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Episode 276: Is Reading Romance Novels for Women the Same as Watching Porn?

• Sheila Gregoire • Season 8 • Episode 276

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We know watching porn is wrong--but are romance novels just as bad? We've often heard that comparison made: Sure, guys watch porn, but remember that women read novels! Today Rebecca and I talk about when the comparison may be fair, and when it isn't. And we ask: how should we see romance novels or erotic novels? Listen in and see what you think--as we try to reason it through!

WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:

Beth Allison Barr's insightful and important new book Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Learn how women got pushed out of ministry positions in favour of marriage, and what we can do about it.

And join Beth Allison Barr and Karen Swallow Prior and me for a FREE webinar TONIGHT, March 27, at 9 pm EST. Registration is FREE. 

TO SUPPORT US: 

LINKS TO THINGS MENTIONED:

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Sheila: Are porn and romance novels the same thing? Should we feel the same way about romance novels that we do about pornography? That’s what we’re going to be talking about today on 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 I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.

Rebecca: Hello.

Sheila: And your voice is almost back.

Rebecca: It’s almost back. You all notice as I’m talking that it’s definitely not 100%, but we’re getting there.

Sheila: We’re getting there. Yes, we’ve all been sick for quite a few weeks which really kind of messed up our launch for our book, The Marriage You Want.

Rebecca: Yes.

Sheila: Which came out March 11. We’ve been getting some great feedback.

Rebecca: Yeah, the launch went well even though we all got sick and had a beloved family member die in the middle of it. It was just—be honest. It was a rough go.

Sheila: It was rough.

Rebecca: And thank you to everyone in the launch team who really just kept it going even when we couldn’t because you guys really kept the momentum up, and we’re just so grateful.

Sheila: Yeah, we’ve got almost—I think about 160 reviews on Amazon right now—

Rebecca: That’s amazing.

Sheila: —which is amazing. And so fun to see everyone’s reviews with pictures so go check that out. Look up The Marriage You Want on Amazon and check out the reviews. They’re super fun, and then last week Beth Allison Barr joined us with her new book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, and I want to thank Brazos Press and Becoming the Pastor’s Wife for sponsoring this podcast. I can’t say enough good things about her book. Beth’s book The Making of Biblical Womanhood—her first book—was so important. Just talking about how this whole idea that men and women have different roles isn’t the biblical way of seeing gender.

Rebecca: And it isn’t even the historical one either.

Sheila: No, exactly. It was made up and really got going in the 1970s when you could no longer just simply argue that women were inferior.

Rebecca: Yeah, because before it was just women are deficient men and so therefore they shouldn’t be in charge. And it’s like, “Oh, no, we realize women are like actual people now so what can we say instead to make sure they’re still lesser people.”

Sheila: Yes, and so that’s when this whole idea of roles came on, and she showed that so well. And in this book what she’s doing is she’s showing how over the decades the idea that the way that women do ministry is that they marry a pastor and so they become a pastor’s wife. It has become more and more entrenched, and so the idea of women doing ministry—whether it’s being ordained or becoming a missionary or running an organization—was actually bigger in the ‘70s and ‘80s than it is today.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: Which is so scary, but that is my life experience too when I remember back to being a teenager. So such an important book. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife challenging us as a church to rethink what we mean by women in ministry and to just give women back the ability to follow the giftings and leadings that God has given them. So important, and I really encourage you all to get this. This podcast comes out at 7:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, March 27, and so if you are still listening to this on Thursday, March 27, and it is not 9:00 p.m. Eastern yet, you can still make it to our free webinar that we are doing with Beth Allison Barr, Thursday, March 27, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. And the link for that is in the podcast notes. Otherwise you missed it. I’m sorry, but you can still pick up Becoming the Pastor’s Wife and pick up The Marriage You Want and find out what we were saying. So today, Becca, we have something a little bit different to tackle.

Rebecca: One that we’re quite terrified to tackle.

Sheila: Yeah, but you know what?

Rebecca: People have strong opinions.

Sheila: It’s good to have controversial takes.

Rebecca: People have strong opinions, and I don’t have strong opinions, and that’s always a very, very awkward place to be as a podcaster. Oh, great, we’re going to get everyone mad for—like let’s go.

Sheila: We just want to be nuanced on this, and we’ve been talking about the book so much the last few months. We haven’t had time to talk about just some of the fun conversations that we want to have. This one I hope is going to be fun. And I want to start by telling a fun story. So you and I were in—was it Chicago last year? When we were speaking.

Rebecca: Yeah, it was after—yeah, after we were speaking at Wheaton I think.

Sheila: And we were flying back home, and we were in the airport.

Rebecca: The airport bookstore.

Sheila: The airport bookstore, and we saw this book staring at us.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh. That’s right. Yeah, from the bookshelf. And it’s called Birding with Benefits.

Sheila: Birding with Benefits, and we saw it. And I could not stop laughing.

Rebecca: No, and for anyone who is like watching—for anyone who is not watching on YouTube, the cover is of a woman looking through binoculars while like biting her lip, and you can see birds in the binoculars.

Sheila: That’s technically a yellow warbler.

Rebecca: A yellow warbler and a guy in the other one. It’s just so—

Sheila: A bearded guy.

Rebecca: It’s so camp.

Sheila: Yes, it really is.

Rebecca: It’s so over the top. It was—I told—I was like this is going to be the worst book you’ve ever read in your life, like this is going to be terrible.

Sheila: Yes, but of course, my husband—

Rebecca: Is a birder.

Sheila: —is a birder, and so I had to buy this. And again, I didn’t buy this book to read it. It was just—the title was so darn funny. But as I got—as we got thinking about it, it just reminds me of the conflicts that often break out on social media whenever we come hard against porn, someone—and it’s usually a guy—will say, “But what about the women who read romance novels?”

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: How come you always call out the men for the porn, and you don’t call out the women for doing the romance novel thing?

Rebecca: Yep, exactly.

Sheila: And all over the net, there are articles in Christendom that equate romance novels with porn. And so I thought we could just talk about it today.

