Ep 1240 ｜ TikTok’s Spicy Novels Are Warping Women’s Minds
Episode Stats
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Summary
The dark world of steamy romance novels is much bigger and more powerful than you think. It is deeply affecting women psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, perhaps even politically. We are going to explore the depths of this sphere today and explain exactly why this matters so much to Christians.
Transcript
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The dark world of steamy romance novels is much bigger and more powerful than you think.
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It is very deeply affecting women psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, perhaps even
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We are going to explore the depths of this sphere today and explain exactly why this
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If you love this podcast, please make sure you are subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify,
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Leave us a five-star review wherever you listen.
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Without further ado, here's today's episode of Relatable.
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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All right, I have been wanting to dive into this subject for a while, and that is the
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subject of dark romance and the hold that it has on so many women and how it is affecting
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young women politically, psychologically, most importantly, spiritually.
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We've been gathering a lot of information and data on this subject for a while, but it
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was this particular post on X that just stopped me in my tracks and made me go even deeper
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into this subject because I realized just how disturbing things are getting in the world
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There is a book that is apparently very popular.
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I thought that it was a joke when I first saw it on X.
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And let me just tell you before we put the picture up, okay, and before we get into all
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of this, if you couldn't tell by the title and the subject that I just introduced, this
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Okay, like I would actually tell you, if your teenage daughter listens to Relatable,
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most episodes are great to listen to with the family.
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And I take no enjoyment from talking about this and you're going to think, oh my gosh,
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I can't believe that she's saying these titles.
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I want you to know though what is going on because if you do have a daughter or you have
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a friend or you have someone that you know in your life who is into these kinds of books,
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you need to know what is going into their mind, the input that is going in that might be
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It's not enough for me to just say, oh yeah, this is a trend.
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Believe me, I've got to show you what's going on in the world and why women think the way
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Okay, and I mean, you could probably put the pieces together and kind of deduce what the
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If you are listening to this on the audio side, instead of watching this, first, you should
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And then we've got this woman who is obviously completely in love with this animal.
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This author is apparently a best-selling author, which is disturbing in and of itself.
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And what also caught my eye at the top here, it says, a monster bait romance.
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So you're telling me that this is a theme, that there are other books that fit into this
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So as we started researching this, I wanted to know, is it real?
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And is this something that a bunch of people are reading?
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There is a reviewer on Reddit, which Reddit is just a cesspool of some of the worst opinions
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But a Redditor called this book one of the hottest books that they have ever read.
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This writer, CM Nascosta, claimed on Instagram that she has aphantasia, a condition where
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someone can't form mental images or scenes in their mind and cannot actually picture
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So I'm not sure if this person is saying this as an excuse, like, oh, I had no idea that
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Or if, I don't know, it's just a strange part of this person's character.
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And it's just also ironic that you are causing people to picture basically bestiality and
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weird, dark fantasies, but you yourself aren't able to picture them.
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The book is very popular on something called BookTalk.
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And we are going to talk about BookTalk today and how it is advancing some of the worst ideas
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and promoting some of the worst resources for women.
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And I guess this is a trend on BookTalk, where these avid readers and romance readers try
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to explain the plot of some of the books that they're reading to their husbands or to another
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This person is going to explain what this very popular book that women are consuming
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So the book starts off with a woman and she's down on her luck and she sees a job advertisement
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And it's not a normal milking farm like with cows.
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And it's a special type of milking, if you know what I'm talking about.
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Apparently, this is the kind of stuff that women are reading.
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And it has only gotten worse and worse over the past few years.
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But it was a really big deal when this came out.
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This movie, this book was promoting something called BDSM, which is basically violent and
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And in this world in which consent is considered the only standard of morality, it was seen
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And if their husbands weren't giving them everything they needed, then maybe women should
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be able to read Fifty Shades of Grey and get the sexual satisfaction that they're looking
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But we see that in 2015, when Fifty Shades of Grey was published, that it made so much
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money, that it sold so many books, that it grossed so much at the box office, that this
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was obviously tapping into a desire that many women had.
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And that this was actually going to lead to a boom of this genre.
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And as we know, the sexual revolution moves really fast.
