Let's Talk About Sex
For the first time in my life, a woman’s magazine is talking about sex in a way that aligns with my faith
Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I talk about … sex.
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If you haven’t heard by now, Evie Magazine, the only women’s magazine of its kind, dedicated its latest print issue to marital sex. I wrote a calmer version of this for the Daily Caller, if you are interested. However, I have some thoughts on this that I think would be better for our Substack audience, and I want to convey them.
To reiterate what I wrote earlier on the subject, I think it is a beautiful thing that Evie is stepping into the void to have honest conversations about sex. It is desperately needed. Young women should not learn about pleasure and intimacy from degenerate leftists who will tell them that hook-up culture is more fulfilling than marital sex. The writers and podcasters in the women’s media space will tell your daughters that they must have one-night stands and threesomes as the only way to achieve female liberation.
Evie Magazine is giving a profound blessing to a generation of women by fearlessly telling them there is a different way.
There has been so much focus in the conservative Christian world on preaching the message of abstinence and waiting until marriage that we never even thought to tell our daughters what it is that they were waiting for. I know several women who, despite having children of their own, struggle with the shame and guilt of marital sex. This isn’t how God intended it to be.
The Catholic Church, through Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, provides what I believe is the perfect understanding of this, as it teaches that marital sex should be both beautiful and pleasurable. It is not simply for procreation, although as Christians we must always be open to life in these occasions, marital sex is divinely designed for spouses to experience pleasure that unites them as one unit. It is as much a spiritual act as a physical one. God designed us to enjoy it.
Because of our fallen nature, we use this pleasure in a sinful way. Hook-up culture distorts sex, makes it dirty, and leads Christian women into feeling shame about having sex with their husbands. This is why what Evie Magazine is doing is so important.
I feel conflicted, as I am sure many Christian mothers do, about when I need to have a discussion about sex with my daughters. I want them to avoid living a life that gives in to lust. It’s a deviant way to live, and I would hate for that to consume them. But I have also seen the pendulum swing so far in the opposite direction that it causes strife and hardship in the marriages of people close to me.
At the end of the day, I fear the two ends of the spectrum equally. Knowing this, my girls will learn about sex from me because I believe this is how our society should be. They shouldn’t need to turn to a women’s magazine to find out that pleasure with your husband is divinely inspired and holy. The older women in their lives should be passing on generational knowledge that will help them navigate this new world until they and their husbands have a clear understanding of each other.
But for millions of women, they didn’t have that. Our mothers and grandmothers never told us what to expect on our wedding nights. We were left to find out about the wide world of sex from secular entertainment. Some women never made it to their wedding night before entering this world, and some went in so blind they ultimately ended up disappointed or wrecked with guilt.
There are some in the conservative movement who have chosen to denounce Evie for its decision to write the “Sex Issue,” without ever understanding why they felt the need.
Evie’s founder, Brittany Hugoboom, was very honest that this was years in the making and not because she wanted to use her magazine to talk about sex, but because her readers were desperate for answers to questions that the women in their lives had made too taboo to ask.
“For years, a recurring plea has shown up in our DMs, emails, and survey responses. Young married women asking us for real, honest, detailed guidance about sex,” Brittany said.
“Many young women, especially from traditional or religious families, have come into womanhood without learning anything about sex. They saved themselves for marriage and then realized the culture that told them to wait had absolutely nothing to say about what comes after the altar,” she continued.
“They grew up with negative associations to intimacy, but were expected to become uninhibited the moment they said ‘I do.’ We believe sex is one of the most important foundations of a thriving marriage. You cannot call something sacred and then refuse to take it seriously,” she added.
It’s our fault. We should be ushering these women into this beautiful, exclusive club with glee, but instead, we pretend it doesn’t exist. Or worse, we tell them that marital sex is an obligation that women just need to get through in order to have children and keep their husbands happy.
For the first time in my life, a woman’s magazine is talking about sex in a way that aligns with my faith. It’s making a topic that would otherwise make someone blush into a fruitful discussion that will hopefully help marriages thrive. And because of this, we should support their mission. Buy the print issue and save it for your daughters as a wedding present. Use it as a template to help open up a conversation on a topic that can be hard to discuss.
Marriage is the most wonderful blessing of my life. The intimacy I share with my husband brings me so much joy, and I want my daughters to experience it too. All mothers should. So, before you attack Evie, realize that they wouldn’t have had to write the book on sex if we were doing a better job preparing our daughters for marital bliss.
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