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5 Reasons Jesus Would Ask You to Un-Sign the Nashville Statement

September 1, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

After the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood issued their Nashville Statement on gender and sexuality this week, I tried not to care. Don’t we already know where they stand on these issues?

But I couldn’t let it go, if only because so many of my own friends carefully follow CBMW or John Piper. They are people who truly want more than anything to be faithful and loving. They don’t know or care much about the politically correct ways to say things; they might even read the statement as many commenters did—”compassionate,” “gracious.”

It was CBMW’s insistence that their position is central to the Gospel, I realized, that took my breath away with shock and a little fear. Do my friends think I oppose the Gospel? Will they think so after their spiritual heroes sign on to this sweeping declaration?

Whenever I have questions about the Gospel, I ask Jesus. Here are five things I could imagine him saying to those who signed.

The Nashville Statement is hurting people.

I know many people who might sign on to the statement with some sorrow. They worry about the state of world. They wish others didn’t have to struggle with their sexual identities. They want to have LGBT friends and serve them meals and “do life with them” until the day the friends realize how terrible their lives are and repent.

That is well-intentioned in a way, but it’s not compassionate. “Com + passion” equals suffering with. You are not with someone as long as you are drawing a line between sexual morality and sexual immorality with yourself squarely on the opposite side from the other person. You are not with someone as long as opposing a fundamental aspect of their self remains a fundamental aspect of your theology.

Instead, the language and tone of the Nashville Statement reveals that it was not written by people in real relationships with queer people. If it had, it wouldn’t use the made-up word “transgenderism” or insist at so very many points that people can change to fit “God’s design.” It would acknowledge the church’s utter failure of queer people, evident in the prevalence of depression, suicide, and self-harm among queer Christians.

It’s not Biblical.

The Nashville Statement’s conflation of beliefs about sexuality with salvific belief in the Gospel (Article X) is utterly unsupported by Scripture. Jesus never preached that fulfillment of narrow gender roles would signal the arrival of the kingdom of God.

It’s not holistic.

Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t make statements about gender and sexual identity in isolation from an understanding of sex and sexuality for straight people. In particular, it’s tone-deaf to trumpet the urgency of these issues for the Evangelical church, the vast majority of whose queer members have left, while ignoring the fact that rape culture, pornography, and abuse continue in the pews (and in the clergy) daily. This is the epitome of a plank-and-speck situation.

Likewise, a church that demands lifelong celibacy of its members is also rejecting the gospel if it does not expect to sacrifice just as heavily as the celibate members to support and include them in its life. Jesus said his followers would hate their mothers and brothers; perhaps he meant to suggest that there is no place in his kingdom for those who idolize the nuclear family.

It makes you look silly.

The Nashville Statement will not go down in history as a defining moment on par with the Nicene Creed. It may someday be a footnote illustrating how conservative evangelicalism died orchestrating a series of exercises in missing the point. The grandiosity of the name points to the hubris of the whole thing.

It reveals more about you than about God.

The fact is, no one reading the Bible—and especially the Gospels—for the first time would put it down and say, “that was a fascinating book about sex.” You’re revealing your own obsession with sex and the status quo. The Nashville Statement itself makes an attempt to look strong and decisive, but the preamble reveals that that attempt is just an impulse driven by fear—fear of change, fear of humanity, and most importantly, fear of those who are different.

I think if Jesus were here, he’d ask you about your own nuclear family. He would sit and his eyes would glow with yours as you told about the passion and steadfastness your spouse has shown you, the incomparable joy of raising children, how the best nights of your life were just all of you piled on a couch. Maybe he’d chime in—I have always loved how her hair catches the sun, too.

Jesus would ask you about sex. About what it meant to you to share all of yourself with someone; about what you learned about God and yourself in your own celibate seasons; about how your gender makes you who you are, places you on a team, invites and challenges you to be fully yourself.

Jesus would listen and listen and when you were done, when you had told all that made your own experience precious to you, he would wait a while. And I think he’d ask you to let go of the Nashville Statement. I think he’d say, here, let me hold that for you, and he’d promise to keep it safe.