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In 2015, we also saw that the Obergefell decision was made by the Supreme Court, which said that
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gay marriage is a human right that has to be recognized or that is recognized by the Constitution.
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And in just a matter of 10 years, we got Drag Queen Story Hour.
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We have parents losing custody of their kids because they won't affirm that their child was born in
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So the sexual revolution, whether it comes to LGBTQ or whether it comes to sexual promiscuity,
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sex outside of marriage, moves very, very quickly because that is the nature of sin.
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And so that is what has happened actually specifically in the genre of romance that is targeting women that
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is so popular among the young women in America today.
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We'll get into more of that background in just a second.
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Okay, let's talk a little bit more about 50 Shades of Gray.
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This is probably the prime example that still comes into a lot of people's brains when they
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think of this genre of smut or erotic literature.
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Now, what it appears, so I am told, what appears on screen when it comes to 50 Shades of Gray
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is actually a lot more PG or PG-13 than what you read in the books.
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And that is a very important thing to remember about these books, is that there aren't the
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same regulations and need for ratings and screening when it comes to books.
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There are certain parameters that typically have to be followed to be on a streaming service,
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Now, of course, the boundaries have gotten looser and looser over time, but that is not the case
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And I think a lot of people think if something is written down, that it's not going to be
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It's not going to be as explicit if I'm not seeing a picture.
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But the mental picture that is being put in people's minds by this literature is, I would
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argue, just as powerful, just as brain chemistry altering as watching pornography or watching
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So let me tell you some examples of this kind of smut genre that people, according to Book
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Talk and according to just the numbers that we see, are really into right now.
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This is not just about emotional romantic fantasy.
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But this is about, in many cases, the dark and demonic.
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Characters mix love with revenge, hurting each other emotionally or through power plays
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in a secret society before reaching twisted resolutions.
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Intense relationships feature one partner dominating the other with jealousy and control,
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What's interesting is that this is a common theme, male domination of women, men overtaking
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Irony is, is that a lot of the women who just eat this stuff up consider themselves strong,
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And yet in their fantasy lives, in the literary porn that they're reading, they are looking
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It's very sick juxtaposition when you think about it.
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There's also a series called The Highest Bitter Series.
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The core premise involves men buying partners in an auction-like setup, okay?
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So this is like a slave auction fantasy happening.
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It emphasizes extreme control and ownership dynamics.
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The men exert intense, possessive dominance over their partners, creating relationships
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You know, I'm starting to think here if when the feminists are talking about The Handmaid's
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Tale, that they're actually fantasizing about it and not warning against it.
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They seem to have this obsession with being dominated by men, and they act like that's
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But the literature that they consume tells me otherwise.
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The stories feature violence, possessiveness, and what one reviewer called an unrealistic amount
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So I'm telling you, this is just as sexual graphic explicit as any man who is addicted
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It's a dark romance reverse harem about villains who get the girl.
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It's just so ridiculous that someone would be like, yes, I'm going to put pen to paper,
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and this is going to be how I spend my time and energy and creativity and skill that God
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One reviewer says, violence, dark kinks, sexually explicit scenes are throughout this entire
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So if that's not your thing, I would steer clear.
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The Loser Series, it is about a polyamorous dynamic with intense BDSM.
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Most unrealistic thing here is that according to the cover, these are supposed to be attractive
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people involved in polyamory, and we know from seeing what polyamorous, you know, polycules
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look like on social media that that is, like, never the case.
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A true hate-to-love story between stepbrothers who live together.
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I can't even finish the description of that because we've gone from gruesome to gay, and
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Okay, I think that we could probably skip over some of the other examples.
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There's all of these things that can get into your mind, whether you're reading about it,
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whether you are watching it, and it changes how you think.
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It changes what satisfies you in a way that can lead you toward the path of the demonic.
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Not only that, but also towards depression, because real life, thankfully, is not like
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And I just want to note that, and we'll get into this a little bit more in a second, but
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whether or not a woman is reading these dark, demonic, violent books still escaping to this
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Measuring your relationships or your sexual activity against what you are reading in books
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It is always going to hamper your sanctification.
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It is always going to inhibit the God-ordained intimacy that you have with your marriage.
