"It’s one thing to give up plastic straws and recycle daily. But ecosexuals take their love for the planet to an entirely new level. What exactly is ecosexuality? It's a trending sexual identity that means everything from literally having sex with the Earth to getting it on in the most eco-friendly way possible.

“Ecosexuality is where ecology meets sexology,” Jennifer J. Reed, PhD, a sociologist from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells Health. “It is imagining ‘Earth as lover’ rather than ‘Earth as mother.’”

Dr. Reed explains that ecosexuality is an umbrella term for people who treat nature as a sensual partner to protect rather than a resource to exploit. How a person practices and expresses their ecosexuality, however, is up to them.

One of the most common ways to be an ecosexual is to use biodegradable and/or organic sexual aids and products. “A person that expresses their ecosexuality in this way may purchase environmentally friendly sex toys, all-natural sheets, or even organic tampons,” Holly Richmond, PhD, a sex therapist in New York City, tells Health. “Using products that don’t cause any harm to the Earth is one way a person may fulfill their attraction.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum are individuals who literally have sex with the earth to get aroused.

“For some people, having sex with nature or having sex with a partner and incorporating nature into intercourse is how they get turned on,” Richmond says. “It might be something about having the tactile feeling of dirt or grass on your skin, or knowing that you’re involving nature into your sexual experience.”

Ecosexuals "want to protect nature so much and are so enamored with the Earth and how it makes them feel that this is how they express their sexuality,” Richmond adds.

Ecosexuality is inclusive, Reed explains, and ecosexuals can fall anywhere on the sexual identity spectrum, from straight to gay to trans and beyond.

“Ecosexuality is one way to inspire people to engage by making the environmental movement more sexy, fun, and diverse,” says Reed. The framing of "queer, erotic, 'irreverent environmentalism' resonates with many people today,” she adds."

"PSA: Consent can be revoked at any time.

Things can change from the start of a sexual encounter, and you should always be able to stop any time you are no longer comfortable with the activity.

“Consent is not a blanket yes,” Engle explained, adding that people often misunderstand this crucial point. “It is an ongoing conversation throughout a sexual experience… Sometimes sex is going well — [and then] it's not. Maybe you change your mind, maybe you're not into this person's moves and want to stop, maybe you thought this would be fun and it isn't. If this is the case, you are completely within your right to revoke consent.”

It can feel scary to assert your boundaries in that way, but it’s important to remember you have agency over your body, and you never have to do anything that doesn’t feel right. To stop something mid-act, Engle suggests taking a deep breath first, and then using a phrase like “I’m uncomfortable,” “I’d like to take a break,” or “Stop.”

Another tactic is to set up a safe word to bring things to a full halt if needed. “Have a nonsexual word that is designed to stop the play, especially with a new partner,” Engle advised. “I suggest using the traffic light method. ‘Green’ means go, and ‘red’ means stop.”

As Engle described, enthusiastic consent can be confirmed or denied through physical cues, but also by communicating out loud before — and during — a sexual act. Juliet, a 20-year-old from Los Angeles, California, told MTV News that she’ll sometimes ask her partner questions like “Is this OK?” or “Do you like that?” adding that if she ever has any doubt, she stops to check in further. “I would expect my partner to do the same,” she said, explaining that it hasn’t always easy for her to talk freely about consent. “There were times [in the past] where I was cool with kissing or making out, but I didn't want to go further, and yet I would find myself going further anyway because I felt like, ‘I started this, I guess I can't really stop.’ But I know now that that's not true. I have the power to say, ‘Hey, wait a second. I'm not comfortable, let's slow down, take a break.’”

"Yes, dirty talk can count as consent!

If you’re comfortable with it, turning up the heat with your words can make consent crystal clear. And given that enthusiastic consent is an evolving process, adding some raunchy dialogue to your sexual encounter can only help communicate your feelings and desires.

