The Weird, Sexist World of Gary Thomas and His Weird Sex and Marital Advice Books to Christians
Several months ago, a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook – mainly married or divorced Christian women – were really angry with Christian author Gary Thomas, I think mainly for some new book he released last year about marriage that contained some really gross, sexist, or disturbing marital and sex advice.
To be honest, I was busy with other things in fall of 2021 when this stuff went down. I should’ve blogged about it then but didn’t have the time.
I wasn’t able to totally follow the controversy, so I am not sure how to write up a summary, but from what I could tell, Gary Thomas wrote a bunch of strange, bizarre, sexist stuff about women, wives, sex, and marriage – some of it involving advising married women to tickle their spouse’s testicles with their make-up brushes – ???? 🤨😯🤮
From what I do recall, after people online began posting screen shots of Thomas’ weird marital advice book around October of 2021, a lot of women then began taking Thomas to task for the book’s objectional contents by contacting him at his Twitter or Facebook accounts and letting him know how troubling his book is.
Along with screen shots or quotes from Gary Thomas’ new marriage book, some of the women may have also included screen shots of his previous, troubling work.
Below you will find a smorgasbord of material about Gary Thomas’ weird or sexist marital and sex advice, most of which will probably be from his recent marriage advice book, but some may be from other sources he’s written (I’m unsure about that).
I began putting this post together prior to reading the Sheila Wray Gregoire review of said book (which I have excerpted below), and wowza, this book is cringe. So cringe. It’s awkward.
I’m not even done reading the entire Gregoire review yet. I’ve only read down the first several sentences (where she summarizes from the book), and my eye brows are already raised in shock, when my facial expression is not registering horror.
Cringey Christian Advice (Link): @cringeyxtian on Twitter was once source of Gary Thomas material you may want to visit.
Apparently, Thomas is rather fixated on women’s breasts or breast size, as he discussed this topic in his marital advice books.
I’ve not read his books, does he tell any male readers of his book that huge penis size matters to a lot of women? Because according to studies, it does:
(Link): Article: Scientists: Why penis size does matter [to women]
Also pertinent:
(Link): Bride Discovers New Husband Has Micropenis On Honeymoon After He Refused to Have Sex Before Marriage
The more cringey, sexist, awful martial and sex advice I see from Christian writers such as Doug Wilson, John MacArthur, Mark Driscoll, Gary Thomas, and guys like them, and the more exposes I see about churches who harass their abused, married women members to stay married to child abusers and stay married to pedophiles, the more I am happy I remained single and celibate into middle-age. It looks like I dodged a bullet. Marriage is not worth this misery.
This is a review about Gary Thomas’ marital advice book:
(Link): The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley
By that same author, but hosted on Medium:
(Link): “But Have You Tried Sleeping Naked?”
by Shannon Ashley
Oct 2021
Writers like Gary Thomas keep banking on men’s sexual satisfaction to save evangelical marriages.
…For decades, most mainstream Christian self-help books have taught sex in a way that harms the end goal of healthy marriages. Instead, authors have relied on faulty principles and pseudoscience like pink and blue brains or good Christian men cheat when their frigid, dowdy wives drive them to it.
…To make matters worse, Gary convolutes the messages he’s plagiarized. Although he uses ideas and phrasing from The Great Sex Rescue, he also undercuts them by utilizing the same old faulty Christian teachings in question
…When some of those survivors spoke up on Facebook [to criticize Thomas’s woman-blaming commentary, ie, he blamed wives for men being addicted to porn]? Gary didn’t handle the criticism well.
He blocked the commenters and deleted his Facebook post about the controversial blog. Then, he made a new post to explain why he deleted the Facebook post, and claimed a mob was trying to gaslight him.
Again, we’re talking about survivors of abuse — and in particular, women — trying to tell a male Christian marriage writer why his piece was problematic. Giving a spouse with a sexual addiction more sex doesn’t actually deal with the issue, and easily fosters abuse.
In response, Gary accused those women of having an agenda to tear him down. Then, he claimed they could have at least disagreed more… agreeably.
