Candace Nassar (00:00.)
Well, welcome everyone. Today’s conversation is a big one. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. And if you know me, you know I love apologetics. From my homeschooling days to managing a Christian bookstore in San Diego, I’ve been a student of this vital theological discipline.
And now I have the absolute privilege of welcoming Hillary Morgan Ferrer and Amy Davison from Mama Bear Apologetics to the show.
and God bless them for the incredible work they do and the courage they show in standing up for God’s truth. Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s more important than ever, empowering our kids to understand and live out God’s design for sex. It’s something we all need to be equipped for. So buckle up, because here we go. Welcome, ladies.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (00:53)
Thank you.
Amy Davison (00:54)
Thank you.
Candace Nassar (00:55)
So glad to have y’all here. first of all, for our listeners that aren’t that familiar with the term apologetics, can you shed a little light, Hillary, on what that is and why you founded Mama Bear Apologetics?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (01:10)
Yeah, so apologetics is really just reasons for why you believe something. So I like to say that everybody out there is an apologist for something. Like I give my mom as an example. You cannot talk to my mom for more than five minutes without her figuring out if you have an insta pot and if not, why not? And if you don’t, then do you possibly need one? Amy, she bought you one, right?
Amy Davison (01:32)
Yes, yep.
Candace Nassar (01:33)
my goodness.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (01:33)
So she has all the reasons why she thinks this is the greatest invention of all time and she’s willing to talk about it and share it and invite you to into conversation about how it’s made your life better and like, you all the things that you can do with it. We all are apologist for something. I don’t care if it’s the Instapot or your favorite band or, you know, who made the greatest touchdown back in 1987 during, you know, the third quarter of some Super Bowl game. Everybody is an apologist for something.
Candace Nassar (01:50)
Mm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (02:02)
And you’re usually going to find that people will defend that which they love and they will try to get others. We are created to worship and a lot of times we love to bring people into our worship so that they can worship with us. They can see the goodness. They can see the beauty that we have. so apologetics is really just that. It’s learning how the Christian beliefs, God, Jesus, it’s not just true, but it’s good and it’s good for people.
Candace Nassar (02:32)
love it. And so why did you found mama bear apologetics?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (02:36)
Yes, so I was involved with an organization called Women in Apologetics and I remember asking, why do we need a special thing for women in apologetics? Why don’t we just do apologetics? Because I’d been apologetic since I was about 12 when my pastor did a series from the pulpit and it just changed my life. And she responded that, there’s a large demographic out there who won’t read something unless it’s by women for women.
Candace Nassar (02:53)
Mm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (03:01)
and my mind immediately shot past the women and said, holy cow, well, who’s equipping the moms? Because moms get all the questions first. I say this at every conference that I speak at and every time people laugh because it’s true. Kid will walk right past dad sitting on the couch drinking something, watching TV and go into the bathroom where mom was in the bathtub, shaving her legs, asking them, asking her to open the pickle jar or asking her where the pickles are.
Candace Nassar (03:07)
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (03:28)
Because mom knows everything, dad’s just, you know, there. Now dad becomes more important in the teen years, specifically in regards to questions regarding economics, politics, stuff like that. But in the younger years, when it comes to spiritual questions, kids go to mom first. Now this is not to say that dads are not important. In fact, the number one correlator to passing on the Christian faith is, get this,
Candace Nassar (03:39)
Mmm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (03:56)
a warm relationship with the Father. This is done through a 30-year study by guy named Vern Bengston who wrote the book Families and Faith. So Papa Bears are so absolutely important for having that warm relationship to model who God is and who God the Father is. But when it comes to questions, kids are going to the moms and that’s who that she’s like the youth pastor in the home. And so I said that’s who we need to be equipping and nobody else is.
Candace Nassar (04:22)
That is so great. And I know it’s been a decade already. congratulations on that. My kids were already gone, raised by then. So I’m just super thrilled that the younger generation than me has this resource. So thank you.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (04:25)
I know right? It’s crazy. I’m not pedal.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (04:38)
Well we got stuff for you too, Nana Bear.
Candace Nassar (04:40)
Okay, good to know. I’m excited. So Amy, how did you get connected to Mama Bear?
Amy Davison (04:48)
You know, I had been familiar with Mama Bear because I had been watching their worldview series that was being written by Lindsay Medenwald as I was in graduate school. And I was kind of a meeker person. And so that final year of seminary, I was like, you know, I want to dedicate this year to being bold for the Lord. And so I’d been watching this worldview series. And as I’m coming up on graduation, I’m like, Lord, you called me to apologetics. And you called me to use it. And what do I have a passion for?
And that year I had been picked to be the student speaker at the Stand From Conference at the seminary. And God had given me the guidance to speak on raising warriors, basically preparing your own children for apologetic engagement. it was a passion, it got me excited. And I was like, well, here’s already this ministry in place. Let me just see if they need someone. So on the very last day of the year, I’m like, okay, last day of the year, Lord, let me do one big act of boldness. And I emailed.