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. Rebecca here to tell you that if you want to get to be one of the patrons who tells us your opinions on smut before we do the podcast about things like pornography and romance novels, you can join all those conversations at our Facebook page that is for exclusively for patrons. We’ve made it really cheap though like you can be part of the page for as little as $5 a month, and then there are more perks and benefits and exclusive materials at the higher tiers than that. Our patrons make what we do possible, and they also are just a really fun community of people who are talking about this stuff where you can really wrestle with concepts that you’re working through, finding people who are like-minded to both challenge you and to kind of just encourage you as we’re going through all of this together. I hope to see you over there, and hello to all of our patrons who are listening now. We are so grateful for all of you and what you’ve allowed us to do.

Sheila: So let’s just start with basic definitions, okay? So why is porn bad, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Yeah, well, the number one reason that pornography is—zero tolerance policy is because of the human rights issues. 

Sheila: Yes.

Rebecca: Pornography is the largest fueler of the sex trafficking industry even “consensual porn” sites, like you don’t know whether or not that actually is consensual. Like you’re taking their word for it for one, and a lot of it has been shown to not be consensual, even the ones—

Sheila: Yeah, there have been multiple studies that have shown that even on the consensual porn sites, they’re not consensual.

Rebecca: And also even if it is fully consensual and they’re fully aware of everything, what are the life circumstances that got someone to the point that they want to engage in pornography and also as soon as there’s money involved, is it really consensual? Like this is an age-old question though. Is it possible to have consensual sex for money because you wouldn’t be having the sex if it weren’t for the money which means you’re just paying—that’s a whole other conversation, but it’s one that applies here too, right?

Sheila: Yeah.

Rebecca: The idea of consensual pornography is very iffy. I don’t really have any personal problem being like I just don’t think that it exists because I think that even in areas where you are currently consenting, your future self—there’s just—it’s very complicated.

Sheila: It is.

Rebecca: It is complicated.

Sheila: But regardless, let’s imagine that it was fully consensual and that it would always be fully consensual, you as the consumer are still watching real people have sex, and you are getting sexual gratification from someone else, and that’s not okay.

Rebecca: There is an actual person that you could theoretically meet either in this life or the next where you have now objectified them for your own pleasure. That is a—as Christians we believe in living a chaste life which means we do not use other people for our own selfish sexual gratification. That just means pornography is out of the question for Christians. That’s just how—that’s how we see it.

Sheila: Yes.

Rebecca: That’s how it works. That’s why we have a no tolerance policy, like that’s just—

Sheila: Yes, you have to have a no tolerance policy just because of the human trafficking. So that’s the human trafficking side. Then let’s do the evidence-based side which is that in our studies we have found that there is no level of porn that is good, like any porn is worse than no porn.

Rebecca: Yeah, and there's been lots of studies that aren’t us either that show that especially with adolescents and young adults like watching porn increases rape myth acceptance. It increases your likelihood especially if you’re female of being sexually assaulted, and as—it increases boys’ rates of becoming a sexual assaulter. So it’s a poisonous—it’s a poisonous socializer that normalizes sexual violence especially against women in particular. And so this is just a thing that has been shown to be not helpful and not beneficial.

Sheila: Yeah, so you have human trafficking. You’ve got the evidence based. And then if you just simply look more at the spiritual aspect in terms of what is sex, porn changes the nature of sex because it takes it out of the context of relationship. It makes it devoid of relationship and intimacy, and it really becomes only about gratification which is why we’ve always said like porn and sex—I’ve said this repeatedly on the podcast are polar opposites because sex says I want to know you deeply, personally and porn says I want to use you for my own gratification. So they aren’t substitutes for one another. They’re polar opposites. And then of course, porn can be a maladaptive coping mechanism.

Rebecca: It actually not only can be. It usually is.

Sheila: Yes, it covers up—people can turn to pornography when they don’t want to deal with negative emotions. You get into a shame cycle, and it’s just—it’s not helpful from a psychological point of view either or emotional maturity point of view.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Sheila: So porn, all bad. Don’t use it, right?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: And if you are—if you are struggling with pornography, there’s some great books on that. I have lists of great books to help you, things like Unwanted by Jay Stringer, Surfing for God by Michael John Cusick, The Sex Talk You Never Got by Sam Jolman, Nontoxic Masculinity by Zachary Wagner. There’s some really, really good books out there that help put it in its right perspective.

Rebecca: And as always, we always want to say this disclaimer. You’ve probably heard before that if you’ve watched sex—watched porn, you’ve changed your brain. You have not. The brain is plastic. There is no point of no return with sex. Your brain can relearn things so don’t buy the fearmongering and just get help.

Sheila: Yes, exactly. Exactly, okay, so that’s porn. We don’t like porn, but let’s go with the other side now, which is the idea that romance novels are bad. And before we even get to that, I think we have to define romance novels.

Rebecca: Well, because this is the problem is that romance novels exist on a spectrum. Romance novels go from your Beverly Lewis Amish who hasn’t even kissed until their wedding day books where you only see them kiss, and that’s it. And that’s when the book ends. Or they kiss and so they are shunned. 

Sheila: And occasionally something flutters.

Rebecca: And occasionally something flutters, and hands brush hands. So you’ve got your Beverly Lewis which are like your very, very—we call them hair books.

Sheila: Hair books.

Rebecca: Where the most interesting thing about it is the hair on the cover, and you have all these books—

Sheila: My daughter, Katie, had a video where she made herself into a romance novel cover model.

Rebecca: Yes, it was quite funny.

Sheila: It was quite funny. I will link to it.

Rebecca: But that is—that’s kind of like your bare minimum kind of level. But then you have this whole group where it’s like there’s books where there also happens to have sex in it, but the sex is very—what I would call like genuinely vanilla, like your one to two spice books where like yes, there’s sex, but there’s not like rape. It’s not a dark romance. It’s just part of the story line, but the story line does exist.

Sheila: Or if there is rape, it’s not portrayed as something sexy.

Rebecca: It’s rape. Exactly, it’s an actual rape. Like it’s like no, these things are separate. The sex that is portrayed is realistic is what I would say. It’s not pornographic sex. It is just they are telling a story, and the story happens to have sex in it. Then there’s what I would say crosses into erotica where the book exists to have sex in it.

Sheila: Like your Nora Roberts book or your Birding with Benefits.

Rebecca: Birding with Benefits. It’s like I’m sorry. Ain’t no one reading Birding with Benefits if they don’t boink, right? That’s not—that’s why people would read this book. Let’s be very honest here, and it’s incredibly poor—I will say we read a couple of the first chapters. This lady is—she’s got to be so proud of herself with the amount of bird puns that she stuck into this book. Anyway, this is the thing. This book exists because you’re looking for that release of the sex of the book, right? Then there's your dark romances and your fetish books, and those kind of things where the sex that is happening is not healthy. 

Sheila: Right.

Rebecca: There’s complicated consent boundaries or the thrill is that there is not consent.

Sheila: Like Fifty Shades of Gray.

Rebecca: Yeah, or like the big one right now is the Haunting Adeline series, the dark romance all over TikTok which there’s a study that actually looked specifically at the effects of reading stuff like Haunting Adeline on young adults like teenagers and young adults that we’ll talk about in a minute. But these are like the dark romances, and that’s actually the kind of sex that’s depicted in the majority of pornography. The vast majority of pornography is not happy married couple celebrates their tenth anniversary with a respectful, 17-minute bang session, and then they watch Netflix. Like that’s not the majority of porn out there. And that’s the thing. It’s not just normal, respectful, consensual, kind, loving because that’s not what people click on. The majority of it—there have been so many studies that the majority of pornography that people are looking at, it’s got something taboo about it. It’s rough. They’re all in these dark book, fetish book sections so when people compare romance novels to porn we’re already not having the same definitions because even just the type of sex is not the same. I think we need to separate romance novels into healthy sexuality portrayals and unhealthy sexuality portrayals, like pornography—

Sheila: Or just romance. A lot of romance books have no sex in them or very little.

Rebecca: Yeah, but that’s not what anyone is talking about. Let’s be real. They’re talking about the books that have sex in them. So let’s be honest. I think that we need to be able to have some discernment and realize there are books that talk about a different kind of sex than other books, and some books are more akin to pornography than others. I think that is a commonsense take that we can all agree on.

Sheila: Yes, but it’s amazing how that distinction was not present in most of the articles that I looked at for this, and even a sermon that I listened to which I will not make anyone listen to. It was like awful, but anyway, but because the idea of really instead is what is this doing to your heart, and you need to guard your heart, and anytime you’re thinking about sex you aren’t guarding your heart. And so anything would fall under that really.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: And that was called sinful.

Rebecca: Well, and that’s what’s so interesting when you look at the study that I found that looked at young adults’ experiences reading dark romance novels, and by dark romance—there’s going to be people who listen to the podcast who don’t know what I mean—I’m talking about books where like a woman is kidnapped and repeatedly raped and that’s—and then eventually they end up together. And it’s a love story. Or like torture is involved, and that kind of stuff. Like so these are the books that there—or like really, really severe BDSM, roughness, assault, all the stuff. We’re not talking about oh no the fairy has wings books. I don’t know. But this is what we’re talking about. This woman found that reading dark romance books increases desensitization in readers so in essence you start to want more and more intense sex yourself. You stop being as sensitized to graphic sex, to rape, to these kinds of things. And it starts to not be okay to only get what is “normal” so that’s something we also see with pornography, right? That’s a real concern with pornography is you keep looking for more. You keep looking for more intense, and we see a similar thing among people who are reading these dark romance books which again are showing porn—that are showing sex that is more akin to porn. The other thing that we see according to the study is increased kind of like openness to rape myths kind of like there’s more—it’s more like this idea that people are normalizing rape as romance and so are they able to recognize rape as much in their real life or are they more likely to say but it’s okay in this case because he really understands her? Are they going to make excuses for the rapist? Are they going to—anyway the study is really interesting. It’s also 100 pages long but very interesting. But her real point was like we have to be careful with what kinds of content we are allowing our young adults like especially emerging teenagers and emerging adults to be reading as they’re creating their relationships, as they’re exploring sexuality for the first time, as they’re deciding who to end up with. Reading books that normalize what should not be normalized can actually act as a socializing influence, and so people who otherwise might not have ended up in a sexually violent relationship might ignore red flags because they’ve been socialized and groomed in essence by unhealthy books. So anyway it was really interesting. And I think that is something that is similar to pornography. I’m just trying to give these guys all the wins before we deal with the rest of it.

Sheila: Right, right.

Rebecca: So I do think that there is a genuine concern about fetish and dark books that it can normalize what should not be normalized, and it can put you down an unhealthy trajectory where consent becomes muddied, and thrill and adrenaline becomes kind of like a sensation seeking factor when it comes to sex. And we shouldn’t be sensation seeking when it comes to sex because that can be dangerous.

Sheila: Yeah, and when our sexuality and when our sexual pathways, our arousal pathways, are formed not by intimacy but by dehumanization and by humiliation and by violence that gets really dangerous.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Sheila: And what’s interesting is I started Googling people who have—Christians who have equated romance novels and pornography, and a lot of them from a couple of years ago were actually quoting me.

Rebecca: That’s hilarious.

Sheila: Because I wrote a lot about this back in 2015 when Fifty Shades of Gray came out, and I agree with my conclusions, but I don’t agree with how I ended up there. I think if I were to write it now, I would say much more about that, about how the arousal pathways are really—it’s all about humiliation and degradation whereas back then in 2015 what everybody was saying is this is too graphic.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s just because sex was shown. It’s therefore bad.

Sheila: Yeah, and it’s causing women to get aroused by something other their husbands, and it’s causing you to think about sex when you shouldn’t be thinking about sex. And so that is the main issue, and that’s really how it was taught to me growing up is like if you think about sex you have sinned.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: And so anything graphic is going to make you think about sex, and therefore you have sinned. And it’s like okay but Song of Solomon is in the Bible.

Rebecca: Yeah, and obviously Song of Solomon is not the same thing because it’s symbolic rather than descriptive.

Sheila: Right, but—and people who say look how explicit it is, it’s not.

Rebecca: Okay, honey, just read a book.

Sheila: But back then—but the other side of it is that if you look at it in ancient history, it is talking about sex.

Rebecca: Song of Solomon is similar in my brain as listening to Hozier. Symbolic, incredibly erotic, but nothing in it is descriptive. So it’s saying the same things, but that’s the correlate in my mind. It’s not erotic novels, but my other thing too is when we talk growing up what we learned is I think this is one of those areas where the church gives the same advice to 12-year-olds as it gives to 47-year-old married women.

Sheila: Yes, I think it does.

Rebecca: I don’t think that 12-year-olds should be reading books that have graphic sex scenes in them. I really don’t. I also think there’s a difference between age appropriate coming of age stories that have sexuality in them that are written at a level where you understand 13-year-olds will be reading this or 14-year-olds because there are—I know I read some books growing up where sex was mentioned in a part of the story but wasn’t descriptive, and they were so good to like build up my idea of what healthy and consent and everything meant. And those kinds of books can be really, really good, but not books that are like about getting off. I think—

Sheila: Birding with Benefits. Don’t read that when you’re 13.

Rebecca: I just think there’s a level where kids get to be kids and grownups get to be grownups. And there's a muddy area in between where every family and every person is going to get to figure out what their own kid is ready for, and also each of—every person needs to figure out what they’re ready for. There are some kids who are kind of like yeah, and I just read past, and it was fine, and other kids where it is going to ruminate in their head. And they want to make sure they’re protecting themselves, and we need to be teaching kids to be empowered to protect themselves from having to grow up too early. And I think that is a part that is missing in the conversation in the pro-romance novel side because I feel like they’re so afraid of shaming people for reading these that we forget that kids also get to be kids, and our advice can be different for grownups and children. And that doesn’t mean that we’re being shaming—we have shame. I’m perfectly fine. There are books on my bookshelf that I do not think my little 15-year-old friends at church where we read—we’re all into Hunger Games, right? We just had a new Hunger Games, and there's a couple high schoolers I’m like, “Have you read it yet?” They’re like, “No, I haven’t.” There’s other books that I’m not going to lend them because kids get to be kids and grownups get to be grownups. And I think that’s something that needs to be grappled with more in the church because you said it’s all about is there sex? Well, a 14-year-old shouldn’t be reading about sex, and so therefore no one should read about sex. Okay, but what’s the sex?

Sheila: Yeah, and that’s the problem too is that we do see a 14-year-old and a single 34-year-old as the same thing, and they’re not.

Rebecca: And they’re not the same thing. They’re not the same, but additionally on top of that, one of the big—okay, let’s talk about one of the reasons that romance novels and porn is the same but where it’s different that they’re the same. That’s a complicated section. The number of kids—and I mean kids—who get their sex education from pornography is wild, even in our own study. The number of women who knew all the words for men’s stuff and not women’s—I would—we haven’t studied it. This is me pontificating. I would hazard to guess that a lot of that is because either they had been socialized sexually through pornography or they are—just the culture is so male-centered, pornographic.

Sheila: But also the big one that showed this is when we asked both men and women at what age did you learn a female orgasm existed? Men knew before women did.

Rebecca: And why did they know? It’s not because some people were giving men better sex education than women. No, it’s because men are watching fake orgasms in porn.

Sheila: Men are watching porn. And so getting married more men knew that women could orgasm than women did which is just wild.

Rebecca: Yeah, and then again they’re not learning it because of very respectful, good conversation because otherwise the girls would be having them too. They’re learning it because they’re watching it in pornography, and it’s fake.

Sheila: So right now porn is our sex ed, and this is where romance novels are actually quite different.

Rebecca: Because for a lot of women, I mean I was—

Sheila: I’m having a hot flash here. Hold on. You can keep going. Go ahead.

Rebecca: Okay, sounds good, but talking about sex education and the female experience, you have a hot flash over there while I keep the conversation going. But like we’ve talked to a lot of women especially in our patron group people have been putting this question up over and over and over again. A lot of them were saying because they grew up not allowed to talk about what sex was like for women—like sex is kind of clear how it works for men, right? Like it’s an external process. Everything is happening around you. 

Sheila: You can see it.

Rebecca: Yes, you can see it. It’s little. It gets bigger. Poof, and then it gets little again, right?

Sheila: Yes.

Rebecca: Again like—oh, gosh, this job. Anyway, sorry, clip that. Anyway but for women it’s not as obvious of an arousal cycle, and so for women, if you’re not talking about how the arousal feels—we’re uncomfortable because you can say well the man will become erect. We don’t talk about how there’s pulsing or—we don’t—but you have to use those words for women because for women, there’s—oh you say we become aroused. What does that mean? Well, you have to talk about how there’s pulsing, there’s blood flow, there’s—you have to actually talk about the phenomenological experience a lot more than you do with men to actually let them know what’s happening. And that feels much more explicit because you’re talking about not just the well slot A goes into slot B. They move around a little bit, and then poof, you’re pregnant. We don’t just have to—there’s a lot more to women’s pleasure.

Sheila: And we have—this was hard because this is something that we added when we did our puberty course that we revamped in September.

Rebecca: And we knew that a lot of people were really uncomfortable with it, but you do have to talk about the sexual arousal cycle.

Sheila: We added a bunch about what arousal feels like for women because studies have shown and our own study shows this that when women don’t know this is how you get carried away because when you don’t know this could happen to you, and then all of a sudden it does, that’s when you end up going further than you want to or whatever. 

Rebecca: So ironically to help kids keep their boundaries and to really be strong and like them being empowered with how they experience sex which by the way even if you’re not having sex, you can be empowered in how you’re experiencing sex, and I think that’s also something that freaks people out, but true. Knowing how your body works including being willing to be graphic is actually really important.

Sheila: Yes, and I will put a link to our puberty course. We have it so parents can share it with their kids ages sort of 10-15 about puberty and sex, etc.

Rebecca: Yeah, but that’s the thing.  A lot of these romance novels for a lot of women who were raised in areas where they weren’t allowed to talk about female sexuality, where sex was all about in essence what the man does with his penis to a woman versus how a woman experiences sex—

Sheila: Yeah, and that’s the thing about Birding with Benefits is what you get, and I’m not trying to do an ad for this book.

Rebecca: No, no.

Sheila: It’s just I don’t tend to read this stuff. I really don’t. I don’t have time. I’m reading all of the nonfiction, Beth Allison Barr books. 

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: Great book. Read Becoming the Pastor’s Wife. I don’t have time—

Rebecca: It’s not quite as titillating as Birding with Benefits. I think Beth would agree.

Sheila: And I read this just for a laugh but what really surprised me was I almost wished that women could read this one sex scene because this is what we’ve been trying to explain.

Rebecca: Well, and that’s exactly it is often these things can be sex education because—there are books where people read them as like sex education where it’s not realistic. Anything where there is—I’m just going to say this, okay—ACOTAR is not sex ed, friends. It’s not. I’m so sorry. Please read other books that have actual normal depictions of sexuality. If you’re talking about people exploding into the Cosmere because it’s so good, guys, that’s not actually how this works. Books where people are meeting and having a relationship and they have sex where they’re two normal people having normal people sex that’s orgasmic for her for a lot of women who aren’t allowed to talk about what female sex is like—

Sheila: And the thing is the vast majority of TV shows and movies and this is well-documented show sex from the male point of view. This is what he wants, and that’s why sex on TV shows and movies focuses on intercourse. Even The Notebook, the classic sex scene in The Notebook, which women went crazy about because at least her show her orgasm and enjoying herself. She’s still enjoying herself doing things that is from his point of view—intercourse, etc. It isn’t actually women’s normal arousal pathways. But a lot of these erotic novels actually show sex from a woman’s point of view, of what women actually want. It is quite different, and I wonder if that’s part of the reason that people are so uncomfortable with these books.

Rebecca: I know. I think that there’s a real fear about talking about sex in graphic ways because it feels—I mean look. We have an entire generation of people who were raised to be afraid of being aroused, right? The Every Man’s Battle generation is if you have a boner, you are a sinner. Boner equals hell. That’s the generation we were raised in is if you start thinking about sex, you’ve already gone too far, and you're already giving pieces of your heart away versus what if we were allowed to say that—and I’m sorry. People might get mad at me for this—but I want you to hear the nuance of what I’m saying here. Both sex is important, and it is sacred, and it is personal, and it is deeply—it deeply affects us as people. It’s also just sex. Like both of those things can exist, and I just—if we’re so afraid of even just knowing how sex works or hearing about sex being done, I just don’t know if that’s necessarily healthy. Again, there's a difference between—we’ve already dealt with the issues of like romanticizing nonconsensual or harmful or violent sex in a way that normalizes it, desensitizes us to it, and increases our desire for it in kind of like a parasocialized way. We’ve already talked about that. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about your books where it’s like they meet, they flirt, they kiss. Oh, no, there’s only one bed. We’re talking your very basic books here. Like this is what we’re talking about, and I just think at some point, I’m worried that our ability to learn about how female sexuality even works is dampened by our inability to just acknowledge that sex exists in actual terms.

Sheila: Well, and especially because—and this is what bugs me—is that you don’t hear pastors really saying hey don’t watch Friends or don’t watch these—I don’t know—whatever sitcoms are on TV or don’t watch this Netflix show or whatever. You do hear some pastors talking about Game of Thrones, which has legitimate rape in it, and that’s supposedly sexy, you just don’t really hear people talking against all of the sex—the gratuitous sex—that is in a lot of TVs and movies, but you do hear people say hey don’t read these novels, women.

Rebecca: Yeah, well, even like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you don’t see people’s genitals, but there's all sorts of jokes that are like frankly pornographic jokes.

Sheila: Talk about a sex tape. Talk about a sex tape.

Rebecca: Yeah, I actually like Brooklyn—like it’s a funny show, but it’s also like you have to recognize that the idea of sex tapes is even so much—already so much more intense sexually than the idea of reading a book where two people who are in a relationship have sex that is very normal and consensual and vanilla. Like we’re already talking about something that is already like way up here, way higher, in terms of like sexual safety, in terms of pornographic mindset.

Sheila: Objectification.

Rebecca: Objectification, like the idea of a sex tape is already more extreme than actually—like my question is why are we so desensitized to that and so sensitized to the idea that he can rub her clitoris and she will start moaning? Like why is it people—me talking about sex tapes did not give people a visceral reaction and me talking about her moaning as she—as he rubs her clitoris is going to make people go oh? Why is that? Because this is one is actually just as graphic. You have a mental picture the same way. So why are we desensitized to pornographic depictions of sex and we are like sensitized to normal sex that focuses on her pleasure? Why? That’s what I don’t understand.

Sheila: Yeah, and I want to—I want to read you some stats, okay?

Rebecca: Sure.

Sheila: All right, so this is from our new book The Marriage You Want. One of the fun things—well, I don’t know if fun or horrifying or however you want to phrase it—that we did is we actually looked at the stats for the honeymoon and the first-time having sex.

Rebecca: Right.

Sheila: Okay, and I want you to listen to this. So when we looked only at couples who waited for marriage for sex and we asked whether their spouses brought them to orgasm before attempting penetrative sex, and here’s the breakdown, in 41.1% of couples, neither partner had brought the other to orgasm before trying penis in vagina. In 25.5% both had brought the other to orgasm before penis in vagina. In 24.9%, only the husband had been brought to orgasm, and in 8.5% only the wife had been brought to orgasm before trying PIV. Now that means that 50.4% of men had been brought to orgasm by their spouse before penetrative but only 34.1% of women had. And again who has a harder time reaching orgasm during intercourse? It’s women. Now let’s break it down even more. When we look at the first sexual encounter that involved intercourse, so it might have involved stuff other than intercourse, but the first sexual encounter that involved intercourse, we asked who orgasmed. In 14% of couples, both did. In 11.6% of couples, neither did. In 1.2% of couples, only the wife did. In 73% of couples, only the husband did. So break that down and among Christian couples who save sex for the wedding, 87.3% of men but only 15.4% of women reached orgasm from any stimulation during their first encounter that involved intercourse.