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Multiply that times a thousand when you're talking about the smut that so many young women are
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I guarantee you there's a big crossover between kink talk and book talk.
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A few years ago, we talked about this horrific trend where you've got the young, young women,
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we're talking teenage girls, who are describing on TikTok, liking to be chokes and sexual violence
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I'm not saying that all of them are reading these kinds of novels, but I am saying this
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is a culture of self-objectification and degradation that directly flows out of a refusal to believe
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It is all connected and Satan is having a playday.
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There is another genre within this, and this goes back to what we were talking about at the
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beginning, that monster bait story, which seemed like a joke and wasn't a joke.
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Okay, so there's smut, there's violent smut, there's monster violent smut.
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One of the examples of this is Strange Love by Anne Aguirre, a human pairs with an awkward
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non-humanoid alien creating a forbidden dynamic due to their physical and cultural differences.
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Apparently, according to one reviewer, this is a sexy book.
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And then, like, they're not even trying with some of these titles.
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It's amazing to me that someone would look at this cover and be like, yes, I want to read this.
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There is a woman named Cinnamon who gets dragged into a demon's violent quest to kill a witch
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with their attraction growing amid danger and conflict.
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Okay, this also goes back to what we talked about with K-pop Demon Hunter, the confusion of evil versus
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good and normalizing demons, making them seem layered and nuanced and maybe inside, you know,
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able to be redeemed or lovable or loving when we know that is not the truth of real demons.
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We see a lot of that in these themes of making us think that maybe demons would actually like us if they really got to know us.
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And, you know, I'm thinking I'm wondering if that is why so many women are completely delusional about crime and criminals
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and just completely naive when it comes to the reality of good and evil and bad guys and criminals that really exist and the need to restrain evil.
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Is that why they vote for these social justice soft on crime policies?
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Because they're reading books that make it seem like the bad guy deep down inside is good and sacrificial and will finally fall in love with them.
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A horrid soul eater fixates on one human soldier in this male-male romance.
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A human man develops an attraction to a lizard-like alien king.
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And the alien king's possessive claim over the human involves restrictive dominating behavior.
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Maybe you've heard of closed-door romance or non-spice romance.
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I would say that that is a category of books that as long as it's not glorifying sin is a category of books that women can read and enjoy and is not pornographic.
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And the descriptor of spice makes it seem like it is not bad or explicit, but that's not necessarily true.
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So, if you hear someone saying they don't like any of that crazy stuff, they just like spice, that's not better, especially for the Christian.
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Okay, y'all, if you are looking for none of this stuff, like anti-smut conference, like if you want truth, if you want goodness, if you want beauty, if you want to be around women who care about that stuff too, then you need to come to share the arrows.
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Because maybe you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm alone.
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Am I the only one that has the values that I do?
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Am I the only one that wants to consume only things that are pure and lovely and excellent?
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Lynn, I need friends who have my same beliefs and values.
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I just want you to know that if you come by yourself, you will not leave by yourself.
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This is the kindest and the friendliest and the most generous audience out there.
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You will be empowered and equipped by the wisdom of God that is channeling through these
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This year's Share the Arrows is brought to you by Good Ranchers.
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Go to share the arrows.com and get your tickets today.
00:20:53.680
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Let us watch Sot 3 to set up what this spice genre of fiction is.
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I'm getting a little bit concerned about your guys' level of spice when it comes to spicy books.
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But I asked you guys about a month ago to drop in the comments your filthiest, spiciest,
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Like the number one where it's like, whoa, that was like crazy.
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And some of you guys recommended as the spiciest, filthiest, nastiest book that you've ever read.
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So she is saying in the rest of that that that is not spicy enough for her.
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I don't know how spicy Colleen Hoover books get.
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I understand that some of them are pretty spicy, what I would consider spicy.
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However, I have also heard that some of her books actually do get really dark.
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But this person is saying, nope, that's not what she wants.
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She wants stuff that is really, really crazy, really explicit, really bad.
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So Melissa Saavedra, she is the owner of Steamy Lit Bookstore in Deerfield Beach.
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She became a fan of the genre when she read The Fifty Shades of Grey.
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So she created this company called The Steam Box.
