<p><b>How Christianity Turned me Ace: A Journey From Rape Culture to Queer-Identity</b></p><p>Content warning: the following discusses sexual assault in quite minor detail.</p><p>“Anyone who looks on a woman [or any other person] with <i>lust</i> has already committed adultery with [them] in his heart.”</p><p>If you grew up in any movement resembling purity culture, you are tremendously familiar with this verse and the following phrases that grotesquely depict the gouging of eyes. Many of us were brow-beaten into avoiding the ideation to lust—at all cost. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off! If your browser is tempting you to lust, install Covenant Eyes. But wait a minute… what <i>exactly</i> even constitutes lust?</p><p>Thoughtful Christians may have asked this question many times throughout their journeys. Rightly so, as incorrectly ascribing lust to one’s own experience is to unnecessarily thrust a horde of trouble upon themselves. Unfortunately, thoughtful Christians do not often get good answers to this question. The Greek word επιθυμήσαι, translated above as “lust,” tends to have a wide semantic range centering around <i>desire</i> and is used in Matthew 5:28 in an explicitly sexual context. This gets us a little further along in our answer, but do we even know what sexual desire is? Many would say “yes,” but have trouble explaining the concept. In defining sexual desire, people might say that their heart rate increases and they blush as they experience a physiological response to a stimuli. Usually, I reply that my body responds the same way after a good workout. Conversations and comparisons go on ad nauseam, but eventually we say with Justice Potter Stewart, “I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced with the shorthand [sexual attraction], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. <i>But I know it when I see it.”</i>*</p><p>We have just outlined the problem of sexual desire and compulsory sexuality. This is an issue that plagues asexuals—and all queer people, for that matter. If concepts like lust, sexual desire, and even sexual orientation can only be understood and expressed by those people normatively experiencing them, those that do not normatively experience these attractions will be left behind. To those propagating purity culture, the fact that some may not experience sexual attraction—at all—is of no concern. To these systems, <i>everything is sexual</i>. Everything is a threat to holiness. This is where books like “Every Man’s Battle” speak of “bouncing eyes” (to avoid looking at women <i>at all</i>) or being wary of women who enter your (I’m not making this up, this is the word they actually used) “corral,” which kinda compares women to animals. This is also why books like “Every Woman’s Battle” make the entire fight for purity about what women can be doing to “help” men not lust—that is, not experience attraction outside of marriage. In this philosophy all men experience an onslaught of addictive lustful cravings and all women are weighted with the responsibility to help ward off these desires. The particular form of this narrative that I was thrust into was to avoid all types of attraction at all cost—as I was an uncontrollably sexual male. Fortunately, my upbringing largely neglected to characterize women in the complementary battle.</p><p>At my very conservative Christian college I encountered this problem in an extreme form. Not only was lust considered a disciplinary action, but any kind of sexual behavior outside of a very heteronormative marriage was prohibited. Keep in mind, lust and sexual behavior were not defined. We are operating with an “I know it when I see it” definition. The disciplinary action included academic suspension and even revocation of your college housing. Never mind that tuition was $40,000 each year, sexual behavior ended one’s academic career—no matter how much debt they had accumulated. Of course, this left students constantly wondering, “Where do we draw the line? How far is too far?” These were very important questions from a physical, financial, academic, and spiritual perspective—with no good answers. When my ex-partner and I began to date, we asked these questions vehemently. There were simpler behavioral questions: is kissing okay? Probably, other people do it. Heavy petting? Maybe not, that seems a little bit much. Long hugs? Seems a bit suspect, but morally tolerable. What about cuddling? That’s likely fine, but it depends on what “cuddling” actually means. Sexual intercourse? Absolutely not. But there were also more complex questions: what kind of outfits are you allowed to wear around your partner? What kinds (and how many) clothes are you allowed to wear while doing any of the above actions? Where is it appropriate to do the above actions (public or private spaces)? On the one hand, you may be showing too much PDA; however, on the other hand, you might not ought to be alone with a woman (otherwise known as the “Billy Graham” rule). How much accountability do we need? How much of the above action is morally acceptable? Do we stop at the lips or can we use tongue? The list goes on and on forever.