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Virginity auctions.

My heart hurts for a young, Brazilian woman named Rebecca Bernardo.

Her mother, who had a stroke, is now bed-ridden and requires assistance to eat and use the bathroom. The news says Bernardo, who is 18, barely could afford to hire help for her mom. In effort to raise funds sufficient to meet her mom’s needs, Bernardo used a YouTube video to solicit bids on what her mom – according to CNN – wishes she wouldn’t sell: her virginity.

A Brazilian news channel offered to cover Bernardo’s mom’s medical expenses if Bernardo calls off the virginity auction. Media ethics aside (journalists aren’t supposed to get involved), the outlet’s offer finagles Bernardo out of a bind. It provides her mom with what she needs without requiring prostitution of Bernardo.

It’s kind of a no-brainer. Except there is a snag in the story: Bernardo said no.

According to CNN, she turned the channel down because the sum of money the channel promised to provide to Bernardo solely would cover her mom’s medical expenses. It would not be enough, said the story, also to move her and her mom to a new town, where Bernardo could “start a new life.”

“There comes a time when you have to make decisions to get what you want,” Bernardo said to CNN. “You have to be strong.”

Which is true. I totes agree.

But if Bernardo says no when somebody offers to pay for what her mom needs, maybe what her mom needs isn’t what Bernardo actually wants. And if what her mom needs isn’t what Bernardo actually wants, what does she want?

I can’t answer that.

I can, however, say this:

One indeed must “be strong” in the face of something that’s hard. It requires strength to do a difficult thing, in other words. I don’t doubt it is difficult to take care of a mom who needs constant medical attention when you don’t have the money to pay for it.

But which action requires real strength: praying, trusting, and working through a really bad bind, or having sex for money so you can quickly find your way out of it?

I don’t blame Bernardo for her choice, although I neither agree with it nor trust her motives, given her decision to turn down the media outlet’s money. But I pray she opens her heart to real strength, before she accepts anybody’s bid.

Click here to read the story on CNN.

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The goal of chastity.

I have suspected for awhile now that there is little clarity in our culture regarding the goal of chastity.

This is probably in part because there is little clarity regarding the difference between abstinence (which ends at marriage) and chastity (which never ends). But it is also probably in part because chastity contradicts the ways of life our culture encourages us to pursue (and in case it needs to be said, chastity isn’t one of them).

In other words, it’s really freakin’ difficult for the average, unchaste American to wrap his or her head around the concept.

Which isn’t an insult. (It’s an observation.)

A case in point comes from an anonymous comment somebody left on my site the other day, regarding my choice to save sex for marriage, which is rooted in chastity:

“Your options, and the available pool of accomplished men … is severely limited. 99.9% of all the men will have nothing to do with you, and you know it.”

Which is an observation. (But I think it was supposed to be an insult.)

Whoever left the comment is right, and may as well have quoted Jesus:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

1. There are fewer fish in our sea.

but

2. Chaste daters learn not to worry about finding the needle in the haystack (and not solely because we can’t find the right haystack).

The difference between people who practice chastity and people like the one who wrote the comment is this: We are ok with points 1 and 2. They aren’t.

Our ok-ness with points 1 and 2 is the result of knowing the goal of chastity.

Of knowing few people in our culture find a man or a woman dateable who isn’t going to have sex with them before marriage.

Of knowing this is a non-issue if what you intend to accomplish by dating is to meet somebody who would suit you as a spouse.

Of knowing that if you are saving sex, somebody who is not saving sex is not suitable for you.

Of knowing, when you meet someone not suitable, how to suck it up and move along.

When author Elna Baker wrote about sex for Glamour, she called virginity a disadvantage in dating. In the same way, the anonymous comment implies chastity is a disadvantage. As if the small pool of people from which chaste daters can choose is proof our way of life doesn’t work.

But the “good luck with thats” and the “you’ll be single forevers” and the anonymous comments like the one around which this post revolves are proof of this:

People don’t get our way of life.

The goal of chastity is love.

It’s about death to self and self mastery, which require abstinence until marriage, and celibacy if you aren’t married. It’s about upholding the intrinsic value of the human, which requires us neither to use nor objectify each other, which requires us to reject relationships that are based solely on emotions or sensations (to reject, in other words, relationships based solely on what use they are of to me).

