Author: HA Editorial Team

The Invisible B: Faith Beauchemin’s Story

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Faith Beauchemin’s blog Roses and Revolutionaries. It was originally published on February 2, 2014.

*****

Being bisexual is freedom, and it is invisibility.

I flip-flop between calling myself bisexual and pansexual.  Bi is the word everyone knows. Pansexual doesn’t leave anyone out.  And you see, I don’t care what your gender or lack thereof is.  I’m attracted to people, not genders or genitals.

That doesn’t mean I’m attracted to every single person.  It doesn’t mean I have crushes on everyone I hang out with.  It doesn’t mean I’ll go home with just anyone.  All it means is that I could potentially be with a person who lies anywhere on or off the gender spectrum.

To be quite honest, I didn’t know pansexuality even existed up until very recently.  When I was a fundamentalist, the “being gay is a choice” narrative sort of made sense to me.  I mean, everyone had the ability to be attracted to everyone, right?  I read a Christian modesty book which claimed that everyone is “drawn to the female form” because it is just objectively beautiful.  So I figured I must be straight because I knew I was in fact attracted to men, and any pleasure I found in female beauty was artistic, it had nothing at all to do with sexuality.  Besides, all the Christian dating books had a tiny appendix tucked in the back that warned of the dangers of predatory college lesbians.  So, I knew lesbianism existed but all of my associations were totally negative.

Even when I was less naïve, even when I started thinking people were born homosexual and that most gays and lesbians (like most straight people) were not predators, I still didn’t realize that bisexuality actually existed.  “Bicurious” was a term I was aware of, but I thought it was a descriptor of an in-between phase, a transition between heterosexuality and homosexuality.  So therefore, since I was definitely attracted to men, I couldn’t possibly be a lesbian.  Simple as that.  There was no other option.  Monosexism was all I knew.

And that is what I mean when I say bisexuality is invisibility.

We get erased a lot.  The biggest problem is what I term “Schrodinger’s bisexual” which is that a person is perceived as either straight or gay depending on who they’re in a relationship with.  I’m dating a man right now, therefore everybody assumes I’m straight.  You can’t typically determine bisexuality by just one interaction with a person, by one specific point in time.  It doesn’t help that a lot of people talk about bisexuals as though they are “switching” between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Of course as a woman especially I am sometimes permitted the total opposite of erasure, and that is performance.  Men like the idea of a bisexual woman because their first thought is often of having a threeway.  One night in a bar, a girl kissed me, and immediately a man walked up from across the room and said, “Mind if I join in?”  Visions of a porn-worthy fuckfest dancing in his head, no doubt.  Later, I tried to say something to a friend about how frustrating it is that no one thinks you’re bi unless you’ve actually had a homosexual experience, and he just jokingly spun a scenario where I and another woman would have sex and he would film it.

This goes back to the overarching issue of female sexuality being owned by men.  If we are not having sex with them, we must at least be performing for their gaze.  That’s why most threesome porn is FFM.  That’s why a lot of men think that bisexual women exist to have threesomes with them, and that lesbian women could be “cured” by their magical dicks. And that is all such bullshit.  My sexuality, whatever it is, is mine.

But the seemingly fluid pansexual approach is in fact deemed everybody’s property.  More than anyone else’s, my sort of sexuality is approached with doubt.  Everyone makes assumptions and gets to speculate about the causes and motivations behind my sexuality (no, I am not just “greedy” and I am not going to try to fuck you. No I am not disease-ridden or commitment-phobic. No I’m not going to cheat on my partner).

It’s a reminder to everyone of how truly queer-phobic our society still is. 

We’ll (grudgingly, gradually) accept gay people as long as they want to be just like straight people.  We might potentially on a good day accept one or two trans people, as long as they have had whatever surgery we deem “necessary” for them to pass as cis.  But anyone who is genderqueer, agender, or pansexual is met with flat-out denial of their self-identification.  “You’re lying.” “You’re confused.” “You just want attention.”

Do I though? No more than anyone else.  I hate the fact that being honest about myself means I’ll get extra attention.  But we haven’t reached a truly all-point-on-the-spectrum accepting utopia yet. In fact we’re pretty far from it.

So what’s it like being pansexual?

I’m not exactly sure.  I’ve never been anything else.  What’s sexuality like for all of you out there who are monosexual?

It was truly liberating, though, admitting it to myself.  It was truly liberating learning that pansexuality exists.  I used to fight my attraction to women, not so much because I thought it was “sinful” (because yes the story of my sexuality is also concurrent, though not especially related, to my deconversion) as because I thought if I gave in to it I would have to get rid of my attraction to men.

When I understood that it is possible, acceptable, and even (for me) normal to be attracted to all types of people, it came as a great relief.

For the first time, I was no longer trying to fit my sexuality into any mold that society had built for it.  I could like what and who I liked, without feeling guilty or needing to repress anything.

