Before I got married, someone recommended The Act of Marriage, a Christian marriage manual by Tim and Beverly LaHaye. I was young, with very limited sexual education. Years later, I remembered only one distinct impression: I didn’t think Beverly LaHaye liked sex very much.

I couldn’t have explained why. I didn’t have the vocabulary, knowledge, or experience to articulate what felt wrong. I certainly didn’t question the basic premise that sex meant penile-vaginal intercourse, generally culminating in male ejaculation. That was simply what sex was. Decades later, I understand my discomfort differently. Sheila Wray Gregoire has produced some important critiques of the book: article and podcast, documenting not merely outdated advice, but some deeply troubling teachings about sexuality, gender, and marital obligation.

What strikes me now is how thoroughly the book centered male pleasure and reinforced a sense of male sexual entitlement, while treating women’s desires, comfort, and bodily autonomy as secondary. What I couldn’t articulate then is much easier to recognize now.

When sexual advice reinforces a hierarchy

Published in 1976, The Act of Marriage emerged amid the sexual revolution, changing gender expectations, and conservative Christian efforts to preserve traditional marriage. To its credit, the book acknowledged female sexual pleasure at a time when many religious discussions rarely, if ever, addressed it. It discussed clitoral stimulation and encouraged husbands to care about their wives’ sexual satisfaction. But giving women more room within a sexual framework designed around men’s pleasure and experiences does not change the framework itself. I’m reminded of a scene in the Barbie movie, where the men running Mattel eagerly try to persuade Barbie to return to her box. They seem genuinely bewildered that she doesn’t want to get back inside. After all, they made the box for her! The humor exposes a familiar blind spot: men can mistake the arrangements they’ve created for women as noble and generous, while failing to recognize that women had little power to shape those arrangements. Making the box more spacious doesn’t change who designed it, who continues to enforce its expectations, or the assumption that women should be satisfied accommodating what men have defined as desirable. If female arousal is understood primarily as preparation for intercourse—the activity considered “real sex”—the underlying hierarchy remains intact, even when a husband is instructed to be attentive and generous.

Female pleasure becomes something to incorporate into an already established sexual script, rather than something that might fundamentally change the script itself. Consider how LaHaye described the relationship between intercourse and gender roles:

“As we know, in sexual intercourse, as in life, man is the actor, woman the passive one, the receiver, the acted upon.” The significance of that statement extends far beyond the bedroom. Male activity and female passivity are presented not merely as sexual behaviors, but as expressions of a natural social order. The sexual act becomes a physical representation of how men and women are supposedly designed to relate to one another.

And when that understanding of gender is extended beyond sexuality, it helps normalize arrangements in which women’s time, labor, health, and bodies are treated as resources available to support men’s lives.

The imbalance in the bedroom is not an isolated issue. It reflects some of the same assumptions that help sustain unequal divisions of domestic labor, caregiving, leisure, and economic opportunity. In each case, men’s needs and trajectories can become the organizing priorities, while women’s accommodation is expected.

Elsewhere, LaHaye associates feminine surrender with sexual fulfillment and suggests that strong-willed women may struggle sexually because they resist surrender. Notice what this explanation accomplishes. It relocates the problem from the sexual arrangement to the woman herself. In this context, when a woman struggles to enjoy sex within a male-centered script, the problem is not understood as inadequate arousal, insufficient attention to her pleasure, unwanted penetration, or an unsatisfying sexual encounter. Instead, her difficulty is attributed to her attitudes, inhibitions, or unwillingness to surrender. Her dissatisfaction becomes evidence of something she needs to change. The arrangement itself escapes scrutiny.

Whose needs become whose responsibility?

Another striking feature of the book is the way women’s sexual accommodation becomes connected to men’s behavior and success. A sexually satisfied husband, LaHaye suggests, gains confidence that carries into other areas of his life. A wife’s sexual responsiveness can help sustain his motivation, strengthen his self-image, and protect the marriage from infidelity.

Consider the responsibility this places on women. A husband’s fidelity, confidence, and even occupational success become connected to his wife’s sexual availability and performance. His choices and behavior become, at least in part, her responsibility. This is not simply problematic marriage advice. It can create conditions for sexual coercion and abuse by normalizing the expectation that women are responsible for men’s behavior, emotional well-being, and fidelity when their sexual desires are not accommodated.

I have often heard a similarly troubling message: men need sex to feel emotionally close, while women need emotional closeness to desire sex.

Presented as a natural difference between men and women, this formula can become a powerful source of implicit pressure. If a man’s emotional well-being depends on sex, a woman who declines may be made to feel responsible for his distress, withdrawal, or unhappiness. In this context, sexual accommodation can feel like a moral obligation for women rather than what should be a freely chosen expression of desire and intimacy. His sexual desires become primary and urgent. Her bodily autonomy, comfort, and desire become negotiable.

This reflects a broader pattern. Women and girls are often socialized to anticipate others’ needs, manage disappointment, support ambitions, preserve relationships, and absorb the emotional—and sometimes physical—consequences when things go wrong. Much of this remains “invisible” precisely because it is understood as a natural expression of what it means to be a loving, “good” woman. And when these expectations are given religious legitimacy, questioning them can feel threatening, even morally wrong, rather than a legitimate examination of culturally constructed norms. But what if some of these expectations are themselves the traditions and doctrines of men? If we believe in an ongoing restoration of truth, surely this is a question worth asking.

I often consider and highly recommend a reflection by Adam Ellis on the question God asks in Genesis: “Who told you that you were naked?” I find Ellis’ exploration useful beyond its original context. Who told us what a good woman does? Who taught us what a loving wife owes her husband? Who defined what sex is supposed to look like? And whose interests are served by the ideas we’ve inherited?

What if our definition of sex is problematic?

Modern sexual education frequently reminds us that most women do not reliably orgasm from penetration alone. But consider how revealing that statement is. Why is penetration the reference point against which female sexual response is measured? Imagine if history had gone differently. What if sexual culture and narratives were organized around female pleasure, with “real sex” defined by women’s orgasms? The script might change to:

“Most men don’t orgasm from clitoral stimulation alone.”

And for some reason, men might seem less interested in sex than women. In this scenario: penetration might become an optional sexual activity for heterosexual couples relegated to “aft-play.” People might be perplexed by a persistent male orgasm gap. Male sexuality might be explained as more complicated. Nothing about male or female anatomy would have changed. Only the cultural reference point.

This illustrates what philosopher Iris Marion Young described through the concept of cultural imperialism: the experience of a dominant group becomes the norm, while other experiences are treated as deviations.

In heterosexual sexual culture, male orgasm and ejaculation have often supplied the organizing framework, with women’s sexual experiences understood in relation to it. Women’s sexuality has too often been defined by what their bodies can provide for men, rather than by their own experiences of desire, intimacy, and pleasure. This male-centered perspective has shaped not only sexual expectations but also what researchers, medical professionals, and educators have considered important to know about women’s bodies.

The clitoris, not the vagina, is the primary anatomical structure responsible for women’s sexual pleasure. It is homologous to the penis, developing from the same embryological tissue, yet many women have never been taught this basic fact about their own bodies. Sexual education has often focused more on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections than on understanding female pleasure. Meanwhile, we treat penetration and ejaculation as the central sexual act, relegating other forms of stimulation to preparation or supplementation, even though most women do not reliably experience orgasm through vaginal penetration.

When women struggle to experience pleasure, they may be told to communicate their desires more effectively, without recognizing how limited knowledge and male-centered sexual expectations have shaped their understanding of pleasure in the first place. Why must women advocate for recognition of their pleasure within a sexual framework that already takes men’s pleasure for granted?

The consequences of this arrangement extend beyond pleasure. When men’s sexual experiences define what counts as sex, women’s bodies become the means through which those experiences are fulfilled, while women disproportionately bear the physical risks, reproductive consequences, and responsibility for preventing them.

The limits of consent within unequal expectations

There is another problem with teaching women to understand sexual intimacy primarily through accommodation.

Consent can become entangled with an internalized obligation to fulfill an expected role.

A woman may agree to intercourse because she wants to please her husband, preserve closeness, protect his ego, avoid conflict, or prevent disappointment. She may have learned that refusing sex is selfish, that a husband’s sexual needs are especially important, or that an unsatisfying encounter reflects something deficient in her.

