purity culture

A Shamed Sexuality: Gracie’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. “Gracie” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: the following story contains descriptions of sexual harassment and emotional abuse relating to sexuality.

*****

“Will you have sex with me?”

So much hung on that question. I was in love with him. I wanted to be with him more than I could put into words. I said yes before I could allow myself to really look at the situation.

My sex education was never given to me. My mother gave me “The Big Sex Talk” without ever explaining sex. It wasn’t till I was sixteen or seventeen, and had started going to public school, that I figured out was sex was and how women get pregnant. Seventeen. I would hear things from the kids at school, words or phrases I knew were vulgar, and I would slowly piece together their meanings. I didn’t know what birth control was or why you would ever need it. I spent my high school years hiding my lack of knowledge, discreetly looking up definitions online, trying not to look like the freak I felt I so obviously was.

I entered my first year of college as an emotionally and sexually repressed woman who felt nothing but shame from her body, a body that she knew little to nothing about. The results proved to be detrimental.

The first rude awakening came during a football game, in a busy stadium crowded by over 60,000 people. I was cornered by two large men who made sexual comments at me, tried to get me to sit with them, and groped and grabbed at me. It was all over in just a few moments and they disappeared into the crowd. I spent the next several days terrified that they would walk into the restaurant I worked in or run into me on campus. I had no one I could talk to about it. I was afraid to call my parents, afraid they’d make me come home.

So I bottled it up and labeled it with more shame.

I don’t know how many panics attacks I had that week.

Then came the boy. He was attractive, funny, adventurous, and had a way of making me drop everything for him. But he didn’t love me. In fact, he was verbally and emotionally manipulative and abusive. He would dangle his “love” over my head and after 9 months of following him around, I would have done anything to hear that he loved me.

I come from a large and chaotic household where emotions were never expressed. I can’t remember ever feeling loved or welcome at home. My high school boyfriend was so wrapped up in being the “good godly young man” and staying “pure-minded” that he broke up with me because he was afraid to find me attractive, lest I ruin his relationship with the Lord. Sex was never discussed. Sexuality might as well have been a curse word. The only thing I had ever felt sexually was shame.

But here he was, asking me to have sex with him. As my abuser so clearly explained, over a text message, he would be delighted to be my boyfriend, to love me, if I only agree to have sex with him.

And I said yes.

Then came that night; that horrible, horrific night. He looked at my undressed self and he turned away with disgust. Suddenly I was cheap he said. It was too easy to get me to sleep with him. Had I gained weight? Was I not taking care of myself?

I still hear his violent words running on a loop through my mind. Even though I walked away from everything that was connected to him or that year, I have found that walking away from those memories is almost impossible.

Therapy was the first time I was told that my having a desire to share an intimate and sexual relationship with the man I loved wasn’t a bad or shameful thing. It’s called having sexuality. Being a human. Every human has sexuality and I can’t fault myself for wanting to explore mine.

I wish that abstinence wasn’t taught so aggressively to me. I was trained to hide away my sexuality and never let anyone know it’s there. I was told that I was responsible if a boy around me “stumbled” and had an “impure thought.” That’s a lot of pressure and shame to put on a child. Now, as an adult, I’m having to teach myself to celebrate my sexuality and not shame myself in it. It’s a slow learning process.

Telling my story is helpful. Therapy is helpful. Naming my abuser for what he was is helpful. All of this is very painful, stressful, difficult, but very helpful.

And very hopeful.

How I Educated Myself About Sex: Holly’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.

Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Holly” is a pseudonym. Also by Holly on HA: “Memories of EXCEL” and “Seeing Shades of Blue.”

*****

As I reflect on my experience with sex education, there are probably 5 or 6 stories I could write, but they don’t all fit together into one narrative. I learned about sex in little bits and pieces, and got strange mixed messages that never taught me about consent or the possibility of pleasure. I knew some things I shouldn’t have, but didn’t connect them to sex, and other things I should have known I didn’t know, and found out too late. But that isn’t my story today.

Today I am going to tell you about how I decided to teach myself about sex.

