Never Would Have Guessed

A Conversation on Purity Culture with Sheila Gregoire

• Bethany Fray • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Charissa and Bethany talk with author, Sheila Gregoire, about her latest book, She Deserves Better.

Learn more about Sheila at BareMarriage.com and follow her on Instagram @sheilagregoire and Twitter @sheilagregoire.

Follow us on Instagram @bethany_fray and @charissabrim and online at neverwouldhaveguessed.com

Bethany

Hello, and welcome to never would have

Charissa

guessed the

Bethany

podcast. I'm one of your

Charissa

hosts, Bethany fray. And I'm

Bethany

your other host Caressa brim.

Charissa

This is a place where

Bethany

we dive into the things others never would have guessed about sexual drama. Here's what we

Charissa

want you to know. No matter your relationship

Bethany

to sexual trauma, you are welcome

Charissa

in

Bethany

this

Charissa

conversation.

Bethany

And while

Charissa

this podcast centers around our experience, the concepts we

Bethany

cover may apply to other traumas as

Charissa

well.

Bethany

We are not therapist, but therapy has been game changing for both of us. We've also

Charissa

seen that safe conversations

Bethany

with trusted people can be an anchor in the healing process. We

Charissa

know

Bethany

firsthand that

Charissa

this can be a heavy

Bethany

topic. So consider this your official invitation to own

Charissa

your experience

Bethany

of this conversation. if you get three minutes in and feel like your

Charissa

shoulders have become permanent earrings,

Bethany

Just hit the

Charissa

pause button. Take

Bethany

a few deep breaths, maybe move your body a

Charissa

bit.

Bethany

Decided today is a good day to enter this conversation. And then trust

Charissa

your decision with no

Bethany

shame.

Charissa

At the end of every episode, we will guide you

Bethany

through a two minute grounding

Charissa

exercise. To hopefully leave you feeling light and empowered

Bethany

by honest

Charissa

conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. We are so glad

Bethany

you're

Charissa

here. Today we are joined by Sheila Ray Gregory, and she's the author of 11 books, holy Moly. Uh, including the Great Sex Rescue. She's the host of the Bear Marriage Podcast and the founder of To Love, honor, and Vacuum, an award-winning writer. Sheila calls the church to more than just pat answers by conducting original research to find out what advice works and what really doesn't. Uh, Sheila and her husband Keith, have been married for over 30 years, and together they have two adult daughters, one son in heaven, two sons-in-law, and two adorable grandchildren. And Sheila, even in line at the grocery store, which I love. so Sheila, thank you so much for taking time to join us. We devoured your book.

Sheila

Oh good.

Charissa

Just on a personal note, I just wanted to look you in the eyes and tell you thank you first of all, because gosh, a couple years ago I was introduced to your work with the Great Sex Rescue

Sheila

Mm-hmm.

Charissa

It, yeah, just made so many things that I knew internally, concrete, and so I just wanted to say thank you for what you do cuz it really matters.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

wonderful. Thank you for that encouragement too.

Charissa

Yeah. So Sheila, we have you on today to talk about your new book. She Deserves Better. So can you kind of tell us what it is about, kind of what prompted you to write it and maybe why now?

Sheila

Okay, so I have to go back in time a little bit. So this is, this is a little bit of a longer story, but um, a couple of years ago we surveyed 20,000 women for our book, the Great Sex Rescue because we had become really concerned with some of the stuff we were reading in other evangelical sex and marriage books. And we were like, this does not sound healthy. And we decided to take Jesus at his word cuz he said, a bad tree, can't beer, good fruit and a good tree can't beer, bad fruit so you can recognize good teaching by its fruit. So we thought, let's just measure the fruit. So that's what we did. We surveyed 20,000 women and that resulted in our book, the Great Sex Rescue, looking at some of the toxic teachings in the church. And I heard from so many women who said, oh my gosh, I feel validated, I feel free, you know, this is wonderful. Um, but then in the next breath they'd say, but, I don't know what to do with my kids now cuz I grew up with all this toxic stuff. I don't wanna pass that along, but I also don't wanna tell my 14 year old go do whatever you want. So what, what do you do? Um, so we decided to do another huge research project. So we surveyed almost 7,500 women this time to find out about their experiences as teenagers, what they were taught, what their rules were, how sex ed was handled, and then see how that impacted them long term. And that became, she deserves better.

Charissa

That's powerful cuz yeah, you do kind of just get left with this feeling of, okay, so I know that wasn't the way, but what is the way moving forward?

Bethany

Well, and as I was reading, I think what is so impactful other than that feeling of, oh, I feel seen and acknowledging things that maybe you have an emotional memory for, but you don't necessarily have the quotes from the specific books. I love all of the data that you guys have to back it up, which is just so empowering for women who were brought up in that purity culture because sometimes you can look back and you can think. Was it really that intense? You know, was it really that bad? Did I kind of like make this up in my brain? And so for me, as someone in your audience, going back and reading and having all that DA data, and seeing, wow, you guys really did your research was so, it was just a really powerful addition to the content that you guys put in the book.

