Oh man, this sex therapist just threw the gauntlet down on the Elder Callister and the church's anti- masturbation stance. I'm only going to highlight a few things here but you should read the entirety it's all very, very good she knocks it way out of the park
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mormontherapist/2014/02/morality-we-can-do-much-better-than-this.html
I was thinking with this and the quote about "a woman attracts the man she dresses for" idea that it is utterly AMAZING to me that there aren't way more mormon divorces due to this childish view of sex. I mean yes, we don't want our wives to be dressed up like strippers when we go out to the store. But what man doesn't want his wife to be sexy and confident and sexual in the bedroom? What guy doesn't want her to wear a little Victoria's Secret or *gasp* Fredrick's of Hollywood in the bedroom? How, exactly, do we expect women to own their own sexuality and confidence after they've spent nearly a decade having it crushed? While it's less common the same thing happens to guys. I mean I've met women who feel terrible because their husband only wants sex twice a month, while they want sex 2-3 times a week. They genuinely feel like sinful, lustful bad people for this when it's goddamned normal/healthy. I've met guys that had been married to their wives for years and the number of times they had sex was in the single digits.
I'm not saying that sex is all there is to marriage. But it's a large part of it and having seen tons of people get divorced over sex or cheat on a spouse that is only "meh" sexually I don't think people can say that sex is a small part of a healthy marriage, especially after they've get to/have crossed the "7 year itch" part. I believe that when the sex is good it's 10% of the marriage and when it's bad it's 90%.
I am just astounded that the church honestly believes that its members can transition from a state of non-sexuality to a state of sexuality enough to support monogamy as if a switch had just been thrown. This is an old antiquated idea that's left over from the idea that a wife should submit to her husband and where sexuality was on the man's terms. That died 40+ years ago and yet we're STILL talking like that. Monogamy is a complicated dance that requires both partners to follow and lead at the same time. And the church would have you go your whole life never dancing and then suddenly after you get married to become Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It doesn't work like that, it hasn't worked like that since the 70s.
Not to mention what it does to our non-married members. What a number is getting played on them. I mean one of the top posts on reddit right now is a guy who started cutting instead of masturbating. I saw a mormon blog the other day about a single woman called something like "waiting for my life to begin". How sad is that? I've had this saying that the church is stuck in pre-1950s and that, more than the internet, will be the end of them. I've said it for about 5 years now, but honestly I never really took it too seriously. But really in the past few weeks I'm starting to think that maybe I should start taking it seriously. The church's issues around sex will not go away and they're plentiful and very serious.
- Telling LGBTs that they're welcomed but doomed to a life without love or a life without the church. That's not gonna work in the 21st century. Too many people out of the closet now. Everyone knows someone who's gay and is a good person.
- Telling women that they attract the man they dress for. That's not gonna work in the 21st Century. I hate hate HATE the words "rape culture" but...yeah.
- Infantilizing members that aren't married. That's not gonna work in the 21st Century. Women are putting off getting married til later as are men. Leaving them stuck as "less than grown ups" in perpetuity until they're married isn't gonna hold up.
- Tying a woman's salvation to a man. That's not gonna work in the 21st century. Oaks came out a while ago and addressed the complaint of some women saying there weren't enough worthy men to marry and what should they do. His response was that the best way to help women was to create more active men. Women don't think like that anymore. They want be masters of their own fate. Hell, even Disney has caught onto this.
- Preaching asexuality until marriage. That's not going to work in the 21st century. Monogamy has changed (just like war). It's no longer a "duty" to be done/fulfilled. You don't "endure to the end" with it. Like I said it's a complex dance and delivering people up for marriage that a sexual IQ in the tens is a terrible way to start that dance
- Preaching against masturbation. That's not going to work in the 21st century. There used to be a time where most everyone preached against masturbation but that time's gone. Now people are talking, and the church can't hide behind a curtain. People will know other people masturbate and are moral and good people. This combined with everyone getting married later, well something's gotta give. I'd lump porn in here too, but I think that one's a bit more difficult to address. No, I don't believe that most people who say they're "addicted" actually are (not by a long shot). But at the same time, there are people that can't handle it. These are by far few and far between, but they do exist.
In short the only thing I think the church has a good stance when it comes to sex in the modern world is monogamy, but even that one they do not prepare its members anymore for proper monogamy than me shouting at my kids not to pick their nose prepares them for a life of proper hygiene.
Yes, yes, I know the church wont change. And yeah, I'm probably over dramatizing the doom for the church. But honestly, I see friends and family having their lives ruined by this shit, I see self-esteems destroyed, lives thought of as worthless, divorces and broken homes and dreams and I'm not laying all of those at the feet of the church, but I'm also not foolish enough to say they have no small part in it.
R