hey, stripper!

July 6, 2011 in sex, relationships, and women with 53 Comments

Last week, I wrote a little post–a letter to my future wife–that got a lot of feedback. I have thought much since then about relationships and women. I was honored to be invited to post over at the Good Women Project coming in August … honored and a little nervous. I think highly of what Lauren is accomplishing there, so I don’t want to screw up my post. Trying to narrow down a topic, eventually I realized that I have a lot of thoughts about sex and relationships and dating and women. Why not, it occurred to me, say something regularly? … And here we are. From now on–until you demand otherwise or I burn out–I hope to devote Wednesdays to these themes. We’ll see how it goes. I will offer a disclaimer here and now. I will be raw and honest, this post is no exception. However, the posts will never venture above PG-13. I will not shy away from speaking frankly about things that should be frankly spoken about, but I will seek not to glamorize it or make it lascivious. Good? Excellent. So, without further ado …

There’s a SohoDolls song called “Stripper.” The chorus is simple: Hey, stripper! Hey! I want to be your mister!

I was in eighth grade when a girl flashed her breasts at me. Waiting behind the school at the annexed parking lot for my carpool to show up, I heard my name called out and turned just in time to see a girl in my class that I had a bit of a crush on, lifting up her shirt from across the way, then dropping it quickly while she and her friend giggled hysterically and then ran off, blushing like mad.

I immediately felt two things: intrigue and power.

Intrigue is easy to explain if I simply point out that it’s a stand-in for a different, more specific word as to what happened to my fresh-into-puberty body.

But that wasn’t what really got me, that’s not what coursed through my veins like a free hit of meth, the one that gets you hooked, always wanting more, to pay anything for it. No, intrigue was nothing. Power was the drug. Power was everything. And it was everything ever since. I didn’t even ask her to do that. She just did. That was power.

Hey, stripper! Hey! I want to be your mister!

What most women don’t understand about pornography is that it’s not about sexual fulfillment. It’s not even about rampant hormones or ever about boys being boys. Though those factors are in play in varying degrees, what porn is really about is power.

Being the mister is all about the power.

Porn can’t say no. Porn can’t demand that you respect it. Porn can’t tell you that you aren’t providing for it what it needs. Porn doesn’t have rights. It’s just there. It’s there for you to control how you want.

Is the addiction to the sexual feeling? Not a chance. The addiction is to the power.

And what does this have to do with a girl who flashed me when I was just leaving middle school?

Quite a bit.

A lot of blame gets heaped on guys for not treating women with respect.

To be fair, there are a number of occasions when this is deserved. The system is broken. It is completely ridiculous for youth groups to teach that the only reason girls should dress modestly and keep their purity is for the sake of keeping their fellow, male Christians from stumbling and so that they may be presentable to their future husbands. As if there was no benefit to a girl’s own self worth for dressing like she was loved by her Creator or that God has never called a girl to be celibate. Or, worse, that losing your virginity meant you had no value.

And for the guys, we’re taught that we shouldn’t masturbate or fall into the temptation of lust because Jesus said we shouldn’t. As if the reason we shouldn’t has more to do with our own heart and soul than respecting the rights of the beautiful creation that God has made and, like a certain piece of fruit from a certain tree, isn’t ours to touch unless we have permission. Even if it’s just touched with our eyes and thoughts.

So yeah, when you stack things up, guys rightly take some heat for how we treat women and perceive them, how we’re taught that everything is really about us and our purity.

This needs to change. Desperately.

As men, we need to treat women with the respect they deserve having been created in the image of our God. We need to honor them, to be willing to sacrifice ourselves as Christ sacrificed Himself for the church. We need to edify them. We need to stop falling for the girls who are easy, because that just makes them think that it’s ok and it makes the girls who aren’t feel like that’s who they need to become. We need to demand better of each other, to hold each other accountable not to just keeping from lust but keeping from ever treating a woman like she’s an object.

Frat bros, I’m talking to you. I’m calling you out. That little joke a certain Baylor University, “Christian” fraternity says with glee that the a reason a girl can’t ski is because there’s no ski slope between the bedroom and the kitchen is the biggest piece of chauvinistic, backwoods, ignorant, asinine, pseudo-masculine piece of starts-with-a-b-and-has-two-syllables I have ever heard.

Women are to be valued.