“Some of the best partners … have been really vocal about letting me know what they like or how (and where) they want to be touched,” Nick explained. “Not everyone is into that of course, but if you are, it can be a great way to demonstrate enthusiastic consent, and it's a huge turn-on to know that you're turning the other person on.”

Juliet told MTV News that she tries to make it clear to her partner during any sexual activity that she is enjoying it and wants it to continue. “I'll say things like, ‘That feels good,’ or ‘Don't stop,’ or even guide them to touch me somewhere to show that I am not just okay with it, but really into it,” she explained."

Spiritual bypassing is a way of hiding behind spirituality or spiritual practices. It prevents people from acknowledging what they are feeling and distances them from both themselves and others. Some examples of spiritual bypassing include:

Spiritual bypassing is a superficial way of glossing over problems in a way that might make us feel better in the short term, but ultimately solves nothing and just leaves the problem to linger on.

Spiritual bypassing can sometimes be difficult to spot because it is often very subtle. However, looking at examples can help make this phenomenon more apparent:

Spiritual bypassing is also often used to dismiss the very real concerns of people who are dealing with problems. People who are faced with discrimination are often advised to simply be “nice,” “civil,” or “patient” when dealing with blatant abuse. It suggests that people can rely on individual positive thinking to overcome complex social issues.

If you say these things, you might be engaging in spiritual bypassing:

Before resorting to platitudes, ask yourself who the comment is really helping. Is it really giving someone comfort or insight, or is it just a way of dismissing a difficult situation so that you can feel better?"

Sort of like bird watching, except instead of looking for birds, you’re looking for sin. Sin watching is keeping a close eye on someone else’s behavior with the intent of pouncing on them if you perceive they have made a mistake. It is practiced when a person establishes themselves as a kind of moral gatekeeper who believes it is their job to police everyone else’s behavior.

For example, a woman at my former church would befriend all of the younger people in the church on social media and then keep an eye on their newsfeeds to make sure that they were behaving themselves.

On one occasion, she saw a photo of a group of them enjoying a few drinks at a local club and dutifully reported this to the church leadership. The church disciplined the young people. Most of them ended up leaving. The woman patted herself on the back for faithfully admonishing her brothers and sisters in Christ towards greater godliness.

Futurism is keeping people living in fear of a certain future which ultimately prevents them from living life now. For example, a person who believes that the second coming of Christ is imminent may delay going to college or getting married because, hey… what’s the point if the world is going to end?

Futurism also absolves Christians of social and environmental responsibility by allowing them to claim that social and environmental decline are merely signs of the ends times. We shouldn’t have to fight it. It was all prophesied about in Scripture.

Above all, futurism uses the fear of future punishment (eternal damnation or hell) as a tool to manipulate and control behavior in the church. If you are repeatedly told that the threat of hell hangs over you unless you listen to and apply the preacher’s words, it actually gives the preacher power over you. You must keep coming back to them for assurance.

Service abuse is taking advantage of the good nature of people by pressuring them into volunteering their time to serve the church without the expectation of reward or compensation using the argument that service to the church is the same as service to God.

For church staff members, it can come in the form of being expected to work way above and beyond the hours for which they are paid or being paid at an unreasonably low rate because they are ‘serving the Lord.’

For laypeople, it can manifest as being guilted into serving in various church ministries or activities by church staff who only have a relationship with you to ensure that you keep on serving and only try to reach out to you to find out how you are going if you happen to stop serving.

Forced forgiveness takes the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:15, which says: “If you don’t forgive others, then your Father in heaven will not forgive you,” and uses them as a weapon for forcing you to forgive people who aren’t necessarily sorry, repentant, willing to take responsibility for their actions, or willing to change.

During the middle of a sermon that I was preaching one Sunday, I somehow offended an older man in the congregation. He jumped to his feet and, from his pew, unleashed an almighty tirade of abuse, shouting at me about how wrong I was. It was, for me, a total public humiliation.

After the service, the church elders got this man and me together in a room for mediation. In this meeting, I was forced to offer my forgiveness to this man who had publicly torn me to pieces, even though he didn’t seem particularly perturbed by his actions.

At its most wicked, forced forgiveness has been used to keep women locked in domestic abuse situations, all in the name of forgiveness."

"There were several occasions in the narrative where Douglass explains situations where Christianity was significant. One of Douglass’s master, Thomas Auld, portrayed the effects of Christianity on an individual. At a point where Douglass was able to give dates of his life, he remembers 1832 when he began living with Auld in Baltimore, Maryland. He describes Auld as a mean man with a temper. But one of Auld biggest problem was not giving slaves enough to eat. However, Auld was a master who was not too firm and at times “lacked that of a master.” Douglass recalls that Auld had visited a Methodist camp meeting where he experienced religion, Christianity, for the first time. It was clear that Douglass saw this in a optimistic way. Being affiliated with religious faith would change a person for the better. Douglass felt Auld would either “emancipate his slaves and if that (Christianity) did not do this, at any rate make him more kind and humane.” Nevertheless, it made his character cruel and unjust according to Douglass. Auld found religious sanctions to support his cruelty and harsh punishment. This showed the conversion to Christianity had a negative impact on Auld. In another instance, Douglass began living with Mr. Wilson at St. Michael’s. Shortly after Wilson began participating in religious activities. 

Douglass began to identify a difference in Mr. Wilson through the way he “tied up a lame young woman, and whipped her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip.” Douglass states that the way Mr. Wilson justified his behavior was by using the religious literature, repeating a passage of scripture- “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many strips.” This demonstrated that the religious literature help provided master’s with the evidence they needed to defend their actions. Either this was the incorrect way Christianity was practiced or humanity was presented in an ambiguous way. The presence of religion goes on further when Douglass introduces Mr. Covey, another master he was assign too. Mr. Covey was a professor of religion and a religious class-leader at the local Methodist church. He also had a reputation of breaking apart young slaves in which Douglass refers to him as a “nigger-breaker.” As young as Douglass was when he moved in with Mr. Covey, he remembers when Mr. Covey gave him “a sever whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little fingers.” This is puzzling to hear of a man who is committed to faith but his actions seemed to be contradicting.

Douglass notes many laws during his time of slavery. In particular he talks about the law of lynching. If slaves were not behaving or doing the work they were assigned, they would be punished. If punishment was not suitable actions for the slaves, then slaveholders would turn to lynching. Under the law slaveholders would be protected for lynching slaves. For one, the other slaves who witnessed the lynching could not go to court as they were deemed unreliable or not creditable. Although slaves were humans, they were considered property first. According to Jennifer Glancy’s theory, “in some Christian circles to say the least, that slaves’ bodies were property- objects of physical violations of all kind, surrogates for torture and vessels for sexual pleasures and sexual crimes.” (Glancy. 2007)The law and its literatures such the United States Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights consisted of so much ambiguity that property and humanity was not clear-cut that it allowed slaves to be adopted as property."

"For me and my brothers, all of this homogenous living was just the way it was. When non-Greek friends invited us over for dinner, to a slumber party, or to a high school dance, our parents rarely allowed us to go. They preferred that we stay in the setting where they felt safe and secure and in control of us. Truthfully, I think they expected us to carry on our Greek heritage as though the rest of Sydney’s cultural diversity and influence didn’t exist—but that wasn’t realistic or healthy.

My brothers and I were Greek, and we loved our Greek heritage, but we were Australians by birth. We wanted to explore our country and all it had to offer. I wanted to venture out and embrace a culture far beyond my own.

Sometimes, I think as Christians we behave similarly to my parents and their friends. We live in a Christian bubble, inside our Christian communities, inside our collective Christian friends—and we stay there. Perhaps, we even hide out there. We design what we think is heaven on earth—the perfect religious world—and we hunker down in hopes all will go well until we leave this planet. But Jesus has sent us out into the world to make disciples.

We can’t make His last commandment our first priority if we don’t break out of our bubble.