Loving relationships necessarily involve consideration and compromise. But mutual consideration is different from a persistent expectation that one partner’s desires should organize the encounter while the other adjusts. And when a woman has learned to regard that arrangement as natural or virtuous, she may struggle even to recognize her own dissatisfaction as meaningful.

Paulo Freire’s work on oppression offers an important insight here: dominant assumptions can become internalized by those disadvantaged by them. People may reproduce and defend expectations that constrain their own possibilities.

Women may come to believe that accommodating men’s sexual needs is simply what good wives do. They may judge other women who resist those expectations as selfish, withholding, or responsible for marital difficulties. In this way, women can become enforcers of the very gendered and sexual norms that diminish their own agency.

This does not mean women lack agency or that every traditional arrangement is inherently coercive. It means that our choices are shaped by what we have been taught to regard as normal, desirable, and morally good. We cannot meaningfully evaluate those choices without also examining the culture that informed them.

What are we still teaching?

A few years ago, someone contacted me after attending a marriage class at an LDS conference. She said The Act of Marriage had been recommended. I was struck that a book I encountered before my own wedding was reportedly still being recommended decades later. My concern is not simply a matter of outdated advice or antiquated gender roles. As Sheila Wray Gregoire documents, the book includes a story of marital rape in which the victim is portrayed as the problem, treats repeated sexual boundary violations as something women should learn to accommodate, and confuses the trauma of sexual assault with guilt requiring spiritual cleansing.

These are teachings that obscure sexual abuse, excuse violations of bodily autonomy, and can make it more difficult for women to recognize coercion and rape. The religious framing makes them particularly dangerous. When such ideas are presented as part of God’s design for marriage, women are taught to distrust their own discomfort, interpret violations as marital obligations, and assume responsibility for behavior that is not their responsibility.

That a book containing these teachings was reportedly still being recommended in a religious educational setting raises questions that go far beyond the adequacy of sexual education. What happens when the well-intentioned sources women trust for moral guidance teach them to misunderstand abuse as a normal part of marriage?

We have become more comfortable discussing female pleasure. We have better information about anatomy, arousal, consent, and sexual well-being. But adding information to an unequal framework does not necessarily transform the framework. A woman can learn about the clitoris and still believe that intercourse is the “real” and central sexual act. She can understand consent and still feel responsible for accommodating her husband’s sexual desires. She can believe in equal partnership while organizing her life, including her sexual life, around his needs.

We may have expanded what women are permitted to experience without fundamentally reconsidering who ultimately has had and continues to have power to define the experience.

I think back to reading The Act of Marriage before my wedding. I didn’t have the words to explain why something seemed wrong. But I noticed something. I also remember a conversation with a woman in her eighties about some of these issues. She said something I have never forgotten:

“I thought I was crazy.”

She, too, had sensed that something was wrong in her life, but lacked the language to make sense of her experience. Looking back, I recognize that I was being taught something far more consequential than how to have sex. I was learning to disregard my own feelings and experiences, to anticipate and accommodate my husband’s needs, and to treat his experience as more important than my own. I barely considered my own pleasure. I had been taught, in so many ways, that being a good woman meant putting someone else’s needs before mine. And this was understood as love, selflessness, and the natural order of marriage.

This experience is familiar to many women. We learn to overfunction, accommodate, and sacrifice, often without recognizing the imbalance because it has been so thoroughly normalized. Even kind, well-meaning men can participate in and benefit from these arrangements without recognizing the costs to their wives and the relationship.

Perhaps one indication of how deeply these assumptions are embedded is that when men’s experiences have long been treated as the organizing norm, asking that women’s experiences be equally valued can feel like a demand to reverse the hierarchy. If examining gender inequality feels threatening, perhaps that discomfort is itself worth examining. When men’s experiences have long been treated as the norm, asking that women’s experiences be equally valued can feel like taking something away from men. But recognizing women’s experiences does not diminish men’s. And ultimately, both women and men have something to gain from relationships grounded in genuine mutuality.

Better sexual formation requires more than teaching women and men about their bodies. It requires questioning whose experiences have defined sex, whose needs have been prioritized, whose interests have shaped our knowledge, who has held the power to define it, and whose voices have been missing from the conversation.