Sheila

Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah, cuz that is, you know what, what often happens in these, in these scenarios is that we end up debating ideas, right? So one person will say, well, this is what we should teach. And another person will say, well, this is what we should teach and you can't make any headway. And so our strategy was, let's just add some numbers. Let's just say, okay, if you believe that then long term she's gonna have a 35% lower orgasm rate. Or, or if she believes that, then long term she's gonna have a 68% higher chance of marrying an abuser. So, you know, when you put some data behind it, then there's, there's a lot of power to that.

Bethany

Well, it adds science to it and facts, and that takes things out of the opinion section and moves it into, well, here's what we know from what we've seen, which is really powerful.

Charissa

And like you were saying, Sheila, it's easy to, box purity culture into its own little box and say oh, that was uncomfortable for me as a teenager, but now I'm a grownup and I have different thoughts and opinions. But you're right. This isn't just something that impacts you as a teenager. This has implications on your self-esteem. Like you said, your, future of marrying into an abusive relationship. It has so many far reaching implications that really make us, question what, what the impact of all of this is

Sheila

yeah, and most people don't realize that it necessarily hurt them. You know, you can, you can think, okay, you know what, sure, I was taught some crazy stuff, but I love Jesus and I'm doing fine, and it really didn't impact me. And you may think that it didn't impact you, but what we're trying to say is okay. But if you look at the numbers, it may have impacted you and you didn't realize it.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

You know, like you may be living with a really low libido and you may think, well, that's just my normal, and you don't realize that had you not been taught this stuff, had you not internalized this stuff, you may not have that in your marriage. Like you, that may be a hurdle that you never had to walk through and walk with. And, um, and that's what I want people to realize is it's not that we always recognize when things are harmful, sometimes we don't, but we ha do have a responsibility to the next generation to not repeat the same problems.

Charissa

Yeah. What I found so interesting is I have some level of understanding that purity culture impacted me. Just some context, I experienced a sexual, assault in my early twenties, and when I was reading the Great Sex Rescue, that's when I started to piece together, oh my gosh, I think I was kind of like, walked into this, you know, like there were a lot of things that just waltzed me into an abusive situation without any tools to manage it. And you put such succinct wording to that in this book, and I'm, I'm not a mom at this point in my life, but what I found was your information and your view of what do we need to do for the next generation was immensely helpful in helping me to kind of reparent parts of myself, you know, to walk through those questions and that open dialogue to, you know, re recast my vision of myself now as an adult, which is interesting.

Sheila

Yeah. You know, so many people have told us that we actually weren't expecting that and it's been such a nice, it's, it's been such a nice thing to learn. But we had about a thousand women in our launch team, and so many of them were saying, I'm just here to reparent myself. we heard over and over again. I'm just here and, and they found the book so good. It's like this is what little 15 year old me should have been told, and even just to hear it now so that you can tell little 15 year old, you, you know,

Charissa

Yes.

Sheila

you're not a walking stumbling block to be used by Satan. Like you, you, you have a right to exist in a female body. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Bethany

Yeah. Sheila, you kind of mentioned this in your first chapter, the difference between you, how you grew up, and then the nineties and two thousands, purity culture. I wonder if we could kind of bring in some context here of personally how each of us are coming in with our relationship to purity culture.

Sheila

I didn't totally realize this until we did our survey and we looked at the difference in the generations. And even when my own girls were younger, I was starting to get a sense that something's different with their youth group. And I knew it was hokey, but I kind of thought, well, maybe it was just the church, like the particular church that they were going to. But as we've looked back, and this project has really encouraged me to look back at the differences. They are quite immense. So I grew up in downtown Toronto. Um, we're all Canadian. The, the three of us who worked on this, on this project. Um, I grew up in downtown Toronto in the eighties, so, Conservative evangelicalism really hadn't become mainstream in the US yet. It was, it was starting to, and it certainly hadn't come to Canada. So, you know, we spent, uh, we actually, our church was right next door to the first major abortion clinic in Canada. And so we spent a lot of our time, you know, getting coffee to the police officers who were working there. Um, we spent a lot of time talking about prayer, a lot of time talking about evangelism, how to win our schools for Christ, how to get Christian groups in our schools. Like we were very focused on evangelism, on missions, on prayer. Doesn't mean we were perfect, um, doesn't mean everyone was equally devoted to Jesus, but the topics of conversation were around that. And yes, we all knew that we were supposed to save sex for marriage. And yes, we all knew that, you know, you weren't supposed to go too far. But that wasn't the main thing talked about. And everybody dated, absolutely everybody. I think I went through every guy in the youth group. It was a small youth group, you know, so every six months you move on to something and that was normal. Um, when by the time my girls got to youth group in the two thousands, things had totally changed because now youth group was almost entirely about sex. And when we looked at the books that were aimed at teen Girls during Pur Purity culture, the themes in them are all about virginity and purity and how you're aiming for marriage. And this was not talked about in my youth group. We all were aiming for university and we all were trying to figure out what God's will was for our lives. And that morphed into your identity will be found in getting married. And your identity is found in staying a virgin and your virginity is the main thing that shows that you follow with Christ. And so everything changed. It was no longer about this outward focused faith where you know, you're trying to win the world. It's about, I'm an isolate myself and keep myself pure from everything.

Bethany

Mm.

