Reblogged from Covenant Eyes
When I was asked to review Sexual Sanity for Women, I was far less than excited. As a woman who battled pornography addiction, I know the frustration of trying to find resources to help me. At first there were none, and then the men’s resources were just reprinted more gender neutral or with pink covers to make them more women-friendly.
I have had several friends ask me to read books over the years—books written by men, books written by married couples, books written by women that addressed the broad-sweeping idea of purity with a little lust sprinkled in there for good measure. One book was exactly the same as the book for men, just all of the male nouns were changed to female.
Each book fell frustratingly short of really ministering to what I feel is one of the primary needs of a woman struggling with lust: She needs to know she is not alone, and that this struggle does not make her ‘one of the guys.’
Women locked in the chains of sins like pornography, lust, and masturbation—sins that are defined both in society and in the church as “men” problems—are confused about their sexuality, about their spirituality, about their humanity. They feel twisted, screwed up and less-than-human. They feel like animals or objects and feel rather stuck. Resources that do little to minister to the deeper heart issues leave those women feeling even more stuck and helpless.
Sexual Sanity for Women is not one of those resources.
Is there somewhere I could find a link to buy this book?
I feel really challenged even just in your review of it, and I’d like to study it with my accountability partners.
I’ve found it on iBooks, only in the American store though… Is there anywhere I could download it as an ebook or in ePub format and put it on my kobo?
Pamela,
I’m not sure. I have a few people from Australia who are asking, actually! You might try the actual publisher’s website? http://stores.newgrowthpress.com/-strse-SMALL-GROUP-RESOURCES/Categories.bok
I know that since it is a workbook, that it isn’t in electronic form. There are exercises you have to write out and such, so only the leader’s guide is available electronically. Let me know if trying to order straight from the publisher works. If not, I can get in touch with the author and see if there’s anything we can do.
Hi there,
If you haven’t found it yet, you could go to our website at http://www.harvestusa.org. There are additional links to other articles by Ellen and also a link to the bookstore: http://harvest-usa-store.com/. Jessica, thank you for the great review I know that Ellen really appreciated it!!
You are welcome. Thanks to her for creating such a great resource! I’ve been promoting it wherever I can!
I actually preferred the gender-neutral books, or even the men’s books even though the men’s books had a horrible way of talking about women. They said things like “women’s sex drives are nonexistent during marriage” which is obviously not true.
S,
Thanks for commenting. I definitely have run across those gender stereotypes before, and they are far from helpful! I am if you have read any gender-neutral books, which ones? Also, is there anything in particular about women-centric approaches that you do not like as compared to men-centric approaches?
I looked at a lot of books, and don’t remember all of the names… but there was a Catholic book that was neutral and had “Sexual Revolution” in the title, and there was a book about lust and dating written by two young adults (one female, one male) addressed to teenagers.
Then there was “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” which wasn’t exactly helpful because it was more academic and didn’t answer any of my questions, but I did appreciate the gender-neutrality.
The one addressed to men that I liked more was “Every Young Man’s Battle” but it seemed like the author viewed women as some strange species, and I wondered if he had ever spoken to a woman before. And I read “The Thrill of Being Chaste” which was written by a woman, and addressed to women, but was a little too gendered for me. What I did like about “The Thrill” was how passionate the author was about God, and how she gave specific reasons not to masturbate.
I guess it might be different for me because I was specifically looking for books about chastity and fighting lust, and not necessarily addiction. But I didn’t like the woman-centric books as much because they made it seem like women only had sex/looked at porn/masturbated because they were lonely or looking for love or suffering from low self-esteem. And in my experience, this is true sometimes, but not always, especially when I was younger. Plus, for some reason, I wanted an “objective morality” view of all of that stuff. In other words, I wanted to know how to respond when my friends talked about how it gave them benefits (stress relief, pleasure, etc).
Also, some of the woman-centric ones viewed all men as womanizers, like all men were sex-hungry people who were preying on vulnerable women. And although I didn’t bother to read “Every Young Woman’s Battle”, I read the reviews, and the reviews said the book didn’t even mention girls’ arousal, or porn.