The Truth About Sex
The following article is not actually by me. But I thought
it should be in here. Please read carefully.
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The Truth About Sex
Even Christians get seduced by the sexual lies our culture
proclaims.
By Jenell Williams Paris | posted 11/13/01
In an episode of Friends, one of the show's lead characters,
Monica, was sick with the flu. Despite her hoarse cough
and weariness, she was overcome by desire and enticed her
then-boyfriend Chandler by seductively rubbing Vicks
VapoRub on her chest. Monica and Chandler's relationship
perpetuates three common lies about sex: Sex is easy; sex
is free; and sex can be engaged in with any willing partner.
Evangelicals have been quick to tell the truth about the
last lie, insisting that sex ought to be reserved for one's
spouse. Indeed, virginity, abstinence, and monogamy
are essential virtues, but not the whole truth.
Telling less than the whole truth hurts people. This is
important to me as a Christian college professor, a fertility
awareness instructor, and a married woman. Together with
my academic colleagues and students, I strive to critique
American culture with both biblical and social science
insights. Despite these efforts, I sometimes find that
my behavior reveals hidden belief in these lies. I sometimes
see a similar disconnect between belief and behavior in
my students.
Sex Is not Easy
On TV, people often engage in sex spontaneously, without
forethought or verbal communication. On Temptation Island,
three women in committed relationships were separated
from their partners to be tempted by buff men. One woman
was asked to choose her favorite from the available bunch.
"I choose Dave, " she said, "because
he gives the best impromptu striptease." Her choice,
like hundreds of others made in popular film and TV, bases
attraction and affection on visual signals alone, suggesting
that sexuality is a trait separate from relationship,
character, or commitment. Similarly, masters of technique
are shown as the best sexual partners, while virgins, awkward
lovers, or people with sexual dysfunction make for great
humor. Even nonsexual things like clothes, food, and music
become subjects for sexual innuendoes, joking, and arousal.
If sex isn't easy for you, or if you think too hard about
sexual choices, something must be comically wrong with
you.
An engaged couple, one of whom was my student, came to talk
with me about their upcoming marriage. The woman worried
that she might not have enough sex drive to make her marriage
happy. "On TV, most everyday events are sexual, "
she said. "Cooking, eating, coming home from workall
these commonplace things spark sexual desire. I'm
not like that. I think about sex sometimes, but not all the
time. Am I supposed to want it all the time once I'm married?"
Though she believed in virginity and abstinence, her immersion
in American culture caused her to believe the lie that sex
is easy. Because she lacked knowledge of and conversation
about normal, real-life sexual frequency, she worried
about her possible failure.
Sometimes sex is easy, but whether easy or difficult, it
always requires work. At the very least, it requires more
verbal communication than pop media lead us to believe.
Questions of when, where, how often, and how must be negotiated
and renegotiated throughout a marriage. Beyond this basic
relational work, many people have deeper difficulties
with sex. Many newly married couples find sex painful,
awkward, or even boring. They often feel ashamed, because
they believed the myth that married sex will be easy and
erotic from the first time on. They see "failure"
mocked in popular media, and they often remain silent and
alone. Sexual pain, dysfunction, emotional stress, or
changes in sexual interest associated with illness, parenthood,
or other life stresses are the stuff of real life. In real
life, women with hacking coughs and achy bodies don't
seduce their partners with decongestant medication.
The truth is that sex is hard work. Building a relationship
that can contain the intimacy, vulnerability, joy, and
struggles of sex takes effort. It also takes community,
a network of friends, family, and believers who support
the lovers in their marriage. Just like other kinds of laborparenting,
working at a job, caring for the ill, or volunteeringworking
at a marriage is God-blessed, fulfilling, and worthwhile.
If a particular act of intercourse is spontaneous and easy,
it's because the partners have worked to build a relationship
within which such love can be expressed.
I informally counsel students on contraceptive choices
and teach natural birth-control methods to some. One couple
reported several months after their wedding that natural
methods were working well, mostly because the discipline
had enhanced their communication and respect for each
other. "A woman is a beautiful thing, " the
husband said. "I am amazed at what God made."
They worked for a year to build a courtship, studied for
a few months to learn about fertility and the woman's
cycle, and they continue to work together to maintain a
beautiful marriage.