When I was about 9 or 10, my mom told me the basics of how babies were made. In retrospect it was very basic. I remember laughing nervously afterwards and saying “Is that all? You did that four times?” Since we were immersed in purity culture, sex was not discussed in a positive light in our home. The topic was generally avoided or discussed as something dirty, so I didn’t get any more information other than “avoid sex,” “stay pure,” and “dress modestly to help keep boys from having lust problems.”

The older I became the more I was expected to keep myself away from any discernible discussion about or perception of sexuality. However, since I did not understand what sexuality was, it became difficult for me. I knew the basics, but what was I supposed to do about all of it? My family kept me away from boys, covered me in modest clothing, and allowed me only “appropriate” books and videos. None of my friends seemed to know any more than I did, and in the homeschool world it would have been taboo to ask them anyway. When, at 17 years old, I realized that, in order to go on a certain trip, it would be best if I bought tampons, my mother could not explain to me how they worked, nor could my friends. I had to read the package instructions in detail and figure it out.

I was shocked to find out exactly what was going on. The vagina was a totally separate thing?!

Things changed when I went to college. Even though I was at a very conservative school, where young women were expected to be good Christian virgins, I was a real standout. It was obvious I had no clue what was going on with the opposite sex. I could talk to men just fine as long as the topic was neutral, and once I got to a store and bought normal clothes I looked pretty good, but if someone asked me out… well, that is where things went downhill. My suitemates, who were a pretty naïve bunch in their own right, had to quickly school me in the ways of the world, and in the process had to chase off a few creepy seniors whom I thought were just being “friendly.” The general impression was that I was completely clueless, and here I was, in a college environment, with men actually noticing me. I had only a faint idea what men wanted to do.

My project became taking charge of my own sexuality.

I didn’t really know what that supposed sexuality was, but after a couple of years of confusion, I needed to do something different. I made an appointment on my own for the gynecologist, went by myself, and she even told me I didn’t have to have an exam for another year. She explained a lot. I got birth control just for the heck of it. I started nursing school, and decided to read the part of my books on women’s health ahead of time, because I was tired of not knowing about the health of my reproductive system.

This is when my life started changing fast.

All the things I had been taught started falling away, because I was in school with real people. I was in nursing school now, not at a Christian school, either, and people didn’t fit into tidy little boxes. My closest friend in nursing school was gay, and I didn’t spend any time thinking about the things my homeschool group taught me about that. The one fundamentalist woman in nursing school was deceitful and mean, and she claimed to be having sex with the guy in our class who claimed to be supporting himself by dating several wealthy women. He claimed to be having sex with the fundamentalist also, but said he didn’t charge her; he just did it because he liked to make her lose her religion. The guy in our class who was openly Christian was scornful of the “professional boyfriend” and tried to witness to my friend who was gay. I found myself looking at the class as people who could either be defined by the ways they had sex or by their other attributes as well.

I decided that I saw so much more to my classmates than just their sexual identities.

I cared about them as people. I still didn’t understand sex personally, but I was getting the picture from my textbooks, from hearing my classmates’ conversations, and from lectures. It was a big deal, but it wasn’t the only deal.

As the years went on, I wish I could say that I figured things out in a healthy progression and met someone who was understanding and allowed me to experience sex in a positive way. I cannot. That is a different story.

What I can say is that now I know a lot about sex. I ended up working at a series of jobs in which I learned a lot about sex, and eventually took extra training for a job in public health in which I talked about sex quite a lot. At this point in my life I’ve also had plenty of sex, some bad, and a lot of it very good. More information would not have hurt me. I’m certain that it would have helped me very much. Even with everything I’ve read, even with everything I’ve heard, no one told me what certain words meant, what consent was, how to negotiate a situation in which two people might have different sexual expectations, what things could happen besides “baby-making” sex.

I figured it out, but I really, really wish I had figured it out earlier.

I thought about writing a more strictly informative post, but for many reasons I was unable to at this time. If anyone who has been raised in homeschool purity culture has any serious questions about sex, I would be happy to help point you in the right direction.

Ten Things That Are More Important to Teach Than Abstinence: Heidi Joy’s Thoughts

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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.

*****

Here are ten things that are more important to teach than abstinence:

1. Anatomy:

It is absolutely necessary to teach children the names and basic functions of the parts of their bodies. This way they are empowered with knowledge and have the language necessary to not only to relate to their own body, but also to know when someone is crossing a boundary so that they can tell a trusted adult. When I was abused as a child, I didn’t have the knowledge necessary to tell an adult what was going on, allowing the instigator to continue the abuse. I know many adults who do not even know the basic functions, locations, and names of their own body parts.