— end excerpts —
I’d advise, really advise you to click this link below to visit the site to read the review in whole, as I’m only providing an excerpt below:
(Link): A Book Review of ‘Married Sex’ By Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta
Excerpts:
by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Jan 12, 2022
I’ve been talking about Gary Thomas’ and Debra Fileta’s new sex book Married Sex off and on on this blog and my podcast for the last few months, and there’s been quite a hubbub about it on social media. The book has also been largely panned in reviews on Amazon.
… Married Sex opens with a story of a naked 60-year-old couple pretending to be Adam and Eve and having sex in their backyard.
…The first chapters then set up strange expectations. Look at Danny and Jocelyn! They sleep naked, even when they’re cold. They sleep in a small double bed. Jocelyn never says no to her husband, and loves talking about her climaxes with her women’s Bible study group. Be like Jocelyn!
This felt like the book version of the clique you never managed to join; all through the book were unrealistic stories of people who embraced sex to the extreme–and the unspoken accusation was, “why can’t you be hot like them?”
Whether it was Janell who gave her husband sex and blow jobs multiple times a day over their 9-day trip for her husband’s father’s funeral…
We’re invited to listen to women who love sex and get in the mood because they get Brazilian waxes; go out on dates panty-less; or wear crotchless panties.
…Instead, while much of the book was positive, I was left feeling very saddened, because the harmful messages that we identified in our survey of 20,000 women were repeated–but sneakily. It almost felt like we had taught Gary Thomas how to give the obligation sex message without sounding like the obligation sex message.
We had taught him what NOT to say, but he hadn’t taken our findings to heart to understand what TO say. Instead, he just doubled down on the same old messaging: Men need sex in a way that women will never understand. Men are visual creatures and they can’t control it. Sex should feel like a sacrifice for women.
…Most of these concerns focus on the chapters that Gary wrote himself. Here are the problematic things that I identified:
In Married Sex, Gary Thomas Objectifies His Wife
I’ve mentioned this on a podcast before, but it is undignified and disrespectful to say about your wife, “her nipples were like superpowered, high-octane sexual excitement boosters.” It’s dishonoring to talk about how she bites the pillow when she orgasms.
…Married Sex Glosses Over Abuse Issues
Power dynamics in marriage are dangerous. A power dynamic is inherently abusive.
And yet how does Gary suggest women address these power imbalances? We flash our boobs.
That’s right. God apparently gave women breasts in order to reset power balances.
…To imply that the way we deal with power imbalance is to flash our boobs is just plain dangerous. To mention power imbalances in a marriage book and not also say that this is abusive and problematic is authorial malpractice.
.. Perhaps that’s really the big problem with Married Sex. If men do the bare minimum, they’re lauded. But women? We need to sleep naked; cook naked; get aroused giving handjobs postpartum; send naked pictures; adore sex even when burdened by mental load. …
— end excerpts —
Regarding this:
I’ve mentioned this on a podcast before, but it is undignified and disrespectful to say about your wife, “her nipples were like superpowered, high-octane sexual excitement boosters.” It’s dishonoring to talk about how she bites the pillow when she orgasms.
— end excerpts —
That is way too much information. TMI. I don’t need or want to know how Thomas’ wife reacts during sex, or what specific sex acts or reactions take place.
After having read just those summaries of Thomas’ book by Gregoire, I feel like I need to bleach my brain and get some therapy. Yikes. Yikes. This is what some churches or Christians who write books about marriage and sex are peddling? I’d rather stay celibate and single, thank you.
This part:
Whether it was Janell who gave her husband sex and blow jobs multiple times a day over their 9-day trip for her husband’s father’s funeral…
— end excerpt —
Excuse me? The man’s father died, he’s driving over a week to get to the dad’s funeral, and he’s this preoccupied with sex? What?? When my Mom died over a decade ago, let me tell you, her passing was the only thing on my mind. I wasn’t thinking about dating, marriage, or sex. That is just utterly bizarre.
Gregoire and other reviewers have mentioned that Thomas has advised women readers to get nude(?) or semi-nude photos of themselves taken for their husbands to look at – I take it he means analog photos, not digital?
Regardless, I am totally against this, because in today’s world, such photos can get leaked. If they’re analog, any idiot can scan them or snap photos of them with a cell phone, then they can be uploaded all over the internet.
What if this couple breaks up? The jaded ex-husband could easily use such intimate photos as “revenge porn.”