Sheila

And that put such a different pressure and emphasis on girls, cuz now their identity was so small compared to what I went through as a teenager.

Bethany

I wonder if we could pivot a little bit, cuz there are several statements in your book. The She Deserves statements that, I would love to talk about that are just, they pack a power punch. It was hard to kind of pick out a few, which ones do we wanna dive into. which ones did we have the biggest. Response to, you know, and I was at the beach with my family while I was reading, and I was laughing with Kris because all I had was a lip gloss. I forgot my highlighter. And so your book is highlighted in lip gloss. I was like, this is either really funny or like, I, I'm not sure what, um, and most of my lip gloss highlights, were in two of the parts. The first one being she deserves to exist as a person and not a threat. And the two, data points that you highlight in that section that were so just empowering to me, and like I said, evoked the most emotion, was you say the modesty message makes female bodies dangerous and so boys must be protected from female bodies. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that.

Sheila

Yeah, so we knew going in that the modesty messages were gonna be some of the most harmful because this is what people have said. There's multiple studies in this, but we wanted to figure out why and how. So we actually drilled down pretty hard on modesty messages and we measured four different iterations of them in our survey. So we asked, um, did you believe as a teenager that, uh, boys are visual in a way that girls will never understand? That boys can't help but lust if a girl is dressed like she's trying to incite it. Girls have a responsibility not to be a stumbling block to the boys around them by what they wear. And a girl who dresses in modestly is worse than a girl who doesn't. And we let the survey taker decide what worse meant and. They're all so terrible long-term, like they're all so awful. Um, but to give you two data points, just that, that explain how awful, um, when a, when a girl believes that she is in part, at least in part, to blame for a boy's lust, she's 68% more likely to marry the abuser. That's where that stat came from, that I quoted earlier. But she's also 52% more likely to experience sexual pain or vaginismus. And this is something we never talk about and we need to, because vaginismus is largely an evangelical problem. It's a sexual dysfunction disorder when the muscles of the vaginal wall contract, which can make penetration really painful, if not impossible, and evangelical women have an instance rate of 22.7%. Which is roughly two and a half. I think the general population is around eight, seven or eight, so that is huge. This is our issue. If you talk to any pelvic floor physiotherapist, they will tell you the majority of their clients are evangelical. And so we wanted to figure out why. And in the great sex rescue, we identified one big message that was largely responsible for it, if you believe it before you're married, which is that a wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it, cuz that takes away women's agency. But the modesty message looks like it's even more related to it

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

because think about this, okay, if you tell a girl that a boy can't help but lust that boys are visual in a way that you can never understand, that you have a responsibility not to be a stone. What you're really telling her is that no matter how great a guy is, essentially, he's always gonna see you primarily as a sex object. So all your desires for intimacy, all your desires for, you know, an actual healthy relationship, okay, maybe you'll get that. But you'll only get that if you first let him treat you like a sex object, cuz it's really sex that that drives him. And that's really what he wants. And when you go out in public, some men are just gonna be overcome by your body and they're not gonna be able to help it because that's just the way men were made. That's the way God made men.

Bethany

Ooh.

Sheila

And so God made men to objectify you. God made men. To sin against you, and they can't help it. And so because they can't help it, you have to stop it by changing what you wear. And that means that you forever feel like your body is putting you in a dangerous position. It's putting you in a dangerous position emotionally, because no man that you really love is ever gonna really be able to be intimate with you. And it's putting you in a literally dangerous position because all of these guys are trying to rape you. And a lot of, there's a lot of theories right now that vaginismus is actually the body's trauma response. Um, the rates of vaginismus correlates, um, like the obligation sex message, the modest it correlates with, and it's analogous to if women have prior trauma. So you see almost identical numbers. So it's like our bodies are interpreting this as trauma and our bodies are trying to protect us

Bethany

Yeah.

Sheila

because you're telling them you're not safe. Can I give you the most, the, the worst example that we found? It was just heartbreaking. So Dana GREs wrote a lot of books around purity culture. She wrote and the bride wore white, um, sh lies young women believe she has an event, secret Keeper Girl that goes all across North America talking to girls ages eight to 12 about modesty. Um, it's now been rebranded. True Girl, but it's really almost the same thing. And in the original Secret Keeper Girl curriculum, which we had to analyze because I bought it for my daughters when they were younger. Um, we only did, we only did one of the eight dates and I realized this is weird and then we put it aside. But, um, uh, but in that, so we never got to this particular date. Um, cause this is further on day five or six or something. But she has these tests that mothers can do with their daughters to see if your clothes are modest. And one of them is you're supposed to lift your arms up in the air. And if any bellies, sh belly shows, that's bad because she explains bellies are intoxicating. And then there's a conversation that moms are supposed to have with their daughters about this. Do you remember what intoxicating is? It's like when you're under dental anesthetic or when you're drunk and you get out of control. And God designed our bodies to be intoxicating to men, but you're only supposed to intoxicate one man, your future husband. And so we need to cover up so we don't intoxicated others. This was aimed at girls as young as eight, and so she was telling eight-year-olds that the sight of your belly can make an adult man out of control.

Bethany

Hmm.

Charissa

Mm.

Sheila

And no one said anything.

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

of thousands of girls went to these events. They're still being held,

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

and people thought that was okay.