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And then she opened that bookstore and she said that her shelves never stay full because she's
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always got women who are coming in who are trying to buy these very steamy books.
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It refers to the degree of sexual explicitness in romance novels, often rated on a scale of
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He grabbed me by my waist, pulled me in close and gave me a big kiss.
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And I know that there are a lot of women out there.
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I know there are a lot of women, including a lot of professing Christian women who are
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High Spice, explicit scenes in chapters, several chapters throughout featuring dirty talk,
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He goes, me holding back from you has purely been for your sake, not mine.
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I want you from the second I wake up until the moment I fall asleep.
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Okay, so you might be thinking, especially if you're just listening to this, well, that
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So you kind of have to watch it because she is reading the words that are being said by
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a man like in a very explicit sex scene in this book, Onyx Storm.
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So again, if you see your friends, if you see fellow church members, if you see, if you're
00:25:40.260
a relatable out there, you see your wife, and I doubt that this is the case, but reading
00:25:44.620
this book or your sister, your daughter reading this book, then you just need to know it's
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Like Twilight would probably be considered now to be low spice, although I should not
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have been reading that when I was a teenager because even that, even the implication of
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the stuff in Twilight was not healthy for a teenage girl to be reading, but this is even
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And I know that there are teenage girls that are reading things like A Court of Thorns
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And also, I just want to point out, though, in the quotes there that she is reading, like
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there is this kind of like dominance that women are fantasizing about, even these very
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Now, the Colleen Hoover novels, like It Ends With Us, very popular.
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But look, I'm just going to say Colleen Hoover books are very unhealthy.
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They should not be read or promoted by Christians, okay?
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They are not promoting healthy relationship dynamics.
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They are certainly promoting sexual immorality.
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And if you are a Christian woman, you are obligated to consume things that are excellent
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And just on a practical level, it's going to hurt your marriage.
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Now, when I talked about this last time, I talked about this a little bit in the episode
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that we did on divorce and what the Bible has to say about divorce.
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And I asked the simple question, women who are in this situation, like the woman that
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we talked about was, they're saying, oh, my husband is great.
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He's everything that I've ever wanted, but I'm not satisfied.
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If you are a woman who's thinking that, you need to ask yourself before you do anything,
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Because if you find yourself escaping to a fantasy land and comparing your husband to
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these fictional relationships or these fictional sex scenes, you will continually be disappointed.
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And I got all of these comments from people saying, oh, this is so sad.
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It is holding your husband to completely unfair and fictional expectations in the same way
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that pornography dies for men and affects their relationships.
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Reading pornography is no less sinful than watching pornography, okay?
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And, you know, I think that we should be making a big deal about male addiction to pornography
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and the degradation of society that it causes, but this is no less a big deal.
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Okay, so we've got this, um, we've got this darker theme that we've talked about and we've
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Um, this particular dark romance scene is this clip about it is lighthearted.
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Uh, but you can see that how he is demonstrating the scene is glorifying violence.
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So they're trying to make it lighthearted, but she's sad at the end there because, okay,
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so he chokes her, if you're just listening to this, and, like, lifts her up by her neck
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because, as the text says, he is trying to act out this dark romance scene that she is
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reading about, and she says at the end, don't actually do it to me.
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Like, Chief Related Bro, a few years ago, I wanted to play that game where people are,
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like, slapping each other with tortillas because I thought it would be funny, and he would
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He was like, I'm not going to even pretend to hit you with a tortilla.
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Um, and so I think it's weird that a guy would be okay with even pretending to do something
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like this on camera, which clearly hurt his girlfriend or his wife.
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Okay, here's another example of what these women are consuming.
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Why settle when you have your step-uncle and your step-cousin?
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Why settle when he searches everywhere for you after you were given to him as a gift,
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but you decided to toss yourself over a waterfall instead?
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Why settle when you cut him and he makes you lick the cut?
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Why settle when you get put up on an auction block against your will and you get bought by
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Why settle when you come downstairs in the middle of the night and find him deleting your whole
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Okay, so this is the kind of stuff that women are consuming, and the New York Times is diving
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Also, we looked at Writer's Digest and some other news outlets just to see, like, what are
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So these kind of romance novels are the top-selling fiction genre, with sales soaring from 18 million
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print copies in 2020 to over 39 million in 2023.