They are to be sought after as daughters of the King.

They aren’t there to serve you a sandwich and bare your many ill-conceived children.

They are there to be crowned. Cherished.

… But I’m asking for a favor from the ladies, because you could maybe help us out a bit, too.

Be a girl worth pursuing.

Dress like a woman who was designed, composed, thought up in the mind of God. A woman who has a Father, even if the only good Father in her life is her Heavenly one. Be beautiful by being faithful. Challenge us as men to desire women of integrity by not settling for jerks; teach us as men to long for women of purity by choosing not to compromise. Stop acting like you think you’re supposed to, some silly, stupid, naive girl who is just eager to please. Stop acting like you want to be a porn star. A thing.

Because when you do, when we watch you do that, debasing yourself, it’s feeding right back into that addiction to power.

Please, help us break the cycle by taking away the drugs. Help us by not enabling our minds to feast on your bodies.

Because this isn’t about keeping us from stumbling. It’s never really been about that.

This is about teaching us to treat you with the respect you deserve. When God made Eve, it was good. And I am pretty sure Adam thought it was very good. But society has completely rejected any notion that a woman’s body is anything more than in chronic need of repair and enhancement or is there to be lusted after. That girl thought it was nothing but a harmless joke, a provocative tease to raise her shirt at me.

Hey, stripper! Hey! I want to be your mister!

And we call this empowerment?

As men, we are not trained in any arena to value you for who you are unless it’s by Godly women who model for us that grace and Godly men who demand it from us.

But we need both sides working to make this happen. It doesn’t happen by a guy waking up one day and seeing a girl dressed like a stripper and thinking to himself, “Oh, what a beautiful creation God has made, I shall now look elsewhere and linger here no longer.” Nope. Not going to happen. That’s not actually living in Christian community. We are called to look after one another, both for the benefits that it brings to us as a group and for the edification it brings to our own souls.

We’re both responsible.

So help us out and do your part. Love yourself for the beautiful creation that you are, because that’s the only way we’ll really learn to love and honor you.

Stop dressing like a stripper. Stop acting like one. Stop letting boys treat you like you’re worthless. Raise your voice.

You’re not worthless. Do you know that? Because it’s not something we can teach you. Only He can.

When you dress like a stripper, you ask to be an object. You receive it as the illusion of power, but really you have none. The young woman in my middle school thought she had enticed me all the more. But what was the point after that? From that point on, I had seen it before. When a girl compromises herself, thinking she has power, she’s just one more body with a face we may or may not pay attention to, because she has already told us how much she’s worth.

I’m pleading with you. Teach us to not think this way. Teach us to see you as a creation.

Hey, stripper! Hey–

Put on some clothes! Be the handmaiden of Christ. Please! Help me learn to be a proper man.

Because I don’t want to be a mister anymore.

I’ll work to the bone to do my part, I’m just asking if you would consider doing yours.

Let’s be free together. Let’s be healed together.

And to all the women who already are, who have been, who have made hard choices, who haven’t had a good relationship, who have been looked over or passed up because you held firm: thank you.

Thank you for faithfulness.

You make me want to be a better man.

—

Like this post? You can like the blog and keep up with it on Facebook here.

—

Note: I want to add here at the end that it could be possible to misread sections of this and come away thinking that I imply women who dress somewhat provocatively are responsible if they are assaulted sexually. Having known in my life too many women this has happened to, I assure you that this is not the case. What I have said here is all within the context of basic sexual relationships and sexual tension. The evil that is to violate a woman against her will is a topic I will need to write about later, when I’m not shaking with anger as I try to form words. This post sought to address the two-way street of sexual impurity exclusively.

Also: Is there something you’d like me to talk about here in the weeks ahead? Drop me a comment or an email.

Rae

“When you dress like a stripper, you ask to be an object.”
I don’t know, Preston. I just don’t know. I guess that, as always, it depends upon what you mean by all of this, but despite my best to read your entire post with all of its good intent I am unsettled…disturbed?

In what ways would you say that men ask to be objects?

Anonymous

I’m still thinking about this, Rae. I wonder if you have some thoughts already?

Rae

Oh, I have no idea. The purpose of my question was to try to understand what you mean by “asking to be an object.” I thought that perhaps if you gave another example as it applies to men that I could understand your underlying meaning and thus figure out if I was bothered by your post simply because words such as “object” mean different things to me than what you intend here.