I think if you were so sure of your beliefs and so close to Jesus, you’d be able to set them aside for a bit and listen, instead of alternately clutching them to your chest and brandishing them about. And Jesus might say:

Your love for your family is a beautiful and holy thing, a thing that makes you who you are. And my queer friends? Their gender identities and romantic relationships make them who they are, too. Precious, thrilling, and a little bit odd, with histories of mistakes and triumphs—just like everyone else.

Maybe you feel the need to police all of this precisely because your own identities mean so much to you. Is it so hard to believe that the people they love and the genders they express mean this much to others as well? That they are integral to their very being? That I made them that way?

Your family doesn’t need to be protected by rules and declarations. They need to see you model the servant leadership you talk about sometimes. They need you to wash the feet of your transgender neighbor and really hear the stories, start to finish, of the queer people who have quietly slipped out of your life. They need to see that you know how to repent and to make amends. That’s what would take courage. That’s how you would display integrity. That’s how you would be changed by imitating my love.

How purity culture feeds rape culture (sex and shame part five)

August 31, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Fifth in a series, explained here.

A common theme among people I’ve talked with is the understanding that parents or teachers meant to protect them for safe and fulfilling intimacy, though the lessons unwittingly barred them from it in one way or another. I’m grateful to all our authors for contributing to a conversation that doesn’t seek to condemn or blame, but to heal and to empower.

TW: brief description of assault

My parents were raised conservative Baptists. From the time I was a small child, my parents made sure I knew that they had only ever had sex with each other. My cousin got married when I was seven, and though I personally saw no reason for the outrage, my mom assured me that their marriage did not erase the fact they were living together beforehand. When I asked why it mattered, she said you could never be too sure that the person you were marrying wasn’t going to change their mind, and it was best to be certain before you got too close.

When I was thirteen or fourteen my dad told me that his high school girlfriend had wanted to have sex with him but he’d been strong enough to deny her, and that nice girls didn’t tempt people they cared about. Shortly thereafter Mom gave me the “boys only want one thing” discussion, where it became my responsibility to circumscribe my behaviors lest I unwittingly cause the downfall of some weak boy. They were my parents. I believed them. I wanted to do what they told me was right. So I became very careful about how and if I touched people, just in case I touched them in the wrong ways or got too close. I still struggle with this.

After high school (during which time I didn’t date) I went to a small college just far enough away that my parents weren’t involved in my day-to-day decisions. I made friends who drank and went to fraternity parties and I felt young for the first time. The parties were fun, and on those evenings, for a short while, I didn’t have to be the person who carried the entire weight of the world on her shoulders.

One evening my sophomore year I was standing in an alley between two of the fraternity houses when a group of young men came up to me. I was wearing something moderately low cut and was a little drunk. They liked the way I looked and wanted to kiss me. I clearly told them no. It didn’t matter. They kissed me and touched me for a while, and I was so afraid. In my mind it was confirmation that everything my parents said was true. While I know it could have been much worse, I remember feeling like I deserved what I got because for one evening I had felt pretty. I told some friends about it the next day. They laughed. I felt so foolish. I waited a decade to mention it to anyone else.

I was 30 years old before I allowed someone else to touch me, and before I allowed myself to touch him. I was 30 years old before someone I wanted kissed me. I was 30 years old before I found someone who made me feel safe, someone who saw me and wanted nothing from me, other than to make me feel good. It was an incredible gift while it lasted.

Now, as a single person trying to figure out the world of online dating, I often feel as if it’s too late—that there was some kind of learning curve that I missed out on. While I know that isn’t strictly true, it’s something I confront every single time I go out with someone new. Will he understand? Will he interpret my inability to touch as disinterest? How do I be me while still giving off the appropriate signals? Do I know someone who will let me practice touching them? Oh god, how would I explain the need to practice? And I still feel like damaged goods. Every. Single. Time.