Candace Nassar (05:28)
Mm.
Amy Davison (05:40)
Mom Bear Apologetics. I didn’t know it was going to Hillary directly. I just emailed and I said, hey, you know, I don’t know if you ever need anyone I think I even sent a few examples of my writing I’m like, here’s some stuff I’ve done if you need somebody to let me know and 30 minutes later I got an email back and so we ended up meeting probably about two weeks later in January She came down for a meeting and we hit it off We started recording podcasts together and we just kind of share a you know I think a similar sense of humor a similar passion of how can we practically equip moms?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (05:57)
Mm-hmm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (06:06)
Yes.
Amy Davison (06:09)
but also not lose the reality of it. Like, okay, you know, we’re not saying everything’s gonna be hearts and roses. We’re just saying that when you’re in the trenches covered in throw-up and you’ve got a screaming toddler, how can you use that moment to the glory of God? And that’s what we’ve been doing. And so it’s been a huge blessing to be a part of this ministry.
Candace Nassar (06:27)
Absolutely, and that’s similar to the heart of MomQ, honestly, is just equipping moms, but we address the whole mom from marriage, parenting, and self-care. equipping moms, this fits in beautifully, so we’re just so excited for this conversation. And so let’s dive in. Okay, so first question, we are talking about God’s design for sex. So how about you just start off by telling us what that is?
Amy Davison (06:37)
Yeah.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (06:57)
So we have like the basic things that kids are normally told that know sex is for procreation, it’s for a husband and wife, for closeness between a husband and wife, and it’s intended for marriage. But what I think a lot of times kids don’t understand is the deeper meaning of sexuality within marriage. So there’s a bunch of different covenants throughout scripture that were accompanied by an external sign of the promise. You have the Noatic Covenant.
That you God promised it’s now I’m never gonna destroy the world by rain again And he gave them every time you see the rainbow in the sky That is the sign that I am never going to destroy the world through rain again Or you have the Abrahamic covenant that said you are a people set apart for me and I will make you into a great nation and He gave them the sign of circumcision. And so sexuality is really just another Covenantal sign every time a married couple makes love they are in fact
renewing the marital vows that they already made before God and before family. And so this is a way of almost kind of like a physical sign of those marital vows. And just like you have specific things that you say during the wedding, you know, to love and to honor and to cherish and to protect, that you can use your sexuality within marriage to either negate
what you promised or to reinforce what you promised. There’s some people who think that sexuality within marriage is just, you know, all systems ago you can do whatever you want. If there’s nothing more or less glorifying to God or your husband or wife is bound to do whatever you want them to do because, you know, their body now belongs to you. But you can use that sign of the marital covenant in a way that wrecks your marriage or a way that reinforces your marriage. And so if we can get kids to understand that this is a sign of a promise
already made before friends and family of a covenant, then I think sex outside of marriage starts making a lot less sense.
Candace Nassar (08:52)
That’s right. And I remember when I first understood that I did not come to Christ until I was 30, was already married and had a kid. And it became just so much more special and beautiful when you think of it that way that God, you know, ordained it that way. So let’s talk a little bit about the boundaries that we can explain to our kids that are around sex and God’s designed for sex. I love in the book where your book is the, your guide, Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (09:03)
and then.
Candace Nassar (09:22)
And I love how you talk about fire. And I would just love it if you’d give that example.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (09:29)
Yeah, so one of the things I’m very convinced of and one of the things that we take into mind whenever we are writing a book with Mama Bear is how are kids assimilating this information? And I think one of the ways that children learn is they kind of form categories around things. And so this is why the game Scattergories is a lot of fun. So Scattergories might have something like things that are red. So you could say a stop sign or a lipstick or whatever you want, a ladybug.
Kids are forming categories to which to put information into. Insects as a category might be in a category of things that are so powerful that you need to put guardrails around it. So this might be something like, you know, if you had a little chihuahua or you had a big Rottweiler and both of them are really mean, yeah, you want to guard both those dogs, but that Rottweiler needs to be on a leash or…
I could give my kids the key to the car or I could give them the keys to nuclear warheads. Not really. But which one do I need to guard more? Probably the key to nuclear warhead because the more powerful something is, the more it needs boundaries. so fire is kind of like that, that you put fire in the fireplace and it warms the home. It does so many good things, but you take fire out of its proper place and, you know, it burns down half of California as we’ve seen.
So getting them to see a physical representation of what’s happening on the spiritual level. So you can use things like that. You see how this is wrecking over here. That is what happens when you take something out of its natural design and put it somewhere where it’s not created to be. It can destroy. And then likewise, we talk about them and their bodies. The more valuable something is, the more you protect it and guard it.
And so this would be like, you know, picture that someone drew on the sidewalk versus the Mona Lisa. You have all these guardrails around the Mona Lisa and special glass bulletproof, you know, glass because it is that valuable. So we say I’m not wanting you to protect your body into to guard against people trying to use your body because I’m a prude. I’m doing it because you are that valuable. I’m ascribing value to you. I’m not trying to steal your fun.