Anonymous

I understand now, gotcha.

I think guys can do similar things when they present their bodies in similar ways. Strippers in their own right. Purposefully showing off their form for the express purpose of being noticed and drawing attention. And it’s never enough for it to be the attention of just one girl, it has to be as many as possible. He’s setting himself up to not be a creation with depth, but an object, a thing. I think the same is true of girls. When they dress in ways that is only about getting attention, any attention, then they aren’t asking to be looked at like they are creation but as a thing, to be objectified. Is it right that guys look at them that way when they do it? No. Is it right when girls look at guys that way? No. But knowing that it happens, knowing that we live in a fallen world where those temptations are real, we could do each other a favor and try to not provoke those emotions.

That’s not to ever suggest that girls can’t wear skirts. That would be ridiculous. The behavior and attitude is as much a part of it as the dress. And that cuts both ways for both sexes.

Anonymous

(Sorry, meant to reply rather than like. Not that I don’t like, but anyway.) Preston, I definitely appreciate what you are trying to do here, and I think our society would be a lot better off if more men would take the time to think deeply about these issues.

I would submit a couple of things: 1)That perhaps the link between, for lack of a better term, stripper clothes (or complete nakedness) and sex is a lot less explicit than you are making it out to be. For example, take the same outfit and put it on (or take it off of) an 80 year old woman. Is your reaction one of lust or revulsion? And if it’s the latter, then isn’t the connection between dress and lust more of a projection of male desires than of inherent immodesty? To me, this seems primarily to be a problem of male socialization. But what’s the solution to this? Do we just send you all to nudist camps populated by toothless, retired hippies until you learn to desexualize the female form? I have no idea. 2)I doubt that too many women ask to be treated as objects, regardless of their attire. (And I don’t know that that’s exactly what you meant, but it is what you said, so I’m just going to take it at face value.) Most of the women who wear stripper clothes probably dress that way because they like the attention, but I think that that is very different from wanting to be objectified. I mean, what age are we talking about here? 19, 20? 24, 25? When these girls leave the house, the vast majority of them are probably thinking, “this outfit is cute and maybe a hot guy will talk to me” (which is a whole separate issue, but I digress) not “the patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in society that this outfit will lead to my objectification.” I think you’re absolutely right to point out the fact of the matter, but I also think that it ultimately points to a symptom of the problem, rather than to the problem itself.
http://www.elizabethhillgrove.com Elizabeth Hillgrove

Men are easily visually stimulated and women are often easily affected by what they hear, namely romantic words and praises. One way a man can make themselves an object in a woman’s eye is to be untruthful with their words and feeding her romantic words that he knows she wants to hear. In this case, she may “fall for” that like a man might “fall for” an attractive image. However, neither will love or be much closer to loving the person they’re staring at or listening to.

Does that apply, Preston and Rae?
http://www.elizabethhillgrove.com Elizabeth Hillgrove

P.S. I really enjoyed this, Preston!! I’m just offering an example like a nosy, digital neighbor.
http://www.elizabethhillgrove.com Elizabeth Hillgrove

P.P.S. — I will stop soon, I promise… To further explain, many women objectify Jane Austen’s male characters for their speeches or letters to the female characters. If a man without a sincere heart were to write them the same words, we’d see something similar to the effect a woman in a stripper-outfit might have on a man. I’ll put down the shovel.

http://felicemifa.wordpress.com/ felicemifa

I had a number of really interesting conversations recently about the ways that women become complicit in their own oppression, particularly in our “porn culture”. I think Preston does a good job sorting through many of the ways women do this, and also the pressures they face to do this. I think there is always a temptation in a culture that treats women like objects, to cave a little, and to say if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. When the uphill battle against the media becomes wearying, it’s hard not to decide that if you can’t fight your way out of being an object, you can at least be an object of which the powerful approve and then take what little power you can get.

http://lesykes.wordpress.com/ LS

love this preston. just found your blog recently through your letter to you future wife. as a woman who watched her engagement shatter under the weight of pornography, i think you hit the nail on the head with it being so much about power. out the gate, i really felt as if maybe i wasn’t pretty enough, sexy enough, just enough in general. and with how culture tells women we should act, dress, be, etc it has certainly been a process for me in thwarting the lies of the enemy with truth (honestly, a battle i don’t win everyday) and believing that one day, the Lord will provide a man who loves and admires a clothed body and woman who respects herself. who seeks to find her worth in Christ alone – not in the affirmation of a man.

here’s to being free. cannot wait to read your wednesdays. . .maybe it’ll inspire me to start writing on these themes i am so passionate about as well. . .

