Tomorrow America votes.
I won’t vote. I’m Canadian. And so I don’t really feel like I should chime in on the election. I know people who read this blog fall into different political camps, and that’s all right. My main role is encouraging marriages, and it’s one that I want to take seriously.
But there is one thing that happened during this campaign that so fits in with exactly what I was talking about in The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and I feel like I would be remiss not to talk about it. I don’t want to address this as a political issue, but more as social commentary.
I’m sure most of you have already heard of the infamous Lena Dunham ad. If you haven’t here it is:
Regardless of your political affiliation, I do hope that we can all agree that comparing voting to losing one’s virginity is disgusting and disparaging towards women.
But here are four things I want to note:
1. This ad assumes that girls WILL lose their virginity before they’re married
2. This ad assumes that lots of your partners will be jerks
3. This ad assumes that anyone who doesn’t want to lose their virginity is seriously strange and geeky
4. This ad is sanctioned by those who are extremely culturally powerful.
Why even say, “you should do it with a great guy” unless you know that OTHER times may not be so great, so it’s important to make your “first time” special.
And then Dunham throws in how it is super uncool to say, “No, I wasn’t ready.” The analogy is here is to say that one wasn’t ready for sex is also super uncool. Get it? Cool people have sex with someone they think is also cool.
I find this absolutely disgusting.
At least a few decades ago we all agreed that sleeping around indiscriminantly might be something that people did, but they didn’t talk about it. They didn’t promote it. There was still lip service to waiting until you were married.
Now there’s not. The President of America is saying that it is super uncool to say, “no, I wasn’t ready.” I realize that they were talking about voting, but the whole premise of the ad is comparing voting to sex. And so to say “I wasn’t ready” is silly, in their minds. And that’s coming from the highest level of our culture. I wonder if he has shown this ad to his daughters?
We are now in a situation where the most powerful citizens of the United States are making fun of girls who won’t lose their virginity. We are living in a culture where the most powerful will mock those in their late teens early twenties if they decide they don’t want to sleep around.
I find this absolutely heartbreaking.
Interestingly, teen sexual activity is actually lower today than it was when I was a teenager. Kids are fighting against this culture. But it is a fight.
And when we lose that fight, the results are so sad. I have written at length on this blog about the dangers that sexual baggage can bring to a marriage. I have written about why God knew what He was doing when He said, “wait until marriage.”
If there are ads like this out there, targeting young women, we need to be even more vigilant and encourage our own girls. Tell them it’s okay to go against the culture! Tell them no one ever regretted waiting; many, many people regret not waiting. Tell them sex is so much better in a marriage context.
I do agree with Lena on one thing: Your first time should be with a great guy. I just also believe your first time should be with a ring on your finger.
If your first time wasn’t, and your marriage is still affected by that, my new ebook that I hope to release first thing next week, The 31 Days to Great Sex, will help you and your husband deal with that baggage!
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 25 years and happily married for 20! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
Wow. I am with you. Good grief.
Wow. I had not seen that. Thank you for sharing it and I am in COMPLETE agreement with you. SIGH.
THANK YOU! 1,000 times thank you. It was sad to find this was an official ad I’m addition to being told by the Obama campaign that we should “vote with our vaginas”. What supporters of this administration don’t realize is the utter disrespect and demoralization being done against women.
Again, thank you
I saw the ad and couldn’t believe they would be so crass as to compare voting for Obama to sleeping with him. Totally gross.
I agree that they simply assume that losing your virginity before marriage and sleeping around are normal and that you’re weird if you don’t want to do those things. It says a lot about our culture that this ad would ever be made or aired.
It is also insulting to women to not only assume that they will be promiscuous, but to suggest that voting (like sex, apparently) should be based on whether or not the person is a “nice guy” and cares if you get free birth control. The same campaign talks about voting “like your lady parts depend on it.” So I guess we empty-headed women can’t vote with our heads or our consciences…only our “lady parts.” That ‘s totally demeaning and offensive.
Wow! Just wow… I don’t get it. What would happen if the roles were reversed it was a man comparing voting for Ms Politician to sleeping with her and men were being told to “vote with their penises”? I suspect there would be some women’s groups outraged about that.
Amen! Can we say “double standard”!
This ad bothered me so much that I couldn’t stop thinking about it – I had to write also. Truly tragic that this is what our leader peddles to the young women of our society.
http://www.theaccidentaldoctor.com/2012/10/27/susan-b-anthony-elizabeth-cady-stanton-lena-dunham/
I agree that this is disgusting and tragic.
Not to mention, as a woman, I have had it up to my eyeballs with talk of “women’s issues”… like somehow the economy, gas prices, the war, national safety, and gun rights are not my issues. I find it demeaning and insulting to women. Vote with your vagina? How about the pro-equality people start acting like I can care about defense issues as much as my husband!
[not to mention that I don’t even agree with the “women’s issues” people on what actually constitutes an answer to the perceived problems anyway]
Completely and totally insulting.
Well, I was going to leave my own comment until I read yours, Amanda. I’ll just say DITTO.
Exactly! People keep talking about birth control and sexual rights. How do you plan on defending any of your rights if our basic ones (right to bear arms, free speech) are taken away?
If our President were TRULY a Bible-believing Christian (as he so claims…) he should have denounced this ad within moments of seeing it for the first time. He speaks regularly about being a good dad to his daughters, but then he gives garbage like this a cutesy little “wink-wink”? I agree with those above who said “double standard”… most definitely.
Jason, well said!!