I know my parents did the best they knew for me, and in many ways my upbringing was wonderful. I’m a functional member of society and I’ve had lots of great opportunities. But I wish they hadn’t pushed (what I now know is) their body stuff off onto me. I wish they’d have let me be me, and, more importantly, I wish they’d have used something more than fear and shame to teach me about sexuality and intimacy.

Sexual violence is pervasive in American life (and throughout the world): half of women and at least one in five men in the U.S. will be victims at some point in their lives. Sadly, sexual violence is also becoming a theme of this series. If you’ve experienced sexual violence, know that you are not alone and that you deserve respect, autonomy, and safety. The people at the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) can direct you to those who can help you on your journey.

Today’s questions, in light of this crisis:

How does purity culture diverge from rape culture?
How does it intersect?

What does an emphasis on boundaries communicate about the way the world works?

What qualities (joy, courage, anger, empowerment) or experiences have helped you replace fear or shame in your life?

Actual Proof that we’d Done It (sex + shame part four)

August 29, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Continuing our sex and shame series.
I am very fond of this story, not only because the author’s “never minds” gave me a bit of a giggle, but also because I think sharing this simple story is just as brave and important as sharing any other. Thank you to this author for your honesty.

With our first child, I was ashamed to tell friends and family about the pregnancy. Proud and excited, yes, but also very embarrassed: here it was, actual proof that we’d “done it.”

Never mind that we’d been together for more than a decade. Never mind that our bedroom has only ever had one bed, and that sex in married life is sort of a given. Never mind that I actually loved doing it. I still felt so traumatized by sex jokes I heard in elementary school, and sexism in the media, and sex scenes in movies I wasn’t ready for – all the awful, too-graphic-for-me stuff coming from my school and culture and society – I still felt so disturbed, that evidence that I’d “done it” myself was somehow deeply mortifying. Just as being childless allowed room for the *possibility* of virginity, this baby left no room for doubt. Our physical intimacy was public knowledge.

To be clear, I never judged myself as indecent – I just didn’t want anyone else to know that we…did that sort of thing. I think my sister really did feel a bit scandalized when she heard our news.

Why should I be so bashful about others knowing I have sex with my husband? (Or *had*, once — Baby’s really only proof of that one time after all, right?!) Why wasn’t the truth of my own years of (totally positive) experience enough to over-write, even partially, the idea that sex is generally “disgusting and naughty”?

I don’t know.

When I was pregnant with our second child, there was less shame in the announcement. Everyone already knew. But even now, I still hate any references to sex in songs, books, movies. I still feel embarrassed at the idea or suggestion of anyone else having sex. I can only imagine these feelings were formed when I was a small child, and that’s why they are unshakably strong.

One of the things that strikes me about this story is that it illustrates how we can know (or choose to believe) one thing, but still be controlled by the voice of shame shouting otherwise.

Have you ever felt shame about doing (or saying or being) something that you actually thought was perfectly acceptable?

What family and cultural factors influence our decisions about what is public and what is private about sex and our sex lives?

Why does joy so often get lost in all the other associations we make about sex?

part 1

part 2

part 3

I loved those monuments, not so long ago

August 27, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

My latest is at Amity Coalition:

I thought they stood for resilience and pride, for the other side of every story, for a nation grappling with the sorrows of its own rending. I saw the generals as gentlemen, protectors, reluctantly orchestrating an inevitable but tragic conflict of brother against brother. Imagining the people who erected the monuments, I felt I could draw from them some of the strength and stubbornness and grit that form part of my Southern identity.

I never thought much about what they meant to black people.

I hope you’ll read more here.

Bad Sex, Terrible Shame, and Worse Christianity (sex + shame part three)

August 25, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

There is nothing I can add to this post. It is honest, beautiful, heartbreaking, and hopeful. It gets hard, but I hope you’ll read to the end. We are about halfway through our sex and shame series; you can catch up here.

