Every Woman’s Battle was written by Shannon Ethridge and released in 2003. It’s supposed to serve as a complimentary book to Every Man’s Battle (from 2000). Every Woman’s Battle conveys very false, harmful, and toxic messages about sex and relationships, and the fact that it’s target audience is adolescents and teenagers makes its content even more disturbing. Here are some of the things it teaches:

1.) ”Women/girls lust, but only in a strictly emotional way, whereas men and boys only lust physically.” This, of course, is patently false. This is just the standard evangelical belief that women aren’t sexual or carnal.

2.) ”Women are only aroused by what they hear and men are only aroused by what they see and feel.” Again, this is nonsense. Of course women are visual and aroused by sexual pleasure, and of course men are aroused by things they hear or feel emotionally.

3.) “The primary motivation for women to enter relationships is being able to say they have a boyfriend/husband, while the primary motivation for men to enter relationships is sex.“ This is incredibly harmful to teach adolescents/teenagers, because it makes them see males as only driven by sex, and therefore sets them up for awful thoughts and decisions when dating (“he’ll dump me sooner or later if I don’t have sex.”)

4.) “Women have sex for attention. Men totally separate emotions from sex; for them, it’s purely carnal. For men, satisfying their partners and being sexually desired is incredibly important, it’s not just about reaching orgasm for us. And I guess women only like sex or attention, as opposed to, I don’t know, pleasure?

Worst of all, the book makes the following claim:

Women give sex to get love, men give love to get sex.

Aside from being incredibly degrading to both genders (more degrading to men, I would argue, since it portrays them to be sex-crazed animals), Ethridge is normalizing predatory behavior. She’s normalizing the concept of men being manipulative and dishonest in order to get a woman to have sex with him, while also normalizing the idea that women should have sex in order to receive love and affection. To her, sex is transactional, with women being the sellers and men being the horny, insatiable customers. This is a terrible message for middle school and high school-aged children.

She says other standard things you often hear in purity culture, such as “masturbating while being married is disrespectful to your husband” and “don’t sit on a guy’s lap because they’ll get horny” and “watch what you wear” etc.

This book sold millions of copies and undoubtedly impacted the way millions of young people view sex and relationships. For anyone who grew up with this book and its messages, how negatively did it affect your life and your outlook on dating/marriage?