Browsing Tag

sexual abuse

Feminism

Pensacola Christian College and sexual abuse victims

crowne centre

I’ve never named the college I attended for undergrad– not here, not anywhere else online. I have never brought it up here on my blog because I didn’t want it to become about the specific place I went to college. The problems that exist there exist at most other fundamentalist colleges, and I didn’t want anyone pigeonholing me. I was also  trying to avoid the harassment I personally know comes with critiquing this college in public.

It’s been sort of obvious anyway– despite my best intentions– that I went to Pensacola Christian College. I even managed to graduate, and I was one of the nauseating people that managed to accrue less than 15 demerits a semester (although I’d completely given up by my senior year and graduated with a whopping 170 my final semester).

The reason why I’ve decided to bring this up now is that I’m going to write an article about PCC, but I need your help.

If you travel in the same sort of online circles that I do, you’ve probably at least heard about what’s been happening at Bob Jones University. I’ve mentioned how BJU fired GRACE recently, and I’ve been aware of the problems at BJU for over a year now. However, yesterday, The New Republic published an article that detailed how the same exact things have been happening at Patrick Henry College.

As I’ve been reading all of these articles, my heart has been heavy because, as a graduate of Pensacola Christian College, I know that what’s been happening at Bob Jones and Patrick Henry have also been happening at Pensacola Christian. I personally experienced a small taste of it– when I tried to explain what my rapist had done to me the staff counselor interrupted me in the middle of a sentence to ask what I had done that I needed to repent of. I also know women who have been expelled because they reported being sexually assaulted.

I am currently outlining an article that I’m hoping will be published in a major online news outlet– like the Times or the Post, who published articles on BJU. In order to do that, however, I have to have more than just my own solitary story.

I need your stories, too.

If you were ever a student at Pensacola Christian College, a sexual abuse or rape victim, and had an encounter with Student Life, floorleaders, residence managers, or the counseling staff concerning your abuse, could you please contact me? I promise that I will keep  you anonymous if you would prefer not to be named, and I will only include as many details as you feel comfortable sharing. I will do my honest-to-God best to make sure I tell your story how you would want it to be shared, and that I will treat you with grace, dignity, and respect.

You can e-mail me at forgedimagination@gmail.com

I know how much emotional strength and resilience it take to tell a story like this one, so please don’t feel any pressure. If you contact me and then later change your mind, I will respect that, as well.

Thank you.

edit: please read my comment policy before commenting.  Victim blaming myself or any of my readers, or engaging in rape apologism will guarantee that I block you without appeal.

Theology

church statistics and abuse

sadness

[trigger warning for child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence]

I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but from the reading I’ve been doing, sometime in the last 30 or so years there’s been a subtle shift in how churches talk about growth. What my reading tells me is that this is at least somewhat connected to the rise of the “mega church,” with it becoming impossible for pastoral staffs to simply look around their churches and understand who their congregation is.

There’s a certain appeal to evaluating church growth by the numbers, especially when church sizes seem to be ballooning. Applying business models that are intended to bring growth can be extremely useful for a variety of organizations, and churches are, really, just organizations. Organizations that are almost totally defined by “growth,” for better or for worse. Even in Acts, as my partner pointed out yesterday, the apostles tossed around a lot of numbers. Peter, especially, has one famous speech about Pentecost and how many were saved.

In the churches I’ve been in that have talked numbers– “X many people were saved! X many people were baptized! X many people have joined our church in the last year!”– the focus has almost always been hope. Numbers are real, concrete indications that we’re headed in the right direction, that what we’re doing is making a difference. Numbers are people.

But, in the last year, my perspective has changed quite a bit. I used to hear those numbers shouted from pulpits all over the country and exult right along with the preacher. And, in some ways, I still do. But, when I hear about how many people regularly come to church, and how many children are in Sunday school, and how many babies are dedicated, a completely different set of numbers starts spinning around my head, and it makes my heart ache.

My heart has been especially broken this week, since Bob Jones University decided to terminate the investigation they’d hired GRACE to do. I wasn’t a student of BJU, but I did grow up in that world and I know many people who were– and I know how important the GRACE investigation was to them, how much hope it had given them that maybe, just maybe, BJU could turn over a new leaf.

But, just like the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and just like Sovereign Grace Ministries, and IBLP, and just like countless other churches and ministries all over the globe, BJU has decided to do what far too many other Christians have done: turn a blind eye to the abuses happening under their watch– abuses they are allowing to happen through their silence, abuses they are complicit in.

I know how hard it is to face the bleak reality that there are so many people willing to hurt others. That abuse in so many forms is commonplace. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a pastor and stand in front of your congregation and know that there are abusers and victims in your church. That you could be shaking the hand of a pedophile or rapist after church. That you could be eating dinner in the home of a batterer. That you can’t know. Not for sure.

But, this is a reality that does need to be faced. We need to look it dead, square in the eye and let it change us. We need to keep in front of us, always, that people are hurting and desperate and don’t know a way out. That most victims don’t even know they’re being abused, that abusers cloak themselves in forgiveness and grace and redemption, that some abusive husbands will use “I am the head of this home and you are my wife, so you must submit to me” as a weapon.

So, because this needs to be something that we know, something that changes how we talk, changes the advice we give, changes the way we love the people in our churches– I’ve broken down an average church size by the most reliable statistics we have.

Most churches in the United States have an average church attendance of around 500 adults, 125 children. Most congregations are dominated by married adults, so in this “average church,” there are 200 married couples, 275 women and 225 men, 64 girls and 61 boys. This means that in this church:

That’s a possible 256 people– 40% of this “average” congregation— who have been violently wounded by some kind of horrific abuse. This isn’t something we can afford to ignore. This is something that should utterly break us and radically transform everything we do as a church body. We can’t be dismissive of hurt. We can’t ignore that there’s darkness and pain and suffering. We can’t preach messages filled to the brim with ideas that can be turned into weapons by abusers. We can’t afford the blithe, non-committal “if you’re being abused, you need to get out,” and then move past that as if it doesn’t happen here. We have to stop burying our heads in the sand with our “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle!” and our “faith like a mustard seed!”

We have to be the ones who love the hurting and the broken, who acknowledge their pain.

Feminism, Theology

victims and abusers, and why church is not safe

my fair lady
[trigger warning for abuse]

If you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed that I watched My Fair Lady this past weekend, one of my favorite movies from when I was younger, but a movie I haven’t seen in years. And while I enjoyed the nostalgia and singing all the songs again, it was not an entirely pleasant experience and I probably won’t watch it again. Watching Professor Higgins, listening to him sing “Let a Woman in Your Life,” realizing that he never uses Eliza’s name and instead prefers to call her wretch, insect, and baggage, and understanding for the first time that Professor Higgins is an abuser . . . it was rough. The scene when the maids are ripping Eliza’s clothes off her body and you can hear her screaming, begging them to stop, pleading with them not to touch her– I had to bury my face in Handsome’s arm and try not to cry.

Our culture– our movies, our books, our television shows– is filled with abusers. It seems like everywhere we go, we can see an abuser being presented as a regular person. Many times, these abusive characters are written to be sympathetic. These abusers are given story arches that tug at our heartstrings, and all their abuses are ignored. Look at him, the writers ask us, look at how sad he is. Don’t you just want to help him get better so he’ll stop being so mean to people? The problem is, that is exactly the method John* used against me to convince me to stay with him. Don’t go I need you he’d say, so I wouldn’t. I would stay with him, accepting his abuse and believing that I could help him get better.