And it does, in fact, mean that “99.9% of all the men” will have nothing to do with me.

Which, believe it or not, makes practicing it a lot easier.

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Talkin’ sex on NPR’s Tell Me More.

Grateful for the opp to talk sex on today’s episode of NPR’s Tell Me More, hosted by Michel Martin. Fabulous to chat with Martin and fellow panelists Monique Matthews, author of Sex Free, and Lisa Marziali, from the first episode of TLC’s the Virgin Diaries.

Here’s how NPR describes the segment:

“In the old days, many people aspired to remain abstinent until marriage. Today, that goal seems rare. Host Michel Martin speaks with three women, Arleen Spenceley, Monique Matthews and Lisa Marziali about their decisions to abstain from out-of-wedlock sex.”

If you’d like to listen to it, click here.

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[Guest Post] Why my husband and I don’t use contraception.

Guest blogger Stephanie!

I bet not everyone gets to learn about contraception with the help of a Slip N’ Slide. Seriously. Born and raised Catholic, I learned somewhere along the way that the Church never permits artificial forms of birth control, but until I attended this particular gathering of my high school youth group, the one involving said slide, I’d thought birth control was one of those things, like Crocs and the Backstreet Boys, that wasn’t really taken seriously anymore.

I’ve discovered, as it turns out, that birth control totally is serious business. Love, I was told that night, is meant to be free, faithful, total, and fruitful (the slide was supposed to represent this, I think). It’s meant to be given without reserve, promised and sealed in fidelity, to hold back nothing, and to invite a man and woman to become creators of new life. It all made a lot of sense, especially when I discovered that the Catholic Church didn’t insist that every sexual act produce a baby.

So yes; my Catholic faith tells me that contraception is always inherently wrong. If you told me that it’s foolish to follow a bunch of rules just because the Catholic Church tells you to, I’d say you’re absolutely right. The amazing thing about the Church, I’ve learned, is that every time I’ve put a question of teaching to the test, there’s been a perfectly clear, logical answer that emphasizes one’s best good. Rules don’t exist to burden us (there’s a reason why you stop at a red light, for instance, or why your iPod manual tells you not to take your iPod swimming), but to let us live in the most fulfilling way.

The thing is, I don’t want to lead with my religion. I want to lead with who I am. My understanding has since deepened beyond a teenager’s somewhat blind obedience to her faith. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that birth control is one of the greatest inhibitors of romance, intimacy, and true freedom. I’ve come to see that biologically, practically, logically, and even romantically speaking, choosing not to bring contraceptives into a relationship is one of the absolute best ways to foster trust, honest communication, and authentic love. Who doesn’t long for that?

In the past few years, various friends and personal reading have led me to become a huge advocate for what I like to call the crunchy life. You know: coconut oil, kale, homemade cleaning products, and natural deodorant. I know I’m not the only one — in my observation, the benefits of things like green juice, organic meats, and neti pots are becoming commonplace on the pages of many women’s magazines.

It’s a puzzle to me, then, that with all the justified concerns we have about our well-being and environmental impact, so many of us seem to overlook a critical area of our lives: our reproductive health. Biologically, the birth control Pill and other hormonal contraceptives work by releasing large amounts of synthetic hormones, estrogen and progestin, that suppress ovulation and mimic the hormonal symptoms of pregnancy. In other words, they fool a woman’s body into a sort of state of constant pregnancy.

This, to me, couldn’t be further from natural. Consider, for instance, the fact that it’s normal to take medicine when you have a headache. It’s not normal when you don’t have a headache. In the same way, the Pill is marketed to “treat” a condition that doesn’t exist: it’s intended to actually prevent a woman’s body from functioning as it naturally does.

What’s more, the information packet for the Pill contains an extensive list of side effects that are directly related to taking it, ranging from weight gain, acne, migraines, and high blood pressure all the way to heart attack and increased chances of breast and cervical cancer. Ironically enough, the Pill often lowers a woman’s sex drive, the very thing she sought to liberate, as well. While packets are quick to point out that the Pill is merely “associated with” higher instances of serious conditions, and that they are rare, I still personally don’t find that the freedom to enjoy sex without pregnancy outweighs these risks.