Anonymous

Thank you for sharing this. I’m so sorry for the parts of your journey that have borne the scars of this kind of destruction.

http://evermind.wordpress.com/ Robyn

I think you’re really awesome. I found your blog last week when Lauren Lankford tweeted about your post to your future wife, and I’ve been jumping around and reading through your posts ever since. I just have to say that it’s so refreshing to know that you exist…does that make sense? I have Christian guy friends that I love dearly, but a lot of them still make jokes like that one about the ski slope, and it kills me. It’s just so refreshing to know that there ARE Christian men out there who think that jokes like that are just as destructive as I do. Thank you. The jokes go hand in hand with using the femininity as an insult, don’t you think? Like men are raised to believe that anything “girly” is bad, that it’s weaker if you’re like a girl. We’re just perpetuating this idea that women are of lesser value — and I don’t think we even realize it! I’ve seen a youth pastor do it in church, laughing about a boy acting feminine or joking and putting down “girly” things…. Gah it kills me.
But anyway, I also love that you called us out as a Christian culture on our teachings about purity. I’ve dealt with the modesty question before, in being taught and teaching other girls — dress to protect your brothers. But no, I like what you said better, “Dress like a woman who was designed, composed, thought up in the mind of God.” Why is that not taught more often? I definitely think we need to re-examine the way we teach about purity….
Anyway–anyway! Thank you for working on your end, I’m working on mine. Praise God for warriors like you.

Anonymous

Robyn, I totally understand what you mean. I get so heartbroken (read: rampantly pissed off) when I hear fellow Christian guys make derogatory remarks about women or something that seems womanly. We have to break beyond that. We are created differently, wonderfully so, but those differences are the gifts to be celebrated, not condemned. Praise God for warrior women like you!

Anonymous

Preston – SUCH a powerful post. I’m going to share this on Twitter and probably on my blog this Friday when I do the week in review. I think every man AND woman needs to read your words. Thank you for writing.

Your post highlights a really important dynamic, I think. The issue is two-sided. It’s a cycle. And each of us get to choose if we are going to perpetuate the cycle or fight against it.

We have been adopted, transformed, redeemed, made valuable. Will we choose to live like it, or not?

Thanks again for sharing.

Anonymous

Thanks so much, Ally! I have loved stumbling around your blog so I’m really honored that you would share this. And you’re exactly right. This is about both sides working together in partnership. Companionship. Hm, what a novel idea.

Blanche

I loved this post, so much in fact, that I wrote a response.
http://belovephoto.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/hey-mister-im-done-being-your-stripper/My sister had posted your blog on my fb knowing full well that I would be interested in a post like this. I really appreciate the thought that you put into this and your heart behind it.

http://belovephoto.wordpress.com Blanche

ok so the link spazzed and didn’t give you the right post,

just go to belovephoto.wordpress.com :)

Anonymous

Blanche, thank you. Your response is an inspiration and really humbling. Thanks for sharing.

http://www.imperfectpeople.net Katie @ Imperfect People

This rocks! Thank you so much for your bold and TRUE words. I am sharing this with everyone I know

Anonymous

Thank you!

http://www.abundantlifewithkids.blogspot.com Alittlebitograce

Wow. Some good stuff here. I hope to raise my children to respect both themselves and those around them as children of the King.

Anonymous

That’s the greatest compliment, to know children are being raised by parents who want them to know their worth. Thank you.

http://www.prudychick.com Prudence

This is awesome Preston. Seriously.

Anonymous

That means quite a lot from someone who has a talent for short, lucid posts that never fail to inspire. Thank you.