This attitude that abusers are just regular people who can be jerks sometimes appears in evangelical contexts, too, but with another concept tacked on: because every human being is wicked, perverse, and evil, we are all equally awful people. “There but for the grace of God go I,” they say in pulpits and podiums all over the country, and the people listening to these sermons hear about how “aren’t we all capable of doing things to hurt each other?” and somehow what happens is that everyone is a victim, and everyone is an abuser, and the ability to stop and say no what that person is doing is evil and I need to get away from them disappears.

Recently I heard a lesson based on Psalm 52. PerfectNumber, who blogs at Tell me Why the World is Weird, has been going through the Psalms, re-examining them, and has been showing me a picture of a God who cares about justice and seeks out the poor and oppressed, and seeing the Psalms in that light has been incredibly restorative to me. I can read some of the Psalms now and see a God of Justice who hates it when abusers hurt people, when the poor are ignored or taken advantage of, a God who comforts good people when they’re hurting. That is beautiful, to me, and is one of the reasons why I still think the Bible is valuable even though I have questions about it.

But, in this lesson, a couple things happened. First, Psalm 52 is about Doeg, from I Samuel 21 and 22. Doeg sees David at Nob, and at some point when he thinks that the information is valuable, he tells Saul– and Saul orders to have the priest Ahimelech, who gave David the holy bread, executed. When Saul’s guards refuse to kill the priests, Doeg is willing, and he kills Ahimelech, 85 other priests, and then slaughters every single last person and animal in Nob.

In short, Doeg is evil. He is only interested in using whatever he can for his own advantage, and is perfectly willing to kill priests and slaughter an entire village. That is what Psalm 52 is about– David is describing a man who “boasts of evil” and “plots destruction.” David is talking about an abuser– and that God will bring justice, and that people will “laugh at him.” In my experience, the worst possible thing that could ever happen to a narcissistic abuser is to be laughed at.

However, while the teacher talked a little bit about that, the main focus of the lesson was “how should we respond to problem people? How should we react to troublemakers?”

Problem people.

Troublemakers.

The abuses, the violence, the narcissism, the obvious self-interest, the willingness to slaughter innocents just to get ahead completely disappeared. Doeg was a “problem person” for David. The teacher spent some time asking us to envision the “problem people” in our lives, emphasizing how we probably have tons of people who cause problems for us because they’re selfish. But, we need to examine ourselves, he said, because we could very easily be someone else’s “problem person,” and we shouldn’t forget that. We could be someone’s Doeg. And, if we have a Doeg, a “problem person,” in our life, we should just trust the lord to take care of him or her.

I wanted to scream.

Because there is so much wrong with that. If we have a Doeg, who is not a problem person but is in fact an abuser, in our life– we should absolutely do something! Being in a relationship with an abuser is incredibly difficult to escape, and when the Church seems to constantly be sending the message that abusers are just problem people and we could be just as bad, too, it makes it that much harder for victims to get out. Victims don’t need more reasons to stay in an abusive relationship– they already have reasons. What they need is for a pastor or teacher to love them, to look them in the eye and say abuse is wrong and if you’re being hurt you don’t deserve it and I’ll do whatever I can to help you get out. Saying “oh, that abuser who is perfectly willing to use violence? He’s just a “problem person” and we’re all “problem people!” is … well, it is evil in its own way.

There’s another way abuse is ignored and downplayed, another twist on the “we’re all equally evil” theme. A while ago I heard a sermon that was about how much Jesus cares about us and how no matter what we’re going through he’s there for us and can help us with whatever’s going on. At the beginning of his sermon, the preacher spent a lot of time describing a bunch of different scenarios we could find ourselves in– except almost every single example was connected to “poor decision making” in some way. The only time he mentioned abuse was so vague and non-specific it could have meant anything from “your friend gossiped about you behind your back” to “your father raped you”– and it was at the end of a very long list on all the ways people are capable of getting themselves into terrible situations. He never, not once, during the entire sermon made a distinction between situations you are responsible for creating and situations where it is happening to you and none of it is your fault. In fact, he did the exact opposite– he conflated poor decision making with abuse not once, but six times.

Abuse is not normal.

Abusers are not normal.

They are not “problem people.” Not everyone is capable of abuse. We’re human, so we’re capable of doing hurtful things, selfish things, but that is different from abuse, and we desperately need to recognize that they are not the same.

Abuse is evil and the church needs to stand up and say something about it. Pastors need to look into the eyes of 20% of the married people in his church who are probably being abused and say the words abuse is wrong and you don’t have to stay there, you don’t have to live with them. Youth leaders need to sit down with their teenagers and say you have the right to determine what happens to your body. Sunday school teachers need to listen to the children in their classroom with the awareness that 1 in 4 girls  and 1 in 6 boys are being sexually assaulted or raped by a relative or family friend.

But, in my experience, churches tend to be silent. Pastors don’t talk about it. Teachers use softened language. No one wants to look this bleak reality in the face. And because we are silent, because we refuse to look victims and survivors in the eye, because we are blind and deaf, because we tell each other that abusers don’t really exist and we’re all equally capable of doing hurtful things we don’t have the right to say “this is wrong, this is evil, and it must stop.” We ignore the victims and survivors in our churches when what we should be doing is shouting from every single rooftop that the church is a safe place, that we will love, and we will help.

Social Issues

learning the words: abuse

into the light
Tamara Rice is an editor and write and a frequently loud-mouthed advocate for victims of abuse within the church who blogs at Hopefully Known. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

trigger warning for child abuse, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse

Where I come from abuse was a term reserved for vicious violence. I’m not really sure why or how this protection around the word came to be, but I know that great care was taken to distinguish between parents who were abusive and parents who were merely … very bad parents. Between sexual boundaries being crossed in a way that was sexually abusive and in a way that was more … molestation. Between spiritual authority being misused in an evil way that was spiritually abusive and in a way that was simply … unfortunate. Abuse, in short, was reserved for what I now might put in the category of sadistic torment—the stuff they make horror films about.

