Utne Reader

By contrast, secular society is embracing masturbation as a way for women to better understand their bodies and enhance their pleasure with their partners. Millions of women struggle with reaching orgasms during sex, so, more and more, sex-ed teachers are including masturbation in their curricula. Last year, the United Nations released a report suggesting that children as young as 5 learn about masturbation. The National Health Service in Britain recently released a pamphlet for teenagers with the headline “An Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” advocating that regular masturbation is good for cardiovascular health. In Spain, one regional government has just launched a sex-ed campaign with the slogan “Pleasure Is in Your Own Hands,” stating that masturbation boosts confidence and self-esteem. And even Oprah Winfrey, the standard-bearer for mainstream American ethics, has discussed the benefits of female masturbation many times on her talk show. One of Winfrey’s frequent guest experts, Laura Berman, says encouraging girls to masturbate can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences.

But Renaud isn’t pleased with secular society’s increasing acceptance of porn and masturbation for women. Interestingly enough, she’s fine with teaching young children about the existence of masturbation and porn-as long as they don’t try it. “It’s a very dangerous society that we live in,” she says, “when we’re telling women that it’s OK to look at porn.”

Many girls in Renaud’s ministry think that once they get married, they will be free to express their sexuality and enjoy orgasms with a man. This causes some to take the fast track to the altar, only to find that after they’ve married, they still feel the same taboo urges. One forum commenter married at 19 in the hope that pious matrimonial intercourse would rid her of her sinful thoughts-only to find that during sex with her husband, she would have the same fantasies. “I cannot cleanse my mind of these images,” she says. “I try so hard to focus on my husband only, but my thoughts are so warped.”

Almost the entirety of this article is worthy of comment — it represents the latest reincarnation of the obsessive wave of anti-sexuality theology that is sweeping fundamentalism. Unfortunately, that would nearly require the authoring of a book…

One of the most striking pieces of this article is the subject’s inability to grasp any sort of difference between the erotic (part of every society and artistic practice around the world) and the pornographic (rage based materials designed to dehumanize, degrade and shame those depicted so as to allow those who are so awash with hatred that they do not view themselves as capable of connecting or becoming stimulated in a normative bonding based manner to become aroused.) The result of such is a strange, dichotomous hostility to everything erotic and to every thought of sexuality (no matter how relationally oriented) that is meshed with a completely artificial separation of secular erotica from Scriptural erotica (Psalm of Solomon for example) but yet still denounces even the thought of such arousal response that Scripture itself could generate.

In other words: Internal inconsistency to the point of the insane…

The article is also completely devoid of any sort of grasp of the difference between fantasy (Mental expression of need and preparation of the person for the pursuit of the legitimate meeting of said need that draws us into the beauty of permanent intimate love that God designed for us) and lust (The predatory desire to use, consume and then dispose of the person with no thought for the other’s well being.)

It is then overlaid with a pseudoscience that holds that the neurological release of any chemical indicating pleasure is indicative of addiction (and thus to be avoided) that completely ignores that dopamine is also released as a result of, er, bowel movements… (It’s a rather convenient way of avoiding addressing anything approaching a modern psychological understanding of said bondage that basically leaves them free to demonize anything they want.) An addiction is, to quote Patrick Carnes from memory, “A pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience.” In other words, it is a bent way of replacing a person with a substance, experience or mental state and using such not to feel/to feel numb.

Stoicism and Gnosticism would be proud – for to them, pleasure and the body were the enemies…

The last paragraph above is stunningly insightful: The logical result of all of this, of course, is that the God-designed third of our personality that is sexual, which has only one means of expressing the needs and longings of such and bringing them into a relationship (Fantasy) is forever condemned as sinful and silenced thus ensuring that even the marriage bed becomes a tortured place of guilt and silence — to say nothing of soul-deadening boredom… Paul’s contention in Hebrews that the Marriage bed was honourable and could not be made to be defiled seems to have escaped their notice.

But, the most striking part of the whole mess is on the first page:

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape-from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution-Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.” Renaud’s advocacy is labelled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not. When you peel back the layers, the core of her crusade is against sexual thought-even within marriage-unless those thoughts are about your husband while you are engaging in intercourse with him.

Read it carefully: She is fully aware that the women in her group have been damaged, severely abused and often had their sexuality commercially exploited and are in desperate flight from soul-wrenching pain, but she’s more concerned about that which Christ already took away: their sin.

Matthew 23:1-15 New International Version

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Like in the time of Christ, the entire charade exists to ensure only one result: That the human leaders of the charade ensure their own place at the helm of the lives of their members — where Christ alone should stand.