Circus Sex and the Chuch Lady Sex Addict

Today, on my In Bed podcast:

Christian Female Sex Addicts: the New Pandemic!

It's the Religious Right's latest problem: Too many otherwise-decent women are suffering from sexual addiction.

"You never would have thought that the woman sitting next to you in Sunday school might be viewing porn," says outraged Pure Life Ministries author Kathy Gallagher. "But with the growth of the Internet, the gap between what men and women do in secret has been drastically reduced."

Read the whole  story in Pam's House Blend....

Next on our show, I talk about the latest reader review in Random Honest Porn Review, which analyzes the phenomenon of "circus freak" porn movies that are modeled on the success of the Hollywood Jackass craze.

Listen to an excerpt:

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Finally, in my Try This at Home mailbag, a listener offers her theories and examples of pet names for women's sex toys.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for free show coupon cards to susie@audible.com.

 

Comments

[Brent]

Ahhhh, the scourge of Christian sex addiction. It's stories like these that make me want to become a Buddhist, or an atheist, or . . . something. Why is it that simply looking at porn makes you an addict? How can there even be such a thing as "porn addiction?"

And how do they know that the women do this in secret? Maybe these couples talk about their daily porn viewing while they are in bed. That, of course, is what these folks are really afraid of. If both the husband and wife talk and realize that they are both looking a porn, then they might realize that---oh my goodness---maybe its not a horrible, bad thing. Maybe being sexually arouse is normal! Maybe sex can be more than a furtive, dirty thing that we do so that hubby can get to sleep and wifey can be more frustrated.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Maybe if the Christo-Republican Fascists would stop turning our lives into endless office drudgery designed to line the pockets of the top 1% of the rich, we would be so terribly bored and depressed so that we feel the need to look at porn to get our minds off of our lives.

Or we can put together a $150 a week treatment program to try to emasculate everyone so that they won't want to look at sexual imagery anymore. Honest, I really have to wonder how anyone could NOT want to look at porn. It's fascinating, entertaining, fun, exciting, diverting, and low in calories.

[Peter Throckmorton]

Sheesh.

I followed the links on to see what they had to say about masturbation:

Isn’t masturbation ok if it keeps you from acting out in your sexual sin?

I’m afraid that your line of reasoning doesn’t fit with Scripture. It would be comparable to asking, “Wouldn’t it be acceptable for me to vent my anger toward someone by badmouthing them if it would keep me from hitting them?”

First of all, expressing hatred to someone or giving over to masturbation will only tend to lead a person on to deeper sin. Secondly, the lesser of two evils does not mean that something isn’t evil. This line of thinking is what often comes from church leaders who have long since thrown up their hands in acquiescence to sin. In my book Counseling the Sexual Addict I wrote: “A counselor who condones a habit simply because it seems too strong to overcome demonstrates a lack of understanding and experience of God’s power to set the captive free.”

The real issue you have to come to grips with is whether or not you believe masturbation is sinful. It sounds as if you already have been convicted about your habit but are looking for a way to hold onto it. I won’t take the time to explain my reasoning here, but I will briefly mention the reasons why I believe masturbation is sinful:

• Sexuality was not created for personal enjoyment but as a way to express love to one’s mate.
• Masturbation is self-centered behavior.
• Jesus expressly calls His followers to deny themselves.
• Masturbation is driven by lust and fantasy.
• Masturbation causes a person to isolate from others.
• Masturbation is controlling.
• Masturbation causes feelings of guilt and shame—clear signs of its wrongness.
• Masturbation opens the door to other sexual sin.

What a collection of silly, evil, and harmful things to say.

Since one's religion is a choice, it certainly makes sense to choose to follow a religion that doesn't have this controlling manipulative concept of "sin". Make that one decision and all of a sudden everything is so much lighter and less burdensome.

[Richard T. Anderson]

"Masturbation causes feelings of guilt and shame"

Um, I guess I didn't get the memo on this. I've never felt guilty or shameful about masturbating. Sure, I don't walk into a crowded room and yell, "Hey, I just masturbated." But that's shyness and politeness, not shame.

Peace,
Rich

[S.P.]