Due to circumstances and the timing of me finally coming out to myself, I have never had sex with anyone but men.  It’s not really a point of bitterness for me, I don’t have to experience sex with all types of people to know my orientation (much like virgins often know their own orientations before ever having sex of any kind).  Right now I’m happily in a relationship and I don’t see that changing any time soon.  If I die never having had sex with anyone but men, I won’t feel like I was robbed, and I will still be pansexual.

Of course there is a lot of work to be done, to make this world a better and more accepting place for those who are not heterosexual or cisgender.  But “they” are right: coming out is the first step.  Coming out to yourself, to embrace freedom, and coming out to everyone else, to combat invisibility.

This is me taking that first step.

*****

Faith has an open call for stories on Roses and Revolutionaries for individuals that do not fit in the gay/straight binary. If you are interested in participating in that series, read more here. 

The Styrofoam Cup: Sam Neely’s Story

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Author note: Sam Neely blogs at Yes We Sam!

*****

It was just a Styrofoam cup. But the man said to examine it, so I did.

I was fifteen years old, and was sitting in a classroom at the church building where my homeschool umbrella met. I passed the cup to the next guy in the line. I don’t remember who it was, but we had been segregated, boys and girls, so I know it was a guy.

I don’t remember who this teacher was either. He was an older gentleman, bearded, husky. He wasn’t the parent of one of my friends, like most of my teachers were… he was a guest.

The Styrofoam cup had made its way down the line, and the instructor held it up to us again.

“It looks normal, right?” he asked. We agreed, yes it did. Then he poured water from a pitcher into the cup. The water leaked out the bottoms and sides of the cup.

“Just because something appears sturdy,” he said, “doesn’t mean that it is.”

The message was clear: condoms have holes in them. Never mind that the difference in material between Styrofoam and latex makes the analogy useless. Never mind that the only reason the cup he used in his example only had holes because he put them there and intentionally made them undetectable. No, the point of the illustration was that protection doesn’t exist.

Another illustration used by this lecturer involved a gun. He brought a printout of a handgun as an illustration of “A good thing that can sometimes be used for bad”. Like sex, he said.

But why did his illustration have to be a gun? This was less than a month after the shootings at Columbine High School. (I remember this, because he said that was why he only brought a picture of a gun, instead of the real thing).

After his presentation, we traded places with the girls, and they presumably sat through the same collection of demonstrations. We had another lecturer, I believe she was a former nurse, show us a slide show of graphic STD photographs.

The message was clear: Don’t have sex.

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So why does this bother me? I got this message all the time — at home, at church, even in a series of public service announcements on television. Why did it bother me here?

Because this was science class.

The biology class at my homeschool co-op divided the A Beka textbook into the systems of the human body, focusing on one at a time, but the course did not cover the chapter on the reproductive system. Instead, we had an optional (parental permission required) course called “Crossroads” where we were supposed to learn about sex. I signed up for it, assuming it would be the science that was left out of the curriculum.

But it wasn’t…

It was just the “don’t do it” lectures, with scare tactics and manipulation.

*****

I’ve spent the last five days trying to expand this story into a deeper post. I’ve tried to tell stories of my sexual history, and how it was painted by certain experiences, how many of them come from purity culture, and how many simply come from my own bad luck, but the thoughts are too jumbled, and everything is too complicated. Instead, I’m left only with this anecdote.

It says nothing, and it says everything.

It is one of the funniest stories I tell.

It is also one of the saddest.

Oak Brook College of Law Distances Itself from Bill Gothard and IBLP

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

In the wake of allegations and evidence that Bill Gothard has sexually harassed and molested young women for several decades, Oak Brook College of Law (OBCL) has announced plans to distance itself from Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles.

When OBCL was launched in 1995, it was done so as a joint effort between Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI) and HSLDA stakeholders. Bill Gothard served as the law school’s Chancellor, Michael Farris served on the Board of Trustees, and former HSLDA director and staff attorney Jordan Lorence served as the school’s Constitutional Law Professor as well as Chairman of Oak Brook’s Board of Advisors.

OBCL was launched by ATI itself. Their graduation ceremonies have been held at IBLP Training Centers. Law students at OBCL not only study Bill Gothard’s Basic Seminar material, but up until last year were required by Oak Brook’s official college policies — as a prerequisite for admission — to attend “all the sessions of the Seminar in Basic Life Principles sponsored by the Institute in Basic Life Principles.”

Much of this appears to be changing, however, with the college’s recently announced plans. These plans involve three organizational changes, specified on Tuesday, February 18, through an internal news bulletin by OBCL to their faculty, staff, alumni, and current students. (Oak Brook’s website still has no official public statement on the matter.) These changes are:

1. Bill Gothard will “no longer serve as chancellor.”

2. Oak Brook’s board, which previously “consisted of a few IBLP Board members and several OBCL faculty and alumni,” will — at least for the present year — include “no IBLP Board members.”

