I wrote the following essay in 2016:
I could feel the sentiments of that scene from “Home Is Where The Heart Is.” This 17year old single mom to be. Abandoned. Somewhere in Oklahoma. Uncertain of her future. Her only assets were her long locks, sun dress, youthful beauty and a young plant she just purchased—perhaps serving as a metaphor to encourage the growth of what her story would become, a parallel to the young daughter growing inside her. After giving birth in a Walmart aisle, she names her Americus. I see it as a combination of America (never taking our freedoms for granted) and Invictus (meaning “unconquerable” in latin). I believe Americus represents the triumph over the death that she could have succumbed to before she even made it into the world had her mom chosen to abort her. In reality there are a lot of women similar to Novalee in an inconvenient situation to have a child. Like her namesake, Americus defied all the odds to make it into this world.
But it shoudn’t be like that.
It shouldn’t be that 1 and 4 females have an abortion. It shouldn’t be that we should have pregancy scares which—surprise—only seem to happen outside of wedlock when you are not ready to have a baby. Birthcontrol using condoms is about 85% effective—and still only 98% when used perfectly. The pill and IUD are both 99.9%. Women who use no birth control and women on birth control (and it ends up failing) is where we are now: more babies being born out of wedlock than ever before, 1/3 of the annual poplulation growth is being terminated before birth because they would be out of wedlock, and women who are not married and don’t get pregnant, nonetheless, still have several pregnancy scares (either on or off BC) every year leading to ALOT of anxiety and denial. So let’s talk, girls—and all you boys should lean in, too.
A panic like no other
As an artist and visionary I most often involuntarily project myself into the future in the most lively of ways—sometimes it can be so beautiful, sometimes it can be terrifying and I feel powerless. I’ve never been pregnant but I could feel the vulnerability pervading that scene. Imaginations such as mine often teach lessons to the individual from actual experiences they never had. It is a common emotion many women like myself have found themselves in—whether pregnant or pregancy scare. Such was the latter case when I was sitting in a Walgreens parking lot at 10pm one night 5 years ago—contemplating buying a pregnancy test. That was the last time I had sex and decided to wait until marriage. I had just broken off an intense 5week fling—my first and only I had and there was a mishap on the condom a couple weeks prior. I was paranoid. I wanted to buy a pregnancy test because my mind was going crazy. I knew I never under any circumstances would abort MY child, nor did I want to have a child out of wedlock. It felt like I was in a headlock of emotions. My heart was beating like the drums from that movie “Jimanji” when they rolled the dice and didn’t know where they were going to land. In the midst of my powerlessness, a visceral fear of God came over me in the coming weeks: the next time I would give my body away would be to my husband.
Up until that point, I was waiting until marriage longer than most. Admittingly (like a good amount of virgins I can imagine), I blue balled a few guys but I managed to stave off partaking in the actual horizontal activity until I found myself in said situation above. It was after I surrendered to the notions that A) no guy I was going after was going to respect my choice to wait and at the same time B) my lustful desires and curiosity had reached a crescendo while C) I was around enough of my girlfriends over the years nudging me that I needed to have some “practice“ and “fun“ before marriage. My consumption of mainstream womens magazines and guilty pleasure MTV reality shows like Rock of Love and Bad Girl’s Club, although I did not agree with them, brought me farther away from God’s purpose for my long-drawn out singlehood that I was growing impatiently self aware of.Hyperbolically speaking, it was like several trains on a collision course. A sexually charged yet restrained individual can only hold out for so long if they don’t find The One in a certain time frame expected. I was prideful of my solo walk and thought I could hold my own at the same time that I started conveniently embracing the lie of wrapping up more of my worth in men through my sexuality—because that’s what I saw other women doing around me, even my church-going friends. “Why me? Why are you giving me this kind of wait?” were my thoughts back then.
Perphaps it was all forebearing writing this blog you are reading today—to help another girl out. All it takes is one attitude change to create a domino effect in society and a few attitudes to have an exponential effect. Four years ago I really started opening my eyes to what the feminist movement was programming into the hearts and minds of girls in my generation regarding sex. Subsequentely, I started blogging on the matter after reading Suzanne Venker’s “The Flipside of Feminism“ and also in response to the highly circulated “The Future Is Female“ teeshirt.
Eyes wide shut
Five years ago today I still remember that feeling of my world taking a different trajectory, if I had gotten pregnant how my life would have shifted because I would have ended up keeping a baby with a guy I only knew a month. I went through a pregnancy scare ONCE. The average woman my age probably goes through a few a year. No one can tell me they are not feeling something along the lines of what I am talking about right now.
The story is all too common. It is almost too common that we have become numb to our disgraced feeling of having used sex outside of the confines of marriage because the 1960’s culture said it was ok to do so. “People don’t blush anymore” my grandma always says in regards to today’s sexual indiscretions and blatent promiscuity. The default consensus back then by both men and women was that they would wait until marriage—today it is flip flopped and the default is that sex is just expected outside of marriage and if you are holding there is something wrong with that (and don’t say it’s cute or endearing, we who wait know that is belittleing). That’s how far—how sickly—our culture has become. There seems to be no self reprimending because we play like the men in the name of equality which I see is great for the here and now but bleak for our futures.
