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Sex therapist Betty Dodson, for example, believes the word addiction belongs only in the substance-abuse category and sees labeling sexual desire as addiction as a form of manipulation. “This is going to mess them up, because now whenever they have any kind of desire to read about sex or look at images of sex, it’s going to be accompanied by guilt,” she says. “And guilt is the most worthless thing on the planet. People are manipulated by it through religion all the time.”


Indeed, guilt and shame are emotions commonly expressed by the women involved in Dirty Girls Ministries. “Once I’ve actually committed the sin (of porn and masturbation), I find myself feeling such sadness, frustration, disappointment, anger, shame,” writes one anonymous commenter on the Ministries’ forum. “It makes me feel sick and unworthy,” writes another. One girl even reported feeling guilty after simply dreaming about masturbating.

- from Blaire Briody’s “Look God, No Hands” in Utne Reader

via Andrew Sullivan

The last sentence there — the one about feeling guilty for a dream — hurts to read. It reminded me, though, of the one authentically illuminating moment in a very loud conversation I was forced to overhear on a bus about a month ago. These two addicts — one in recovery, the other not — started commiserating about how a single dream can sabotage sobriety. You’re clean in real life, but you dream about using, and it all seems so real, and you wake up with it still seeming real, and suddenly the bottle or the needle or the pill is vastly more tempting than it’s been in weeks or months or years. I’d never thought of this. But why shouldn’t it be true? We’ve probably all had the experience of finding it nearly impossible to be nice to someone who spent the whole night ridiculing us in a dream.

Getting back to the Utne Reader article, there’s a passage about how “the brain scans of an infatuated lover look nearly identical to the brain scans of a cocaine addict” and how “orgasms and self-stimulation release similar chemicals to the brain and can give you a momentary high.” This got me thinking about other brain scans we might compare: whether, for example, there would be any meaningful difference between the scans of someone submitting herself to the restrictions of Dirty Girls Ministries and someone acting as the submissive in the sort of relationship depicted in this scene from “Secretary.”

On a neurological level, is there any difference between “Just a scoop of creamed potatoes and a slice of butter. Four peas. And as much ice cream as you like to eat” and “She then asks them to be ‘clean’ for 90 days, which means no sex, no porn, no masturbation—not even TV shows about sex”?

I don’t claim to know. Just asking.

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Must Muslims unequivocally reject all forms of terrorism—especially those Muslims who wish to promote full Muslim participation in American society? Of course. But if the Catholic experience in the United States holds any lesson it is that becoming American also means asserting one’s constitutional rights, fully and forcefully, even if that assertion is occasionally taken to be insulting. The genius of the American experiment in religious liberty is precisely this long-term confidence that equal rights for all religious groups builds the loyalty every democratic society needs. Certainly American Catholics learned that lesson long ago.

John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby, Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy (via nybooks)

I have yet to read the full piece that this excerpt links to. The excerpt itself is sensible and worthwhile, so I’m reblogging it. It reminds me of a post I wrote in ‘08 for Huffington Post about the anti-Catholic smears Al Smith endured when he ran for president in the 1920s. I’d been ignorant of that.

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UPDATE: 

Now that I’ve read what McGreevy and Appleby wrote, I want to call attention to another passage from their post: “For much of the nineteenth century Catholics in America were the unassimilated, sometimes violent ‘religious other.’ Often they did not speak English or attend public schools. Some of their religious women—nuns—wore distinctive clothing. Their religious practices and beliefs—from rosaries to transubstantiation—seemed to many Americans superstitious nonsense.”

They go on to acknowledge that “historical comparisons are bound to be inexact.” Even so, their rundown of the American Catholic experience is helpful. They do leave out Al Smith, though. So here, for whatever it might be worth, is a link to my aforementioned 10/19/08 HuffPost, “A Cell Phone Call During Mass (Remembering the Anti-Catholic Smears of the 1928 Election).” (I just re-read it. Parts of it make me cringe. Style stuff. Not substance. Let’s just say that it was written at a certain historical moment that is not now. I’m tempted to delete the link, but the stuff I quote from NYT stories in 1928 is worth knowing about. For example, one Alabama senator refused to vote for his fellow Democrat because Smith’s Catholicism supposedly would drive him to use the presidency to annex Mexico. Because Mexico has lots of Catholics, see? And then pretty soon the Protestants are outnumbered and America is ruined. “Smith!!!!” Crazy, bigoted stuff.)

(this post was reblogged from nybooks)