What Is It That We Want—That We Really, Really Want?
Christine Emba offers a solution to a culture of bad sex.
Review by Whitney Rio-Ross
As a girl raised in an evangelical church, I learned early to dodge uncomfortable conversations about sex. Premarital sex was off the table, of course, but purity culture went much further. By high school, sexual ethics (among the girls) felt like a competition in restraint, based on the fear-romance combination sold in books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye. To escape judgment at a sleepover, I said that I wouldn’t kiss a boy until marriage. (I did not intend to keep this rule.) I went along with chastity agreements because that’s just what you did if you were a real Christian.
Christine Emba was raised in a similar environment and planned to remain abstinent until marriage. She eventually changed her mind but was disturbed by the emptiness and depression she found so prevalent in the current sexual culture. Soon after her liberation from a puritanical background, she realized the liberation offered to her didn’t feel like freedom. She wasn’t alone in this feeling: women especially were feeling disappointed by and even giving up on sexual relationships with men. This dissatisfaction fueled Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. (She notes at the beginning that she’s examining heterosexual relationships between cis men and women. This is good. We need a book about sexual ethics in the LGBTQ+ and nonbinary communities; I’m dying to read it. But Christine Emba shouldn’t write that book.)
Emba begins by interrogating the term on which our culture’s sexual ethic hinges—consent. She believes “consent is a good ethical floor but a terrible ceiling.” Consent is absolutely necessary, but it’s concerned with legality more than ethics. Moving from consent meaning not saying no, to saying yes, to saying an “enthusiastic” yes shows some progress, but it’s still about what is technically allowed, not what is good.
Because consent concerns what is criminal and not criminal, Emba argues, it leaves room for many uncomfortable situations that can lead to trauma, shame, or simply unpleasurable sex. That’s really the hook—straight people are having a lot of bad, and sometimes unwanted, sex. Through many interviews, Emba shows how often people on the dating scene technically consent to sex but don’t necessarily want the sex that’s being offered. As I did with purity agreements, they go along with it because it’s just how sex works. It’s how it’s advertised.
Real liberation doesn’t end at being saved from something bad; we must be liberated into something better.
The first half of the book examines the ways that women especially got into a sexual culture that doesn’t offer the freedom hoped for in the sexual revolution. Emba uses the word “vacuum,” showing that victories in the fight for sex equality don’t enter a new utopia; a capitalistic society that thrived on misogyny could repackage every breakthrough to work in their market, on their terms. Emba’s look at advertisements of equality—including the archetypes of the female playboy and girl boss—is especially fascinating. Nothing is “free,” but part of an economic system and the consumerism that fuels it. Dating apps can lead to true love, but they were never our friends. They were companies.
She also analyzes a key contradiction in advertising sex—that it’s both nothing and everything. Sex is “just a physical act,” yet adults who aren’t having sex regularly are pitied, as if they are missing out on something essential. There is plenty of evidence—anecdotal and scientific—that sex is more than a handshake. Emotions make transactions messy. Whenever my friends are shocked that they have developed feelings for a hook-up, I wonder how they missed an entire genre of movies. They want to be the “chill” person who’s down to have sex and nothing more, but according to Emba’s research, most of us aren’t that person; most people on the dating scene want to find a committed romantic relationship. But that’s risky, not sexy.
You know what else isn’t sexy? Judgement. Of any kind. Our sexual culture avoids judging any “kink” (used as a catch-all term for any sexual desire or act others may find weird) as long as it’s consensual. Yet even in our consumerist culture, most people know they must control some desires; they at least shouldn’t kill the coworker they loathe. Most people also like to think of themselves as people who care about others to some extent. It makes sense, then, that we shouldn’t encourage malicious fantasies that edge us toward total unrestraint. Why should that change when our sexual organs get involved? If sexual morality ends at consent, our only rule is that we shouldn’t assault people. What a victory.
I understand this impulse to suspend all judgment for those who were raised in and now resent purity culture. Many young adults abandoned not just a set of rules but the communities that vilified those who disobeyed—premarital sex made you a damaged slut; using birth control meant you were selfish; people in homosexual relationships hated Jesus and families. It makes sense that we would want to escape these kinds of judgments and reclaim sexuality as something good and not shameful. But by automatically “consenting” to everything we once said no to, we’re playing into the very stereotype on which purity culture thrives: those who disagree with us must be hedonists incapable of lasting, loving relationships. As Emba reminds us, consenting to constant casual sex isn’t leading to the kinds of relationships most of us crave, especially when the sex is disrespecting us or our partners.
Real liberation doesn’t end at being saved from something bad; we must be liberated into something better. Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean always taking what’s offered but rather choosing what is good. So Emba offers a bit of a solution for a culture of bad sex: Perhaps we shouldn’t consume what we don’t even want; perhaps we should have less sex.
This doesn’t mean limiting ourselves to a certain number of sexual encounters. Rather, before having sex with someone we should ask ourselves if this is willing the good for ourselves and our partner. Are we planning to break their heart? Do we really want this sexual encounter, or are we using it (and this person) to numb ourselves? Are we letting someone demean us by assenting to all their whims? This will almost certainly lead to less casual sex, but hopefully also fewer regrets that could cause serious damage. (A bonus: Having less sex now to work toward a stable relationship could lead to more good sex in the future. In my monogamous marriage, I don’t have to wait for Saturday’s cocktail-induced confidence to hook up with someone who may not care about what I want.)
We should be talking about sex beyond the false dichotomy of abstinence or “everything goes.”
For years I’ve heard Christians say we need better conversations about sex in the Church. But Rethinking Sex takes on another important issue—that sexual ethics isn’t only for the religious. Religions can’t hold good sexual relationships hostage. People with no religious affiliation can have sex that is more loving than the sex in many Christian marriages. (Sex doesn’t become morally neutral at “I do.”) When churches believe they must malign all other sexual ethics to teach their own, “I am the way and the truth and the life” sounds more like a threat than a gift. We need true freedom and care in our sexual culture at large. We should be talking about sex beyond the false dichotomy of abstinence or “everything goes.”
And if someone wants to remain abstinent until marriage or for forever (it’s not a fault to stay single), people with different standards should let them, not pressure them into “consent” by claiming their choice must come from a place of shame. Maybe it does, or maybe it comes from a strong conviction (religious or not) that they wait. Emba reminds us that we owe each other something: we should think of everyone—whether or not we’re sleeping with them—as an equal person and will their good. That means respecting everyone’s agency.
Rethinking Sex is just the beginning of this conversation. Christine Emba wants her ideas to open thought, discussion, and even critique. It’s about time we all share and listen, that we strive to respect each other as equal human beings in and out of bed—even if that means having an awkward conversation before anything else. Vulnerable ethical discussions might not sound sexy, but as the poet Jane Hirshfield writes, “Think assailable thoughts or be lonely.” And aren’t we tired of being lonely?
Whitney Rio-Ross holds a Master’s in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Reflections, America Magazine, LETTERS JOURNAL, The Cresset, St. Katherine Review, The Other Journal, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Birthmarks and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband.
Rethinking Sex: A Provocation was published by Sentinel on March 22, 2022. Fare Forward is grateful for their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy on their website here.
