Browsing Tag

Grace Driscoll

Feminism

Real Marriage review: 207-22, "Reverse-Engineering Your Life and Marriage"

Well, folks, we finally did it. We managed to make it all the way through to the very bitter end of Mark and Grace Driscoll’s Real Marriage. Usually I’m excited about wrapping up one of these review series, but all I can manage to feel about finishing this one is … relief. I’m not entirely sure why reading Real Marriage was so much more draining than Fascinating Womanhood or Captivating, but it has been.

And, thankfully, the last chapter is mercifully brief. It’s not really a chapter so much as it is a homework assignment: pages 211 through 222 are a list of questions that the married couple reading this book are supposed to answer separately and then discuss.

The one thing that stood out to me about this chapter is how patronizing it is. Mark has been a lot of things through this book—a lying manipulative asshole, primarily—but his need to openly patronize women hasn’t been as glaringly obvious.

But then we get to stuff like this:

“During the vacation, I kept a legal-size yellow pad handy and started writing out a length homework assignment for Grace.”

A homework assignment. Right. If my partner came home from vacation and handed me a legal pad filled with the questions on 211-222, I’d shove it up his ass. Thankfully, my partner is a decent human being who respects me.

Honestly, most of the questions are fairly bland—like ones that talk about furniture and kitchen appliances– but some take on a super-special patriarchal flavor:

  • What church will you attend? Will it be a church with strong men leading so that the husband is motivated, engaged, and committed? (214)
  • Husbands, how will you wash her in the Word? (215)
  • What is your job? Will the wife be working? (215)
  • Who will be the primary caregiver of your child(ren)? (216)

It’s interesting that the whole list seems to be written entirely by Mark (the book has usually noted when an idea came from Grace or when she’s writing. Surprisingly, she’s participated less in Real Marriage than John Eldredge did in Captivating), and the whole thing is targeted toward men. It’s not specifically any one question that makes me think that as much as how most of the questions are phrased. If any of you have access to this chapter and had a different thought, I’d appreciate another perspective on that. But it struck me as odd that questions like “Husbands, how will you wash her in the Word?” had no feminine-gendered counterpart.

Another thing to note is the classism that’s been hinted at in other places but came out of the woodwork this week. I haven’t really commented on it before because I spent so much time focusing on the classism and white supremacy happening in Captivating, but there’s a heavy dose of it here:

Quarterly—go for a romantic and fun overnight getaway together …
Annually—if finances allow, take a planned vacation that you are both excited about. (213)

List all of the things you can hand off to someone else (for example, ordering groceries online and having them delivered, mowing your lawn, doing your taxes, running errands, outsourcing dry cleaning and ironing …) (222)

I don’t know about you but “romantic and fun overnight getaways” four times a year is beyond ridiculous, and I’m a solidly middle-class white person. Between the price of gas, dinner, hotel, and traveling food, around where I live that’s a minimum of $300. I’m sorry, but doing that every couple of months isn’t something we can afford, and I don’t think people who aren’t drawing down the income of an extremely wealthy mega-church pastor can do that, either.

And that other bit about “handing off” things? Have you ever looked up what it costs to have groceries delivered to your house? Or what it would cost to have someone do all of your laundry? He’s practically talking about hiring a maid and it just boggles me because he’s not meeting his readers where they actually live. It must be really nice to live in a world where “handing off things” is simple and affordable, but for the vast majority of us it doesn’t work that way and we could really use some advice about simplifying our lives that don’t involve spending more money.