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Romance novels have been the top-grossing fiction genre in recent years, generating $1.44 billion
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Women make up the majority of readers driving this romance, of course, making up 84% of the
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So what women are doing, according to these articles, is that they are getting away from
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the kind of happily ever after genre and ending to books, and they're purposely seeking out
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more disturbing and darker and even demonic and violent elements.
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Sir Kana, this consumer behavior analysis report, revealed in a June 2025 report that romance
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The shift in romance aligns with growing genres like psychological thrillers, dark fantasy, and
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horror, showing a broader trend toward darker fiction.
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That book, Onyx Storm, that we watched that TikTok about, sold faster in its first week than
00:32:23.700
There are intense themes of violence, death, and dark magic.
00:32:28.800
This is Brenna Connor, a U.S. Books Industry Analyst.
00:32:33.760
This year I'm watching a shift away from rosier romance subjects like romantic comedy and new
00:32:39.040
adult romance in favor of authors and titles with darker themes.
00:32:42.820
Combined with the growth in other more intense fiction subjects like horror and dystopian, a new
00:32:48.200
trend has emerged that's marked by darker escapist themes.
00:32:52.380
These subject matters provide an outlet for readers to safely explore negative emotions,
00:33:05.900
There are so many programs now for, you know, down to pre-K, all the way up to explore our emotions.
00:33:14.020
I'm not saying they should always be stuffed down, but sometimes they should.
00:33:19.520
Sometimes we're just like a basket of confusion in there.
00:33:22.760
And the more you explore your feelings, actually, the sadder you are.
00:33:26.300
We're told over and over again that if you explore your feelings, you'll be a healthier
00:33:30.280
Y'all, some of the people I know that focus the most on their feelings and desires, emotions
00:33:34.940
are like really sad and really discontent because the further you dig into your heart,
00:33:43.520
And so all of this just psychological, just whatever, just slop.
00:33:48.860
I expect to see continued interest in these darker subjects.
00:33:53.920
Okay, so this is happening in particular among Gen Z, and you see this driven a lot by book
00:34:02.300
talk, and this is creating a huge industry boom with lots of lots of money behind it.
00:34:08.360
So let's talk about the psychological aspects of this, though.
00:34:12.840
Let's talk about loneliness and the impacts on relationship and mental health.
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Gosh, it's been over four years now that I've been talking about them, and they have changed
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So I'm really interested in the psychology behind this and what is so addicting in particular
00:35:50.840
You would think in an age where we're reading less than we were before that people really
00:35:55.400
have a hard time paying attention for more than 20 seconds.
00:35:58.640
You have to put all kinds of movement into the clips that you post, the reels that you
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post, because people just can't pay attention for very long.
00:36:06.040
So what is it about these books that are drawing women in in an age of technology?
00:36:11.480
According to Psychology Today, romantic stories trigger a cascade of neurochemicals and hormones
00:36:19.660
The combination of oxytocin, norepinephrine, and dopamine is an emotional roller coaster
00:36:27.420
What's interesting about oxytocin, I mean, there are a lot of reasons that our bodies
00:36:34.920
But oxytocin is the hormone that kickstarts labor.
00:36:38.700
It is also the hormone that is released when you and your baby are cuddling after you're first
00:36:45.580
And I've talked about this a lot, and I know that this is maybe an indirect corollary here,
00:36:52.900
but as women are getting married later and later, as they are valuing marriage and children
00:36:57.780
later and later, as they are not getting these happy hormones and these connective relational
00:37:04.040
hormones that are released between husband and wife, between baby and mother, they are seeking
00:37:12.060
They are seeking them from superficial sources like these dark fantasy books.
00:37:17.460
Nikki Logan, president of Romance Writers of Australia, wrote the book The Chemistry of
00:37:23.720
Reading, Arousing Your Reader, which explains how brain chemistry drives reader engagement.
00:37:30.340
She says that romance writers, she tells romance writers to leverage hormonal effects like dopamine
00:37:36.140
and oxytocin by building tension and emotional bonds in stories.
