11 Comments

My best friend's top surgery is very soon, and I'm only just coming to understand how much our relationship will change once his bottom surgery is complete. We are VERY affectionate but once the bottom surgery is complete, I won't feel comfortable in the same way. Part of the hangups are mine as a southern, married exvangelical woman, the rest have to do with trauma from my rape. Your benediction is one I really needed today while I face down the rest of my twenty year-old rape trauma.

Expand full comment

Absolutely believe it is time to end body shame. The book shameless calls for a reformation long overdue. It is a very enriching read.

Expand full comment

You know I skipped this book initially because I wasn't thinking I had any shame, but who am I kidding. Your post on this reminded me we are all sexually screwed up from some messed up religious stuff combined with some previous generation beliefs. I'm so getting this book right now (and thank goodness, a paperback. I hate hardback books).

I volunteer with a group doing amazing work with women in Tanzania (www.empowertz.org), and they are reaching more into the topic of female genital cutting. I was visiting with someone about it (because seriously...WTH did this ever become a good idea, anywhere?) and they pointed out that it is the same concept that virginity had in the previous generation here (that still lingers). No good girl would be of any interest to a man who wasn't a chaste virgin. FGC/FGM is the same kind of thinking. I'm simplifying a lot here, but he wasn't wrong with a companion that hits home in how to understand it.

Wow we really have some screwed up concepts of sex.

Can't wait to read this book now.

Expand full comment

THANK YOU!!

God truly speaks through you to me and your words are SOOOO appreciated!!!

Expand full comment

This is a beautiful, loving post. Thank you! Anything that gets us away from the culture of shame is a blessing.

I should have left the church years ago when the senior pastor, from the pulpit said that if a girl (GIRL) is rapped, she did something to provoke the guy. OMG! Were her hands showing? Did she breathe too loudly?

Sorry, got stirred up thinking about the last couple of years at a large local church and again wondering why I stayed for 12 LONG years. A guy who left that church was handing out Ken Blue's book: Healing Spiritual Abuse. He bought a case! I was on the road to freedom. Something tells me more freedom will come as I read SHAMELESS. I look forward to it.

Expand full comment

How do I learn to see the Bible the way you do? There is so much life and light and beauty in the things you say, the way you interpret passages and I just.... miss all of that when I read it on my own. I want that vibrancy to my faith, the kind that gives hope to others when I talk about it. Does that make sense?

Expand full comment

I like everything you said here. I would like to add, especially for those in the beginning of their sex lives; be responsible about it. It's a beautiful thing, but it's not a game.

Expand full comment

This is such a beautiful post! Thank you so much. You really are a breath of fresh, loving air.

Expand full comment

Thank you for redeeming the voice of God from those who claim to speak for God. I wrote this several years ago along this theme.

PUNISHED BY THE WRONG GOD

How many times has God punished you?

For all your failings, fumblings and imperfections?

How many times has his wrath been loosed upon you?

As you gobble up the judgements.

Have you really peered at this God?

This judge almighty, this cold stone tyrant?

Has God really punished you

or has someone told you about God and how he loves to punish?

Has some sick fuck decided to speak for this God

and whip you in His name?

Have you really peered at this God?

If so, have you noticed the cracks in the stone?

The smell of stale tobacco seeps through the cracks,

The sickly white pot belly, visible also through the cracks.

The nose hairs and yellowing teeth.

Have you really peered at this God?

Power and control with a facade of love

but through the cracks in the stone

It is not God back there

And you realize it hasn't been God

punishing you all these years.

You realize who’s behind the beatings.

You wake up

and

you are pissed.

Expand full comment

I absolutely love it, i recently acknowledged i love older people(am pansexual) and i have always been ashamed of it n being judged for my sexuality, am now dating someone n i pray it works out

Expand full comment