Kasey

Wow. This is so spot on. So many times as a woman it is so hard to run and endure in the race of purity because culture and everyone around you is saying that you’re only worth what you look like. Never being noticed feeds us the lie that “Who you are isn’t enough, you must conform”…which is a complete lie. Its frustrating. You know in your heart that the man God has will notice your heart and personality, not your body, but no male attention is kind of disheartening. Anyway….this post is amazing. It really stirred my heart and reaffirmed to me that indeed, the road of purity is indeed worth it even though it feels like a lonely one. I wrote a response post on my blog with what God was stirring in my heart. http://kaseycoldiron.blogspot.com/2011/07/dancing-with-jesus.html

Anonymous

Thank you!

http://www.facebook.com/tyler.byler William Tyler

This article is so anti-woman, only a Christian could write it.
Pingback: hey, stripper!
http://jenn3.wordpress.com/ jenn

“Because this isn’t about keeping us from stumbling. It’s never really been about that. This is about teaching us to treat you with the respect you deserve.” Powerful words. I love this.

I found you through I Kissed Dating Hello. This is a wonderful post - possibly the best I have read in quite awhile. I want to force every teen girl that I know to read this. And I also want to go back in time to my teenage self and read it. Good stuff.
http://acp1004.wordpress.com/ Ashley

I love that you show both sides to this! The blame is usually put on the other sex, depending on who is talking about it. But your post is refreshing, we all need to work on it.
http://bethanyanndavidson.blogspot.com Bethany Ann

i have trouble reading long posts (3 boys under 7, art exhibit in two months)… but there are well-written truths sprinkled throughout here, and they got my attention! you taught me how porn goes straight back to pride — i need to know this, so i can warn my sons. thank you!
Kelsey

My name’s Kelsey and I found this post to be very touching and moving. I’m so glad you realizes the crucial mistakes we make everyday. I understand that you plead with women to dress appropriately as a creation of God but what about other things in our lives? We can dress decently and still fall so short of who we want to be. For instance, I consider myself to dress pretty modestly but I know for a fact Christian, godly, women don’t belch, they don’t randomly dance around, and they definitely don’t wear clothes that they accidentally bleached, all of which I’m guilty of. I guess I have to learn the difference between being a Christian woman and being ladylike. As far as a specific guideline to learning how to behave like a Christian woman, I’m at a loss (I honestly have no idea). Maybe college life has glazed me over but I feel that I just can’t mature like God wants me to.
http://twitter.com/emily_wierenga Emily Wierenga

wow. applauding you, new friend, for addressing this subject and for helping me understand the male mind a little more. brave and powerful post! thank you so much for linking. e.

Anonymous

Thank YOU. I have loved getting to know your blog and it was really thanks to @eloranicole:twitter that I submitted. And I look forward to conversations in the future.

Pingback: Sex, Power, Pornography & Marriage: The Week In Review
theresaEH

if you are studing “midevil theology” sooner or later you will trip over the catholic church eh! I invite you to read about the about the church fathers, or better yet “Rome sweet home” by scott hahn.
Pingback: Saturday Linky Love « somewhere in the middle
Sugabelly

Congratulations. You wrote an exercise in cultural ethnocentricism. What does “dress like … blah blah” even mean?

In my culture women are supposed to walk around with their breasts on display. Children running around completely naked is also okay. Just because in European and some Asian cultures nudity is taboo does not mean that women from other cultures are not to be respected.

And here you are pushing the blame for the irresponsible attitude of men on women again. Oh, men treat women badly because they don’t dress like “the daughters of the King”.

I am sorry but that is rubbish.

Even if a woman is naked and jumping on you she is still a human being and deserving of your respect for that reason alone. Men are just selfish and irresponsible and so they want to make up all sorts of excuses for why they behave like dicks such as “oh her skirt was too short” or “oh, I already had sex with her”.

If those reasons are valid then women would treat men with equal callousness.

The summary of this whole thing is that men want to have their cake and eat it. You tell a woman you don’t respect her because she had sex with you but have you also considered that YOU also had sex with HER? So what does that make you? Just as much a slut. But no, you want to be able to have sex with women and then turn around and call them sluts and also marry the supposedly good girls and also have sex with them all while escaping any blame being put on yourself.

Anonymous

I’ll admit to be a little surprised by your comments. I think I make it pretty clear where men are at fault, that the system of blaming women alone is broken, and that we’re all responsible.

Also, nudity and sex have explicit links to each other, stemming from Adam and Eve. There is but one King, and He is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

As for the clip you provided, I do make distinctions between cultural norms, but I also believe that distinctions become unifications under the Gospel. But you can’t hold someone to a standard they have not received.