00:37:40.200
She provides a practical toolkit for authors to trigger those responses, creating addictive
00:37:44.720
reads that keep readers hooked and eager for more.
00:37:47.520
So it's important to know that when you are buying your books, that you are buying chemistry,
00:37:53.260
that you are buying something that is going to affect you and change you physiologically.
00:37:58.920
Like you're not just reading a book because it's a good story.
00:38:02.020
This is something that is changing you on a physical level.
00:38:06.140
I mean, that should really make you think about what you're consuming.
00:38:13.380
She is the chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.
00:38:17.260
She treats patients with various addictions and researches behavioral dependencies.
00:38:22.040
She wrote this book, Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
00:38:30.120
And I remember we were talking about this aspect of this book that we found really interesting.
00:38:34.460
And it is about her addiction to romance novels.
00:38:39.420
So this author says that she was addicted for two years to these kinds of books, starting
00:38:44.560
with Twilight and progressing to erotic fiction, which she compulsively read on her Kindle, even
00:38:54.500
I started reading, you know, more and more sort of graphic, erotic, sexualized versions of this novel.
00:39:07.540
And that gets into the whole double life of addiction, where now we're lying about our use,
00:39:12.260
we're using our drug over here, but pretending like we're not.
00:39:15.300
So my kids or my husband would walk in the room and I would be, you know, hiding behind
00:39:22.340
So it looked like I was reading something, you know, I don't know, more sophisticated.
00:39:29.100
So this is someone, she was a grown woman and she was probably not influenced by TikTok.
00:39:36.340
And she realized that she was addicted to smut.
00:39:39.280
And she explains that dopamine produces pleasure and motivation, but quote, it may be even more
00:39:47.380
important for motivation than for actual pleasure, driving us to seek more, even as the high fades
00:39:56.380
She compares her addiction to reading this kind of stuff to a form of masturbation triggered by a
00:40:03.260
patient's extreme sex addiction story that mirrored her own compulsive Kindle use.
00:40:08.440
She said that her own habits exhausted her, made her hide from her family, as you just
00:40:13.200
heard, and it interfered with her life, with her roles as parent and doctor, turning a pleasurable
00:40:23.080
To overcome her addiction, she literally had to quit cold turkey for a month.
00:40:29.640
She describes this as socially sanctioned pornography for women because it reinforces attachment and
00:40:36.400
sex themes that really hooks the brain's reward system.
00:40:40.840
Okay, so again, this is basically pornography for women.
00:40:44.560
And she's not even coming at this from a Christian perspective.
00:40:47.560
She's coming at it from an expert psychological and personal perspective.
00:40:52.940
Now, I do not think it's a coincidence that Gen Z women, as well as millennial Gen X and baby
00:41:00.240
boomer women, specifically white women, really struggle with mental health.
00:41:05.240
The highest rates of SSRI prescription are found in this demographic.
00:41:11.100
But let's look at Gen Z because a lot of book talk is filled with Gen Z.
00:41:17.720
Gen Z women experience the highest stress levels globally, with almost half reporting
00:41:26.660
CDC data in 2023 showed that 53% of Gen Z high school girls feel persistently sad or hopeless,
00:41:36.260
with 27% considering suicide nearly double the rate of boys.
00:41:40.600
Among Gen Z workers aged 18 to 22, 73% report feeling lonely, sometimes or always an increase
00:41:51.060
We also know that heavy social media use is strongly linked to loneliness, with 71% of users
00:42:04.140
Social media also triggers your brain's reward system.
00:42:08.920
It rewards your brain with very cheap dopamine.
00:42:13.880
You don't have to put effort into getting that high, but you need more and more of it.
00:42:20.020
You need crazier and crazier and faster and faster content in order to stay hooked.
00:42:25.780
The same is true of pornography that is being watched and the same is true of pornography that
00:42:31.960
And so that is why we see the rates of depression so high among those who use social media.
00:42:39.500
And that is why people who are addicted to this kind of smut tend to also be very unhappy
00:42:49.140
Coping methods such as porn can have addictive effects and also affect relationships.
00:42:55.160
This particular study showed, of course, we already knew that, but there was a 2019 study
00:43:00.240
published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that showed that adults who feel
00:43:04.240
lack of affection and watch more pornography tend to be less satisfied and feel less close
00:43:09.640
They feel lonelier and they feel more depressed.