Candace Nassar (11:48)
That’s so good. That’s so good. that’s, I love that. That’s a lot of what you do is give just, you give the background and the why behind the truth, but you also give great examples on how we can talk to our kids. And that’s so important. So how does our worldview impact how we see God’s design for sex?
Amy Davison (12:09)
Do want me to take that one? Yeah, so one of the things that’s amazing when we actually look at sex is sex is not an act between bodies. It’s actually an expression of one’s entire worldview to where if we get our worldview of the body wrong, we actually lose our ability to see God and see him rightly. And that’s 1 Thessalonians 4, 3 through 8. And so we teach from a worldview standard because for generations, our kids, ourselves, we have been taught that it’s just this sort of Darwinistic
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (12:10)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Amy Davison (12:37)
I mean, in high school, one of the popular songs was by the Bloodhound Gang, and one of the lines of the Bloodhound Gang is, and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. And most of us thought this was a really catchy song, but nobody recognized the worldview that was actually being celebrated and how that worldview has a direct impact on how we use our bodies. And so that’s why it’s so important when we’re raising our kids, because when they understand the why, that’s where reverence is nurtured. And so when they understand, sweetheart,
This act between bodies, this is a, like Hillary mentioned, a confirmation and a renewal of a covenant between God. But it’s also a physical representation. Many people have given this example besides myself, but God gives us physical representations that point back towards spiritual truths. And so the acts that we do with our bodies are a physical representation of the spiritual reality.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (13:21)
Mm-hmm.
Amy Davison (13:27)
of God’s relationship with the church and how that’s supposed to look. That’s why throughout the Old Testament, whenever the Israelites would go wayward, they would always be accused of being adulterers, promiscuous. And this correlation is because any worldview that we now capitulate to, aside from Christianity, is always going to have a direct impact on how we see our bodies, what we do with our bodies, and what we constitute as morally right and morally true.
So this can’t just be seen as an act. Instead, it’s an expression of one’s worldview. So that’s where we ask our kids the question, is what worldview are we expressing with the acts of our bodies? And for so many within the church, Pew Research, they did a survey with regards to Christians, and the numbers were just devastating. Like 50 % of Christians believe that having premarital sex is okay, so long as you’re in a committed relationship. It’s like, okay, well, what defines commitment? when we adopt a dog together, like is it date three? Like what is our standard now?
I mean, even from like hooking up, hooking up 50 % of Christians believe that finding a stranger online and having sex with them at some random location and then leaving, ideally not knowing their name, that that’s just an average thing you do on a Friday or a Saturday night. Like 50 % of Christians surveyed. It’s wild, but why is that? It’s because the church has fallen silent and not spoke boldly to this act of God that has this covenant, these spiritual anchors. And instead, whenever we stop talking, culture now takes our place as primary discipler.
So of course our children are now living out sexual lifestyles and bodily lifestyles that are completely in alignment to culture because the church for so long has gone silent. So now culture has taken our place.
Candace Nassar (15:07)
such a good answer and it’s such a great segue into my next point and that is 100%. I agree when you say sexuality is the God of our culture. So how did we go from sexuality being a moral issue to a political one? How did that happen?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (15:24)
So this would be kind of one of the main things that people hear kind of, you know, Marxism as this big boogeyman. They don’t quite understand how this is an entirely different worldview that basically rearranges how we interpret evidence and how we rearrange what is good, what is true, what is beautiful. Like that song from Frozen 2 where she says, just keep doing the next right thing, keep doing the next right thing.
the next right thing could be radically different depending on which worldview you take. And so would say the Christian worldview kind of almost started at everything starts with truth and is filtered down through that and morality is then filtered through truth. And how do we basically show, like it was moral to try to show God’s attributes and God’s morality and God’s commandments through your actions.
What we have with Marxism, is everything comes down, Marx says it in just the opening chapters of the Communist Manifesto, that everything comes down to class struggles. So we have, excuse me, the haves and the have-nots. So back in the day with Marx, this was who owned the businesses and who worked the businesses, the haves and the have-nots, the bourgeois and the proletariat. But then when we moved on towards say like critical theory, everything, it’s not just economic power, it’s social power.
Everything comes down to social power and who is on the margins are the people that are oppressed and the people that are in majority culture are the ones that are leveraging unfair power so what they have done is they’ve taken all of God’s commands regarding sexuality and said this is not representational of truth rather this is representational of this
this bourgeois values which wants to pass on generational wealth, keep it in the family, keep it within the kids, it’s everybody that is on the margins, the lesbians and the gays and the transsexuals and the whatever you want to add into that category, they’ve been on the margins, they’ve been marginalized and Jesus said to love the marginalized and speak up for the marginalized. So now the next right thing, the moral thing according to this worldview is you have to uplift
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (17:25)
those who are on the margins and so that’s the entire LGBTQ plus brigade that’s going on. Kids are being told in order to love like Jesus loved you have to celebrate any kind of alternate sexuality, you have to celebrate any kind of alternate gender identity. If you don’t do that then you are just oppressing those who God called you to love and Jesus said they would know your disciples through your love so why aren’t you loving like Jesus did?
