Now that Josh Duggar has been indicted on possession of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (child porn), some depicting toddlers, we must confront the sexualization of children in evangelicalism.

Let's start with teenagers, and go all the way down to toddlers.

Shaunti Feldhahn, in For Young Women Only, tells girls "82% of boys feel little ability and little responsibility to stop the sexual progression." Telling girls that boys have "little ability" to stop legitimizes date rape and puts the blame at the girl's feet.

Furthermore, in a post to teenage girls, she warns that their date's dad will be tempted to "visually take in, linger on, and fantasize about all the details of this great body he's seeing." Let that sink in. Teens are being told that it is normal for adult men to sexualize them.

Every Man's Battle depicts a youth group volunteer in his 30s who inadvertently "has sex" with a 15 YO. They say she "looks more like twenty", & describe her as flirting. Paige Patterson, when in his 60s, relished describing a 16 yo's figure from the pulpit: "she looked fine."

And then there are the myriad of stories of teenagers being victims of clergy sexual abuse, and yet the blame is usually placed on them. Andy Savage, for instance, received a standing ovation from his congregation when he confessed to sexual abuse as a youth pastor.

Now let's go younger. When my youngest was 11, she was told by her female Sunday School teacher that she had to watch how she dressed now that she was developing, because adult men could get distracted by her. She was afraid to go to church for weeks.

In informal polls, readers have told me that as children and preteens they experienced more sexual harassment at church than anywhere else.

What about toddlers? In For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn is making a case for the "male brain", that men are visual from the earliest ages. She tells an unfortunate story of her son at 4: his "tummy felt funny" when seeing Victoria Secret models' tummies, sounding like arousal.

She tells a similar story in Through a Man's Eyes, where a 3-year-old gets an erection from looking at sewing patterns for women's underwear. She says men have this male brain whether they're "nine or ninety."

Curiosity is normal in toddlers. Playing doctor is normal. Touching one's genitals is normal, as is getting erections in boys. But adult male sexual response and arousal in pre-pubescent children? Definitely not normal.

If these stories were told in a pediatrician's office, they would warrant follow-up screening questions for child sexual abuse, according to my husband, an examiner in pediatrics for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada.

Beyond that, this is the EXACT SAME argument made by pedophiles for lowering the age of consent. They argue that toddlers & young children have sexual feelings the same way adults do. Our evangelical resources should not be making the same arguments as pedophile lobbying groups.

What astonishes me is that nobody noticed this beforehand. These books have been bestsellers for years, and they sexualize children.

We need to make evangelical circles safe spaces for children, and that will only happen when we stop laying the blame for male sexual sin at the feet of women and girls; when we have zero tolerance for clergy sexual abuse; and when we stop talking about children as sexual.

For more on how evangelical resources often lay the blame for male lust & sexual sin at the feet of women, & how this affects women's marital & sexual satisfaction, see The Great Sex Rescue--based on our survey of 20,000 Christian women!
https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/great-sex-rescue/
#greatsexrescue

For reference: Shaunti Feldhahn's blog post: https://shaunti.com/2019/04/a-letter-to-our-teenage-daughters-about-how-they-dress/

Paige Patterson's sermon with the 16-year-old: