Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1065: A Raw Conversation about Modesty and Purity Culture: Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Sheila Wray Gregoire is the founder of Bare Marriage (baremarriage.com) and the author/co-author of several books, including the great breaking The Great Sex Rescue, which she co-authored with her daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach, my other guest. Rebecca also works for Bare Marriage and is the co-host of the bare marriage podcast. Rebecca and Sheila are coming out with their latest book She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up. 

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Gold Level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in the Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology inaraw. That's patreon.com forward slash TheologyNaraw. All right, friends, you ready for this one? I have on the show today, Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach. Sheila is the founder of Bare Marriage and an award-winning author. Rebecca is her daughter and also co-host of the podcast that they have through their bare marriage ministry. And they've co-written

several books together, including the about to be released book called She Deserves Better, Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up. This was a lively conversation, folks. First of all, I do want to give a warning that while the conversation is incredibly tasteful, I believe, we do not shrink back from talking about sex very explicitly. So if you have young people around, you might want to at least listen to the podcast first and before you play it out loud to others who might be young. Although, I don't know. I didn't think we didn't get into too many super racy things, I don't know. I didn't think we didn't get into like too many like super racy things, I don't think. But I really, really enjoyed this conversation. And I think you will

too. Last year, I had Sheila and Rebecca on the show. And as I say at the beginning of this podcast, that that episode was by far the most downloaded episode of 2022 for Theology in a Raw. And I suspect this one's gonna come close. You'll see what I mean when you listen in. So anyway, please welcome back to the show, the one and only Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach. All right, Sheila and Rebecca, welcome back to Theology in the Raw. Thank you. We're happy to be back. Yes, absolutely.

So we just offline said that when you were on a year ago, your podcast episode on Theology in the Raw was the number one downloaded episode of 2022. And that includes, okay, that includes, I had NT, right? Francis Chan, Beth Moore, Max Lucado, Jackie Hill Perry. I mean, I can keep going on and on. So you guys, I don't know. You did something that really stirred some thinking. That's amazing. Well, I'm glad people really resonated with the message. Everybody learned the word vaginismus, which will probably come up again in this podcast. So there you go. Yeah. So the last episode we did a year ago was on your book, The Great Sex Rescue. Give us a quick maybe summary of what that book was all about. And then let's talk about your latest book that you, I think you just released it, right? Recently or? Yeah, it's coming out April

18th. So I have a pre-release copy then. Okay, cool. Yeah. So Great Sex Rescue was based on our survey of 20,000 predominantly evangelical women. And we were looking at how certain messages about sex that are really common in the evangelical church actually can end up hurting women's marital and sexual satisfaction. And so we found in our survey, we identified four big ones. Things like a wife is obligated to give her husband sex if he wants it. You should have frequent sex to keep him from watching porn. All men struggle with lust. It's every man's battle. These things that we hear a lot, they actually tank women's libidos,

tank women's orgasm rates and increase rates of sexual pain. Wow. Golly. Okay. We can close in prayer just after that. So I'm curious, how was that book received? I mean, again, in my audience, from what I heard, it was very well received. Well received in the sense that you were naming stuff that many women have felt but have never talked about it. I would say that's probably the most common response I got. Not that I didn't survey 20,000 women, but just the anecdotal kind of responses I'm getting was like either, yes, I've been working through this. Thank you for publicizing that. Or, oh my gosh, I haven't processed why we've had these kind of struggles in our marriage. And this has opened up awesome conversations between me and my husband typically is the two major responses I got.

How have you got, how has it been received more broadly? Well, I know if you go to Amazon and read the reviews, there's over 2000 now, the main word you'll hear over and over again is validating that this was just so validating. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've heard a lot of the same as you have. Um, our main goal in doing one of the reasons we wanted to not just write yet another Christian sex book, but we wanted to actually put a lot of numbers behind it was because we wanted to make sure we were actually giving a voice to the women. We wanted to give a voice back to women whose voices so often been taken away in the name of like being a good wife. Right. And so

let's talk about what it actually means to have a healthy marriage. And I think so many people, it's when you're, when you've been in the desert for so long and you finally get a drink of water and realizing, oh my goodness, it doesn't have to be like this anymore. That's, that's what really we wanted to do with this. And it's been so encouraging to hear so many women and men to feel so much freedom, realizing I don't have to be a slave to what I've been told is masculine sex drive or like, I don't have to be a slave to this desire and women hearing. I don't have to be, you know, forgotten in this. And God didn't design me to be forgotten in this. Or to be your husband's personal porn star. Yes. Yes.

Exactly. Yeah. So we've heard great stuff from counselors. I heard from an Air Force chaplain who is using the book now in his counseling. So, yeah, it's just going everywhere, and that's really exciting. That's awesome. Anything that you maybe push back to have gotten that are legitimate? They're like, ah, maybe we should have said something different or done something different.

Anything, like if you're going to publish a second edition would you change anything or do you feel like you any kind of criticism was maybe misunderstood or overplayed or a lot of people wonder why we were so female centric like people want more of the male perspective um but that's kind of the whole point. And I did publish a book for men afterwards. So The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex deals with our men's stuff. But we just, to us, the issue is there's a huge orgasm gap. Okay, 47 points between men and women in the church. One of the biggest problems when you ask people, what is your main sex problem? They tend to say it's because she doesn't want it enough. Now, we know that in large minority of marriages, she has the higher sex drive, but people say it's because

she doesn't want it. And so we wanted to look at this and say, how could we fix sex for women? Because it seems to be women that are really having the trouble now. So I know guys want their book, they've got their book, but please give women a space sometimes too. please give women a space sometimes too. And you would say that that orgasm gap is at least partly due to sociological, socio-religious factors that have lowered. We proved that it was, we proved that it was. Yeah. Let's talk about your newest book then the one's coming, the one that's coming out in April. Uh, what's this one all about? You got to stir the pot again. Oh yeah, we definitely are. So for this one,

we use some of our data from the original 20,000 women survey, but we really wanted to do a new survey to, to really hone in on some specific questions about adolescence, about women's experiences growing up in the church and how that later related to just their marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, but also just self-esteem, how they feel about themselves, whether or not they end up marrying an abusive person, those kinds of questions. So we surveyed another 7,000 women, again, primarily evangelical,

and we really doubled down on different teachings than we did before. And so this book, She Deserves Better, is about figuring out how do we raise girls to resist toxic teachings. I think our subtitle is about sex, self, and speaking up. So that the goal is, in essence, we want to raise the next generation of girls to not need a great sex rescue. That's our goal. Our goal with books like She Deserves Better is to make great sex rescue unneeded because our girls have been getting the good messages from the beginning and have been sheltered from the damaging ones even before they had time to take root. This is a prevention strategy and we really hope that it changes a lot for the next generation. Yeah, because one of the

biggest things we got from women after reading The Great sex rescue is, okay, I feel a lot better about myself, but now I have absolutely no idea what to do with my daughter. So tell me how I raised my daughter so that they don't end up like I did. So that's, that's the question we're trying to address. Okay. Yeah. So you don't, do you, do you deal a lot with like, like modesty or like, yeah, modesty, purity, culture stuff. And, and this is so interesting. Cause I just don't, maybe because I swim in maybe broader circles or different circles, like, like the overwhelming majority that I hear about purity culture in my Christian circles is negative, negative. Like that was terrible. And, and, and I'm glad we're not doing that anymore or whatever, but it sounds like it's still alive and well, and we actually do to um push against some of the negative stuff that