Bethany

Mm.

Sheila

And then we wonder why we have such high rates of sexual pain. Yeah, we're totally all traumatized.

Bethany

Yeah, yeah. I'm sitting over here just doing some breath work because even, even though I've read through, it's like, yes, I read these parts. This chapter in particular hits home so personally for me, because I'm one of the large number of women who's experienced vaginismus, I also had sexual trauma early in my childhood and part of the church, and this message of my body being intoxicating. I walked around and also I was. A C cup by the time I was in sixth grade. So I was a large busted girl. I went to a private Christian school. I had a teacher one time in the middle of class call me out and ask me to leave the classroom because I was wearing a pushup bra that was distracting the boys from the lesson. And the truth of it was, I, I was 12 years old. I didn't know that I had outgrown my bra. It was not a pushup bra, it was just too small. But I was horrified. And the shame that followed that was so immense because of this exact message that you're talking about. Coupled that with the trauma I'd already experienced and then what the church was teaching and you know, I was one of those girls who really tried to be good. You know, it was like, I want the straight A's and I wanna be seen as, as the good Christian girl. And this message to me, it has helped me unpack, my own personal experience going back and thinking about purity culture and all these teachings, of course, so many people wanted to just point straight to sexual abuse, which I think it's hard our pasts are so intricate and layered, right? And so you can't necessarily compartmentalize things. And also, it's so powerful for me as a woman to say, yes, this modesty message was also traumatizing. And to name it, is such a big part of my healing journey because in the naming is where we find freedom.

Sheila

Mm-hmm.

Bethany

You even talked about this in that chapter, there's a data point where, A girl with a larger bust can be wearing the same shirt as another girl, and she is basically told your body is overly sexual. It's more sexual than your peers. And so that's kind of like this idea of that's on you.

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. And you, and that's not anything that any girl can help. And, and that's why when churches, and Christian schools make these dress codes and what they're really targeting is girls with, you know, a figure that's not, that's not fair, that's not right. That is inherently body shaming. And I think that, um, one, one thing you said about how these messages are traumatic, that's something we really wanted people to understand. Um, do you remember three years ago when that Matthew West, I think it was three years ago, maybe two, when that Matthew West Song came out? Modest is hottest and it was supposed to be a parody. Um, I think he had it up for like a week before he had to take it down cuz of all the outcry.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

Um, and I listened to him talk about this with Ali Beth Stuckey on a podcast. And they were saying that the problem is that all of these people who were traumatized as teenagers were now reacting and they were getting triggered. Um, and yes, people were too legalistic in the past and we need to stop being legalistic, but we need to remember that God does cause to be closed in righteousness, et cetera. And what they were missing was, no, it's not that people who were traumatized in the past are triggered. It's that these messages themselves are traumatic. The messages themselves cause harm, and it, the messages don't cause harm because of the rules. Like, you know, your short can't be more than three finger widths below your clavicle or your, your skirt has to touched the floor if you're kneeling. Like, those weren't the things that were the problem, the problem was thinking in the first place. That women are responsible for men's lust and the girls are responsible for boys' lust. And so it doesn't the rule. In fact, I would rather have rules than tell girls, well, you just need to be clothed at righteousness and make sure that your clothing says gospel, cuz that's what they're doing now. Right? They've gotten rid of the legalistic rules cuz they thought legalism is the problem. And now they just say, just dress so that you say gospel. Well, there's no gospel aisle in target. Like, I mean, I can just see a girl showing up to youth group and then the youth leader saying, I don't know, Everly, do you think that that that shirt says gospel? Like I, it's just, it's ridiculous and it's still doing the same thing, which is telling girls that your clothes declare your faith

Bethany

Yes.

Sheila

and that you need to cover up so that boys don't lust.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

that's the thing that's traumatic. Reducing girls faith to their clothing and telling girls. That they're responsible if they're sinned against, that's Davo. It's just straight up davo.

Charissa

Okay. You say Davo and I'm familiar with this. Can you just share briefly what that means? Cause that's powerful.

Sheila

Yeah. So Davo is the way that abusive people or systems, um, respond to accusations of abuse. It isn't necessarily intentional, it's just this is the way abusive systems operate. So when someone says, this hurt me, or You did something wrong to me, they respond by first denying it happened, attacking the accuser, and then reversing victim and offender.

Charissa

Mm.

Sheila

So, you know, a girl can say, well, you, you hurt me because you lusted after me, or you made me feel uncomfortable by staring at me. And then the response is, you know, well, what did you expect wearing that? Don't you know the boys are visual and men are visual, and God made us this way.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

you know that you're supposed to cover up? Because by dressing like that, you incited lust in me and you hurt me. You caused me to sin. And so now, instead of you being the one who sinned against you are the one who caused the sin. And so you're actually the offender.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

nuts. And we do that in so many ways in the church, especially with sexual assault,

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

We tell, we tell girls that boys can't help it. They can't stop in a makeout situation. So you have to be the gatekeeper. You're the brakes. You need to stop it. And so then you'll have a girl who consented to start kissing,

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

but he kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing until he raped her. But she feels like it was her fault, cuz, well, what did I expect when I started kissing? And that phrase, what did, what did you expect? I mean, that's even in the book, every young woman's battle, what did you expect?