Gregoire wrote another post about Gary Thomas (October 2021):
(Link): I Have Become “She Who Must Not Be Named”
Additional links, commentary about the “Married Sex” book by Gary Thomas:
(Link): How the Book “Married Sex” by Gary Thomas Objectifies Women and Perpetuates Abuse
Excerpts:
A Review of Married Sex by Andrea Aleksandrova
On September 10, 2021, Gary Thomas posted a blog post entitled, “My Wife Can’t Cure Me, but She Can Help Me,” where he implied that women can help their husbands overcome their pornography addictions by giving them more sex. The backlash in the online abuse survivor community was almost immediate.
…Throughout Married Sex, Gary sexually objectifies women. The advice given is dangerous for women who are married to porn addicts. Gary encourages wives to be personal porn stars for their husbands and advocates for a male-dominated power and control dynamic in bed, while Debra shifts blame onto women for their husbands’ bad behavior.
…The Objectification of Women
Gary objectifies women throughout the book and obsesses over their naked bodies. Women are blamed for their inability to orgasm and for pain during sex. These are viewed as her problems and her responsibility (160).
This directly contradicts the research done by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky in their book, The Great Sex Rescue (Baker Books, 2021), where they surveyed over 20,000 women and concluded that the obligation sex message (which is what Married Sex teaches) is actually a major contributing factor to the orgasm gap between men and women and to vaginismus. (Natalie interviewed Sheila about her book on the Flying Free podcast (Link): HERE.)
…And how do single men survive being visual creatures who need sex? Well, says Gary, single men aren’t sleeping next to scantily clad women every night, so it really isn’t even a problem for them. (63)
Destructive for Wives of Porn Addicts
In addition to continually objectifying women, Married Sex completely ignores the wives of porn addicts while directly addressing porn-addicted men multiple times.
— end excerpts —
The above review contains many, many more excerpts from the Gary Thomas book, if you’d like to see more.
Even in the Thomas book, as the review above notes, Thomas is obsessed with who has control in the bedroom during sex, the husband or the wife.
This is a really sexist obsession many men have, and it’s one that Christian men should not, but they do – they all buy into “complementaranism.”
Jesus actually taught in the Bible that one should not seek to have control over or have authority over another person (Matthew 20:24-26), but complementarians promote men having authority over women, so that complementarians are in direct opposition to Christ himself.
There are, sadly, some conservative women (usually secular but sometimes Christian) who buy into this garbage too, and so these women try to indoctrinate other women to believe in it as well, where they actually tell women that women would be so much happier if they’d just cave in and give up their agency and control to whatever man is in their life.
I’ve written several blog posts arguing against this view, and explaining some of its dangers to women, such as:
Additional Links or Resources About the Gary Thomas Book
Tweet above contains photo of a page from a Gary Thomas book which reads:
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- one hand or two
- up- and- down or circular motion
- palms or fingers
- fast or slow
- dry or lubricated
No two guys are alike, so you get to explore what your guy likes.
If you’re not using both your hands on his penis, don’t forget the other parts of his body.
You can create all kinds of different experiences: you’ve soaped up behind him in the shower and one hand is going up his abdomen while the other is busy down below; you’re lying next to him and start stroking his face while your other hand is stroking something much farther south; he’s lying on the bed and one of your hands is busy on his shaft while another is using a soft scarf or even a makeup brush on his testicles.
(Link – to Facebook Post): Patrick Weaver Ministries, Re: Gary Thomas’ Marriage Advice Book – October 21, 2022
Excerpts from that Facebook post:
His [Gary Thomas’] latest book, “Married Sex,” co-authored by Debra K. Fileta, which is marketed to Christian couples, can only be described as strange, dangerous and stupefying.
The book is so saturated with crazed, erroneous, misogynistic and unhealthy advice, until it’s hard to imagine that a woman is the co-author, and that a Christian would write it. The book would have been appropriately titled, “When I Was A Child I Reasoned As A Child.”
The bottom line, it’s a disappointment. To call it a Christian book would insult the Bible — as there is no biblical support for the content in this book nor does the book lend itself to healthy marriages.
It’s a disappointment because an abuser or an abuser in training might be emboldened by the tired, utter and complete chauvinistic, misguided tropes that read more like a game plan for an intimate partner predator than the mentality or heart of a Christian spouse. Sexual manipulation, exploitation, coercion and gaslighting are common themes throughout the book.