Note: While #2 is technically accurate, it can also be misleading. There remains a strong and significant connection between Oak Brook, Bill Gothard, and IBLP as Oak Brook’s current board includes Bob Barth. While Bob Barth is technically not an IBLP board member, he is nonetheless a key figure in Gothard’s empire. Barth is not only the General Legal Counsel for IBLP, he is the Secretary for 3 organizations of which Bill Gothard is President: IBLP, Embassy International, and ALERT.

3. Whereas all prospective Oak Brook students were required as of last year to take IBLP’s Seminar in Basic Life Principles, the school will “no longer require completion of the Seminar in Basic Youth Conflicts as a prerequisite for admission.”

You can view the college’s internal news bulletin in full as a PDF here.

IBLP has reciprocated the distancing, no longer listing Oak Brook as one of its “educational programs.” This is a new change as of at least February 3, when IBLP still listed the college as one of their programs. (A screen capture from February 1 confirms this as a recent change as well.)

These announcements come slightly more than week after Jordan Lorence emailed Homeschoolers Anonymous and said that, as of February 10, he had “resigned from all of [his] connections with Oak Brook College of Law.”

Neither OBCL nor IBLP has made any public statement on either these organizational changes, the evidence concerning Bill Gothard’s abusive actions, or IBLP’s attempts to ignore Gothard’s abusive actions — or if there is any relationship between them.

Patrick Henry College Releases Statement on Sexual Assault Cases

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

On Monday, Kiera Feldman — a member of the Ochberg Society for Trauma Journalism  — published a story in the New Republic about how Patrick Henry College (PHC) has handled sexual assault cases on its campus. The story, entitled “Sexual Assault at Patrick Henry College, God’s Harvard”, has caused an uproar among homeschool alumni, PHC graduates, and others. The story got picked up by Salon and other news agencies.

Yesterday, PHC’s Office of Communications released a “Statement by Patrick Henry College to concerned alumni and students about article in The New Republic.” It was disseminated yesterday to alumni and today to PHC’s general student body (and was met with student applause).

You can view the statement in full as a PDF here. An excerpt follows:

Many of you may be aware of an article just published in The New Republic magazine (and picked up by several websites/blogs) concerning allegations of sexual assault now being made in connection with events that occurred off campus some years ago – especially about one situation more than seven years ago, and another about four years ago.

…Patrick Henry College is absolutely committed to the protection and care of our students, male and female equally…

…The fact is that the information provided by the key individuals at the time differs from the allegations now related in the New Republic article. The College acted on the basis of the information made available at the time. Moreover, at no time did anyone suggest to any female student that she was somehow responsible, or more at fault for the situation…

…Where possible, we provided the reporter and the magazine with clarification of some of these allegations contained in her article, but she either chose to disregard the information or simply lumped the information into a single paragraph toward the article’s end…

…Any fair observer would conclude that a review of the entire evidence demonstrates that PHC earnestly sought to do the right thing in each instance, did not attempt to cover-up any sexual crimes, and did not seek to blame women for the improper behavior of male students…

…We are glad that the number of such situations involving PHC students is far below American campus averages…

(PHC Professor of Biblical Studies Darrel Cox also wrote his own statement, arguing that the New Republic piece was “a very angry (and honestly, shoddy) attempt at a hit-piece” and that the actual victim in all of this is Sandra Corbitt, PHC’s Dean of Student Affairs.)

Rachel Leon, who was cited in the New Republic article, gave the following response to PHC’s statement:

As Sarah’s friend and former roommate, it’s been deeply distressing to watch some of the direct and indirect attacks on her testimony and character from both the Patrick Henry College administration and the wider PHC community. Sarah is a humble, truthful, and brave friend who only came forward because she wanted to do something to help other victims of sexual assault at PHC. In the hellish days right after the assault, Sarah painstakingly drew up a detailed account of her assault to turn in to Dean Corbitt. This is the same account she turned in to the journalist who wrote the New Republic article. Sarah honestly believed that the administration would handle her case appropriately, and we both felt a sense of betrayal when the administration instead chose to discipline both her and her attacker as though her sexual assault had actually been a consensual encounter. Her account of the assault and her attacker’s account of the assault really only differed on one point: her attacker said it had all been consensual. That Corbitt chose to discipline her by having her read materials about purity shows that Corbitt believed Sarah’s attacker’s version of events from the start. This gives the lie to any notion that the college handled this investigation in a fair and impartial manner. I still vividly remember sitting in Corbitt’s office holding Sarah’s hand as she violently trembled while explaining the details of her assault and responding to Corbitt’s harsh cross-examination. I still vividly remember the way she sometimes screamed at night because of her nightmares. I still vividly remember walking her across campus after dark because she was afraid to walk alone. As I reflect upon some of the worst memories I have of my time at PHC, I challenge the PHC community to step up to the plate as a Christian community and demand greater support for victims and accountability for all who would choose to harm them.

