The high cost of casual sex

At the recommendation of a friend, I’ve recently been reading Michael Lewis’ excellent book The Blind Side. While until now I knew little about football beyond the fact that the quarterback is the one who throws the ball, they all hunch over before the play, and you score by running into the end zone (except when you kick or throw it through the end posts), Lewis succeeded in making the sport both fairly intelligible and compelling to me. If I thought I could actually witness some of the strategy he was talking about in a play, I might even schedule time to watch a game sometime this fall.

One interesting thing that struck me, though, toward the end of the book, was a passing exchange that highlighted how much is often at stake in one’s sexual license. Lewis is describing a Thanksgiving meal at the home of Michael Oher’s adoptive family, to which Michael’s brought some from friends from the Ole Miss football team.

To Thanksgiving dinner, for instance, Michael had invited a freshman linebacker named Quentin Taylor, who had no place else to go. At the start of the meal Michael leaned over and whispered, sternly, “Quentin, you’re supposed to put your napkin in your lap.” Right after that, Quentin let it drop that he had fathered three children by two different mothers. Leigh Anne [Michael’s adoptive mother] pulled the carving knife from the turkey and said, “Quentin, you can do what you want and it’s your own business. But if Michael Oher does that I’m cutting his penis off.” From the look on Quentin’s face Michael could see he didn't think she was joking. “She would too,” said Michael without breaking a smile.

It’s often very easy, I’ve noticed, for conversations about sexuality that tend toward the secular/liberal corner of the quadrant to stress heavily the importance of our “individual freedoms” and the “right” to self-expression. But what is often overlooked in such idealistic conversations is all the accompanying assumptions about class, race, sex and education that play into this simplistic view of things. The fact of the matter is, certain policies/freedoms/rights that many in America have long vociferously defended can take on very nefarious consequences in situations where the circumstances we have mostly unconsciously assumed for said rights are not all present.
Thus, for instance, a recent New York Times bloggingheads post discussing the problem of abortion’s use to drastically thin the population of female babies in India -- “sex-selection abortion,” they called it. And thus, as David Briggs noted in an article for the Plain Dealer earlier this summer, the urgency to a growing emphasis on abstinence in some urban communities and churches. As one source he interviewed put it, “There’s no way in the world we can avoid talking about sex because we see the devastation it does in our community.”

Sometimes what we think we’re defending can lead to very different results than those we meant to champion. And sometimes the self-control needed to not take full advantage of one’s rights can be a matter of far more than just a little pleasure or convenience. Sometimes it’s a matter of justice.

Things that make me miss New York

What’s that, you say? This blog’s been so quiet, you worried that I had gotten injured or married?

Nothing like that exactly has happened, but somehow since the book came out, it’s been harder to keep scribbling posts about the spinster life, much less with the candor I used to have. And there have also been various projects, family things ... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Now and then, though, I do manage to squeeze some reading in, though it’s long since eclipsed my knitting as the ultimate leisure activity. One of my occasional reads, thanks to a peculiar email subscription that suddenly started more than two years after my year of getting the New York Observer for free in the mail ended is said paper’s online version.

It’s not as common as the city tabloids, but neither is it as literary and self-important as the Times. And sometimes, the faintly gossipy tone they take with almost all subjects lends itself to nostalgia-inspiring stories of New York quirks, such as these two from a recent issue:

• A snail-mail break-up
• The strategic role of publishing galleys in increasing one’s odds of a subway hook-up

And speaking of the subway, I was utterly delighted with this creative illustration of two New York tots’ ardent passion for all things transit. Did I mention how delightful it was?

Finally, if you haven’t yet picked up the book, it’s now on sale at Amazon (if you want your copy brand-new) or deeply discounted as a used copy. And if you have got the book, don’t forget I’ll send signed bookplates (until they run out) to you and a friend if you want to give it as a gift. Just email me for further details.

Have a happy, safe holiday! And if you’re going to enjoy the fireworks, be EyeSmart.

Crossed-eyes bad for your love life?

It must be something in the atmosphere. Just hours after an eHarmony Advice email all about “body”-related dating dilemmas (topics ranged from morning breath to unibrow to piercings), I came across this fascinating article in a company email newsletter.

