Malcolm Muggeridge
Soulgasms
Sex in crisis
Masturbation: God's gift
See also
A
revolution in American sex, and its Evangelical regulators
The Christian Right, as both Dagmar Herzog and the Republican nomination of Sarah Palin make abundantly clear, is not anti-sex. “We are the ones with the babe on the ticket”, gushes the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. “Run to the arms of your prince and enter your dream”, advises the author, media star and abstinence-before-marriage advocate Lisa Bevere in her book Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry, on sale at Palin’s old Pentecostal church in Wasilla.
Evangelical conservatives have outflanked their enemies: “Christian sex”, and not what the revolutionaries of the 1960s had to offer, turns out to be “the most amazing sex on God’s Green earth”.
All of this is not really surprising. Protestantism from the very beginning defined itself as being, roughly speaking, on the side of sexuality. Being married, the Reformers argued, was not second best; the putative celibacy of Catholic priests, monks and nuns was not only theologically misguided but also a front for hypocrisy and perversion. Methodism was attacked in the eighteenth century for being too sexy; what else was one to make of all its excited talk about “love feasts”? And even if, in early twentieth-century America, the peccadilloes of preachers were not exactly condoned, they were explicable as the all too human failures of men in a world where passion might well break its bounds. God forgives sinners. Still, there was something new going on in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
The Bible Belt South of Herzog’s youth (she is the daughter and granddaughter of Protestant pastors) was, for her, “a sensual and beautiful place” in which sexuality was treated with tolerant indulgence and generosity. In general she is right that there has been a radical change in how these matters enter the public sphere: from being questions of private morality, they have become the province of psychology, physiology and sociology. For the Evangelical Right, premarital intercourse and adultery and even homosexuality have become not so much wrong as injurious to mind, body and society. Even the Right’s arguments about abortion are often now less about whether it is an act of murder than about whether social science finds it harmful. Despite there being “no reliable data to measure the phenomenon”, Justice Kennedy supported his vote to weaken Roe vs Wade with the observation that “severe depression and loss of esteem can follow” from ending a pregnancy.
In other words, the religious Right created late twentieth-century sexual politics on the coat tails of the secular Enlightenment’s ways of arguing. Even if the state could not be asked to legislate morality – although in the view of the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia this is precisely what it is and should be doing when, for example, it makes sodomy illegal – it did have a clear role in furthering the psychological and physical well-being of its citizens and, indeed, of people all over the world. It is by secularizing sex that the religious Right made it so central to politics.
Fragments of Herzog’s story are well known, but, put together, the sheer mass of “intrusive and insidious”, “mean and manipulative” regulatory interventions in matters that seem, in another register, to be so intimate and individual, is, as she says, unnerving. This is a book by an anguished Christian looking at what some aspects of her faith have wrought.
The promise of “soulgasm” – seemingly endless, barely disguised soft-core pornographic incitements to desire that fuel the politics of sex – is at the heart of this book. Timothy LaHaye, the bestselling author of the Rapture novels about how the righteous will suddenly be lifted off the earth, leaving the rest of us behind – and puzzled – had an earlier life selling millions of copies of a book that held out the “titanic emotional and physical explosion” of the act of marriage for those who followed its advice. Many Evangelicals tout the Song of Solomon as a guide to genital stimulation. There are bookshelves of this stuff. One volume of the popular “Every Man” series tells men to “starve your eyes and eliminate ‘junk sex’” so that they will more deeply crave “‘real food’ – your wife”, while another advocates “equity orgasm” and teaches the exercises women can do to obtain it. (Equity pay is not on the agenda.) None of this is very different from what can be read in the magazines at any supermarket checkout counter, except that it so blatantly produces what it then attempts to manage. A teenage boy in one tract confesses how he was home alone with his sister-in-law who had fallen asleep on her belly while watching television. The crease of her buttocks peeks out of her tight jeans. His imagination gets the better of him; he masturbates. Then the warning: he is spoiling his chances for future happy marital orgasm. This is all, in some measure, familiar eighteenth-century stuff, but it is now mobilized far more extensively, systematically and in the public sphere.