2. Bodily autonomy:

When a person understands that they have ownership over their body and that they do not owe anyone access to it, this allows for healthy physical, relational, and sexual boundaries, as well as the freedom to do with one’s body as one wishes. A child with a healthy sense of bodily autonomy understands that they do not have the obligation to make physical contact with anyone, even a relative seeking physical affection and have the ability to say no.

3. Consent:

Consent is necessary for healthy sexual and physical contact. This should be a given, but unfortunately consent is rarely discussed or taught, both encouraging and supporting rape culture while denying personal autonomy and person-hood.

4. Sex Positivity:

Sex positivity is the basic affirmation of one’s personal sexual preferences and personality. It says that the way I am is a good thing, and allows one to celebrate their sexuality. (I believe this includes affirmation of asexual individuals and respect for their identity, as well as affirmation and support for survivors as they may face painful triggers and learn to heal.)

5. Personal choice and respect for other’s choices:

This is important, because it allows a person the freedom to make their own choices without shame or manipulation from others, as well as developing respect and acceptance for the fact that different people may have different experiences and make different choices than us.

6. Healthy Sexuality:

It’s important to develop the ability to experience one’s sexuality without fear, guilt, or shame. For those of us who grew up fundamentalist/conservative it can be hard to shake the shame and sex negativity we were taught.

7. Healthy relationships:

Relationships can be hard and messy. It’s necessary and healthy to learn about appropriate boundaries, personal space, choice, autonomy, and how to recognize manipulation or abuse.

8. Safe Sex:

If you are or will be sexually active, it’s important to be educated about sex, STI’s, and protection… even if you are monogamous or married!

9. Birth Control Options:

Birth control is everyone’s responsibility. There are now many different options and resources available and many of them are free! At the very least, the information is available for free and usually easy to access so there is no reason to be uninformed, or to keep your child uninformed. Even if they are not active now, they may want to be in the future and knowledge is healthy and confidence-building.

10. Having sex doesn’t make you a better or worse person!

Many of us grew up in a sort of “purity culture”, where sex was taught in terms of transactions and marriage. We were taught that virginity somehow made you a good/better person, and that anyone who had or desired to have sex was evil, dirty, worthless, or a slut. They also promised us perfect marriages and relationships if we just didn’t touch or kiss before we got married…and of course, we had to get married to have the sex to make the babies to have the perfect christian family to win the culture war! This is a false dichotomy, a fallacy of black-and-white ideals based in unhealthy patriarchal standards. Sex isn’t the ultimate sin or even “bad”. It can be a fulfilling, healthy thing… even outside of marriage relationships!

Note: If you are choosing to abstain from sex on your own terms without being shamed into doing (or not doing!) something that you don’t choose, that is fine. I think that for some people, chastity can be a healthy state. However, if one chooses to teach chastity, it must be in a way that respects personal choice, does not shame survivors of abuse, and teaches autonomy and healthy sexuality.

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.

My Changing Body, My Changing Mind: Abishai’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. “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…

The Problem with Virgin to Vixen: A Personal Story

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on October 28, 2013.

(If anyone around here is uncomfortable reading about sex, drop out now!)

In “Pulling the Victoria’s Secret Dance”, Libby Anne tackles the conservative Christian culture’s strange demands on women, that they go from being perfectly virginal, pure, and innocent to becoming their husband’s personal porn stars after saying “I do”.

I imbibed enough of Debi Pearl and other Christian writers (not to mention my mother’s advice to ‘not say no too often’) to get this idea in my head that while I could enjoy sex, it was for me primarily about performing for my husband — in part to make him happy, and in part so he would never cheat.

And boy did I perform.

And I think I did a pretty decent job for someone who had never seen so much as a sex scene in a movie — since my husband hadn’t seen anything like that either, he didn’t know any better. ;)

And I enjoyed performing. Mostly. I would sometimes get flashbacks during sex of being touched by other people, but i would push past that — I would disassociate. My mind felt like it was leaving my body and it felt odd but i didn’t stop because I believed that to stop was basically to invite my husband to leave me.