Looksism wins the day?
Apparently people with strabismus (a condition where eyes are either crossed or one strays out) face an acute romantic disadvantage. How bad? The study reports only “strong acne” or a “visible missing tooth” have a worse effect on your love life. More specifically, potential partners also “perceive persons with strabismus as significantly less attractive (p<0.001), erotic (p<0.001), likeable (p<0.001), interesting (p<0.001), successful (p<0.001), intelligent (p = 0.001) and sporty (p = 0.01).” Yikes! Might be worth that not-so-cosmetic surgery to fix.

To kiss and peak or not to
And in other eye-related love-life quandaries, the ever-informative eHa-Advice email also reports that kissing with eyes closed or not has been a mighty hot topic on the site of late. And here I was thinking it was doing well just to kiss or get kissed!

Mid-week reading trifecta

For those either curious or desperately bored on this Wednesday, there were a few new articles on the book this weekend, with especially nice turns by The Oklahoman and the
Tampa Tribune.

And for something a bit more original, check out my new post on the Radiant blog “The Pulse”: a look at Baby Mama, Iron Man, movie sex scenes and what I call “the lost art of implication.”

Happy Wednesday!

Sexless in the City Readers’ Guide

Like most of you, I hope (at least those reading in the U.S.), I’m enjoying the Memorial Day holiday this weekend, so don’t know how much blogging that will result in. Nonetheless, I did want to briefly announce a new resource now online at the Doubleday website: a readers’ guide for Sexless in the City.

If you’re thinking of suggesting the book to your reading group, or would like some questions to think about as you digest what you’ve read, it’s a great resource. And as always, don’t forget that you can also find all the songs quoted in the book in the Sexless soundtrack, and browse the books and albums referenced in the Sexless Amazon store.

New Radiant post: ‘The Vicarious Pleasures of Courage’

I’m off to San Diego this weekend, so don’t know if I’ll have time for a full post here, but my latest piece for Radiant’s blog “The Pulse” is now up, this one musing on Eat, Pray, Love. What do cobras have to do with eating pizza and accidentally drowning lizards in your coffee? Read the post and find out.

Also, don’t forget that for a few days more, you can still take 15% off one item at BarnesandNoble.com -- a great way to save even more when you buy Sexless. And until I run out of bookplates, I’ll send a signed pair to every reader who wants to share the book with a friend.

Happy weekend! Hope it’s not as hot where you are as it is here!

Train designers help improve brassieres?

Just saw this article in Newsweek, and one quote was too awesome to keep to myself:

One U.K.-based bra company, Charnos, even brought on a team of industrial designers, putting the same concepts they use to design trains to work on designing a properly supportive bra.

The story goes on to say, “Another London firm, Seymour Powell, scanned several hundred women using machinery normally used on automobiles to gather data on breast shape and form, then it developed a plastic molding to replace the uncomfortable and ill-fitting underwire that has dominated the market for decades.”

All this notwithstanding, the author soberly concludes: “While such advances are impressive, there remains no El Dorado of the bra world.”

Ah, to have an assignment like that, and the chance for such deadpan reportage. The author must be the belle of writer cocktail parties this week!

New Radiant post: ‘Readings, Writing and a Wedding Parallel’

Still haven’t gotten word whether I can simul-post entries or not, so if you want to hear my take on a recent Mary Roach reading (complete with signs for certain sex-ed-class words and anatomical cakes), have a read. Besides, you wouldn’t think any of that would have some connection to a 17th-century poem and a recent chick-flick with that Knocked Up star, now would you? But it does ...

And don’t forget, you have until Tuesday to enter to win one of five signed copies of Sexless in the City! New details added on how you can do so even without a blog.

Lastly, after a shamefully long wait to follow through, I finally picked the winners of the chocolate-chip cookie prize for those who responded to my reader poll ... um, almost two years back. The winners are readers Elaina and Tiye (email me if you didn’t get your congratulatory email with details on how to claim your prize). And since said winner selection required the development of a highly scientific process involving Singaporean post-it notes, I am happy to report there should be no such delays in picking the winner of this contest (besides which, it’s far easier to sign books than bake a batch of cookies from scratch).

Friday morning morality play

First off: a few announcements. The book is due out in less than three weeks, so if you haven’t yet pre-ordered your copy, it will be in bookstores soon. And if you live in the Oakland area, I too will be in a bookstore, at least the night of April 18. Tell a friend and then come down and join us at A Great Good Place for Books, in the heart of Montclair. (If you would be interested in helping set up a reading or other event in your city, email me about getting involved with my street team. We have a limited number of free copies of the book as a thank-you to those who get involved.)