Further reading:

** Note Sessions’s comment, made in September of 2013, months before the New Republic piece:

Girls have been raped while attending Patrick Henry College: girls who I sat next to in class, by men who I sat next to in class. Other women I know were at different times mercilessly harassed, stalked and frightened—all on the campus of Patrick Henry College. Often it was the “nice boys” no one in a million years would imagine could do something like that until they saw it with their own eyes.

Owning My Sexuality: Sherah’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Sherah” is a pseudonym.

*****

When I was 26, I learned something that changed my life.

I am a sexual being.

I have sexual energy available to me to help me grow up. There is hope right inside me that I won’t always feel like a mere child, that I will be able to grow up and be an adult. I learned that every culture has ways of communicating about sexuality and that I can use the choices I make about dress, makeup, hairstyle, jewelry and accessories to communicate about where I am in my growing up process and who I see myself to be.

This may sound really basic and you might wonder how on earth I had missed these ideas. To give you some background, I am the second oldest of twelve children, homeschooled K-12, and I never had any sex education. This is not to say that my parents hid the facts about reproduction from me. With ten younger siblings, my experience of family life was constantly shaped by pregnancy and birth. Plus, I got the facts about things at the cellular level from my biology textbook.

But what I just didn’t get was the distinction between sexuality and sexual behavior.

Because I was taught that sex was for married people only, and because I was trying so hard to be a good little Christian and perfectly follow all the rules, I thought I had to be a non-sexual person. It never occurred to me that I was trying to be something that doesn’t exist. It never occurred to me that I had to split off a part of myself and numb it into oblivion to achieve my unrealistic goal. I’m not at all sorry that I failed in this endeavor. What scares me to this day is how much I succeeded in suppressing my normal impulses to explore and learn and grow and express myself and how much I succeeded in freezing up my own energy until I literally felt dead inside and wondered if I would ever feel alive again.

Knock, knock, is there anybody home in my own body?

Back when I thought I had to reject and separate myself from everything sexual, I carried a lot of tension in my body, flattening my chest, holding in my tummy and keeping my legs together because I didn’t think it was okay for me to grow up and be a woman and have all the parts and feelings that other women have. I used to feel that sex was some kind of monster that would attack me if I ever left the house with my hair down. I used to be paranoid about avoiding any expression of sexuality by anyone around me for fear of contamination.

Now that I own my own sexuality, I know that I have the right to set my own boundaries and make my own choices about what to do with my body and my energy. I can dress, and fix my hair and even carry my body in ways that express who I am and how I see myself as a woman.  I can breathe deeply without worrying that my tummy will stick out and I will look like a pregnant lady.

Owning my sexuality doesn’t mean that I have to engage in any sexual behavior. I actually feel much stronger now about my right to make my own choices and say no to anything I don’t want.

But I don’t have to control or avoid anyone else’s sexuality.

It is okay for other people to dress in ways that express who they are or want to be. I don’t have to judge others’ decisions to engage in sexual behavior if they want to do that. Because I have my own boundaries, it doesn’t have to affect me. Plus, I feel more reverence and respect for everyone’s sexuality, including my own, and I feel more hopeful about the possibilities of using my sexuality as a creative, life-giving and life-enhancing force, whether I choose to be in a relationship, to have children and/or to put my energy into some project to improve the world for future generations.

P.S. Now that I’ve undertaken the task of giving myself a real sex education and getting all of my questions answered, I’m realizing the multiple ways that a simplistic rule such as ‘just wait until you’re married to deal with the whole category of sex’, can be damaging. First, it can cause a person to disown their sexuality, leave their personality drastically underdeveloped and repress their instincts and desire to become an adult. But secondly, sexual behavior includes such a broad range of behaviors that for two people to commit to a lifelong sexual relationship with each other without taking the time to find out something about each other’s unique and individual sexual preferences seems very imprudent to me.

Would I commit to a career as a pilot if I had never flown in an aircraft? Certainly not!

So why should I be expected to commit to a lifelong sexual relationship with someone without first trying at least a few sexual behaviors such as kissing and making out.

I take marriage seriously, which is why I want to know what I’m getting into.

Here There Be Dragons: St. George’s Story

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “St. George” is a pseudonym.

*****

My youth pastor once told me the story of how his parents gave him “The Talk”. You know the one I mean. Apparently, his mother walked into the room and said, out of the blue and with no prologue, “Gary, soon you’re going to have certain feelings about girls. Just make sure you don’t get it in her.” She then exited the room, leaving Gary hopelessly confused.

Sometimes, I envy him. He received better instruction than I did.

You see, my parents didn’t talk to me about sex at all. I mean I suppose it was a more open subject in our family than in some. But I never received anything even remotely resembling “The Talk”.

Instead, we got the internet. I don’t know if the two were related in my parents’ minds or not. Probably not.

So there I was. Little guy, totally lost in the woods of human sexuality, not a clue how the trees grow in that forest, but absolutely sure that there must be an explanation.