Homosexuality, for example, becomes for the Evangelical Right the “disgusting opposite” of the luridly attractive marital pleasures of soulgasm. The shrillness of its homophobia can still shock: the prominent preacher Pat Robinson warned that disaster would befall Orlando, Florida, because its city council allowed the “rainbow flag” to be flown in God’s face (“You’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you”); the problem with homosexuality, declared the chief of staff of a prominent senator, is that sperm “swim into feces during anal sex”. Few people go as far as the Primitive Baptist preacher Fred Phelps, who carries signs saying that “God hates Fags”, because evangelical leaders had decided explicitly at a series of meetings in 1992 that they would have to “de-religify” their prejudices and express them in the language of psychology: homosexuality is an addiction, increases promiscuity and hence the spread of disease, causes depression, is associated with substance abuse, and so on. It is curable. And even if it is not, those “biologically” programmed to be gay are still responsible for their actions just as criminals are, if it were to turn out that anti-social behaviour is genetically determined. The Defense of Marriage Act in 1997 was the high-water mark of the right-wing wave on this topic.
Homophobia has not gone away, but the Evangelical Right’s energies have shifted to a new cause: abstinence, domestic and foreign. At home, the emphasis has been on “abstinence education”, now taught in 50 per cent of public schools – and many private schools as well – at a cost of several hundred million federal dollars each year and more from individual states. Its claim on the public purse is, once again, made on generally secular grounds: premarital abstinence prevents disease and births out of wedlock to unprepared parents as well as preserving boys and girls for the true pleasures of marital love. Sex is worth waiting for. And for teens who fail, it holds out “secondary virginity”, which can just about restore hormones and the body to good health. Abstinence education abroad means, basically, not allowing US foreign assistance to be spent on distributing condoms in the battle against AIDS, instead offering good advice to not have sex and to avoid prostitutes. The Right is helped in its endeavours by people such as Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda, who gives her Evangelical beliefs an anti-imperialist twist: the West rejects abstinence education because it doesn’t believe Africans can control their sexual urges. Some Evangelicals, Rick Warren for example, who recently quizzed both presidential candidates on their religious views, send thousands of missionaries to Africa who offer medicines, care and counsel, but still no condoms to prevent disease.
Herzog does a brilliant job in putting together an ugly and complex picture of “the new sexual revolution” of the Christian Right and especially of its impact in the public sphere. One understands why the evidence she brings to light has unnerved her as a Christian and a citizen. But why, exactly, sex is more deeply enmeshed now in the political life of America than at any time in its history remains puzzling. The four reasons she offers do not quite work, and she herself does not seem committed to them.
It is not the case, as Herzog suggests briefly at the beginning of her book, that the revolution she writes about is fuelled by repression. The soft-porn confessional advice literature she quotes is an incitement of desire on an unprecedented scale. The supposed crisis of sexuality in society more generally does not offer much of an answer either. Maybe the endless parade of articles about twenty proven techniques towards better fellatio or the pleasures of sex in the age of Viagra that fill ordinary magazines in every corner of ordinary life does reflect – or create – a new level of anxiety. But there has never been a time when people – at least the literate who wrote and read about these matters – weren’t anxious about sex. Even heightened anxiety in society at large does not account for a parallel universe of sexual politics on the Evangelical Right.
Sex is also not an easy way to manipulate politics, as Herzog suggests. She showed in a clever earlier book, Sex After Fascism: Memory and morality in twentieth-century Germany (2005), that even those master manipulators the Nazis did not have much success in shaping the libidos of their subjects, however much the German generation of the 1960s might have thought otherwise. Finally, I do not think that the blame can be laid at the feet of liberals who have supposedly failed to mount a strong defence of individual rights. Liberals – progressives might be a better term – were the ones to put sexual education on school curricula in the first place, on the grounds that knowing about sex was in the interests of hygiene and public health. One can argue, as Herzog effectively does, that abstinence education or prohibiting the distribution of condoms as a means of preventing HIV infection is bad public policy. Study after study supports this view: telling teenagers to wait until marriage is ineffective; condoms do prevent AIDS. But those of us who supported sex education in middle school (my daughter was shown how to put a condom on a cucumber in seventh grade) cannot claim that these matters are of only individual concern. At issue here – abortion rights and gay marriage are another matter – are not individual rights but a view of what children should be taught and how a disease should be managed. The case cannot be made on principle.