I understand that sometimes the bubble just happens. We get saved, we make Christian friends, we grow in Christ, and we naturally enjoy the camaraderie, safety, security, and comfort of our Christian community. But over time, we find ourselves trapped in the bubble, rarely interacting with people who don’t look, think, or believe like us. We don’t work out with them at the gym, or take them to lunch, or invite them to our homes. And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus tells us to do.

Jesus didn’t save us to build a Christian subculture. He didn’t save us to hide from the world, avoid the world, ignore the world, fear the world, hate the world, condemn the world, or judge the world. He sent us into the world to love the world He created and loves so tenderly and fiercely."

"Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, comes from a line of white American Christians that stretches back before the Revolutionary War. His ancestors weren’t large plantation owners or Confederate generals, or ― as far as he knows ― active members of the Ku Klux Klan. For much of his life, Jones believed the “unremarkable” nature of his family’s background meant that white supremacy wasn’t a part of their history.

But he’s recently started to tell a different kind of story ― one that acknowledges that white privilege shaped his family’s sojourn on American soil.

His ancestors were wealthy enough to own slaves, Jones said. The family settled in Georgia on land the government seized from indigenous Creek and Cherokee people. They became Southern Baptists, part of a denomination founded in 1845 on the belief that it was perfectly moral for Christians to be slave owners.

Decades later, after Jones’s great-grandfather was killed in a clay mining accident, co-workers allegedly killed an innocent Black worker in retaliation. Jones still remembers how satisfied his great-uncle appeared while retelling that story, as if this arbitrary and unjustified act of racial violence helped balance the scales after a white man’s death.

It wouldn’t be hard for many white Christians to find examples of white supremacy’s claims on their own family’s trees, Jones said. But white Christians’ image of themselves and their religion has been warped by what Jones calls “white-supremacy-induced amnesia.”

Jones wrestles with that amnesia in his new book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” He argues that white Christians ― from evangelicals in the South to mainline Protestants in the Midwest to Catholics in the Northeast ― weren’t just complacent onlookers while political leaders debated what to do about slavery, segregation and discrimination. White supremacist theology played a key role in shaping the American church from the very beginning, influencing not just the way denominations formed but also white Christians’ theology about salvation itself.

HuffPost spoke with Jones about his book earlier in July. Just as his own family history would be incomplete without acknowledging the influences of white supremacy, Jones said it’s impossible to talk about American Christianity without recognizing that racism helped shape the church.

How did your own eyes open to the ways that white Christianity and white supremacy are entangled?

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. I was deeply immersed in white Southern Baptist evangelical culture. I was that kid who was always at church, four to five times a week. I have a degree from a Southern Baptist college, and I have a Master of Divinity degree from a Southern Baptist seminary. But it wasn’t until I was in grad school in my 30s that I really began to examine the history of my denomination’s direct ties to slavery.

Along with that, in my day job as CEO of PRRI, we’re repeatedly confronted with public opinion data that suggests white Christians really have a blind spot in seeing racial injustice and particularly structural racism. So it was a combination of really reckoning with my own family’s history, together with seeing patterns in the data that just made it so clear that this is not a story of some distant past, but this is very much still in the DNA of white Christianity today."

"Agnes and John Lawless argue in The Drift into Deception that there are eight characteristics of spiritual abuse, and some of these clearly overlap with Enroth's criteria. They list the eight marks of spiritual abuse as comprising:[citation needed]

The author of Charismatic Captivation[50] in a post on the book's website delineates "33 Signs of Spiritual Abuse",[51] including:

Hayley Jade:

"I came out as autistic during the pandemic. Being isolated for so long finally revealed that I had been “masking,” or performing social behaviors that are considered neurotypical, my entire life. And the less I masked, the happier I became.

I have this theory that autistic people know they’re autistic just like gay people know they’re gay. As a bisexual woman, I didn’t have to go to the psychologist to take a test and have an old white man tell me whether or not I’m into women. But for some reason, this is what society requires of autistic people. Without a diagnosis on paper, we’re not recognized ― even though a diagnosis still rarely helps us in society. But for much of my life, I knew I was different, even though I didn’t know why.