I’m angered when I see how readily the Pill is pushed on women, largely in the name of profit. Friends have described taking birth control to me as feeling trapped in one’s own body, not feeling at all like oneself, and living in fear of what might happen to one’s complexion, weight, and future children, if one ceased to take it (you can read more anecdotal testaments here). We deserve so much more. The health-related shortcomings of birth control speak for themselves, but I think the logical case against contraception is just as convincing.

Free, faithful, total, and fruitful. It seems that even to a nonreligious individual, these four elements of love and sex are, at some point in a relationship, very desirable. I think most would agree that the body speaks a language, and that sex and love speak the same thing, whether one intends them to or not. They say, I want you, and all of you, forever. Isn’t that what we’re all longing to hear?

If one of these elements is missing, the body essentially speaks a lie. I want you, it says, but not all of you. It’s a conditional promise. When the fruitful aspect of sex is artificially eliminated, there’s a withholding of one’s fertility and the accompanying responsibility it bears.

That exact sense of unconditional love and responsibility is my biggest reason of all not to contracept. I met my husband Andrew four years ago, and when we became a couple, it didn’t take long for either of us to know we’d never go on another first date. Not only was he a handsome lover of words who’d hide notes around my apartment, he shared my take on birth control. During our engagement, we signed up for Natural Family Planning (NFP) courses to prepare for a contraceptive-free marriage.

Choosing to forego birth control in our marriage comes down to love. Karol Wojtyla, the man who became Pope John Paul II, wrote that the opposite of love is not hatred, but using another person. One need only look to the culture, I think, to see that hookups, friends with benefits, and cohabitation have left so many of us broken. We’re promised freedom, but are left instead with deep wounds. No one’s body or heart is meant to be used only for what it can offer sexually; it’s meant for love that sacrifices and heals.

Each of us is so much more than just a body, but in our humanness that can be easy to forget. Even in a loving marriage, there exists the possibility of desiring one’s spouse for self-gratifying purposes, rather than a desire to express love for the other. It’s a daily battle to let love prevail over lust.

I want my husband and I to have the best possible chances of winning–when birth control takes pregnancy off the table, I can only foresee a greater temptation to use one’s spouse, even unintentionally, to take sex for granted. Birth control, I think, could easily become a crutch to mask a lack of self-control for one another’s sake.

In our attempts to not take sex for granted, we’ve found NFP a powerful way to understand sex as good and beautiful without idolizing it. A far cry from the rhythm or calendar methods of old, NFP is a scientifically precise, observation-based method of simply tracking, rather than altering, the existing conditions of a woman’s body in order to determine periods of fertility and infertility throughout her cycle. When used correctly, NFP is as effective at postponing pregnancy as the Pill.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard not to giggle, at first, when we learned that cervical mucus was one of the observable signs of fertility. We discovered that planning to use NFP in the abstract and actually sitting in a classroom learning it, trying to pretend a couple wasn’t standing there talking about ovulation the way most people talk about the weather, are two completely different things. You get used to it.

It’s actually something I’m so thankful for–I’d venture that, between texting my husband about my mucus while I’m at work, filling in my chart together each night, and constantly discerning a prudent time to begin a family, we have a more goofy, more intimate, and more joyful sex life than we ever could with contraception. The responsibility of planning our family doesn’t just fall to me as I take a daily pill or replace a monthly patch; it’s shared by the both of us. The self-control required to abstain during times of fertility sets us free to truly give ourselves to one another.

Intimacy isn’t a right to be demanded. It’s the fruit of loving, willful submission. Sexual freedom, we’ve seen, doesn’t mean a total lack of responsibility for each other. It means a willful choice to love in a pure, self-giving way. “Freedom,” said John Paul II, “exists for the sake of love.” That is, when you love someone, you actually desire to place their happiness before your own. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

Love that is free, faithful, total, and fruitful; love that sacrifices and unites. It’s nothing less than any of us deserve. I’d say that’s definitely worth a trip down the Slip ‘N Slide.

