I do believe "not all men." But I also believe "way too many men."

Thinking about the intersection of the horrendous French case involving Gisele Pelicot, and Steve Arterburn, evangelical author, declaring loudly that "men just don't have that Christian view of sex."

A 🧵 In Every Man's Battle, Arterburn & Stoeker say that men sin naturally, "simply by being male."

In another book in the series, a woman wails that she feels like a "human toilet for semen." They don't sympathize, but tell her to understand what her husband is like--& satisfy him.

Here is amazing poem about megachurch pastor Josh Howerton, who jokes about women being essentially sex blow up dolls for their husbands, and about "shady little girls in mini-skirts in church parking lots" being his enemy.

🧵

1/14 But remember--like Josh always says--"it's just a joke!"

Grateful to commenter Julie Chupp who wrote this about Josh:

2/14

Dear newlywed women: If you're feeling neglected or unimportant in your marriage, you may decide to push it aside and let it go. If sex is awful, you may think, "well, the main thing is that he's happy."

You can do that for a decade maybe. Then suddenly you can't anymore. There's something I like to call "The Unfairness Threshold." You can put up with a lot for about a decade or a decade and a half. Then you break. You can't convince yourself everything's okay, or it's not that bad. You're tired.

Here's the scenario: You know a couple where HE was a youth pastor/youth leader and SHE was a youth group member when they started dating, but they're married now. And they're doing great!

So you wonder: how can we say these types of relationships are wrong? Let me explain.

https://twitter.com/sheilagregoire/status/1820830444796916216

First, you assume they're doing great because of what you see on the outside. But you don't actually know. The number of memoirs coming out right now of women telling how they were being controlled and nobody knew, is astounding. We only see the outside of a relationship.

Does it really matter if a YOUTH PASTOR dates & marries a GIRL in his youth group? After all, an age difference of 23 and 17 isn't that big a deal, right?

A thread. Many of us approach the youth pastor/youth member dating thing from purely an age perspective. And we can all picture mature 17 and 18-year-old girls who would be fine to date a 23 or 24-year-old.

But there's more going on here we need to take into account.

Are we teaching our girls that they have the right to say a firm, "no" when they don't want to do something with a boy? Let's talk about it. 🧵 When purity culture teacher Dannah Gresh was teaching girls how to say “no” to a boy going too far, she had some questionable advice to share in her book "And the Bride Wore White":

What would happen if we all just stopped?

That question at the end of @bethallisonbarr 's book The Making of Biblical Womanhood is sticking with me today, because I am so absolutely and thoroughly DISGUSTED with the latest Matt Chandler news. Here's a man who leads a megachurch and a church networking/planting organization, who thinks he can tell us how to live--and his church hired his father, who is a self-confessed child sexual abuser, and didn't tell the congregation.

Christian book publishing rant:

I just saw that a big male sporting celebrity's wife, who has a large social media following, has a book coming out.

Can we talk about this? 🧵 A large platform that is based on celebrity can get someone a book contract, even if they have very little life experience; no relevant education; and no independent research and no innovative philanthropic initiatives.

The megachurch pastors who have been caught and lost their positions--were they really EVER "strong men of God"?

I'm seeing people on social media saying that the devil targets strong men of God. I don't think that's what's going on. It seems clear that these pastors have had issues for a long, long time. Robert Morris criminally sexually assaulted a child thirty-five years ago. He was NEVER a strong man of God.

He was an extremely charismatic, eloquent speaker.

Before approaching a woman about what she's wear, ask yourself:

If men are being made uncomfortable, why is it necessary to transfer that discomfort and shame onto a woman? Why not ask the men to deal with their discomfort? Several women messaging me have explained, “she’s really well-endowed, and that’s distracting to the men around her.” But a woman cannot do anything about being well-endowed. The issue can never, ever be about how her body is affecting the men around her; that’s on them.

Why do people cheat? New research says it has nothing to do with frequency of sex!

a 🧵 This new research about cheating was recently published online, and it is fascinating.

(and has been incorporated into our upcoming book on marriage!)

Here’s what it says:

Why do evangelical male authors/pastors so often teach that women need to have more sex to prevent affairs--even when new research shows that's not remotely true?

I have a theory--and it's a controversial one.

A 🧵 Authors and pastors teach this because fundamentally they likely aren’t emotionally healthy themselves, or they live in communities where emotional health is relatively rare, and so they don’t understand it.

Do teen girls have a sex drive? I’m desperately hoping that you answer, “Of course!”

Recently, I had a woman email me to tell me that a friend of hers learned from a seminary teacher that teenaged girls are not aware of their sexuality and don't need to learn about sex. 🧵 And this is being taught at a seminary! So let’s go over a few things.

1. Boys tend to be more aware of their bodies and sex because their sexual organs are external. Just because boys tend to be more aware of their bodies, doesn't mean that girls are not sexual.

When male pastors/teachers/authors reveal they objectify women–we should treat those men accordingly.

a 🧵: One of the things that shocks me about evangelical culture is that a man can reveal that he has a really low view of women, or that he objectifies women or blames them for men’s sin, and that doesn’t change how that person is treated.

If a megachurch pastor is plagiarizing his sermons, then perhaps it's time to admit that churches are hiring performers and actors, not pastors.

A 🧵 In small churches, the pastor is often a jack-of-all-trades. The pastor has to write sermons; organize services; coordinate all the activities of the church; set the vision; plan extra events; counsel people; show up in emergencies; and more.

Does sex for you have a start up cost or a major cost? And what is the difference? We talked about this on the Bare Marriage podcast recently, but I’d like to elaborate on part of it today. 🧵

1/7 I think we often get confused when people talk about this. They’ll say,

“Well, sometimes I have sex when I don’t really want it, and it’s really good for us. And it’s really good for our marriage."

And what she means is,

2/7

Can we talk about how, when a pastor messes up (as Josh Howerton did with his horrendous wedding night "joke), other pastors often rush to his defence? I think there's something bigger going on here.

A 🧵 I've been just amazed at how the internet was pretty much universally appalled by Josh's words. The reason the clip went so viral is because people saw it and said, "Wow, that's bad." Atheists, SBC members, and everything in between saw it was bad.

But two groups defended him.

Over the weekend, a number of people fighting against misogyny in evangelicalism felt quite discouraged, as did I, when the conversation shifted from calling out bad behaviour to asking people to stop piling on pastors who did something wrong.

A few thoughts: It is natural and good to feel sympathy when we see someone go through intense online criticism--even if we think the criticism is just. We simply must see the humanity in others.

But there is also a difference between being piled on unjustly and being piled on for being unjust.

Over the last two days it has ben so disheartening to have to convince multiple pastors, defending another pastor, that "jokes" from the pulpit about how women should essentially be sex blow up dolls for their husbands is not okay. It has been AMAZING how many people have seen the problem. The fact that the video went so viral, and continues to be talked about, shows that most people see this as a huge, glaring issue.

Josh Howerton has made a statement saying I took him out of context and it was "just a joke."

I have no problem giving the whole context and talking about this more, so let's play the entire clip and break it down, shall we? Here is the entire clip. I didn't play the whole thing yesterday for the sake of keeping things short and sweet, but on Instagram, so far about 90% of people are saying the whole clip makes things so much worse.

Could it be that many men who have risen to the top of evangelical institutions just wouldn't be that impressive anywhere else?

A 🧵. I've been thinking about two incidents lately: Al Mohler's comments about apparent sex abuser Paul Pressler (throwing shade on the accusations saying, "he had a lot of enemies"), and Bart Barber's "joke" at the expense of sexual abuse survivors.

Something has occurred to me.