Let’s be really clear…a spouse is not a sex slave or a suppressant drug for a sex addict. A couple can agree and desire to have sex multiple times a day, every day, or once a month. The key is, sex is not a tool, weapon or trick in a healthy relationship.
Healthy relationships aren’t defined by how much sex they have or how often, healthy relationships are defined by how much love they have and how much Jesus is reverenced (Ephesians 5:21).
Sex alone doesn’t keep marriages together — the glue that keeps marriages together is God. Suggesting or claiming that a healthy Christian marriage, or any marriage, is between a sex addicted husband and a sexual servant/slave for a wife is borderline sadistic, and wholly unbiblical.
— end excerpt —
(Link – to Facebook Post): To Love, Honor and Vacuum – October 11, 2021
Excerpts:
I know last night with my “Fixed It for You” many of you were surprised and discouraged to see that in Gary Thomas’ new book Married Sex, he objectified women in a very strange way (a wife’s breasts can reset the power balance in marriage?)
— end excerpts —
You will have to click this link to watch this video on You Tube, as embedding it to this blog does not work, as the video’s creator has disabled it so that it cannot be viewed on blogs:
(Link): MARRIED SEX : A Book Review – 22 minute video
Next Video.
Video below is 58 minutes long.
I’m not sure if it mentions the Gary Thomas book specifically or not – it does mention the Christian penned book “Every Man’s Battle”:
(Link): You are NOT methadone for your husband’s porn use! – Episode 86
(Link): An Open Appeal to Gary Thomas – 8.33 minute video:
— /// —
I guess if I find any more interesting or relevant tweets or links about this odious book, I can add them to this post later.
Gary Thomas does not make marriage or sex sound appealing but a turn-off.
Thomas makes both sex and marriage and men in general sound like huge turn-offs, especially for women.
He apparently has no empathy for single Christian MEN who are over 20 and still celibate, either. No concern for what single adults with libidos go through, men or women.
Christians are not only obsessed with men having power over women – which is sick, deranged, goes against Christ’s teachings – but they don’t care about single adults who are single over age 30.
Related:
(Link): Christlike or Pornlike? A Christian Woman’s Role in Marriage by Andrew J. Bauman and Taylor May
(Link): The Insidious Reason Women Have Fewer Orgasms (2022 Study)
(Link): Codependence Is Not Oneness: What Christians Get Wrong About Relationships
(Link): The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley
(Link): Why Men Have More Orgasms Than Women by David Ludden (Hint: Male Entitlement is Involved. Notify Every Christian Gender Complementarian, Christian Patriarchalist, MRA, and Incel Ever)
(Link): Can We Stop Saying Singleness is God’s Will? by Anonymous via Sheila Wray Gregoire
(Link): Single Adult Christian Pressured Into Marriage by Her Church – And Regrets It
(Link): Young Single Women Try to Appear Less Ambitious To Attract A Mate – via WSJ
(Link): Women Have A Higher Sex Drive Than Men, According to New (2017) Study
(Link): When society isn’t judging, women’s sex drive rivals men’s
(Link): Women are buying more sex than ever before, new research claims (May 2015)
(Link): Study: Men Think About Sports More Than Sex by J. Gratton
(Link): Heartbroken Woman Reveals Pain of a Sexless Marriage as Husband Hasn’t Slept with Her in SEVEN Years
(Link): ‘Sex Starved Wife’ Cuts off Her Husband’s PENIS After He Refused to Make Love to Her for Ten Years
(Link): Wife Writes to Ask Amy About Her Sexless Marriage October 2013
(Link): Dear Prudence: Help! I’m Glad My Awful Husband Is Dead.
(Link): Dear Prudie: Help! My Boyfriend Refuses to Do Any Housework
(Link): Newlyweds Forced to Be Celibate After Bride Diagnosed With Cervical Cancer Just Days After Honeymoon
(Link): Woman Almost Dies From Allergic Reaction After Sex With Husband by S. Osborne
(Link): Atlantic: “The case for abandoning the myth that ‘women aren’t visual.’”
(Link): Why Are Most Christian Men Living Sexually Immoral Lifestyles? by J. S. Shelton
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