And so yeah, that’s why we see that happen on the political sphere.
Candace Nassar (17:28)
You know, it’s so absolutely the enemy, right? Because he’s taken something that was true and twisted it. Yes, we need to take care of the poor and the needy and the, and really the marginalized. We need to love those people. And you talk about that a lot in the book, which I so appreciate it, but that doesn’t mean that we have to condone or approve of sinful things. And that’s where it’s gotten so off. And
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (17:45)
Yes.
Candace Nassar (17:58 )
and so I think you do such a great job of explaining that and just as it’s become so political, there’s now, curriculum that we’ve heard of, some of us, but maybe we don’t know and we haven’t educated ourselves. So can you just speak to the importance of that?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (18:10)
Yes, absolutely. So there are two different things when it comes to schools. You have standards and then you have curricula. So standards are saying this is what across the board we think everybody needs to cover. And then the curricula is how we’re going to take, how we’re going to do this on a daily basis with those standards. And so I would recommend all parents go and kind of familiarize themselves with the, it’s called the NSES, the new sex education standards. It came out in 2020.
And while this is not a government mandate. It’s one of those things that a lot of schools have adopted this thinking that it was an official mandate that they had to do. And this brings us up to things like the court case that’s going on and do parents have the right to opt their children out. It takes the right away from parents to address some of these issues with their kids as they go.
Even at that point, I just want to bring out a principle that is something that we finally gave a name in this new upcoming iteration of the Sexuality and Gender Identity book, and that’s something called the Founder’s Principle. So the Founder’s Principle is something that we coined that is a phenomenon that we’ve heard about in all sorts of psychology, just nobody gave it a name yet. But that’s the first person that you learn about something from, becomes the expert in your mind. And so I still have certain topics that just
blew my mind that I remember who it was that introduced me to that topic and they are still the ones that I’m always wanting to go back and ask questions to. So not only does the Founder’s Principle say the first person to ask question or to introduce you to a topic becomes the expert, but also whatever worldview they have becomes your ground zero worldview. This is what kids will be trying to make the data fit when they’re piecing together their worldview.
And so parents need to be aware of what is being taught in terms, especially of the purpose of sex, what constitutes sex. So it’s like we think of just we think we know what we’re talking about with sex. since you have LGBT and we’ll just say not all the parts fit in the same way, they’ve redefined what sex looks like for each of these demographics.
Then they’ve taken that political push to say because we need to uplift the marginalized, we need to teach kids how these different demographics who have been marginalized are able to have pleasurable sex in order to basically be letting their voice be heard and to be meeting their needs. So if you want your children to know exactly how two girls can have the most pleasurable sex or the safest way for two guys to have pleasurable safe sex, this is the kind of stuff that is in the curriculum and you don’t really have the luxury of waiting until you know, fifth grade, sixth grade to address it. It’s something where you need to be aware of where your children are, what they already know. Find out what your school is teaching. Find out if you’re able to opt out. And if not, you gotta kind of take one for the team and be the one that says, okay, I’m gonna tell you what they’re gonna talk about and we’re gonna talk about it first.
Candace Nassar (21:02)
Yeah, scary stuff, but we know God is bigger and through prayer you can address these things and he can give you the words to speak and I love that, The founders principle. That’s something new. I hadn’t heard that one before. So thank you. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about identity because it is foundational. It shapes who we are and how we live. So as believers, we know our identity is grounded in our relationship with God and defines our purpose and behavior.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (21:05)
Mm-hmm.
Candace Nassar (21:31)
How many kids today are identifying as LGBTQ and why do you think that is?
Amy Davison (21:37)
So current studies, and again, it really depends on who is actually running the study that’s being conducted and where they’re actually pulling those numbers from. But current studies today say for teenagers, 26 % of teenagers are now identifying as LGBTQ+. And I mean, we’re including everything from therians, which is this idea that now I can have the spirit of an animal within me, two-spirit, three-spirit. I mean, there’s so many variations. It’s completely customizable. But today, 26 % of young people are identifying as LGBTQ and it’s become the way to sort of be set apart, to be different, to be unique.
I mean I’m thinking of you know late 90s early 2000s when I was in high school to be unique you were goth right? But nowadays LGBTQ because now it has the moral side of it. The moral temptation, and unfortunately our culture, is kind of wrapped up and infatuated with this victimhood mindset to where now if I identify as the spectra on the spectrum of LGBTQ, I’m no longer an oppressor because the most oppressive thing you can be is a cisgender, heterosexual, white, middle-class male. And so if they are falling in there in any way, shape, or form, well if I’m cisgender, my gosh, I’m in the oppressor category. Whereas now for LGBTQ, the easiest way for them to now switch into the oppressee category is to identify as non-binary or bisexual.
