So it’s holidays.  Yesterday, that meant more daytime TV than usual — for both of us!   Oprah’s guest was sex therapist Laura Berman, taking mums through ‘the talk’ with their daughters.

One of the really positive things was Berman’s insistence that there should be no ‘the talk’ in the first place — because parents should foster an environment in which sex is discussed openly from a young age.  Thumbs up from us!

Another thumbs up was Berman’s desire to empower young people to understand their own bodies and sexuality without stigma or embarrassment.  For Berman, a big part of this is ensuring that daughters are sexually safe.  As daughters reach adolescence, we should be equipping them to dodge sexual pressure.

Berman’s solution here is to separate sex from boys.  And you can see what she’s getting at — there’s no way a slimy adolescent boy can possibly offer sexual fulfilment to a young woman.  Berman says that daughters can achieve this separation by becoming masters of their own sexuality through masturbating.  (Berman’s suggestion is to provide them with clitoral vibrators.)

In Berman’s approach, then, sexual safety is achieved through sexual independence.  Sexual pleasure begins and ends with me, because I’m the only one in the equation.  Sex becomes fundamentally self-interested.  It’s about me getting what I want from me.  This might appear to promote sexual safety, but it does so through autonomy and the fear of others.

It’s a stark contrast to Christian sex, in which two sexual partners are not self-centred but other-centred, putting the other’s needs before their own.  This means that each experiences double pleasure: their own and their joy in their partner’s.  The great beauty of this self-sacrificial outlook is that it truly unites two people — surely the best possible reason for sex.  When two other-centred partners unite in interdependent sex, there is true sharing because their pleasure is truly shared.

So what’s the best way to keep daughters safe, if not make them sexually independent?  The solution is not to focus on sexual fulfilment but sexual wholeness.  More than just fulfilment in pleasure, sex is about unity with another.  And true unity develops through mutual vulnerability and trust of a depth so great that it can only be located in a lifelong marriage partnership.  This is such a high vision of sex that it only finds expression in the deepest of relationship.  In this grand vision, daughters do not fear partners whom they can’t trust but are instead equipped to seek a partner to whom they can wholly entrust their sexual and emotional life in marriage.

Berman’s promotion of sexual understanding is spot on, but her solution cannot ultimately kill fear or fuel trust for young women.  An independent sexuality is in the end an impoverished one.  Daughters surely deserve a greater vision.  And that’s why Christians should be following Berman’s initial advice and making the most noise about sex.