– – – –

About the blogger: Born a hop, skip, and jump from the Chesapeake Bay, Stephanie Calis now resides in Appalachia, thanks to love. Her sweet husband Andrew teaches English there. She delights in bike rides, good books, puddle jumping, The Avett Brothers, hammocks, avocados, and Andrew’s many argyle sweaters. She is thirsty. Knowing so many others are, too, she spent a missionary year with Generation Life speaking to students about human dignity and authentic love. Her passion is telling young women they possess immense worth and that pure, sacrificial love is real; she thinks a truthful understanding of sex and love is medicine for an aching culture. Stephanie blogs about love and wedding planning at Captive the Heart.

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Modesty only works when it isn’t distorted.

They need a sign that warns about the butts.

If one thing stands out about a trip I took to South Beach back in May, it’s this:

I have never seen so much butt on a beach.

Our first day there, I stepped off the boardwalk behind the hotel and onto the sand,  far too close for comfort to a woman who – while holding her toddler’s hand – rubbed sunblock onto a part of her body that is normally covered by clothes.

I go with my gut when I say “modest is hottest” isn’t Miami’s motto. (Oh how I wish it was.)

But even for we who are proponents of modesty, embracing it as it stands now could backfire on us. This is because modesty has been distorted.

Awhile ago, a study was conducted at Princeton, as paraphrased like this by Jason Evert:

The test subjects were placed in a brain scanner and for a fraction of a second were shown photographs of women in bikinis, as well as men and women dressed modestly. 

When the young men viewed the scantily clad women, the part of their brain associated with tool use lit up.

According to the study, men are likely to objectify women when women are scantily clad. To accommodate for that likelihood, the purpose of modesty has morphed into this: “Girls have to cover up so boys don’t objectify them.”

Which implies that the woman is responsible for the man’s actions, that the onus is on her to create conditions in which he won’t objectify her.

Which relieves a man of responsibility for his actions and requires of him exactly zero discipline.

Which implies men are weak. As if men can’t not objectify scantily clad women. As if human nature means men will objectify them.

But men don’t objectify women because they’re wired to do it. They objectify women because they’re humans who live in a culture that tells them to do it. And what is learned can be unlearned.

If we decide, however, that “it’s a woman’s job” to create conditions in which a man won’t objectify her (and therefore that “it’s her fault” when he does), men who learned it don’t have to unlearn it. And men who don’t unlearn it – even the ones who save sex for marriage – become husbands who will objectify their wives, because their wives inevitably will be scantily clad sometimes.

This is not to say I want the world to be one where women can be scantily clad under any circumstance. This is to say that if our solution for “men objectify scantily clad women” is “women stop dressing scantily,” we send the following message: A man’s objectification of a woman isn’t the problem. Her body is.

The damage done by an idea like that goes deep for both women and men.

And real modesty doesn’t do any damage.

Bodies aren’t bad. Bodies are good. We know this because we are physically attracted to each other. The attraction is designed to “orient” us toward the other. It produces a sensual reaction. A sensual reaction is a good thing, too.

But a sensual reaction is superficial when compared to other important elements of a relationship (like friendship). When fostered before the other important elements, a sensual reaction can distract a person from ever discovering whether the other important elements even exist.

The problem is “when only sensuality is stirred, we experience the body of the other person as a potential object of enjoyment. We reduce the person to their physical qualities – their good looks, their body – and view the person primarily in terms of the pleasure we can experience from those qualities,” wrote Edward Sri in Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love.

But, wrote Sri, we live “in a highly sexualized culture … (where) we are constantly bombarded by sexual images exploiting our sensuality, getting us to focus on the bodies of members of the opposite sex.”

Which is why real modesty is so important.

Modesty, when not distorted, doesn’t say girls have to cover up so boys don’t objectify them. It isn’t a burden on women and doesn’t imply men are weak. It requires us to pursue and be pursued for virtuous reasons. It enables us to be drawn to somebody for who he or she is (which is conducive to love), not for what his or her body does to us (which impedes love).

And in a culture mostly all right with superficial relationships and way-too-bare bodies on (and off) the beach, modesty provides a refreshing “arena in which something much more than a sensual reaction might take place.” (Sri)