Two Day Magazine

Really? I mean, some women do enjoy porn just as much as their male counterparts, but addicts? Is this seriously something the Christian community is taking on as a pet cause? Little did I know that according to Theresa Flynt, VP of marketing for Hustler videos, female consumers make up of 56% of video sales. And, now with women having as much fun at the sex shop down the street as their male counterparts, the religious right has decided to step in a put an end to these naughty secret lives of women!

Anti-porn activism has been around for a while now, but never directed towards women. Well, there are a few new groups out there called Dirty Girl Ministries and XXXChurch (no those are not porn titles of new movies, don’t get excited! Those are the actual names of the anti-porn groups) who want to change all that and focus on the problem of porn-addicted women.

Dirty Girl Ministries (I can’t get past the name-they claim their reasoning for the name is to attract people online who are searching for porn) calls itself a “Christian anti-pornography ministry created to help women struggling with pornography addiction.” When it is time to graduate, the members are asked to write on a balloon all of the sexual deviant practices that they have given up including, “Lustful Thinking”, “Self-Gratification” and “Masturbation”. Sounds like the worst graduation, ever!

In a final session for the “addicts” in Lenexa, Kansas, a group of women at the Westside Family Church’s Victory Over Porn Addction (who had 3 members graduating) had not had a good week. The youngest member, a 17 year old girl named Kelsie, said, “I slipped two nights this week,” she said to the chagrin to the other women in the session. “I decided that every time I’m tempted I’ll just let everything out to God. Then pray specifically for something else, do selfless acts, to get away from being selfish.”

It gets worse! This is what she has learned so far about masturbating:

“You have to take into consideration what’s best for the one you’re going to be with. Say someday I’m married and my husband can’t please me as much as I please myself. That’d be terrible.”

There starts the guilt and shame game that people trapped in uber-religious situations can’t seem to pull away from. It’s like an addiction, alright, but not to porn! It’s an addiction to the feeling of being shamed and then remorseful, which washes a sense of relief over the person...until the shame kicks back in again, starting the cycle once more. Not to mention this group is great for men who don’t want a woman who knows anything about her body, and thereby can’t expect anything fun to happen between the sheets!

The group’s leader, Crystal Renaud, who also runs the Dirty Girl Ministries website, offered these pearls of wisdom: “In the Christian culture, women are supposed to be the nonsexual ones. It’s an injustice that the church is not more open about physical sexuality. God created sex. But, the enemy has twisted it.”

Who exactly is the enemy she speaks of? I don’t think she even knows. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, started Dirty Girl Ministries due to her own experiences. She became interested in porn at 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom.

After that, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it. At school, I wanted to go home and look at it more. Then, I went online. I’d stay late at the library to look at it. Eventually, I got into masturbation, phone sex, cyber sex. That was my life for eight years.” Thankfully, she met a Christian woman who helped her to stop those filthy habits of self-pleasure and turned her sights on other women having fun.

The programs at her group and XXXChurch differ from the secular teachings of sexual theory by focusing on masturbation and arousal as sin instead of a part of being sexually healthy. The recovery process focuses on “sexual purity” in which sexy thoughts outside of marriage are denounced.

She utilizes a sexual addiction workbook called “L.I.F.E. Guide for Women” which stresses Christian fellowship, prayer and “accountability partners” to hold each other up to a higher standard of abstinence.

Chanel Yeary, 19, said that she had considered a secular therapist but that it was too expensive. Besides, she said, therapy when she was younger had little benefit. “With a shrink, you have to pay her to be there,” she said. “Here, with my accountability partner, I know she’ll be there for me.”

Michelle, 27, has been attending Renaud’s group and says it has helped her stay in her marriage.
“I’m learning the correct way of intimacy and bonds. It’s learning what your spouse wants, his needs.”  

Although, Michelle admits she still struggles with masturbating.

“She’ll text me with loophole questions,” Ms. Renaud said. “I’ll say, ‘No, it doesn’t work that way.’ ”

“But I need to release myself,” Michele said.

“I’ll say, ‘O.K., pray about it,’ ” Ms. Renaud said. She added, “Distraction is a big part of recovery.”

I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, denying yourself the most beautiful thing in the world, a healthy and fulfilling sex life, is total bullshit. I don’t care what angle you look at this from, this group is all about repressing female sexuality instead of celebrating it for the wondrous thing that it is. Our bodies are joyful temples that we should be proud of. These women are shamed. Shamed for loving themselves. Shamed for wanting pleasure, for wanting more from their existence. Shamed for giving themselves joy. This is a thinly veiled guise to keep Christian males dominant in the most intimate of situations, therefore giving them control over all aspects of their partner’s existence. What kind of man would want a frigid, sexless woman, anyway? You would have to be brainwashed or repressing some of your own sexual feelings to not want your lover to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

My question is, what is the Church so afraid of? Living in a space of ignorance and repression isn’t going to lead anywhere positive. The ideals that they support are unrealistic, and frankly, they are unhealthy and unnecessary. With all of the troubles in the world one could focus on, this is your main concern? Women enjoying porn and self-pleasure? Sounds like the real concern is that the Church needs to have control over the female body in order to keep the women ‘in line’, so to speak. If the women start feeling things, start striking out on their own, start indulging themselves just for fun, what would happen to the Church’s control over them? No doubt it would lessen, weakening that institution.

It sickens me, though, to see a woman like Renaud in charge of teaching other women how to deny themselves joy. It sickens me that this woman raises her self up by shaming other women in the most personal way possible. Shame on you, Ms. Renaud for your backwards way of thinking, for your repression of female sexuality, for lacking the vision and understanding of the human spirit and human condition, and for planting the seeds of ignorance in the lives of the vulnerable. Shame on you, indeed.