Sugabelly

Excuse you, but there is absolutely no proof that the first man and first woman were called Adam and Eve. Thank God that science has proven to us that human beings originated in Africa (which by the way is where I am from), so, if anything at all, the first man and the first woman were probably called something like ” Emeka and Ngozi” or ” Nyimbi and Oma” or “Umi and Ba” and nobody knows but one thing we can ALL be sure of with 100% certainty is that they were most certainly NOT called Adam and Eve.

Secondly, nudity and sex are only linked to each other in CERTAIN cultures. Unfortunately, Europeans insisted on going to other people’s countries and shoving their culture and beliefs down their throats while telling people that anything that they did not approve of or that was not similar to their own various European cultures and “Christian moral guidelines” as filtered through various European cultures was barbaric or unnacceptable.

There was a time when Nigerian men wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if a woman walked down the street topless. Women were treated with utmost respect no matter what they were wearing.

Enter Christian missionaries and all social values broke down. The rate of rape and various other acts of gross inhumanity against women rose directly proportionally to Christian proselytism and missionary activity in my country.

Fastforward to today and you have a population of men who think that if they can see any part of a woman’s skin then she is public property or they have the right to treat her in a disrespectful manner or touch her because “she must be a slut ” and “must be asking for it”.

These are men whose grandmothers and great grandmothers walked down public roads with their breasts in full view before we were colonised and no man at the time would have EVER in his WILDEST dreams thought to view these women with anything but reverence and respect. But “Christian Values” now teach Nigerian men that it is the fault of women who dress “salaciously” and “indecently” that men cannot control themselves.

I am sorry but it is time for Christians to open their eyes. There is NOT one single world view and even if there was, how arrogant of you to think that it must be yours. Also, it takes a far better and mentally superior person to separately categorise sexuality and nudity and the Christian model encourages men to be little better than animals.

That is what your brain is for. Breasts does NOT equal sex or sexuality. Breasts are TOOLS for the nourishment of children. It has NOTHING to do with you. And Nigerian men understood that until stupid Christian missionaries came and led us all on the descent into barbarity. Now stupidity in the name of religion is the order of the day.

God gave human beings brains. Why some Christians want to prevent everyone from using them is beyond me.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston Yancey

I wonder. Maybe they weren’t called Adam and Eve. God named Adam, Adam named Eve. But when God named Adam, who can speak the language of God? Perhaps these are the words we have inherited to make sense of things beyond articulation. And Eden being in Africa makes all the sense in the world. Of course for the rest, I’ll concede, I have to step back into faith.

What has happened in your country is terrible. Evil. When people take what is true of Christianity and use it for political advantage, it’s wicked. The colonial era was a horrible example of what happens when political power pretends to be mission work. I do believe that there were indeed some people, some priest, some missionaries, who came with an honest desire to see done the work of God. But those who sent them, delighting in the gains it gave them, did horrible things: enslaving people, converting people to a lifestyle not to a faith.

This isn’t an easy thing and I don’t take it lightly. Evil exists. But so does a good and merciful God. I am without any ability to give you more than an explanation that that. I disagree with a large part of what you have said, as you do me. But I hear your anger and frustration, the hurt you feel for your country, and the anguish you feel for your people. You have a right to be angry. What was done to you was wrong. And thought it wasn’t by my hands that those things were done, I hurt as a fellow human, a person who has the image of God within me as you do as well. Image bearer to image bearer: my heart breaks for your pain.

I only pray that you know that the pain you feel was and is felt by Christ and it is only in Him that evil meets its end. Beyond this I have nothing else to offer of explanation, so if you would like to continue as an argument, I can say no more. But if you would like to discuss this Christ, I am more than willing to do so. Again, I am sorry for the hurt you feel, know that I know only a fraction of it, but I hurt for your country all the same.
http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston Yancey

I wonder. Maybe they weren’t called Adam and Eve. God named Adam, Adam named Eve. But when God named Adam, who can speak the language of God? Perhaps these are the words we have inherited to make sense of things beyond articulation. And Eden being in Africa makes all the sense in the world. Of course for the rest, I’ll concede, I have to step back into faith.