Under these narrow definitions, abuse was rarely encountered in my growing up years (or so we thought), and maybe that was the whole point. Defined as such, abuse was kept at arm’s length, out of our circles. Abuse happened to people on the news and in salacious Stephen King novels, it didn’t happen to us, it didn’t happen in our fundamentalist Baptist church, it didn’t happen in the missionary community we were part of overseas.

~~~~~~~~~~

By the time I reached my 30s I had very little to do with the faith community of my childhood. I had married a man in ministry and had gone on to be part of churches and religious organizations where legalism was rare and the kind of fundamentalism I’d grown up with was rarer still. I got it out of my system and left it behind. And then in 2011, I got sucked back in.

I began to fight alongside several old friends to bring justice for the victims of a missionary from our childhood and to call into account the Baptist mission board who had been mishandling the pedophile’s exposure for over twenty years.

Even now, it’s hard to put this story into a few brief words. The pain is still thick at the back of my throat and the journey isn’t over. But from the moment I stepped back into that fundamentalist world, the term abuse grew to encompass so much more than violence. I grew to understand it in its fullness, as it was meant to be understood–as I wish I had understood it from a very young age.

abuse defined

The justice endeavor began as an effort to bring healing to a friend and her family who had been deeply wounded by the pedophile and mission board, but over time it became very clear that I suffered sexual abuse myself—something I had long pushed back and denied and reasoned away, despite it explaining decades of emotional instability. New information made it undeniable, and I had to face the things my mind had hidden. Then, as I fought for justice, I became the victim of spiritual and emotional abuse as well.

First came the e-mails and blog comments from total strangers calling me a tool of Satan and an enemy of the gospel. Verses were thrown at me—at us—and we, the victims,were admonished not to touch “God’s anointed.” The vile things that self-proclaimed Christians will say in anonymity is appalling. If self-righteous curses of “shame on you, you whore of Satan” could kill, I’d be dead from the anonymous e-mails of vitriol and hate I have read.

The harder we pushed for justice, the closer the abusers came. Now it wasn’t just strangers dishing out spiritual and emotional abuse on the internet, it was people we had called “aunts” and “uncles” in our youth. Verses, again, were thrown at us. We were reminded to forgive, reminded of the supposedly innocent family members who were embarrassed and hurt by the pedophile’s public exposure, but who—let’s face it—probably knew a certain amount but lived in denial all along. “What about them?” the emails would say. “You’re being evil and cruel. They don’t deserve this.” And they, the family, didn’t deserve it. That’s true. But neither did we, and neither did any other child.

False familial titles (the cult-like “aunt”/“uncle” monikers) and childhood nicknames were doled out in long e-mails, phone calls and voicemail messages from those whose were rightly being questioned. I stopped taking the calls, stopped listening to the messages, but not before a few left their mark. “This is your ‘Aunt’ ______. We’re hurting so much over all these accusations. We looove you, Tammy,” she said, her voice thick with emotion I couldn’t understand given we’d hardly known each other, hadn’t seen each other since I was fifteen, and she was using a name no one outside my family had called me in over two decades.

It was a poorly disguised attempt to guilt me into silence over a leadership “mistake” her husband had made. Her husband should have be shouting from the rooftops that he’d been wrong, done something criminal under the mandated reporting laws, done something morally shameful. But instead the wife was sent to sway me, to spare her and their grown children this sadness.

Her voicemail haunted me for weeks, not because she got to me, because she didn’t. It was because she had tried. Because she had invoked love and false familiarity and spiritual obligation in her desperation to silence me. I was shocked—utterly shocked—at the subtle insidiousness of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The misplaced resentment against us, against me, personally, grew to epic proportions when a friend exposed a second pedophile a few years later—and by misplaced resentment I mean more spiritual and emotional abuse. I mean using scripture wrongly and improperly, using relationships and pasts and church authority wrongly and improperly, I mean hurting and injuring by maltreatment, I mean the continuation of corrupt practices and customs, I mean language that condemns and vilifies unjustly and intemperately. I mean all of those things above that Webster’s and Farlex tell us are the definition of abuse. I suffered these things publicly and privately from the mission board, from people I barely knew, and from people I knew well.

At one point, a man who grew up on the same mission field as I did launched a Facebook page vilifying me. His page banner labeled me a fascist, but the reality was he didn’t even know me well enough to use my married name of almost twenty years. One by one, I watched as adults and former friends of my formative years overseas “liked” his page, all because they didn’t like men they admired being exposed for the havoc they had wreaked in the lives of young women who were now middle-aged and grown and no longer being silent.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, except that then this Facebook group started in on my faith, mocking me, using my words against me, twisting who I was. Knowing I shouldn’t read their bitter words that came from a narrow view of faith I didn’t even subscribe to, I read anyway, sickened that I had become the target of hate and abuse when there were pedophiles sleeping as free men.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The spiritual and emotional abuse of these years, and the time I spent coming to terms with my sexual abuse—it’s all left me battered.

I retreated for quite a while after the Facebook incident, and I’ve never made a full comeback to that particular justice effort. I wish so much that I could tell you that justice and truth won out. That doing the right thing and exposing sin (no, make that crimes) paid off. But it didn’t and it hasn’t. It has been the most painful exercise in futility of my life.

My consolation, however, is this: I know what abuse is now. Sexual. Spiritual. Emotional. And because I’ve learned the word I can call it what it is. I can give it a name. I can see it when it happens to me or in front of me. And I can cry and grieve and hurt, but then I can get up and walk away and find healing in a safer place. Because the word has lost its power now that my vocabulary has grown.

Feminism

sexual abuse, rape, and sexual coercion

chains
trigger warning for sexual assault, abuse, descriptions of rape, victim blaming, and emotional manipulation

Yesterday, one of my readers bravely allowed me to publish her story as a guest post, and I am fiercely proud of her for that. Telling your story in a public space is a daunting, overwhelming thing. Especially since there are people on this mostly-amazing internet that come to places like this one and jump in, feet first, with statements along the lines of “what happened to you was your fault. You should have ________.”

And, honestly, I expected a comment like that on her post because of part of what is in her story– part of what is in so many stories. And, lo and behold, I got one. I decided not to publish it because the women and men who will come here and read her story must have a safe place. They don’t need to hear that. They hear it from everyone else, and I won’t tolerate it on that post.

But, I wanted to write this because there was a part of Alena’s story that resonated with me on a deep, visceral, whole-body, gut-wrenching level. If you’ve ever experienced sexual abuse in a relationship, you might recognize it, too.

When he held me down, I was confused, even cried and begged him to stop, but he would keep going, He would try to coerce me, saying things like “don’t you like this?” I was weak in my protestations, speaking softly, trying to explain why I wasn’t okay with his actions even as he ignored me and did whatever he wanted. He drew reactions from me I couldn’t control, and that robbed me of the ability to think clearly. I judged myself weak and wanton, because he made me feel things against my will. . .

That part, right there, is the part of her story that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go, because I’ve been there. And I know, from experience, that so many of us have been there. For many of us, this part of our story is what keeps us trapped and silent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first physical thing that John*, my rapist, ever did, he did without my consent. We were in the orchestra pit, rehearsing for an operetta, and we were the only percussionists. It was dark, we were in the back . . . I stood up to flip the sheet music, and when I sat back down on my stool, his hand was there, palm-up, waiting to touch my rear end. He arranged it so that I would completely unknowingly sit on his hand and give him the opportunity to grab my ass.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I blushed, slightly uncomfortable, but . . . he hadn’t really done anything. It was perfectly innocent, right? He didn’t mean anything by it. Of course he didn’t. And so, I didn’t correct him, didn’t even comment on it.

