.  And using people just for release and for fun is really unhealthy.  It just is.  You have people who grew up and they had experiences where they were—they didn’t understand about waiting for sex.  And they started having sex way too early, and they were part of those statistics of people who had sex early and ended up in multiple abusive relationships—sexually abusive relationships as a result.  They are part of the statistics of people who—sexual promiscuity during high school or early adulthood really threw their life off course.  They saw people getting pregnant or STDs or just heartbroken and being used.  They saw the negative effects of having sex outside of marriage, and then they clamped down because of the fear of the very real risks that they had experienced.

Sheila: Yeah.  And this is what I—I still don’t think people truly get this.  So speaking as a Gen X woman, I grew up in the 80s when teenage pregnancy was at an all time high, when they were—teenage kids were much more likely to be having sex in the 80s than they are today.  We get this idea that everything is getting worse.  It isn’t.  A lot of purity culture grew out of a time that was really quite toxic.  And so I think—but this is a problem with black and white thinking which is thinking that we either get purity culture or we get hedonism.  And it’s like those are not the only two options, people.  And what we’re trying to argue for is the middle option.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Where sex is sacred.  Sex is something where we take it seriously.  We aren’t flippant about it.  Sex isn’t just some, well, kids just do it.  No.  They actually shouldn’t.  We have laws about that.  The laws agree that the kids shouldn’t be boinking.  Okay?  This is not a thing.  But at the same time, you’re not a dirty, disgusting, used up, chewed up wad of gum if you do, right?  There is the middle ground of healthy sexuality that is focused on consent, on what does it mean to keep sex sacred, on understanding that chastity is important because it’s good for us and good for others.  And that it’s a way that we can be living sacrifices unto God.  But not because if we give away our most precious gift, we’ll have nothing to give our husbands, right?  There is that balance there of no.  It’s actually not okay to just use people even if they say, “Well, I’m okay with it,” because we shouldn’t be using people.  And also it’s not okay to tell someone, “Well, now you’re used up, and you’re worth nothing,” because they were always worth more than their virginity.  Both of those things exist.  So that’s what we’d say is I understand fully why people think that purity culture was a good thing.  The other thing that a lot—and I—hold your pitchforks when I say this.  Okay? Genuinely.  Hold your pitchforks.  Purity culture, for a lot of people, did help them because, for a lot of people, the message they got from purity culture was the intended message by a lot of people which is don’t be flippant about sex, only have sex with one person, marry someone who is a good person, and then honor God with your body.  That’s the message that they got.  They didn’t get the whole you are a crumpled rose, chewed up gum.  You’re worth nothing if you have sex.  You aren’t a good Christian. 

Sheila: You are responsible for him not sinning as the woman.  Yeah.  Mm-hmm.  

Rebecca: Exactly.  And that’s why it’s important when we’re talking with someone who says that you have to define what your definitions are because they might just be meaning don’t have sex in high school.  They might mean—yeah.  No.  Be abstinent.  That’s actually good for kids.  And so they might have a different idea of what purity culture even was than you do.  And so they might just not even understand.  So I think that’s the thing is understand that this stuff didn’t exist in a vacuum.  This wasn’t some huge conspiracy by James Dobson to be like how can we make girls feel terrible about themselves.  That’s not what happened.  Purity culture came up because of very real threats that were happening to teenagers, and it was an overcorrection to the time that was mixed with misogyny and turned into something really quite harmful.  But a lot of people got kind of purity culture light, and it turned out great for them.  And a lot of people don’t understand that there’s a middle ground. 

Sheila: And can I say something?  Can I say something to the purity culture light people?  Remember the thing called survivorship bias.  

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: Okay?  So if you got through unscathed, you may think, “Well, then it’s good.”  But the fact that you got through unscathed means that you are biased about this.  There’s a lot of people who didn’t get through unscathed.       

Rebecca: Everyone is biased.  It’s not just one side.  

Sheila: Okay.  I have a last one.  I really liked this question.  And I have an answer to this one.    

Rebecca: Okay.  So I’ll read it so you can answer.  If you had 10 minutes at dinner with any of these authors or their staff, what would you say?

Sheila: Okay.  Well, it would depend on which one, first of all, because I had different relationships with different of the authors.  And for a lot of them, I think my main question would be—I just—and this has been heart cry for a long time.  Is I just don’t understand because I thought you loved Jesus.  And if we know this stuff is harmful, why is it so hard to take accountability and to make things right?  I don’t get it because that’s been really difficult for my faith journey is seeing these people who are claiming Jesus but then don’t care when people get hurt.  So that’s it.  But I had a dream.  I don’t know if I told you about this.    

Rebecca: No.  But I’m very nervous.