Secondly, if you’d like a break from my voice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a column today that mentions the blog: “Sex rules are best laughed at.” Check it out if you’re looking for a funny read and a breezy digest of several recent sex studies.

In a study of a different kind, we did an interesting exercise in a training session yesterday that I thought I would share. I know: sounds dorky, right? But actually, I found that it provided an interesting barometer of the character traits we value. If you want to “play along,” find a piece of scratch paper and make a list with the names Ivan, Abigail, Gregory, Sinbad and Slug and prepare to rank the five characters on a scale of 1 to 5, least to most reprehensible.

The story: ‘Alligator River’
Once upon a time there was a woman named Abigail who was in love with a man named Gregory. Gregory lived on the shore of the river. Abigail lived on thee opposite shore of the river. The river that separated the two lovers was teeming with man-eating alligators. Abigail wanted to cross the river to be with Gregory. Unfortunately, the bridge was washed out. So she went to Sinbad, a riverboat captain, to take her across. He said he would be glad to if she would consent to go to bed with him preceding a voyage. She promptly refused and went to a friend named Ivan to explain her plight. Ivan did not want to be involved at all in the situation. Abigail felt her only alternative was to accept Sinbad’s terms. Sinbad fulfilled his promise to Abigail and delivered her into the arms of Gregory.

When she told Gregory of her escapade in order to cross the river, Gregory cast her aside with disdain. Heartsick and dejected, Abigail turned to Slug with her tale of woe. Slug, feeling compassion for Abigail, sought out Greogry and beat him severly.
Abigail was overjoyed at the sight of Gregory getting his due. As the sun sets on the horizon, we hear Abigail laughing at Gregory.

I know, I know: it’s not exactly up to the standard of Hemingway, but still it led to an interesting discussion. The assignment, you see, was for each of us to individually rank the characters from best to worst, after which we were put in groups to develop a group ranking. This was where the differences really emerged, however.

Whereas I thought Ivan’s hands-off approach was probably the healthiest of all of them, the rest of the folks in my group deemed him worst because of his passivity and lack of compassion. And whereas they all thought Gregory was cruel for spurning Abigail, I found little evidence of his love for or interest in her. To me, she seemed like a desperate, aggressive woman, unwilling to let anything thwart her efforts to get the fulfillment of her desire. Gregory certainly should have made it clear to her what his standards were, but it doesn’t exactly sound like he encouraged her to go so lengths for them to be together.

Another point of disagreement was the character of Sinbad. Once each group had reached their collective ranking, all of us compared our results. While my team agreed that Sinbad was rather mercenary, we did give him props for consistency and being very upfront about his ethical standards (perhaps this is why I liked 3:10 to Yuma). The other groups tended to rate him as the worst, however, because of his willingness to abuse power and take advantage of Abigail’s neediness.

Your thoughts?

More on girlspeak/guyspeak translation woes and what marriage does for your health

I don’t plan to make recommended reads the substance of this blog, but when making chowder collides with finishing a bottle of Chimay and putting the final touches on yet another op-ed draft (as it did last night), I’m left with just the latest interesting headlines to share. (Besides, as I think Andrew Sullivan once said, bloggers are the “sherpas of the internet.”)

Today’s reads:

• Why men can’t tell the difference between a flirty and friendly gesture
• What marriage means for your blood pressure

And as an unrelated announcement ...

Have any new, unused makeup or jewelry you don’t need?
A friend of mine is collecting donations of these and other items girls love -- all new, of course -- for a gift bag project. Donations need to be mailed by April 3; contact me for more details if you’re interested. No excuses, now; I know you must have at least some gift-with-purchase you’re never going to use ...

Coming soon ...

Dahlings, I promise, I see your hits checking back for more, but sadly all the most promising phrases and post ideas to drift through my brain come only at the most inappropriate (read: laptopless) moments. Gearing up for a weekend trip to New York and DC isn’t helping either. I did at least manage to fix one problem with sidebar links, so if the “Recent Post” list has been lately spurning your click-throughs, try again.