00:43:13.000
There are so many reasons for that, which we have already articulated so far.
00:43:24.880
Why should we be so careful about what we read?
00:43:27.880
Because if you are like, maybe I was in high school and you thought, well, if I'm reading
00:43:32.560
it, which I was never reading this level of stuff, but again, just smut like Twilight and
00:43:40.340
other things like that, cheap teen fiction at the time, which wasn't nearly as dark as it is
00:43:45.120
today, but still, I mean, pretty dark and too sexual for a teenage girl to be reading
00:43:52.920
But if you're like I was at the time and you think, well, if I'm reading something, at
00:43:57.240
least I'm not scrolling or at least I'm not watching TV.
00:44:00.740
And so it must be right because it's giving me some benefit to my mind.
00:44:04.980
Well, look, even if reading makes you smart, sin makes you stupid.
00:44:08.600
OK, and so increasing your dopamine addiction to this kind of smut is not actually helping
00:44:17.100
It's not increasing your creativity the way reading other kinds of books are.
00:44:24.160
It's hurting your brain and it's hurting your heart and soul.
00:44:29.160
You don't have to give up your love for reading and your love for creativity and good writing
00:44:35.360
He actually ordained his word to be written down and to be read.
00:44:41.460
So let's get into what the Bible has to say about it.
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Catherine Butler wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition, and I know we've had, you know,
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mixed experiences with the Gospel Coalition, but this is a really great article about the
00:46:04.860
release of that book, Onyx Storm, that came out in January and sold so many copies, really
00:46:15.000
She says, around midnight on January 21st, 2025, bookstores across the United States experienced
00:46:20.880
crowds they'd not seen since the days of Harry Potter.
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The fervor was so intense that some shops charged admission.
00:46:29.200
Unlike the Hogwarts mania of the 90s, however, most attendees were women.
00:46:33.520
Their costumes often included leather bodysuits.
00:46:37.280
And the book in question featured not only dragons in a magical realm, but also explicit
00:46:46.300
She says, Catherine Butler says, influencers often praise the female empowerment they encounter
00:46:55.200
Instagrammer Christina Clark Brown told The Guardian, its editorial staff elaborated,
00:46:59.900
the romanticity heroine speaks to the cultural moment.
00:47:03.340
The strong female-led stories show young women can be nerdy and sexy, vulnerable and powerful,
00:47:16.360
Such remarks hint at women's yearning for meaning and identity.
00:47:23.720
We desire love to be lovable and yet to be like God.
00:47:29.660
If you've been watching this show for any amount of time, you know that everything goes
00:47:35.220
It's an undercurrent of wayward longing, also evident in the link between romanticity and
00:47:42.280
She says, post-COVID, women are hungrier than ever to fill that Jesus-shaped hole in their
00:47:46.340
heart that only festered during the loneliness of quarantine.
00:47:49.480
And where men usually gravitate toward online pornography in those moments, women are more likely
00:47:54.940
to pick up a romance novel or even erotica, said Mary and Jacob's contributor to the Christian
00:48:05.920
In a small 2018 survey, 94% of the 38, so very small, Christian women who responded reported
00:48:15.020
And they give in in this way by looking at or reading romanticity.
00:48:20.160
What's interesting about this description of women wanting the strong heroine who is in
00:48:25.740
control and they want to see themselves as that is that, again, in all of these, including
00:48:31.280
in Onyx Storm, there is a theme of the domination of the heroine by a man.
00:48:37.440
So actually, what they are saying is that there is a part of the created order that they want,
00:48:45.620
but they want it to be perverted and distorted.
00:48:48.160
It's like they will balk at Ephesians 5 saying wives should submit to their husbands and husbands
00:48:56.240
should love their wives as Christ loves themselves.
00:48:59.680
They'll say that's anti-feminist and that's fascist or that's like Sharia law, whatever
00:49:06.800
But when it comes to these kinds of themes of violent domination of women in fantasy books,
00:49:17.340
Christian publishers should publish, this person in this article says, last name of
00:49:23.340
Jacobs, should publish clean, God-glorifying romanticity that seeks to lead readers closer
00:49:28.080
to Christ rather than to a life of sexual addiction.
