Sexvangelicals
Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema
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Sexvangelicals is a podcast that explores the intersection of religion, relationships, race, and sexuality. Join Jeremiah and Julia for hard conversations, lots of laughs, and celebrating the resilience of the human spirit. Let's heal together!
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Episode #86: Sexual Fluidity, and How Anger Helped Access My Sexuality in Ways that My Arkansas Homeschool Didn't Want, with Maddie Upson, part 1
We have big news! We hired a new Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Maddie Upson, and we’re excited to introduce you to her in a two part episode.
In this episode, Maddie describes her experience growing up in a homeschool connected with the Evangelical Church in Arkansas, including:
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Fitting into the Church (8:00): Maddie explains that her church and homeschool had one major goal: to keep people (men and women) in their “godly” roles. “You are assessed at how well you can read the implicit rules and you get rewarded if you stay within those rules and you will get kind of smacked down if you’re kind of to out the line. It's really about how well you can read the room and you're rewarded for that.”
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Conversations about Sexuality (14:00): Maddie describes the gender roles she learned: “For men and women, the messages specifically about gender and sexuality was more about what wasn't said. It was very common to like to talk about men and boys are visual creatures. They are addicted to porn. It's on us [women] to not just enforce our purity, but theirs as well, and how we dress, how we act.” Maddie speaks about how not only did Church leadership, but parents, expected girls to be the monitors for boys' sexuality.
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Anger (23:00): Julia talks about how anger can be used and geared towards justice and is not something to be demonized.“ Certainly like any emotion, people can misuse anger just like they could misuse anything. But I wish that in all spheres, in and outside of the church, we could actually be able to embrace anger for the important role that is necessary, particularly in terms of justice. And it sounds like from a very young age, you had experiences with anger that were demonized, and then eventually you got to the point in which you said, okay, no, I'm no longer going to wait for the boys to bait me.”
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Anger and Boundaries (25:00): Maddie explores the power of anger when someone disrespects your boundaries. “Anger's such a powerful emotion because it allows you to carve out space and hold your boundaries in a way that shame and fear can kind of incapacitate you. While there are pros and cons, anger is one of the few emotions that really, I think, shores you up and you can push it back on things. A boundary's been violated. And so I think I came to have like a really, maybe an unhealthy, but still like very strong relationship with my anger because it protected me and it would help me create space for myself when people were trying to take my breathing room.”
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Anger and Changing the System (33:00): Jeremiah suggests, “While anger has the capacity to bring more immediate change or at least call for immediate change to the systems that exist that aren't working…That's something that 30-somethings, 50 something struggle with. Do I change the system? And if I do change the system, what are the consequences? And do I want to deal with the consequences of that?” Maddie responds, “I think that especially for women, anger is a necessary thing. And I honestly wish in the church, more women were able to feel free, to feel angry because there's a lot to be angry about.” The church controls our bodies, our tongues, and our “purity,” so why shouldn’t we be angry?
At the end of the episode, Maddie talks with us about cheese, the black market, Boston, and her love for Wonder Woman.
We’re so thankful to have Maddie on our team! Let’s heal together!
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May 22, 2023
Episode 85: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Mutual Pleasure, with Nicole Marinescu
We wrap up our series on The Sex Ed We Wish We Had by talking about the final sexual health principle from the work of Doug Braun Harvey and Michael Vigorito: Mutual pleasure.
And we’re excited to have our editor extraordinaire, Nicole Marinescu, share her experiences of navigating mutually pleasurable experiences in an age of Tinder, virtual communication, and the growing influence of EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal) communities.
Nicole provides a simple definition for mutual pleasure: “Caring about the other person or persons that you are having a sexual experience with.” We also talk about the following:
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Gen-Z and Independence (4:00): Nicole talks about how in growing up with the internet, Gen-Zers have become a ‘hyper-independent’ generation, which can be great in many aspects; however, hinders us in aspects of community, relationships, and mutual pleasure. “When you have this level of independence, working with one another was not a skill that was taught even in elementary school. Independence is a beautiful thing, but when you're not kind of taught to work with people in your community, the people around you, you're not really gonna apply that as you get older. You're not gonna apply that to dating, you're not gonna apply that to sex.” Julia adds “What we know from research is that Gen Z folks are having less partnered sex. Now solo sex and masturbation are fantastic, so keep doing that. But it doesn't sound like your generation has learned good relational skills to move out of the independence into a partnered state in which you can both talk and engage pleasure together.”
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Tinder (8:00): Nicole shares, “Tinder is an app that commodifies not just sexuality, but the people that you are reduced to your height and the one or two pictures that you have, and you are something that you just say yes or no to.” Jeremiah responds, “That's not mutual. That is one person asserting themselves, asserting their sexuality at the expense of another person. Social media impacted and inhibited the ways and the skills with which people who use social media at high volumes communicate effectively. It also inhibits the ability to move into empathetic spaces in response.”
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Pleasure (25:00): “I think we find pleasure in the excitement and in this wonderful human connection that you don't have with most people,” Nicole says in response to a question about the difference between meeting people virtually versus in person. Excitement is pleasure to a degree because it not only adds to a potential sexual experience, but it aids in our ability to empathize. With sex and romance becoming more virtual, we lose that excitement and in turn, lose some of our ability to empathize.
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Relationships During Times of Transition (31:00): Nicole explains how she and her partner create space for happiness and mutually pleasurable, not only during times of transition, to connect. “I’m talking about specific things we both like, that make us both happy and we'll do that. We'll cook meals together and that makes us so happy. We get to connect and it's not sexual, but you know, we're laughing, we are both following the recipe really poorly. It's a really good point of connection for us.” Julia adds, “The pleasure within sexuality requires a lot of time and intention and communication. That is not easy. Pleasure also exists outside of sexuality.”
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The Church and Community (45:00): Nicole describes, “The community element of church is something that I think we're missing in a lot of other spaces. But the community element of the church also comes with a lot of guilt and shame. And they tell you, oh, you can talk to us about anything. We can give you guidance, but you talk to them about something and it's. ‘What? That's wrong. No, no, no.’” The Church can and has damaged many people’s ability to be vulnerable by showing them that many of their questions will be met with shame, which in turn can hurt someone's ability to be vulnerable in a relationship.
A huge thanks to Nicole for joining us in this episode! Let’s heal together!
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May 15, 2023
Episode #84: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Shared Values, with Jimmy Bridges, part 2 of 2
Today’s episode discusses one of the most challenging dynamics that we see when doing sex therapy with couples where one/both grew up in a religious context:
How do you navigate value conversion, the paradigm shifting that happens during therapy, when two people convert their values at different paces?
Jimmy Bridges, PhD, therapist extraordinaire at This Space Between, joins us for part two of this extremely important conversation. Jimmy, Julia, and Jeremiah talk about their process of value conversion in their former marriages—spoiler alert: it wasn’t pretty for any of the three of us—as well as:
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Empathy (5:20): Jimmy explains, “What I'm mostly encouraging folks to do is both get to a place where they're able to really like step into the shoes of the other person. And then that works both ways because it helps with pacing. I think the biggest issue that leads to harm is we're trying to move too fast. Be cognizant of how it's impacting the people connected to you and learn how to step into the shoes.”
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Finding similarities (10:30): Jimmy continues, “More than not, there's probably more alignment than we think there is in this process of huge transitions, either religiously or like relationally. I think how it gets enacted—behavior versus principle—I think can sometimes confuse us into thinking, oh, my partner's really different than me because they like practice this in a different way. But the value itself might still remain the same.”
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Anxiety and value conversion (15:30): Jimmy describes processes that impacted his separation from his ex, “I wish I would've advocated for what I was wanting more because there was a fear of like, “Ooh, how is this gonna be perceived?” But I didn't even think at that time, about this is why it's important to me. This is what I do with like couples all the time. Connect it to why it's important to you.”
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Navigating gender roles and therapy (18:30): Jeremiah notes that adherence to gender roles can interfere with the process of therapy, to which Jimmy responds, “The dilemma of a therapist is how much do I put myself in a position where I'm actually not being culturally competent? Right. And instead, use my position of power to say, Ooh, okay, I can't actually go forward with respecting all of your cultural values if some of those values are going to go against the treatment goals that you came in here asking me to help you with.”
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The impact of enmeshment (29:20): Jimmy notes, “I think there is quite a lot of enmeshment that occurs relationally because it's being in a way socialized into you from being in an enmeshed church. I think communication skills become more important when you come out of a culture like that are like developing tolerance when you're in the space of tension, so distress tolerance. Find some internal reminders that the family isn't going to collapse. If we're hearing someone talk about something different, that harmony can still be maintained in the face of differences. And what that looks like in communication is something as simple as, “Let me see if I've got you so far, are you saying this, this and this?”
At the core of our work at Sexvangelicals is the process of value conversion. If you’re interested in working with us, please give this episode a listen!
Let’s heal together!
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May 8, 2023
Episode #83: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Shared Values, with Jimmy Bridges, part 1 of 2
Last week, in our episode with Kara Haug, we talked about honesty as structures that provide accurate information to individuals and groups about sexuality and relationships. This week, we talk about how to navigate honesty within a relationship, where two people may have similar or differing perspectives, needs, and values. The language that we use to describe this sexual health principle is “shared values”.
Doug Braun Harvey, founder of the Harvey Institute, writes:
“Values are a source of identifying one’s sexual standards and ethics. Values differences, when honestly and vulnerably shared between partners, can lead to closeness or painful distance. Either way, it is a conversation that brings reality and clarity where couples may have previously chosen avoidance and deception.”
We invite our colleague Dr. Jimmy Bridges to talk with us about how to discuss values in relationships. In part 1, we talk about the ways that conservative religions discourage discussion of values using our own experiences—ours within Evangelical circles and Jimmy’s within the Mormon church. We talk about:
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Language of Sex Ed (8:00): Jimmy says that he was taught about “plumbing,” to which Jeremiah responds, “The language of disgust that's connected with plumbing is where sewage goes. It's where waste goes.”
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Shame around Masturbation (11:00): “I think most folks, most kids feel [shame] about masturbation. Like you don't need any faith tradition to feel shame about masturbation if you grow up in the United States,” Jimmy describes. The shame around masturbation led to shame around sexuality, and ultimately, himself: “I got pretty good at repressing a ton of like sexual urge, sexual desire, sexual exploration, sexual identity exploration, to where I thought I was getting a good sense of who I was and building this like really strong identity, but the reality was I was losing myself.”
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Values (23:00): Jimmy shares, “The value of confrontation, self confronting, taking ownership of how I behave and the impact that that has on the world and the people around me actually guides a lot of like what I do in my own personal life and also in my professional life.” Jimmy speaks about how his own values have evolved as a person who has moved through many different religions and as a therapist. and Jeremiah notes “So the idea of value conversion then suggests that values aren't static. Values have the capacity to grow, to evolve.”