Rebecca: And I’m curious how many of those 11% of men who didn’t experience orgasm during their first time having intercourse, if the intercourse stopped because of like pain or something like that because I think that’s probably pretty common considering we know how common sexual pain is the first time attempting.

Sheila: Yeah. So my question is would we have those numbers if we normalized talking about sex from her point of view. Like if women knew oh this is what sex looks like that works for me. And I’m not trying to say that everybody should read romance novels, but I am saying that in our general culture, our depiction of sex is very male-focused. That’s certainly true of TV shows and movies. The only place where you’re really going to get the female sexual experience is from books, novels, and Christians are telling us that this is wrong to read.

Rebecca: But at the same time we still have the vast majority—almost 100%--of teenagers—of teenage boys in particular—being exposed to pornography in high school. So if we have almost 100% of boys being exposed to a male-focused sexuality in high school but we’re getting, and we’re stopping everyone from being exposed to a female explicit sexual perspective, I just feel like we’ve done some damage. And I just don’t think that there’s—I just don’t see the logic—before this I need to state my bias. I don’t enjoy sex scenes in books, and I’m not just—this is the thing. I talk about orgasms all day with work. There is only so much that a girl can take. I’m like okay I’m reading this book, and I’m real happy for you. This is a lot. I’ve already studied seven articles about female clitoral movement during penetrative orgasm, and I’m just looking at this as McClain et al from 2017. But also I’m the kind of person that I just feel like whenever authors write a sex scene, I personally feel like too much of their own personal experience or desires or like proclivities just go on the page. And I just—it makes me—it gives me ick. I’m like oh no. Oh, yuck. La-la-la. I can’t—and I think I’m just—

Sheila: Give you Mr. Happy from Kevin Leman vibes.

Rebecca: It does. I can’t help it. That’s a personal—that’s a personal thing that’s likely due to how much I have to think about sex because of work. I’ll be really honest, but I just—I much prefer what I call my Mormon box which is just books with like no sex in them at all.

Sheila: Yes, you love your Brandon Sanderson.

Rebecca: I love my Brandon Sandersons. He’s an author who happens to be Mormon, but no, his books are totally, totally sexless. I’m like yes, this is where I thrive. But this is—that’s my personal bias. If you're feeling at all like I don’t think—if you slightly disagree with me on something, well, there’s my bias. So my bias is kind of like I just think on average you can get yearning, you can get fire, you can get desire, and you don’t need to do excessive graphic sex scenes. That’s my bias, okay? But that being said, I also understand—I also don’t have a problem with these graphic scenes that are not depicting dangerous, damaging, dehumanizing sex. I don’t have a problem with it. This is an issue where it’s like I’m going to yuck on someone else’s yum kind of thing. This is a situation where for so many women who don’t have an understanding of female sexuality from when they were growing up who weren’t allowed to have kind of a normal sexual awakening because it was changed by maybe you were introduced to porn really young. Maybe you had a boyfriend who pushed your boundaries, and even if you didn’t have sex, now all of a sudden arousal feels threatening. Maybe you—there are people who, there’s all sorts of reasons why kind of crap got in the way of being able to have a normal, healthy, sexual development. And that is unfortunately a reality for the vast majority of women. When you put everything all—it’s for men too when you put in pornography. I just don’t understand why people are so up in arms about the idea that we might actually get a mental image of how women like sex and why that’s seen as a huge deal. Well, that’s not fair because I can understand because I think a lot of men in particular, I think that there’s a lot of couples where sex isn’t great. And she starts reading romance novels, and I—

Sheila: And then she realizes.

Rebecca: Well, I think a lot of times it can feel very intimidating and very—it can feel like a betrayal a bit by the husband. I think that’s true.

Sheila: And I think any time you do read a romance novel to be your sexual outlet, that is a problem.

Rebecca: Like I think that depends on what we define as sexual outlet.

Sheila: Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca: Because again we’re coming from the boner equals hell generation.

Sheila: Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca: If you’re aroused—this is why it’s so complicated, because there's so much crap here. It’s like I’ve been—it’s like I don’t have any—I don’t care if Connor reads a book that has a sex scene, and he doesn’t care if I do. We joke about it if we do because we always read the same book for pity’s sake. It’s not that big of a deal if it’s not that big of a deal, but if it is a big deal, then it is a big deal. Like this is why it’s different from pornography because it’s not on its own a problem. But I get really nervous when I see—okay, let me back up. Our research has found that women can be in unsatisfying or uneven or just kind of bad relationships for like a good 10 years and even 15. They last for a long time before the marriage really starts to either go completely sexless or fall apart, like before stuff really starts to happen. My question is—I think that people seem to think that women just have this inner reserve of strength and then all of a sudden, it’s gone. I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think what happens is we are a very resourceful species. We are very good at finding ways to survive, but at some point those things stop working. It’s a bunch of patch jobs that eventually the engine just still dies. And I wonder and I worry that for many women who are in relationships that have serious problems, these kinds of books are allowing them to romanticize and disassociate from reality and experience getting their needs met on a lower level that gets rid of the hunger pain right now but doesn’t actually fix the problem. This is one of those things where I’m like do I think that everyone who reads romance novels is covering for a bad husband? No, I don’t. However, there is a subgroup that I am concerned about that I have heard of. I talked—I mean I know people who are in this category.

Sheila: The funny thing is—this is something that has been preached for centuries, and it’s actually quite humorous.

Rebecca: Oh, no.

Sheila: Well, you know the story about Northanger Abbey, right?

Rebecca: No.

Sheila: About why Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey?

Rebecca: No.

Sheila: Okay, so basically Northanger Abbey which was—I think it’s her unfinished one.

Rebecca: I don’t know. I’m not the Austen nerd. Joanna is.

Sheila: It wasn’t super—okay, I might be totally wrong so what I’m about to say may not be accurate so big asterisk.

Rebecca: This part is not the evidence-based part of the podcast.

