S2E08: The Sex Ed We Wish We Had: Non-Exploitation, with Amber Wood

We’re continuing our series on The Sex Ed We Wish We Had, rooted in the six sexual health principles of Doug Braun-Harvey. The second principle is non-exploitation (5:00), “when a person leverages their power and control to receive sexual gratification. The outcome is sex that is ruthless and insensitive to the feelings of a partner and family members. The outcome encompasses unwanted, harsh, or cruel nomination or taking advantage of a person who is mentally incapable to use their cognitive and emotional capacity. To give or not give consent.”

We commonly talk about exploitation from the perspective of individuals leveraging their individual power and control to receive sexual gratification. On this, and in future episodes, we acknowledge that individuals who exploit are commonly enacting cultural and societal directives to exploit. As such, we are holding both systems and individuals accountable.

We’re excited to have our colleague and friend Amber Wood as our guest. She talks with us about the exploitation of queer people in the church, including:

• Your Goodness is God (13:00): “I was raised that anything good in you is God. That's not you. Your humanity essentially is bad. And so if I take away my belief in God or my belief in Jesus, if I take that away, I'm just now trying to figure out who I am because all my identity that was good. Well, that had to be God. Anything that's bad, well that's just your sinful nature, right? So what exists when you take that away?” Amber shares how the Southern Baptist Church taught that all your goodness is God and all your badness is you.

• Erasure in the Church (15:00): Amber reflects on how homosexuality was not even condemned, it was never mentioned. “I don't remember them ever really talking about queerness. It was so black and white in scripture to the point of just like, I wouldn't commit adultery or I wouldn't rob a bank. I'm not going to have a same-sex relationship. It wasn't something that was taught about in lessons.” Amber shares her story about not being able to identify what a crush on women even felt like because there was no vocabulary ever given for that. Erasure spurs feelings of confusion and non-belonging without ever giving a label so many people feel more lost. Jeremiah summarizes, “The assumption that if we don't talk about something, people will just like make the assumption, oh, well I don't need to explore that.” (21:00) 

• Guilt Around Masturbation (31:00): Amber shares her guilt around masturbation: “I was tormented by that. I felt like that was my horrible thing and I felt so much guilt and shame for it. Now I can look back and be like, no one took the time to really talk to you and educate you and, and support you in that,” This is heartbreaking because these feelings could have been non-existent if proper sex education was taught and available. The conversation about comprehensive sex education is a theme throughout Sexvangelicals because so many painful feelings stem from inaccurate or non-existent sex education.

• Developmental Delays (48:00): Amber explains, “With some clients that I have who come out later in life, their developmental level of building relationships is more at a junior high level now. So the immaturity part of that is trying to navigate that. Plus their entire self-worth and how they view themselves is all messed up. Yeah. That puts them at bigger risk of being in unhealthy relationships, because they don't understand who they are, what they are outside of what they were raised to believe.” Julia and Jeremiah talk about the impact of those developmental delays on the stability of relationships.

Amber closes with a message of hope: “I'm seeing more acceptance and less of a stigma. The LGBTQ community is just normal. And so it gives me hope that they will then raise their children to where they're accepting and they don't have to go through this. That gives me hope that, that maybe this is changing.”

Let’s heal together!