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Therapy and Power (26:00): Jimmy describes that therapists have to be aware of “power and the influence that a therapist and power or position of privilege holds in guiding and shaping people's values.” This can become especially dangerous for folks who grew up in religious contexts, because “coming from religious structures, we are just ingrained in giving our autonomy up to the authority and asking the authority figures to make these decisions for us.”
Tune in next week for part two of our interview with Jimmy, where all three of us talk about our experiences navigating shifts in values in our marriages.
Let’s heal together!
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May 1, 2023
Episode #82: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Honesty, with Kara Haug
We continue with our series on The Sex Education We Wish We Had by talking about the sexual health principle of honesty.
Doug Braun-Harvey, of the Harvey Institute, explains:
“Sexual health requires open and direct communication with oneself and every sexual partner. Honesty with oneself involves being open to sexual pleasure, sexual experience, and sexual education. Without honesty, sexual relationships will not be able to have effective communication or be able to uphold any of the sexual health principles.”
How can we have honest dialogue about sexuality when we’ve been so dishonest with our kids and adolescents about sexual health?
To help us answer this, we invite Kara Haug, co-founder of Reframing Our Stories, a business that provides sexual health education, resources and tools for families and communities to normalize conversations around sex and relationship in Sacramento. Kara talks with us about:
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Mixed Messaging (9:00): Kara shares, “Something that stood out to me was that even in the affirmation of being a dancer, that there was still a sexualization component of you as either a girl or an adolescent that you could dance in church, but literally, God forbid, your nipples show, that there was still this insidious underbelly of purity culture and gendered messaging.” Women’s bodies are treated as subjects that must be debated on, ruled upon, discussed, and punished, instead of just being treated like a human body.
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Role of Sexuality (20:00): Kara discusses her motivation for her work: “The amount that I saw how sexuality played into people's stories and how it shaped their lives and how it touched so much of our lives that I didn't realize before I think overwhelmed me. And then I just became really sad because I'm like, what we are doing is we are continuing negative cycles that don't need to happen.” The absence of honest conversations and comprehensive sex education leads to unnecessary suffering and grief.
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Gut Instincts (33:00): Kara talks about how she was taught to go against her instincts: “I was told not to trust my bodily sensations and things like that. And so that's why now recognizing how I feel like I have made decisions against my gut instinct. Every time I teach anyone, I bring in a body element, like from young to old.” To have honest and open conversations about sexuality, we need to be able to trust ourselves, and our bodies first.
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Grief (34:00): Jeremiah asks, “When families work with you, I imagine that they are often receiving comprehensive sex education for the first time as well. How do you help them navigate the experience in the grief of receiving sex ed for themselves and sharing it with the children at the same time?” We talk about grief quite a bit, and for an important reason: we need to hold space for our younger selves who did have the opportunity to have the same education as our children. It’s important to break those cycles for future generations.
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Triggers (40:00): Kara reflects, “Your children are your biggest triggers and so as soon as you feel triggered about something, you need to think about why was that triggering? And then you need to think about the root of that and then possibly be willing to get help for that,” Our children can trigger us, but it is up to us to be honest with ourselves and unpack why we were triggered.
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We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (43:00): “Nobody likes hard feelings. We don't like them. You know, we don't like feeling like garbage. I say that and I go, but just like the book, we're going on a bear hunt. We can't go over it. We can't go under it. We have to go through it.” Kara speaks about the book, also loved by Julia, for how it is an effective tool for teaching about how we have to push through hardship because we cannot avoid it.
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Directness and Respect (50:00): Julia summarizes the importance of “directness and respect and not sugarcoating hard things that were happening in or outside of family systems.” Children deserve the same honesty and respect as adults. Age-appropriate language and honesty can co-exist, and it is important that children are exposed to honesty young so they can incorporate that into their own mindset and expect the same from others.
Learn more about Kara through her podcast Reframing Our Stories.
Let’s heal together!
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Apr 24, 2023
Episode #81: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Discussing Sexually Transmitted Infections with Jenelle Pierce, Part 2 of 2
April is STI Awareness Month. STIs are commonly discussed in sex ed curricula, but typically as a fear-mongering technique to discourage premarital sexuality.
We are excited to have Jenelle Pierce, Executive Director of The STI Project, break down the stigma and provide strategies for discussing STIs with partners.
The episode begins with this prompt: “A person is beginning to date and is exploring multiple potential dating, sexual, and or romantic relationships. What are some ways to help set initial conversations around STI or pregnancy prevention?”
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The Value of Honest Communication (2:00): “It’s important to be honest, if you are in any stage of a relationship, even a ‘talking stage’”, Jenelle says. “First of all, communicating the dynamic of that relationship to all your partners, making sure that those who are involved know and are in the same place and are comfortable with that.”
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Beginning the Conversation (4:00): Julia reflects, “I have many clients who have recently moved out of religious structures that have such specific rules around dating and sexuality and never learned the skills to have a dialogue about sexuality in general and different components about sexuality, including STIs. And those conversations can feel very anxiety provoking for folks.” Many folks who grow up in religious structures typically do not even have a starting point for conversations about sex and sexuality, so it can cause fear and anxiety to even begin that dialogue because of the idea that talking about sex is shameful.
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Misconceptions About Open Relationships (13:00): Jenelle shares, “The assumption is that they're (people in polyamorous relationships) potentially higher risk and that there are more STIs within those communities. […] But it's actually the other way around. So research tells us that those who have known infections are less likely to transmit their infection than someone who has an unknown infection.” This shows how vital comprehensive sexual education is. People who are more inclined to have honest and open conversations practice safe(r) sex.
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The Psychology of Disgust (22:00): Jenelle explains, “Disgust is one of the core central emotions that helps us to navigate life in a way that we can be healthy and productive. And so it's a central emotion that's necessary from an evolutionary standpoint. Your risk assessment and disgust sensitivity changes and is dynamic intentionally also to benefit you because we need those relationships. The actual exchange of bacteria that happens when we're in close proximity to one another is good for our immune system and our overall health.”
Learn more about Jenelle and The STI Project on Instagram.
Let’s heal together!
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Apr 16, 2023
Episode #80: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Discussing Sexually Transmitted Infections, with Jenelle Pierce, Part 1 of 2
The third principle of sexual health, according to Doug Braun-Harvey and Michael Vigorito, and part of the sex education we wish we had is effective, non fear mongering conversations around sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and pregnancy.
Jenelle Pierce, the Executive Director of the STI Project, joins us for the next two episodes to share how we can have greater education, awareness, and dialogue around sexually transmitted infections. In this episode, Jenelle shares her personal story with us. Not surprisingly, purity culture is at the room of this."
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The Pervasiveness of Purity Culture (6:00): Jenelle speaks to us about how even though her parents were not the hyper-religious type, the conservative area she grew up in Michigan influenced her ideas around and about sex. “I was really involved in a youth group at the time and I loved going to youth group and I actually was on board with the idea that I think I might try and save myself, quote unquote till marriage. That of course didn't end up happening and was a lot of the source of shame. I felt very much like, this is a result of my bad behavior and I'm deserving of this. And this is how I'm being punished by God and I will never be worthy and I'm less than.” When proper sex education is absent, it makes sense that someone would think an STI is a divine punishment.
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Medical Misinformation or Lack of Information (20:00): Janelle talks about the lack of information she got after her diagnosis. “The severity, duration, all of those things did dissipate over time, but mine was a very kind of traditional outbreak and experience. My doctor told me that it was the “worst case that I've ever seen”. There was no, this is super common. The first outbreak, is oftentimes really severe, but after your body builds up antibodies, it will start to suppress, you know, no education, no literature. So then I'm thinking, well, if someone who's a medical practitioner who in theory sees this somewhat frequently, I didn't even understand how common it was at the time, and of course, he was certainly not going to substantiate that for me.”
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Shaming and Sharing (37:00): Jenelle and Jeremiah reflect on the implications of the phrase “Thank you for sharing your story,” and the fine line between acknowledging vulnerability and assuming culpability and shame.
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Dialogue (45:00): “It’s not just like I have this STI I status I need to disclose. It's that I wanna talk about these things around sexual health and safer sex because I had an experience that opened my mind. That looks like, “I'm curious about what you need. I'm curious about what you'd like to do around safer sex or sexual health. I'm curious when you were last tested, cause here's when I was tested here was, here were the results of my tests.” And all of those things are important because the person who is initiating the conversation their safety, comfort, and body is just as important as the person who is receiving that information and then reciprocating the dialogue in return. So that's, the onus gets put on the person who has the thing, you know, like the thing that they need to share. It's all parties that are responsible for this.”
To finish off this episode, Jenelle talks about what a conversation about sexual health and safety should look like. The dialogue is a two-way stream, and not just on the person initiating it. Check out next week’s episode to learn more about specific ways that this dialogue can look.
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Apr 10, 2023
Episode #79: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Non-Exploitation, with Amber Wood
We’re continuing our series on The Sex Ed We Wish We Had, rooted in the six sexual health principles of Doug Braun-Harvey. The second principle is non-exploitation (5:00), “when a person leverages their power and control to receive sexual gratification. The outcome is sex that is ruthless and insensitive to the feelings of a partner and family members. The outcome encompasses unwanted, harsh, or cruel nomination or taking advantage of a person who is mentally incapable to use their cognitive and emotional capacity. To give or not give consent.”
We commonly talk about exploitation from the perspective of individuals leveraging their individual power and control to receive sexual gratification. On this, and in future episodes, we acknowledge that individuals who exploit are commonly enacting cultural and societal directives to exploit. As such, we are holding both systems and individuals accountable.
We’re excited to have our colleague and friend Amber Wood as our guest. She talks with us about the exploitation of queer people in the church, including:
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Your Goodness is God (13:00): “I was raised that anything good in you is God. That's not you. Your humanity essentially is bad. And so if I take away my belief in God or my belief in Jesus, if I take that away, I'm just now trying to figure out who I am because all my identity that was good. Well, that had to be God. Anything that's bad, well that's just your sinful nature, right? So what exists when you take that away?” Amber shares how the Southern Baptist Church taught that all your goodness is God and all your badness is you.