came out of the purity culture not not everything was bad necessarily but totally i think that a lot of people are saying things like yeah purity culture is bad it's it's it's the thing right now to say with your with your words that we don't believe in purity culture anymore we don't believe that girls value is only in what they do with their bodies no we don't believe that girls value is only in what they do with their bodies. No, we don't believe that except that when you actually look at what they teach, they use different language, they use different words, but it's still there. For example, you brought up modesty. So the classic is secret keeper girl. That is what the secret keeper girl curriculum that happened when I was how old I bought it when you were 12 and Katie was 11. So let's say 2007, 2008. So the Secret Keep It Girl curriculum was this really big event

devotional that was put on by Dana Gresh. And it had this book that you could go through with your daughters, had eight dates for moms and daughters to talk through, you know, what it meant to understand your true beauty in essence as a girl. And so much of it was about covering up and about modesty. And it was talking to girls aged eight to 12. So you have to picture an eight-year-old girl. Okay. So she's still playing with Barbie. She's not two whole hands old yet. She's eight. playing with barbies still playing with barbies she's not two whole hands old yet she's eight and this curriculum taught her that her body if she shows too much of it is intoxicating to the men around her and she was taught to cover up so that she wouldn't intoxicate the men around her which is horrifying telling an eight-year-old that a grown man might find her intoxicating is horrifying and and we don't believe that it was done in any malicious intent i do fully agree is horrifying. Telling an eight-year-old that a grown man might find her intoxicating is horrifying.

And we don't believe that it was done in any malicious intent. I do fully agree that they are trying to, Dana talks about how you talk about it before they hit puberty so that there isn't shame relating to puberty itself. The problem is the unintended side effect is we just told eight-year-olds that it's normal for grown men to find your body intoxicating. as we just told eight-year-olds that it's normal for grown men to find your body intoxicating. Yes. But although today, you know, places are not saying specific modesty rules in the same way, they're still saying things like, your body is a temple, so dress in a way that shows the truth of the gospel. Well, what does that mean?

Yeah, that's kind of weird to me. What does that mean to clothe yourself with righteousness? Like, and these were things that we're seeing on YouTube in the last two years from big Christian creators. Very big. Very big creators, you know, and we're talking about these topics like we're saying, oh, we don't do that anymore. Yes, we absolutely do.

We absolutely still tell 13 year olds that if she doesn't wear, if she doesn't wear a long enough skirt, the elders in the front row might be looking up her skirt. So she has to make sure to be modest. So the men don't get distracted. We're absolutely still telling this to girls. We hear us all the time. We get messages from women saying, I can't believe this. My daughter just came home from youth group with this pamphlet talking about how the girls can lead boys to lust. So these things, they might, what's happening now

is it's getting trickier. It's not that it's not around there. It's that it's getting trickier. We know we can't say, well, if you have sex now, you're damaged goods and therefore you are no longer as loved by Christ. Like we used to say, and I'm being a little bit glib there. I apologize. This is how I grew up with. So I'm very, I'm very passionate about this. And these are the messages that I internalized as a young girl. But when you look at the things that our teenagers are being taught today, they're just said in such a tricky way. And that's why this book is so necessary, because it's not as easy anymore of just saying,

you know, yeah, we don't agree with that anymore. We don't agree with that. We'll just move past. No, because this is the foundation of the evangelical culture that our girls are growing up in. Even if we can pay lip service to moving past purity culture, we are still seeing women as primarily objects. And we're still seeing girls as primarily areas of temptation. Man, that's so, so this, okay. So you're seeing, even though the, the original language of purity culture as a whole is not necessarily being said, a lot of the, a lot of the themes are still alive and well, specifically, I'm hearing you saying in

modesty conversations, is that kind of the big, one of the big pieces now? Yeah. Even just think about how much we talk about how visual boys are and, you know, kind of how girls can't be stumbling blocks, even though, you know, the most recent neuroscience literature shows that that's far more cultural and that our brains are not that different. So it's much more nuanced than the way that we usually talk about it. And so what we did in our survey was we measured four different iterations of the modesty conversations that we have, four different modesty messages, and all four of them, things like a girl has a responsibility to dress so as not to incite boys. Girls who dress immodestly are worse than girls who don't dress immodestly.

That boys are visual and take in girls' anatomy. These sorts of messages. So we had a bunch of different iterations. take in girls anatomy, like these sorts of messages. So we had a bunch of different iterations. And what we found is that they are all highly, highly correlated with lower self-esteem in high school, that self-esteem, lower self-esteem continues into adulthood. They are more likely to marry an abuser and their chance of experiencing vaginismus, which is, as you may remember from our last appearance, it's a sexual dysfunction disorder where the vaginal wall, the muscles in the vaginal wall contract so that sex and penetration becomes very painful, if not impossible. That becomes much more common, too. The risk is really elevated.

And I think it's one of the reasons why evangelical women suffer from it at twice the rate of the general population. Wow. We said more likely to marry an abuser. And again, just to make sure I'm tracking with you, when a girl is told in so many words that she might be a source of male stumbling, male lust. What's the, is that just correlation or is there a, like, what's the link between why she'd be more pro-Namerican abuser? That's interesting. Yeah. Okay.

Well, first of all, one of the nice things about this survey is that we could tease out causation a lot easier because, you know, correlation, the problem is if you find that two things both happen, the question is, does one cause the other? Does the other cause the other? Or is there a third thing that's causing both of them? question is, does one cause the other? Does the other cause the other? Or is there a third thing that's causing both of them? And you can't always tell. But the nice thing about our survey is that because we were saying, did you believe this way back then? And then what is happening now? We could actually trace it over time. So the causation is easier to figure out. It's still not absolute, but it's easier. And here's, here's how we think that works. Let's say that we raise a whole generation of girls telling them men lust. They just do that

as part of being a man. They are visual. And so you have a responsibility not to be a stumbling block to a man. What's going to happen if that girl, if your daughter is in a dating relationship with a guy who is constantly pushing her boundaries, with a guy who is blaming her for dressing too provocatively, she isn't going to see that as a red flag. She's going to see, oh, this is just how men are. Plus it lowers her self-esteem. And when girls have lower self-esteem, we know that women with lower self-esteem are more likely to get into marriages where they aren't treated well because they don't think they deserve it. Wow.

I literally was just talking. I have really awesome. I've got three teenage daughters and we have this conversation all the time. I really wanted to have at least one on, but she's like, I don't want to be on the podcast again. I never want to push them. But I did a podcast with my 15, now 16 year old daughter last fall. And everywhere I go, people say that was one of their favorite podcasts because she's just super sharp and honest, asks hard questions. We have like really some of the most honest conversations about everything, but especially this topic. And it's, it's so educational for me.

She said yesterday, literally we're talking and we're talking about modesty again. Like, what does this mean? What are some frustrations? And, um, her, one of her biggest struggles is the, One of her biggest struggles in her context is the imbalance. The guys never get the modesty talk. They even pointed out a guy in the youth group was wearing these just short booty shorts. You know, like short shorts. And she's like, yeah, if I wear that, I'd be confronted by everybody. But this guy just waltzing around. And not that it's the same.

It's not like I don't know too many girls that are l lusting after his legs or whatever but like it's just like how come like how come guys get a free pass how can we go to the pool and you know yeah some guy that's shredded just gets to walk around in his you know eight pack as if that doesn't do anything to girls and no one says anything you know or whatever but then or tight t-shirts or you know she's like why is it so one-sided was her biggest. But she also said something exactly what you said, that when she's told implicitly or explicitly to cover up, don't show that, she immediately feels shame around that part of her body. Like, oh, something's wrong.