And when I say performing, I mean it. I was acting. When i didn’t feel sexually attractive, I was pretending I was.

It was all an act.

That only gets you so far. It can be fun, acting, but doing it every time is draining and regularly having sex while disassociating left me feeling a little sad and confused.

I finally realized this year that I was performing — like I was taught — instead of really being there myself.

I’ve started saying ‘no’ when I start to disassociate. I’ve started being a little less sexy, and a little more myself. I’ve started learning about what I want.

I’m relaxing more and forcing it less.

This is the part where i would love to say that everything is better than ever now. Well, that isn’t quite so. It was easier when I was acting. I knew exactly what to do and my feelings didn’t matter. I could even manufacture a version of the feelings if necessary — growing up where your ‘attitude’ and emotions are under constant scrutiny makes you good at that.

So it isn’t all a bed of roses now. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, trying to get rid of my emotional baggage and start over from a new, healthier perspective in which sex comes out of love and desire instead of duty and insecurity.

But we’re working together, connecting instead of acting, and I think it will end up being a beautiful thing.

Pulling the Victoria’s Secret Dance

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on October 27, 2013.

Fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christianity is weird.

Women are taught to dress modestly in public, to stay away from pornography or premarital sex, etc. Prostitutes and strippers are derided, along with everyone who dresses “like a whore” (i.e. less modestly than they’re supposed to). But in private, within marriage? Women are expected to perform.

They have to somehow go from reserved modesty to being, well, a man’s personal supermodel.

Take this blog comment, for instance:

I understand that the woman who are not in favor of woman as homemakers mainly had a history of sexual abuse or neglect or have a lack of suffering and salvation with Christ of some sort. This is a fallen world and even if [a] woman is married to a man who is fallen . . . we woman [sic] may have to pull the Victora’s [sic] Secret dance for our husband to keep him in line.

I’m not even sure how a woman who has remained abstinent and has shunned any hint of or look at immorality is supposed to know how to “pull the Victoria’s Secret dance” for her potentially cheating husband.

There’s an enormous amount of pressure on a wife to perform sexually.

Many fundamentalist and conservative evangelicals would place at least some blame on a woman if her husband cheats. Was she putting out? Had she let herself go? Was she giving him the fulfilling sex life he needed as a man? Sure, they would say the fault ultimately lays with the husband, but they would also scrutinize whether his wife was doing her proper job keeping him fulfilled.

In fundamentalist and conservative evangelical circles, a woman is to keep her husband sexually satisfied. It’s part of her job description as wife. In fact, not a few leaders would go so far as to tell women that one way to cure a cheating husband is to put out more, and better, to become a porn star in the bedroom so that their husbands are no longer tempted to cheat.

Except, it doesn’t work like that, and the pressure—and guilt—created is enormous.

Now I do want to be fair. An increasing number of evangelical leaders do place an emphasis on female sexual pleasure, and some have been doing so for decades. However, there is still generally this idea that sex is more necessary for men, and less necessary for women. Because “Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P. Men spell romance S-E-X.” Amirite? This shouldn’t be surprising, as this idea is also widespread in culture at large, but the increased emphasis on female sexual pleasure in evangelical circles does occur within this context.

My second concern has to do with the amount of baggage surrounding sex that so many young women who grew up in fundamentalist or conservative evangelical homes find themselves with. Switching from zero to one hundred overnight can be a problem for many of these women. Without any experience or knowledge, they’re expected to become a man’s personal Victoria’s Secret model and perform well in bed.

Of course, to be fair, it’s generally accepted that there will be a learning curve. Still, going from seeing sexual urges as sinful to seeing them as good, and then going beyond that to sexually perform in an effort to keep a husband uninterested in other women, all without outside experience even knowledge or information? Ugh.

In the last decades many fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals have been doing more to preach the goodness of marital sex, and in some cases are writing guides.

I still can’t help but feel like at least some of these read like “how to perform for your husband” manuals, rather than “how to have mutually-fulling sex with another individual” manuals (to be clear, I haven’t read them all, and will check back with you on some of this if at some point I do).

I guess I can’t get over the feeling that many fundamentalists and evangelicals don’t see a woman performing sexually for a man as in and of itself bad. It’s only bad if that man is a paying client rather than a husband you’re trying to keep from cheating.