He did that intentionally.

Like most abusers and rapists, he set up a situation in order to gauge my response. How would I react when he did something without asking me first? Would I call him on it, or would I let it go? If I did get upset about it, how easily could he convince me that it wasn’t worth getting upset over?

I didn’t say anything. I let it go.

And it escalated. Slowly. Little things, harmless things, innocent things– all things that on their own I could brush off and ignore. I wasn’t asking for any of it, didn’t want any of it, and any time he did something my reaction was never positive. It was clear to him that I didn’t want it, but the only thing that he cared about was if I was ever going to say anything. How far were my limits? How far could he push me?

We dated for almost three years. And in those three years he sexually assaulted me well over a hundred times and raped me twice. But, to people like the man that left that comment here last night, I am being unfair.” He didn’t actually assault me. He didn’t actually rape me. It’s my fault, because I didn’t tell him no “clearly” enough. I didn’t “stand my ground.” I didn’t make sure he knew I didn’t want what he was doing.

To women who have been in sexually abusive relationships, that is a gigantic, heaping mound of horse shit.

Because there is no “No.” It’s a word that doesn’t exist, because our abuser has purposely stolen it from us; robbed us of the ability to think it, let alone say it. There’s actually a term for this predatory behavior: it’s called sexual coercion. Simply put, “sexual coercion is the act of using pressure, alcohol, drugs, or force to have sexual contact with someone against his or her will.” Pressure, in the case of sexually abusive long-term relationships, usually comes in the form of emotional abuse and manipulation.

In my relationship with John* I performed many, many acts against my will. I had no desire to engage in the sexual behavior he insisted on. The thought of performing fellatio on him nauseated me in the extreme– but I still did it. I did it without him hitting me, or forcing me in any physically violent way. Any time he touched me made me sick. The thought of kissing him turned my stomach into knots and made me want to vomit. But I kissed him anyway. I “let” him touch me intimately because I had been groomed, for months on end, to “let” him do whatever he wanted because he wanted it. What I wanted didn’t matter- not even to me.

When he had escalated the physicality to the level where he would touch me intimately is where everything goes crazy inside of my head. Because, for a very long time, he didn’t ask me to do anything to him. He didn’t force me to stroke him. He didn’t force me to perform fellatio. He didn’t force me to do anything– to him. What he did do, however, was force reactions from my body that were completely outside of my controlHe would hold me down, and he would start convincing me. “I just want to make you feel good,” he would say, over and over, all while never caring if I even wanted it. Oh, but he knew exactly what he had to do in order to trigger a chemical response from my body that I didn’t want. “Doesn’t this feel good? I can feel you getting wet,” he would say, over and over and over and over . . . And he would never stop, not even when it became painful, not even when I started flinching and pulling away. “Just let me make you feel good,” he would start until I just gave in and stopped trying to resist, confused and afraid and lost.

But, according to men like those from last night, I had the power to stop it, right? I could have said no. I had the option of not letting it continue. Secretly, I must have wanted it. I was sending “mixed signals.”

The first time he raped me– men like those who left that comment last night, if they were standing in that room, probably wouldn’t even call it rape.

We’d gone to a funeral, and made it back to his parent’s home well before he expected them to arrive. He pulled me into the room I’d been sleeping in, told me to get down on the floor and begin masturbating. And I did it. When he told me to pull my underwear down, I did. When he got on top of me and told me to stroke him, I did. When he told me to start trying to put him inside of me is when I hesitated— and instantly the same tired threats began. He started cursing at me, verbally abusing me, making it clear what would happen to me if I didn’t do exactly as he said right fucking now, and so . . . I started to try.

But I stopped. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to have sex with him. I started sobbing, begging him not to make me do it. I pleaded with him the entire time while he started stroking himself and forcing himself inside of me.

It was the first time I’d ever really said no. It was the first time I’d ever said “no” and he didn’t even bother trying to convince me. He’d done what he had intended to do all along. He’d taken “no” away. He’d made “no” meaningless. He’d made it so that when I said “no,” all he heard was “push harder.”

So, you, men and women of the internet who think that all we have to do is “say no”?

You can go fuck yourselves.

Feminism

when I actually am worried about being nice

romantic teddy-bears

Recently, I wrote a post on how I’m not worried about being “nice enough” to those who I’m critiquing. The next day, I read an article that bothered me, and it took me a long time to figure out what about it specifically made it feel . . . off.

And then I realized:

It wasn’t nice enough.

To me, that was interesting, because I’ve read all sorts of articles that could be perceived in the same way– no sugary sweetness, occasionally acerbic tones, sarcasm, even anger. So what about this article, specifically, bothered me because it wasn’t “nice”?

There were two halves to this article; the first half talked about a common pattern in evangelical culture, and how that pattern is reinforced by rhetoric from very powerful people in different movements. It’s an idea that gets hammered away at in pulpits, comes screaming off of the pages of a hundred different books, and it’s an idea that causes real harm to people. The author was critiquing the delivery of this particular message, encouraging people to be aware of how they go about talking about this idea. And I agreed with him.

However, the second part of the article changed focus. Instead of talking about the delivery of the message, he turned to the people who were the recipients of this message– specifically, he addressed those who had been hurt by this message, directly affected by it.

But, instead of continuing his original critique, by saying “I know you’ve been hurt by this message, and here’s how I want to bring some healing,” he instead delivered the exact same message not because he said the same words, or even used the same style, but because when he turned to those who had been wounded by this idea, instead of acknowledging that pain, he told them “I’m sorry, but this is your cross to bear. Some of us are called to suffer more than others.”

W. T. F.

This is when I’m worried about being “nice,” but I’m working with a slightly different definition of “nice” in this post than in my previous one. In my last post, I was using “nice” rather pejoratively– as part of this idea we have of nice being non-confrontational, or non-offensive, or having a pleasant tone and delivery. Today, though, when I say nice what I actually mean is compassion.

That’s the key here, I think.

Even when I’m critiquing power structures and the powerful, I still try to have a level of compassion and love for that person. Whoever it is, he’s a human being, and deserves to be loved. But, often, this is extraordinarily difficult. Impossibly hard.

If I ever came face-to-face with the leader of my church-cult ever again, I don’t know what I’d do. Hopefully ignore him. But, I know myself. I’d be shaking with rage, and I would be flooded, again, with all the things he’s done to intentionally hurt me and my family.

If I ever came face-to-face with my rapist . . . I would be completely paralyzed. He would probably try to make nice– he’s tried reaching out to me before with “I would so love to talk to you again”– but I wouldn’t be able to. I’d have a hard time resisting the urge to scream at him. I had a hard time resisting that impulse when we were still in college together. He chased me down and confronted me all over campus, and nearly every encounter ended with me screaming at him. A while ago, when the city he lives in suffered a natural disaster, a sliver of me hoped he’d be on the casualty list.

So… yes. I struggle with loving my enemy. I have a hard time separating the eternal soul of a person– the person that God loves — from the person who has done evil things. I have a hard time thinking of abusers as anything but– they abuse. To me, that is the defining factor of that person, and I will have nothing to do with him or her, and I believe that is right and justified.

But there’s a balance there, a balance I don’t maintain. Loving that person . . . is up to God. It’s not something I can do on my own– neither is it something I want to do. So, I do my best to surrender that person to God. God can love them because I can’t. Not actively hating them has got to be enough, because I need God to even manage that.