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Erasure in the Church (15:00): Amber reflects on how homosexuality was not even condemned, it was never mentioned. “I don't remember them ever really talking about queerness. It was so black and white in scripture to the point of just like, I wouldn't commit adultery or I wouldn't rob a bank. I'm not going to have a same-sex relationship. It wasn't something that was taught about in lessons.” Amber shares her story about not being able to identify what a crush on women even felt like because there was no vocabulary ever given for that. Erasure spurs feelings of confusion and non-belonging without ever giving a label so many people feel more lost. Jeremiah summarizes, “The assumption that if we don't talk about something, people will just like make the assumption, oh, well I don't need to explore that.” (21:00)
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Guilt Around Masturbation (31:00): Amber shares her guilt around masturbation: “I was tormented by that. I felt like that was my horrible thing and I felt so much guilt and shame for it. Now I can look back and be like, no one took the time to really talk to you and educate you and, and support you in that,” This is heartbreaking because these feelings could have been non-existent if proper sex education was taught and available. The conversation about comprehensive sex education is a theme throughout Sexvangelicals because so many painful feelings stem from inaccurate or non-existent sex education.
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Developmental Delays (48:00): Amber explains, “With some clients that I have who come out later in life, their developmental level of building relationships is more at a junior high level now. So the immaturity part of that is trying to navigate that. Plus their entire self-worth and how they view themselves is all messed up. Yeah. That puts them at bigger risk of being in unhealthy relationships, because they don't understand who they are, what they are outside of what they were raised to believe.” Julia and Jeremiah talk about the impact of those developmental delays on the stability of relationships.
Amber closes with a message of hope: “I'm seeing more acceptance and less of a stigma. The LGBTQ community is just normal. And so it gives me hope that they will then raise their children to where they're accepting and they don't have to go through this. That gives me hope that, that maybe this is changing.”
Let’s heal together!
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Apr 3, 2023
Episode 78: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Consent, Part 2 of 2, with Jeremiah and Julia
We're continuing our conversation about consent on Sexvangelicals. Julia made a comment on this week’s episode that consent is simultaneously easy and extremely difficult to navigate.
I mean, we want consent to be an easy, straightforward thing. And when there are clear intentions to use sexuality as a way to physically and emotionally hurt and violate other people, the line between consent and non-consent becomes pretty straightforward.
However, if we think about consent not as attorneys do, as a yes/no binary, consent was or wasn’t given, but more as a relational process, a dialogue, a conversation, here’s where things become a bit more complicated.
We continue to talk about the nuances of consent in part 2 of our episode. We also provide Relationship 101 on how to use some of the principles of consent in your sexual relationships.
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Expressing desire (7:45): Julia says, “Because being able to express desire for sexuality is an important part of consent. Consent is the negotiation of pleasure.” Unfortunately, due to the shaming of sexuality in the church and performance of gender roles, neither she nor her ex were able to communicate their desire for sexuality, to the detriment of the relationship.
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The church’s myths about consent (12:00): We name three myths about consent. 1) The frequency of sex and the performance of sex is an indicator of relational health (12:45). 2) Men are expected to take over, and women want men to take over (17:30). 3) Men are sexual aggressors, and women are expected to be passive recipients (24:00).
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Relationship 101: How to practice affirmative consent, particularly if talking about sex is new (31:30): We name five specific tips. 1) Plan a time and place (31:50). 2) Pick a specific topic and use specific resources to help out, if necessary (32:30). 3) Set a limit to the amount of time you talk about this (34:25). 4) Celebrate the ends of conversations together (35:15). 5) Use a safe word if things get too overwhelming (37:05).
Julia concludes, “You might even be apprehensive about having a conversation about sex, so check in along the way.” Consent is ultimately about conversation and dialogue, not just during the actual sexual experience, but before and after genital play happens.
Let’s heal together!
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Mar 28, 2023
Episode 77: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Consent, Part 1 of 2, with Jeremiah and Julia
After our month-long foray into the disturbing literature from the Evangelical Christian publishing industry, we continue our new series The Sex Ed We Wish We Had.
Last month, we interviewed Doug Braun-Harvey, who describes the six sexual health principles that we and many other sexual health providers use as their rubric for co-creating healthy sexual encounters.
We begin with a two-part series on consent, which, to quote the Harvey Institute (8:40):
“Consent means voluntary cooperation communicates permission to try and reach sexual satisfaction and intimacy with willing partners. Consent transforms the act of sex from invasion, intrusion, or violation into an act of transformation. Establishing consent throughout each step of a sexual interaction provides each sexual partner space for sexual safety and pleasure that's consistent with their sexual desire.”
We also address:
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Consent in Church and the Country (9:50): “Consent in our country has been about folks, primarily men, getting as far as they can sexually while escaping rape allegations or charges. Similar to the church, American culture has given women the responsibility of gatekeeping men's sexuality. While keeping themselves safe from violence,” Jeremiah says. Consent is a tool used by men to absolve themselves from any hurt or crime they may have committed. It is not seen as something that should be intrinsically tied to sex. Julia then makes the connection that, “so often the Christian Church establishes themselves as countercultural. However, in terms of sexuality, the status of so many sexual health principles are quite similar. Within and outside of church walls, we have long taught women best practices for avoiding assault.” The conversation around consent usually centers around the metaphor of wearing a bulletproof vest instead of just banning guns.
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The Process of Affirmative Consent (11:55): “Learn that consent is the proactive negotiation of pleasure. To catch onto this concept, a religious university in Ohio was the first to develop a model for affirmative consent.” Julia notes as we give props to a Christian institution on this podcast for probably the first time. They then list the seven principles of affirmative consent:
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Explicitness. A yes must be expressed verbally.
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Voluntariness. The yes must be given voluntarily without pressure or coercion.
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Ability to consent. Intoxicated people, people under a certain age are unable to give consent.
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A shift of responsibility. They mean the person who initiates the sexual act has the responsibility to obtain the consent of all participants in non-coercive ways.
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Freedom from presumption. Consent must be obtained repeatedly for each new sexual act.
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Informedness. All participants must know what consent is being given for, in particular, when we think about the role of the receiver, what would it be like to have a sexual experience where the initiator says, hey, this is what I want to kind of work through.
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Revocability. A previously given consent can be withdrawn at any time.
These seven principles are without nuance, which we will dive into next, but still are a strong framework and guide to affirmative consent. As well as, great starting points and rules for someone to follow.
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The Simplifying of Consent (15:40): “Consent is actually very complicated. Even in more progressive circles, I've noticed this impulse to try and make consent as simple as possible. We actually have so many different contextual factors to take into account with each sexual scenario. With each of the seven principles, we can't actually package consent into a simple formula.” Julia adds to the conversation about affirmative consent, saying that even though this is a great framework, consent cannot be distilled into a simple idea. It is okay that consent is nuanced and complicated, and that is what they are exploring today.
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Heteronormativity (21:00): “Heteronormativity relies on narratives about how men and women enact sexuality differently inside the church. As we talked about in reading the Butler series and in the seven deadly sexual sins according to the church, but also outside of the church, we have the false narrative that men are inherently more sexual and that women have the duty to perform sexuality according to the socialized norms of what men crave sexual,” Jeremiah says. We explore the effects of heteronormativity throughout different episodes, but pertaining to the idea of consent, this heteronormative dynamic affects how consent is given and received. Many women in heterosexual relationships feel the need to say yes, and many men feel the need to initiate sex, even if they do not want to have sex.
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Sex Therapist Training and Consent (31): Jeremiah talks about his experience how, in one of his sex therapy training classes, he learned what consent actually looked like, and also how his heterosexual relationship fit into a larger context within society. “I was also so stuck in the emotional cycle of protecting my ex at the time, that I didn't have the wherewithal to realize the larger societal context for our relational interaction. But in this particular class, I internalized this.” He then talks about his experience unpacking much of the ingrained ideology about martial consent within the context of Christianity.
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Christianity and Consent (39): “The most heartbreaking part is that we were both trying hard to be the best partners that we could be, and the patterns that developed from our best efforts, which were modeled to us by Christian culture and Christian leaders were strong contributors to our divorce and set the stage for both of us to have years of non-consensual sexual experiences," Julia talks about how Christianity establishes that consent happens only once at the altar, and never again. This has negative repercussions as sex does not equal an enjoyable and safe experience for the people involved, but quite the opposite.
These are hard conversations to have, and next week, we’ll talk more about Julia’s experience navigating sexuality and consent in her marriage, before concluding with some Relationship 101.
Let’s heal together!
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Mar 21, 2023
Episode #76: Reading from the Book That the Gospel Coalition Apologized For Last Week
This week, we finish our third and final installment in our series reading Joshua Butler’s “Beautiful Union.” This book was initially endorsed, then quickly recalled, by the Gospel Coalition. In the final part of Chapter One, we get to read how Butler compares the vulva to a “bus depot, how Jesus was supposedly a 33-year-old virgin, and how Butler uses citations incorrectly.
In all seriousness, this messaging by Butler is not new, just repackaged for 2023. You could have realistically picked up a book like this in 2013, 2003, and 1993 and the same message would be clear: Don’t. Have. Sex. (Unless you are married, then it’s okay!) He stays true to Evangelical beliefs by making it clear that Queer people do not exist and reinforcing the binary that you can only be single or married. We hope you enjoy this episode where we read yet another book repacking the same purity culture values again!
Sex Workers and Therapists (9:00) “Therapy is the selling of a relationship. And a sexual experience regardless of the length of time, regardless of when the relationship stops or ends, is the selling of a relationship. Now the relationship involves the bodies. Rather than an emotional and psychological connection, but still the selling of a relationship,” Julia says in response to how Butler describes sex work. She draws the comparison between Therapists and Sex Workers in an interesting fashion, and says how the two are not so different!
Repacking Rape Culture (16:00) “He's creating this double bind in which he is simultaneously describing rape as a sin while setting up a context in which that is an unavoidable sin due to the nature of genitalia, excusing the violence and then wrapping it in the language in which that's an inversion of giving. Nothing about that is giving, and the language of inversion does not excuse that.” The central idea in rape culture, that men are just too horny to control themselves. Both misogyny and misandry are at play here because rape is violent and without excuse, yet he is giving an excuse.
Sex is a Relational Experience (22:00) “Nowhere in this book so far has Joshua Butler suggested anything about sex being a relational experience. A relational experience being two people communicating about what they want regarding a particular experience.” Jeremiah notes how Butler has not mentioned at any point how sex is a communicative experience involving actual people and feelings. Evangelicals have a unique ability to sterilize sex whilst also not using the words penis, vagina, vulva, clitoris and so on. They put sex on a pedestal without taking into consideration that actual people having that sex.
Relentless Pursuer (32:00) “He's making the assumption that God is the relentless pursuer. That whether you want God or not, he's gonna keep pursuing you, even violating boundary norms. Which if that's your theology, that's fine, but if you want to make a parallel process between that and the way that men should pursue women, again, one more representation of rape culture.” Jesus as the relentless pursuer has the same ring to it as the guy who won’t stop harassing the girl who doesn’t want to go on a date with him.