In the meantime, read, marvel and be scared — very scared — by this fabulous, funny example of girl brain, from Emily Giffin’s novel Baby Proof, in which the heroine ponders a proper response to invite she knows her ex has gotten as well:

I suddenly wonder exactly why I’m going out of my way to avoid Annie and Ray. I … don’t want to be around anyone or anything that reminds me of Ben, period, and I’m afraid that Annie will offer up unsolicited details of Ben’s new life. Details I most certainly don’t want to hear. Unless those details include that he’s single and miserable. And there’s no way that’s the case. After all, I saw him yucking it up with Tucker. He may not be in love with her, or even with her at all, but by no means did he appear to be a broken man.

Of course I could always tell Annie that I don’t want to hear anything about Ben, but I don’t want to come across as the big relationship loser, and I would appear to be emotionally unstable if I ruled out conversation about the most significant thing to happen to me, ever. Then Annie would pass this along to Ray who, as a man, would not have the good sense and tact to keep it to himself, and would instead tell Ben what a pitiful case I am. Moreover, if Annie obliges my request to avoid mention of Ben, I inevitably will read all sorts of things into her ensuing silence. I will wind up thinking that, yes, I told Annie I didn’t want to discuss Ben, but if the report were favorable to me (unfavorable for Ben) she’d somehow find a way to sneak it into the
conversation, as in, I know you didn’t want to hear anything about Ben, but he asks about you every time we see him and he seems desperately lonely without you.

In any event, this invitation forces my hand.

And that, in a nutshell, neatly sums up the sort of hyperanalytical lunacy women are constantly processing, at the drop of a hat (or invite, in this case). Back soon!

Some entertaining, interesting research

I’m still waiting for time and energy to align in my schedule such that I can write pt. 2 of “Anna and the Sergeant,” but in the meantime thought I’d share these two stories my housemate kindly alerted me to:

• Marital bickering doesn’t improve
• Cell phone use may blunt men’s, er, virility

Interestingly, the first story seems to confirm one take-away from my new favorite book (How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk): “The good doesn’t always last, but the bad usually gets worse.” Commendably, while some might be inclined to read the marriage study as a discouraging finding, the authors note that it may just be an indication of the couple’s growing intimacy and increased willingness to be themselves. For some reason this also makes me think of the piece in this week’s Newsweek on how our nearly pathological efforts to treat and avoid sadness may not be so healthy.

Back in a bit!

E-dating week 5: Gambling on love?

So I’ve got a little confession to make: I’m not quite sure what Kenny Rogers’ advice on gambling means, or how it applies to life, but I might be about to embark on a little romantic roulette beyond the blind date blackjack I played a few weeks ago. (Is that enough cheesy gambling references yet? Yes? Good.)

Can buy me love?

The last lotto ticket I plan to buy.

Yes, I might be about ready to plunk down cash for a dating service. I didn’t have to do it with the first one, since their two free trial periods were sufficient time for most of the guys I met on there to give me their emails or IM handles — and CrazyBlindDate is free of course — but eHarmony wants to charge me through the proverbial wazoo to answer questions from/trade emails with/view pictures of my matches. And by wazoo — in case you haven’t priced such services lately — I mean anywhere from $60 for one month to $251.40 for one year.

Now, granted, they have a vastly better interface than the previous site (though clearly the former had work to do in ensuring their users were actually revenue-generators), but still, the whole thing entails a bigger financial commitment than I’m prepared to make ... at least before my likely first date with e-Prospect #1 this weekend (turns out life in the mujahidin did not exclude some internet use after all). I still have almost no clue what the plan for Sunday is, but we’ll see. I guess you have to play each hand one at a time, eh? In any case, depending on how that all goes, I may be more or less likely to fold ’em, more or less likely to hold ’em, pay up and see how harmonious my matches are.

Either way, this new experiment at “putting myself out there” seems to involve risks with every deal. Obviously that’s inevitable, and some things will turn out better than I feared. Despite the cliché of blind dates being horribly demoralizing and awkward, my first one in a long time resulted in almost no nerves on my part and a very lively conversation that let me talk about things I’d forgotten I had thoughts about or had studied. (Alas, there wasn’t enough there for me to consider him a romantic prospect, but on the whole it vastly exceeded the street rep of such random outings. Props to the e-dating matchmakers at CrazyBlindDate.)