Europe, as Herzog notes with a sense of longing and envy, is mercifully free of the disputes about sexual morality that embroil the United States. No right-wing leader in Europe would touch the issues that are daily fare on the political pages in the US. Margaret Thatcher may have used her femininity to further her cause, but “Hoosiers for Hot Chicks” – a sign held by the Indiana delegation at the Republican Convention – is untranslatable into any other political culture’s language.
Nevertheless, liberal, laicized Europe has its sexual disputes, and they are not always pretty. Muslims are blamed for the rise of homophobic attacks in the Netherlands, while those seeking citizenship are required to acclimatize themselves to local mores by watching gay men kissing. Views about Islam and about sexuality, and not just the separation of Church and state, lie at the core of the fierce French debates about headscarves and veils.
The unprecedented centrality of sexual politics in contemporary America has both local and more general causes. In the first place, the resurgence of biblical fundamentalism as a quasi-autonomous movement has a part in this: the Southern Baptist Convention declared that homosexuality was “unbiblical”, not unhealthy. Of course, this claim (like the arguments from Scripture deployed against the theory of evolution during the twentieth century), was not made in a social vacuum, but it was not made in a theological vacuum either. Fundamentalism is the other side of a debate about interpretive strategies that are at the heart of liberal Protestantism.
Of course we might wonder why homosexuality has become so central to many conservatives when in fact Jesus was entirely silent on the subject, St Paul has only a few cryptic references, and the Old Testament’s one injunction against gay sex is among hundreds that Christians ignore. But this is not the first time in the history of Protestantism that a relatively obscure and little-noticed passage of Scripture has assumed what outsiders might regard as undue importance. If one is to argue against fundamentalist readings, one has to do it from within, as many Southern Baptists and others are indeed doing.
It is a myth that the Evangelical Right had its origins in opposition to Roe vs Wade. Fears about church taxation and about efforts to abolish school prayers were there from the start. But there is no doubt that the question of abortion, as part of a more widespread reaction to what Evangelicals call “secular humanism”, has enormously fuelled debate about sex more generally. And there is also little question that sexual morality hs come to play a far larger part in contemporary Christianity worldwide than it has played for centuries. It would have seemed inconceivable twenty years ago that the Anglican communion, with African bishops leading the forces of schism, would be tearing itself apart over the ordination of homosexual bishops, although it did get a taste of things to come during the crisis over the ordination of women during the 1970s and subsequently.
Why this is the case might be understood in two further contexts. The first – the foundation of what Herzog describes as the oddly instrumental as opposed to moral arguments of the evangelical Right – goes back to Thomas Malthus. He argued that sexual desire was irrepressible and indescribably pleasurable, but at the same time that it was deadly unless very carefully managed. Sex meant children; children added to “population”; population grew geometrically; resources arithmetically; death would right the balance. Malthus was the one who put reproduction at the very heart of social policy, where Herzog finds it.
Nineteenth-century thinkers proposed two ways out of the “Malthusian scissors” (whether endless economic growth remains a third was and is still not clear). The first – what Malthus himself called “moral restraint”, ie not having sex – was less than attractive to the average man or woman. The second, inconceivable to him but the core of the neo-Malthusian programme, meant separating sex from reproduction and, arguably, even from marriage. In other words, break what had long seemed a connection writ in nature and at the heart of human communities. Sex could exist for private pleasure and be simply a private matter: reproducing the social order was another matter. This is a view of enormous consequence. The American liberal commentator Walter Lippmann wrote in 1929 that “birth control was the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals”, and conservatives of his day agreed. Today’s battles over abstinence and homosexual marriage are arguably less shrill than the fierce battles over birth control in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when civilization itself seemed to hang in the balance.
Sex has, over the past two centuries, become much more of a private matter than it ever had been before, and the politics of the 1960s did its part in clearing the legal ground to make this so. But the Evangelical Right recognized that it was also, and always had been, a profoundly public matter. It is, and was, that aspect of our common human existence on which tectonic shifts in Western and perhaps global history are and were represented and fought through. In late antiquity, in the Reformation, and perhaps today, great changes are writ on and through the body.
