Thread by @_Bryana_Joy

I want @garyLthomas (& @Zondervan!) to know that for an untold number of women, his words in Married Sex are triggering trauma responses & great anguish this week. We. are. tired. We are so, SO tired of being told that men desperately need sex & we don't. 1/9

We are SO tired of being told that our bodies have an almost-mystical power over men & that we need to use our sexuality strategically to retain our husbands' affection. We are so tired of being treated like a separate species primarily defined by our sex appeal. 2/9

I want @garyLthomas to know what it's like to be a woman suffering with vaginismus/dyspareunia & forcing herself through agonizing pain & hours of dilator therapy every week in sheer terror that the man she loves will leave her if she can't fulfill his sexual expectations. 3/9

I want @garyLthomas to sit with that pain, that fear, & that sense of helplessness, & to understand that the weary tropes he uses in this book are perpetuating that anguish for yet more women. 4/9

I want @garyLthomas to recognize that scaring women into performing sexually by threatening them with the collapse of their marriages leads to serious trauma, insecurity, & an inability to trust their husbands—even when their husbands *aren't* raging sex machines. 5/9

I want @garyLthomas to understand that when women aren't excited about sex, it's really no wonder given the way women have historically been victimized by sex, forced into sex, & (by people like him) taught to see sex as a man's need & a woman's responsibility. 6/9

I want @garyLthomas to recognize that trying to frighten women into sex by warning them that their husbands will resent them if they don't do it is a cruel dismissal of the way women's sexuality & sexual pleasure has been almost entirely overlooked for hundreds of years. 7/9

I want @garyLthomas to understand that loads of women are already trying to like sex with a frantic desperation made more excruciating by books like his, but that the power to make sex good for women doesn't primarily rest with women but with men. 8/9

Most of all, I want @garyLthomas & the other authors & creators of Christian marriage resources to please, please listen. Listen to women. There are so many of us saying the same things again & again & again. Don't our stories matter? 9/9

I'm grateful for everyone's input, & I want to specifically thank those who have weighed in about the very prevalent but underdiscussed issue of women with higher sex drives than their partners. Just wrote a follow-up thread about that:

https://twitter.com/_Bryana_Joy/status/1446958430300823553