For a long time, I thought that the phrase “sleeping together” was to be taken literally. I had cunningly deduced that pregnancy occurred when a man and a woman slept in the same bed at the same time. This explained why those people on TV always seemed to be acting so enthusiastic and yet secretive about what I assumed were romantic activities — after all, it must be difficult to find time to fall asleep together for several hours and not get woken up.

I remember a family vacation from around that time in my life. The entire family was sharing one hotel room to save money, and it was determined that I would share a bed with my two sisters. I was terrified, and after I was sure my parents were asleep, I slipped out of bed and slept on the floor that night. I couldn’t imagine what kind of sick bastards my parents must be for thinking I was ready to be a father, and with my own sisters no less.

Eventually, as no further sign of my parents’ mental illness emerged, I reasoned that I must not have figured out all the details on this “sex” thing everyone seemed so keen on.

The game was afoot once more.

By this time, my powers of deduction had begun to emerge. I had heard it rumored that men and women were “different”. This much seemed obvious; obviously, women had longer hair. As I thought more about this, however, I realized that my aunt had very short hair. There must be more, I thought.

If I hadn’t noticed any other significant difference, then the difference must be on a part of the body that was hidden. From there, I made the necessary deductions rather quickly. It’s all a matter of engineering, and I’d played that peg game at Cracker Barrel before.  Of course, now I understand that these deductions were guided by instinct as well, but it certainly felt as though I were performing some sort of arcane conjecture, a modern alchemist speculating on the very meaning and nature of life itself.

But how to confirm my theories? This was what troubled me. Then, I remembered: the internet. That tool for finding animated Pokemon cursors, for downloading favorite sound clips from Star Wars and M*A*S*H? Perhaps it could help me in this matter.

And that is how I came to Ask Jeeves: “sex?”

It wasn’t a real question, but it was enough to point Jeeves in the right direction. As he retrieved resources to educate me, my heart started to beat faster. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but suddenly I realized that I was probably doing something that would displease my parents.

Ever have quests for knowledge been so opposed by those in authority. Like any true scientist, I remained resolute in curiosity and jumpy in disposition, listening for the sound of my mother returning from…actually, I have no idea where she was.

But she stayed there, as Jeeves began to educate me. It wasn’t enough, he was using big words. I needed something more instructive. Like a video.

Jeeves! “sex video?”

Now, Jeeves was asking me lots of strange questions. “Asians”? Why, does it work different in Asia? I want to know how it works in America first, we can start cross-cultural studies later, Jeeves. Something about pictures of money. I wasn’t interested in that; I knew what money looked like. “Amateurs”? No, I wanted an expert to teach me about this stuff.

Eventually, God only knows how, I actually got to a video. On a dial-up connection. Yeah. You can be impressed at my tenacity now. I’ll wait.

I honestly don’t remember what sort of video it was. With what I know now, it’s a miracle I didn’t pick up some very strange ideas about sexuality that day.

Regardless, my suspicions were confirmed. I knew How It Worked now. My afternoon then proceeded much as usual, with Pokemon and the Legend of Zelda. Somehow, I had the presence of mind and tech savvy to clear the browsing history. As far as I know, my parents never discovered what had happened. They certainly never mentioned it to me. It certainly no longer mattered to me — the mystery had been solved, it was time to move on.

Unfortunately, I developed into a very insecure person, for reasons that had nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with…well, with me. I’m just that way.

The point is that even today, because I was never “formally educated” in matters of sexuality, there persists a lingering doubt in the back of my mind. That is, I doubt my knowledge of sexuality and sexual behavior. Like, what if there are dragons involved? There could be dragons involved.

I don’t think there are dragons involved.

But then again, nobody experienced in such things has ever explicitly told me that there are never any dragons involved. What if I’m, like, with my wife someday and we’re all like happy times but then a dragon bursts through the wall all like RAWR!!! and my wife is all kill it using the ancient secret method and I’m like fuck fuck fuck what the fuck is the ancient secret method how do I even?

(These aren’t rational fears. I get that.)

When I’m able to take a step back from my anxieties, to examine my thoughts rationally, I’m actually not worried about dragons or anything so fanciful.  But I don’t like to approach anything serious without what I feel is an adequate explanation of what to expect. I get the same sort of fears about paying my taxes, or taking a required drug test, or applying for a job.

My point is, talk to your kids about sex. Also, talk to your kids about dragons.  But mainly the sex thing. 

Please. 

Growing up is a process fraught with insecurities and fears already, without worrying about things like whether it’s possible to accidentally commit incest.

Maybe you can’t talk to your kids about sex.  Maybe you just don’t know how to have that conversation, or perhaps (like me!) you’re too insecure in your own perception of sexuality and sexual issues to address your child’s questions in a helpful and reassuring way.  In that case, consider trusting someone else with the responsibility – a family member, perhaps.  Someone trustworthy.

Just get it done. 