Someone's obviously not doing it right... (grin)

[Dan]

Susie,

Your blog is timely for me this morning. I was reading, finishing my second time through, the Confessions of Augustine (400AD). This well intended scholar and pilgrim is a self admitted sex and love addict. He described himself this way several times in his Confessions but I think he was simply a man who wanted to live in relationship and didn’t know how.

Needless to say he sprouted some very bad theology that, sadly, took hold in the West and is a bad root wrapped around all things sexual for Catholics and Protestants I fear. He taught-and Roman Catholicism teaches today-that all sex is sin and life is (this is the sad part)transmitted sexually and therefore all life is sexy (true) and bad (sadly false) at the same time.

If it’s baby makin’ sex, the sin is Venial …“Priest: give me a couple Hail Mary’s and your cool.”…you don’t have to go to hell; if it’s not baby makin’ [condom] sex, well, then it’s Mortal…and "...to hell with you." The Catholic Church believes this and teaches this to this day. Sad. The Eastern Church does not share this Romans 5:12 legal notion of how sin (harmatia: missing the mark) enters our lives. And, in part, this is why he’s called Blessed Augustine and not Saint Augustine in the Eastern Christian world today.

It’s a bad day all around when you've got always work to shake off your bad sex body. “Body bad, spirit good” theology puts you in a no fun happening here holding pattern your whole life, waiting for Jesus to come and rescue you from your evil body. Augustine was nine years a Manicheaen, a body bad, spirit good Neo-Platonist when he supposedly renounced this teaching and converted to Christianity. Along with his teacher, Ambrose, he never really left his body is evil Manicheaen and Neo-Platonist ways behind. His Baptism/conversion was a late in life (after he’d raised a son and had a family with a common law wife, with whom he traveled and lived) conversion which was as much a conversion from an active sex life to sex sublimated celibacy life...as it was to the Christian faith. “Give me chastity but not yet” remains one of his most famous quotes.

All who wonder about philosophy and theology deal with how evil entered this world we live in. It is sad that due a lot to Augustine, evil enters your world when your dad puts his penis into mom and you show up a mess soon after. It is no wonder the Roman Catholic Church (Susie, your mom was Catholic, right?)is in a heap on the floor and that Evangelical Protestants who are cut from the same theological Western cloth are hosed when it comes to cultivating a good, godly "sex is a family value" kind of life. This would be "clits down" living. (Yes, I have your "Clits Up" button on my desk at work.)

Some of my friends who are experts at this Augustine stuff remind me not to be too harsh on him, as he was using a Latin (West) not Greek (East) translation of Romans 5:12 when he goofed with his teaching. Sexually speaking, it’s been a sad day in the West every since. The East to this day sees sex and love and marriage more as a mystical thing than a legal thing. It helps, too, that most Eastern Orthodox Christian priests around the world (Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Antiochian) are married and have a naked wife to go home to at the end of the day.

Again, thanks Susie for making us think. And keep passin' out those buttons.
-Dan

[Brent]

The whole premise of their "ministry" is appalling. It goes beyond any established sexual mores of Christianity into some very scary territory. The masturbation position is just the tip of the iceberg---although it is certainly the most blatantly ridiculous and unintentionally humorous.

"Sexuality was not created for personal enjoyment"? So God created this thing as a way to be selfless, but he made it feel really good. What is wrong with God? And if sex isn't for personal enjoyment, then what is? Apparently, nothing. If you don't believe me, read the website. The overwhelming theme is that it is a sin to derive pleasure from anything except prayer and bible study.

And if sex is meant as a way to express love to one's mate, does it mean that my sexual partner sinning if she enjoys what I'm doing to her? What is that post-coital conversation like? "Did you come honey? You did? Better pray to Jesus for forgiveness. You know that sex isn't meant for your personal enjoyment."

"Masturbation is controlling"? Controlling whom, exactly? Myself? I'm positive that the Bible repeatedly holds up self-control as a virtue, so wouldn't that make masturbation a good thing? Maybe it's bad because its a way of keeping sex from my spouse and that's why it is controlling. Of course, it would also eliminate any possibility that I might accidently cause my partner to have an orgasm and, thus, save her from the sin of personal enjoyment.

