The orthodox protestant christian website Refoweb offers an anonymous form of pastoral care. Visitors of the website have the opportunity to submit questions to the questions section. In this article, questions about gender are analyzed. Questions deal about women’s clothing and the problem women experience with the idea that man is the head of the wife. From a dualistic point of view, males are associated with the mind and spirit and females are associated with the body. Some questioners experience this as inferior and oppressive. Questioners articulate their agency within the context of orthodox Protestantism.

Anonymous pastoral care is one of the options for help in problems pertaining to sexuality. This paper explores the topics they seek help for, the religious aspects involved, and the relation between the normativity of their church tradition on the one hand and sexual and spiritual health criteria on the other. We analyzed helpseeking questions of two protestant Christian organizations in the Netherlands providing anonymous pastoral care: Refoweb and EO-Nazorg. Sexual themes were addressed in 19 and 2.3 % of the submitted questions, respectively. Of the helpseekers, 56 % is female, 15 % male, and 29 % unknown. Questions and problems for which people seek anonymous pastoral care focus primarily on premarital abstinence, gender roles, contraception, sexual orientation and masturbation. The authority of the Bible seems to be important for questioners, especially when dealing with ethical questions. Different relations between the normativity of the church tradition and sexual and spiritual health are discussed.