I was fourteen, attending a purity weekend retreat with other high school-aged girls in our church youth group. There was worship and Bible study, but most importantly the message we received was “You are a daughter of the King. All boys think about is sex. Don’t let them touch you or you’ll get pregnant and have an abortion and regret it the rest of your life.”

There to punctuate the message was our local abstinence cheerleader. She worked at the local anti-abortion pregnancy center and told us how, back in her college days, she had had a one night stand with a man and become pregnant. She was so scared to carry to term that she had an abortion. She regretted that decision every day the rest of her life.

She also told us that there was a link between abortions and breast cancer. See how that sin follows you the rest of your life? Your sexual indulgences literally become a cancer that you will have to fight for your life against. Best course: Don’t do it.

Easy peasy, I said. I’ve never had a boyfriend, so this is the perfect time. I’ll just draw a line before kissing. My first kiss will be my wedding day, and I’ll have no sexual sin problems. No regret. No “piece of my heart” given away before its time.

We were collectively asked to make a commitment to God that we would keep ourselves pure for our husbands. We went home, steadfast in our newfound promises.

I was twenty, and a junior at a Christian university. My boyfriend and I had just patched things up after a semester breakup. But this time, this round, our relationship was For Real. The breakup would make us stronger, I told myself, and hadn’t I gotten a word from God that He had hedged me in and would set my path before me? This was fated, predestined to work.

We kissed, everywhere but the lips. No French kisses. Those were for wedding days, right? The first time he slid his hand between my legs, I pushed passed the immediate terror and hesitation. He wanted to love me. I should let him. Besides, there was no penetration. This was okay, right? We had a future.

The second time—hidden in the back of his university housing bedroom—we went further, ever edging around true intercourse, while still avoiding lip contact.

I heard the door to his apartment open, signalling the arrival of his roommate. Shame and panic gripped my heart. Females were forbidden in male bedrooms, to name just one of the myriad school rules I was breaking. I straightened my hair and skirt, positioning myself quickly at a modest distance from my boyfriend to leave room between us “for Jesus”; wincing as the bedroom door opened; praying the dreaded roommate wouldn’t hear my panicked movement and frightened breathing and report us to the school.

By the third time, I felt so filthy and soiled from pretending we weren’t having intimate relations that I figured true intercourse couldn’t add any more sin to my already enormous heap. I would just marry him, and all our pre-marital dalliances would be washed away by the ultimate consummation of our love. But the sex hurt and was overwhelmingly unpleasant; I left his apartment nauseated and unfulfilled. The silver purity ring, which I had worn since middle school, gleamed mockingly from my left ring finger. I couldn’t remove it, lest anyone suspect. I was the most false Christian to walk the earth.

In subsequent months, I often cried in the shower, trapped by my shame and wishing I could throw up. Maybe if I purged enough I would be pure again. I begged God to forgive my sins of lust.

I married that boyfriend. I accepted his proposal for a myriad of reasons, but underlying all of those was the pressure to marry the guy with whom I’d had sex, as if it would redeem me somehow. Our marriage was short-lived and as terrible and unfulfilling as our nights of clandestine passion in school housing.

Now I am twenty-seven, revising my understanding of virginity, purity, and worth. I’ve left behind those innocent assumptions at the purity retreat. Through prayer and conversations with other godly people, I’ve realized several truths:

I am not less of a Christian because I have had sex. No mistake—no matter how large or small it actually is—is insurmountable for Christ’s sacrifice.

I am not a less desirable partner because I have had sex. I am not blackened and damaged and unfit for a godly, loving husband.

I am not a less worthy person because I have had sex. My value is not reduced to mere biology. It is more than whether my hymen is still intact.

God’s love for me is not diminished because I have had sex. To believe that He loves me less would be to cheapen His grace and to ignore Christ’s response to the sinful people with whom He kept company. He loved them, despite how “holy” they were before he met them.

May these truths bring as much healing to you as they have to me.

Some questions to ponder or discuss:

Have you ever found that your innocent assumptions suddenly clashed with reality?