Sheila: This is not the evidence-based, but Northanger Abbey was really her novel about novels because there was a big discussion in England at the time that these novels were corrupting girls. And she herself felt that some of them were not good, and so she was writing about the concept of novels, which is kind of interesting. But I found this one sermon online from this pastor who was comparing romance novels to porn and how terrible romance novels were, and he has all of these quotes that he used to justify his point, and this was a very recent one in the last few months, but a lot of the quotes were from like 120 years ago or even 200 years ago. So he quotes from the American Journal of the Medical Sciences from 1829.

Rebecca: Eighteen? Not 19? Eighteen twenty-nine.

Sheila: Eighteen twenty-nine where they say that in regards to the cultivation to the faculties of females a principle object should be to cultivate and strengthen their understanding and volition and to avoid tale reading, romances, and false mysticisms, which produce a morbid sensibility very often the cause of corporeal diseases.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, yes, all the women are having diseases because they’re reading smut.

Sheila: This is from a Dictionary of Practical Medicine in 1858.

Rebecca: Eighteen fifty-eight.

Sheila: Again this pastor thought that this was worth quoting.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, that’s hilarious, 1858.

Sheila: The occurrence of insanity among females is partly owing to reading romances and novels and thereby exciting the imagination without improving the reasoning powers.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, so this pastor is literally like quoting guys from almost 200 years ago?

Sheila: Yes, yes. Here’s the Royal Path of Life from 1882. Again this is a sermon. He quoted out of this.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh.

Sheila: I’m not going to list the sermon. It isn’t worth listening to, but anyway, a woman who gives herself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, and sister, and daughter. There she is. Hair disheveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting into tears at midnight over the fate of some unfortunate lover.

Rebecca: I unfortunately have to say that’s a very apt description. I’m like wait a second. I’m not seeing any lies here about this description. Hair disheveled, bursting out into tears at midnight over the fate of an unfortunate lover. Yeah, actually that just sounds like book girls.

Sheila: And then there’s a lot of other warnings about romance novels, etc.

Rebecca: Oh, that’s so funny.

Sheila: But this concern that women might be reading novels has occupied people for—

Rebecca: For 200 years.

Sheila: For 200 years.

Rebecca: That’s so funny.

Sheila: And Jane Austen was writing in response to this concern. This concern was here forever, and the question really is are we concerned about the wrong thing to me? Because I just don’t see pastors talking about how much—yeah, like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and just whatever else is—

Rebecca: Well, I don’t necessarily think—

Sheila: I like Brooklyn Nine—but that whole idea of the normalization of the pornographic view of sex is very much in our media, and yet, what we’re often told is but women need to beware of reading novels which depict healthy sex.

Rebecca: That’s exactly it.

Sheila: And this is the problem. And the reason is because any time we think about sex that is seen as something sinful. And that’s the question. Is it?

Rebecca: I think and the other thing too is you’re allowed to insinuate that men orgasm, right? Just think about like all these jokes. They all culminate with the idea that he orgasms, like that’s what a lot of these dirty jokes are about, right? But you're not allowed to actually talk about how she does. It’s like, and this is it—I personally, I’ll say I’m of the opinion that there is a good, evidence-based argument against reading books that depict dehumanizing, problematic, consent-wavy, degrading sex. I think there’s a good evidence-based argument that can actually cause desensitization towards these things and can cause you to ignore red flags in sexual encounters with partners. It normalizes the pornographic and it makes sex something that is not humanizing. I think there’s a good evidence-based argument that similar to how—for the personal growth reasons that we avoid pornography, I think there’s good arguments based on evidence that we should do the same like for your more extreme dark books. I think there’s a good argument for that. At the same time, there is a world of difference between something where there is an actual person and there’s not which is why I don’t really care personally if someone does read dark romance books, but I do actually care if they’re watching a degrading pornography. Like this is the difference where it’s like there are—because with pornography there are both personal piety issues and there are human rights issues whereas with these books for the most part it’s—

Sheila: It’s just personal piety.

Rebecca: It’s just personal piety issues which means I’m worried for you. I’m not worried for how you’re treating other people in the same way. I’m not worried for the effects on society. I’m not worried for these things.

Sheila: Yes, yes.

Rebecca: And then to take it back, when it comes to romance novels that just have sex in them, I genuinely cannot find an evidence-based argument or even like a biblical argument for why this particular thing is bad. I can’t. I do think that this is one of those areas where it’s like girly, I’m so sorry. You’ve got to use discernment. There’s not an easy answer here. You’re someone where if you’re starting to have a book boyfriend where like genuinely—

Sheila: Yeah, you’re way too into Jamie.

Rebecca: Like yeah, I think your generation will get that one. No, but like I just think there’s a situation where if genuinely you’re finding because I think people start asking when do I know it’s too far? I’ll give you some answers that we’ve found. If you're finding you cannot have sex without disassociating, if you’re finding that—we’re not talking about basic partner role playing with your partner. Do whatever you want just don’t tell me about it. Like this is my motto.

Sheila: Please, please.

Rebecca: This is my motto.

Sheila: Please. We get the DMs.

Rebecca: Please don’t tell me about it. No, but like if you’re—but if you’re finding that you have to lie to your partner about what is happening in your head, you probably have a problem. Either with your partner or with your books. If it’s because your partner is dangerous, that’s the problem. If it’s because you are not able to be honest because you are in essence you’re picturing someone else, you’re picturing something else, and they’re just not cool with that, that is a sign you have a problem. That’s sign that we’ve gone a little bit too far. If you’re finding that reading these books has gone past escapism and has gone into disassociation—because all of us read to escape. I hate it that escapism is so demonized.

Sheila: I mean that’s why we watch Netflix. That’s why we watch Disney—that’s what we watch anything.

Rebecca: Our brains are designed to escape so that you can have a chance for your cortisol—like you’re supposed to be able to escape, and at the point that you’re not able to kind of shut off your brain, you probably should deal with long-term stress reduction. But escapism is not bad. Disassociation or avoidance is the problem.

Sheila: And if anything—if escapism becomes the main part of your life outside of your work, that’s not okay.

Rebecca: Exactly. The difference between I had a horrible day. I need to just sit down. I’m going to read for an hour so I can just get myself back into myself and then I’m going to be nice mom again. Like that’s one thing versus like going through all these books so that you are topped up enough so that you don’t deal with the real underlying issues of what’s going on in your life. That’s not healthy. Again it’s the difference between something—

Sheila: Or reading the books and not feeding your kids which is why I never let myself read any novels—

Rebecca: Oh, yes, absolutely.