The problem with the Evangelical agenda that Herzog exposes in all its detail is not primarily, as she suggests, that it will reverse or has already reversed the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Americans are having as much or more premarital and extramarital sex as they ever were; what people do in bed is remarkably resilient in the face of all but the most concerted state efforts. (Pro-natalism, for example, almost never works; an anti-natalist campaign with the full panoply of punitive measures, as in China, perhaps does.) At the core of Sex in Crisis is a debate about what kind of a world Americans want to live in. An Evangelical “babe” on the ticket of a major political party as a candidate to be “a heartbeat away” from the presidency suggests that the debate is going in one direction. The fact that Proposition 8, an effort to amend the California constitution so as to prohibit gay marriage, is failing in the polls – especially now that it has been rephrased on the ballot as a question of taking away a right that people already have – gives hope that it is tilting in the other. Dagmar Herzog’s book really is about what her subtitle claims: “the future of American politics”.
Dagmar Herzog: SEX IN CRISIS
The new sexual revolution and the future of American politics. Basic Books. distributed in the UK by Grantham Book Services. 978 0 465 00214 6
Thomas Laqueur teaches History at the University of California, Berkeley. His book Solitary Sex: A cultural history of masturbation was published in 2003.
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Sex In Crisis, a new book by Dagmar Herzog, explores how religious conservatives are hijacking liberal rhetoric - the idea that orgasms are actually rather good, for example - to preach ideas on sexuality that are anything BUT liberal.
According to Herzog, the conservative right are using the (literally) touchy feely language of sex-positivism to demonstrate how much they 'value' and 'respect' women, and acknowledge that sex is a vital (and maybe even fun!) part of relationships... as long as its not DIRTY AND SINFUL.
In conservative right-speak, "prostitution demeans the value of women" equals "so lets withdraw AIDS outreach efforts to prostitutes in developing countries, cos they shouldn't be doing it anyway."
Exploring your G-spot (with no-one but your husband, of course) will bring you closer to God according to evangelical sexologists (now there's a combination of words you weren't expecting to hear this morning).
And as long as you ONLY have sex within marriage, a lifetime of 'soulgasms' (ick) is yours for the taking.
Homosexuality can be cured by Christ (phew! I was tiring of my deviant attraction to women anyway) and best of all is the news that good wives who put out wherever, whenever (and whatever time of the month) will protect their husband's spiritual purity by preventing any 'need' for porn or masturbation.
She'll wear sexy lingerie and keep herself shaved and showered at all times, ready to *ahem* drop everything the moment her man wants some.
"Ellen", an ideal wife, explains, "[My husband's] purity is extremely important to me, so I try to meet his needs so that he goes out each day with his cup full. During the earlier years, with much energy going into childcare and with my monthly cycle, it was a lot more difficult for me to do that. There weren't too many 'ideal times' when everything was just right. But that's life, and I did it anyway."
So that's that. Man's satisfied, woman's satisfied, God's satisfied - and Jesus is coming again.
A happy outcome for us all, eh?
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The subject of masturbation is the cause of much concern and confusion among Christians. Most of us are taught that masturbation is sinful or wrong, and many believe that the Bible actually forbids masturbation. The latter is simply untrue; masturbation is not even mentioned in the Bible. And when we consider the facts, it becomes clear that masturbation is not a sin, but rather a blessing from God that enables us to fully enjoy our bodies and can help us lead a more healthy spiritual life.
Masturbating for the Glory of God
Some people say that they feel guilty, shameful, or dirty after they masturbate, and so they conclude that masturbation must be a sin. This is just because most of us have been taught, often by misguided religious authorities, that our bodies are bad and anything relating to physical pleasure is sinful. This is simply not true, and this is not what God intended for us. God created our bodies, along with our capacity for sexual pleasure and orgasm. Masturbation is just a normal release of sexual energy, and if used properly, it can help keep us healthy physically and spiritually.
The Scripture tells us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and that everything that we do should glorify the Lord. While masturbation is not a sin, we must be careful to masturbate in a way that is respectful to our bodies, and respectful to God. Masturbation is a gift that we should not abuse. This means we should not masturbate to excess, or to the point where we injure ourselves. If you are masturbating until you are exhausted, or until your genitals are raw or bleeding, this is excessive, harmful, and not what God intended. If you masturbate compulsively to the point that it interferes with your work or your relationships with friends, family, and God, this is a problem. If you masturbate while indulging in impure thoughts (fantasizing about your neighbor’s wife, for example), this is also a misuse of God’s gift. Of course, this is not to say that masturbation in itself is wrong – simply that we must use masturbation in a way that is healthy and responsible.