In what ways do various aspects of culture tie men and women’s value to sex?

Where have you found your worth when any of those models of value failed you?

You can still contribute your own anonymous story (or a guest post including your name if you wish.) Details are at the end of this post.

part 1

part 2

Going First: Sex and Shame part two

August 14, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Part one is here.
As I hold these stories about sex and shame, poring over each one, the thought comes again and again: There is so much heaviness and hope here. It’s not that we have rushed to a happy ending. It’s that in telling a story, we accept it just a little, for all its wounds and all its silliness and all we felt, good and bad. The hope is in the new lightness of letting what was, be, and in the wisdom we find we’ve received from it.

I’m honored to be a part of this process and floored that people—friends and strangers—have been willing to speak. There are so, so many waiting to have this conversation, only hoping that someone else will go first. Thank you, thank you to these women for being the first to step out of silence.

I grew up in a Catholic family. In religion classes in my Catholic high school we were indoctrinated in the purity myth. I rejected this rhetoric later, but at the time, for the most part I bought it, and I decided to wait for sex. For me, it was mostly about self-protection. I thought that if I had sex with a guy, and then we broke up, it would absolutely destroy me psychologically. I didn’t trust myself to be resilient enough to survive that. I had had no bad experiences with men, but I didn’t trust them not to use me for sex and then discard me. Maybe I was afraid I wasn’t lovable enough that a guy would want me for more than sex.

I made a decision that armed me against my own lack of confidence. I would pretend I were so supremely convinced of my lovability that I didn’t need sex to attract or keep a guy. It was a logical response to the rhetoric in my religion class that made sex and love opposites: “If he loves me, he’ll wait. If he doesn’t love me, I don’t want to have sex with him anyway.” I’d been taught to view dating as a marketplace, and sex as currency, so working within that model I made a conscious, deliberate decision to value myself highly, one that, in the end, outweighed my insecurity and poor body image. I set my standard high, and prayed some guy would rise to it.

Ideally, I also wanted sex to be something special that set apart my lifelong relationship from any other relationship I might have. I decided to wait, if not until marriage, then at least until I found the guy I would eventually marry. I thought it through and figured out what was important to me about sex, and especially my first time, and stuck to that decision with such determination that I was actually able to make it happen that way. Not having sex before I knew for sure that I was ready was something positive I did for myself. I’ve never regretted waiting as long as I did.

Now, this didn’t come up in high school at all. No one wanted to date me then. I was a little chubby and a lot of a know-it-all.

I had my first serious relationship in college. We almost broke up after we’d been dating a couple months because it became clear to him that I wasn’t going to sleep with him anytime soon. He was frustrated, but he ultimately decided it was worth it to stick with me and explore our connection. He had to wait almost 5 years. We’re still together, 13 years and 2 kids later.

We didn’t have sex in college, but we certainly had a physical relationship, especially after we’d said “I love you.” There were hands everywhere, there were orgasms, there was nakedness. It was great. I felt sexy, desirable, powerful, in love.

After I graduated from college, I moved back home to go to grad school. My college boyfriend and I continued our relationship long distance. We still didn’t have sex, but when we were together we wanted to really be together. We needed that physical outlet and release, that reassurance and affirmation of our love. It was the glue that kept us together during the weeks we were apart.

Once, just before my boyfriend came to visit, my mom told me she didn’t want me to shut myself in my room with him, using a tone of voice that made me feel dirty about it. She talked about me setting an example for my brothers. What should we do, where should we go, I asked, bewildered. Go park somewhere, she snapped dismissively.

Well, we tried to. We drove around looking for a place where it would be safe to park and get in the backseat and get busy. We didn’t really find one. We got caught by a bored small-town cop who was rude about it, but didn’t do anything.

After my boyfriend went back home, I talked to my mom, saying words I’d been rehearsing in my head all weekend.