Anyway, this chapter wasn’t really rage-inducing like many of the others, but it sort of reminded me of “The Hollow Men” because the book finished not with a bang but a whimper.

~~~~~~~~

In conclusion, there’s been a few consistent problems that put this book into the “actively harmful” category.

First, I cannot stress enough the danger and harm of minimizing abusive behaviors, which Mark and Grace repeatedly do in their own ways. Mark dismisses his habits of verbally and emotionally abusing the people around him, and Grace paints abusive and hurtful actions—like boundary violations, entitlement attitudes toward sex, verbal and emotional abuse—as “normal” and “expected.”

They also go out of their way to reinforce traditional gender roles, and like Fascinating Womanhood and Captivating, place a horrible burden on people who don’t naturally fit them, condemning their inability to conform to a ridiculous construct as sinful and anti-God.

Mark, like most other evangelicals, also accepts the idea that the female-gendered body is inherently sexualized. He sees no problem with viewing women as sexual objects meant to service men—the only change he makes from mainstream American culture is that women are supposed to be sex toys for their husbands and no one else, and that it is supposedly a good thing for men to treat the women married to them like objects.

Grace implies pretty much every single time she opens her mouth on the topic that being an abuse survivor is sinful. Not that what happened to an abuse survivor was a sin committed by the abuser, but that abuse survivors need to “repent” and “be cleansed.” Not only that, but much of the advice given in this book fits right into abusive narratives, and abusers will use what they say in order to gaslight and further abuse their victim.

Anyway, I’m just happy I’m done with this and I won’t have to touch it again for the foreseeable future.

December 17, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" Review: 177-206, "Can We _____?"

I knew before I sat down to read today’s chapter that it had been the one that people found controversial, but I wasn’t familiar with why it had upset some—and I have to admit that even after reading it I still wasn’t sure why it had apparently caused a hubbub. To me, it seemed as though Mark was toeing the conservative evangelical line pretty well. I mean, he was clearly “being Mark,” but he didn’t say anything that I wouldn’t have expected from a lot of other evangelical leaders.

So, after reading it, I went and read a few reviews that focused on chapter ten—Denny Burk, Tim Challies, and Rachel Held Evans, who are all writers I’m familiar with, and represent different positions on the theological spectrum. And, honestly, I was surprised by what upset people like Burk. Primarily, they seemed to have a problem with Mark endorsing anal sex, which everyone I read referred to exclusively as “sodomy” (which … problems).

No one had a good argument for why they thought that Mark should have condemned heterosexual married couples doing that sort of thing, but it was all rooted in homophobia—“but but but what if his wife stimulates his prostate and gasp he turns into a gay?!” seems to be the only thing these people have against it. Those reviews would have made me laugh if they weren’t so pathetic—seriously, I swear, that is not how sexual orientation works.

Those sorts of reviews had some secondary problems, like being against “cybersex” and the purchase of sex toys (it seemed they didn’t usually have a problem using sex toys, but how could you buy them without looking at teh pornz? To those people I say: you should go look up Adam & Eve).

Anyway, I came out on the other side of this chapter frustrated. Me and Mark have completely different guides for figuring out the answer to “can we _____?” but that should shock absolutely no one. His rule-of-thumb is “does the Bible explicitly forbid this? No? You’re good!”—and that did surprise me, because it doesn’t seem like the sort of argument an evangelical typically makes. There’s a lot of things the Bible doesn’t ever mention, but plenty of evangelicals extrapolate rules based on what they identify as “biblical principles.”

On a big-picture level, there are two glaring problems: the condemnation of all pain, and no real mention of consent.

I’ve already talked about the difference between pain and abuse, and why consent plays such an important role in that. But, one of the things that Mark does when he mentions pain is to conflate it with harm. In a way, I can see why people mix these two up, but it doesn’t actually make much sense. A really simple example is surgery: it hurts, recovering sucks, and the whole thing is pretty miserable. But, the doctor performing the surgery isn’t harming you. They’re actually helping. Pain with sex isn’t the same thing (there’s nothing like “if I don’t do this you could die” going on), but there isn’t a 1-to-1 correlation between pain and harm like a lot of people think.

He does get closer to talking about consent than he has in any other chapter, though—but it’s odd to me the way he decided to talk about it. This chapter is structured around a few supposedly “taboo” sex acts, like mutual masturbation and oral, and the one thing he repeatedly says is talk to each other about whether or not it might violate your conscience. That’s a very wrong-headed way of talking about it because of what it does.

The question shouldn’t be “does this violate your conscience?” but “are you into this?”

Arranging the conversation around the “does this violate your conscience” question implies that it would be the only acceptable reason to say no to a particular sex act, that if you don’t have a moral problem with something than, well, you should be willing to do it if your partner wants it, and that’s just ridiculous.

For example, there are very few things that involve sex with my partner that would violate my conscience, but there are many things that I have zero interest in whatsoever, and that is enough for him. He doesn’t need any reason beside “yup, not really into that, sorry”—and neither do I. Because sex for us is about having fun, and about making each other happy. If my partner doesn’t want me to do something to him, well, everything changes because if he doesn’t want it, than neither do I. The second I know he’s not interested, it’s not like I’m sitting there going “oh, I wish he liked this thing, because I really want to do the thing,” because sex is about us. There is no “him” and “me” during sex.

If he doesn’t like something, it means that I also don’t want it anymore, because what I really want is to bring him pleasure—and this is one of the biggest reasons why sexual compatibility is so important. There will always be these sorts of compromises during sex, but if you are going to be consistently disappointed because you want or need something that your partner doesn’t like … that’s inevitably going to be a problem. Not necessarily an insurmountable one, but I think it’s helpful to understand these things about yourself before you commit to one person for the rest of forever.

It’s a little ironic that Mark seems to have missed that train, since a big part of what he talks about is “becoming one.” I don’t know how it would be possible to have the mindset he presents all the way through this book and still “cleave together and become one flesh.”

Another thing that bothers me is how Mark seems completely and utterly blind to misogyny. I shouldn’t be surprised by how often that comes up, but it was obvious in this chapter when he talked about anal sex. I don’t have any problems with anal sex per se, but when you spend a couple paragraphs talking about how anal sex is probably becoming more popular because of porn without even glancing over how sexism might play a part in that, you’re missing something huge.

But, Mark can un-ironically talk about “the sexualization of our culture” without bothering to even challenge it, and I think it’s because Mark likes it. At the very least, he needs it to be that way, since he became an incredibly popular speaker after preaching through Song of Solomon in the most lewd and crass ways imaginable. Without the objectification and sexualization of women, Mark would still be a nobody.