After hours of telling my psychologist my life story, doing multiple-choice personality tests and emailing him traits I identified with, I was devastated when he told me he didn’t think I was autistic. I tried to keep eye contact and look calm while I dissociated.

I asked him why he didn’t think I was autistic when I had been so certain. I had stayed up until 3 a.m. watching TikTok videos of other people around the world who made me feel less alone ― and suddenly my whole life made sense. Suddenly I knew why being diagnosed late with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) didn’t feel like the complete answer. I had suspected I was autistic for years ― but now I knew I was.

“Oh, I just don’t think someone who’s autistic would be able to do your job,” he said, like it made perfect sense.

I had told my psychologist that I had been working as an escort for the last few years. Unable to keep a job in my 20s, I went on disability and started escorting to make some extra money. I found it incredible that men would pay hundreds of dollars an hour to spend time with me and that the more I was myself, the more they wanted to see me."

"There are lots of reasons someone might see an escort. I’ve had a man come to me because his girlfriend had pain during sex and she gave him the go-ahead to seek out a professional. Another sex worker told me someone’s wife messaged her because she wanted her husband to learn stamina in bed. Many clients are too busy with work to settle down but are lonely, crave intimacy and are even depressed. A lot are unhappy with their sex lives and don’t want to leave their marriages.

But after a little over a year, I’ve begun to see a trend. Often the clients who contact me are older cisgender white men. This is probably the group of people you think of as johns: married professionals who travel a lot. While I’m a fan of salt-and-pepper gentlemen, seeking out a sex worker isn’t just for older white men who are lacking intimacy in their marriage and are rich enough to do something about it discreetly. In fact, about 50 percent of my clients are people of color, and many are around my age. But I want to see more variety — people with mental illness, people with disabilities, women, people who are LGBTQIA+ (yes, asexuals, because intimacy is about more than just sex)."

"Sexual Abuse Survivors and Sex

HEALTHYPLACE.COM STAFF WRITER

by Kali Munro, M.Ed., Psychotherapist

Many sexual abuse survivors struggle to have positive and enjoyable sex lives. It can be very hard to feel comfortable with and enjoy sex when you've been sexually abused. Even people who haven't been sexually abused struggle to feel comfortable with their sexuality and sex. This article may be helpful to anyone who has issues with sexuality.

For many sexual abuse survivors, sex becomes linked with sexual abuse. As a result, some survivors will mistake unsatisfying and unpleasurable sex, or even sexually abusive behavior, for sex. This means that survivors can be vulnerable to being further abused. As a survivor, this is not your fault. You may not know: that you have the right to enjoy yourself sexually; what a mutually satisfying sexual experience is; what you want sexually, and that those needs deserve respect; and that you can say "no" and have that respected.

Abuse teaches the opposite - during abuse, your needs don't matter; you have to cater to someone else's sexual needs. Your sexual desires don't exist, and if they do exist they don't count. And of course you have no power to stop the abuse.

Some survivors believe that's what sex is - unenjoyable and abusive - or that that is how it is with a man, or with a woman. They may also believe that's all they are good for, that they can't expect anything better, and that if sex isn't enjoyable it's their fault or the result of their own inadequacy - they are "damaged". These reactions and beliefs are outcomes of abuse and need to be challenged - because they are not true.

One of the hardest things for abuse survivors to do is separate sexual abuse from sex. I know you may know this intellectually, but it's worth repeating many times - sexual abuse is not sex. Even if you liked the attention, approached your abuser for attention, were aroused, or had an orgasm, it's still not sex and you are not responsible.

Placing responsibility on the abuser is one of the most important steps in separating the sexual abuse from your sexuality and sex life. That may involve feeling anger at your abuser, holding him/her responsible (in your own mind), grieving your victimization and powerlessness, and reassuring the hurt child inside you that it wasn't her/his fault."