But what about us, the victims?

This is even more difficult territory for me.

Because there are those who walk among us that are so very, deeply hurt. They are still hurting. For some of us, nearly everything in our lives rips a new hole in our heart, or scrapes open an old wound. A flicker, a moment, a word, can cause all of our pain to come crashing down around us until we just want to cover our ears, shut our eyes, and scream at the world to just make it stop. Everything hurts.

But, sometimes, I struggle with empathy and compassion, even for victims, because I’m a fighter. I have some hard things in my life– not as hard as some, not as easy as others –that I have to deal with on a nearly daily basis. Chronic pain, the fallout from spiritual abuse, the physical and emotional scarring from being raped, the constant nightmares, the triggers, not being able to sit in church without flinching at every other word . . .

But, I get up in the morning, even though I know waking up means pain.

I go to church, even though I know someone might innocently say or do something that hurts.

I go to sleep, even though I know the nightmares will come.

Handsome says I’m tough, and I think of myself as resilient. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been times in my life when I haven’t succumbed. There have been those times. The days when getting out of bed was too much to contemplate, so I didn’t. The whole months that disappeared into fog. The days I managed to scrape by on painkillers and coffee.

So, when I encounter someone who seems to have given up, to have surrendered to the concept that they are a victim, I have to remind myself that what looks like “giving up” to me might be fighting tooth and nail for them. I’m not them, and I have no right, no place, to judge– because I know. I’ve been there. I’ve been the person who people look at and tut-tut and shake their head. I’ve been on the receiving end of helpful advice where well-meaning people tell me to “not have a victim complex.”

Fight, they say. Fight for your shitty life.

What I do to fight my battles, however, is not what another person does, and that is something I have to keep in mind. Even me. Because I’m not above hurting someone else because I think they could be doing something more with their life. That it’s been years– shouldn’t have they recovered more, have experienced more healing? And, it’s tempting to think that it’s their fault. If they wanted to get better, they would.

The key is compassion.

To look at people who you know have been hurt and be willing to say that.

You’re hurting.

And that’s ok.

No “buck up.”

No “put your big girl panties on and deal with it.”

No “it’s your cross.”

No “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

No “his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.”

The best thing to do, sometimes, is just to shut up. Weep with those who weep. Mourn with those who mourn.

Feminism

ravening sheep: child abuse in the church

sheep

[serious trigger warning for sexual abuse, child abuse, spiritual abuse]

If there’s a metaphor I dislike for Christians, or for the church in general, it’s probably sheep. This is probably due to a variety of reasons, including the cultural reference that when a person is a “sheep,” it’s because they are somehow the worst form of a conformist. Not only is this person conforming to whatever is around them, they’re doing it without thinking about it, or analyzing it, or making sure that what they’re conforming to is good.

Another reason why I don’t like calling Christians sheep is that anytime I’ve heard this metaphor in church, it’s to call me stupid. I’m a sheep. I’m not smart enough to make my own decisions. I’m incapable of coming to any conclusion on my own– I need help from God’s appointed shepherd. It’s my duty to follow the shepherd, even when I don’t understand what he’s doing. The problem is that this “shepherd” was not Jesus– or anyone resembling Jesus. It was usually a pastor who stood up in front of his congregation, disparagingly called them his “flock,” and told them that God had chosen him to be their shepherd here on earth. He was not the Great Shepherd– but the Great Shepherd’s stand-in.

But there’s an image that’s been haunting me the past few weeks. I read a short post on sheep and wolves that struck me deeply, and part of what resonated with me was the idea of earthly shepherds allowing wolves into their flock– but what if there weren’t any wolves? What if the only thing in the fold was each other– our “fellow brothers and sisters”?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s dusk. The earth is starting to settle down for the night, and nocturnal creatures are beginning to peek out from their nests and burrows. The sun has set, and the flushes of pink and violet and crimson have faded down to a silvery gray.

A shepherd carries a lamb so small and frail and fragile into the fold, a lamb so exhausted she’s trembling. He finds a place for her to settle in for the night– a soft, plush bed of grass, and gently lays her down. He strokes her head, then begins moving more of the other sheep into the fold for the night. They settle down, and the shepherd takes up his usual post at the entrance, idly watching the surrounding countryside be swallowed up by nighttime velvet.

One of the sheep– one that all of the other sheep likes or respects, one that’s been there for as long as any of them can remember– begins making his usual rounds. He’s helped the shepherd corral them all into the fold at night, he’s let the shepherd know when one of the other sheep begins wandering off. So none of the sheep think anything of it when he approaches the fragile, exhausted little lamb. The lamb looks up, expecting a friendly little baaah of goodnight, knowing that this sheep is trustworthy. He’s a leader. He’s respected.

And suddenly, so suddenly that any of the other sheep couldn’t have predicted what was happening, this sheep begins attacking the lamb. He tears into the little lamb’s face– tearing at her ears. His jaw clamps down around her throat, sinking his teeth in, and he mounts her. The other sheep can hear the terrified lamb bleating desperately for help. After he’s done everything he wants to do to the lamb, he starts kicking her. He kicks her, again and again, over and over, until there is nothing left except a macerated bloody pulp of blood and wool. There’s one last weak, pleading bleat, and then everything is silent.

The other sheep in the fold stare at the bleeding remains. They look into the eyes of the lamb, and they see a terror so deep, so profound. They watch as the lamb’s body starts to convulse because of the agonizing pain, they watch her struggle to even breathe. She can’t even cry out for help anymore, her body is so bloodied and beaten and ragged.

And they turn away.

They find their spots in their fold, the places they all usually settle in for the night, and they go to sleep.

In the morning, the shepherd begins waking the sheep up and prodding them out of the fold. When they are all outside in the pasture, contentedly munching on the thick, luscious grass, he begins to count. But wait, one is missing. Where is the little lamb?

He goes to where the lamb has laid all night, shivering in anguish. The blood is dried and caked, mixed in with the sand and grass to become mud. Gingerly, he picks up the lamb, and the lamb is overjoyed. Finally, someone will help. Finally, someone she can trust to take care of her. He carries her out into the pasture, far, far away from all the other sheep. With a rising horror the lamb realizes where the shepherd is taking her. He’s taking her to the place where all the sheep know there are wolves. They know not to go there, because it’s dangerous.

And again, he sets her down on a bed of grass. “It’ll be ok. I just can’t let you inside the fold anymore. You’ll cause more harm to my flock, and I just can’t let that happen.”

He leaves her there. Leaves her where there is no place to run, or hide, or seek safety. Leaves her where she can’t even crawl away. He goes back to his flock, and he spots the sheep covered in blood. There are flakes of blood in his teeth, spattering his wool. His hooves are caked in blood, and the lamb’s wool has gotten caught in his teeth and in his hooves. The shepherd leads him to the stream, and there he tenderly washes it, cooing over him. He tells him that everything will be ok, that no one has to know, that the little lamb has forgiven him and there’s nothing to worry about or be afraid of. The sheep nuzzles the shepherd happily, and looks over at another little lamb in the flock.

It’s hours later, and the lamb is choking now, gasping for breath. Her heart is beating so violently she can feel it pounding, like it’s going to explode. She knows she’s going to die. This is the end. There’s nothing she can do, nowhere she can go. She can’t even go back to the flock or the fold. Everything she thought she knew was safe and trusthworthy has been obliterated, annihilated, destroyed. There’s nothing left.

There’s a rustling in the grass, but she can’t even turn her head to look at it, to figure out what it is, but she knows it’s a wolf, and suddenly, she’s thankful. Grateful for the death that is about to come swiftly.