Queer Erasure (35:00) “How did he erase the queer community so much? That this isn't even mentioned as a sin, which is of course so disturbing.” Julia responds. This idea of don’t ask, don’t tell is reinforced here because Butler doesn’t even mention being gay as a sin, he just ignores the existence of queerness!
Single Like Jesus (51:00) “They use singleness as a euphemism for celibacy. And this is another classic move. We are absolutely effing obsessed with sex. And then the afterthought is, don't worry if you aren't having sexual experiences, you are equal in your humanity. This is an idea that happens outside of Christian circles as well,” Julia talks about the Christian idea that you can only be single and celibate or married and have sex. Christians leave no room for those of us who are single AND having sex or those of us who are in a non-marital relationship AND having sex.
Concluding thoughts (1:05) “I’m angry. I'm angry that men and women continue to be encouraged to hold onto these insanely rigid positions as Butler has described” Jeremiah finishes off this episode with a sentiment I think we can all hold on to, anger. It is ridiculous that this messaging is still prevalent in 2023, but it is. There is always hope, as Julia points out because the Gospel Coalition got well-deserved backlash on this. Even though this book is still set to be published, we hope that the Gospel Coalition getting flack for this is not a one-time occurrence.
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Mar 14, 2023
Episode #75: Reading from the Book that the Gospel Coalition Apologized For Last Week, part 2
Last week, we read the introduction from the book Beautiful Union by Joshua Butler.
You know, the book that the Gospel Coalition posted an excerpt from two weeks ago, causing the Internet to lash out against TGC and Butler.
And this week, we’re reading the first half of the first chapter, and have our own variety of responses and reactions.
We are not theologians; check out Jackson Wu’s recent article on Patheos The Fundamental Flaws in Josh Butler’s Argument for a dissection of the problematic perspective of Butler’s (and many Evangelical leader’s) theology.
We are sex therapists. And we’re reading chapter one from the lens of how Butler’s theology informs the rigid expectations around sexuality that continue to fuel Evangelical and Pentecostal sermons and teachings.
Naming these rigid expectations and understanding how Evangelical theologians come to these conclusions help us deconstruct unhelpful expectations for humanity and recreate new possibilities for people…
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Mar 7, 2023
Episode 74: Reading from the Book that the Gospel Coalition Apologized For Last Week, Part 1
This week there has been controversy surrounding Joshua Butler's new book, Beautiful Union: How God's Vision for Sex Points us to the Good, Unlocks the Truth, and Sort of Explains Everything.
And yes, that is the real title.
The Gospel Coalition, a media source for conservative evangelicals, published an excerpt from Joshua Butler's new book, which was so horrendous, even THEY had to take it down.
We were incredibly curious to see what piece of writing could be so bad, even the evangelicals had to apologize for it.
Enjoy as we navigate the introduction and first chapter to Joshua Butler’s Beautiful Union.
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Mar 1, 2023
Episode #73: The Sex Education That We Wish We Had, with Doug Braun-Harvey, part 2
Join us for part two of our episode with Doug Braun-Harvey. Doug is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapy supervisor and certified sex therapist in San Diego. He has taught and consulted on sexuality and sexual health with Widener University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Minnesota. Doug is also the co-founder of the Harvey Institute, an international education, training, consulting, and supervision service for improving healthcare.
Good Christian (3). “I grew up in a very Christian world. And so for me to say I wasn't a Christian, took me 35 years. To be honest and open and say, no, I'm not a Christian. I do not identify as a Christian, and that was a tremendously liberating for my sexual health.” Doug shares the liberating experience of just saying I am not a Christian. This phrase can be a challenging hurdle for many people, because of the Christian central country we live in.
Deconstructing Narratives (18). “One of the thing…
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Feb 20, 2023
Episode #72: The Sex Education That We Wish We Had, with Doug Braun-Harvey, part 1
This week we start our new series The Sex Education We Wish We Had and our first guest Doug Brown Harvey, the co-founder of the Harvey Institute, an international education training, consulting, and supervision service for improving healthcare through the integration of sexual health.
Since 1993, he has been developing and implementing a sexual health-based treatment approach for men out of control, sexual behavior. His book, treating Out of Control, Sexual Behavior, Rethinking Sex Addiction, written with co-author Michael Vito was published in 2015. If you Google his name, you'll get access to his other books. Doug is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, supervisor and certified sex therapist in San Diego.
He has taught and consulted on sexuality and sexual health with Biden University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Minnesota.
The term “Sex Addiction” (14:50). “The idea was sex addiction was supposed to become a diagn…
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Feb 13, 2023
Episode 71: Deadly Sexual Sin (According to the Church) #7: Don’t Ask Questions, with Jeremiah and Julia
We conclude our series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church) with reflections on the final sin: Don’t ask questions.
Not knowing is an extremely difficult skill to master, especially for those of us who grew up in contexts where knowing and believing will conflated. However, not asking questions impacted our own sexual development, and ultimately the end of our marriages.
Jeremiah and Julia talk about the conflation of faith with knowing about God, the ways that questions invite anxiety into a relationship, especially a theological one, and ways that questions bring excitement and growth into a system.
Let's heal together!
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Feb 7, 2023
Episode #70: Deadly Sexual Sin #6 (According to the Church): Don’t Say No, with Dr. Laura Anderson, part 2
In episode #69, we talk with Dr. Laura Anderson, co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute, about the ways that Evangelical structures set up the sixth deadly sexual sin, “Don’t say no”, especially to your “God given gender roles”.
In part 2 of our interview, Laura talks with us about the devastating implications of “Don't say no”, including:
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The involvement of guilt and shame (10:45)
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The ways that our bodies respond to high control religion (17:20)
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The distinction between acute and complex trauma (20:45)
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The first steps of healing (34:15)
* Healing in relationships (40:30)
And we close the episode with two tips for Relationship 101 (53:45):
* Pause. Julia explains, “Create some time between an ask and a response, particularly from a partner.”
* Cultivate intimacy outside of sexuality.
Let's heal together!
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Jan 30, 2023
Episode 69: Deadly Sexual Sin #6 (According to the Church): Don't Say No, with Laura Anderson
“In purity culture, both men and women are hypersexualized and then also supposed to be asexual at the same time,” explains Dr. Laura Anderson, cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute.
In short, the expectation is that men are expected to say yes to all things sexual, and women are expected to say and embody the word, no. The sixth deadly sexual sin captures the practice of rigid gender roles.
Men are expected to be dominant. Women are expected to be submissive.
Don’t say no to those gender roles.
We talk about the pressures on men and women to say yes to these particular roles, the ensuing paralysis that creates, from simple decisions to longer-term decisions, like dating relationships, and the competitiveness between women and men that this culture creates.
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Jan 22, 2023
Episode 68: Deadly Sexual Sin #5 (According to the Church): Don't Watch Porn, with Cayte Castrillon
Last week, we talked with Cayte Castrillon about her research on the pornography consumption of teenage girls impacts the ways they view their bodies, relationships, and perceptions of men.
We continue our conversation with Cayte this week about the constructs of ethical porn (8:50), how mainstream porn (read: Pornhub) invites unhealth comparison (18:20), how moral reactions prevent us from having healthy conversations about pornography (25:00), and how we can talk with our partners (34:50) and children (48:45) about pornography.
Jeremiah summarizes Cayte’s position in the introduction (4:10):
“We're not at fault for our social conditioning, but we are responsible for it. We have to reflect on how we have developed as sexual beings, how that impacts us and our relationships, and then ask ourselves, am I content with who I am as a sexual person?"
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Jan 16, 2023
Episode 67: Deadly Sexual Sin #5 (According to the Church): Don't Watch Porn, with Cayte Castrillon, part 1
Welcome back to the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church). We continue with Deadly Sexual Sin #5, especially geared toward men: Don’t Watch Porn. After all, we know that women don’t watch porn.
Or do they?
We invite Cayte Castrillon, sex therapist and PhD student, to share her research about how women consume porn, what porn teaches women about their own bodies and sexuality, and the observations that women make about the ways that male partners are influenced by porn.
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Jan 9, 2023
Episode 66: Three Conversations to Have Before Setting Your New Years Resolutions
What are your goals for the New Year?
What word encapsulates what you want to accomplish in 2023?
Answering those questions, be they at the start of the year, midway through a project, or at the conclusion of an event, requires an effective self-reflection process. Ideally, said process happens both individually and in relationship, be that with a partner, a friend or family member, or larger community.
Julia and Jeremiah describe three practices that can provide a structure for having these conversations.
1) Month and Review.
2) Intentional Grief Practices
3) A Process-Centered Evaluation
We use these processes to talk about our worst and best moments of 2023, knowing, as John Gottman reminds us, that for every negative interaction, it’s important to name five positive interactions. We also reveal our own individual and relational goals for 2023!
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Jan 4, 2023
Trailer: Happy 2023 from Jeremiah and Julia!
Happy 2023 from Sexvangelicals! We're excited to preview our January episodes, including the final three episodes of our Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church) and a special episode about our visit to the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna. Thank you for being part of our journey! Let's heal together!
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Dec 27, 2022
Episode 65: Christmas: Going to Church When You Don’t Go to Church Anymore
Christmas is a strange season for folks who are in the process of exploring and healing from the ways that the church has negatively impacted them. Many of our listeners are deconstructing Christianity in some way; however, deconstruction can quickly move into emotionally cutting off, which don't give you the permission to engage with the complexities and beauty of the family members and stories and institutions. For us, Christmas is the best of the modern Christian tradition. We also acknowledge that Christmas also intersects hope with grief, especially for those of us who have moved out of overtly religious spaces; we identify strategies for tending to the grief and finding traditions that work best for you and your family.
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Dec 20, 2022
Episode 64: Get a Room! And Three Other Ways to Navigate Sex During the Holiday Season
Jeremiah and Julia take a break from the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins According to the Church and discuss two ways that sexuality can be hard during the holidays: 1) Privacy concerns; and 2) The general pressures of the holiday. They then discuss a myriad of relationship tips, including getting a separate space for you and your partner when visiting family and friends, talking with your partner about the pressures connected to the holidays, and creating intentional transition spaces in and out of sexuality.
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Dec 20, 2022
Bonus Episode: Happy Holidays from Jeremiah and Julia!
Happy Holidays, from Jeremiah and Julia! Thank you for all of the support that you've given us in 2022! We're excited to share two holiday episodes with you to wrap up December, and launch 2023 with new pictures, new episodes, and a lot of fun!