When Your Daughters are The #1 Threat to Your Agenda

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on October 15, 2013 with the title “Are Daughters the Biggest Threat to the Christian Patriarchy Movement and Reconstructionism?”

Whether they say it publicly or not, I believe that Christian leaders in the Reconstructionist and Homeschool Movements view adult daughters to be the biggest threat to their agenda in furthering their ideologies.

In this video trailer of The Return of the Daughters, you can hear the urgency of this movement, the fear-mongering blaming the feminists as the primary cause of the destruction of the idolized godly family image.

Stay-at-home daughters — it’s a matter of choice

I want to be clear what my beef is with this movement.

It is not the idea of daughters staying at home if they choose to stay at home.  It’s about an adult daughter not being allowed to make choices for herself.  It’s the idea that if daughters don’t stay at home under their father’s “protection,” they are not being biblical – that the only right way is if a daughter has her father’s blessing on all of her choices, including marriage – and that marriage is very selective as the father wants to make sure that his future son-in-law holds to the same Patriarchal beliefs as he.

I am sick and tired of the implication that young ladies who go to college are trying to perpetuate the feminist agenda and destroy families, simply for making the adult choice to further their education.

In studying the patterns of abuse in churches, the control tactics the proponents of this movement use are similar.  

Why does this issue have to be so black and white?  Because it’s about control.  We see love-bombing of daughters, building her up in her femininity, her homemaking skills, but there is no allowance for an adult daughter to question of authority, to have differing viewpoints, to have a mind of her own.

If adult daughters are not sold on the concept of first being comfortable at being stay-at-home daughters, and then stay-at-home moms, the authoritarian position of the Patriarch, and thus, the entire Movement, is diminished. Any diminishing of their role as Patriarch by a daughter challenging or questioning them would be looked at as disobedience and sin and divisive, just as in spiritual abuse patterns, any questioning of a pastor’s authority would be labeled as divisive.  Do you see the parallels?

Their ideology is that husbands will be spiritual heads of the home, will rule over their wives and families and wives will humbly submit without question to everything they say.  They will be reproducing babies and raising them with the same ideologies:  boys will grow up to be men and heads of households and will rule their families spiritually.  Daughters will grow up and embrace their “biblical role” as submissive wives/mothers.

But ask these folks what happens when abuse enters the picture?  

Does the wife and children get support?  Or what about a death of a husband or disability or unemployment?   Does the church assist these families in real and practical ways?  Or is the family abandoned and the wife accused of sin when she attempts to earn income for her impoverished and broken family?

…O, treason of the blood!
Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds
By what you see them act.  ~ Othello

Daughters who are allowed to think for themselves, make their own choices, are viewed as a threat

It is my belief that daughters who go against this system, who go to college, learn how to think for themselves, are viewed as a threat. It is wrong to challenge, to question, undermine, speak out against this destructive movement.

I’m certain that Patriarchs know this real threat and that is why we are seeing so much building up daughters positively by glorifying the godly wife role and encouraging the relationships with fathers and daughters.

Patriarchal fathers must win their daughter’s heart at a very young age, win her approval and trust, in order to successfully perpetuate this cycle.

I am now convinced that for many Patriarchs, the agenda is not to honestly build the relationship between the father and daughter. Rather, fathers are using their daughters to instill in them what they believe to be the godly ideology and sell the daughters on their role in continuing and supporting this ideology. This is accomplished through purity balls, purity covenants, books, videos, conferences or retreats like this:

God’s Word speaks volumes to the relationship between fathers and daughters: His most sacred duty is her protection and preservation from childhood to virtuous womanhood. He leads her, woos her, and wins her with a tenderness and affection unique to the bonds of father and daughter. Success in his life mission is directly related to the seriousness and compassion with which he seeks to raise her as an industrious, family-affirming, children-loving woman of God.

She, in turn, looks to her father as a loving picture of leadership, of devotion, and of care. Her relationship with her father will help to define her view of the worth of a woman, the meaning of fulfillment and contentment, and her vision for virtue. When these relationships are realized and cultivated, the generational mission of the Christian family is secure.