But what touches her isn’t sharp teeth, gouging claws. It’s a pair of hands, and she tries to jerk away. Terror seizes her, tells her that she has to run, to hide, to get away. It’s the shepherd come back, and she doesn’t know what he’s going to do. But she can’t even move, there’s so much pain. So much hurt.

The hands gather her up, pull her close to a chest. And it’s a familiar feeling– oh it’s so familiar. She wants to give in to it, but she can’t. She can’t. She tenses when a hand touches her head. The shepherd used to do that. Used to hold her like this, stroke her head, her ears.

Everything is quiet and still for the space of what feels like a few heartbeats. But then… she hears crying. And the crying becomes sobbing, and the sobbing becomes wailing. And the hands pull her tighter to the chest, and the warmth feels good, but… she doesn’t know what to do, or what to think. The body that holds her begins to rock back and forth, and groan, and weep.

“Oh, my lamb.” A voice says. “My precious, darling, wonderful lamb. Oh, my lamb. My lamb.”

It’s a voice she’s heard before, somewhere, but it carries that sense that she’s heard it before in a dream. It’s deep, and wonderful, and there’s so much love. More tears fall into her wool, onto her face.

And the pain fades. It’s still there, aching and devastating, but it’s muted somehow. Finally she’s able to look at the body that’s holding her, and the face she sees is tanned from years in the wilderness, and gaunt from sleeping by roadsides, and scarred so horrifically and so beautifully it almost can’t be borne. She looks into his eyes, and they are overflowing with tears and with love, and he smiles at her, his lips trembling and tears pouring down his scarred, weathered face.

“I’ve got you,” He says. “I’ve got you.”

Feminism

choices and being allowed to make them, part three

child abuse

I realize the claims I’m about to make here are going to upset some. Many of you are going to violently disagree with me, and I’m anticipating that. I’m not accusing the parents who hold to these ideas as abusers– they have no idea that the system they so fervently believe in as “biblical” is abusive. I’m making some very big, very broad claims, and I’m making them without nuance or complexity simply because of time constraints. There is a Polemical nature to what I’m saying, and I’m aware of that.

Shortly before I married Handsome, I was in his childhood home, kicking around with his younger brother. We’d just finished watching a movie, and we’d been discussing all sorts of interesting things– the merits of a Confederacy over a Republic, for example, and the meanings of oligarchy and aristocracy. Smart kid, right? Well, Handsome came downstairs, and I’m not sure how we got around to this, but we started talking about some of their mutual childhood memories; namely, how they were taught to respect their mother. Handsome and his brother started reminiscing about how their mother would “count” in order to get their attention.

When I say “count,” I’m talking about what we see in the grocery store every day: “I’m going to count to three,” and the child has the opportunity to respond within that time frame, or, well, consequences. That is not how their mother practiced it– she used it only as a means of getting attention, with no threat of consequences implied — but that’s the typical perception of “counting,” I think. Hopefully you agree.

When they started talking about this idea, I scoffed. Probably rolled my eyes, too. “We’re not doing that with our children,” I pronounced, quite firmly.

Handsome turned to me, genuinely confused by my obvious hostility to the idea. “Why not?”

“It’s just teaching them that they can disobey however they want to. That I don’t really mean it when I call them.”

He stared at me, clearly not following. “Huh?”

“Children need to obey their parents. They don’t get to define how and when they obey– we do.”

What followed was a rather intense discussion that, in retrospect on my part, didn’t make any sense. I started trying to argue that “counting” was inherently a threat, and I didn’t want to threaten my children, but somehow completely missed that the kind of authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator-style approach to parenting I was advocating was based on threats.

During our conversation, I started feeling very triggered, and I could feel a panic attack coming on, which perplexed me. Why was I reacting this way? Why was I spiraling out of control? I could feel myself start to tremble all over, and I knew I had to leave. I went up to my room, curled up on my bed and cried, completely not understanding why I was panicking, or even what had triggered me. What was going on? What had caused this? Why was I so upset, when Handsome had not done anything remotely triggering?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the time I attributed it to stress- it was a week before our wedding, and it had been a somewhat intense, although still friendly and open, conversation.

I know what it is now, although thinking about it is still very muddled. But, it is linked to the idea of instant, cheerful obedience that was advocated by nearly everyone I knew as a child and teenager. All the books we read taught it, and it was practiced by everyone in the community. Every child I knew had been taught since they were infants that they were to obey instantaneously and without question– and not just their parent. All children were required to obey all adults, and we could be punished by any adult immediately and with the direct approval by our parents.

My supposed “pastor”-‘s wife used to summon her children by whistling. She whistled through her teeth, and the sound was distinct, unmistakable, and loud. You could hear it from anywhere inside Wal-Mart, practically. Anytime she whistled, all of her children responded immediately— and in the sense of “immediately” that is the result of programming. Their response was so ingrained, so automatic, when they heard a whistle it was like watching Pavlov’s dogs. For all their talk about the evils of psychology, conservative religious disciplinarians sure jumped on board the behavioral modification and classical conditioning bandwagons.

Personally, I was taught to respond with a cheerful, respectful “yes ma’am,” to any demand, with the rationalization that it’s impossible for a child to say “yes ma’am” and try to fake respect if they’re not actually feeling it. I was required to drop anything I was doing the second I was summoned, because the summons was always more important than anything I was doing.

This continued into adulthood– I was still living with my parents, and had gotten home from an exhausting shift at work. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch the movie I’d rented when my mother called me into the office.

“Why?” I responded, believing it to be a reasonable response. I didn’t want to move. I was tired. I wanted to watch my movie and then go to bed.

“Just come here!”

“But why? I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not. Come here. I want to show you something.”

“What is it?”

“Just come here!” The frustration in her tone was escalating.

I realized at that point that if I was ever going to watch my movie I’d have to do whatever it was my mother wanted. When it turns out she wanted to show me a map because I’d gotten lost the day before, all I wanted to do was leave. Maps are completely useless to me– they make no sense, and unless I am actually driving on the road with one, all those little lines, squiggly and straight, mean absolutely nothing to me. My sense of direction is abysmal, and yes, it takes me a little while to figure out where I’m going and how to get there. But maps– they are worse than useless. But, they work really well for my mother. And, she was convinced, despite my protestations to the contrary, that if I just stared long and hard enough at the squiggly lines I wouldn’t get lost again.

She was the parent.

I was the child.

What I wanted to do didn’t matter. That I was tired didn’t matter. That I knew myself, my own capabilities and limits, didn’t matter. She knew how to help me, and she wanted to help me right now, no matter if I told her it was a waste of time or I was busy. I didn’t even get to define for myself if I was busy– that was determined by her. I don’t know what’s good for me, but because I’m her child, she does.

This is one of the biggest problems of the “Instant Obedience Doctrine.” No one grows out of it. Not parents, not children. And the children, fed since birth this dogma of absolute, unending, cheerful, complaint obedience to all authority, are implicitly indoctrinated against every outgrowing it.

This is why I believe that the Instant Obedience Doctrine (my term) is inherently abusive.

My parents didn’t abuse me with this doctrine. Our relationship is fine, although we’re having our problems adjusting to me being an independent, autonomous, free-thinking adult. It’s rough, but we’re doing it one day at a time.

The problem with the Instant Obedience Doctrine is that it grooms children to be abused. This is inescapable. Not every child brought up in this doctrine is being abused or will be abused, but it creates an entire system where abuse will be allowed to go unchecked, mainly because the child will have absolutely no concept of abuse. They will not have the ability to think of themselves as autonomous, as free agents, as having rights over their own bodies and what they get to do with them– because this idea is explicitly disavowed. Children do not have any ability to choose in this system– that ability is systematically taken away from them as part of “biblical child-rearing.” We have been taught since infancy that we are never, ever allowed to say “no” to an authority.