That way, when your kid grows up and hears he needs to “bring protection”, he’ll grab some condoms instead of a sword and shield.

Dear Michael Farris, Sexual Abuse Isn’t a “Basic Strength” That “Can Get Out of Control”

HA Editorial Team22 Comments

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

*****

“You have planted wickedness and harvested a thriving crop of sins. You have eaten the fruit of lies — trusting in your own way, believing that your great armies could make your nation safe.”
~ Hosea 10:13

*****

On Sunday, HSLDA’s Michael Farris made his first public statement on the recent controversies surrounding Doug Phillips’s clergy sexual abuse and Bill Gothard’s sexual child abuse.

Take a look:

I continue to hear distressing news about the moral conduct of Christian leaders and speakers some of whom were/are popular in the homeschooling movement. Of course, anyone can sin–including me. But I cannot be so gracious about protracted patterns of sin that reveal a deep hypocrisy.

From my own observation there is a central problem that often accompanies these kinds of failures. All leaders have to have a certain amount of ego strength to be able to withstand the slings and arrows of the naysayers who attack anyone who attempts to lead. But, that basic strength can get out of control. Consider it a danger sign when the leader never shares the spotlight with other leaders in the organization. Consider it another danger sign when the leader does not have anyone in his organization with both the power and the character to tell him “no” at times.

Mike Smith has been at my side at HSLDA from the beginning and he now leads the organization day to day. Chris Klicka was a significant part of our leadership team for many years as well. And I guarantee you that both Mike Smith and the HSLDA board tell me “no” on semi-regular occasions.

I am also reminded of the statement of Dick Armey when he was asked what his wife would say if he was caught in an affair like Bill Clinton. He said, “She would say ‘how do I reload this thing?’ as I lay there in a pool of blood.”

Having a wife who is a good shot is also a great asset.

(Farris’s statement is archived on HA as a PDF here and a PNG here.)

Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s review what exactly the “distressing news” is concerning individuals who “were/are popular in the homeschooling movement”:

While in a position of hegemonic spiritual leadership, Doug Phillips pursued a sexual relationship with a young woman who worked for him and was under his authority. This is clergy sexual abuse.

Bill Gothard has sexually harassed and molested over 30 young woman, including children, for decades. He personally admitted “defrauding” young women decades ago. This is child sexual abuse.

Taking advantage of, harassing, and/or molesting children and young adult women isn’t simply “sin” or “hypocrisy” which “anyone” can fall into. Taking advantage of, harassing, and/or molesting children and young adult women is criminal behavior. It is sexual abuse, plain and simply. This isn’t a question of people’s fallibility; it isn’t a question of “ego strength,” unless you somehow believe leaders are innately abusers.

And it sure as hell isn’t a question of “basic strengths.” Sexual abuse isn’t a “basic strength” that “can get out of control.” It’s not something that comes from “too much of a good thing.” Michael Farris’s attempts to spin these situations away from criminal activity and into the realm of “we’ve all fallen short” is self-serving, inexcusable, and horrifying. It is yet another example that he is in denial about abuse within the movement he himself helped to build.

Making this statement of his even more ironic and tragic is that a mere day later after Farris praised himself for accountability and looked down on other leaders for not taking “protected patterns of sin” seriously — just one day later — the New Republic released a devastating look at how Patrick Henry College has handled sexual assault cases on its campus, entitled “Sexual Assault at Patrick Henry College, God’s Harvard.”

The basic premise?

Patrick Henry College, which Michael Farris founded and is currently the Chancellor of, does not take protracted patterns of sexual assault seriously.

Patrick Henry College has ignored, minimized, and threatened abuse survivors and people standing up for them. Just like Doug Phillips and Vision Forum. Just like Bill Gothard and IBLP.

And yet Farris still has the gall to praise himself for treating “protracted patterns” differently.

The hypocrisy did not go unnoticed. Homeschool alumni took to Farris’s page to call him out for making such a statement about Phillips and Gothard right when the story about PHC was coming out. Farris’s response was predictable, considering it was completely deja vu from HSLDA’s handling of the #HSLDAMustCampaign: he quickly deleted the evidence of his original statement (which, again, HA archived as a PDF here and a PNG here), deleted comment after comment after comment after comment by homeschool alumni, and blocked homeschool alumni from his public page.

Honestly, Michael Farris has run out of time to play these games.

He has spent decades ignoring the growing, obvious, and publicly verified problems — and what did he do? He remained silent. He has never publicly condemned the abusive teachings of Doug Phillips. He has never publicly condemned the soul-crushing system of Bill Gothard’s ATI. (In fact, he himself brought Inge ATI’s Inge Cannon to HSLDA and HSLDA continues to feature Gothard’s homeschool curriculum on its website.) He has refused to this day to acknowledge the concerns of homeschool alumni and parents that homeschool communities need to take abuse more seriously specifically because of reasons like this.