She doesn't feel like this part of my body is so beautiful and stunning that I need to like cover it up, which is kind of what people think when they're given the modesty talk. Like, right. Like this is every guy who thinks this is so beautiful. Therefore she's like, Oh, there's something wrong with this. Like it's, it's icky. It's, it's yucky. And that's why I'm told to cover it up. She says, it just produces so much body shame when people are speaking a mod, you know, giving some kind of modesty. Well, again, whether it's explicitly or implicitly. That was fascinating to hear that side of it. So I'm hearing you say that that's

very, very common. Yeah. Can I give you another data point for body shame? That's kind of interesting. Okay. So we gave women a set, a number of different words, sexual vocabulary words. And we asked, did you know these words at the point that you graduated high school? And it turns out that women were more likely to know the words for male anatomy than they were for female anatomy. So they were more likely to know scrotum than vulva, for instance. Okay. So they were more likely to know scrotum than vulva, for instance. Okay. Which again, shows us that we really have a problem with women's bodies. And what we found in our survey is that what the evangelical church did during the 1990s

and 2000s, and even into the 2010s, is they substituted sex ed with fear and scare tactics. And so we weren't actually giving kids sex ed, like my generation, Gen X, we knew way more about sex and consent and date rape than millennials did who took our survey, like at the point where they graduated high school. So we kind of stopped sex ed for the millennial generation and it really affected them. They were, you know, the less sex ed you had, the more likely you were to get sexually assaulted or abused, the more likely to marry an abuser, even the more likely to have sex before marriage. Like it doesn't protect kids to not give them sex ed, but giving kids knowledge about their bodies is actually protective. Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally, yeah. People always ask me like, when do I start talking to

my kids about sex and how do I do it age appropriate and everything? And I always say, pick an age in your mind and go like five years younger usually. And people are like, well, gosh, should my young kid be exposed to these terms and concepts? And I said, well, first of all, they're probably already are, so let's not kid ourselves. But you can always start with body positivity, naming sexual parts of your body in a very positive way. Because it's like the Voldemort, when something's just not mentioned, that's got to produce shame, right? It's so dirty and shameful, we can't even talk about it. Or when we name it, it's kind of like in this embarrassing way, that's got to produce body shame. So we can, at a very early age, talk very positive. I mean, at the earliest age possible,

talk positively, naming body parts in a positive way so that it doesn't cultivate that kind of shame. Is that, I don't know if I read that somewhere or is that, would you agree with that approach as well? Yeah, completely. Yeah, that's a lot of what we talked about. And in She Deserves Better, at the end of each chapter, we've got exercises for parents to do with their daughters, you know, to talk about, yeah, talk about sex ed more, talk about what consent is, talk about how do we figure out a healthy view of modesty if we don't want to do the typical modesty thing. you you need to talk to your kids that's the big thing is that all of these things are helped when you're able to talk about them with your children and that's what we didn't do we largely scared them did you ever see the movie mean girls because there's this scene um it's it's it's an it's just a famous scene at this point the coach the gym coach scene doing health class doing sex ed yeah or he's threatening this group of, this group of teenagers saying, if you have sex, you will get pregnant and you will die. Right. And that's,

and that's everyone, now everyone take a condom, right? That's what it does. But if you look at the, at, at, at the messages in, in the books that we reviewed for, for She Deserves Better, that's largely what was said. You know, if you have sex, there'll be no babies ever because you will get infertile. And, and, uh, there's so many examples in these books of people having sex and then dying, like actually dying. Yeah. And you know, the problem is if, if that is our main reason why we're telling kids not to have sex, if we're telling them, if you have sex, you're going to get an STD, you're going to die, you're going to get pregnant. Every 16 year old has friends who are having sex, who are not dead, who are not infertile, and who haven't had disastrous repercussions. And so we have to talk about this differently. Yeah. Yeah. So I really want to, I'm glad you, you hinted at it. Cause I,

so my main question now is, okay, we've seen all this unintended benefit of the doubt, unintended fallout and damage. How do I'm like, I don't want to throw away modesty either. So how do we, throw away modesty either. So how do we talk about healthy, actual biblical modesty in a way that's life-giving and not producing shame? Your daughter had such a good point. First of all, this is so unnecessarily gendered. First of all, so when the modesty message is gendered, so we talk about how girls need to be modest because boys will stumble. What that says is that boys deserve to live in a world without female bodies. That's what that tells boys and girls. It creates an idea of sexual entitlement among boys that I deserve to not be made uncomfortable by someone else's body more than that person deserves to simply

have a body that I feel sexually attracted to. And that's a major problem because what that leads to, we have horrific stories of what that leads to. So let's, let's talk about what's healthy, but I do want to tell a story that explains the problem with the current modesty message. Right. Like first we had a lot of focus groups like we did in Great Sex Rescue, where we kind of delved into some of the more tricky, intricate aspects of our research. And I talked to women who had experienced sexual assault as teenagers. And a recurring trend that we heard was that women would be, well, I'll tell you one girl's story when she was very young, like we're talking junior high, 12, 13 years old. She came from a non-Christian family

background and latched onto this Christian family when she started going to church because they just seemed like the perfect Christian family. And she loved them so much. And she was really great friends with their daughter. And they had a son who was a little bit older and she just wanted so badly to be like them. So she's at their house all the time. And this boy started to tell her that like he had, she had to come with him and he started to molest her. He was a year older than her. So it was, it was, it was, she didn't know that she could say no for one, but also she's in this situation where she's in a room with a boy who says that he knows more about God than her and is telling her, you chose to wear that around me and you know what that does to me. And then he would molest her,

he would assault her, and he would also force her to do acts upon him as well. Then, of course, he would feel ashamed, he would feel angry at himself, and then he would also force her to do acts upon him as well. Then of course he would feel ashamed. He would feel angry at himself and then he would scream at her because how could you possibly do that to me? How could you possibly wear that around me? You know what that does. You know what that does. And she's wearing a t-shirt and jeans. And this is the result of first of all, raising boys in a church that tells them you can't help yourself if a girl dresses in a way that makes you sexually attracted to her. And also it is the result for our very vulnerable girls in churches to be told, if you dress a certain way, boys won't be able to help themselves. Because what happened to that girl?

She went to youth group and then she got handed the modesty flyers and they were all to only girls. that girl, she went to youth group and then she got handed the modesty flyers and they were all to only girls. And she also listens to these stories and these sermons about how girls need to cover up and how we have to be pure and how remember that year, these are bits only for your husband one day. Well, her bits have already been touched by a man who was not going to be her husband. And she already thinks it's because she wore two low rise jeans. So when we talk about modesty as a gendered thing, we not only give women shame and teach our young girls that your body is a problem. We also give permission to boys to abuse them. We give them biblical reasons why you can't help yourself. We give them that, that stamp of

approval, whether we meant to or not. So what do we do instead? First of all, we need to not make modesty gendered as much as humanly possible. But also we need to recognize that modesty is not about how much skin you're showing as much as it is about whether or not we're being respectful to people around us. And so that also needs to include things like not flaunting wealth. Like I was involved in a camp growing up where we had a lot of incredibly rich families there. And all a lot of the leaders who were running different groups would show up in, I kid you not, Gucci pajama sets. And they would all wear their matching Gucci pajama sets. And then all the kids who couldn't afford it would be in their Walmart pajama sets. And they're like, well, this is awkward.