Charissa

Which I can say firsthand In the instance of my trauma, whenever I came back into my body and was like cognitively aware of what was happening, I think that was probably one of the very first things I said to myself. What did you expect? And you're right, so abusive, it's so, um, degrading to yourself. There's a quote that you had in your book that I feel like just is so succinct and so poignant, and you say, violating consent should not be normalized as succumbing to temptation.

Sheila

Mm-hmm.

Charissa

Why have we conflated these two things?

Sheila

Yeah. You know, it's funny, um, my, my daughter Rebecca and I were on a really large podcast a couple of months ago where we were arguing with the host who was saying, well, boys can't help. Like boys have such a strong sex drive though. I mean, we need to teach girls that boys have such a strong, strong sex drive and they can't help it. And so girls need to be aware of this. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because when you say boys can't help, but what you are saying is a boy can't help but rape you.

Charissa

Yes. Yes.

Sheila

That is what you are saying.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

Shanti Felton, who is a very well known bestselling author in evangelicalism, um, wrote a book with Lisa Rice called Every Young Woman's Battle, and she based it on a survey that she did of teenage boys. And so I'm gonna quote a statistic from that survey. This statistic is not accurate because her question was so poorly worded and the possible answers were poorly worded, and then her conclusion was poorly. Um, done. So I, I'm not saying this is accurate, but this is what she told a whole generation of evangelical girls is that 82% of boys have either little ability or little responsibility to stop in a make out situation. And then she highlighted the advice given from one of these boys, if you want to stop it, is safest to not even start.

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

Now, let's be clear, 100% of boys have the ability to stop and 100% of boys have the responsibility to stop. If she says no. Okay. So, but telling girls that, oh, boys can't stop. This is so hard for boys. Normalizes rape, it normalizes violating consent because instead of seeing it as rape, you simply see it as a will. He got carried away because of his God-given sex drive, which you like stoked because you were wearing that skirt and because you started making out with him.

Charissa

What I love about this messaging, Sheila, is that. Freedom for one is freedom for all. Right. And so in communicating this message to young boys and young girls, you are trapping young girls and you are also trapping young boys.

Bethany

Yeah.

Sheila

absolutely. And can I, can I talk on that? Cause I'm actually quite passionate about this, first of all, when we tell boys you can't help it,

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

We are instilling such helplessness and shame in boys.

Charissa

Yes.

Sheila

And I think a lot of that stems from the fact that we have taught boys to equate noticing that a girl is pretty or noticing a girl's figure with lusting after her, and we haven't clearly drawn the distinction. And so you have these poor 12, 13, 14 year old boys who are just starting to get hormones. They're going through puberty, all of a sudden like, whoa, she has boobs. And they're fascinated by boobs. And they think this means they are sinning because this is all we talk about, right? How important it is not to lust. And no one has explained, or very few people explain that lust is not sexual attraction. Sexual attraction is not lust. Noticing that a woman has or a girl has boobs is not lust. Um, feeling like a girl's pretty is not lust. You know, lust is using someone for your own sexual gratification. So it's fantasizing about someone. It's fixating on someone's body. Um, masturbating does the memory of someone like that is lust. But feeling attracted to someone or noticing someone is pretty, is not lust. But when boys think, if I even notice a girl's boobs, I have sinned.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

How are they supposed to live? Like that would cause full-blown panic. And this is what a lot of men told us when we did our men's survey, is like, I didn't know what to do. Like, where am I supposed to look? Everywhere I look, there's all these girls.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

And so you can see why dressed in girls in burlap sacks becomes, you know, an option. Because otherwise they're gonna see a figure. And that means that they've sinned. And so you have these boys growing up feeling like, I have no control over my sexuality. My body is just, it's, it's out there and it's making me sin and it's betraying me.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

And so you give up and you give up trying to treat women with respect, because you've never been taught how to respect a girl other than being told, don't find her attractive, right? Don't get attracted to her, which you can't do. And so he stops fighting and he thinks it's impossible, and he thinks I cannot help anything. And so the only option I have is to be with a girl who will stop me.

Charissa

Yeah. A trickle down of that exact situation is, like you said, they give up trying, or there's this like military grade barricade between boys and girls. And so I know my experience as a young teenager and shoot, even through college, I went to a Bible college was men, boys would treat me like a ghost. I didn't even exist to them. And I was left to decide whether that was because they were attracted to me or I was causing them to stumble, or I was just not important. Like, you know, whatever you fill in the blanks with always the harshest possible answer, right? But there was like such a lack of a male gaze towards me that then when I did receive it and boundaries were being crossed, I was left to think that it was a good thing. Oh, I'm being paid attention to, oh, this person must like me. And so I excused. What in hindsight was predatory behavior? Because I wasn't able to interact with someone who respected me and liked me at the same time and showed me that through their actions or through, you know, what would be a normal, developmentally appropriate form of, connection.

Sheila

Yeah, cuz we really got rid of friendship.