00:49:32.060
Like I would also say you got to be careful about things like redeeming love.
00:49:40.560
And of course, it's not like these dark themes.
00:49:45.760
But did it foster in me at the time contentment and satisfaction?
00:49:50.560
Or did it grow in me a longing to be married, but only for like the sexual aspect of it when
00:50:01.760
If a book, whether it is Christian fantasy or not, is fostering in you discontentment and lust and
00:50:09.920
desires that cannot be healthfully satisfied, then I think it's not for you, whether or not it is
00:50:16.820
Why you should avoid, this is according to Focus on the Family, all shades of erotica.
00:50:22.920
Fifty shades doesn't shy away from the S word, or at least the idea of it.
00:50:27.140
It's time to talk about submission and why it's so tantalizing in erotica and sadist sexuality,
00:50:36.060
And pulling back the shades, Dana Gresh writes that erotica strategically and masterfully
00:50:40.840
pulls you in by exploiting what your heart secretly longs for.
00:50:48.800
Psychologist Julie Slattery, co-author with Gresh, identifies five desires that women have.
00:51:06.420
And they argue, and this is so important, this is just what we were saying, all of these
00:51:12.380
The first woman created as a helper for her man.
00:51:16.680
Yet the modern woman's I-can-do-anything-you-can-do-but-batter attitude casts these relational longings as
00:51:27.180
Felicia Masonheimer also has written on how erotic fiction harms women.
00:51:35.140
She and she talks about her own experience with this.
00:51:39.820
She said, there will be people in your life who will tell you that it's not that big of
00:51:43.040
a deal, partially perhaps because they feel convicted by your recognition and you're trying
00:51:48.940
She said, when I talk about this online, people get very angry and defensive.
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There are several biblical responses to this, but let's go specifically to the Word of God.
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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is
00:53:34.080
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything
00:53:42.040
1 Corinthians 6.18-20 says flee from sexual immorality.
00:53:46.220
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins
00:53:52.920
He goes on to say, Your body is actually a temple of the Holy Spirit.
00:53:57.960
John Piper for Desiring God says, But the temptation that ruined the whole world in Genesis 3 came
00:54:02.800
through the ear from Satan's voice, and so did the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.
00:54:07.020
The heart is the primary seat of holiness, and the ear is as good a pathway of corruption as
00:54:14.940
So that means audio books are also off limits when it comes to this smut.
00:54:21.560
Pastor Todd Pruitt says lust deserves our aggressive opposition.
00:54:30.280
That's why Jesus says, It would be better for you to pluck out your eye than to lust after a woman.
00:54:39.800
And God has given us, number one, himself as our source of satisfaction, whether you are married
00:54:48.060
The truth is that, yes, sex is a beautiful gift that is to be enjoyed in the context of marriage.
00:54:54.260
But if you are single, you have that desire, but you do not have a holy means by which to
00:54:58.920
satisfy that desire, that is still not an excuse to run to any form of pornography or smut.
00:55:05.020
It is an excuse to run completely and totally to Christ, because He is your full and total
00:55:12.200
And every single one of us, single or married, is called to self-denial and to self-sacrifice
00:55:18.820
and to take up our cross and to get rid with the power of the Holy Spirit of the sin in our life
00:55:27.320
That looks different for everyone, depending on your relationship, depending on the stage
00:55:32.220
But we are all called to pursue holiness in this way, not because God wants to rob us of
00:55:37.700
things, but because He loves us, because He knows what's good for our mind.
00:55:41.740
He knows what's good for our body and our relationships.
00:55:44.380
And one day, in a very short time, we will no longer be tempted.
00:55:50.620
We will no longer have unmet desires, but we will be fully and truly, eternally satisfied
00:55:57.440
And with our eyes on heaven, we forego all of the sin that wants to hinder us and hold
00:56:04.060
Remember, it goes all the way back to Satan tempting Eve.
00:56:10.020
All right, that's all we've got time for today.
00:56:14.800
Amazing conversation with Raymond Ibrahim about the Islamic infiltration of Western civilization