But as I try to get back on the same (or similar) emotional horse that bucked me off the last time and left several nice horseshoe grooves in my heart, it’s hard not to fear that I’m in for more pain this time, whether or not the ride’s half as good as it was the last time, and whether there’s one more thrilling fall involved. Then again, I’ve probably been that sort of romantic gambler/horse-rider who goes all in on the first round, who rides the horse without using stirrups, reins, or other standard safety devices (humor me, and find these two metaphors compatible, will ya?). This, it’s to be admitted, isn’t something I’ve really acknowledged till lately, but hopefully it’s a step toward saddling up again.

Improving on a poor poker face

One thing that may help me learn to ride and fall better is a new Sunday school class on dating that started this last week. Based on a DVD series with the author of How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk, it looks to be a tremendous guide to not so much different ways of dating but the skills, head knowledge and heart-pacing needed to “Pick the Right Partner” the course title mentions. The overview session alone gave me lots of new insights into some of the bruises my heart has sustained, and the book has uniformly high praise on Amazon. Check it out if the title is as new to you as it was me. Even if you’re not “single-and-looking-to-change-that” yourself, odds are you know someone who is.

If nothing else, I can say from experience that the title alone will get you plenty of laughs and stories about others’ ill-fated gambles on jerks/“jerkettes” when you mention what you’re reading.

Which confession of reading/classwork, now that I think of it, is one more social ante-in that went better than my risk-fearful heart might have expected. And if there’s nothing gained without venturing first, perhaps I ought to focus more on improving my game and learning when and how to risk, than just quitting cards altogether.

Kenny, I guess I’m not ready to walk away just yet, but have you got any insider tips on what the winning odds are with eHarmony? I’m still wary of big-money games ...

A recommended read

I found myself writing a book review for the Barnes & Noble website* tonight (we’ll see if it gets posted) and thought I’d publish it here as well.

Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
I have to admit, when I first got a used copy of this from my cousin, it did not jump to the top of my reading list. Oh no. In fact, it stayed on my dresser top, beneath a growing pile of books, for at least a year. Finally, however, one night when I had just finished reading a used copy of The Red Tent (a creative retelling of the life of Jacob’s daughter Dinah), and found myself swallowing disappointment at the flat second half of what started out as a very promising book, I gave our girl Francine a second thought. True, I had once devoured every Bodie Thoene book I could find; perhaps Christian romance wasn’t entirely the tepid discredit to writing I’d mostly thought it was.

Since nothing else in my dresser-top stack came close to the soul-feeding book I longed to read at that moment, I decided to take a chance on Redeeming Love. While the first couple pages didn’t exactly ring with the prose of an Updike — though he, too, struggle more with plot — it wasn’t long before I was unexpectedly hooked and turning the pages so fast I started to wonder if this book might make a speedreader of me (I did finish it in something like two days, a return to childhood late-night reading stints).

To my surprise, it wasn’t a book with the “fake” premise of a sinful woman redeemed that instead proves to paint “sin” in the palest, mauve shades imaginable; it delved with shocking candor into the sort of gritty, painful details too few authors seem to recall the Bible doesn’t blush at acknowledging. Rivers unflinchingly follows her characters’ story, not constraining it to the places church librarians might think it could safely go — and that’s where the transforming power of the book really lies.

Scenes like a later, pivotal one in a brothel play surprisingly well, though even that far into the book, I doubted there’d be a convincing, plausible resolution. Same with Rivers’ bold, but measured treatment of scenes in the couple’s marital bed. While she could never be accused of titillation, she doesn’t draw back from important issues raised and resolved in the couple’s greatest intimacies, powerfully mining the difference between physical sham and real unity. Full props to Francine on this one.

I have to say, too, on a personal note, that not only was Redeeming Love exactly the sort of story I was looking for that night — a book that fed my soul and left me feeling I’d live life better for having read it — it was a guide to me as an author. In the months later, as I tackled some major challenges in writing scenes for the book, I thought back to how Francine had handled sensitive scenes in her book. Definitely a worthy read, and a credit to the what’s possible when Christians make art with a view to honoring God.

*The links throughout are to Amazon right now, as I’m still waiting to get approval for B&N’s new affiliate program. Sigh.

Sex really worth talking about

Disclaimer: Normally I try to assume a broad audience for this blog, while writing from an undeniably Jesus freakish perspective. Besides, addressing conservative critics/questioners of my position is just exhausting. But in the last month or so I’ve faced rumblings not only against the project of this blog in particular, but against most writing on chastity in general as “unchaste” (interestingly, secular people, too, have made this criticism, based on a peculiar conflation of chastity with modesty with silence). As Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex has become a particular lightning rod for such critiques — particularly in certain religious circles — today’s entry will show a hopefully rare disregard for my secular readers and address those critics in more “insider” language than I usually use. The Sexless tone and focus you’re accustomed to should return with Friday’s post.