</p><p>The problem is that—when framed in the context of an external moral system of guilt, financial loss, judgement, and disciplinary action—none of these questions lend themselves toward conversations of “how do we best respect the rights, autonomy, comfort, and consent of the other person.” At no point does one ever consider what is actually best for either person. Instead, the answer to the hurricane of questions I asked above was simply that each person was responsible for their own moral conscience and—no matter the arousing circumstance—they would answer to God. My ex-partner entrusted me to take care of my own holiness by choosing** not to sin and I likewise with her. Thus, it became the personal responsibility of each person to ensure that they were <i>not lusting.</i></p><p>My first real sexual experience (while in this college) did not go well. It was an assault to my humanity at indescribably deep levels. It started off as usual—making out and heavy petting—but I sensed that the moral boundaries I had set up were quickly being overrun. I tried to stop it from happening. I recall at least three separate times where I physically removed my partners hands from my body, said “no, please stop,” only to have them return almost immediately. That night I all but cried myself to sleep and I spent the next several months extremely depressed. Even if I had the words or capacity to realize that I had actually been violated, I had still crossed the line into lust. In addition to the moral wrong, I would have been ruined as a student. Moreover, maybe it was my fault—my lines were not drawn narrowly enough. I should have listened to Billy Graham, Mike Pence, and Paul Washer: I shouldn’t have been alone in a room with a woman. In reality, the whole system—my partner included—was ridiculous and malevolent.</p><p>It’s not a coincidence that an instance of rape occurred in a system of thought that conceptualized the human sexual experience as a fine line—a binary on-off switch—either “turned on” in sin or “turned off” in abstinence. <b>In a world where only one boundary matters, the boundary of lust, all other boundaries cease to be important by comparison</b> (no matter how necessary they may be to protect the autonomy or bodily safety of real people). Some might be wondering, with a system/person that does not value you, why even get married? The answer: compulsive sexuality. Purity culture cultivates a world where the heteronormative, monogamous, allosexual ideal is to be ordered above your own desires. Moreover, purity culture teaches that the sex-act binds one to another person (whether spiritually or physically) and this bind is best lived out in a normative marriage. I could not imagine a world where romance could exist without sex. A relationship that was merely committed, queer-platonic was not any more a comprehensible category than same-sex marriage. Marriage was the only place to live out any attraction—sexual or otherwise.</p><p>While I was never physically violated again—at least in a manner where force was used—this first experience was a microcosm of the remaining relationship. Sex was viewed as a prescriptive, compulsive need that was required to be filled; where unmet needs resulted in a detriment to the health of my partner. Traditionally, evangelicals have presented this relationship in a gendered norm, where men require the satiation of their lusts at specified intervals by their wives or risk psychological and physical turmoil (see James Dobson’s 72-hour rule). In my case, the gendered norm was internalized and reversed—leading to deeper, emasculating shame. I knew my partner had a higher libido than I; therefore, in the language of 1 Corinthians 7:5, “The husband shall fulfill his marital duty to his wife.” Chronically, the overt possibility of infidelity was used to press me into (often uncomfortable and personally disturbing forms of) sexual intercourse. “No I am not really comfortable with that” was met with incredible disdain. After months of this and growing contempt she said “you’re just a paycheck to me.”</p><p>For several years I thought something was wrong with me: I had failed to please my partner in some way. Maybe I wasn’t attractive enough. Maybe my personality was unbearable or my Christian upbringing had somehow made me a prude. Even now I don’t claim behavior that nears moral perfection, but for the longest time I really believed I had sexually and physically failed my partner. This was reflected in my attitude of sex: namely, that it is a demanding encounter that should generally be avoided if possible. Sex doesn’t feel that great and it gives people the opportunity for people to take advantage of me. Why would you ride down the interstate without a seatbelt for a little adrenaline rush? It seem hardly worth the risk. <b>However—fairly recently—I discovered the asexual community and the nonbinary model of consent.