And when when he finally breaks his silence, it is with this? Yet another attempt to sweep everything under the rug by saying these abusers were just “too strong” for their own good, that praise God he has two (?) people at HSLDA who stand up to him (but one is deceased?), and then he closes with a joke about domestic homicide?

Not once, not even once, does he say, “What these men did was abuse, and it was wrong, and we as a community need to take abuse seriously.”

Not. Once.

Not once does he say, “I am sorry that I gave platforms to and partnered with these individuals that have caused so much pain for so many people.” Instead it’s “basic strengths” that “got out of control” and basically people should be more like him or lol their wives will shoot them.

Even with this short-lived statement, Michael Farris still refused to call these men out by name. He was still afraid to directly criticize Bill Gothard. He is still hiding.

Homeschooled children deserve better from you, Michael.

If you continue to refuse to call abuse abuse, you’re contributing to the exact same culture of silence from which Phillips and Gothard fed — the exact same culture of silence that you intimately built and continue to defend.

The Secrets of the Birds and Bees: Iris Rosenthal’s Story

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Iris Rosenthal” is a pseudonym. Iris Rosenthal blogs at The Spiritual Llama. This story is reprinted with her permission. Also by Iris on HA: “Confessions of a Homeschooler,” Part One and Part Two.

*****

When I was ten years old I saw blood in the toilet after I finished using the bathroom. Freaked out and thinking that I was dying, I ran and told my mom that there was blood in the toilet when I went pee.

She asked me if I was sure and said that it might be from her and she forgot to flush the toilet. I was then told to take a clean piece of toilet paper and check to see which hole the blood was coming from, if any. Then she proceeded to tell me that if the blood was coming from my poop hole I would need to go to the hospital, if it was coming from my vagina then she would need to have a talk with me, and if there wasn’t any blood then she just forgot to flush the toilet.

So I went to the bathroom to check and discovered that I wasn’t bleeding at all. Relieved that I didn’t have to go to the hospital and that I wasn’t going to die but still very curious what the talk would be about, I decided to fake my period. I picked a scab on my leg to make it bleed on the toilet paper and told my mom that it was coming from my vagina.

She then sent my siblings out of the room, turned the lights down and sat me down on the couch with her.

At this point I thought I was in deep, deep trouble (and so did my  siblings, because there was no sign of them lurking about).

Then my mom started explaining the bleeding. She told me that what I had experienced was my first period, I would get them every month for seven days, and that meant that I could have babies now.

At that point I was wondering what my deception had gotten me into, and decided that I didn’t ever want to get old if bleeding every month was considered normal.

The next day she gave me a book called Preparing for Adolescence by Dr. James Dobson. She told me to mark down on notebook paper how long I was reading and what chapters, so it would count as my Health subject.

The only thing I remember from that book (besides it being boring) was that I finally learned what masturbation was. That thing I did where I would touch myself finally had a name.

I would fake a period every month so that I wouldn’t get in trouble.

I didn’t get my first real period until I was 13. Even then I wasn’t any more ready for it than I was when I was ten. There was so much blood, I always felt angry all the time and my stomach would hurt.

I would get in trouble with my mom for “being in a bad mood” even if I tried to tell her that I was on my period. Apparently that was no excuse and since I was a Christian I had to always be in a good mood. “A crabby Christian is an oxymoron.” She would say.

One day I started my period at homeschool co-op, I didn’t have any pads with me but there was a basket of tampons on the back of the toilet. It took a few tampons for me to figure out how it worked, but I was finally successful… Or so I thought.

After co-op I went to my riding lesson, and an hour later I was very sore. I almost couldn’t get the tampon out and started freaking out thinking that it was stuck.  Thankfully I was finally able to get it out and wadded up some toilet tissue so that I wouldn’t bleed all over the place.

I was never really told how sex worked, so I had to figure it out on my own. Living on a farm I watched the animals and from there was able to get a better idea. But it wasn’t until I read a book on Native American folklore that I got a clear picture of how sex worked for humans.

When I moved out I did a ton of internet searches and then I had information overload.

After all, you can only learn so much from watching a goat.

Like Acid on Skin: Myra’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Myra” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: the following story contains descriptions of physical and sexual abuse of a child.

*****

Perhaps this is just for me, for me to finally put into words the terrible pain in my heart, which seems to slowly eat away at life like acid on skin. Sexual education.

I received none as a child, absolutely none.

The following story might be confusing in places because I have recently been told I suffer from PTSD and DID, or dissociative identity disorder. Large portions of my childhood are missing, confused, or simply changed. Only recently has the truth been resurfacing in my mind.

I was homeschooled my entire life growing up, and my family was the homeschooling family to be in our area.

My mother kept a computer in the house that was password protected and we were never allowed to use it unless we were typing. I found her password book one day tucked under her mattress when I was cleaning the house. When I was a teenager I snuck out of my room in the middle of the night and I searched sex, rape, and pornography on the World Wide Web. They were all terms I had heard before, mostly associated with evil and the world going to the devil at church.