December 2, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 156-176, "Selfish Lovers and Servant Lovers"

[note: this post inspired some swearing]

This chapter seems to be laying all the necessary groundwork for the last chapter in the “Sex” section of the book, and from the title (“Can We ____?”) I’m guessing that’s the one that caused some of the firestorm around it. Honestly, unless he does something drastic in that last chapter, I’m going to be a little confused as to why people were so bothered, since he hasn’t said too much at this point that I haven’t heard echoed in plenty of other corners.

But, I think “Can We ___?” Is going to finally define what Mark means by “having sex freely,” since this chapter focuses on the “frequency” half of his definition of a healthy sex life. If you’re having sex a lot, and you’re having it “freely,” you’re golden in Mark’s book.

There are two over-arching problems with this chapter: he does not address communication in any form until he’s nine pages into the chapter, and then he only really talks about it for a single paragraph. The second problem is that while he’s couched most of the discussion in this chapter in gender-neutral terms (you, spouse, they, him or her, etc), the vast majority of the potential bars to a “healthy” sex life he address are typically considered female problems, and his attempt to make it seem as though he’s being “gender neutral” falls flat.

Obviously I don’t agree with the gendered way most evangelicals talk about sex. Women are just as visual as men. Women can want sex more often than their male partners. Gender and sex don’t matter anywhere near as much as the people in the relationship and what they want– which is a fantastic reason for why communication is so important. Evangelicals like to assume a lot of things based on nothing more than their Western, American, White Supremacist conceptualizations of gender.

However, while Mark is superficially trying to get away from that by using gender-neutral terms, he can’t get away from the fact that he really hates women:

She was a virgin on her wedding night and had grown up in a fairly religious home … She had some anxiety regarding their first night together that made her body tense up … As a result, they were unable to experience intercourse and without putting in too much effort to overcome their obstacle, she instead gave him a helping hand …

He felt embarrassed … that they had intercourse so infrequently that she usually experienced discomfort, as her body had not adjusted to being sexually active. (156)

See what happens? That she’s having problems overcoming the messages of purity culture is all her fault. It’s not “their” problem– it’s her problem. Also, Mark is working under one of the worst lies of our culture: that people with vaginas will experience pain during penetration until they get used to it, which is total bullshit.

The rest of the chapter has a similar focus; for example, in a list of “Ways we are Selfish Lovers,” six out of the nine ways are typically associated with women– like “letting ourselves go” (165-66). Considering that Mark blamed Gayle Haggard for her husband’s adultery because of this very reason, he’s made it clear that he thinks this is something that women struggle with.

So those are the two big over-arching problems of this chapter, so now I’d like to address some of the more particular ones.

On page 160, we run into yet another way that they minimize abuse:

Foxes in our vineyard for me (Grace [referring to Mark’s behavior]) include name-calling, strong language … using discouraging words …

This really breaks my heart for Grace. She’s been married to an abuser for so long and has been taught to see his abuse as normal. Not necessarily acceptable, but normal. Another problem with this whole section is that Grace gets six lines to talk about Mark’s verbal abuse while they dedicate twenty-two to Mark ranting about how he hates it that Grace isn’t as punctual as he is, and Grace acknowledging that this was a “sin issue.”

Because verbal abuse and different perspectives of “being on time” are totally the same thing. By the way, Mark has not once referred to any of his abuse as a “sin issue.” He’s exclusively talked about other people having sin issues, or Grace has talked about her own.

Another big problem is when Mark uses I Corinthians 7:3-5 (the “you don’t have authority over your own body” passage) to support the argument of this chapter. I don’t have the space to talk about why this way of thinking is a problem, so instead I’ll direct you to these resources:

“A World Without Consent” by Jeff Eaton.
“I Belong to Me: Learning Agency and Consent Outside Christianity” by Dani Kelley
Sarah Moon‘s series You Are not Your Own.

Honestly, passages like that one are the biggest reasons why I have problems with the “high view of Scripture” perspective, because I read things like “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” and everything inside of me starts screaming run away. Also fuck this bullshit starts repeating on an endless loop. I’ve read the arguments that this is a passage about mutuality and such, but I don’t find that a compelling enough explanation to get around “you do not have authority over your own body.” Because to me, there’s no way for this not to be incredibly harmful and dangerous.

Anyway, I’d appreciate all ya’ll thoughts on that passage, cause I got nothin.

The last and most glaring problem with this chapter is that there is not a single word about consent. Not a single one. In fact, he does something worse than not talking about it:

People have explained this [referring to putting in “too little effort”] as a gross feeling, where their spouses simply lie there, looking away disinterested and disconnected, making them feel as if they are basically using their spouses’ bodies.

Aish. I’m writing this in a Starbucks, or the book would have gone flying. Instead I just sat and stared into space while the red faded from my vision.

People: if you are having sex with someone and this is their reaction, you are probably having sex with someone who is disassociating. There are many reasons why someone might respond that way, but the biggest one would be you are raping them. And these people fucking know that— they feel “gross” and like they’re doing something wrong. Because they are. Because we know that having sex with an unresponsive person is a fucking bad idea.

Anyway. This chapter was bad. I don’t have high hopes for the next one.

November 24, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 123-138, "Disgrace and Grace"

[content note: sexual violence and victim blaming]

This chapter was a … struggle. I’ve known it was coming for a while, but I wasn’t certain how bad it would be. It deeply concerns me because if this is how Mark and Grace Driscoll and the pastoral staff of Mars Hill has been counseling sexual abuse survivors I’m horrified, and I’m grieving for all the men and women who have been harmed by their teachings.

There was one section that I didn’t have a problem with, and was encouraged to see– the one headed “Serving and Protecting your Children” on 136-37. She recommends giving children the words they need to describe their abuse, about the difference between good and bad secrets (surprise parties vs. “this will be our little secret”), and assuring them they won’t get in trouble if they relate something that happened to them. She also makes it clear how important it is to believe your children, no matter who they tell you harmed them, and I was grateful for that.

The rest of the chapter, though, was a nightmarish trainwreck and in my opinion is totally irredeemable. Everything she says is not just wrong but actively harmful.

I also think it will be helpful for me to simply allow what she says to speak for itself. Often I get asked why I’m reviewing this book, and this chapter is a perfect example. Grace says some horrific things, but Grace is not alone. She is one evangelical Christian woman among thousands of others and “biblical” counselors who will all tell sexual abuse survivors the exact same thing, and they’ll probably say it in similar ways.