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Dec 14, 2022
Episode 63: Deadly Sexual Sin #4 (According to the Church): Don't Have an Affair, part 2
We continue our series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church) with part two on the sin: Don't Have an Affair. We're sharing this story because we need to talk about the commitments that partners make to each other around sexuality, and we need to talk about the ways that people break those commitments, and why they break those commitments, because affairs don't happen in isolation. We name five characteristics of infidelity. 1) Infidelity as one of a bunch of bad choices (or no good choices). 2) Infidelity as an autonomous choice in a sexual history with minimal autonomy. 3) Infidelity as protest. 4) Infidelity as regret. 5) Infidelity as isolation.
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Dec 4, 2022
Episode 62: Deadly Sexual Sin #4 (According to the Church): Don't Have an Affair, part 1
We continue our series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church) with Sin #4: Don't have an affair.
As the church describes, the marriage is the most foundational relationship in the Evangelical community. It’s a right of passage into adulthood and symbolizes the union between God/Jesus and the church, as the church describes.
And, according to the Evangelical Church, any relationship with a person of the opposite gender that is not your spouse is a potential threat to the sanctity of marriage. The Church will use this logic to condemn people who have affairs.
Jesus, however, has a very different way of responding to adultery, as we read in John Chapter 8. Learn more about how we might take an approach like Jesus when we engage with the presence of infidelity in our own lives and communities.
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Nov 29, 2022
Episode 61: Deadly Sexual Sin #3 (According to the Church): Don't Have Wants, with Jake and Sarah Lollar
The third of the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins is the psychological engine for the church’s position on sexuality:
Don’t lust.
Which, in the Evangelical Church, quickly reduces to "Don't have wants or desires."
Our friends Jake and Sarah talk with us about how growing up in the Evangelical Church (the same collegiate church as Jeremiah, in fact) impacted their relationship with wants as individuals and as a partnership. We explore the concept of lust throughout Christian history, and then describe a three step process that can help give yourself permission to name your own wants and desires.
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Nov 21, 2022
Episode 60: Deadly Sexual Sin #2 (According to the Church): Don't Be Gay
Jeremiah and Julia continue their series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins, According to the Church, with the deadliest of the “sins”, as we were reminded over the weekend in Colorado Springs: Don’t be gay.
They discuss the different ways that the combination of “Don’t be gay” and “Don’t have sex before you get married” negatively impacted their development.
They then describe two binaries that the church (and other institutions) place around queerness: 1) Either you're gay or you're straight; 2) Either you're "born this way" or queerness was socialized into you.
Julia and Jeremiah close the episode by discussing three strategies to navigate the homophobia of the church and broadening practices of sexuality.
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Nov 21, 2022
Episode 59: Rage Against Homophobia: A Response to the Murders at the Club Q in Colorado Springs
The murders at Club Q on November 20 in Colorado Springs are horrific, as are all acts of violence against the queer community. Julia and Jeremiah bypass the impulse to dissect how church rhetoric impacted the murders, especially given that they happened in the mecca of the Evangelical Church. They name their anger and rage at this and a myriad of other crimes committed against queer bodies.
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Oct 31, 2022
Episode 57: Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church): A Preview
Sexvangelicals is a podcast about the sex education that the church didn't want you to have. What's the sex education that the church did want you to have? So glad that you asked! Julia and Jeremiah talk about the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (according to the Church). And you'll notice that they all have one word in common. Don't. In this episode, we talk about the implications and limitations for how the word "don't" can negatively impact sex education, as well as how you can name some "do's" to more effectively communicate what you need. Welcome back to Sunday School! Get some animal crackers, a cup of apple juice, and enjoy the episode!
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Oct 17, 2022
Episode 55: How the Slippery Slope, as Described in Lauren Winner's Real Sex, Creates Sexual Anxiety, with Jeremiah and Julia
The slippery slope.
These three words provide the principle for exploring sexuality under the purview of Purity Culture.
The slippery slope asks unmarried daters the question, “How far is too far?”
How much physical contact and pleasure can I have before God gets pissed at me, and I have to apologize for being an abysmal human being?
Is it making out? Necking? (Still not entirely sure what that means.) Is it hands on the butts, breasts, and/or genitals? Mouths on butts/breasts/genitals?
While Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex is theoretically about chastity, a word that Jeremiah describes as a “fancy, hyper-intellectual term for purity”, she spends much of the book wrestling with the above questions. Jeremiah says, “You want to know what the rules are so I can go as far against the slippery slope, have a pleasurable experience, but also be in good standings in the eyes of an angry and bitter God.”
In our newest episode of Bedtime Stories, Jeremiah and Julia talk about t…
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Oct 9, 2022
Episode 54: How to Practice Body Neutrality, with Abby Kubicek
Many of our guests and listeners (and ourselves) grew up in religious contexts that packaged the abstinence-only sex education curricula developed during the Reagan era and continued in the 40+ years since then through the concept of “purity”.
Spiritual success happens to those (especially the female segment) who avoid having sexual relationships prior to marriage, either with their partners or with themselves (with or without the assistance of sexually explicit material) and who avoid same-sex relationships.
Much of the work on our podcast is dedicated to debunking the painful and toxic implications of purity culture.
Because, as Julia summarizes in this episode, “There’s no such thing as the good girl. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you’re never good enough.”
We talk with Abby Kubicek, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed Addictions Counselor, and owner of Durango Relationship Counseling in Durango CO. There she focuses on helping those in all types o…
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Oct 2, 2022
Episode 53: How to Reenvision Masculinity, with Mark Vaughan
Many of our guests are either women or queer folks, as the messaging from purity culture most commonly places restrictions and shame onto their bodies and relationships.
This is not to say that straight White men are immune from the negative ramifications of purity culture. In fact, the messages from John Eldredge, Mark Driscoll, Brian Houston, and myriad of disciples of these aforementioned men center around a rigid, dominant, aggressive, take-no-prisoners form of masculinity that result in limited communication, high expectations of privilege, and almost zero emotional accessibility (other than anger).
Stories of men who have attended and survived conservative religious groups are imperative to our mission of exploring the values and impact of Evangelical culture. “From the beginning, boys and girls are split up, saying that if you’re a cis het boy/girl, you’re not supposed to talk to the opposite sex about sexuality. This reinforces gender binaries and secrecy,” our guest…
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Sep 26, 2022
Episode 52: How to Set More Intentional Transitions in Your Relationships, with Jeremiah and Julia
Conservative Christianity centers its relationship education around two main themes:
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A mishmash of ethics from the Sermon on the Mount, the 10 Commandments, and the writings of Paul.
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The “shoulds” of rigid gender norms
We’ve mentioned before that the church taught us a lot of great values: honesty, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness. However, the church does a poor job at communicating how to navigate these values in the midst of an intimate, (hopefully) egalitarian relationship between two different people.
We consider Sexvangelicals to be an adult education center of sorts, providing relationship and sexuality skills to folks who did not grow up in contexts where open dialogue, conflict, and sexual health were encouraged.
In this mini-episode, Relationship 101, we reflect on transitions and intentionality. (This is a big theme in Sexvangelicals Season 3.)
We discuss two main topics
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Taking time during transitions (7:00): “We are both driven, ambitious peop…
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Sep 19, 2022
Episode 51: How to Base Your Sexual Journey on Values Instead of Behaviors, with Andrea Eriks
There are numerous communities on Facebook, Reddit, and the podcast world that support people who are navigating through the pain and restrictions that religious communities often create. “Deconstruction” becomes an organizing word to summarize the process for folks who are exploring and moving through these challenging experiences.
But what does deconstruction actually mean? And what are the characteristics and challenges of deconstruction?
Andrea Eriks helps us explore these questions (and a lot more). Andrea is a licensed mental health counselor and co-owner of the group therapy practice The Cottage at 933 located in South Bend, Indiana. Andrea earned her master’s degree from Indiana University South Bend in 2016 and has been working in private practice since. Andrea has honed her skills in trauma, attachment, systemic therapy, and most recently sexology. Currently Andrea is attending Modern Sex Therapy Institute where she is working toward her PhD in Clinical Sexology as we…
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Sep 12, 2022
Episode 50: How to Prepare Yourself to Leave a Fundamentalist Community, with Tia Levings
“I am here for a reason, and it’s not to be someone’s tool or vessel. It wasn’t so that five people could come into being. There’s something unique about me. I gave three decades of my life to others’ agendas for me—how was I useful to them? I don’t find that useful anymore. I want to fulfill the reason why I’m here. It depends on me being able to do it, and not stay in the place where I only think about what happened to me. That’s giving them my future. I will not do that anymore. I have a lot of say in what my future will look like.” — Tia Levings
Tia Levings is a writer and content creator whose work explores the female narrative in patriarchal spaces. A survivor of church-sanctioned domestic violence, Tia shares the realities of Christian Fundamentalism, and sheds light on the strategic influence high control religion has on our society and headlines today. Her memoir releases in 2024 with St. Martin’s Press and you can find her videos on Instagram an…
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Sep 4, 2022
Episode 49: How to Develop a Strategy to Resolve Conflict, with Jeremiah and Julia
We are on vacation this week! We are currently outside of Frankfurt, and later this afternoon, will drive with some relatives to the Saxon Switzerland National Park (a national park that is on the German/Czech border, and not particularly close to Switzerland).
So this week, we wanted to do an episode that speaks to all of us. We usually record on Wednesdays, and our Wednesday began with some conflict. While we resolved some of our conflict before moving into a work day, we wanted to use this episode to reevaluate our conflict, talk through some of the differences between us that contributed to the conflict, and explore how we can navigate these more effectively next time.
So rather than writing official show notes, we wanted to walk you through our process for moving toward conflict resolution.
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Agree to a specific time to have the conversation, and length of conversation. In theory, we would have our discussion earlier than 2 AM, but we are both working American jobs on the Ce…
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Aug 29, 2022
Episode 48: How the Church of Christ Informs Expectations of Masculinity, with Jeremiah
One of the lesser known Evangelical denominations is the Church of Christ. As this article explains, Churches of Christ are autonomous communities; there’s no governing or organizing body, though each CoC has defined staff and ministry leadership. It’s a small, fairly minimalistic denomination, as shown by its acappella worship tradition and stringent adherence to Biblical text. It’s clear that all of the images of church buildings in the afore-mentioned article are stock photos, because no Church of Christ is that architecturally fancy.
The Church of Christ is the context for Jeremiah’s spiritual and communal upbringing; check out his elevator pitch for the Church of Christ at the 12:00 mark.
Its messages around theology, morality and successful living, and gender performance provided Jeremiah with an understanding for how to engage with others and set expectations for himself.
Julia interviews Jeremiah about themes from his religious upbringing, including:
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Moral sup…
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Aug 22, 2022
Episode 47: How Purity Culture Creates Perfectionism for Women, and How to Overcome It, with Julia
A lot has changed in the last two years since we recorded our third episode, when Julia described the intersection between purity culture, Christian school, and the relationship with her body.
