Should Christian Women Be Allowed to Read Books Nude?

Every once in a while, a Christian guy with a beard pulls out his phone and is like “I desperately need people to pay attention to me, so I can feel something,” and he posts something ludicrous.

Fortunately, for anyone who is interested, there is a simple and effective way to make these people go away: you see their post, you read their post, and you think “this stranger wants me to argue with him so he can feel important. I will not.”

Of course no one in Christian culture ever walks away, though. Christians are deeply unsettled by the notion that we are all spiritual siblings, so we are always looking to create pecking orders so we can feel better than the next believer. To that end, whenever we see one of the beard guy’s dumb posts, we run to our phones, falling all over ourselves like someone is ringing the dinner triangle at Moron Ranch. We desperately fat finger and re-type our responses, snorting and huffing as we imagine the beard guy getting owned by our razor wit. Then we post our take, revel in the ripples of dopamine, and then go back to doomscrolling for the next beard guy. Meanwhile, the original beard guy looks at all the angry replies and is like “I no longer know the difference between attention and affection; this will do just fine.”

---

But what to do if you are a thought leader. I will not link to the current post that everyone is fussing about, which has something to do with telling Christian women which books to read. But I can’t ignore it, either, because my brand depends on me always being at the forefront of The Discourse.

So, how do I get everyone’s clicks without amplifying the beard guy who started the whole mess?

I’ll show you how. Take his initial premise¹, which looked something like this:

Christian women should not be allowed to read on their own

Then, turn it into a broad question that no one is actually asking, so it seems like I’m objective and shouldn’t be blamed by anyone on any side:

Should Christian women be allowed to read?

Finally, add something to it, so it reminds people of the original issue, but also seems different and original. If at all possible, connect it to women’s bodies or sex, which are things that Christians LOVE to read about, because we obsess about them all the time:

Should Christian Women Be Allowed to Read Nude?

Presto. Now Christians on all sides are thinking about boobies, so they’re going to click on your think piece, but there’s also a question mark, so it’s not immediately clear what side you’re on. And you don’t have to tell them! Just put 3-5 headings in the article, and make each of the headings a question, too, like this:

Ladies, what if the male characters in the book see your private parts?

Is it a sin to use one of your bosoms as a bookmark? (Men do this all the time with their wieners)

Does this mean you can listen to audiobooks nude in public?

At no point do you have to tell people what you actually think about any of this. And you shouldn’t want to; when readers disagree with you, they tend to find another thought leader to follow. Besides, if your readers already like you, they’ll try to assume you are on the Correct Side, which you are.

Then, when you get in that 600-800 word range, you have to end the think piece. This is the tricky part; you don’t want to overwrite it. Approach the article like a couple of married thirtysomething Baptists on a Friday night: make sure everybody gets what they need, but don’t keep on grinding for no reason. A good trick is to call back to something in the first paragraph, so that people will keep paying attention to you, and you can feel something.

*Weekly-ish articles are free; periodic special articles are behind the paywall. If you are a paid subscriber, even for a short while, thank you for making this whole thing work. To everyone, thank you for reading and sharing. Please understand that all offensive content is the fault of my team.

1. which (spoiler alert) even he doesn’t actually believe