Isn’t it part of the Christian Faith not to judge others… I’m really disappointed that someone that is using the argument that the add is not Christian, implying to me that you are a Christian, would then immediately judge someone else based on their “christian-ness”. Regardless of what you think the add is or is not, I don’t think its fair to say what kind of Christian the president of our country is. I thought our number one job as Christian’s is to spread God’s love, just as Jesus did. End of story. This argument is absolutley disappointing to me.
Jessica, Jason didn’t say he wasn’t a Christian. He said “if he was a Christian, he should do this…”
I think sometimes we can take nonjudgmentalism so far that we fail to stand up to the truth. Personally, I believe that if you are a Christian, you should not put out an ad like that. I also believe that if you are a Christian you should not support abortion, and you should not vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
I’m not saying that people who do these things aren’t Christians–that’s not for me to say. But I think it is DEFINITELY okay to say that Christians should not do certain things. Paul certainly said that. Jesus certainly said that. And I think we need to stand up loudly and say, “Christians need to stand against our culture promoting sex before marriage as being a good thing!!!” Maybe if more of us stood up this wouldn’t be considered culturally acceptable anymore, you know?
Jessica, you are certainly free to disagree with me – that’s fine. But Matthew 7:1 (and onward for context) is NOT a command to “NOT judge”, but a command to JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY. For example, if I were involved in a certain sin – let’s just use adultery for this scenario. Would it be right for me to walk around telling people who I knew were having affairs how wrong they were? Absolutely not. That’s called HYPOCRISY. The “judge not lest ye be judged” command is usually half-quoted, leaving off the rest which provides the entire context.
What I AM being told to do is first deal with my own sin of adultery (Matthew 7:5), to get rid of that from within my life, ask forgiveness of the Lord and get clean. THEN I am in a better (non-hypocritical) position to speak into the lives of others. This is what the entire context of Matthew 7 is about.
As far as what I said about our president… the man claims with his lips that he is a Christian. However, the fruit he shows goes in direct contradiction to what God’s Word says. The evidence is there for all to see. He promotes killing unborn children, he promotes homosexual marriage, and so on. Do you feel that these are things that Jesus would have promoted? I believe God’s Word is clear.
In Christ,
Jason
So much of this election seems to be about abortion and free love. Forget about the economy or the war, we seem to only care about base animal instincts right now. Very telling. :/
That ad really disturbs me!!! Thank you for speaking up!!
such a sad ad! Such a powerful and prevalent topic–thanks for posting on this!
As a man may I add that I find this commercial to be the most offensive and demeaning comment about women. I was taught to respect women from an early age. When I met my future wife it never crossed our minds to engage in pre-marital sex. We discussed it of course and my fiancee said she wanted two children. The wisdom of our decision to refrain was brought home to us immediately. God truly does have a sense of humour. He said you want children then children you shall have and our daughter was conceived, probably on our wedding night. She is our pride and joy. Knowing that we have never shared our bodies with anyone but each other enables us to appreciate to the full the true beauty and wonder of sex, God’s greatest gift to husbands and wives. Having just written this my disgust of the commercial has increased considerably it IS utterly disgusting.
I had not seen this ad, so thank you for sharing and thank you for blogging about it. I couldn’t agree with your post more.
i had not seen this ad, probably because I’m not in a swing state.
Campaigning is a dirty tricky game…game being the operative word.
distasteful yes….can’t wait for 11/7 to come
THANK YOU!!! I was appalled when I first saw this ad, too. Thank you so much for writing this; I’m sharing it with everyone.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I loved your blog before, but you have hit a new level of awesome with this post. I am a super-political person and could rant all day about this, but I’ll just say that I agree with you 100% and leave it at that.
Terrific commentary on this disturbing ad. When I first saw it a week or so ago, I was incredulous. It was just another reason, in my mind, not to vote for him. So I didn’t. But I did share this post. Thank you!
Hi Sheila, I have a bit of an interesting question for you. Of course, feel free to pass on it if you don’t feel comfortable!
I am not particularly religious but I value the advice given on your blog more than any other. I think your words can span across religions, political parties, anything, because the basis of all your advice is love.
That said, I do have many traditionally religious personal values. I am in my twenties and have been in a relationship for nearly eight years now, but we are not married. Why? Because both of us have extremely liberal families that devalue marriage, and insist that both of us finish our PhD’s before getting married. (I know, they are crazy!)
I do not know how to communicate to my family that I am sick of my current lifestyle. I love my boyfriend, but I want to be his wife and have children with him. He has expressed these same views, but when he told his family he intended to marry me, they told him he could count on being disowned if he started a family now.
This is weighing on me heavily and I fear it will become baggage once our REAL life begins, as a married couple. There are years between now and when we will both be finished with our PhD’s. I want to honor my parents, but I also want to become my boyfriend’s wife. As you can see, I have a lot of conflict.
Do you have any suggestions, or just thoughts on the situation?
I would appreciate anything you have to say. Coming from an agnostic, politically moderate American, you are one of the most inspiring women running one of the most honest blogs I have ever had the pleasure of coming across. Thank you very much, and may you be blessed every day!
Sophie, that’s a tough one, but I know many people who are in similar situations. I guess what I’d say is that it’s your life. Do what YOU feel is right. If that means going against your parents, do it. Most parents would be proud of having children who wanted to settle down, but who were also committed to postgraduate education. Ultimately, your life is going to be what you make it. You’re the one who is going to have to live with the repercussions, not them. So if you think it’s right to get married, then I think you should get married. Best of luck!