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

We got rid of friendship and we, and we never explained what it meant to respect each other. Um, and to re you know, just, just to treat other people well as you would want to be treated. And to treat people as whole people, not just as body parts. We never explained what that meant or what that looked like. And so, you know, even, even if guys are ignoring you, that is still objectifying you.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

They may think, well, I am honoring her. And this is what every man's battle teaches and every young man's battle is that you're supposed to bounce your eyes. Um, Steve Arburn even, even suggests that if you really like a girl, you just act like a dweeb so that she's not attracted to you so that she's not a problem to you. Like you're supposed to separate yourself from women as much as possible. Cause women are just temptations and, and there's nothing in there about, Hey, how about you just learn to treat her like a person and not a set of body parts.

Bethany

Well, and I'm seeing so many ways that. She deserves better. And your content here just kind of circles back to meet the great sex rescue because then you go, okay, so what happens in a marriage when you have a man who has not learned how to not objectify women? You have a woman who comes into the marriage with a pre-acceptance of objectification and responsibility, and then all of the sudden there's supposed to be intimacy and friendship and delight and pleasure. And then it goes back to exactly what you're saying of women not experiencing orgasm and just this s great miss in, marriages because of this teaching.

Sheila

Yeah, and I think a lot of men feel desperate because they feel like I need to have sex in order to stop all my lusting after all these other women, like, you know, I talked to women who said we need to have, we needed to have sex every Sunday morning so that he wouldn't worry about lusting after women in the worship service. So I needed to top him up. I needed to give him release before we went to church so that he would be able to keep here. And they, they felt this was normal,

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

you know, or before we'd go to the beach, I need to make sure that I do something to him to give him release so that he's not. Um, I'm gonna be overcome by all of these women in bikinis. So this feeling like he is helpless again because we've equated noticing with lusting. So this feeling like he is helpless and so the only weapon that he has is her, is constantly giving him release in whatever way they decide so that he can fight against these things. And that is so dehumanizing to her.

Charissa

Hmm. Yes.

Sheila

That totally changes the very nature of sex. It's not something that's intimate, it's merely a sin management tool.

Charissa

If we can kind of. I jump off from this idea because this speaks explicitly towards consent and that is one of your statements. Um, I think it's chapter eight, that she deserves to understand consent and what you're describing there, there's a huge difference between coercion, compliance and consent. Can you kind of speak to like what is coercion, compliance, consent, how do these all go together and what has the research shown?

Sheila

Yeah. So consent is an enthusiastic yes. Consent is saying, yes, I want to do this. I'm totally into this. Let's do this. Compliance is going along with something with, without actually saying yes. So you're not physically fighting or resisting, but that doesn't mean you said yes. So here's an example. Um, we talked about a woman, I think we called her K in the book. Who told us her story. So she was dating a guy probably 16, 17 years old, and they were making out. His hand would wander and she would say no, and he would take his hand away, but a minute later he would do it again and she would say no again. And then he would try it again, and he would keep trying to go further and further and further. And she eventually realized that her no meant nothing.

Charissa

Mm.

Sheila

And so she just stopped saying it

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

and he ended up raping her. But for two decades she didn't realize she had been raped. She felt like she had sinned,

Bethany

Hmm.

Sheila

but she had never said yes. She had repeatedly said no until her, she was worn down.

Charissa

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

And so that is not consent. That is compliance, but not consent.

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

Um, here's another example. And this one is actually in one of the books that was one of the Christian books, very, very well selling Christian book to, to teen girls and young women, um, where the author tells the story of how she lost her purity at 15. She describes the situation. She said, um, she hadn't wanted it. He was forcing his advances on her. He was doing things she didn't understand. She felt like a deer in the headlights, but he awakened something in her

Charissa

Hmm,

Sheila

and so she lost her purity. What she's actually describing is a classic date rape situation with arousal, non concordance. And I want, I want everyone to understand what arousal non concordance is so our bodies can be physically a aroused when our minds don't want it.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

So arousal does not equal consent, but a lot of people think, well, if I got aroused, I must have consented. But let's see what she said. She said that she said no. She said that he was forcing her. She said that she felt like a deer in the headlights. That is the classic freeze trauma response. But then she got aroused and at, and that, that is how she lost her purity. And so she started this ministry to teach girls how to protect their purity and how not to lose their purity. And so she's dis, she's framing this as her sin, but she didn't consent. That

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

was a case of date rape. And if you go to any comprehensive sex ed in public school, they will use something like very similar to that as an example. But we don't do that in the Christian Church. We don't talk about, you know, about consent because, well then we're, we're saying that kids might have sex. And so all we're gonna say is don't do it. And we, we haven't explained consent. And so even our authors writing to teen girls are not explaining this. There's, they're, they're telling situations which are obviously date rape and saying that this is a sin where she lost her purity. And every young man's battle does that. Too. They give all these examples of what is obviously date rape and they don't name it as such.

Charissa

Which just has such long reaching implications. Because if you think about that woman who, goodness, the I like, I identify so much, you think about that woman if she views her own sexual assault as her responsibility. I think you describe it in your book, there's a twofold impact that happens. One is, She was assaulted, right? She was raped, but then the other is now she's holding herself responsible for that. And when you carry your own trauma in that way, you don't get help that you need. You don't pursue healing. And so you end up in this self-perpetuating traumatic cycle denying your own self, the healing and help that you deserve.

Bethany

Yeah.