The Lies they told us
“Empowerment” comes to young women as a form of setting us free from the shackles of marriage, children and spousal responsibility but ironically it puts us in new shackles: the ones of self absorption (sleeping with several women’s future husbands), procrastination (letting our best fertile years go to waste), irresponsibility (pregnancy scares) and denial of worth (“he’ll leave me if we don’t have sex”).
I have read countless articles on this subject. In my mind it devolves something like this: “Gotta get that career going, might as well get on birth control the next ten years because, let’s face it, there is no way you will wait until marriage for sex let’s get real (too many men expect it now because that’s what women have given them) ! Oh, and while you work like a race horse and give your body up in the most fertile years of your life (many will face an abortion this way out of inconvenience) don’t forget to freeze your eggs so when you are finally settled into your copywriter or fashion assistant career your eggs are dried up and its harder to find a man and you can finally have a baby for $25,000 of IVF treatment.
Talk about a viscious cycle. Is it just me or is this self mutilation of the female mind?
Pay attention to the rule—not the exception
You won’t find these stories in Cosmo, Vogue or Glamour. We are so worried about white oppression, race wars, and expounding on women’s rights in this country that we forget the stories that women are really thinking about. You see, what society observes out in the open is mere theater compared to what is going on behind the curtain inside us: the experiences that us girls go through between having our period at the average age of 13 and up until we get married. It’s a 20year landmine of reckless behavior—if we allow it to be. The more partners a woman has before marrying the greater likelihood of divorce—that is, if you can find someone to marry in the first place. The stark reality is that your sexual market value decreases in your 30s. You are reckless and play around in your 20s and you will pay for it in your 30s. Nothing is free in this life. The assault on the sexual moores of American women—not being encouraged to defer gratification until marriage—is almost a new form of slavery.
I wrote 70pages of poetry when I was 24 and one of my most powerful was a 1,137-word poem called “Bars.“ I want to provide a few sections as it encapsulates what the average female is going through, today. Whichever way you interpret it, I know it will have a profound effect on you. It’s about how WE as these intelligent 21st century have-it-going-on women can be in these shackles of emotional strife when it comes to sex that we hastily yet reluctantly put ourselves in as society sits back and watches as we simotaneously play victim and foe.
BARS
I feel like I’m in prison and its not the one you’re thinkin’
The one where I am free to do as I please—
Make something of myself like they all did it seems,
I stand up in court everyday
But even I cannot save me—I am my own worst enemy
I take myself away in shackles that only the angels above could hear rattle
I step outside—I’m free—another day free!
But I am back in my prison cell once again—
You would never know the way I smile at you
On a happy Sunday morning from my cushioned church pew.
Like a bird in its cage—yeah I know its cliché
But this is how I feel about right now I just figured it out.
I’m in a beautiful adorned cage and you, the world,
I just let stare back at me as you wait for me to attempt to take fight—
Escape these bars I put up around me and set myself free tonight!
But I’m not letting myself out
No, No, I’ve spent too much time constructing
These beautiful bars up around me—
Invisible to your eye but to mine, always there.
But for now it is like the bird
that sings to me on the other side of my “prison walls’
So I ask myself “who is freer?” that bird in its physical cage
Or me in my psychological plague?
That last part of the poem packs a punch: We live in the most free society yet women oppress their freedom to do what is noble with their bodies and with their futures when it comes to sex.
Sanctity of life
We might be of sexual maturity but that doesn’t mean we are mature in our views of what sex really is and how it should be reveared: just like how human life is sacred, so is the act that makes life. There seems to be that missing element in health class, amongst parents even—and, not surprisingly, amongst the mainstream culture of entertainment fed to us everyday. We became one big delinquent society with more babies born our of wedlock than in marriage.
It started in the 60s. Degrade the meaning of sex, make premarital sex not taboo anymore. Pass Roe v. Wade. Then degrade the need for men (2nd 3rd wave feminism), demystify the gay culture—-not only accept and tolerate, we must embrace them. Next, punch the sanctity of marriage in the gut and groom society into nihilism—the government has ultimate authority over the Bible—by enacting gay marriage. Equalize the sexes so that leads to enacting genderlessness, creating new penal codes of hate crimes against the LGBT community if they go against what you believe—even if its practicing out the truth of the Bible. Throw in environmental propoganda like the risk of overpopulation and global warming to scare off (primarily) white couples from having more than 2 kids (or any kids at all). Now we have a negative population growth rate right now and muslims are coming in to replace blacks and whites. Over the next 20 years this will happen if American women don’t step up and start deferring gratification until marriage and capitalizing on their healthy fertility years.
Feminism does not equal equality but idiocracy instead. The women might be getting more education these days, making their own living but putting that above the CORE of what civilization is built on—family and marriage—that is the ultimate propaganda to destabilize the home and allow full government control. This is the most pressing issue of our time. We change the way we think about the sanctity of life then we sure as heck would change the way we view sex in this society: WHO we do it with, WHEN we do it with, WHY we do it with.