Needless to say I got a first-hand pseudo sex education from the porn industry.  And I was hooked. I spent every night on that computer watching pornography in a trance. I realized, eventually, that I had been masturbating since before I could remember as a self-soothing mechanism when I was spanked. I also realized that my father touched me after beating me (it was called spanking but I was always left with bruises from the middle of my back to my knees) to make me stop crying.

I had my first orgasm as a small child with my father.

Frankly, the experience was beyond confusing. The actual experience with him was pleasurable not painful at all, but it forever associated being beaten with sex for me. And obviously, I was being molested even thought I did not know it. I honestly thought it was how people were supposed to comfort their children. The intense shame and regret I felt as a teenager immediately caused me to dissociate the memory and place it in my mind in a place that was carefully guarded.

I do not know how long this abuse continued or when it started. There are other elements of the abuse that I have recently remembered but are too fresh, raw, and frankly too explicit to detail.

My mother spanked me between the legs whenever she caught me masturbating. When I was almost a teenager I was raped by a family friend.

Today I am left with a confusing mixture of sexual issues. I have a hard time not associating sex with punishment. I have a hard time not seeing sex as something used to make someone feel better, basically, used as a commodity, I have a hard time associating intimacy with sexual action.

Having any sort of sexual education might have helped me see that I was being taken advantage of by the people who were supposed to care for me. Perhaps it would not have, I honestly do not know. I do know that it could have saved me from a life long struggle with pornography addiction.

I hear others talking about how wonderful, intimate and generally fireworkery, sex is.

I wish that had not been taken from me.

I wish I had not been so isolated. I wish I had been told more about sex.

My Changing Body, My Changing Mind: Abishai’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 7.48.57 PM

Series disclaimer: HA’s “Let’s Talk About Sex (Ed)” series contains frank, honest, and uncensored conversations about sexuality and sex education. It is intended for mature audiences.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Abishai” is a pseudonym.

*****

“No way, they don’t get naked! A baby is made when a Mom and Dad pray for it.”

In spite of the neighborhood kids’ efforts, I tried so hard to defend what I’d been taught. Their version of making babies by getting naked would mean three things:

1. My parents had lied to me.

2. The public school kids had been taught correctly.

3. The jumper-wearing moms in our homeschool group were doing things (naked things!) with the stern dads.

I think I somehow made it to about ten or eleven years old when my mom finally had to sit down and have her version of “the talk” with me.

It wasn’t really informative though, at least not in the way I needed it to be. She had purchased a typical Your Changing Body book through one of the homeschool book catalogs. I learned about periods and that my hips would get wider and that I should be glad I’m not a boy because they have something called wet dreams. Then came the sex part – the extent of which was that a married couple would get naked, move around, and it would be emotionally fulfilling for the wife and sexually fulfilling for the husband. She would become pregnant. The end.

As I grew older and heard more things, the info from my Mom was pretty… uninformative. Birth control and condoms were things that irresponsible people used when they were sleeping around. Those methods always failed, and because the type of people who have sex before marriage are selfish, they will inevitably have an abortion once they get knocked up… if they don’t die of an STD first. Sometimes people are confused and dress like the opposite sex – we should pity them for being so conflicted. Gay people? They choose to be that way and they have an agenda!! Oh the agenda!! Seduce the kids and make everyone gay. They will also all get AIDS. Men look lustfully at women, and as a woman I should dress in such a way so that I don’t lead them astray. God-forbid they should be in control of themselves and their thoughts.

Girls at church wearing low tops or short skirts were always referred to as sluts.

It’s hard, twenty years later, to look back at all of this and laugh about it as a coping mechanism. I can’t, it’s still too painful. I can also see now that I was very interested in sex from a really young age. Yet I was taught to feel ashamed of those feelings.

I knew that the craziest things would give me that “funny feeling down there” and I was pretty sure that in addition to liking boys… I also liked girls. Yet, I knew that not only was I suppose to not be boy-crazy (though I should pray for my future husband!) but any feelings for females meant that I was confused, and was as bad as those “dykes” who were the butt of many of my Mom’s jokes.

Oddly enough, it was those early days of AOL, it’s Instant Messenger and the chat rooms that came with it that were my sanity and my education. When I was about 16 I finally had found a place to find answers to my questions. I was able to engage in a really colorful online life where I could be myself but not have to take any risks – which was especially important given how very naive I was. It was a perfect way for someone like me to finally figure out who I was.

Now, at 30, I harbor a lot of resentment for the limited information I was given. I’m now in year seven of a happy, monogamous, kinky relationship. To my parent’s dismay, we live in sin. To my dismay, nearly all of my friends who quickly got married out of high school like they were supposed to, are now divorced or separated.

A few of my younger siblings are now married; each got married very young, to their first loves. Their speedy relationships were grounded in purity and of course won my parents’ approval. Meanwhile, I’m still told that this cow is giving her milk away for free.

Some things will never change…