What has happened in your country is terrible. Evil. When people take what is true of Christianity and use it for political advantage, it’s wicked. The colonial era was a horrible example of what happens when political power pretends to be mission work. I do believe that there were indeed some people, some priest, some missionaries, who came with an honest desire to see done the work of God. But those who sent them, delighting in the gains it gave them, did horrible things: enslaving people, converting people to a lifestyle not to a faith.

This isn’t an easy thing and I don’t take it lightly. Evil exists. But so does a good and merciful God. I am without any ability to give you more than an explanation that that. I disagree with a large part of what you have said, as you do me. But I hear your anger and frustration, the hurt you feel for your country, and the anguish you feel for your people. You have a right to be angry. What was done to you was wrong. And thought it wasn’t by my hands that those things were done, I hurt as a fellow human, a person who has the image of God within me as you do as well. Image bearer to image bearer: my heart breaks for your pain.

I only pray that you know that the pain you feel was and is felt by Christ and it is only in Him that evil meets its end. Beyond this I have nothing else to offer of explanation, so if you would like to continue as an argument, I can say no more. But if you would like to discuss this Christ, I am more than willing to do so. Again, I am sorry for the hurt you feel, know that I know only a fraction of it, but I hurt for your country all the same.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston Yancey

I also want to say I’m sorry for the ways you may have been treated in the past. You do deserve respect. You bare the image of God within you. No woman should ever be mistreated or treated as inferior. I pray that if you do not already know the love, respect, and delight our Lord has in you and the value He placed in you when He created you that you come to know it and that you would know just how vast and infinite it is. And I am sorry if I have not done well in reflecting that to you. He loves you, fiercely.

Anonymous

And, another thing, I want to let you know that I am sorry for the way that men may have treated you in the past. There is no excuse for a woman to be disrespected. I’m sorry for the pain that can be and I pray that if you don’t already know, you come to find the delight our Lord has for you and the value He has placed in you. You do deserve res
Anonymous

I also want to say I’m sorry for the ways you may have been treated in the past. You do deserve respect. You bare the image of God within you. No woman should ever be mistreated or treated as inferior. I pray that if you do not already know the love, respect, and delight our Lord has in you and the value He placed in you when He created you that you come to know it and that you would know just how vast and infinite it is. And I am sorry if I have not done well in reflecting that to you. He loves you, fiercely.
Pingback: announcement: guest post for me? | see preston blog
Pingback: Sought After « This is Awkward
Pingback: All My Single Ladies « Life Out of Bounds
Anonymous

My young, Christian, brother, … a friend just linked me to your blog; and may I say, being a 67 year old Christian who spent 22 years of my life, until well into my 30s, obsessively pursuing a distorted image of sex, with an equally distorted image of women, you have nailed, in this piece, who I once was and prayerfully whom I have become in Christ. Right now I lead a ministry to help Christians “get it right,” as you have written about here. You can find Battle Plan Ministries described @ http://www.battleplanministries.org … and I will be sharing your ideas via Facebook and on our forums with the men whom I’ve been blessed and challenged to lead away from the distorted image of women so many of us are led to pursue. Thanks for your candid and honest perceptions of God’s truth. … Rev. Bill Berry, Director, Battle Plan Ministry
Pingback: Women + Sexploitation «
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1424573720 Bethany Chandler

Wow! thank you for your heart! thank you for speaking bluntly about this subject and giving insight to young women. Working with high schoolers who often get this talk from women at a less than relatable age its is extremely refreshing to hear it from someone who can speak on experience vs just theory. You Are breath of fresh air in a world full of perversion.
Pingback: Women + Sexploitation | Caitlin Muir
Erin

Yes. Very relevant. Some of this is relates to thoughts I’ve had for a while and have not had the complete insight to form into a coherent message, not being a man. This article paints a clear picture though. Please continue to be bold sharing this because it is very important. Especially in light of the problems with trafficking currently. Major universal problem, not just young innocent students. I have even run into some men at Baylor, great guys overall, who don’t understand this. It really is sad the way culture has shaped perceptions of relationships, and we need some more voices to combat the lies the same way this truth just sheds such comforting light on a confusing topic. I came across this via IKDH (which I have no idea how I came across that). I read your about section and I couldn’t believe that you are a Baylor student. I’m at Baylor, about to graduate in May, with a BA in studio art. If I don’t run into you between now and May, best of luck to you with your art and your writing! Write on!!