Sheila: —outside of vacation because—

Rebecca: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Sheila: —or homeschooling because you guys always loved it when I read novels because I wouldn’t homeschool that day.

Rebecca: Oh, yeah, it was great. We got ice cream twice a day. No, but like my—I think that if you’re—okay, put it this way. There’s nothing wrong with having a sweet treat when you had a bad day and you made yourself do the thing you didn’t want to do anyway. Have a sweet treat. Get yourself a sweet treat. But it’s not healthy if we’re engaging in like binge eating disorder to deal with our stress. There’s a difference here.

Sheila: Yeah, and it’s very similar.

Rebecca: And this is why it’s so tricky because people are like well then people are just going to think that it’s all too much. Well, then, let them. At some point, people have to have discernment, and this is what I want to say to all these pastors. At some point, you’ve just got to trust that people have discernment, and if people say it’s not a problem for me, then it’s not a problem for them.

Sheila: And that’s the one thing—that’s one of the big takeaways that we want to say is yes you definitely need discernment.

Rebecca: But you don’t have any judgment from us if you like these books.

Sheila: And porn and romance novels are not the same thing. But the other thing that we do want to say is we just—is I do just find it interesting that things which accurately depict sex the way women want it are demonized when all of this other stuff isn’t. And that does bother me, and I find that very interesting that things that are graphic in the sense of what women would want are seen as super graphic, and I wonder if part of the reason is because if women are supposed to be the gatekeepers and make sure that nothing goes too far, then we actually can’t have sex that women want.

Rebecca: Yes.

Sheila: And so we’re priming—like we’re seeing sex that women want as dangerous, and so we can’t have women reading that. But one of the things that I was thinking when I did read this book was you know, a lot of couples would probably have better sex if they read it together.

Rebecca: I said that before.

Sheila: Not read—not like get into the habit of reading these books together, but just like, guys, this is what she’s trying to tell you.

Rebecca: Well, that’s what I said. What do you do—we’ve even had this issue where we’ve created curriculums where we talk to people about how to—how to experience arousal, how to listen to your body, and you know what, it’s pretty impossible to do without saying some pretty explicit things. And that’s something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable especially the people who are trying to deal with libido and orgasm issues quite frankly. And there is a level where like maybe we need to desensitize a little bit to healthy sex and get more sensitized to pornographic sex. That’s what we’re trying to ask for here where it’s not like we’re like everyone needs to go and read the entire Fourth Wing series. No.

Sheila: No, you don’t need to (inaudible).

Rebecca: No, you don’t and also it’s not very well-written. This is the thing. No one is saying you have to. There’s no mandate. There’s no anything, but what I do think is we need to start questioning why is it that perfectly normal sexual encounters that are written in books and described that focus primarily on the woman’s internal experience are seen as just as bad as pornography even though that includes sex trafficking, actual people involved, so you actually do have visuals in your head, and also are much more likely to include the kind of sex that is dehumanizing towards women because I’m sorry these books are not dehumanizing towards men. The books that are focused on women’s pleasure it’s not the detriment of men’s sexual autonomy.

Sheila: No.

Rebecca: It’s like no the men are also not being raped. Like why is it so weird to think that there could be a kind of book where no one is raped? This is the thing it doesn’t have to be one or the other, like these books are actually quite egalitarian, like both people are having a good time. But it’s just very focused on her experience, and I think that there’s a lot of need for kind of the church in general to question why we’re so aghast at hearing about what sex is like for women when it’s totally normal to talk about men’s orgasm from the pulpit. And I think that’s something people should talk about, should think about.

Sheila: So nuanced. Give you something to think about.

Rebecca: Yeah, if you disagree with us, that’s fine. And also—and I do want to say this because I know there’s a lot of shame for people who grew up in purity culture, if your—if you’re listening and you’re like I would never read those books. It’s horrible. You don’t have to.

Sheila: No, gosh, no.

Rebecca: There’s no shame in not reading them. I don’t want this to make you feel like oh no, I haven’t recovered from purity culture. I don’t want to read those books. No, that’s not a sign—like don’t add shame onto yourself that doesn’t need to be there, okay? This is an issue of personal proclivity, of personal boundaries, of what you like. If you’re just like me and you just don’t really like sex books and you’d much rather read a book that doesn’t have any sex in it, hey, join the club, baby girl, but also if you’re one of our lovely patrons who said they can pry my smut from my cold, dead hands, we’ve got like three of them. I also love you. I see you, girl. You do your thing.

Sheila: It was really our patrons that got us started thinking about this recently.

Rebecca: It was so funny. It was so funny though. After 28 years of male-centered sex, they can pry my smut from my cold, dead hands. I’m like I also see you, and I also totally get that. So I just want to make sure that I verbally said that because I know that a lot of people who came out of purity culture can feel a lot of shame about not being sexual enough, and remember that there is no amount of sexuality that is sexual enough. You are just who you are, and your boundaries do not make you more or less sexy. They just are your boundaries.

Sheila: Yeah, exactly. So there you go. So thank you for joining us on The Bare Marriage Podcast for a fun conversation where we have—we just tackled something we haven’t tackled before. And yeah, I wish I had that—this sort of conversation back in 2014 and ’15 when I started writing about this that it’s not that talking about sex is bad. It’s are we seeing sex as something degrading, humiliating. Are we using other people? These are the kind of questions we need to be asking.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s like are we creating—are we creating a world that has pornified sex, or are we actually understanding what sex is supposed to be?

Sheila: Yeah, and I don’t think we understand very well what sex is supposed to be so hopefully we can get people started thinking about it. So thank you again to our sponsor at Brazos Press and the book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife. Please check that out in the link at the podcast notes. It’s a wonderful book, and we do need to be talking about this more in the church about how we can empower women to use their voices. And we’ve also got links there to the book The Marriage You Want and to all the other things we mentioned in the podcast. So thank you for joining us, and we will see you again next week on The Bare Marriage Podcast. Bye-bye.