Before we get to that, though, I want to highlight something that I think is revealing:

Was Mark really safe to talk to about it, or would his response cause more pain (123)?

What will happen to our church and our life if they know about my abuse (128)?

The first time I told Handsome about my rape and abuse, it never once occurred to me to wonder if he was a “safe” person. There was not a single second that I was worried if his reaction would hurt me. I was nervous about telling him, but not because I thought he would possibly think of me differently. And this breaks my heart for Grace because her gut knew that Mark’s reaction wasn’t going to be the right one (“Sometimes his responses caused fear all over again” 132); she makes casual references all through this chapter about how Mark had to learn and adapt in order to respond “appropriately,” and she talks about that as if it’s normal.

That is not normal. That is disturbing.

Also, the fact that she was worried about what the congregation at Mars Hill might think tells me that they had not been building a church that was safe for survivors. If a church hears “your pastor’s wife was in an abusive relationship” and reacts with judgment and condemnation, you have not been responsible leaders. Unfortunately, this is a failing endemic to evangelical churches everywhere.

Anyway, I want to spend the rest of the post showing how evangelicals use Christian-ese in order to victim blame survivors.

We wondered if it was really possible to trust each other again … (126) [implying that she had done something by being abused/telling him she’d been abused to be untrustworthy]

I had lived a double life, a pastor’s daughter and wife filled with deception and fear. (127)

That meant asking the Holy Spirit to restore any memories that needed to be brought into the light so I could be cleansed … and it meant Jesus’ righteousness alone had to replace all my old identity of abused, neglected, dirty, and worthless [sic]. (127)

We quickly realized there were large numbers of abuse victims attending our church … Mutual, honest accountability had always felt too vulnerable but it was part of the process I needed to prayerfully participate in. (128) [“accountability” is a term used among Christians that is intrinsically linked to sinfulness; men who struggle with porn have “accountability partners,” many small groups have “accountability times” where they confess sin to each other.]

I finally wanted to put my own sin and shame to death, through Jesus’ death on the cross. (128)

God gave me a few trustworthy women to encourage and exhort me and love me, despite knowing the truth about me. (129)

I never thought [healing] was possible, but that is what repentance and redemption feel like. (129)

To cope with the pain, I initially pretended to be a “good girl,” … without true repentance. (130)

It was an identity crisis [referring to different common coping mechanisms experienced by many survivors] because I wasn’t rooted in Christ. (131)

But we each need a new identity so that we don’t feel condemned by our sin. (132)

I sobbed off and on for hours over the pain of abuse and the conviction of my own sin. (133)

I could give many other examples, but the others need more surrounding context and I’m trying to keep the length of this manageable.

Survivors of abuse– any form of abuse– have not sinned. I don’t know how to stress that any more emphatically. The only person responsible for sin is the one doing the abusing, not the victim. Trusting someone not to hurt you? Not a sin. Expecting someone to be a decent human being? Not a sin. Hoping that your abuser is capable of change and growth? Not a sin.

There is a common argument among evangelicals, especially “biblical counselors,” that it is important to claim “responsibility for your choices”; very often they frame this in terms of “autonomy,” appropriating feminist vocabulary in order to cloak what they actually mean. In reality, what they’re doing is a logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc, more commonly known as “false cause.” Grace argues that because she chose to date her abuser and chose to have sex with him willingly, she is partly at fault for what happened. If she had not chosen to date him, or chosen to have sex with him, the abuse would not have happened.

And, in a ridiculously literal way, that’s true. However, just because the abuse happened after she started dating him does not mean that she was abused because she dated him. It happened because he was an abuser.

In my opinion, there are few “counseling” ideas more poisonous. I spent so many years trying to do this, trying to be “responsible by recognizing what I had done wrong,” not allowing myself to have a “victim mentality,” and all it did was cause agony.

There’s a secondary problem going on in this chapter, most clearly seen in this:

My judgment was clouded once I had sex with someone outside a marriage relationship. The abuse made me feel dirty and defiled, and the lie that I had no value became even more believable. (136)

This is what purity culture does to sexual abuse survivors. I don’t want to say that without purity culture no victim would ever feel “dirty” or “defiled” after being abused. Abuse is intrinsically a deep spiritual, emotional and physical violation and it will cause pain and suffering, regardless of whether or not purity culture exists. However, Grace feels that because she’d consented to sex that her abuse was inescapable (“I was filled with my own guilt from fornicating and told myself if I married him it would cover my sin somehow” 124), and she felt that way because purity culture teaches women that sex– even rape– makes women dirty and defiled.

And she’s clueless that the “lie that I had no value” comes from purity culture, the exact same lie she’s promoting all the way through this chapter.

November 10, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 107-122, "Sex: God, Gross, or Gift?"

This chapter seems to be Mark and Grace’s attempt at establishing a historical context for arguments they’ll make later; it’s basically nothing more than an extremely truncated and condensed version of how sex has been viewed in Ancient Near Eastern (“biblical”) and Christian cultures. The unfortunate thing is that their history lesson is … well, I think it’s deceptive. Mark seems principally in control of this chapter, and he makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims, or he makes claims based on debunked arguments, or he omits relevant information because it would destroy his argument.

Perhaps most of this is due to inept research and ignorance, but … I don’t think so.

Ideologically, the biggest problem I have with this chapter is that Mark is demonstrating a concerning lack of empathy.

He dismisses whole groups of people who approach human relationships more analytically. I’m a hopeless romantic in pretty much every way that term applies, but I’ve had many friends who interact with their significant others primarily on a rational level, and who aren’t overly given to emotional displays, who don’t have the “sense of poetry and passion” which Mark says is “required” for people to “be any good at [marriage]” (108).

He talks a lot about people who view “sex as gross” for a variety of reasons (including referencing sexual abuse as a possibility multiple times), and then he says stuff like “Are either of you prone to view sex as god [meaning idolatry] or gross? If so, you are in danger” (121). He repeats this sentiment all the way through this chapter– if you don’t have sex frequently enough, or “freely” enough (I’m guessing his definition of “freely” is where some of the controversy around this book comes from), your marriage is in terrible danger to all sorts of outside threats– adultery, pornography … the usual boogie men of conservative screeds on marital “responsibilities.”

In short, the message seems to be: “have sex as often as I think is ‘often’ and as uninhibited as I think counts as ‘freely enough,’ or one of you is going to cheat or end up addicted to porn. I don’t really care if you’re an abuse victim. You need to get over it in order to protect your marriage” (120).