And they made a big deal by having their little brand names. They thought, oh, we're just being so cute. We'll take all of the Gucci pictures for Instagram, and then all the girls in their flannels weren't included, right? That's also immodest. But when we make modesty about specifically, oh, but you have too much cleavage. Oh, your boobs are too big to wear that jacket. Oh, your hips are a little too sexy in that skirt,

so you need to wear something looser than this girl who has less hips than you. What we do is we make women's bodies. The problem is that a teaching men and also boys how to respect people regardless of what their body looks like. women of color when they are growing up are more likely to be, um, the recipients of dress code violations, um, than their white peers, regardless of what they are wearing. Yeah. So we just need to stop the idea that we need to police what people wear. I think, I think if we just simply talk about, Hey, what's appropriate for the occasion, right? Like if we're going to have, if we're going to be having to be having water Olympics in the pool, then that's an athletic event. So, you know what, everyone, you got to wear stuff that's got structure, you know, like let's wear let's wear athletic swimwear and you can leave it at that. If you're going to go for a hike, then you talk about how you need to wear clothing that's appropriate for hikes, which means be careful of ticks, as opposed to saying, don't wear short shorts, like expect people to wear clothing that is appropriate for the occasion. And then I think another big thing is just tell people, hey, consent is a thing. And other people

did not consent to see parts of your body. And so everyone needs to keep the parts of your body that you would require consent to see covered, you know? And that's true for both guys and girls, which means guys cannot have pants, you know, down below their underwear, right? And that's, I think that's an easy way to do it without making it about sexual temptation. Because the thing about is like, when we make up a sexual temptation,

that's purely like man, woman, sexual temptation, the other thing is like, I, as a grown woman, also do not want to see anyone's accidental nip slip like and i'm not attracted to women so it's like we don't need to it's also it's uncomfortable to other people if you're dressing inappropriately but i think if if mothers can if parents can talk to their kids about this idea of how are we respectful of the occasion of the people around us versus being like, Ooh, but people will notice you have boobs. That's not the problem. The problem is, are you purposely trying to make P are you doing shock value with

your clothing? Are you trying to be vain? If we talk about vanity instead of modesty to like, there's a really big difference there because modesty has been so tied to lust versus like, are you trying to take advantage of the fact that Mitchell really likes you and you really like the attention that he gives you? And this is like you're wearing a really flirty dress and you know you don't like him back. Are you being nice? Like, come on. I think you have those discussions a little bit more nuanced than it being like, hey, Mitchell's going to not be able to stop himself if you're having that dress. That's not what we're saying at all. We're saying don't play with people's emotions.

Right, right, right. So here's – I'm going to figure out how to ask this because let me lead with this. I want – hopefully I've done this with my daughters. 100% agree that women should not be blamed for male lust. I mean, everything you're saying, I have no question about. Like I've, I don't know if I ever, maybe when I was younger, did I ever not believe? Like, of course, women shouldn't be blamed for male lust. How do I also teach my daughters that we also live in a fallen world? That's just

biologically, if you pump a male filled with this chemical called testosterone, that has a biological effect on your sexual desires. There's just certain biological realities here that are simply true. And you were on the cultural piece. I think there are cultural things as well. Like my missionary friend and cousin in Papua New Guinea said, you know, a woman could, she said, you know, she said I could ride on a horse shirtless, no one would bat an eye. But if I wore jeans, I would be, it'd be the scariest thing to walk down the street because I would have men clawing all after me. From that culture, it's different. Or even, I've been to Europe many times and most beaches, being topless is not that big of a deal.

Men got Speedos. I think it's not a big fan, but the older the man, the tighter the speedo. It's one of those laws of the universe. Yeah. Yeah. So there, there is a cultural factor here that that's, that's interesting to me. There's also biological realities. The line between biology and culture, I think can be, it's going to be complex.

It's hard to, it's hard to identify that. And to me, it's almost like you're kind of irrelevant. The fact is like, if my daughter wore something that was revealing, whether it's a tight shirt, whether it's showing more skin, she simply is going to be looked up and down sideways, up and down by men. And they experienced this all the time. And they get creeped out like just creepy greasy old men like they just get it's like yeah they just get and and the more body they're showing whether through tightness or skin revealing that they i can't control all these christian or non-christian men just whatever in society like and they don't feel good about that either and they and when they

are more covered up they don't get as many looks when they're less covered up they get a lot more looks and they don't like that that produces this ickiness it's kind of unsafe to like to get an old man that's just looking doing the eye thing like that and it's even something it is this is this is something i you know well we can get into yoga pants later but how do i like i talked to a girl this is a few years ago she i mean she said she told me she was a teenager walking through walmart and she was just what was she wearing like maybe like a a shorter skirt cowboy boots not not even that whatever but she said i left the sort of feeling so trashed because of all, I could tell everybody, all these men were just looking at me up and down. And here's this minor, you know, and she's like, she like left the store and she was like, oh, but if she wasn't wearing, there were certain things.

And again, so I, how do I, how do I even talk about this? Because 100%, I'm not saying she is at fault. She is not at fault. Fact is, you got a bunch of sinful people out there and that's just the world we live in. So how do we, how do I navigate that? Like, I don't want to pretend like that doesn't exist either. How do I help me out here? Okay. So here's the thing. It doesn't matter what you're wearing, you will always attract unwanted attention. Even if like, have you ever seen those, um, uh, displays of what you were you wearing when you were sexually assaulted?

Um, and there's so many Amish clothes on them. Like there's art displays that go around the country of what I was wearing when I was raped. And it's like sweatshirt, sweatshirts and sweat pants. Like there is nothing that you can wear that is going to protect you from assault. In fact, there's peer-reviewed studies that show that as well. Men don't actually tend to assault women based on what they're wearing. They assault women based on other characteristics. Yeah, so in fact, the more modest you are, you often look very insecure. And those are often the people who are targeted just as much.

So the more you can actually be a victim by covering up too much, you know. So real quick, that's just sexual assault. But if I have a Muslim woman in a burqa and another in a string bikini, and they both walk around Walmart, we would have to be naive to say they're both going to... But the string bikini doesn't belong at Walmart. The string bikini doesn't belong at Walmart. Okay. Just say like booty shorts and a half shirt. I mean, just a really more of a way sexy outfit versus a Muslim.

We can't say that they're both going to equally be. I know what you're saying, Preston, but I'm wondering if we can reframe this. Because are you trying to get men to not look at your daughters? Is that the problem i'm trying to tell my daughter that um we live in a world where there are sinful people out there um okay so and and you will get like certain looks and attention and certain dirty you will get guys looking at your your body the more you're revealing. That's going to happen to almost any girl at all times. Yes. The more revealing you are, you certainly can get more of it, but I'm assuming that your daughters are not dressing super revealing. Anyway, the simple fact is if, if our kids are

wearing what is normal in our culture. Okay. And that's what most of our daughters are wearing. They're just wearing what is normal in our culture. They're not, they're not being way on the other side. They're still going to get some looks. And I think a far, it's not that this conversation isn't important. It's just that a more important conversation is how are you going to address this and how are you going to handle it? And what does this tell you about the world? Not what does this tell you about what you should dress, how you should dress, but what does this tell you about how you're going to act? And so how can we act confident when we're walking through the mall? Because I'll tell you the best way to avoid people looking at you or, or, or calling you out and being

gross to you is to be confident. There's, yeah, there are, you know, it's not about what you wear. It's how confident you are. So, cause I'm assuming that your daughter's not going to wear a string bikini in the mall. So like your daughter is not, and most of us listening, our daughters are not going to be dressing like with fishnet stockings. Okay. So, so what you, most of our daughters are just wearing what is culturally appropriate for teenagers. And so what they need to understand is how can I recognize red flags? You know, how can I make sure that I'm being respectful to people around me? And how can I learn that this world is not necessarily a safe place for girls? And so what am I going to do to make sure that I

stay safe? And those are good conversations to have. Telling a girl, here's how you can dress so you won't get stared at is never going to work. Especially since the idea of teaching your daughter that the world is not a safe place also teaches her that it is not your responsibility to keep men from looking at you. It's not your responsibility to keep men from looking at you. I actually, I had an experience where in my old neighborhood, a man was on a bike and ran and smacked my butt as he was going by, I was wearing a literal parka, long jeans and giant boots. I was not in Canada. I could not have been more covered unless I was wearing a long denim skirt. Like it was impossible. And that still happened. And so then what would have happened? Like, Oh, well maybe I, maybe my hips were swaying too much when I walked.