For instance, we’re recording episodes from The Netherlands. We hired Nicole to be our podcast producer (a huge thanks to Nicole for writing these show notes). We’ve had a ton of hikes and trauma days and travel experiences and conversations.
While the events Julia and Jeremiah are reflecting on to start season 3 are the same, we’re engaging our stories with fresh perspectives, new information, and expanded contexts. We hope to reintroduce ourselves to you, our listeners, as well as to ourselves, as we reflect on our stories in new ways.
In this episode, Julia talks with Jeremiah about the features of her small, insular community of origin in New England, and the ways that they impact her relationship with herself, including:
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Insider versus outsider (10:00): “The outside world w…
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Aug 15, 2022
Episode 46: How I'm Healing from the Wounds Created by the Left Behind Series, with Natasha DeHaan
Edmund Burke, 18th-century English philosopher, writes in Reflections on the Revolution in France: “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”
In the Evangelical Christian narrative, there are two very clear antagonists:
1) Satan.
2) Humans
And a very clear, frightening bad guy’s lair: Hell.
The simplistic story is that we are born bad, but can avoid the bad guy’s lair if we invite Jesus (the protagonist) “into our hearts”, through baptism, repentance, evangelism, etc., and do good things like Jesus did.
While Evangelical writers would never suggest that Satan is our helper, the depiction of hell (sulfuric lakes, constantly hot, intermittent torture scenes) is a motivator for moral behavior. If you don’t behave in the ways that the church wants, you have an eternity of demons waiting for you.
No artistic trope has done more to depict this doomsday scenario than the Left Behind series. Sadly, there is anoth…
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Aug 7, 2022
Episode 45: How I Got Really Good at Assimilating as an Interracial Adoptee, and What I Lost in the Process, with Jeremiah
Two years ago, Julia and Jeremiah started Sexvangelicals as many podcasters do: By introducing themselves and their stories.
As we begin our third season of Sexvangelicals, recording in a brand new country, we want to reintroduce our stories. After all, as we explain, “The human healing process involves telling and retelling our stories. Parts of our perspective and insight change, though the facts and details may be static. The ways we create meaning and alignment with our values is the beautiful part of the story making and storytelling process.”
We begin by revisiting Jeremiah’s story, which intersects themes of adoption and navigating race and racism as a Brown person in White spaces, including:
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The evolution of the relationship with Jeremiah’s birthmother (26:00): Jeremiah describes the process that his parents used to ensure that he felt as accepted as possible—the Jeremiah Story, which was commonly told before bed. In this story were two heroes: the adoption ag…
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Jul 24, 2022
Episode 44: How to Have Conversations When Christians Claim One Value but Enact a Completely Different One, with Jessie Lane
Healing from the abuses of religious communities—both specific churches and the impact from the restrictive social policies that arise from intersection between Evangelical leaders and the Republican Party—can be a long-term process.
One of our goals with Sexvangelicals is to introduce you to professionals who can facilitate that healing process.
Our first guest of season 3, Jessie Lane, is one of those people.
Jessie talks with us about a variety of ways that religion impacts emotional and relational processes, including:
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The distinction between guilt/accountability and shame (3:00): Julia begins the episode with these definitions: “Shame is the inherent sense that you as a human being at your core are broken, bad, or deviant. Guilt, or accountability, is the sense that I did something that didn’t align with my values, which allows us to make relational and behavioral changes that align with our values and perpetuate positive cycles in our lives.”
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Anxiety as em…
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Jul 17, 2022
Episode 43: How Defining Our Terms is the Key to the Sexual Health Revolution, with Jeremiah and Julia
Today is our first full day in our new home, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
We have been on break for the last few weeks while Julia and I rotate between Dutch Airbnbs, and Nicole has been in Prague filming a documentary. But to celebrate our first official day in Utrecht, we want to also begin season 3.
Dobbs v. Jackson could not have been made possible without the relentless influence of the Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Catholic Churches to simplify (in the worst way possible) conversations about pre-natal and reproductive health; as a byproduct, the bodies and sexuality of women (and specifically poor women and/or women of color) will be even further scrutinized by a political party who has shown minimal interest in protecting the sanctity and success of family life outside of its “pro-life agenda”.
As such, the time for a podcast such as ours could not be more fitting, and in the inaugural episode of season 3, we reclaim our purpose and mission, and reintroduce ourselves in the…
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Jun 27, 2022
Episode 42: How Dobbs v. Jackson Parallels
the Ways that Evangelical Churches Read the Bible,
with Jeremiah and Julia
The overturning of Roe v. Wade screws all of us over. This is the nicest way that I, Nicole, can put it, but the rage, grief, anger, and despair cannot be summarized in a sentence.
Over the past year, I have worked on my thesis film about the effects of communism on Romania. One of the worst laws passed was Decree 770, which banned all abortions and contraceptives. Women were gynecologically inspected at work once a month and if found to be pregnant, were closely monitored by the Romanian KBG (the Securitate). If they were found to have had an abortion, they were thrown in prison, along with the doctors or people who performed the abortion. This Decree left Romania with one of the worst orphan crises’ the world has ever seen. Children were left to die in orphanages.
There is truly no way to sugarcoat this. I bring this up because my mother and grandmother lived through that, and I’m seeing it happen again in front of my eyes. People should not have to die because of Christian rel…
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Jun 20, 2022
Episode 41: How to Manage Expectations in Times of Transitions, with Jeremiah and Julia
Renowned family therapy Jay Haley said that communication problems commonly occur when people are unable to make transitions from one developmental stage to another.
There are transitions that naturally happen, such as when a couple makes an overt decision to enter into a monogamous relationship (or for that matter, an overt decision to be consensually nonmonogamous), or a child enters puberty or leaves home following graduation.
And then there are transitions that are chosen, such as our decision to move to the Netherlands, which Julia summarizes, “Being in a country that’s chosen to adopt policies that promote sexual and public health reminds me that we have the resources to build a more humane society.”
The fact that we’ve chosen to make this transition hasn’t made the adjustment process any easier. In some ways, the psychological and relational challenges with this transition are more acute. Living in a foreign country requires a more vigilant state and ensuing emotion…
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Jun 13, 2022
Episode 40: How to Say Goodbyes
with Intentionality,
with Jeremiah and Julia
Today is our eighth day in the Netherlands. It’s been an absolute whirlwind, to say the least, between not knowing how to speak Dutch to dodging whizzing cyclists on the road. This is the third day in a row that we’ve struggled to begin engaging the day before 10 AM. For two productivity-oriented folks, this has caused waffling degrees of panic and frustration.
This isn’t how we wanted our first few days to be.
We’re tired, and it would be easy to chalk that up to immersion in a new culture while navigating immigration.
But we would be doing a disservice to ourselves and our relationship if we were to neglect or underestimate how much the goodbye process is impacting the exhaustion that we’re currently experiencing.
In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about the process of saying goodbye to the US, and our lives and relationships in Boston specifically. Whether or not you’re moving to another country, goodbyes, little and big, are persistent facets of all of our liv…
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May 28, 2022
Episode 39: How to Practice Cultural Sensitivity When Talking About Sex, with Scotney Young
I grew up in clashing cultures. My mom and step-dad both being Romanian while raising me in America. When it was time for the “sex talk” at 13 I was shocked by my mom's openness, as Romanian culture is not one defined by sex positivity as it is deeply entrenched in Orthodox Christian values. Reflecting on that talk we had as an adult, I find it incredible that she was able to unpack her own cultural restrictions and have an open and honest conversation with me about contraception, consent, gynecology appointments, and STDs. This is not to say America has a sex-positive culture- it doesn’t, but it is to say that being able to communicate with your child about sexuality and sexual health has its benefits. That conversation prepared me to not be riddled with shame when I went on the pill, and not to be embarrassed when buying condoms, it all seemed very normal and proactive to me.
This week Jeremiah and Julia explore the intersection of religion and sexuality in different cultural…
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May 15, 2022
Episode 38: How the Term "Pro-Life" Dodges What the Conservative Position on Abortion is Really About, with Jeremiah and Julia
Did any of our listeners go to one of the numerous protests against the feared revoking of Roe v. Wade yesterday (May 14)? What was your experience?
In the NPR report on reproductive rights rallies, Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton said it most succinctly: “Here in Illinois, [or insert state here], we trust women.”
Put simply, as we discussed in an earlier blog post, revoking Roe v Wade is bad policy. It doesn’t actually make abortion go away, but introduces a myriad of negative implications for the physiological, psychological, and sociological health of women.
In fact, as western European countries show, increasing access to abortion (and contraception) reduces the numbers of abortion altogether.
Julia and Jeremiah explore how the dichotomy between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” completely misses the larger point: How do we support adult women, and the folks they choose to include in their lives, make choices to build healthy families, families that involve and…
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May 8, 2022
Episode 37: Five Things I Learned About
the Role of Bodies by Reading Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot with My Colleagues
In the introduction of Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot, author Mo Isom establishes the position that the church has been relatively silent about sexuality.
Julia was out of town for this episode of Bedtime Stories, but Jeremiah’s colleagues Stephanie and Tina team up with him to refute this assertion.
Warning: Jeremiah, Stephanie, and Tina only make it through the first three pages of Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot; however, these first three pages say a lot about how Evangelical theology, philosophy, and social structures center their discourse around bodies. Jeremiah summarizes:
“Christianity of today seems to have a clear moral and political agenda about what to do with bodies, who can do what with bodies, and if people who aren’t supposed to do certain things with bodies do certain things with bodies, here’s what those bodies can expect.”
In this episode, Jeremiah, Stephanie, and Tina explore:
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The appeal of the “us” v…
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May 1, 2022
Episode 36: How I Navigated Infertility and Pregnancy Loss While Practicing Sex Therapy, with Paula Leech
Mother’s Day is Sunday.
Motherhood is an expected stage development for women, despite the growing number of women who voluntary (or involuntary) do not have children. Many of the stereotypical traits of femininity are aligned with the characteristics of mothers that we aspire to have and to be. (Interestingly, this is not as true for men, which we’ll explore next month.) Many women experience a lifelong craving to be moms, while others have an initial sense of ambivalence around having children that morphs into a desire and longing with age.
However, this Mother’s Day, we’re especially mindful of the growing number of women (and men) for whom fertility is a fleeting process. Those who have physiological challenges, such as low follicle and sperm count and motility. Those who have experienced miscarriages. (We separately fit into each of these categories.) Or, as our guest, Paula Leech, those whose fertility issues are simply unexplainable.