I stopped reading chastity guides a while ago. Not that they’re all bad reading, but let’s just say my sentiments lay with a P.K. friend who joked he’d “given the dating the tongue” (he’s had more love-life success than I). Doesn’t it say something when that paragon of purity Elizabeth Elliot has one of the raciest treatments of sex and desire out there? Most such books read as if written in the rarified air of Colorado Springs.

A typically indoctrinated sort might agree with the reader who warned: “If you're going to send ‘sexy’ signals to guys on dates and not (to be vulgar) ‘produce,’ then you're going to lose the guys who can wait and you're not going to satisfy the ones who want it.” I had broadly implied that Jesus freaks endure sexless dates, while the freaked-by-Jesus do not, but he assumes Christian men are either so overcome by desire (owing to the woman’s “sexy signals,” no doubt) they expect sex just the same or if they’re waiting till marriage barely want to have sex anyway.

Clearly we have a problem. It would be great if we could all learn about sex — not to mention, the Christian sexual ethic — from our parents or the church, and forget dating-and-mating guides altogether, but not everyone’s parents plainly inform adult children that they were having a “romantic evening” when you tried to call earlier. (Seeing as how mine didn’t start such announcements till I was an adult, my views on sex were already formed by then.)

Which views were formed less by the likes of Lauren Winner’s Real Sex and much more by James Dobson’s Love for a Lifetime, in which he breaks sexual intimacy into an elaborate 10-point schema. Imagine my shock when a frisky date’s advances showed me the portion between waist and neck was one contiguous zone, never mind breasts lay between. Dobson implied progression from stage to stage was well-marked and that somewhat-innocent kissing (from which one could easily slip to neck-contact, I reasoned) was far removed from high-intensity hand-to-breast contact. Recalling post-date that Dobson also put hand-to-head contact close to intercourse, I decided his outline might be somewhat flawed. What’s so hot about hair?

Winner’s “steps of the rotunda” approach to “how far is too far?” could not be further from Dobson’s detailed schema. But maybe that’s because her book is more honest about the struggles we face. Unlike many of the chastity-guide authors — whose hard-to-handle standards and recommendations proceed from apparent lack of either sin or sexual desire — Winner candidly acknowledges her own failings and the difficulty of honoring God’s high standards.

Which they are — high, and difficult. But this can only be discussed if you acknowledge the strength of the desire one seeks not to sublimate but to serve God by embracing and reworking. In its tendency to emphasize the intellectual over the emotional and physical, however, the evangelical church has hewed to a bankrupt theology of desire and sexuality. To its downfall, Real Sex follows that tradition in emphasizing the Pauline perspective on marriage more than the Hebrew Old Testament teachings, minimizing the God-imaging (pro)creativity of Biblical love-sex-marriage. Thus Winner’s arguments against masturbation and for the communal aspects of sex (whereby why my neighbor has a right to care how — not just how loudly — I’m having it) sound labored at times. If she explicitly rooted human sexuality and community in the character of God and the Trinity (instead of our bodily creation), these points would have flowed with greater ease. Nevertheless, Real Sex stands to move the discussion of chastity out of the pallid rut of undesire — and all the hypocritical deception such denial often produces in Christians — toward a more candid, convicting, fruitful dialogue about how to honor God with our relationships and bodies.

Perhaps most significantly, Real Sex has also moved the Christian discussion of sex outside the coffee shops and, yes, bars where it’s raged thus far to the pages of the New York Times and elsewhere. Why does this matter? A few years ago I reviewed a promising but mostly dismal collection of scholarly research called Sex, Religion, Media. In the concluding essay, the editor bashed religious perspectives on sex as unhelpful rot best reserved for the private sphere, never mind the failings of the sexual revolution which my generation is just beginning to realize and rant about. We could use a few books like Winner’s to help both the Christian and the secular own and improve on their failings to adequately form sexual beings. May hers contribute to a more honest discussion of sexual ethics across the spectrum of belief. If honest, we just might begin to meaningfully and productively talk about sex in our homes, churches and formative communities, reducing the need for books such as this one altogether.