Maybe, maybe he didn't, maybe he saw, maybe my hips were swaying too much when I walked. Maybe he didn't. Maybe I looked at him weird. We cannot get into a habit of telling our girls or even implying to our girls that it is their responsibility to keep men from objectifying them. Because the problem is we don't stop there in our heads. When we do that, even on a small bit, we start to create a seed in our daughter's heads that teaches them at some level, what happens to you is always your fault. Because if you could have prevented it with

20-20 vision, then you should have been able to prevent it, which means you really made this happen. And we heard this over and over again from our focus groups, from women who didn't, it wasn't just assault. It's also like, okay, then I ended up marrying the guy I shouldn't marry because yeah, he yelled at me all the time, but I also disrespected him. So maybe if I don't disrespect him, then he won't scream at me. Yeah. And this is, this is the thing, like in She Deserves Better, we don't only look at like modesty and sex. We look at a lot of the other messages that are given to girls. So for instance, we, we give girls the message that, um, the way that a boy treats you tends to be your fault in many different ways. So for, um, there, there was one book that was really big

for teenage girls, which said, um, if you are wondering why a boy is angry at you, look at, look for disrespect because probably you've been disrespectful towards him. look for disrespect because probably you've been disrespectful towards him. And it goes on about how boys require respect while you require love, you know. And so boys are really sensitive to disrespect. And so it's very important that you never make a boy feel that you are smarter than them, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a message that is given to our kids over and over again. Girls, you need to be smaller because boys can't handle it. Boys can't handle if you have a body that they find attractive.

Boys can't handle if you're shinier than them. Boys can't handle if you say something in the wrong tone. And these things all lead to preparing girls to be perfect. I mean, frankly, it's horrible, but perfect offerings for abusive men. I mean, frankly, it's horrible, but perfect offerings for abusive men. Yeah. We have trained our girls to already explain away problematic behavior towards them, even in our attempts to protect them. This episode is sponsored by Faithful Counseling. Look, life can be super challenging, filled with ups and downs, times of joy and times of sorrow.

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apply. Just visit Biola.edu for more information. And that's, it's such a hard tension. Cause like I, I a hundred percent, again, a hundred, I never, ever want my daughters or anybody to feel like anything is their, their fault or that they are responsible for male lust. And yet, there is such a thing as male lust, right? It is still a thing that exists. And I think I might share this with you. Maybe the last podcast we had, I remember I used to, when I was in California, I'd work at the Starbucks. And I was always sitting in the back row and I could kind of see everything. And there was a trainer who would – a female trainer who would come in. She would always – almost same out like – she was fit.

She had yoga pants on and everything. And I would literally look around at the guys and almost literal slobber coming from their mouths as they were just like – one guy was like losing in his chair. He was like this. Oh, gosh. He's like – I was like losing in his chair he was just like he was like this oh gosh he's like everybody's just salivating she had no clue didn't see it with many other women that came in and again i'm like is she responsible for that 100 no is that happening 100 yes where does that leave us like i don't i don't but she doesn't know what's happening right not unless

she turned around i don't know but like she didn't see it i don't want to like yeah this is the thing she is protected because she didn't know what's happening right like they are choosing to do that but she's not suffering and i think again we're seeing it from like how do we stop men from having this reaction she's just going about her life You're allowed to just go about your life. Is it wrong for me to tell my daughter, like, hey, if you do dress a certain way, you are free to do that. You're creating God's image. Your body is beautiful. You're not responsible for anything.

Also, this is probably how many other heterosexual guys are going to be this is what's probably going to be in their mind when they see you in that outfit is that can i say that or is that always going to produce shame and blame and here's where i have do you see my attention at least like i it truly is i'm wrestling out loud and i hope i fully understand the dilemma especially as a woman who does decide and i I raised two drop dead gorgeous girls. So I understand. I understand this, too. But I and as a woman who does decide how to get dressed in this culture, knowing how creepy

men are, I literally study how creepy men are. Like, I'm sorry, just a little funny. But yeah, I understand this. I really do. The problem is, as a parent, when we're raising our girls, we really do have a choice. And it's an uncomfortable choice is we can be the person who tells them, you know, no, you deserve to exist how you are. And yes, do that with wisdom.

Or we can be the voice that tells them you're going to be a problem to someone else and you need to be neutralized. So the problem with saying things like, I know how all these men are thinking is quite frankly, there's a couple different things here. First of all, studies have shown that there is a lot of cultural difference, even among the same countries, about different generations, how different generations see things versus not. A lot of people in younger generations don't even bat an eye with leggings or yoga pants because they're around all the time no i just learned that recently so so with so where does it stop the 83 year old men who aren't used to some to to things that were normal in the 70s and 80s are do our girls need to need to dress the same

way that people did modestly back in the 40s and 50s. And so this is why we can't talk about the idea of like, well, I know what men are going to think. Well, let them think what they're going to think. That's on them. That's on them. That is not a girl's responsibility. A girl's responsibility is to dress in a culturally appropriate way, yes, but culturally appropriate does not mean neutralizing their bodies so that men don't sin. Because your daughter is not the reason that men sin.

Her body is not the reason men sin. And additionally, as someone who was raised in an area where I'm going to be very honest here because this is something that really affected me growing up. OK, I read Brio magazine growing up and I read an article. It's sorry. It's a focus on the family magazine. It was huge. It was the biggest magazine to Christian girls. It went sorry. It's a focus on the family magazine. It was huge. It was the biggest magazine to Christian girls. It went, it went for years. Um, I read it religiously in junior high and I read an article by Dana Gresh in there that told me when I was 13 years old, that if I couldn't pinch the fabric on my jeans easily, that meant I was immodest. Okay. And that meant that I was

inviting men to finish the picture of my body. And I will never forgetodest. Okay. And that meant that I was inviting men to finish the picture of my body. And I will never forget those words. Okay. The problem is I was a little bit curvier than the other girls in my church youth group. I had the thickest thighs. I had the biggest butt. Okay. Let's be honest.

And so I looked in the mirror at age 13, being a very healthy weight. And I looked at myself and thought, I am disgusting. And I thought I am a problem. And they didn't mean to tell me that. And when girls are told things like you can't wear that, it brings too much attention to your chest. You know, we know what men are going to think. What they hear is I'm just, I'm a problem. They don't hear men are the problem. They hear I'm the problem. And even when they do hear that men are the problem, what they hear is I need to cater to men who are the problem. Instead of men get out of my way, I'm a woman and I'm allowed to be a woman. That's solid. So we're not talking about wearing a string bikini in walmart we're talking about

wearing a t-shirt that shows your figure and maybe shorts that are three inches shorter than what was appropriate in the 19 i mean actually the 60s had booty shorts oh yeah i was gonna say the 1960s and i've seen pictures of the 60s and 70s shorts they were terrifying um on men for men too yeah no but men it's like i'm gonna start seeing some bits dangling out but but we're we're talking about some things that are culturally appropriate but when they're on someone that someone finds attractive all of a sudden it's immodest yeah no that's super that yeah no that that's that makes say it's just the unintended piles of shame that are created in how we have gone about this conversation.

I still keep learning. So every day my daughters teach me stuff. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. I mean, this is this is crazy. You brought the generational thing. So it's so funny. I've read just anecdotally like yoga pants, you know, Gen Z. No big deal.