A RACE TO THE BOTTOM
“There used to be this unspoken female solidarity which says we’re going to slut shame the hell out of the promiscuous woman so she doesn’t handout for free what men need to earn”
Stephan Molyneux
The problem is now all sexual moores are destroyed by promiscuity. Now all virgins are prudes and all men are sexist but don’t you dare slut shame a promiscuous woman! The women who think they can get away with having sex outside of marriage and still not think about repercussions in their marriage (if she ends up marrying the guy, plus the 5 or so average amount of guys the women slept with BEFORE MEETING her husband) does not equate to marital bliss. In fact, studies have shown that premerital sex is the root cause of divorce in this country.
The lie that women should feel liberated and empowered to now play like the men these days is a gross misunderstanding of the power they really have to say “no” instead of “yes.” Deferring gratification is a sign of intelligence by the way. Thus, touting liberation and empowerment is really under the guise of promoting ignorance and naivety. The feminists want nothing more than you to work like horses until “you’re settled with your career”, stave off marriage until your 39 and your ovaries have already dried up. I hate writing that but it’s true. Today, sex sells as cheap as a Kit Kat bar in a vending machine when it should really be attained at a 5class restaurant (metaphorically speaking, more virtuous).
“Have sex when you are ready”
(a.k.a. the worst advice ever)
Humanity has good intentions but we are fallen beings and this advice sets a fallen human up for failure. We need some transcendent order, a convenant to perfect the otherwise blurred boundries we would place for ourselves. Have you ever heard “Love is blind?”‘ This is why we don’t gauge our ultimate thoughts on how we feel about someone outside of marriage in the same way we feel once we are committed to them in marriage. This is why God starkly said keep sex within the confines of marriage. Keep the fire in the fireplace—capiche? The obscurity of this shallow diplomatic statement that your parents or friends gave you growing up needs a reality check— we live in a fallen world. If I took that advice I’d have sex by the third date easily, maybe the 6th if I was being conservative. Seriously what the heck does that statement even mean?! It’s a defeating case in itself. Left to our own devices, in the fog of navigating true love until we both say I do, is just too much of a burden for me. Have I wanted to live out my fantasy life like one of the girls from “The Sweetest Thing”, sure. But we let art imitate life too much in this country that it is impacting the sobriety of how and when God wanted sex placed in our actual lives. Marriage is that safety net. Of course there are lots of couples who have slept their way to the alter but that has not set them up for a good marriage and the baggage they carry with their other ex-partners compounds that. Less than only 15% of people who wait until marriage end up getting divorced!
It’s just this obscure notion of “keep his dick away from as long as you can until he’s made it clear he loves you and wants you in his life.” Fine, then what? That is so naive to think that outside of premarital love is the same as covenant love—it doesn’t have staying power until you say your vows, period. Sex is like fire, you use it to warm a house or burn it down. It all has to do with the BOUNDARIES you put up. Unless you have a fireplace (in marriage) you have nowhere safe to put this flame.
CHARMINGNESS IS DECEITFUL, BEAUTY IS VAIN
Proverbs 31:30
That has always been a hard verse for me to digest but that’s how boundaries are ushered in. Boundaries! Seriously, someone tell me what love is anymore outside of marriage that justifies us banashing our dignity for short term satisfaction that so few times leads to fruition in that walk down the aisle? Men will wait, sure. Men will whisper in your ears to tell you about your future. Men will also leave you once they’ve gotten what they want and there is no contract to stay in. I’m not being paranoid—I’m being as real and matter of fact as the sun comes up every day. The depression rate is 3x higher for women who are cohabitating with a man vs women who are married and couple who cohabitated before getting married have as much as a 46% higher divorce rate. I will never forget a woman once sternly telling me (after she got in an argument about something unrelated with her live-in boyfriend) with tears streaming down her face: “Sex should be illegal until you’re married.“ Moments like that stick with you.
I don’t think it’s liberation to have sex outside of marriage. For a moment, YES it’s awesome but that is the most fleeting and deceiving bill of lies sold to the American woman today. “But he won’t stay with me, Whitney” PERFECT! Door is that way. Congratulations, you just saved two months to two years out of your life by NOT staying in a convenient quasi relationship with his “love” for you masked in the free sex he could attain and empty words of praise for your future as a couple while you played wifey with him under one roof of empty promises, shallow commitment, and no sacred covenant of marriage. Let him move on to the next girl that should probably, if she were more smart be at least CHARGING for her services like a good prostitute (who is now without a job because of you). Stop sleeping with your boyfriends until they become your husbands!
SUMMARIZING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJh962pYvAU
“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good”
-Romans 12:9
Thankfully, I left the party a long time ago before it could really gain any traction in my life but I never left the people still there. I have always had a earning within me to let others know everything I said above and today I will say it for the millions of girls that are screaming it inside: sex without a left ring has warn out its welcome. You’re not cool anymore, Samantha Jones. This slumber party is OVER.
More data:
https://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Divorce_Rates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um3EmS9DKsI