~~~~~~~~~

I’m going to take the time to examine where I think Mark has either omitted or misrepresented key facts as I think this re-envisioning of history is going to play a part in arguments he makes later. I can’t address every single claim he makes without support or with misleading support, though, because there were just too many. I’ll keep it to what I think were the biggies.

Claim 1: Porneia means “sexual immorality” and encompasses all sorts of sexual sins. It is a “junk drawer term.” (109)

According to pretty much every concordance American protestants use, Mark’s not wrong. However, he doesn’t even address the full meaning of the term– porneia can also mean “the worship of idols, especially animal sacrifice,” and its principal historical meaning is prostitution. This linguistic history is even evidenced in the Bible; many times when the word porneia appears, the surrounding context references prostitution or idol worship either singularly or principally (Acts 15 and 21, I Corinthians 6 and 10, Ephesians 5 …). Considering that prostitution as usually practiced in the ancient world is much more like sex trafficking than it is modern consensual prostitution, it seems obvious why biblical writers might have had a problem with it.

However, if Mark admits to this linguistic history in porneia, he might have to start talking about concepts like consent, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere near that because he needs to maintain the belief that sex acts are right or wrong because God Said So and not because there’s any holistic ethic surrounding sex.

Claim (by omission) 2: Sexual incompatibility does not exist. (110)

He describes a husband who wanted certain “sexual experiences” that his wife was not interested in because it “violated her conscience.” This husband cheated, a choice he rationalized because the other woman was willing to engage in those activities. I have absolute zero judgment for the wife in this situation: if she wasn’t interested in certain sex acts, that is her decision and her husband should have respected that.

I believe that many couples through communication and research and love and trust can overcome some issues surrounding sexual incompatibilities– two people who got married not really understanding what they wanted out of sex (so, pretty much every Christian person who “saved themselves”) will probably encounter some unexpected hiccups, and that’s ok. A lot of those can be worked through with graciousness and understanding.

Some of them can’t.

I’ve known women who cannot have PIV sex with their husbands because his penis is just too big and no matter how slowly they go or how aroused she is intercourse is excruciating for them. I’ve known women who needed certain stimulation (anything from oral to kink) to orgasm and even after trying to work it out for over a decade their husbands were totally unwilling to provide it, preferring to think of their wives as crazy, broken, deranged, or sick. Some of these couples have remained married and chose to focus on building strong lives together based on friendship, some have given up on vaginal intercourse, and some have gotten divorced. They all chose the best path for their lives, but it’s sad that sexual incompatibility played a part.

In Mark’s wold, though, concerns like this don’t seem to exist.

Claim 3: Adultery is wrong because God Said So. (111).

Adultery is wrong because it is a violation of consent. When people marry with the understanding that they will remain romantically and sexually exclusive, violating that expectation without the consent or their partner is wrong. It is a breach of trust, a betrayal.

However, if Mark were to say that instead “adultery happens because of idolatry,” he’d have to address things like polyamory more honestly instead of just dismissing it in a gigantic list of evil things (109).

Claim 4: Porn addiction is real. (113)

No research exists to support this claim. Researchers have noticed that some people experience problems with “excessive use,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the vast majority of people who watch pornography. I have issues with some porn– namely, the kind that features rape, non-consensual pain, degradation, and humiliation. That many women in the porn industry face contract and verbal agreement violations near constantly is also a problem. However, Mark doesn’t talk about that at all– and I’m wondering if it’s because of where he’s going to go with the “freely” definition.

Claim 5: Church Fathers got their “sex is gross” idea from Plato. (115-16)

Well, yes. Also, they got it from the Bible: I Corinthians 7:8. Pro-tip, Mark: if it’s in the Bible, you shouldn’t ignore it.

Through these pages he also grossly misrepresents modern Catholic teachings about marital intimacy. I have my own problems with Catholic teachings about contraception, but you can’t assert that the Catholic ethic surrounding intimacy is completely and totally wrong without explaining what it actually is. Straw men do no good, and that’s all he builds up.

He also pissed me off when he said that the clerical practice of celibacy “has, at least in part, resulted in a global scandal.” This is why I believe that feminists think better of men than anti-feminists do: I believe that men can be celibate without resorting to rape or pedophilia.

There were a lot of other claims– about Hinduism, about the temple prostitution at Corinth, about connections between the sexual revolution and porn … all of which were made with absolutely no support whatsoever. He just said them like we were supposed to believe him, but he was almost always just baldly wrong.

That should be concerning, because a man who can’t be trusted to get that many basic facts straight shouldn’t be trusted with your sex life.

November 3, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 65-85, "The Respectful Wife"

With a chapter title like that, you just know how much I loved it. I probably should have expected this chapter to be more infuriating than the one devoted to men, but I didn’t. My marginalia has a lot more “WTF” and “BS” (which stands for both bullshit and benevolent sexism; nice how that one worked out) than the last chapter did– and I wish I could talk about a lot more than I have the space for.

But, today, we’re going to start of with Significant Problem #1:

Mark and Grace twist Scripture to the point of deceit. Or they proof text in order to mislead. Or they use footnotes as if the verses they’re referencing have anything at all to do with their argument. In short: Mark and Grace use the Bible to lie, and it pisses me off. What they’re doing isn’t at all unusual in complementarian circles, because the “biblical” argument for complementarianism is incredibly weak so they are forced to rely on manipulative tactics like these. Unfortunately, these deceptions work on far too many people.

The first time I threw the book today was when I got to page 71, and Grace quotes 1 Cor. 11:7-9 in order to support her argument that women need to be “companions” and “helpers” in the complementarian sense. I have actually written about this exact problem, in a post I’m particularly proud of.