Guys like those pants. Gen Xers, you might as well be wearing nothing. Like literally it's like, I talked to Gen X, like really good Christian. They're like, I wished we would outlaw yoga. Like again, they don't want, and again, it's not, they're not blaming them or anything. They're just like, they literally might as well be wearing nothing. Like that's how it feels, but we're not, we weren't raised with that. Right. I mean, it was like, it just wasn't a, it wasn't a thing. And that's why we have to ask about where is the responsibility? Is the responsibility on the 16 year old girl to make sure that the 48 year old man doesn't find her butt too appealing? Because that's, let's be completely honest. That's

what we're talking about here. Or is the responsibility on the 48 year old man to adapt to the culture the same way if we were to go to another culture that's okay with topless women we would have to adapt because it would be inappropriate for us to tell those women to cover up it's because i feel like still there's two different conversations here there's like teach if i'm a discipleship setting guys girls 100 we need to disciple the guys probably way better than we've been doing so that the modesty talk is more or equally whatever on on them and being extra sensitive and how our language can produce unaffected unintended shame i'm more thinking like okay but i can't disciple the whole world you know i can't like i was at i was at a

bat i was at a basketball game the other day a bulls game the first nba game it's great game and uh you know i'm looking around all these you know half drunk people and you know i was sitting pretty close to the other cheerleaders, you know, and I'm like, here, I'm going to do my anecdotal survey. Like I always do. And just look around. I'm like, here's the problem though. Anecdotal surveys. Here's the, I will, I will actually say this with the anecdotal survey, we as humans and you're, you're into research, you know, this, I know, I'm sure we have such a tendency towards confirmation bias. We have such a strong tendency. It is one of the most, like every aspect of research across every area, every study. Yeah. We're very good at confirmation bias and that's not confirmation bias that we've all found it. We actually have

studied it across multiple disciplines, multiple times. And so when we are looking at a culture and saying, I'm going to see how the men are responding, or we're going to see how people are responding, we're not necessarily actually looking at it in a scientific way. That's why we have to look at the peer-reviewed research, which actually does show, currently the neuroscience research is coming out about visual nature and lust is showing that men and women are way more similar than they are different. We might show it differently in our culture because men feel more sexually entitled and sexually safe in our culture. So women might be a little bit more discreet in how we look, but we feel the same way. And so we might be tempted to look at, well, I know how this stuff happens.

Have you been on TikTok and seen an average like 15 year old's TikTok for you page? There's a lot of thirst traps go in both ways yeah okay men are like boys making thirst traps for girls girls are making thirst traps for boys okay it's thirst trap i'm not familiar with this one are you i can't tell if you're serious i'm not no i'm not on tiktok i don't know okay a thirst trap is like they are the cringiest thing it's in essence just people make videos trying to turn on people. Like it's like being all hot and all that kind of stuff.

And there's so many for girls. Yeah. Because increasingly, if you look at the difference in the generations, the younger generation of girls are far more likely to be tempted by pornography than older generations of women. They're far more likely to report, um, yeah, being visually stimulated in roughly the same numbers. And so this idea that only girls need to be modest, um, because of the stumbling block, it just, it doesn't even fit with what research is showing. Especially since girls have had to be around immodest boys for so long and have managed not to have an epidemic in the same way. Maybe we

need to focus less on modesty for both and more on respect for everyone, regardless of what they're wearing. And that's, and that's really what we found over and over again, is that, is that if our goal is to raise girls who are safe, you know, that's just, we just want girls to be safe and we want girls to be happy and have good self-esteem and good relationships. You know, one of the best ways to get there is to help them have a voice. Just tell them that they don't need to cater to everybody else to make themselves smaller, to make themselves different so that other people don't treat them badly.

They need to know that God made them in His image. And as much as He made the boys in His image, they are not less than the image of God. They don't deserve to speak less. They don't deserve less. They need to be able to feel their worth, because when they feel their worth, they will be safer. Because the biggest thing that leads to girls not being safe is that girls make poor decisions because they don't think they're worth more and so we need to help our girls know they're worth more and that means we need to give them a voice yeah i think it's really easy to be scared about you know the the objectifying out in the real out in the quote-unquote the real world it's

really easy to be scared of that because it probably happens more frequently than the other scary big things. But our research has found that the messages like the modesty message and cultures where these messages that tell girls, if you don't cover up, men will look at you. And it will be because of how you're dressed, at least in part. Those kinds of cultures are more correlated with every single actually big life-changing scary thing that happens. Yeah, like in the churches that teach that message, the loudest, we see girls being more sexually assaulted within the church in our survey. We see girls witnessing more sexual harassment within the youth group. We see a whole lot of negative outcomes in that particular church.

Is it because it's, you're saying because it's lowering their self-esteem when confidence and... It's a bunch of things. It's a bunch of things. So first of all, there's a culture of church that cultivates the idea that men are at least partially under the control of women's bodies in terms of whether or not they assault them, right? So there's a culture that speaks to our young girls telling them, at least in part, you are responsible if you are mistreated, because we're making men and their needs and their sexuality front and center,

we're making men and their needs and their sexuality front and center, rather than seeing both of us as in the image of God the same way and giving equal consideration to both the male and the female perspective and not saying that the female perspective is a risk to the male. That makes sense. Because we also know that there are going to be people who, it doesn't matter what decisions that you make, they are going to seek you out and abuse are going to be people who it doesn't matter what decisions that you make. They are going to seek you out and abuse you. There are people who are going to. There's absolutely nothing that anyone could have done, even with 2020 vision. Nothing that you could have done.

Where are those men going to hide? Because they are typically men. Where are they going to hide? They're going to hide in churches that are already telling our, again, eight-year-old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old girls that your belly is very intoxicating. So we got to make sure we cover it up. They're going to be hiding in churches that are priming their congregants to think, well, what was she wearing? Or all men lust. They can't help it. You know, there was a survey that was done by Shanti Felden for her book for young women only. Now we don't agree with the way she worded her survey question.

No, I have a major. And we don't agree with the way that she grouped the results. And so I'm going to give you a number that she found, but we don't think that this is accurate. Okay. But in her survey, um, she asked boys, uh, if you were in a makeout situation with a girl, how with your girlfriend, um, how likely is it that you would be able to stop or want to stop? And she concluded that 82% of boys responsibility and little ability to stop in a makeout situation and then she highlighted in her book one guy's conclusion which is if you want to stop it's better to not even start now telling girls that 82 percent of boys cannot stop or do not want to stop or will not stop is rape culture. But this is what

we largely teach girls is you need to watch out. Boys can't stop. Boys can't stop. Boys are going to push your sexual boundaries. And so you need to be the gatekeeper. You need to stop it. And this is what we have told girls over and over and over again. And we've done it because we want to protect girls. But then what happens when girls are in a date rape situation, they think it was their fault. And the number of people that we heard that from was just awful. Do you want to tell Vera's story? Yeah. We heard from a girl who, I think Kay's story is probably a little bit better.

Okay. Yeah. I think there was a woman we talked to who we call Kay, who was in, who was dating a boy, you know, and they're in the back of a car, they're making out, right? As you do when you're 17, you're dating. And they're making out and he starts to go a little far and she's like, oh, stop, stop, stop. That's, that's too much. That's too much. It's like, okay, I'll stop.

And they go back to kissing. And then he tries again and it's stop, stop, stop. It's too much. We go back to kissing and he keeps going again and again and again past her boundary that she set again and again and eventually she just thinks he's never going to stop i've let it go too far and i shouldn't have worn that skirt and then they have they, they engage in some sexual acts and she's, she didn't realize that she had been raped for over a decade after because she thought she caused it because of teachings like this. And then because she was taught that what you really need to do is preserve

your virginity. Then she thought I no longer have a right to say no, because I've already. Wow. But I think the problem is... Yeah, that's horrible. And again, there should be no debate that she should never feel like she's the one to blame for that. That does seem to illustrate, I well tell me if i'm wrong the point you're trying to refute the the guy being told the guy can't stop won't stop doesn't want to stop they have a harder time controlling their last like that doesn't that kind of show at least again in that one example that it was the guy that kept kind of it no because it's not that he couldn't stop it's that he didn't stop there's a very big difference between didn't and couldn't.