"Masturbation causes feelings of guilt and shame"? Of course it makes some people feel guilty, because bulletheads like these people concoct ridiculous moral schemes to make people ashamed of it. If you've ever had a two-year-old living in your house, you probably know that masturbation doesn't naturally cause guilt or shame. Most toddlers are proud of their self-loving habits and the challenge is to get them to learn some discretion.

The most telling thing about the couple that runs this ministry is their story about overcoming his "sexual addiction." He was furtively going to strip clubs, renting porn, and seeing prostitutes, almost certainly because he had been raised to believe that sex was bad and dirty. Therefore, the only way that he could freely express his sexuality was outside of his marriage in secret because he certainly couldn't do those things with his pure, holy, virginal wife. And part of their "cure" for his addiction was the wife coming to terms with the fact that she would have to put out more!

Ironically, what this couple puts forth as the cure for his "sexual addiction," which was really just sexual represssion, was to double up on the religion-based, anti-sex message that caused his sexual dysfunction in the first place.

And the topping on the cake is that these folks are apparently making money hand-over-fist. The residential treatment program is actually relatively cheap, but probably way out of reach for 99% of their audience who can't afford to give up their jobs for six months to a year(!) to go live in Kentucky. the real money is in their "study at home" materials that cost (gulp) $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for couples (I love the 0% discount, it's so very Christian). And, of course, the $30 half-hour telephone counseling sessions that you have to have every time you have a sexual thought.

It just makes me wonder, "Who would Jesus shame into paying obscenely inflated prices for psychological castration?"

[Laurie D. T. Mann]

I wonder if this is code for the fact that women tend to take more sexual stimulation than men to come? If a woman needs more attention than her husband does and ASKS for it, maybe that makes her a sex addict because she knows her body better than he does??

I could be considered a sex addict by these jokers. I think I'm just happily married to a great guy, but...

[Greta Christina]

I'm personally struck by the unthinking, "self-evident to them" equation of porn use with porn addiction. They basically tried to prove that all these woman are "addicted to porn" because they, you know, use it.

You know, if they want to call it a sin, they should just bloody well call it a sin. Calling it addiction trivializes actual addiction.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

"Honest, I really have to wonder how anyone could NOT want to look at porn."

Easy: 1) Not having seen any porn you'd want to look at. 2) Not having gotten ads for any porn that you'd want to look at. 3) Having sexual fantasies that don't mesh well with whatever porn you've caught sight of or heard described, but mesh much better with something else (books or mainstream movies or even just going with your own thoughts over fantasies that better fit other people than you).

"And, of course, the $30 half-hour telephone counseling sessions that you have to have every time you have a sexual thought."

Actually, $30 half-hour telephone counseling sessions that are all about your sexual thoughts could be fun. Wrestling with temptation can be a great way to keep it in your head and linger over it. (I recall there was a passage in The French Lieutenant's Woman about this sort of thing that struck me as quite apt).

[C.S. Lewiston]

What do you call someone who exploits peoples' Pavlovian-conditioned hatred and fear of their own bodies for power and profit? I don't know, but I suspect those words wouldn't be terribly polite.

"The East to this day sees sex and love and marriage more as a mystical thing than a legal thing."

That's interesting. I was previously unaware of this. "Mystical" sounds a damned sight healthier than "sinful".

As Frank Zappa pointed out, bad information makes bad laws. And bad laws (government or religious) hurt people. As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of sexual sadists (who are not to be confused with typical BDSM-ers) and power-trippers out there masquerading as moralists.

"... most Eastern Orthodox Christian priests around the world (Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Antiochian) are married and have a naked wife to go home to at the end of the day."

I have got to convert!

[Adele]

I heard these people (or a similar couple) being interviewed on the local religious right radio station the other day. The man said that he had been flying home from a trip and had a sexual fantasy about one of the airline stewardesses. When he came home, his wife was all happy to see him, but he sat down with her and "confessed" his "sin", and she was devastated. It was so sad because it was so utterly ridiculous and they believe in this sexual repression stuff so seriously. It really is a great way for the religious right to keep their followers minds occupied and under their control.