We talk about defining infertili…
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Apr 24, 2022
Episode 35: How I Survived and am Healing From Conversion Therapy, with Jordon Miller
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that conversion therapy, the development of formalized processes to attempt to change a person’s orientation or gender identity to the dominant discourse (cisgendered heterosexuality), has been officially banned in England and Wales.
Except this ruling doesn’t apply for trans people. The British government continues to leave trans folks open to the dangers of conversion therapy.
Let’s avoid the conversation about the transitioning process for children and adolescents, which involves legal implications around age of consent and when parents have rights to make decisions for their children, even when those decisions override the desires of their children. These conversations are extremely complicated and involve legal elements that are outside of our scopes of practice as therapists.
At Sexvangelicals, we align with a comprehensive community of voices and professionals that condemns conversion therapy directed at all queer communities, including…
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Apr 3, 2022
Episode 34: How to Tell if a Song is About Jesus or Your Boyfriend, with Jeremiah, Julia, and Nicole
Jesus or my Boyfriend? A question we all ask ourselves. Or, maybe not. In this episode, Jeremiah, Julia, and I (Nicole) play the guessing game, Jesus or my Boyfriend? Where Jeremiah and Julia tell me lyrics and I have to guess if it is a Christian worship song or a pop song. I grew up in a Romanian Eastern Orthodox Church, so I never had exposure to American worship music. Though some of the same themes still hold (i.e. the idea of being born a sinner, devoting yourself to God fully etc.), we didn’t have catchy ballads.
We explored what Christian messaging was in the worship songs, how one word is the only difference between a song about sex and a song about God, and how horny Christians might actually be. I mean, this music makes Jesus seem pretty horny. One of my biggest takeaways from this episode is how exposure to this worship music is actually really dangerous for children because messaging around servitude and devotion (especially for young girls) can be really damaging.
J…
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Mar 27, 2022
Episode 33: How Complementarianism Can Be a Harmful Process for Your Relationship, through the lens of The Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler, as read by Jeremiah and Julia
Complementarianism, the idea that men and women inherently have distinct, specific roles in marriages and families, is a theory that permeates contemporary Evangelical Christian and Catholic thought about relationships. Typically, complementarianism exists as a quid pro quo: women are expected to take care of the inside of the house, and men are expected to oversee the outside of the house, for example. Women care for, men provide.
There’s some inherent, biological truth to complementarianism. Men, lacking uteri, can never house and develop an embryo. If a couple chooses to breastfeed their child, the mother is going to be the breastfeeder (although even that notion is being challenged by new technological designs.)
Complementarianism can be a very effective way to operate a relationship; if two different things need to be tended to, it makes sense to have the person whose skill set best matches item A to address that specific task, and vice versa.
However, the Evangelical versio…
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Mar 20, 2022
Episode 32: Five Ways to Have a Successful Relationship During the Pandemic
March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization published the following statement:
There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives. Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospitals.
In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.
WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.
We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
Two years later, following the deaths of at least one million American citizens to COVID-19 (or COVID-19 sparked illness), our world has experience the disruption of family routines and systems, the gouging of energy from an education system (children, teachers, parents) who have seen the development of children stall, a reorganization of the work…
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Mar 13, 2022
Episode 31: How to Maintain a Sexual Connection While Recovering from a Surgery, with Jeremiah and Julia
Julia had oral surgery last week, which resulted in a series of minor inconveniences—stitches in one’s mouth are never comfortable, and make kissing extremely difficult—and major life reflections, such as the impact of sexual assault on dental work, something that Jennifer Wiessner reminded us about in a season 1 episode. Julia summarizes, “I have struggled to move out of a narrative that I am a less desire person if I can’t engage in particular sexual activities.”
She and Jeremiah reflect on some of the impact of surgeries (and aging, as all bodies age) on bodies and sexuality, discussing:
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The grief that comes with making sexual adaptations (8:00): Julia describes how, “experiencing sexual repression for a long time woefully set me up to be a sexual person. I had low sexual literacy and experience. This has contributed to my anxiety that I have to make up for the time that I lost, so if I’m not being sexual and having limited sexual experiences for a period of…
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Mar 6, 2022
Episode 30: How the Pressure to Be a Good Girl
Limits Great Sex: A Discussion of The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex by Sheila Gregoire,
as read by Jeremiah, Julia, and Devin
In 2012, a few months before getting married, I (Julia) received the book The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex (by Sheila Wray Gregoire) at a bridal shower. This was one of many books about “Christian sex” that well-meaning fellow Christian women gave me while engaged.
Rather than having honest dialogue about sexuality in Christian communities, we pass each other books that tell us why we aren’t having the mindblowing sex that purity culture promised us, and somehow our devastating sexual experiences are simultaneously all of our fault and not our fault at the same time.
These books tend to create a false dichotomy between “good girls” and “bad girls”, suggesting that sex outside of the rigid contexts of heterosexual marriage is bad, and that girls (though not guys) who engage in these types of sexuality are inherently bad.
Good girls don’t have sex outside of marriage. Good girls don’t wear clothing that reveals sexualized parts of their bodies. Good girls don’t m…
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Feb 28, 2022
Episode 29: How to Overcome the Scars of Purity Culture in a Marriage That Started in Purity Culture, with Devin Ritenhower
Jeremiah and Julia both went to Christian Colleges, which promoted sexual purity. These ideas are pushed onto people when they are young, reinforcing throughout their lives that sex is bad, to put it in the simplest terms. Women are the most punished victims because though purity culture deeply hurts and traumatizes men, women are acting within the confines of Christianity and the patriarchy (and those two tend to go hand in hand).
Personally, I (Nicole) find the purity culture extends past the Church, displaying the profound impact that Christian ideology around sex and sexuality has had on our world as a whole. So, when hearing how intensely damaging and dangerous the messaging around sex is in Christian contexts it hard not to think about my own experiences with the virginity construct and shame around the oh-so-scary pill (birth control). Purity culture is rooted in guilt, built to promote silence and shame at every corner.
The ideology is ingrained: if you have sex before ma…
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Feb 21, 2022
Episode 28: How to Build Sexual Confidence, with Rachel Maine
In therapy, we talk about Prochaska’s stages of change model. Most of the folks that we work with around sexuality, particularly those who have a religious background, start in either the precontemplative or contemplative stages of change.
Not because they don’t want to be further down the road, but because the systems they grew up in (read: most church communities) place limitations around sexuality, such as “no sex before marriage” or “no sex with someone of the same sex/gender, keep folks in these early stages. The preparation and action stages of change are only reserved for people who are married, and even then, healthy sexuality often takes years of development, overcoming anxiety, and unlearning unhelpful messages around bodies and sex.
If you’re single or queer, many religious circles expect you to stay in the precontemplative/contemplative stages of change, meaning coming out as a sexual person (queer or otherwise) has to happen outside of the church walls.
Sex…
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Feb 13, 2022
Episode 27: How Would a Relationship Between Leslie Knope and Chris Traeger Have Worked, with Jeremiah and Julia
What are your favorite TV characters who never dated during the tenure of said television show?
We are big Parks and Rec fans, and while we love the structure of the relationships on the show, we’ve wondered if the producers missed out on exploring a key, funny relationship:
What if Chris Traeger and Leslie Knope dated at some point during the series?
So, on Valentine’s Day 2022, we write some fan fiction and dream about what their relationship might be like.
And we didn’t have to look too far for inspiration, considering Julia’s male TV alter ego is Chris Traeger (between the running, high energy, and incredible positivity) and Jeremiah’s female TV alter ego is Leslie Knope (with the dedication to civil service, drivenness, and organization).
Valentine’s Day is rife with unrealistic expectations about relationships; in fact, our initial plan for this episode was to watch a chick flick and deconstruct the toxic, pressure-packed expectations on gender and sexuality, and…
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Feb 6, 2022
Episode 26: How to Deconstruct from Evangelical Christianity as a Couple, with Erin Baldwin Day
We both went to conservative Christian colleges that had a moderate/high level of commitment to Evangelical sexual values, namely in the exultation of traditional gender roles and the condemnation of sexual activity before marriage. As we’ve moved out of religious spaces, primarily through the vehicle of the sexual health community, we’ve lost a lot friendships and relationships along the way.
To quote Jesus, “A prophet is not welcome in their own home.”
Some have doubled down on their complementary views of gender and sexuality. Others proclaim to be human rights advocates, but resume their anxiety and judgmentality when dialogue shifts to sexual health; the pain from these experiences and losses is often much more severe. I (Jeremiah) sometimes avoid seeking relationships with folks from previous systems because I don’t want to be let down. (I recognize this is a growth area.)
Every now and then, you find someone who you realize is on a really similar pathway as you. In…
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Jan 30, 2022
Episode 25: How to Thrive in Your Relationship During a Breast Cancer Diagnosis, with Marloe Esch
An estimated 290,000 people, including 2500 men, are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022. We are thrilled to have Marloe Esch, oncology nurse and breast cancer survivor, join us to talk about the impact of cancer on bodies and sexuality. She describes the importance of building health relationships, and explores the connection between a cancer diagnosis and spirituality.
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Jan 17, 2022
Episode 24: How Jewish Religious Rituals
Help Create Sex Positivity,
with Caleb Jacobson
Anti-Semitism erases Jewish culture by making our conversations about Judaism really about their oppressors. What does Judaism actually say about sexuality and our bodies? Dr. Christopher Jones, noted sexuality and Biblical researcher, describes to us the Hebrew principles of tikkun olan (repairing the world) and pikauch nefesh (save a life) with sexuality. We also about how Christianity merged with Roman thought, rather than Jewish thought, for its sexual ethic, and the Menstrubation Initiative.
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Jan 9, 2022
Episode 23: How Christian Literature Reinforces Misogyny and Misandry, Which We Rediscover by Reading Sheet Music by Kevin Leman
When Jeremiah and Julia were counseled prior to their previous marriages, they were encouraged to read Sheet Music by Dr. Kevin Leman. A decade later, they return to his writing in their segment, Bedtime Stories. They explore two common themes. 1) The impact of "two becoming one" and the responsibility for your partner's pleasure, including the negative implications out using sex toys and masturbating. 2) Egregious gender stereotypes that reinforce women as asexual and men as dangerous and impulsive.
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Dec 28, 2021
Episode 22: How Christmas Movies Represent the Worst of the Gender Binary, with Jeremiah and Julia
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Dec 6, 2021
Episode 21: How We Are Rethinking Sexuality After Reading Juli Slattery’s Rethinking Sexuality
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Nov 28, 2021
Episode 20: How to Navigate Burnout, with Jeremiah, Julia, and Nicole
We are both mental health practitioners, and our businesses have been taking off due to an increase of demand for therapy as folks navigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives and relationships. We took a six week sabbatical this summer to create some healing, but still found ourselves burnt out and hanging on for dear life.