Oh, the people who teach this doctrine will pay lip-service to teaching their children about abuse. They’ll say that they’ve taught their children to tell them if someone touches them inappropriately, or if someone does something they don’t like. But the doctrine completely overrules this “stop gap” because the primary, foundational idea in this doctrine is that children are foolish, children are ignorant, and children must be corrected by authorities, usually through physical pain (corporal punishment).

This does unspeakable damage to everyone involved– the parents and the children. Because the children eventually grow up, and if they start asserting independence, like I am now, our relationships can be damaged, because the independence is sudden and unexpected. Expressing my own ideas, disagreeing with my parents can be very emotional, upsetting territory, because the point of the Instant Obedience Doctrine was to raise children who are ideological replicas of the parents. The fact that this doctrine essentially means that parents will never actually get to know who their own children are is completely lost in all the rhetoric.

And for many children brought up in this system, the biggest problem is that they have no access to any concept of being their own, independent person. That idea simply doesn’t exist. They exist to do the bidding of authorities. They are property. These narratives are internalized unconsciously by everyone involved in the process.

Again, not every child brought up in this system is physically or sexually abused by his or her parents, or even by other authority figures in their lives– but they are emotionally and psychologically abused by the fundamental notion that they do not belong to themselves, that they are incapable of making their own choices.

Feminism

choices and being allowed to make them, part two

autonomy

I’ve been struggling, hard, with this post, because, honestly, I don’t know where to begin.

I told a story yesterday from my childhood about the ability I had to make choices– to choose not eating something I disliked over eating cookies. My mother would present negotiations like this frequently, but only when the deal was an honest one. Did I want to wear this, or that? Did I want broccoli, or carrots? I could choose not to wear the wool tights if I wanted to put up with the cold. Whenever I was required to do something, like eat my vegetables or dress up for church (I hated dressing up), there was always some sort of choice involved. When my younger sister insisted that she could do it all by herself, she would wear her clothes inside out and two different socks to church. It was important to my mom that her children know the importance of making choices, and that choices have consequences.

When I was nine and we’d just moved to New Mexico, I was placed in the 5-9 year old Sunday School Class, where most of the kids were 6. I decided that I wanted to be in the 10-12 year old class, and I went to the teacher, not my mother, and told her I wanted a transfer. I explained why, and she moved me. All without even asking my mother– I had autonomy, the independence to decide what I wanted for myself and to go get it.

When we started attending our fundamentalist church-cult, much of that evaporated.

But, it didn’t really feel like I’d lost the ability to make decisions for myself, because I was taught, right along with my parents, that they had the duty, obligation, responsibility to make all my decisions for me, because I was a child and couldn’t be trusted (the fact that I was female compounded this exponentially). Verses like “foolishness is bound up into the heart of a child” and a “child left to himself brings shame to his mother” were used to bludgeon us with the concept that children are completely and totally capable of decision-making. Couple that with teachings like that infants are only lying when they cry, and children are essentially property, and you are left with a frightening vision for child-rearing.

And what we wind up with is my sister practically starving herself for two days because she refused to eat cheddar-broccoli soup and smile while she did it. Or me, as a twenty-four year old woman, curled up in a fetal position, sobbing into the carpet, having one of the worst panic attacks I’ve ever had because I wasn’t “allowed” to exit a conversation that was triggering me and go to my room. The insanity of it all was that I could have left the room– my father would never had physically restrained me. But I had been taught, since I was ten years old, that I do not have individual autonomy, free choice, or personal agency. After it was over he realized how insane it had been and apologized to me, in tears.

The problem is that we had both bought into the horrible lie that, as my parent’s child, they were the Absolute and Supreme Authority Over my Life in All Things. It never even occurred to me to think differently. When I went to the gynecologist for the first time, and she asked my mother to leave the room, I was completely baffled by the idea that I might have gone somewhere and done something my mother didn’t know about. The gynecologist was trying to tell me that it was “ok” if I was honest with her, she couldn’t tell my mother, it was against the law. I had a hard time explaining to her that I was with my parents every single waking moment of every single day, that there was absolutely nothing in my life they didn’t know about, because they were responsible for approving and being a part of everything I did.

This teaching has caused me so many problems as an adult– largely because I’ve been taught that having personal boundaries is wrong. I was taught to always nod my head and do exactly whatever any adult had told me to do, instantaneously, without complaint, and always. There was no room for “can I do it in five minutes?” There was zero tolerance for any kind of refusal, on any basis. There was never an excuse for disobeying anyone. Or even really saying “no” or “stop.” Personal feelings– feeling uncomfortable with a request, for example– were so far outside the point they didn’t bear consideration. And when, as an adult, I started establishing boundaries with people I’d never had any kind of boundary with before, the only result has been the termination of our relationship.

My parents were not abusive, let me make that clear. But, as a family, we swallowed this entire destructive system. Thankfully, for my family, the consequences were not severe. I was so thank-my-lucky-stars blessed because no one besides the pastor in my church abused me as a child or teenager (that would come later, in other relationships). But the consequences, for many, can be. Oh, the consequences can be horrendously and heart-breakingly hideous. The things that have been done to children in the name of patriarchy and “biblical” child-rearing are staggering and horrific.

Because, essentially, in this system, children do not have rights.

In this system, the only rights that matter are “parental rights,” and the organizations that seek to protect parental rights want to see Child Protective Services completely abolished, they openly campaign against the UN Rights of the Child, they call child abusers “heroes.” They openly support (and hire) men who have been convicted of sex crimes against children.

In this system, children are property. And you raise these children to literally be automatons– except, unlike Asimov’s positronic brain, there’s no Third Law— there’s no instruction to protect ourselves, only to obey.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is where I’d like to ask for your help.

You might be aware that there is a petition for the Home School Legal Defense Association to openly acknowledge that homeschoolers can also be abusers, and to educate their members about child abuse.

I want to ask you to go, read the 300+ stories, and sign the petition. If you’re someone who is familiar with CPS conspiracy theories, or you were someone who was abused in a homeschooling environment, or you knew someone who was, please tell your story, too. There’s other outlets– like Homeschoolers Anonymous, which is attempting to collect the stories of the once-homeschooled adults. There’s Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which is researching and collating all the documented cases of homeschooling abuse it can find. The Wartburg Watch monitors any and all of the damaging, destructive trends and teaching that appear in Christian culture.

These issues are  . . . so far beyond words. They are horrifying. They are abomination. They are anathema to anything a Christian should believe, to anything a decent human being should believe is true. The fact that there are entire organizations bent on openly supporting these concepts and then blatantly covering up the natural consequences . . . deeply grieves me. I’ve been reading these stories, and there are days where I can’t take it anymore, when I curl up on my bed and weep for all those who have been so gravely wounded– or destroyed– by these teachings.

This post is going to be a safe harbor. Ordinarily my comment policy is as open as I can make it– but not for this. I will not tolerate comments that dismiss or belittle the evil of these ideas, or attempt to justify them in any way. I will not allow that to happen here, on this post.