And so this has just directly impacted our kids and it’s doubled just within the past few years because there are so many options to where even the Q, we think of Q identifying as queer but actually it can mean questioning to where if there’s some point in time during puberty where you’re like, man, you know, I’m a female but I don’t really fit that stereotypical hyper feminine stereotype like the Barbie girl that’s elevated in culture. I actually, you know, I’m more rough and tumble.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (23:09) Mm-hmm.
Amy Davison (23:22)
having adventures, that’s more of guy thing. I wonder if I’m a guy. Like just that thought alone, boom, now you fit into the Q side of things. So a lot of these numbers are so skewed because it’s, it’s sort of exploiting the vulnerability emotionally, physically, developmentally of puberty. And now throwing in the moral side of things of, man, if you identify as this one thing, a Christian heterosexual, if you’re on that side, you’re actually an oppressor. And kids, thanks even just through the influences of social media, kids do not want to be seen as the bad guy is being mean, close minded or bigoted.
And so so many teens are now aligning with this ideology simply to get out of the implication that they might be unintentionally harming someone in any way, or form. So yeah, these numbers, again, they vary depending on who’s doing the polling, where they’re actually getting these numbers. But on average today, it’s 26 % of young people are identifying as LGBTQ.
Candace Nassar (24:16)
And again, I love how you acknowledge one of the greatest statements that I thought you said was how the homosexual community has kind of been the scapegoat for the church’s sexual sin. I thought that was so powerful. And so we want to respond to these, you we want to love and respect and respond in that way.
Candace Nassar (24:30)
But I do want to address the transgender community just a little bit because I went to the holy sexuality, with Christopher Juan, which was incredible. He was amazing and I loved his book as well. And so he was talking about how they’re the statistics on girls. Identifying as boys now has gone like a thousand percent up in the last few years. And I guess.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (24:40)
Yeah.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (24:49)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (24:54)
I don’t know, not even a decade. And I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That’s an example of the confusion of when you have a girl who might think, oh, well, I don’t, I’m not a typical girl and I don’t fit in. So therefore, I need to identify with a different opposite sex. And so because of that, I think
Amy Davison (24:56)
COVID-19.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (25:01)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (25:16)
It’s a great opportunity for us to learn as parents how to guide our children through those situations. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (25:24)
Yeah, so this is one of those things where I think it was either prior to 2012 or prior to 2017. I can’t remember which date it was. They didn’t even have statistics on girls seeking gender reassignment surgery. And fast forward, now it is a majority of those that are seeking gender reassignment that are female. And there’s several things that this is likened to. Number one is that girls have always been very prone to what’s called social contagion, and especially during adolescence. I remember
Amy Davison (25:34)
Right.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (25:52)
Like when I was in high school, the big thing was anorexia and bulimia. And then I would say probably in the 2000s, it was self-harm in the form of cutting. That was almost like, it went from being a way to express your legit angst to almost like a badge of honor to wear the bandages and stuff like that. And so this idea of
Amy Davison (26:19)
heading. Yeah.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (26:19)
of identifying as the opposite gender, it confers a couple things. Number one, it gives you something special to have that special diagnosis. Number two, they’re finding that it’s happening in groups. If one girl identifies as transgender, the likelihood of all the other ones identifying is even higher. In fact, 60 % of parents who were surveyed said that their child who identified as transgender experienced a boost in popularity after identifying as transgender.
There’s a woman who, I think Kefler, she wrote a book on the gendered kind of cult and she hypothesized that since we have such a large percentage of girls that are on the spectrum like the the autism Asperger spectrum, there has been some limited studies showing that compression garments actually ease some of that anxiety and so this could actually be you know when girls are chest binding
This can actually be taking away some of that anxiety and then further more going on to testosterone. actually lowers, it increases aggression, but it lowers anxiety. So it’s almost this form of self-medication that girls that are doing and to where for a little while they say, hi, I’m finally living my authentic self. I’m finally who I wanted to be because I don’t feel that anxiety anymore.
And one of the things I love is the person who really, really studied this phenomena in girls was Abigail Schreier with her book Irreversible Damage. And she said, are fleeing womanhood like a house on fire. And so it’s not as much that they’re running to masculinity. They’re not running to manhood. They just know they don’t want to be a woman. And this also comes down to the prevalence of porn. The number of them that have seen women depicted in porn
And there was one participant who even said, it is terrifying for me to even think about participating in sex as a woman because of the way that she saw women being portrayed in pornography. And so she would rather be a guy and not have to play that role than ever be put in that position.
So there’s just this entire world of reasons why this is going on and they think that this is something that can be reversed they don’t realize they’re gonna be left with facial hair for the rest of their life they’re gonna be left with a deep voice for the rest of their life there are a lot of girls who are unable to orgasm for the rest of their life if you hit it at this one certain time in puberty can you imagine making a decision when you were young that left you unable to be sexually fulfilled for the rest of your life.
