This is the one hundred and thirty-fourth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a compilation video made up of clips of Evangelicals giving advice about marriage and sex. Let this be exhibit A for why there is so much sexual dysfunction and misogyny in the Evangelical church.
So sad and troubling that so many Christian men and women hold onto these horrible attitudes. The one that says “Men are sexual, women aren’t” maybe being the most damaging. This whole idea that sex is something that men have to get and which women (if married, and only if married) have to give (completely regardless of consent.)
It’s such an oft-given message that it’s become a form of truth which few seem to question. It’s a claim that isn’t borne out by science, by psychology, and by many people’s lives. It is used to underpin a lot of spousal abuse. And how it leads to so much shame!
Not just a fundie Evangelical message, btw: I was brought up in the Catholic Church and a lot of Catholics are full of this. With the added complication that they’ve often been given this message by men who are (at least officially) celibate, men who have without exception very deliberately chosen a life that eschews having a partner and (in many cases) children. The more I hear religious messages, the more I feel they are deeply, deeply damaging, both to individuals and to society.
SHUT UP and get busy with your bad selves! As long as you are not hurtin anyone else – WHO gives a fuck! I guess they do…………………sigh.
The purpose of organized religion is to harm people while telling them they are loved, that this is all about ultimate love! Do not enjoy your life in any way but in denial! Deny yourself! Say it is what Christ did, though he did the opposite. And sex is bad because it is human and human is evil! Harm yourself, hurt yourself, avoid pleasure at all costs unless that pleasure is in loss, in self-harm… praise almighty Gawd! What a load.
Gack!!! That was horrible!
Men don’t have emotional needs? Women don’t have a sex drive?
So many assumptions, so little understanding. One positive where I giggled was the clip where the host was embarrassed out of her skin by the frank language of her guest.
As I understand relationships the first and most important item to use is communication. From my exploration into repressive sexual practices of mainstream religions (and validated by the video) talking ‘at’ one another is preferred to talking ‘with’ each other.
The tragic/funny side I see is comprehensive age specific sexual education classes (where consent is brought into the picture) are thrown out as disrespectful of theocratic idealology. As I see it all the sexual revolution of the sixties accomplished was to bring back a puritanical view of sex.
So glad I don’t live in America.