“I know it’s your house and maybe to you this is a roommate issue, but the way you talked to me when you told me to go park somewhere really hurt my feelings and made me feel ashamed. My boyfriend and I don’t have sex, but we do other things, and I’m proud of the choices I’m making in this relationship, both the things we do and the things we don’t do. And I would like you to be proud of me too. Also, it’s not my job to teach your sons about sex. If you’re worried about the messages they’re getting, that’s on you and dad to give them the messages you want. And just so you know, maybe it was easy to find a place to go park 25 years ago, but now there aren’t any places where you can do that.”

I think she was so relieved to hear that I wasn’t having sex that she didn’t really hear the rest of it.

And another “everything-but” perspective:

Dear 15 year old me,

Sex is much more than a penis entering a vagina. It is heteronormative and offensive to think otherwise because that is not the way that all people everywhere have sex. You’ve had sex at this point, even though you cling to your all-important “virginity.” It’s OK, you’ve done nothing wrong. Sex and love, either separately or in tandem, are beautiful experiences that everyone should have when they feel ready. Love you, girl!

P.S. You’re not fat.

Some questions come to mind as I’m reading these contributions:
Where do these stories resonate with you?
What ideas that you were taught in adolescence (sex-related or not) have you modified, softened, or rejected?
How do we help more young adults develop sexual selves and partnerships they are proud of?
How do the names and definitions involved in our stories and theologies about sex—from “purity” to “patriarchy,” “modesty” to “virginity”—alter our experiences and perceptions of it?

You can still contribute your own anonymous story (or a guest post including your name if you wish.) Details are at the end of this post.

part 1

part 3

sexy, desirable, powerful, in love (sex + shame part two)

August 14, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Now, this didn’t come up in high school at all. No one wanted to date me then. I was a little chubby and a lot of a know-it-all.

After my boyfriend went back home, I talked to my mom, saying words I’d been rehearsing in my head all weekend.

I think she was so relieved to hear that I wasn’t having sex that she didn’t really hear the rest of it.

And another “everything-but” perspective:

Dear 15 year old me,

P.S. You’re not fat.

You can still contribute your own anonymous story (or a guest post including your name if you wish.) Details are at the end of this post.

part 1

part 3

Decent Women, Sex, and Shame

August 8, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

The grass is not as soft as it looks, but cuddling in it seems to make my boyfriend happy. He is my first boyfriend, we are freshmen, and his affection for me is thrilling and overwhelming. I am certain he would do anything for me, so I am cuddling in this grass for him—though if I were to choose a scratchy patch of grass for this activity, it also wouldn’t be the university quad. In fact, when we sat down here, I hadn’t anticipated nearly this level of PDA. But my highest priority as a girlfriend is to be low-maintenance, and we’re certainly not making out like couples in movies about college, or couples I’ve seen in public parks in Atlanta and San Francisco; besides, Christian college is supposed to be a place where you have adventures, just safer and more moral ones than at other colleges. Having a boyfriend is an adventure. Spooning in public is an adventure. I put my discomfort aside. Sideways, I watch the frisbee game across the lawn; people trickle out of the dining hall; from my perspective, ants join up to follow in their wake, everyone busy. Maybe no one I know will even notice us.

Then a pair of boots blocks my view.

We scramble to a seated position and squint up at the Campus Safety officer who’s been dispatched to protect the campus from our obscenity. It is my nightmare. All the voices nagging that I was embarrassing myself are suddenly, solidly before me in this irritated young man and in the finger-wagging of the anonymous professor he says sent him. I cannot look at the officer or at my boyfriend; all I want is to scurry away like an ant and hide, maybe under a bush, the scratchier the better. I should have known better. I should have found some way to say no. Decent women do not even lay down in public, let alone with a boy. Decent women know how to make their boyfriends happy without scandalizing their professors. My face is flaring. People will gossip later, and I know I deserve it.