Sheila

And actually our survey bore that out. This is, this is something I find really tragic because when you look at the purity culture messages, so many of them were spread by women. It wasn't men telling us this stuff. It was other women. It was women telling us to cover up. It was women telling us boys can't help it. I mean, this particular woman started a huge ministry and if you back it up, it was, I wonder how much of it is just a trauma response. It's her saying, I was put in the situation that I didn't wanna be in and so I'm gonna make sure that no other girl gets in that situation. So I'm gonna teach them to cover up. I'm gonna teach them, you know, all these extreme modesty messages and extreme purity messages thinking that maybe this way I can protect them. Because what you're really trying to do is protect little 15 year old you who wasn't protected.

Bethany

Yes.

Charissa

Yes.

Sheila

put words to that

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

never gotten help for your trauma. So instead you're gonna do all of this. Um, you know, Joshua Harris has, has who wrote I Kiss Dating Goodbye, has come out and said that he was a victim of sexual assault as a child as well. You wonder how much that played a role in a lot of this. But you know, when we, when we looked at the, um, the women who still believe the modesty message as adults, because most people in our survey believed it as teenagers, but don't believe it now. So when you look at the women who do believe it now, so the kinds of women who would be teaching this to teenage girls today, they look quite different from other women. They tend to have far worse marriages. Their marriages tend to be abusive or more likely to be abusive, not tend to be, but they're more likely to be abusive. Their husbands are far more likely to be using pornography. They're far more likely to be insecure about their husband's lust issues. And so here they are, they're in this bad marriage and they can't change him. And so what are you gonna do? You're gonna try to change all the girls around you so that maybe your husband won't sin.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

So again, it's a reaction to what we're going through instead of an honest look at where you are in life and saying, okay, my husband's just not a great guy in this area and I actually need to do something about that. I need to set boundaries. I need to say no, I need to see a licensed counselor and get some help in extreme situations. I may even need to separate, but rather than that, they're gonna try to control everyone around them. So that maybe he won't hurt them anymore.

Bethany

Mm-hmm. I think that's such an, important, connection to draw there is, is to bring some, some curiosity around that data and to look at this as, okay, this is, this looks, acts, and sounds a lot like trauma response because I think that brings compassion in because one of the things in your book that you talk about a little bit is how you know women are teaching this message and. the relationship between females and how there's this issue with, you know, we're shaming each other and if you see another woman who is maybe wearing, you know, like a cute short skirt, then it's like, oh, she's a bad person.

Sheila

Mm-hmm.

Bethany

And how it affects not only our friendships with men and and boys when we were younger, but also our friendships with women. Um, and for me personally, this just brings so much compassion cuz there's a lot of anger there. You know, in reading this book, there's, there was a big anger response that came up for me. And so using the data to go, okay, this, a lot of this is trauma response helps bring in that compassion, which I think then can foster connection and allow us to move forward as people. And in changing this message and healing the message. Just as we kind of round out our conversation, my question always, when we name the thing, when we name the problem, we look at the data, my follow-up question is always, now what do we do? And Sheila, I've heard you speak to, two things. One is your passion for the next generation of women and saying, okay, well we can do better. And I also heard you talk about the large number of women who are reparenting themselves. And Chris and I have talked so much about this. and I'm currently pregnant with a daughter, so it's certainly something I'm thinking about, but I think it starts with me and my own story and my own healing so that I can. Lead her through this. Right. but I, I wonder if you can speak to your passion about one of the things that I wrote down, she deserves to know about her body. To be embodied, to understand the things that are happening to her, and pleasure in all of that.

Sheila

Yeah. You know, um, here's just one data point. 40% of women did not know the female orgasm existed until after they were 18. And the younger you are, when you know about female orgasm, the more likely you are to orgasm once you're married, when you explain sex to a kid. So when a kid learns about sex, they learn about the male orgasm because that's necessary for a child to be born. If they don't also learn that women do as well then. The way that you picture sex from day one is something that a guy does to a girl. It's something that a man does to a woman to experience pleasure, and that really warps how you see sex.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

we, we duck pretty deep on sex ed. In our survey, we, we asked a bunch of questions about, you know, how you learned about puberty, how you learned about sex, um, how embarrassed you were of your period. We also gave women a set of 10 sex ed terms and said, how many of these could you identify at the point where you graduated high school? And the more terms you knew, the higher your self-esteem, the less likely you were to marry an abuser, the less likely you were to have multiple sex partners. Like there is no downside to more information. There's absolutely no downside.

Bethany

Mm.

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

But very few women knew a lot of terms and women were far more likely to know the terms for male anatomy than for female anatomy,

Charissa

Hmm.

Sheila

which is super scary.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

And Gen X and boomer women tended to do better than millennial women

Bethany

Isn't that interesting?

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

because the church really changed. Like, I don't think we realize how huge an impact purity culture had.

Charissa

Yeah.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

Um, and you know what I wanna tell parents is you don't need to do this perfectly. You really don't. Like I messed up telling my kids about sex. It was awkward. I didn't do well. But what we did was we kept talking.

Bethany

Yeah.