If you are someone who has been affected by these teachings, who has suffered abuse or trauma because of these ideas, you can speak truth here. You can tell your story– if that is something you want to do. If you want to share your story, but do not want to share it publicly, you can email me, or send my facebook page a message.

forgedimagination (at) gmail (dot) com.

facebook.com/defeatingthedragons

Feminism

on taking a break and being angry

anger

I wanted to write my last post today, finally discussing Christian fundamentalism in modern times, and how the orthodox belief of inerrancy has been largely abused by fundamentalism, or at the very least harmfully misunderstood.

That’s going to have to wait, because of where I’m at today. I already wasn’t feeling well (rapid changes in weather always give me migraines, and we have lots of nasty weather moving in for the next week), and I encountered an issue that I think needs my attention today, but I wanted to let you know what was going on, because I feel that this is an important issue that needs a lot of light.

No Longer Quivering, which hosts the Spiritual Abuse Survivor Blogs Network, occasionally runs some of my posts there, when the content fits into the material they cover. I very much appreciate the work that NLQ and the SASBN does, and that my story might be able to help others.

Last week, she ran my story on how the purity culture taught me that my rape was my own fault, that my rape was something that I needed to repent of. The discussion that followed was productive, I think, for the participants. We commiserated and shared our stories of the “object lessons” we heard growing up.

And then David Cuff entered the discussion. David Cuff is a Calvary Chapel pastor– the same circle of churches that Alex Grenier and others blog about at Calvary Chapel Abuse. Another Calvary Chapel church pastor recent sued Mr. Grenier for “defamation” for talking about the rampant abuse present at Calvary Chapel Visalia.  These churches were recently brought to national attention with the #whowouldJesussue awareness campaign.

That’s probably enough context. Here’s his original comment:

Samantha,
Thank you for the candid thoughts and illustrations regarding sexual purity and self-worth. I have been married for almost 29 years and have learned overtime the importance of love, oneness, and mutual respect. I believe we live in a fallen world that often is contrary to the three qualities I have mentioned. The Bible gives us many core principles for marriage and also leaves much to exploration and personal experience.

I am sorry for those whose personal experience has led them to doubt and challenge the Biblical principles for marriage. I am also sorry for those who have used vivid illustrations to warn of loosing your self-worth if those principles are violated. But…Jesus is our redeemer and the Bible is a message of redemption. While many of us have fallen from the Biblical standard for sexuality, if we repent and turn back to His guidance we can walk in the Light of His love for ourselves and our spouse.
Let me also say that if we look to Christ for our redemption and self-worth then who we are does not fade or fizzle through relationship or feelings…and will keep us looking for those who respect the dignity and Christ-worth that are ours because of what Jesus did for us at the Cross.

Thanks for allowing my two cents….
David Cuff

*emphasis added

A lot of people reacted to the statements I bolded, and I feel for good reason. I believed that Mr. Cuff was being careless and inattentive, which is the case I made in my response:

I think you are intending to be supportive, but I’m actually really confused as to what you’re trying to say.

If you’re truly speaking about what I’ve written here, I’m really puzzled as to what you mean by “doubting and challenging the biblical principles for marriage.” I don’t think any of what I wrote has anything to do with marriage– and I don’t think I’ve presented a “challenge” to biblical marriage whatsoever. Your phrasing causes me to wonder why you’re automatically connecting “rape” and “marriage.” Assuming these two are connected is, frankly, incredibly disturbing to me.

You also talk about the abuse of the object lessons I was taught as a young woman as being representative of the “biblical principles,” and I also find that troubling. The object lessons have nothing to do with “biblical principles.” They are about threats. They are about telling a woman that she is property. And unless you’re reverting back to OT Law when the only thing that mattered about a rape was how much she was financially worth to her father, this is… wrong.

Granted, you may be approaching this from the concept that “virginity” is a biblical principle, which is… debatable, at best. The only time the Bible actually refers to consensual pre-marital sex (Ex. 22:16-17) the only thing that happens is either a) they get married, or b) the dude pays the virgin bride-price. End of story. No stoning. No moral judgment. And one of the few times in the NT that anyone talks about sex the terms “fornication” is used… which is pretty much a catch-all, and in some contexts could mean nothing more than prostitution.

Basically, please don’t assume that the Bible is “super clear” about this issue, when it’s… just not.

And, considering the context of my article, where I was talking about sexual abuse, violence, and rape, the line where you talk about “falling” from biblical standards, and a “need to repent,” uhm…. wow. This is incredibly damaging language. I didn’t “fall.” I don’t need to “repent.” I was RAPED. Repeatedly. I was sexually abused nearly every day. This is not “falling.” And maybe you’re not speaking about my article, in which case, I wonder why you bothered commenting on this article at all.

Granted, I was a little bit peeved and “hetted up,” but I still feel that my response was reasonable, especially considering the content of the article, where I was speaking about how language and words like his were used to hurt me and almost drove me to suicide.

After he didn’t respond or return to clarify, I checked out his blog, where his most recent article (as of April 14) was a “rant against cyber-bullying.” So, I read it, and felt that this must be a man who respects those who have been hurt– even hurt be people who have been hurt like words like his, or even written by him. I left a comment, which he has chosen not to approve, where I asked him for an apology, that his comment had not been respectful to my writing, and that his carelessness in his words were hurtful. I asked him to come back and clarify his original point in order to clear up what he meant– at the time, I assumed that the connection between “rape” and “needing to repent” had merely been accidental on his part.

Nope.

Here’s what he wrote:

Wow….I have never offended so many people with what I thought was a short comment on Biblical Redemption. So, while not trying to justify myself or defend my new “bully” status I will try to address what I see as a misunderstanding.

First I never intended to offend any of you…especially Samantha the author. I simply wanted to point out a persons self-worth is not dependent upon prior abuse by others or their own failure (I did not suggest Samantha was a failure or had failed). I simply was emphasizing (I thought by way of encouragement) that The Bible Is A Book about redemption. And our lives can be redeemed from any abuse (ours upon others or others upon us).

I also wanted to reiterate what I believe is the standard of Biblical Sexuality (sexual purity with one man and one woman) doesn’t change from opinion and experience or even abuse. We live in a fallen world and there is much pain and abuse going on but Mutual respect, oneness and love are God’s design and I believe the N.T. gives plenty of guidance for Marriage relationships. I have personally abused and have been abused (yes even happens to men sometimes) prior to being redeemed by Jesus through my own repentance and trust in His finished work on the Cross for my sins.

If after ready my response you desire to send more negative comments my way…chill please! Sometimes you can disagree agreeably…

And here’s where I get angry.

Horribly, furiously, violently angry. Righteously angry.

Because he employed a tactic I’ve seen so many countless times from every single abusive pastor I’ve ever encountered.

The first paragraph of his response is complete and utter dismissal. He’s so shocked that we pointed out a potential wording of his that could hurt people. He just does not understand how his “short comment,” which was just so supportive, could have been perceived as hurtful.

This is called spiritual abuse.

Because he’s a pastor, talking about “biblical” concept, and he has the truth, which “doesn’t change from opinion and experience or even abuse.” My hurt, how his words hurt me, doesn’t matter at all. Because he’s right, and he has the Bible, and all he’s doing is telling me that I can be “redeemed.”

And then he pulls what he probably sees as a trump card: he’s been there, right there with me. He’s been abused– but guess what helped him overcome his abuse?

REPENTANCE and TRUSTING IN THE CROSS TO FORGIVE HIS SINS.

The connection I very naively assumed was an “accident’? Not an accident at all.

He really does think I need to repent and trust Jesus to forgive me for my rape.