Grace quotes this:

“Man is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.”

And then she stops. Because, if she kept going, she’d eventually run into this:

Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman, For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman.

Grace purposely omits this part of the passage, even though from a grammatical stand point the passage climaxes here. Stopping where she stops would be a bit like me stopping a sentence right before a but. After what she quotes is nevertheless. Nevertheless, (πλήν) as in, “in spite of what has just been said” or “but rather, except.” Quoting a passage in order to prove your point when the author himself says “but” right after the section you’re quoting is … well, I threw the book across the room. Now I just want to type out curse words. It’s wrong and misleading and dishonest and she’s doing this to the Bible, a book they both claim to live their lives by. This isn’t the only instance (she does something similar at least four times), but I have to keep going.

On to Significant Problem #2!

Grace and Mark put all of the responsibility for a healthy marriage and productive life onto wives. In the chapter Mark addressed to men, all he basically said was “don’t be a monster”; he never once uses the word “abuse” even though he describes emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. He didn’t even really take it beyond that into “here’s how to be a decent human being”– he just talks a lot about all the ways men can abuse their wives and then says “don’t be that guy.”

In this chapter, though, Grace has got a lot to say about all the things that a woman has to do.

  • She prays for her husband about every single thing he has to do all day long.
  • She touches him affectionately, romantically, and sexually.
  • She texts him through the day.
  • She makes sure the prepare healthful meals.
  • She takes up his interests.
  • She reads the Bible (71-75).

And while when she’s talking about learning to communicate she indicates this is something husbands and wives have to learn how to do together, “dudes, talk to your wife about what you think a problem is” is something Mark never tells husbands to do. Communication is a two-way street, but they’ve missed that.

And, lastly, Significant Problem #3:

Grace uses the “except if you’re being abused” line.

I wish I could tell you how much I hate that line. I hate it. I hate it more than any other single phrase I’ve ever heard come out of a spiritual leader’s mouth. I have gotten up and left church services because of it, and at this point if I hear it uttered in a sermon and I talk to the pastor afterward and their reaction is nonchalance, I’m never going back to that church. I am done with this phrase.

It is worse than useless. It is dangerous.

It is especially dangerous because of the context of this book. Chapter three spent a lot of time describing abusive behaviors– and not just verbal and emotional abuse, but physical coercion and violence as well. But, Mark never once says “this is what abuse looks like.” He spends the entire chapter minimizing it– personally, I think he has a vested interest in minimizing abuse, because he’s an abuser. There’s no way in hell Grace isn’t going through at home what Mark has been putting his church and staff through for years.

He gets away with it, though, because hardly anyone in our culture understands what abuse actually is. We have the vague thought that it’s black eyes, broken arms, women who “fall down stairs.” But the reality is that my abuser called me Goddamn fucking bitch every single day for almost three years and I never thought it was abuse because he wasn’t hitting me. He would pinch me and twist my fingers like he was playing “Uncle,” and I never thought it was abuse because there were never any bruises.

It is extraordinarily rare for a person in an abusive relationship to understand that’s what is happening. When someone says “oh, if you’re in an abusive relationship, none of this applies to you,” there is basically not a single fucking person who’s going to hear that and think “oh, that means me.”

If you’re about to say something that you think needs to have that disclaimer slapped onto it, then you need to think about it really, really hard. If you know that something you believe could be twisted by an abuser or a victim in order to trap them, then that belief must be re-evaluated, period. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit.

But, Real Marriage makes it so much more worse than that. She tells women that they are commanded to submit to their husbands, even if he makes an irresponsible decision that could be detrimental to both of them (80). She compares a woman submitting to her husband to a child obeying their parents (82). She says that “if your husband isn’t working on his part of loving, you are still called to work on your part of submitting” (84).

But, worst of all, she says this:

If your husband is verbally or physically abusing you, he is not loving or respecting you. If this is an ongoing issue, it should be addressed and stopped immediately by a pastor or trustworthy leader who will listen to you both.

…

There is so much wrong with this. First of all, if you realize that you are in an abusive situation, leaving should be your end goal. Not reconciliation. Not redemption. Not forgiveness. Getting yourself (and children if you have them) safe is your first and only priority, however you need to go about doing that.

Second, Grace’s idea that someone in an abusive marriage should go to a leader “who will listen to you both” is beyond wrong. It is worse than wrong. That “advice” can, has, and will kill people. Anyone who is willing to listen to both a victim and their abuser is an unwise person who should not be sought out or listened to. If they are willing to “listen” to the abuser, if they want to “hear both sides,” they will be used by the abuser to further ensnare their victim. A wise and properly trained counselor who hears “my husband hits me” will not be interested in hearing from the person willing to hit their spouse.

That Grace (and, presumably Mark), think this is a good idea is horrifying.

October 6, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 42-64, "Men and Marriage"

This was the first chapter that the book went flying. Honestly, I’m surprised I got to chapter three before that happened. This chapter was just … frustrating as hell to read. There’s so many problems with this chapter, and I’m going to spend my time today focusing on one of them, but it is important to at least point out a few other glaring problems.

First, he depends on a single researcher to make his arguments. 22 of his 29 citations come from W. Bradford Wilcox. I looked Wilcox up and you can tell from his list of publications that he has an obvious agenda, and he thinks “soft patriarchy” is a fine idea– he also does a lot of mixing up of correlation and causation in his conclusions. Wilcox is the head of the National Marriage Project, an organization that has a history of misrepresenting data in order to make their point. That Mark Driscoll only cites one person who agrees with him so exactly on everything is … awfully convenient. At best, it’s ridiculously shoddy research (and parroting Wilcox is basically all that happens from pages 57 to 63).