</b></p><p>The typical model of progressive sex-education involves <b>enthusiastic consent</b> as the gold standard of any sexual encounter. The basic idea is that it’s not enough for people to <i>fail</i> to speak “no” or actually give an ambivalent “yeah, sure, I guess” to a sexual proposition. Instead, the consenting party should be excited and happy to engage in the sexual encounter. As far as I can tell, this binary model of enthusiastic consent and rape has been taught for about a decade (from 2015 onward). The problem is, for people like me (ace-spec), we cannot really ever give an enthusiastic “yes,” because our emotional and cognitive affections involved in sexual attraction are not present. Asexuals do not experience typical sexual attraction and often cannot enthusiastically consent to the process of intercourse. Enter the nonbinary model: between rape and enthusiasm exists consent that is willing, unwilling, and coerced. Willing consent may be obtained under the pretense that the willing party acknowledges there are no consequences to saying “no” and engaging in sexual activity now may be beneficial to them later—even if they are not “enthusiastic” in the moment. Consent here may be withdrawn at any time, for any reason. More dubiously, unwilling consent occurs when one party says “yes” to sex largely out of fearing the consequences of saying “no.” In my case, I often thought my spouse would be emotionally abusive or generally unsatisfied without sex—so I consented. This is where most of my sexual encounters occurred throughout my life. Further evil, coerced consent occurs when someone overtly leverages another action against a person to force consent to sex. For instance, “If you don’t do X, I will continue to be mad at you.” Here, consenting to X, especially in a sexual encounter, is consenting under coercion.</p><p>This really brings me back to my college experience. For people who were so concerned about sex, they astronomically failed to consider whether it was consensual or pleasurable. The same could be said about my conservative Christian upbringing, which largely abided by the same rules. Sex was for marriage—not the person.</p><p>But let’s back up to the original question, what the heck is lust? The funny thing is that the Asexual community actually has several, well thought-out answers to this question. Here’s part of the solution: attraction is not singular or monolithic. Even if we were to take the most “literal” and direct interpretation of Matthew 5:28, there is so much more to the human experience than sexual desire. Aces have hundreds of micro labels to describe every aspect of physical desire. At the base level is the split-attraction model, stating that romantic attraction and sexual attraction are entirely different. One can be allosexual and aromantic or alloromantic and asexual. Oh, but it does <b>not</b> stop there my friends. There’s sensual attraction, aesthetic attraction, platonic attraction—and more! There is only one explicitly sexual affection: sexual attraction. Other types may be loosely associated with sexual feelings (for instance, sensual attraction involves craving non-sexual physical intimacy, such as hugging or cuddling—granting similar fuzzy feelings as sex and romance) <b>but they are not inherently sexual.</b></p><p>It is only because of compulsive sexuality that people interpret all scope of attraction as myopically sexual; which, in Christian circles, are therefore sinful. It was the church demanding that I fit into an etiology of “Every Man’s Battle” that I internalized as a struggle with sexual temptation. It was the demands from my partner that I sexually satisfy her in accords with the norm, to meet her needs at the expense of my own, that I suffered silently.</p><p>Here is the craziest part: now that I have admitted I am asexual and queer, I am still sitting here asking the same questions about sexual (and adjacent) desire. Did I experience lust when I looked at that person or was it just aesthetic attraction? Am I platonically attracted to this relationship? Where are my sensual needs? I think I am fairly alloromantic but would my arousal in this other circumstance constitute sexual attraction? Will I develop sexual attraction after entering in a safe, committed relationship? I have no idea!</p><p>I am, in short, just as confused as before. There is, however, a very important difference: I am no longer wracked with shame—placed by an external person or instruction. I am discovering myself. I am focusing on my own needs, dignity, and unique person. I honestly don’t know if at any point in my relationship with my ex-partner—or anyone else for that matter—involved bonafide sexual attraction. The amount of coercion that occurred makes this question hard to answer—maybe even unanswerable (see the microlabel Quiosexual for more details here). There is really nothing wrong with not being able to identify sexual attraction. I am well aware that I do not fit into the box that I wrote above, but I expect that I will enjoy the journey of answering that fundamental question: “What is sexual attraction?”</p><p><br></p><p>*Yes, I am aware that Justice Stewarts words here were directed at defining hardcore pornography, not sexual orientation; however, the quote is still applicable in this context.<br></p><p>**Careful readers might note that I am equivocating between terms like “lust” and “sexual attraction.” Even more thoughtful readers would correctly point out that sexual attraction—moreover <i>sexual orientation—is not a choice.</i></p>
💕 They love it! 💕
2
There are no comments to display!