Sheila

And so when they were 14, 15, 16, they could tell me anything. It wasn't a big deal. so even if I didn't do it perfectly at 10, 11, 12, it doesn't matter. Like, just keep talking. No one has to do it perfectly, but it's that relationship that you have with your kid that really matters. And I think we stopped talking to girls cuz we felt like if they know about oral sex, they will go have oral sex. And so it's better not to tell, not to tell them these things. And actually, the opposite is true. The more you know, the less likely you are to be victimized. Like the less likely you are to be harassed or abused in church, the more things you know

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

So that, that's, that's number one. To answer your question,

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

the thing that I would wanna end on is this, and maybe this is my action point, is that if you, if you look at our results from both surveys from like 10,000 feet up, so you just look down, what you'll find is that church attendance is positive. Okay? So going to church is good for people. Believing in Jesus is good for people. You have higher marital satisfaction, higher sexual satisfaction, higher self-esteem. And multiple studies have found this. It's such an established fact in psychology. They've stopped looking at it. So religiosity is positive. Now they're still looking at at individual subgroups, which is what we're doing. But we also found that as soon as you internalize these toxic beliefs, the benefits of church disappear.

Charissa

Wow.

Sheila

And so while church is good, not all churches are equal. And I think a lot of us are trying to deal with the toxic stuff we grew up in while we are still in the same places that are spreading the toxic stuff.

Charissa

mm.

Sheila

And that may be something that we all have to start asking ourselves is this a good place for me? Because if church attendance is overall good, there are churches that are doing this well. And I don't not, I'm not saying that everyone needs to leave their church. I think God has different things for everybody and you just need to ask him. And I can't tell you, but I can tell you what our data says,

Charissa

Yeah.

Sheila

is that raising kids in a toxic place that's gonna teach them all these toxic things is not healthy. And wouldn't you rather raise your kids in a church, which is telling 'em the stuff you want them to hear instead of having to yell louder than the church.

Bethany

Yeah.

Charissa

Mm. Yeah. That's powerful.

Bethany

Mm-hmm.

Sheila

And it's not just for your kids too, like you said, it's about reparenting yourself. And it's very hard to reparent yourself if you're in a church where you're constantly being taught the

Bethany

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Charissa

Yeah.

Bethany

Sheila, thank you so much for, um, your presence brings permission with it. It brings permission to, to question, to name, to get curious, to be passionate about the things that matter. And so I just appreciate your presence on this podcast and in your writing and, your commitment to this good, difficult work. Um, I just thank you for that.

Sheila

Well, thank you. It's been great to be here.

Charissa

Absolutely. So where can people find your book, find you? Where can you point them to learn more?

Sheila

Sure. So she deserves better and great sex rescue. You can get them anywhere. They're just, they're all over the place. Um, but you can find me@bearmarriage.com. So that's b a r e bear marriage.com. My podcast is there. My social media links are there. Um, you know, Twitter is angry. Sheila. Instagram is interesting. Sheila, um, cute Sheila. So you can come find me whatever mood you're in and, uh, and then I have lots of courses there as well and links to my books. So come check that out.

Charissa

Amazing. Sheila, thank you so much. This was incredible. I am sweating. I'm just like, you can probably see how red my face is. She's like so excited by this conversation.

Bethany

Okay friend. If you are here. That means you have listened to some. We're all of this podcast. And I am willing to bet. That you have some feelings about it. As we mentioned earlier, at the end of every episode, we're going to take two minutes to do a grounding exercise. Just to give us some time to breathe and get you ready for the next thing in your day. Today, we're going to practice box breathing together. Now, if you haven't done this before, it's super simple. You're going to inhale for four seconds. Pause. For four seconds. Exhale for four seconds. And then pause for four seconds. And then do the whole process over again. So, if you kind of imagine with your breasts. You're creating a box. The top line as you inhale for four seconds. Pause for four seconds and draw that line down. Exhale for four seconds as you draw the bottom line of the box. And inhale again, as you go up toward the top where you started. Today, we're going to practice three cycles of box breathing together. But feel free to do them as many times as you need to. Okay. Let's get started. Relax, your shoulders. Put your feet on the floor of possible. And if safe to do so. I just invite you to close your eyes. Go ahead and breath in and count to four. Inhaling. 1, 2, 3, 4. Pause your breath. Too. Three. Four. Exhale. 2 3, 4. Hold 2, 3, 4. And take one quick cleansing breasts. You did your first box breathing exercise. Okay, let's do the second. Inhale. One two. Three four, pause. Too. Three. Four. Exhale that breath three. Four. And to hold the exhale Three. Four. We're going to do that one more time for our last cycle of box breathing together. Inhale. Two. Three. Four. Hold Two. Three four. Let it all out. Three. For. And hold. Too. Three. Four.

Charissa

Bethany. Thank you so much for that. Breathing deeply. Paying attention to my body. These have all been crucial to my healing And If I'm honest Part of my healing journey has included learning how to feel comfortable asking for what I would like. So here If you enjoyed this conversation today, please feel free to share it and rate, review, and subscribe wherever it is that you listen. You can find us on Instagram at Bethany underscore fray and at Carissa brim. Or online@neverwouldhaveguessed.com. Friends. Thank you so much for listening. As you go out into the rest of your day. May you feel empowered to navigate the things others never would've guessed about you. And to make room for others doing the same.