Most discussions of masturbation don’t even touch on the multitude of ways that masturbating can contribute to our physical, emotional, and moral health. Here are just a few of the many ways that masturbation is beneficial:
• It prevents sexually transmitted diseases. Masturbation is the safest form of safe sex. You can’t catch or spread any STDs when you masturbate.
• It prevents unwanted pregnancies. By masturbating instead of having intercourse, couples – both married and unmarried – can avoid the dilemma of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. If birth control is not available, masturbation is a wise alternative to unprotected sex.
• It’s an alternative to premarital sex. Masturbation provides an alternative to intercourse before marriage. It allows both partners to keep their virginity intact for their wedding night.
• It’s an alternative to sinful behavior such as adultery. If a man or woman is tempted to indulge in adulterous sex, for example, masturbating is a much better alternative to committing a sin.
• It provides gratification if sex is unfulfilling. Many women do not experience orgasm during sexual intercourse, and some people are just unable to climax with a partner. In these cases, masturbation allows the experience of sexual fulfillment.
• It allows us to reap the health benefits of sexual release. Medical research shows that having regular orgasms can contribute to overall health in many ways. Having an orgasm releases physical tension and emotional stress, releases endorphins, and improves circulation. Studies also show that having regular ejaculations decreases the risk of prostate cancer in men. Masturbation allows us to enjoy these benefits whether or not we have a sexual partner.
• It enables us to enjoy our bodies and God’s gift of sexual pleasure. Most importantly, masturbation is a way for us to enjoy and celebrate our God-given sexuality. Sexual pleasure and orgasm are blessings from the Lord, and masturbation is one way we can experience them. Our bodies and our sexual organs were made to feel good; if we deny ourselves pleasure, we are refusing one of God’s gifts.
What About Onan?
Many people are under the impression that the Bible specifically forbids masturbation. In reality, the Bible does not even mention masturbation. The story of Onan (Genesis 38:7-10) is always cited as an example of how God will punish masturbators; this is where we get the term “Onanism,” which refers to masturbation. However, the story of Onan has absolutely nothing to do with masturbating. After his brother died, Onan was commanded by God to impregnate his brother’s wife. Onan had sex with her, but defied God by pulling out before he ejaculated so she wouldn’t get pregnant. His seed spilled on the ground – due to coitus interruptus, not masturbation – but this detail became equated with masturbation by those who apparently had their own agenda.
There are other passages in the Old Testament (Leviticus 15: 15-32, Leviticus 22:4, Deuteronomy 23:9-11) that refer to “emissions of semen” and what is necessary to purify one’s self after an ejaculation, or if you get semen on yourself or your clothing. There is no mention about how the emission occurs, although it would seem like masturbation could definitely be a possibility. However, it’s important to note that these passages say nothing about masturbation being sinful – simply that you must ritually cleanse yourself after ejaculating. So keep some tissues, paper towels, or wet wipes handy when you masturbate.
Thank God for the Blessing of Masturbation
God made our bodies, so if we think our bodies are dirty and shameful, we are shunning God’s divine creation. And if we masturbate with shame and feelings of sinfulness, we are besmirching God’s blessing. Instead, we should celebrate our bodies and our sexual nature, and rejoice in the pleasure and satisfaction that they can bring us through masturbation. God’s birthright to us is joy, happiness, and health, and there are few moments more joyous than the moment of orgasm. Therefore, every time we masturbate, we should say a prayer of gratitude, thanking the Lord for our bodies, for sexual pleasure, and for masturbation as a means of experiencing the bliss of orgasm. Remember also the many ways that masturbation helps keep us physically and spiritually healthy. Masturbation is truly a gift from God, and one that we should use with respect and righteousness to glorify Him.
See also
Sinful sex
Christian right
Banquet of Chestnuts
On brains blown by orgasm
On the elusive orgasm
The Virginity Choice: STD sluttiness or ‘true love waits'
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