I don’t let on that I am this upset; pretending is something I’m good at. I make some jokes about the threat we pose to campus safety, and we take some aimless walk, as freshmen do. In the future, though, we won’t cuddle on campus. We’ve learned our relationship doesn’t belong there. We will make out in his car in dark parking lots because it seems to make my boyfriend happy. We still won’t be alone, though; a choir of voices will pull me farther and farther from my body, and I will learn every word to the single CD in his car, until the kissing involves him and a policeman and a professor and a pastor and Chris Carrabba, but not me. I will be hiding in shame.

When I was 18 I was not under the impression that making out in cars with boys you aren’t sure about is part of normal human development. My friends and I were raised in various strains of what has come to be called evangelical purity culture. We were generally under the impression that it would be, if not easy, at least fairly straightforward to arrive at our wedding days not only with our virginity, but with a record of very little physical interaction between ourselves and anyone other than our husbands. It had been impressed upon us that all physical contact beyond hand-holding had consequences for all of our future relationships, that “going too far” with the wrong boy could curse our marriages for years—and if we didn’t have good marriages, what would we have?

Now I’ve learned that making out in cars is, in fact, part of normal human development; but for me and my purity-seeking friends, what’s even more normal is feeling extreme shame about it. Whether we shut down our sexuality like we were told to, basically refusing to kiss before marriage, or we drew our lines elsewhere, we have all carried the weight of deep shock at ourselves, believing we’ve done far more than the respectable people around us. We have all sat in a church service feeling that if anyone knew, they would stage an intervention to rescue our integrity, our relationships, and potentially our salvation from the terrible things we hadn’t had the courage to refuse. But no one must find out. We might confess the sins of gossip, envy, cheating in school or spending too much, but sexual sin was another realm entirely. To do it was forbidden. To talk about it was impossible.

Now I’ve learned that the guilt we felt was not a healthy sense of regret at a genuinely bad choice. It was the inevitable consequence of a system that told women to be demure and compliant in every arena—including marriage—then made us the sole responsible guardians of that nebulous object, the “purity” of our bodies and souls. Shame was the inevitable consequence of encouraging dissociation from and fear of our bodies. It inevitably swelled like a cancer, replicating itself on all sides, feeding on itself, on the silence and fear and self-hatred it created.

Now I’ve learned that every single one of us has sat somewhere being torn apart by shame—and believing we were utterly alone.

This series has inspired me to invite you to share your stories about sex and shame, anonymously if you choose. It’s not because it’s sensationalist or cathartic to sit around and complain about our childhoods. It’s because I am coming to believe that in every place we can name our shame and fear, and then say something anyway, we are doing something to cauterize the cancer. We are learning that speaking the unspeakable is not nearly as catastrophic as we thought. We are inviting others out into the light. We might even find ways to grieve, or rebuild, or at least to laugh.

Beginning next week, I’ll publish stories about sex and shame, completely anonymously (or with your name and links if you specify). I’m hoping to hear from women and men, Christian and not-Christian, straight and not-straight. Tell us the thing you wish your 15-year-old self could hear. Tell us the thing you’re afraid of. Tell us where you’ve found healing or discovered a new sexual ethic. Tell us we are not alone.

Send your story to me at lyndseymedford[at]gmail.com, using the contact page of the website, or through a Facebook direct message. If you’re not sure where to start, grab one of the prompts below. Be prepared: I’ll probably have to edit for length or clarity. I’ll do everything I can to honor both your story and our readers.

Share a story like the one above of a specific time when a cultural norm about sex “happened” to you. What aspect of that culture does it illustrate?
How did you relate to your body as a child, teenager, or now? Tell about an event that changed this relationship for better or for worse.
Talk about a message about sexuality that has been particularly powerful in your life.
What embarrassing questions do you have about sex and sexuality? Or if you’re not Christian or evangelical, do you have questions you’re afraid to ask about purity culture?
If you met your 15-year-old self, what’s one specific thing you would tell him/her about sex? Or more generally, tell us about one thing you’ve learned as an adult about the ethics/responsibility of sex.

Thanks for being big and bright and brave with anything you want to share. I hope this conversation can be a sigh of relief, a lightened load, and a space for respectful disagreement; I can’t wait to share it with you!