Is it any wonder that Satan is on the prowl seeking to tear the hearts of daughters from their fathers, and driving wedges of indifference between them — fathers with no time for their little girls, and young ladies who have replaced the love of their fathers with the acceptance of peers and inappropriate romantic relationships? The Vision Forum Ministries Father & Daughter Retreat is one step on the journey of recovering the preciousness of this relationship so crucial to the kingdom-building work of the Church. (from Father & Daughter Retreated Sponsored by Vision Forum)

Sadly, I also think that some fathers are unknowingly climbing aboard this fast train of destruction.

They don’t understand the system in which they are caught.  

They believe what they are doing is good for their families and daughters and don’t understand the price it will have on their family. It really is not about a relationship for many.  It is about an agenda.

As I have been following trends in the Homeschool Movement, what I am seeing is that those fathers who tightly control their daughters and their lives — do not allow them to have educational and work choices, do not allow them to make important life decisions,  do not allow them to think for themselves spiritually or own their own faith — will likely lose their daughters in adulthood.

They may in fact lose a relationship with their daughters forever.

It’s Not Always Rainbows and Roses Now, But: Eloah’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Eloah” is a pseudonym.

I promised a long time ago that I would write something for Homeschoolers Anonymous, but it has been hard to put these feelings to words to pixels.

I wanted so badly to contribute something positive, constructive, maybe even hopeful, to what I feared could well turn into a chaotic frenzy of confessions and self-justifications.

But I also wanted to tell the truth. Honesty, if I learned nothing else from my mistakes, is I believe the paramount virtue. I value it above—well, practically all else.

Honesty is what has brought miraculous healing to some very broken relationships, including those with my parents.

Relationships that were broken as a result of the culture fostered in the homeschooling circle I grew up in.

You see: My parents raised me to know good from bad, right from wrong, and to see things in black and white. And if there was ever confusion about which was which, the adults surrounding me had strong opinions about it that they forcefully fed to their young.

At a very early age, I learned to parrot what I heard, even if I didn’t understand or agree with it. I could passionately espouse a strong opinion in public that was either ill-formed with virtually little thought, or precisely the opposite of what I really felt.

Because I sensed that there was no room for error, I quickly became an expert liar. Even now looking back, I don’t think I realized I was doing it. My outward expressions I believe were genuine attempts to force myself to “be good” and to meet the judgmental approval of my friends’ parents and my parents’ friends.

I thought maybe if I said something long enough, and adopted a self-righteous attitude about it, I could come to believe it, accept it and maybe even agree with it.

Never, ever underestimate a child’s need for approval from adults, especially her parents.

Why would I strive so hard for approval from people who gossiped hours on end about others, their mistakes and their “sins”? (If you can call listening to rock music, going on dates with boys, wearing pants and going to college as a female “sins.”)

Because I knew they would eat me alive if I didn’t meet their expectations—in a figurative sense, of course. But the last thing I wanted was to be a topic of hypocritical and self-righteous conversation. I dreaded the punishments—the intense, oppressive groundings that were meant to treat the aforementioned sins.

This is why it’s remarkable that I did what I did, at that Master’s Conference in 2003. It was in Birmingham, my hometown, and a boy I flirted with sometimes was on guest staff with Communicators for Christ, which puts on the communications conference/tournament.

I was almost 18. I kissed him in a stairwell between rounds one day. Or he kissed me. Who ever knows? It was my first kiss, and I was giddy and excited and happy and all of those emotions that come with your first.

Except somebody saw or found out, as they inevitably do in those circles, and it got back to my parents. And before I knew it, the family staying with us that week had learned of it. And the mother called me a slut, in front of my family and hers, and said she would not trust me alone with her son (who happened to be quite a few years younger than I).

If I had committed murder, I might have met more sympathy.

I resigned from the Master’s worship team, not because I was forced to but because I knew I was expected to.

The emotional roller coaster after all of that doesn’t even need describing. You can imagine for yourselves.

On the one hand I felt liberated at last – “the adults” knew me for what I was: an imperfect human being. No need to go on pretending anymore. But on the other hand, I felt more trapped than ever. I remember one other girl—one considered among homeschoolers as “notorious,” if you know what I mean—reaching out to offer me sympathy and support. “We bad girls need to stick together,” she said.

I was horrified, because I realized I was now a “bad girl.”