He could have stopped. If a rabid raccoon had jumped into that truck and tried to attack his penis, he would have stopped. He was physically able to stop. It's just that he didn't think that consent, that a lack of consent was a good enough reason to stop. This is an issue of sexual entitlement. And the issue is that these ideas that boys are just like this and boys will be boys and boys can't stop. It breeds sexual entitlement. It teaches boys. Yeah, you should try your best, but we know that you're just a guy. Yeah, no, that's, that's the wrong. Yeah. That's the wrong

message. But I mean, how, how, yeah, let's get settled on language here how about more more difficult to stop no it's not more difficult to stop there is no evidence there's no evidence no evidence of that what do you mean no what do you mean no like if you can i'm talking about just a higher sex drive generally speaking among sex drive has nothing to do with someone's ability to respect consent. Sex drive has not, is not something that makes it more likely that someone will have to rape someone. Not again. Sex drive. No, no, no, no. Cause what we're saying here is that it's more difficult. And so we're, we're, we're adding caveats to boys' ability to respect consent. That's not, we can't do that. There's no evidence that shows that

higher levels of, you know, any hormone or anything is a good enough reason to commit rape. That's why there's no, obviously I'm not saying that. I'm saying like, when you start saying that a boy's sex drive makes it harder for him to stop. That's what is being said. What you're saying is that boys can't honor consent and anyone can honor consent. This is what, this is what I think, this is what we need to tell kids. Instead of boys will push your sexual boundaries. And this is what we do in the book is we, we teach parents how to reframe this and she deserves better.

Okay. Here's what you say. You're a teenager. You are gonna have sexual feelings for one another. You know what you say. You're a teenager. You are going to have sexual feelings for one another. You know what? God created us with sex drives. We are going to want to have sex. Okay. That's natural. That's normal. That is nothing to be ashamed of, but we need to figure out what's wise for you to do right now and what you think God wants you to do right now. And then make those boundaries for yourself and make a plan for how you're going to stick to those boundaries. But even more importantly than that, honor the boundaries

of the person you're with. And if you are ever with someone who does not honor your boundaries, that is a huge red flag that this person is not safe and you need to get out of the situation. And whatever happens was not your fault. That's what we need to be telling teenagers instead of boys can't help it. They're super sexed. You need to be careful. Yeah. Because there's, we don't need to just send our daughters out naive little, you know, waifs of things, go enter a pool of men. You know, we don't need to, we don't need to send them out like, you know, sheep among wolves. We're not saying that. And I'm not saying, but there are,

like, we don't send our girls out naive. What we instead tell them is instead of telling them boys will have a hard time stopping, we say anyone who pushes past your sexual boundaries does not respect you, is not safe. And you need to immediately say no and get out of there, no matter who they are, no matter how nice they seem, no matter how much they say, well, I'm trying.

Right, right, right. I'm sorry. I got to keep pushing because I agree. Like, I agree with all of that. I got to be really careful my language here. Because, again, I'll say one more time. In no way would I say let's just assume. Let's just assume.

And I know you might push back on it. You know, males generally have a, on a general level, higher sex drive. I am not saying that gives them right to violate consent a hundred percent. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm just trying to acknowledge, and I guess also in our society when certain people might be tempted with certain things on a greater level, and just to at least be aware of that, not going to certain situations in a naive way. So like say a girl's in the back of a car with a male. And again, I'm speaking on a general level. Each individuality is different. We have a good number of asexual females today, you know, so not everybody has even a sex drive period. But they're in the back of a car, you have a male who is for the most, going to be a lot stronger physically.

The sex drive, generally speaking, is going to be higher. I'm not going to put my faith in the willpower of a male with spikes of testosterone and strength and muscle mass and upper body strength. I'm not going to put my faith in his willpower to respect consent. 100%, I'm not blaming anybody but faith in his willpower to respect consent. A hundred percent. I'm not blaming anybody, but him, if that consent is violated, I'm just trying to acknowledge the biological realities of some differences in,

in male, female sexuality, which can be illustrated, I guess, and let me, let me also acknowledge like my main area research is sexuality. So I read probably all the same literature you have, or at least most of it. It is the most politicized studies on earth.

When I hear people even talk about peer-reviewed literature on sexuality studies, I roll my eyes like, well, yeah, which one? Like there's two, you know, heated camps that they go head to head on, you know, the essentialist versus the constructionist, you know, heated camps that they go head to head on, you know, the essentialist versus the constructionist, you know, is it culture? Is it biology? Is it, and I read back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Neuroscience is some of the most politicized research done where I could read this expert over here and it's all culture shaping the brain over here. No, it's all biology. That's the brain, you know? So I, i the clarity even in the medical research about the the scientific research is super super complex i don't know where i was going with that can i just

ask well here in excited you know a lot of my sexuality research is in same-sex sexuality and and it's almost again i don't give it like you know there's a whole theory like the the lesbian deathbed syndrome meaning like you get two lesbians have been been together for a long time and you know sexual relationships are shit they start we call it the deathbed like how come you know lesbians aren't having near as much sex as they used to or not at all whatever um and yet sexual relationships in a gay male gay community is is going to be way way way, way, way, way more frequent, intense, multiple partners. And those are not, I don't think that's, I don't think that's really disputed. I mean, that's pretty established.

Which, you know, you have two females with two female sex drives, two males with two male sex drives. And you're going to look very, the sexual output is going to be very different in those communities. The sexual output is going to be very different in those communities. Can I just ask, what do you think functionally changes from telling girls if someone pushes past your boundaries, they're unsafe versus telling them boys are going to have a harder time stopping than you? What functionally is different? Say it again. So what we're saying is instead of saying boys simply have a higher sex drive, don't say that. Instead, say if anyone tries to push past your sexual boundaries, they are not respecting you. So you should just say no and get out. What do you think is functionally the difference?

Well, first of all, I kind of want to acknowledge both. I think both can be true at the same time. Oh, we're not. That's not the question. What's different? But like, because those two, here's the thing. The goal is to have a girl who's not raped on a date, right? Like that's our goal.

You can get to that way by either teaching her boys are dangerous and can't and are having a really hard time respecting your consent or you can teach her if someone tries to not respect your consent get out of there regardless of whether or not they have a higher sex drive than you and by the way if you also try to push past someone else's boundaries you're not being respectful of them you need to stop what is the functional difference because at the end're, we have the same goal. But what we have found in our research is that telling girls boys can't help themselves actually makes it less likely we will achieve that goal of her feeling and being sexually safe. Yeah. And it also makes it far more likely that when she gets married, she's going to have, she's going to have a hard time with arousal. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like it

really hurts her marriage long-term. Like, yeah. Cause we're not saying just don't tell them anything. We're saying look for the red flags and get out if they show red flags. So what is functionally so important about teaching girls that boys have a higher sex drive? I think so. Yeah. Um, cause I, I, I 100% agree with that messaging can be so counterproductive in how we're going about it. Again, I'm learning that it's a slow learning process for me. Gen X or growing up in the environment I did having three daughters and like, Oh my gosh, my well intended things are backfiring. And I try to, cause, um, everything we're saying, whatever disagreement we may seem to have here, our ultimate goal is 100% the same. So I'm trying to figure out how to, here, I guess I'm trying to not-

