Episode 210 (Transcript): Marriage Edition Part 2 | Another Conversation with Dr. Jennifer Bird

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Mackenzie Boring, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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SH: Hello, I'm Susan Hinckley. And I am Cynthia Winward. And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things. And the title of today's episode is, “Does That Scripture Mean What You Think It Means? Marriage Edition, Another Conversation with Dr. Jennifer Bird.”

CW: Can you believe it? We're back for part two, ‘cause this is the juicy part. 

SH: Things are about to get real, folks, so…keep listening. 

CW: All right, well let's go ahead and roll the rest of our conversation with Dr. Bird.

SH: Well, Jennifer, can we talk about virgins and virginity for a minute? Because when I read this section in your book, I thought, this is why we're all so screwed up around sex. 

JB: Yeah. 

SH: It started here. 

JB: What did you read that made you say that? Do you remember specifically or generally? 

Sh: Well, it's just when you laid out what those words, like, what we're actually talking about in the passages where those words are used in the Bible, it was kind of staggering to me that so much has been made of something that really is just a word talking about…a woman having sex with someone. 

JB: That's right. That's right. 

SH: So like, can you just say a little bit more about those words and how they came to be? 

CW: Are you trying to keep it G-rated, Susan?

SH: Well, yes! Yes. I'm gonna let…look, I'm gonna let Jennifer, this is why we hired her, to say the hard words, right? So I'm gonna let her say the things. But, anyway…okay, here's the thing. Purity culture has been a big deal in our church and continues to be a pretty big deal, even though we don't really call it that in our church, but it's huge, right? It's modesty and chastity, trying to control everything that women wear, all of that stuff, right? All of that stuff is rampant in our culture. And so, I just want to know, how did a woman having had sex become like the biggest thing that could ever possibly go wrong in a woman's life?

JB: I can't speak to how it got, I mean, I can direct you to a few really great books…(chuckling) that talk about it, but how it became as ridiculous as the purity culture of the last 30 years, 30-40 years, I mean, that is a whole other layer to this issue, right? But I think it, like you said, I do personally think it starts with these kinds of ideas, right? They've been around for 2000, 3000 years, maybe longer, right? This idea of a woman's body being talked about differently than a man's body. The reality of sexual intercourse for a woman and her body is valued differently than it is for a man. 

And I was looking back to what it, I'm like, what did I say about virgins? Like, oh yeah, that's right. I remember doing the video for this, too. And it was really kind of fun and tricky because in our culture today, we talk about losing your virginity, right? 

CW: Yes. 

JB: As if it's a thing to lose. 

SH: Right. 

JB: Okay. Well, let's look at biblically when the word parthenos in the Latin or bitula in the Hebrew, when they're talking specifically about a female body that has not yet been penetrated by a man…that we know of. (chuckles)

SH: Right. That we know of. 

JB: I always want to say that, right? 

SH: We're making some big assumptions here. (chuckles)

JB: Exactly! But that is the focus, right? We have these stories where a woman is purchased by a man and he goes in to seal the deal on their wedding night, on their quote “wedding night”, and which is to have sex with her and she doesn't bleed. So that means that apparently she's had sex before, which is…bollocks, right? It's not necessarily the way it works. 

CW: Not true. 

JB: Right? But sitting with all these pieces to work on this book brought me to a fairly unsettling realization, and that is that for women who have a hymen, not every woman has one, by the way, but most of us do, that the hymen itself doesn't have to tear the first time a female has penetrative sex, vaginally penetrative sex, but it tends to because people don't typically prepare it. It's very stretchy. I mean it's very, I'm doing this visual for Cynthia and Susan (chuckles). It's like, it's very stretchy, but it needs to be primed. And so, to say that a woman should bleed is to say that men are doing a physical violence to women…

CW: Yes.

SH: Right.  

JB: …and that is to be expected. And that just gives me chills, like, that just makes me very uncomfortable and really nauseated, right? 

SH/CW: Yeah.

[00:05:00] 

JB: That's what we're talking about. And so to me, that really brings into focus this, the objectification of women in this whole conversation.