I had been branded with the Scarlet A, and there was no living it down. Decent parents would never allow their sons and daughters around me again.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized she probably wasn’t all that bad. She probably wore a short skirt once, or talked back at a condescending parent. Or kissed a boy.

I can’t tell this story without sharing the redemption. Yes, it was ugly for many years, yes my relationships (romantic and otherwise) got progressively dysfunctional. I became a liar about everything—things that didn’t even matter. I hurt people just to hurt them. I rebelled just to rebel. I felt. Trapped.

Until I started speaking up about it.

Until I started talking to my parents, and sharing with them my feelings. Yes, we had many a loud argument with slamming of doors. Yes, they kicked me out, numerous times, but always let me come back. Yes, we disagreed, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but you know what?

We were hashing things out. We were challenging each other, and learning from one another. And eventually I realized they weren’t wrong about everything, they didn’t hate me and they genuinely did not realize the pressure their behaviors had put on me.

Because I never told them.

And I think maybe they realized that not everyone was formed from the same mold, and that regardless, people are entitled to learn from their own mistakes. And that maybe self-righteousness, judgment, hypocrisy and gossip are also sins.

It’s not always rainbows and roses now, but what I so love and appreciate about my parents (and I think many others from that circle have come to this place now, too) is that they love, respect and see me as a person now – not a parrot. I appreciate that they have been humble, teachable and eager to change their ways so as not to repeat the mistakes with my little brothers. There is a closeness we have now that we never experienced when I was simply walked through life agreeing with them on the outside but confused and trapped on the inside.

And who knows if we ever would have come to this place if I had not spoken up?

I only hope this story gives others the courage to speak up now, if they haven’t already.

Crosspost: Dear Sister, On Your Thirteenth Birthday

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on October 1, 2013.

I can’t believe you are almost thirteen. 

I remember holding you in my arms when you were a baby. I remember rocking you, smiling at you, cooing to you. I remember your tiny fingers and your dark, soft hair. I remember dressing you, bathing you, cuddling you close. I was always the first to jump up and volunteer to get you up when that sweet plaintive wail came from your cradle.

Thirteen. Wow. You’ve grown so big, so tall and clever. I know what thirteen means. Dad will take you out to dinner and give you a ring. You will put it on your finger and promise him that you will not have sex until the day you marry. I know you will because I did too. And when you say it, you will mean it. I know that. So did I.

But I want you to know something, my sweet little sister. You are worth so much more. Your worth is not defined by what has or has not been in your vagina. Yes I know, hearing that word spoken so openly embarrasses you. I remember. But what I’m saying is important. You have so much to offer the world. You are smart. You have interests. You have talents. Those things matter. In fact, those things matter a whole lot more than the state of your vagina. Yes I know, awkward. But it’s true, and I want you to remember that. You matter.

There’s more, too. It is wrong, what they are telling you. Should you choose not to have sex until your wedding day, your virginity is not the most precious gift you will ever give your husband. In fact, depending on whether or not your husband will come from the same religious and cultural background as you, he may not even see your virginity as a gift at all. And if he doesn’t, don’t hold that against him, okay? The idea that virginity is something of value is “culturally constructed.”

That’s just a fancy way of saying “made up.”

There’s something else I want to tell you as well. You probably think that I didn’t have sex until my wedding night. Well, that’s not true. We almost waited until the wedding, but not quite. Yes I know, telling you that is awkward.

But I want you to know that they are wrong when they saying that having sex before you get married will damage your relationship.

It hasn’t.

I don’t regret doing it, and I don’t think it messed up anything at all. In fact, I wish I hadn’t waited as long as I did. I tell you this not to tell you which way of doing things is right and which way is wrong, because that is up to you and is yours to decide, but simply to give you another perspective.

But the most important thing I want you to know, little sister, is that your body is yours. 

You get to choose what you want to do with it. You will have people telling you what you can and can’t do with your body, when, and how much, and how far. But you don’t have to listen to them. Your body is yours, and don’t let anyone make you forget that. What you do with it is up to you.  It’s your choice. Own that, and don’t let anyone else make your choices for you.

I’m not going to send this letter to you, little sister, because mom and dad wouldn’t like it. Putting it here is the best I can do. Perhaps someday you will find it, and read it, and then you will know how frequently you are on my mind.

I love you, little sister.

Libby