Sex Is Not Free
On TV, sex is about pleasure and beauty. After all, who wants
to watch people discussing contraception, waiting for
a late menstruation, being tested for chlamydia, or receiving
treatment for gonorrhea? Like all things beautiful on
TV, the most pleasurable and visually consumable parts
of sex are shown, and the rest are neglected.
Another engaged couple I talked with struggled with imbalances
in sexual experience. The fianc worried that his wife-to-be
would judge his lack of sexual experience. Now in her 20s,
she regrets her one awkward and humiliating teenage sexual
experience. She does not consider herself skilled at sex,
but it was difficult for the two to work through this. A different
couple accepted the high probability that his sexually
transmitted disease, contracted from sexual partners
in the past, would be passed to her. Both these couples chose
abstinence during their courtships and received God's
blessings in many ways, but both continued to bear the consequences
of past decisions.
Christians too often perpetuate a white wedding story,
as though we were all virgins when we married, and as though
none of us have sexually transmitted diseases, past abortions
or adoptions, or prior marriages. These assumptions come
to light when we talk about "those people" (not
us) who were sexually active before marriage, or "those
women" (not us) who have had abortions or pregnancies
outside marriage.
When we point fingers at presumably worldly people who
bear the consequences of sexual sin, we often deepen the
shame and silence of friends and family members who carry
those consequences in secret. Silence and shame sometimes
have more potential to damage a marriage than the sin itself.
The truth is that sex is costly. Even within marriage, making
love is a high-stakes venture that requires a lifelong
commitment to forgo other sexual partners and other sexual
experiences, and perhaps even intercourse itself, should
illness or disease make it impossible. It requires a willingness
to give gifts of trust, vulnerability, intimacy, and honesty
to one's spouse. It involves an openness to children,
whether through human planning or God's providence.
It requires a maturity to bear the other person's burdensphysical
or emotional sexual trauma, the memories of sexual partners,
sexually transmitted diseases, or side effects of medications,
childbirth, or disease.
Falling for the Lies
Too many Christians engage in nonmarital sex because they
believe our culture's lies that sexual intercourse
is essential for happiness, that arousal is a must-meet
demand, and that sex is free and easy. In addition, too many
Christians enter marriage with expectations that hinder
their ability to enjoy one another.
When married Christians believe sex is easy, they don't
communicate about sex, and problems go unaddressed. Sometimes
engaged virgins navely believe that because they followed
"the rules, " sex will be easy and free. They'll
be just like Monica and Chandler. When problems come, they
may feel like failures because they hadn't expected
to have to work so hard at sex. I hope these couples will learn
to communicate honestly about sex. I hope they will draw
into their union trusted advisers or professionals who
can help them make wise choices. I hope sex will be great
for them. If it's not great, however, right away or
after a year or after 10 years, I hope they know they're
not failures. They've just been lied to.
When married Christians believe sex is free, one may resent
the other for the ways that results of past sexual sin come
to bear on their life together. Others say, "I'm
ready for marriage, but I'm too young for children."
They believe that sex can be solely unitive and pleasurablethat
it's always possible to enjoy the good stuff without
the costly result of pregnancy. God made coupling as a whole,
and our attempts to slice it up, enjoying only the present
and discarding the past, or enjoying the pleasure but not
the procreative aspects, often fail. I hope these couples
learn to count the cost of marriage, which includes both
joyful blessings and painful disappointments.
On Friends, being single is the norm because it allows for
multiple sexual partners, opportunities to display one's
body, and freedom to enjoy pornography or erotica unashamedly.
The actors who play those characters, however, show a surprising
fondness for marriage. All three women are married. They
dress up and memorize lines to perpetuate lies that they
themselves do not live. They see behind their own faade,
and make choices that are different from those of their
characters. But it is the characters on shows like this
that shape American notions of sex.
It's easy to see that actors are playing roles. It's
more difficult to see behind cultural faades. When Christians
are silent and TV is loud, it's obvious which message
will be heard. We evangelicals are doing a good job of telling
the truth about God's plan for abstinence for the single
and monogamy for the married. We must, however, tell more
truth. We need to read our culture closely, looking beyond
the messages that promote nonmarital sex to the deeper,
undergirding lies. Sex is one of God's good gifts,
like friendship, parenting, skiing, or playing the violin.
All require hard work, and all are costly in some way. Yet
when enjoyed in good stewardship as gifts, they are some
of life's great blessings. That's the truth about
sex.
Jenell Williams Paris is a professor of anthropology at
Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is also an instructor
with Fertility Awareness-Twin Cities.
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