The second glaring problem with this chapter is the basis for a lot of his assumptions is his own personal experience. On some level we all do this, mostly unconsciously. What else are we supposed to form some of our assumptions on, if not our lives? However, when you’re a rich white American evangelical, your personal lived experience is going to be one of enormous privilege, and assuming that your mind-boggling advantages and opportunities is normal for everyone else will inevitably be a problem. Things that work for a neurotypical cishet able-bodied white Christian man who’s paid heaping amounts of money to yell curse words and insult people every week will not work for everyone, but he consistently does that through this entire chapter, mostly by demonizing men who don’t act exactly like an idealized version of himself (best examples of this are on pages 45-48).

However, the biggest problem is Mark’s main argument that complementarianism is the only possible theological conclusion and the only possible solution to abusive marriages.

The most rage-inducing thing about this chapter is how many times Mark describes abusive marriages, but not even once uses the word “abusive” to describe it:

Do you ever hit her? Do you ever shove her? Do you ever push her? Do you ever grab her, restrain her? Do you ever raise a hand and threaten her? Do you ever threaten her with physical violence? Do you give her that look, that pierced, glazed, angry, don’t-push-it-now’s-a-good-time-to-shut-up look? Do you tell her, “I’m getting very angry; you should just shut up right now or it’s gonna go bad for you? Do you get right in her face? Do you intimadate her with your presence? Do you play the role of the bully to push your wife around? (49)

What he’s just described is physically abusive. But, to Mark, this is simply “bullying.”

How do you speak toy our wife? Do you have nasty nicknames for her? Do you raise your voice? Do you threaten her? Do you give backhanded compliments? … If you start saying critical, cutting, demeaning, cruel, or disrespectful things about your wife, your children will be left in the awful position of choosing between their mother and father. Invariably some of your children will despise their own mother and speak evil of her in an effort to remain loyal to their father. (51)

First: that is verbal abuse. Second: Invariably? What the hell? But, worse than describing abusive acts and then minimizing them, he goes on to do this:

You honor your wife physically by being safe for her, protective of her, and tender with her. In this way she will see your strength as a blessing instead of danger … which means he needs to honor and protect [her weakness] rather than exploit it.

That is benevolent sexism (that link is truly excellent reading, I highly recommend it). There’s a few different forms of sexism: hostile, casual, and benevolent. Hostile sexism is what a lot of the “not all men” types are thinking about when they’re disagreeing with feminists, and, honestly, it used to be commonplace, but other forms of sexism are taking its place. Hostile sexism is what you get when you read Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. Casual sexism is “everyday sexism.” It’s cat calling and jokes about kitchens and sandwiches.

Benevolent sexism, though, is the belief that women are weak, innocent, home-guarding angels that need to be put on a pedestal and protected. It seems innocuous enough on its face; it’s chivalry and nobility and treating women right. Benevolent sexists spend a lot of time talking about how much they respect women, and how much they value women, and how men should honor women by opening up their pickle jars and putting their coats in puddles and treating them like “crystal goblets” (49).

However, the basic assumption of benevolent sexism is that women need to be protected by the men who own them. Daughters are protected by fathers, wives are protected by husbands, and they “protect” women from the big ugly nasty world that just wants one thing from us. In Mark’s words: “We are to be tough in carving out safety and protection for women and children in a world that abuses them” (44).

Missing from this framework is the understanding that women deserve respect because we are people. For example, Mark talks about how Grace was “overwhelmed with the demands of young children,” but instead of saying that “so I decided to shoulder my fair share of the responsibility, after all they’re my children, too, and I’m their parent,” he says that he started “helping out” as an act of service. Grace, in Mark’s head, is the woman-thing that he needs to protect and serve, not the person who is an equal partner in their marriage and who deserves to be treated with respect.

Benevolent sexism might initially seem like it’s not harmful, but it is. Nothing that assumes that women are intrinsically weak and vulnerable can be good. Historically speaking, the view that women are “weak and vulnerable” has been the main argument behind some of the most flagrantly misogynistic church teachings.

Benevolent sexism is just hostile sexism masquerading as a nice guy.

September 29, 2014 by
Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: xi-xiv, "Preface" and "Introduction"

preacher

Ok, so I read four pages of Real Marriage this morning. There’s eleven chapters, so with that plus covering the preface and introduction today, I’m going to try to wrap this up in three months and avoid as much of the “multiple weeks dedicated to one chapter” thing that happened a few times with Captivating. I don’t think you or I could handle it.

Like Fascinating Womanhood and Captivating, Real Marriage will inevitably have statements that I agree with, mostly because they’re common sense. And, the first time I read these pages this morning, I thought I could agree with a good portion of what he said in the preface, which is subtitled “How Not to Read this Book.” And then I read it again, and even with some of the things that I started out kinda-sorta agreeing with, I have a few problems.

Don’t read sections of the book and tell your spouse, “I told you so.” This book is not meant to be a pile of rocks for you to throw at each other in bitterness.

That feels fairly common-sensical, right? In general, “I told you so” isn’t a statement that’s going to help bring healing and friendship back to a damaged relationship. No one enjoys hearing something like that. But, when I chewed on this for a little bit, I stumbled into a question: what else are you supposed to do with a marriage-advice book? Maybe not use the words “I told you so,” but if you and your partner are experiencing problems that you’ve tried to talk to them about before, and a book you read describes what you feel the problem is … isn’t pointing to a chapter and saying something like “this really made sense to me” or “I feel this way” or “she said what I’ve been trying to communicate really well in this chapter” something that will just happen? And isn’t that . . . sort of the point?

And I don’t think Mark would outright forbid someone from doing that– he just forbids us from doing it “in bitterness.” Which puts a horrible burden on someone who’s experienced a lot of hurt from their partner. Being honest for the first time can be messy and painful, and I feel that Mark might be trying to force happy-happy-joy-joy expressions onto people who are feeling raw.