We need to be the ones that are affirming our daughter’s femininity, but also saying you don’t have to fit into this box. So something that we have coming out in the updated version on gender is the idea that personality, interests, and aptitudes are on a spectrum. Gender is not. Because every single interview I’ve seen with anybody identifying as something, it comes down to my personality is more like a guy, my interests are more like a guy, or my aptitudes are more like a guy, therefore, or like a girl if it’s a guy, therefore I must be the other gender.
and showing them how there’s so much freedom in the biological body that God gave them.
Candace Nassar (29:30)
Yeah, so good. Wow. Well, you touched on my next talking point. So let’s go ahead and dive in to talking about pornography. And this is another question we get a lot with MomQ is how early to talk about this, how to talk about it. So first of all, what are the current statistics on porn use? it’s staggering.
Amy Davison (29:53)
Yeah, so porn, what really floored me was just how lucrative the industry is. mean, it’s a 90 and this was several years ago that we did this. It’s a 93 billion dollar a year industry. And nowadays, online platforms like OnlyFans, is where ideally a college age female student will hop onto an OnlyFans account and people can submit requests for what they want her to do. And then she creates it and mails it to him. Even Business Insider kind of reflected on, well, maybe this is the new way to achieve the American dream. And so many of these girls who are already acting in more suggestive ways on TikTok.
There was one influencer on OnlyFans. She was asked, well, why are you doing, why are you on this platform? She goes, well, I was already doing it on TikTok for free. Why not make money? And so many of teenagers think that as long as you’re getting paid and you have notoriety that now all of a sudden that makes it morally good and right. And it’s wild to where I believe it’s upwards of 90 % to 96 % of teens and adults are actually neutral or accepting of porn. Like it’s just something you do, it’s not big deal.
The people who are on there have chosen to be on there, so why not? Why not even engage in it? And I mean, what’s so sad is even within the church.
50 % of youth pastors are absolutely terrified of their porn addiction being discovered. addiction, isn’t even counting for those who just maybe casually view it every now and then. These are full on addictions just within youth ministry. And sadly, the average age for porn exposure is eight years old in little boys. I mean, as we’ve attested through our research, that’s actually high. I mean, you can get exposure to pornography on commercials on Amazon.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (31:24)
Yeah.
Amy Davison (31:29)
easily accessible. And that’s the goal, is because for the porn industry, our young kids are the present target demographic because if they can get porn exposed, especially to the male brain before the ages of 10 to 14, they can actually groom and chemically hijack the boy brain to wire them to be lifelong users to pornography. So, I mean, it’s a complete epidemic and I believe it’s upwards of it’s between 89 to 98 percent of porn involves violence against women. And so these are just like there’s violent acts being occurred, degrading comments being made.
And what’s really sad is the porn industry recognized that women were actually the underserved demographic of pornography. And that’s because women, we don’t like being treated badly. And so what now they’ve done is they haven’t said, OK, maybe porn’s the problem. They said, no, we just need to create a different type of porn. So now there’s feminist porn or what’s been called ethical porn, which is where they say, no, everybody wants to be there. So no human trafficking is at play, which we know that pornography actually fuels human trafficking. But they say, no, the people in our videos, they want to be there. They’re getting medical care.
So regular STD tests and they’re getting paid a living wage and nothing mean is going on in the videos. Like that’s how they make it ethical. And it’s an oxymoron. It’s a bit like jumbo shrimp, right? But yet that’s what’s being marketed to so many kids to where…
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (32:44)
Yeah
Amy Davison (32:48)
By fifth grade, 90 % of boys will already be exposed to pornography. And as a mom of boys, I can say, yep, that was the case with my boys. And it was at a friend’s house. My oldest, when he was eight years old, yeah, he went over to a friend’s house and his little friend said, hey, guess what I found on high school brother’s tablet? And boom, there it was. I mean, it’s happening on the school bus. you know, so many parents that we talked to, they’re like, well, this is okay because I homeschool my kid or I have my kid in Christian private school. So I have had my kids in all of those settings and I have worked
Candace Nassar (32:58)
same.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (33:04)
you
Amy Davison (33:18)
in all of those settings and what I can tell you is the homeschool kids and the private school kids are having the exact same conversations as the public school kids. They’re just sneakier about it so we cannot confuse this setting with the spirit. I mean this is a worldwide, every single person epidemic and it’s not if, it’s when. And thankfully on our website…
We did an interview and I’m blanking out her name. She wrote an amazing book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures where it actually explains the problem and gives a, yeah, it gives a three step.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (33:44)
Mm.
Candace Nassar (33:46)
of it.