We deeply believe in the project of Sexvangelicals; we know that our platform and the ways that we provide space for folks to share their experiences of sexuality, bodies, and organized religion have the capacity to change the world. In the face of burnout, we decided to hire a podcast editor.
Listen to more of the ways that we're attempting to navigate burnout.
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Jun 16, 2021
Episode 19: How Couples Can Effectively Collaborate Around Sexual Evolution, with Bernie Newton and Chris Copeland
Over the past decade, we’ve been honored to hear numerous queer folks describing their individual challenges of exploring sexuality and celebrating their orientation in religious contexts. We are thrilled to have Bernie and Chris share their relational story in this podcast episode. They discuss the null curriculum of sex education in the church, how churches encourage queer identities without encouraging being full sexual people, and how couples can collaborate around sexual evolution. Let's heal together!
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May 10, 2021
Episode 18: How Purity Culture is Uniquely Damaging to Teens and Young Adults, with Linda Kay Klein
Linda Kay Klein, author of the 2018 book Pure, has created numerous spaces to bring folks together to share their stories about repression, bravery, and ultimately freedom. We talk with Linda about ways that purity culture is both appealing and damaging to teens, the grief and anger that accompanied Linda's writing process, the impact of motherhood on sexuality, and some of the challenges and confusion in finding freedom.
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Apr 28, 2021
Episode 17: How to Stay Connected with Your Partner During the Pandemic, with Jeremiah and Julia
Regardless of your story, the pandemic has been especially brutal on bodies and relationships. From their perspectives as couples and sex therapists, Julia and Jeremiah discuss the impact of COVID-19 on relational and sexual health.
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Apr 7, 2021
Episode 16: How to Think Critically About Sexuality, with Joe Winn
Growing up as a queer person in a Sicilian Catholic neighborhood in East Boston, Joe talks about how his family’s immigration story from Ireland, observing the queer community’s response to the rigid gender norms of the 80s, and burying over fifty friends in the AIDS crisis, has allowed him to invite critical thought into his work as a sex therapist, by using humor as a powerful tool in the healing process, studying social work and the impact on his own sexual development, and the importance of giving ourselves permission to be sexual people.
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Feb 28, 2021
Episode 15: How Understanding How Women Crave Diversity in Sexual Experiences Can Improve Your Relationship, with Wednesday Martin
When we’ve interviewed women to describe their sexual journeys in the first dozen episodes of Sexvangelicals, many of our guests have talked about how they learned to censor their bodies and navigate the double standards of female sexuality (be sexy, but not too sexy, for example), centered around the word “Don’t”.
The past 50 years has provided more conversation about female sexuality; however, even “progressive fields” (read: sex therapy) have couched descriptions of female sexuality around two flawed assumptions within sociological and sexological research. Dr. Wednesday Martin, author of Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free , identifies these “sacred cows” as (15:00):
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Women are less sexual than men.
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Women are “wired” for monogamy in ways that men are not. “We built an entire civilization around the idea that women are less sexual,” Wednesday explains.
Dr. We…
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Feb 21, 2021
Episode 14: How to Raise Sexually Health Children, with Jennifer Wiessner
Jennifer Wiessner, the first certified sex therapist in Maine, joins Jeremiah and Julia to talk about two sex education programs, Raising Sexually Healthy Children and Girls on Fire, designed to create healthy dialogue between parents and children. They discuss the importance of sex therapists doing their own therapeutic work, the PLISSIT model (a sex therapy staple), and the limitations of men seeking female sex therapists. They also laugh about obsessions with Maine, grocery shopping, and Jane Austen.
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Feb 15, 2021
Episode 13: How the Sexual Expectations of the Mormon Church Create Sexual Anxiety, with Lauren Drean
In this episode, Lauren shares her history within the Mormon Church—she actually gives a great summary of the structures of the Mormon Church around the 8:30 mark of the epsiode. She then describes the ways that her faith is continuing to evolve as she trains and practices as a sex therapist. You will hear in her voice and her stories how complicated her relationship is with religion and sexuality. We appreciate her vulnerability, wisdom, authenticity, and humor as she struggles with these concepts.
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Feb 3, 2021
Episode 12: How Purity Culture Ignites the Shame Cycle, and How to Move Out of Shame, with Julia
Two of the significant structures in Julia's life that “prepared” her for marriage and her career were the Christian church and the mental health field. Surprisingly, the church and the mental health field share some shocking similarities, including the ways that they set her up to “fail” and then shamed her for it. Julia and Jeremiah talk about the shame cycle of purity culture, the limitations of "the two shall become one", and how the mental health field reinforces poor relational patterns, among others.
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Jan 18, 2021
Episode 11: How Black Churches Can Have More Effective Sexual Health Conversations, with Deesha Philyaw
"There's no nuance, no subtlety in the ways that we talk about sex. That's what creates secrecy and people being harmed," explains Deesha Philyaw, author of the 2020 National Book Award Finalist The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Deesha discusses how Black women can explore empowered sexuality, how fiction writing gives audiences a unique access to sexual exploration, ways that the Black church can better advocate for Black women, and personal reflections about The Secret Lives with Jeremiah and Julia.
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Jan 14, 2021
Episode 10: How Purity Culture Impacts Sibling Relationships, with Jeremiah and His Sister, Juliana
Jeremiah followed the expectations of Christianity well into his mid-30s. His sister? Not so much. Juliana talks about how stepping away from Christianity as a child contributed led to criticism and guilt-trips from parents dedicated an Evangelical worldview, shame around her body, queerness, and fashion decisions, and a rupture in the sibling relationship. Poignant, blunt, and extremely brave, Juliana shines a light on the relationships Evangelicalism builds with folks who don't follow their expectations.
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Jan 4, 2021
Episode 9: How Theologians Can Become Sexual Health Professionals, with Reverend Beverly Dale
Reverend Beverly Dale, founder of the Incarnation Institute for Sex and Faith and the co-author of Advancing Sexual Health for the Christian Client: Data and Dogma, joins Jeremiah and Julia to talk about the importance of building relationships between theologians and sexual health professionals. Dale describes her journey of exploring her sexuality and identity, and her vision for creating healing for Christian folks through identifying dogmatic processes and reclaiming sexual pleasure.
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Dec 16, 2020
Episode 8: How Purity Culture Creates Unrealistic Expectations for Marriages, with Jeremiah Gibson
"Marriage is a rite of passage into adulthood," explains Jeremiah. Conservative Christianity puts additional pressure on early marriage, as straight marriage is the only permissible setting for sexual expression. While Jeremiah was in a 10-year marriage, he explains that the relationship was set up to fail from the very beginning due to sexual repression and the ensuing cycle of shame and anxiety around sexuality. A post-mortem to a significant part of his adulthood, Jeremiah grieves the parts of himself that he lost in an attempt to fulfill both the church's standards of successful adulthood: rigid expectations of masculinity, and the longevity of a marriage.
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Dec 7, 2020
Episode 6: How Purity Culture Encourages Infidelity, with Jeremiah and Julia
Julia and Jeremiah talk about what many couples and sex therapists tend to avoid: infidelity. Oof. They describe their own relationship to identify common themes that are a part of infidelity: avoidance, secrecy, and a lack of accountability. As Julia says, "If we don't humanize infidelity, we risk reinforcing the patterns that contribute to infidelity while adding shame to a person's experience." Shame prevents relationships from flourishing by neglecting the necessity of self-reflection from all partners.
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Dec 7, 2020
Episode 7: How the Demonization of Affairs in the Church Prevents People
from Talking About Affairs and Sexuality
in the Church, with Jeremiah and Julia
A follow-up to episode 6, Julia and Jeremiah talk about the time that they blew up their lives...by having an affair. Yikes. On the one hand, Christian culture demonizes infidelity as the worst thing one can do. On the other hand, movies (read: chick flicks) tend to dismiss or glamorize affairs. Even though their story may read like a Nora Ephron screenplay, Julia and Jeremiah address the strange combination of anxiety, isolation, joy, and shame connected with the beginning of their relationship.
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Nov 20, 2020
Episode 5: How I Lost and Am Rediscovering Sexuality, with Julia Postema
Julia is shocked when she attends her religious college, meets a Christian Democrat, and engages in dialogue around race and sexuality for the first time. During her time in the social work department, Julia both lost and regained a sense of faith, despite leaving institutionalized reigion. While her education laid a foundation for sexual growth and development, she was not given tools to reflect on her own sexuality until starting sex therapy at 25. Julia shares her experiences of grief, loss, and healing.
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Nov 18, 2020
Episode 4: How Adoption Impacts My Sexuality, with Jeremiah Gibson
We cannot talk about sex without talking about race. Jeremiah shares his experience as a person of color adopted by a White family. He grew up in White spaces, including, but not limited to gifted and talented programs and churches, and at an early age, he learned to assimilate to White standards. Performing Whiteness allowed Jeremiah to succeed academically and professionally. As he engages in sexual growth, he describes parts of himself that were co-opted and lost, and now rediscovered.
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Nov 18, 2020
Episode 3: How My Enmeshed Christian Communities Impacted My Relationship with My Body, with Julia Postema
Purity culture. Ugh. Where do we even begin? Julia describes her experiences growing up in an insular fundamentalist Christian community, consisting of her church, her Christian school, and her church camp. If it sounds a bit cultish...it was. Julia also discusses how sexual repression was steeped in a legalistic, perfectionistic culture of anxiety. She talks about her experiences with obsessive behaviors, an eating disorder, vaginismus/vulvodynia, and so much more. Joy!
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Nov 18, 2020
Episode 2: Five Things I Learned About Masculinity Because of Fundamentalist Religion, with Jeremiah Gibson
Jeremiah talks with Julia about what it was like to grow up in conservative Christianity and the impact on his views on sex, gender, and sexuality. Spoiler alert: Jeremiah may or may not have led a Bible study at the wise age of 7. Our in-depth conversation includes the role of masculinity in Evangelicalism, the ways that legalism prevents growth and curiosity, and the anxieties that develop around sexuality as a result of these rigid expectations.
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Nov 15, 2020
Episode 1: How We Can Heal Together From the Sex Negativity of Purity Culture, with Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema
Welcome to Sexvangelicals, hosted by sex therapists Julia Postema and Jeremiah Gibson. In the last 50 years, the Christian church has informed our views and practices of sex and sexuality in a number of ways. In the pilot episode, Julia and Jeremiah explore the following: What is sex? What is the role of our bodies? What happens in sex therapy? Join us as we discuss these and other challenging questions. We promise hard, difficult conversations mixed with a lot of laughter and joy. Let's heal together!
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