The safety of the girls that we love. Our goal is the safety of the girls that we love. 100%. And not feel blame if they are in a situation, regardless of whether they had choices that got them there, regardless that any violation of consent is a violation of consent, period. Hands down, you're not to blame for that unless you're the one violating the consent. I want to help my girls to not be naive about the real world where you have a bunch of sinful people, to make wise decisions to where they're not in a situation where all of a sudden, again, where it's a scary situation where they're with a guy that let's just say he doesn't have as much self-control, he's stronger, higher sex drive. Yeah. So just to avoid those situations without conveying the idea

that if she does find herself in that situation, that she's all of a sudden to blame for that. Yeah. Okay. Let me just push back again. Having a higher sex drive does not mean that you don't have self-control. And I just, I just, I I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that just because someone has a higher sex drive, that you are necessarily in a more dangerous situation. There are a lot of women who have higher sex drives than their husbands. They are not more likely to sexually assault their husbands. Like, so we just, we just need to differentiate. There's a physical strength difference there too okay what if there's a six foot four woman married to a five foot one man who has a higher sex drive sure yeah if she's an mma fighter then yeah he's he's kind of in a i would tell him to avoid that situation but as well as well you know um

rape is far less about sex as it is about entitlement. And so that's been disproven though. Louise Perry blew that up. I mean, I know that's been a theory, but that's not. Because, no, actually we studied this as well. We found this in our surveys. Okay. The men who feel that their wives are obligated to give them sex when they want it, the men who feel like they are entitled to sex are far more likely to treat their wives poorly, to not care about their sexual pleasure, to have wives who feel used after sex. Like this, the feeling of entitlement is highly correlated with feeling like I can go further than you want me to. Okay. So, so, so I do think we need to separate

the idea that just because someone has a higher sex drive that they, that they necessarily have less self-control. No, they don't. And, and girls remember too, when you're talking to girls, your daughter might be the one with the higher sex drive because a lot of teenage girls have very high sex drives. So it's actually a really interesting study that came out that found that if a girl orgasms the first time she has sex, she has the same likelihood of having a high sex drive as a man. Yeah. Like what happens on your sexual debut dictates your libido later on. And so part of the reason that women have lower libidos is also because they don't orgasm the first time they don't have as good sex. And so their brains learn, I don't really want this. Yeah. But if they do orgasm, their likelihood of having the

same libido as their partner is, goes way up. Like they have the same likelihood. So, but that's beside the point. What I really wanted to say was this, um, if we are trying to keep girls safe, there is a reality. And I completely agree with you, Preston, that this is not a safe world for our girls. And so teaching the teaching girls, you know what, sexual assault is a real problem that you're going to face. That's not fair. It is not fair, but it does mean that when you're walking home and it's dark, you need to have a game plan. You know, you need to be talking on your cell phone loudly to people, to some, even, even if there's no one there, you need to be talking loudly on your cell phone. Yeah. I'm on my way home. I'll be there in five minutes. You need to learn to look people straight in the eye.

When you're on a bus, you need to sit by the driver. You need to check the back seat before you get in a car. Whatever your personal protection plans are for your area. You need to not drink anything that you didn't pour yourself. Yes, we need to teach our girls these basic safety measures but we also need to realize that they are far more likely to you know to be sexually assaulted by someone that they know and and so it's just really important that we teach our girls that you're not to blame. And so, yeah, sure. Be wise, honor the other person,

but you know, if we teach people to recognize boundary crossing as a bad thing, it likely wouldn't even get to that point because the kind of guy who was going to cross your boundary and assault you is probably also the kind of guy who is going to be really possessive when you're with other people and isn't going to treat you well. Like these things go hand in hand. Or he's the kind of guy who, when you're making out and you ask him not to put your hand, his hand under your shirt, he's going to do it again. Right. Like, and if we start, instead of teaching girls, this is how boys are there. He just might have a harder time than you. That's actually priming her to expect him to push her boundaries. It's not teaching her to

stand up. And this is the accidental negative effect of that teaching of saying, well, boys have a harder time. They don't have as much self-control in this area. When we say those kinds of things, what we do is you have this girl who's in love with her boyfriend, Brett. She loves Brett. She thinks Brett is the greatest and they're making out and Brett starts going past her boundaries. And what does she do? She's like, Oh, she's starting to freeze. And she thinks, okay, but boys just have a harder time. And so she kind of stops him. And instead of in her mind, it being, that was unacceptable.

There was no reason for that. Absolutely not. You deserve better. What she hears is, well, I can't really, he's a good guy. This is just how guys are. We need to teach our girls. Any guy who goes past your boundaries is not just being a guy. He is not being appropriate. He is not respecting you and he's not safe. And he might just need to grow up. He might just need time to grow up. He isn't necessarily going to turn into some rapist. This is super helpful. So I 100% agree on everything you're just saying. Like

teaching them more of a holistic view of relationships, seeing signs of control, domination, being involved with a guy is just a bad guy. When you get to the back of the car situation, we could have prevented that before by teaching them signs of here's what

respect looks like. Here's what respect for women looks like. Here's what consent looks like. Again, you can see things early on. And then also I'm hearing you say, whatever differences I'm trying to draw out here, I'm in a full agreement on just the unintended effects, bad effects of the messaging and how we're trying to communicate something. And you're saying, when, effects, bad effects of the messaging and how we're trying to communicate something. And you're saying if we maybe, when we communicate guys, they can't control themselves. They're more prone to this. They can't stop when it does, if it does, if, and when they do find themselves in that situation, we're almost teaching them to kind of like, let it happen because. And to not break up with the guy. Right. Okay.

To not break up with the guy. So that, so, okay. No, that's, that's really helpful. And in She Deserves Better, we have like at the end of each chapter, we have these exercises to do with your daughter. We have a really intense one on consent. So you can have these conversations with your daughter to recognize consent. And that includes learning how you can violate his consent.

Because that's, that's a piece we don't often talk about. But girls need to learn to not violate his consent, too. Consent goes both ways. Yeah. And something we say in the book is that, you know, your daughter is not someone's learning opportunity. So, sure, boys, let's say I don't actually believe that boys have less self-control I believe that boys have been trained to believe that they don't that they that they are owed sex and the girl the way that girls have not and I believe that boys are less physically um vulnerable to sex and so they don't feel the fear of the repercussions the way that girls do who can become pregnant um I think

that explains the difference more than anything else I I think it's that boys feel entitled and don't bear the repercussions in the same way. But what if we are telling our girls that boys just, you know, say it is harder for boys. And so they need to learn how to respect consent. Our daughters are not learning opportunities. Our daughters are not homework. They're not the people who are supposed to teach the boys around them how to respect women. They are not. That is not their responsibility. And so that's why we push back so hard on this idea that we need to tell our girls this is how guys are, because it is not their responsibility to help a boy learn how to honor her.

No, her job is only to say no and to get herself out of the situation, to break up with the boy, let him grow up and be a great guy for someone else once he's learned how to respect women. That's good. That's good. We can keep going. We probably have another two hours.

I do have to run though. And my daughter's reading your book. She asked me probably half a dozen times, when can I get their book? When can I get their book? So I think, yeah, I don't know if my wife or my, yeah, finally got your publisher to send us a pre-release copy. So yeah, her and her mom, my wife, are going through it together.

So love the conversation. I hope you appreciate the candid dialogue. This is so interesting. I love this. We love how you push back. It is so interesting. I love this. We love how you push back. It's so great. It's great to actually get to the nitty gritty of these conversations and actually get to it.

Yeah, the one thing I keep saying again, just the unintended effects of well-intended messaging is huge. It's huge in this. That's super helpful. Well, where can people find your work and tell us the name of the book and when it comes out again? Yeah. So she deserves better, uh, raising girls to resist toxic teachings on sex,

self, and speaking up. Um, it's available for pre-order now, um, anywhere where you get books, she deserves better. Uh, and our website is baremar.com, B-A-R-E. And there's links to all of our books, including The Great Sex Rescue. There's links to our puberty course to teach your kids about sex and puberty. If you just look under courses and our podcast is there. So we have a podcast every Thursday to The Bare Marriage Podcast, and you can join us as well. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for the work you're doing. I would encourage everybody to go check out both your website and your newest book and also your previous books as well. All right.

Thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.