Sheila: Okay.  It was a couple of months ago.  And I was going through a rough time.  And I had this really vivid dream, and I was very angry in this dream.  I ended up on a panel with Emerson Eggerichs.  I don’t know why.  But I was up on stage in a church.  And someone brought him out, and they invited me to say something to him.  And in my mind flashed all of the arguments that we have had about Love and Respect, and I was trying to figure out which one I was going to blast him with first about why this was wrong.  And then all of a sudden I had this tremendous feeling come over me, and I turned to him.  And I said, “I am so sorry that you saw your father strangle your mother.  And you didn’t deserve that.”

Rebecca: No.  He was tiny too.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And increasingly, I’m thinking how much of these people’s toxic teachings came out of trauma.  And instead of getting—doing the trauma work and getting the healing they needed, they processed that trauma through writing these books that are causing even more trauma.  But it does come from a root of trauma.  And I just had this dream, and I felt such compassion for little Emerson.  That doesn’t mean I’m not angry at him.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t think he should take his books back.  But I’ve always wondered that question.  What would I say?  And in that dream, I kind of answered it.  And I woke up, and I’m like I can’t believe I said that to him.  And then I thought about it.  And I was like yeah.  You know what?  That’s probably what I would say to him.    

Rebecca: Yeah.  I think that’s the right thing.  

Sheila: That’s probably what I would say to him.  And I wish someone had said that to him earlier.    

Rebecca: Yeah.  That he also deserved better because he was like seven years old or something like that.

Sheila: Yeah.  I don't know how old he was.  But yeah.  He saw his dad strangle his mom, and then he got sent to a military boarding school.

Rebecca: The poor guy.  It is a Charles Dickens novel.  Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah.  The problem is, as sad as it is, he caused all of this trauma for all of these other people as did Martha Peace, as did Stormie Omartian, who came out of a—

Rebecca: An abusive marriage herself.  

Sheila: - an abusive marriage as did Jim Daley, who came out of a difficult marriage with an alcoholic father.  All of these guys had such terrible back stories.  And it’s like instead of writing books how about you deal with your trauma because you didn’t deserve that.  You didn’t.  So anyway I found out what I would say, and it surprised me.  Okay.  Well, that was fun.  We answered a bunch.   

Rebecca: Yes.  Thank you for sending us your questions.  Thank you for letting us do a podcast we didn’t have to spend five hours planning because—

Sheila: Yes.  Because it’s been a week.    

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s been a week.  

Sheila: And if you appreciate us and if you want to show us a little bit of love, please like our Facebook page and just encourage us.  Because as we were watching the numbers tick up yesterday, it’s like—

Rebecca: It made us feel a lot better.

Sheila: Yeah.  It’s like oh look.  These people know us and support us.  

Rebecca: And if anyone has had a toddler who is immobile for a month and has any great activity ideas, leave them in the comments for this podcast.

Sheila: Yes.   We are recording this six days before it airs.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  So I’ll still three weeks at the point that this comes out.  Or two and a half.  Or whatever.

Sheila: Yes.  Thank you, again, to our sponsor, the Kingdom Girls Bible, NIV Bible.  Please check it out with Zonderkidz.  The link is in the podcast notes.  The links to join our patron group, to subscribe to our email newsletter, to get our rubric are also there as well.  And we just appreciate you guys.  We appreciate everything.  We appreciate all the kind messages when all of this was happening.  

Rebecca: Yes.  Thank you.  

Sheila: But, again, if you can just team up with us on more than one platform, it is so helpful.  And that doesn’t just apply to us.  That applies to any creator that you love.  It is so good to plug in in more than one way.  I always knew that at some point something would get hacked because it inevitably does.  So it didn’t surprise me.  But it’s still really demoralizing.  Yeah.  So just plug in in more than one way.  And also, remember, if you have a creator that you really want to support, some of the best things that you can do is drive engagement on their posts.  So comment.  Even if it is just to say, thank you for saying this.  Even if you have nothing major to add to the conversation, leaving a comment is great.  Liking other people’s comments, liking the original post, sharing the original post, all of that drives engagement.  And social media platforms run by an algorithm.  So when they see, oh, wow, this is a post that people like, they’re going to show it to more people because just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean your post gets shown to 100,000 people.  

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Sheila: It’s going to be prioritized if the social media platform knows this is a high quality post.  And that applies for every social media platform.  But the same also goes in the opposite direction.  Please don’t rage comment on terrible trolls or terrible account’s posts.  Because if someone posts something totally misogynistic and you comment and you comment to a bunch of other people constantly, that drives the engagement of their posts.      

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s much better to do it on posts where it’s well meaning people who honestly might not know better versus trolls and rage based.  So the difference between being like, hey, Focus on the Family this was a miss.  Here’s why.  Versus, hey, She Who Shall Not Be Named—our patrons know exactly what we’re talking about.  Versus people who are truly just rage farms, right? 

Sheila: Yeah.  And if you really need to share something from them, take a screenshot and share the screenshot, and that way their post doesn’t get any engagement.  So that’s just a little bit about how social media works and how you can support us.  So thank you, and join us again next week on the Bare Marriage podcast.    

Rebecca: See you later.  

Sheila: Bye-bye.