Amy Davison (33:49)
basically a go-to of what do we do when this happens because again it’s not if it’s when and so highly recommend checking that out because it gives parents okay what happens when porn exposure how do we encourage kids because kids will feel shameful about it they’ll be they’ll want to keep it hidden from parents and that’s where we as parents say baby this is gonna happen and it’s very dangerous but we want to help you so if any of this happens just come and let us know and we’re gonna take the next step to help protect our family and protect you
Candace Nassar (34:17)
That’s so good. Yeah. I mean, I have, I have a number of friends whose high school boys have come to them and said, okay, I’m, got to admit this. I mean, they’re from Christian homes, so praise the Lord. They felt comfortable, but they have shared with their moms and their dads that they’re addicted to porn and the parents were just shocked. I mean, they, I love how they did it. They received it well in a godly way. Didn’t shame them. Didn’t make them feel like they were unredeemable, but they absolutely had
Amy Davison (34:26)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (34:44)
that addiction that they had to unburden themselves of. So we know it is super prevalent. And are there any other ways that you would recommend that we can help our kids stay aware and away from these images?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (34:58)
Okay, so yeah, there are some basic rules that you can have and this is something that I think we need to be doing anyways in our home and that is just controlling where there are screens and where there’s phones. So number one, maybe saying no phones in any room where the door is closed. No phones in the bedroom, no phones in the bathroom. And so it’s like you don’t get a phone that’s gonna be your alarm to help you wake up if we have to. think getting some of, sometimes even just getting some of the smartwatches are great.
Candace Nassar (35:19)
Mm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (35:24)
because they will do a lot of the functions that you need like the alarms and stuff like that without having the phone in there or getting something that my husband and I just got called the brick, the RICK where you can actually say, okay, everybody’s got a brick their phone at a certain point where it only allows you to use some of the things kind of like the email or the…
the clock, stuff like that. And secondly, just any kind of screens, any kind of television that’s in a place that nobody can see, that’s just always been a bad idea because, I mean, they have access to the world through that. And so just limiting that, there’s also a couple different, Amy, talk about some of the different things that we saw that helped with pornography.
Amy Davison (36:08)
So also what helps too is for one, lay that foundation of godly truth of why this is dangerous. I mean, go, talking to the physiological effects of pornography and pornography addiction on how it affects marriages, intimacy, the ability to even become aroused or to orgasm. That’s really important, especially for kids, because if we just come at it from a spiritual side of things, well, if your child doesn’t have a firm belief in the faith, they may be like, well, you know, that’s just mom and dad’s opinion. no, biology. Yeah, biology always affirms God’s design. It’s incredible. And so going at it from that approach and then to putting blocks on phone. So there’s great programs like you can get your
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (36:33)
That didn’t apply to me.
Candace Nassar (36:35)
Right.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (36:38)
Mm-hmm.
Amy Davison (36:44)
either a gab phone or a bark phone to where it looks like a regular cell phone, but they can only access the internet or they can only access like texting and phone calls and that sort of thing. So they can still text their friends, but now they don’t have access to social media. Now, Bark is a cell phone app that you download on the phone and you have to get all of your child’s passwords to any form of social media account and it tracks it. And it does a really good job of alerting you to what is the latest suicidal ideation language that’s being used or your your child. If somebody were to comment on a child’s photo that they posted and said, you’re so pretty, you should post more.
Like it’ll alert mom and dad, hey, there is a stranger who’s potentially grooming your child online. So it’s great to an extent because every child has a tech savvy friend. And yes, they may give you the passwords to their Instagram or their Vine account or whatever, but if they go to friend’s house for a sleepover and create an account you don’t know about, now all of sudden Bart can’t track it. So there’s limitations. So I think for a lot of parents, we need to encourage both being proactive and reactive.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (37:28)
Mm-hmm.
Amy Davison (37:45)
proactive in laying the foundation of truth because, If Daniel can stand firm in the midst of the courts of his complete identity being co-opted and he can stand firm because of that foundation of faith and that’s what we need to be laying in our children while helping them be aware of the world around them. That’s why we’re given spiritual armor for a reason is to wield it well and then to put those boundaries in place and transparency and let your kids know, baby, nobody’s got privacy. Mom doesn’t have privacy. Dad doesn’t have privacy. You definitely do not. And then parents do not give your kids a head up. Just randomly take their phone and scroll through it.
And I’ve seen so many online articles like that’s a violation of their privacy or you’re hurting your head. Nope, you’re protecting your child because I’m telling you on Discord, on chats, there is so much grooming going on. Trevor Project, all of these things, grooming is just able to flourish and we need to be aware of it. if you’re kids, if you see them slipping, do the hard thing and take the phone away. I guarantee you it’s worth it.
Candace Nassar (38:24)
Mm-hmm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (38:30)
Yes.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (38:41)
Yes, and one of the things, one of the best pieces of advice I heard is do not give your child a phone as a gift. You give it to them to say, is a tool to use. That way when you take it away, you can’t say, you’re taking, that belongs to me. You gave it as a gift. You say, this is a tool for you to use. And if you misuse it, then we are taking it back. Do not make it to where it’s their own personal property. But I absolutely affirm what Amy says. There is no such thing as privacy when it comes to your phone. If you wanna have a private place for all your private thoughts.