There was one “Do Not” that struck me as both amusing and troubling:

Don’t read as a critic trying to find where you think we might be wrong. Although we seek to be faithful to the Bible, this book is not the Bible, and, like you, we are imperfect, so there will be mistakes. Take whatever gifts you find in this book, and feel free to leave the rest.

I didn’t exactly laugh when I read that– I snorted and smirked and rolled my eyes. A “mistake,” Mark, really? Like, oh, I don’t know, calling women “penis homes”? (Note: I do not agree with the title of that article, which implies a cause-and-effect relationship that doesn’t exist.) The problem is, I’m not going to find mistakes in this book. I’m going to find sexism and misogyny and since there are chapters dedicated to sexual assault, probably heaping, steaming mounds of victim blaming and rape myths. Those things are not mistakes. They are wrong, and the beliefs that Mark and Grace hold are directly responsible for churches excusing domestic violence and marital rape.

The last “Do Not” of the preface is probably going to be something I comment on a lot as we move through this book. In the opening salvo of Captivating, Stasi Eldredge tried to make it clear how different her book was from other “how to be a godly woman” books– she wasn’t going to give us a list. She was just going to show us . . . well, what turned out to be a rather gigantic list, although the items on it were more abstract that Helen Andelin’s “wear chiffon and florals.” Mark is doing the same thing:

Don’t copy our methods. The principles in this book are more important than the methods. Principles are timeless and unchanging. Methods vary from marriage to marriage and person to person. Many marriage books focus too heavily on methods that worked for one couple’s marriage, but because you and your spouse are unique, those methods may not work for you and your marriage.

On its face . . . there isn’t a glaring problem here, and I can agree with a surface-level interpretation of what he’s saying. However, when he says “principles,” what he means is complementarianism, which is, by definition, a method, so … yup.

What the Introduction makes clear is something we already knew: Mark is obsessed with sex. I counted, and in one-and-a-half pages, there are seventeen references to sex, including one mentioning how sexualized our culture is. Also, Mark wants to make sure that we know how incredibly experienced he is at the ripe old age of 41 (at time of publication), and how he’s a pastor so that means he knows stuff.

In fact, the whole section reeks, at least to me, of the “touch not the lord’s anointed” bullshit that I grew up with. It’s possible I’m being overly sensitive to that, but I don’t think so, not with “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE ME” showing up on the first page.

September 8, 2014 by
Feminism

Mark and Grace Driscoll's "Real Marriage": Review Series

real marriage

A little while ago, I put together a list of the most popular Christian marriage advice books. I made this list based on a variety of factors; I looked at a bunch of “best of” lists and found the ones that showed up on more than one, or had the most reviews– and the most positive reviews– on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook . . . I also tried to limit the list to books that were extremely popular and well-known, that appeared frequently in church curriculum or pre-marital counseling materials. After I had the list, I put up a poll on the next book I should review as part of an extended review series. Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge was the winner, but the close second was Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll.

Since Real Marriage was only published in 2012, it’s not a book that’s been able to have a “lasting impact” of any kind, but it is a book that’s been in the public consciousness since it came out, most recently because of how it became a “New York Times Bestseller.” It’s also been a polarizing book and has caused a lot of controversy.

I’ve been aware of Real Marriage since it came out, but since it was written by Mark Driscoll, I deliberately didn’t pay much attention to it. I think I read one review and then shrugged my shoulders in a general feeling of “meh– just Driscoll. Again.” Since I decided I was going to review it, I’ve been trying to avoid read what other people have concluded about it so that I can have as much of an open mind as possible. I’m already aware that I’m not going to like it, but I don’t know much of anything about what’s in it. For Captivating I read a lot of other reviews before I started mine, and that meant that I noticed what other people had noticed, like all of their movie and pop culture references, and I think I might have paid more attention to things like that than I ordinarily would have.

I wanted to try to avoid doing that, but I still wanted to include how other people have received the book, so I came up with this: the star-rating system. So, here’s what the ratings say about the book:

Out of almost 3,700 ratings, 87% of them are positive, as in the were rated with 3 or more stars. On Amazon, about 60% of people gave it 5 stars;  on Goodreads, 30% of the ratings are 5 stars, and 46% are 5 stars on Barnes & Noble. Apparently it’s a well-liked book, regardless of the controversy it’s caused. At this point, I’m hoping that there’s something in there that I can like or agree with. Flipping through it, I noticed a huge section of it is dedicated to sex, and from what I’ve heard about Driscoll’s “Song of Solomon” series, I think there might be something we can agree on in there. The back of the books is even, in a way, sort of promising.

In Real Marriage, Pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife, Grace, share how they have struggled and how they have found healing through the power of the only reliable source: the Bible.

They believe friendship is fundamental to marriage but not easy to maintain. So they offer practical advice on how to make your spouse your best friend– and keep it that way.

And they know from experience that sex-related issues need to be addressed directly. Five chapters are dedicated to answering questions like:

  • Should I confess my pre-martial sexual sin to my spouse?
  • Is it okey to have a “work spouse”?
  • What does the Bible say about masturbation and oral sex?

Stunningly honest and vulnerable, Real Marriage, is like a personal counseling session with a couple you cannot surprise, you cannot shock into silence, who will respond to every question with wisdom, humility, and realism.

If you want to have a long-lasting, fulfilling marriage you should read this book. Wrestle with this book. Pray over this book. Sharke this book. And discover how God can use it to change your life.

See what I mean about sort of, though? Addressing sex directly, instead of euphemistically? That’s, well, a little different. How he is apparently going to talk about it, though . . . hmm. We’ll see.

September 2, 2014 by