It’s the same place that we had. It’s called a diary and we will not read that. That will be private. I’ll even get you one with a lock on it that only you have the lock for. But the phone is not your private place.
Candace Nassar (39:21)
So good. So wise. Okay. Well, I want to wrap up today’s conversation. You guys have given us so much amazing wisdom, but I do want to just spend a few minutes talking about how we can approach the people behind the ideologies that are out there and talk about the differences. And I love your warrior bear versus nurturing bear. So let’s dive into that. What do you have to say for that?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (39:41)
First off, I would say that we follow the model that we see in scripture, which is when there is a broad audience, that is when we always see Jesus being the harshest. Like people always think these like warm fuzzy thoughts about the Sermon on the Mount because it starts on he kind of, you know, almost like softens it up. blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the, you know, the those who show mercy. He kind of softens it up before he gives the smackdown of all smackdowns.
Like if you’ve been so much look at someone with the intent of lust, you’ve committed adultery in your heart. He is so much more stringent when he’s casting that wide net and talking to the whole audience. He’s trying to take away any kind of loopholes that someone would try to write into his morality, but he was very, very compassionate when it came to the individuals. We see the way he treated the woman at the well. He didn’t give her a sermon. He didn’t preach at her.
We saw the way he treated the woman caught in adultery. He didn’t give her a sermon, he didn’t preach at her. We even see just anytime he’s interacting individually with someone, he is always looking for what is the need that they have? What is preventing them from being able to live out God’s goodness? Because I’ve said it before, I think a lot of times sin can be us trying to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way.
And so trying to look for what is that legitimate need that they’re trying to get met in an illegitimate way and see if we can answer that because most of the time they know what the Bible says on something. So this is where we go, the warrior bear is going to be something that we do in culture. It’s what we do with policy. It’s what we do from the pulpit. And then the nurturing bear is what we do when we are interacting with people one-on-one and saying, how can I love you to the point of where you can see God’s goodness?
Candace Nassar (41:25)
Yes.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (41:26)
and that this is not for you. There’s something I call ideological Stockholm syndrome, that’s where, so Stockholm syndrome itself is when you’ve been taken captive by somebody and you start to actually identify more with your abductor than you do with the people that are trying to free you. And so you think, you start having sympathy on this person who’s abducted you.
So there’s a lot of people who identify, especially in the LGBTQ community who they are absolute captives to this ideology because it seems to them like this is the group that has Unconditional love this is the group that’s not preaching to them This is the group that’s inviting them for lunch that sits next to them that says I like your outfit that I likes their art You know all the different things they’re they’re filling this need for community and acceptance so what we need to do is be able to the only way to get a person to basically see that they have been taken captive is you have to form a stronger relationship than they have with their captor.
And so once you form that stronger relationship and kind of show how, this is not good for you, you can actually start winning them back to where you can say some of the hard things and they’re not gonna feel like, hey, they’re attacking me.
Because as long as they think that the ideology is the same thing as me, the ideology and my identity are the same thing, anything you say will feel like a personal attack. We have to be able to separate those to show them over and over again how much we love, affirm, and accept them so that we can separate them from the ideology. That’s the way they do it in police situations when they have someone who’s been taken captive, and that’s the way we have to do it when it comes to being taken captive by bad ideas.
Candace Nassar (43:05)
That’s so good. I love, we can help our kids do that because we want them to love and to love our neighbor as ourself. We’re not going to win any arguments when we come across like a sledgehammer. Right. And so I mean, you always hear the age old adage “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. So that’s what that’s about. And it’s about trying to just free the captives. Exactly what Jesus said he came to do.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (43:11)
Mm-hmm.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (43:18)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (43:30)
come to set the captives free and he can do that. But we can’t start off by saying, you’re wrong, this is wrong. So very good, very good. Well guys, this has been incredible. I thank you so much. How can our listeners find out more about Mama Bear and your guide to sexuality?
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (43:31)
Okay.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (43:47)
Yes, just Mama Bear in general, you can find us on the web, mamabareapologetics.com. We’re on Instagram, we’re on Twitter, we’re on Facebook. And then we should be having the new edition of the sexuality book that not only has almost, it’s, advertises two new chapters, but it’s really more like three new chapters.
plus a new format throughout the whole thing where we are actually looking at the logic behind a lot of these different ideas. And so we’ll have these little logical vignettes throughout the entire book. But that is, think, for pre-order, going to be available in August of this year.
Candace Nassar (44:22)
All right, wonderful. Well, I can’t wait to check it out. The book, I read the original version. It was amazing. I got so much out of it. I’d love to talk about more, but unfortunately we have to call it a day. So I thank you again and wish you guys the best with the release of your new book.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (44:37)
Thank you so much.
Amy Davison (44:38)
Thank you.
