And the friend who I helped search her home for recording devices wasn’t the only person paranoid that people were watching her.
When Johnnie and I got engaged, everybody felt like they had a piece of our relationship, and he and I both experienced a sense of fear. We would go out on dates and I would be looking in my rearview mirror the whole time being like, “Is someone following us? Are people from the church watching me right now? If I buy this wine, am I going to be reported the next day? If they see my car at Johnnie’s house too late, am I going to lose my job?” There is this idea that you’re accountable to everybody for your sexual behavior, for your dating behavior, for everything, especially as a woman. If you were not telling something, it was because you had sin in your life. You don’t own anything, even your thoughts, and it matters more how the culture and the community thinks about your thought than what the thought itself is. Their judgment determines everything. (Jo)
For me, the sex/shame brain trap was the most difficult to escape. But my interviews revealed that sex and shame weren’t the only purity culture concepts around which people developed what appeared to be brain traps. For instance, one interviewee told me her body reacted in almost precisely the same way when she tried to have sex as when she preached a sermon, as she was breaking the purity movement’s rules about what she was and was not allowed to do as a woman when doing both.
“Sex with my husband is terrifying,” she admitted to me on a hacienda in the Southwest. “I think, ‘It’s going to start; I’m going to panic; and then I’m either going to be a disembodied person while it’s happening, or I’m going to freak out.’ ”
“What do you mean by ‘freak out’?” I asked her.
“Sometimes I end up watching us having sex from over here,” she said, gesturing upward toward the bright sky. “And sometimes I’m just starting to enjoy myself, right? I’m just starting to feel good, and then it just hits. It’s just a real visceral thing. Panic. A feeling of not being able to breathe. Like, ‘I’m going to die.’ And I end up in a ball and I’m crying and I don’t know why. I used to have a panic attack 75 percent of the time my husband and I tried to have sex. Now it might be more like 50 percent or even a little bit lower, but that’s just because we have sex so rarely. Neither of us wants to take the risk and start something sexual that might end up with me crying.
“I became a pastor because I needed to get control of this thing that was so hurtful to me. Especially the cruelty of it I experienced in the religion as a child. But when I was first in a full-time pastor position, in the outfit every Sunday, sometimes it was hard. I’d have these experiences of depersonalization exactly the same as I do with sex. Feelings of, ‘I’m no longer the person who is here. I’m watching myself from afar.’ It’s like it’s too dangerous to be fully present to it. I don’t agree with that logic, but it’s deep in my bones.”
“You feel the same things you feel when trying to have sex, while you are in the pulpit?” I verified.
“Yes. Just standing.”
“Why do you think it happens?”
“Because here’s a thing I’m doing that I was taught from a very young age is wrong for me to do. I’m not supposed to be doing this, and I am.”
“Just like sex,” I said.
“I think at a very basic level, that’s it,” she nodded, her hair blowing in the wind. “So suddenly, I’m gone. I’m standing in the pulpit, but at the same time, I’m ten years old again. Back in that place.”
* * *
Sebastian and I did eventually have sex, though it was, in his words, “a brief and bungling affair.” Both virgins, neither of us wanted to call this our sexual debut. In time, Sebastian and I broke up. In the years that followed, he got a new girlfriend and says he was shocked by how easily sexual intimacy came with someone who wasn’t religious. (“Thanks man,” I rolled my eyes at him.)
It would be another three years before I would finally relinquish my virgin title, having claimed that the things I’d done before that day just “didn’t count.” I was twenty-six. In a quaint Japanese hotel room with a long-term boyfriend that I was certain I would marry, in the way in which we are absolutely certain of just about everything in our twenties. And the sex/shame brain trap just . . . broke. I prayed the whole while. Thanking God for the moment, the man, and most of all, that I might finally be free. And a holy presence filled the room. My boyfriend startled. “Is someone else in here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered him.
* * *
I. I ran into The Empress a few years ago in a Manhattan Home Depot. We were both in our midthirties by then. He startled me by coming up behind me and saying, “Of course I find you in the Martha Stewart paint section . . .”
II. Studies have found that abstinence pledgers are less likely to use protection against sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy when having sex than their nonpledging peers. To be sure, the lack of accurate information young people receive in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is likely at least partly to blame for this. After all, over 80 percent of the abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula reviewed by a 2004 House Committee on Government Reform minority staff report included “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.”4 But I believe there is something deeper going on as well. Prophylactics are demonized in religious purity culture. A condom, for example, isn’t just a piece of rubber in a plastic sleeve; it is an instrument of sin, which can make shopping for protection feel like plotting your immorality. Some serious mental gymnastics have to be done just to get your credit card down on the counter, let alone get the prophylactic out of the packaging and into use. Somehow, it seems easier—and, some hope, less sinful—if sex is unplanned.
11
* * *
Frozen
“So, the book is about sexual shaming—what it does to us, how we struggle through it, and ultimately how we might rethink our approach to sexuality. Any initial thoughts?”
It was a hot summer day in New York City and Eli had traveled a long way to get to my Manhattan apartment, plopping himself down by the air-conditioning unit immediately upon his arrival. “Initial thoughts?” he heaved, his short hair ruffled by the air-conditioning vent. “Oh God,” he rolled his eyes. Then he pulled back to face me. “My initial thought was, ‘I need more Pirate’s Booty,’ ” he said gesturing toward the bowl of pirate-branded cheese puffs I had just put out on the table between us.
I laughed. “To talk about sexual shame you need—”
“Lots of salt,” Eli finished my sentence, grabbing a handful of the snack. “And probably some gummy bears.” Still laughing, I pushed the bowl of gummy bears toward him.
Nine years ago when we first met, the clean-cut, conservatively dressed thirty-year-old man who sat across the table from me was still going by his given name, Elizabeth. About two years later, he transitioned genders. But Eli’s name, physical appearance, and voice weren’t the only changes I noticed when he walked into my apartment all these years later. I remembered Elizabeth, who I first met online, as skittish, almost scared. Elizabeth had literally trembled through our first interview, but Eli—though unabashed regarding his discomfort talking about sexual shame—didn’t shake at all.
Eli and I have discussed it and decided I should use female pronouns when referring to the period in which he presented himself as Elizabeth and male pronouns when referring to the period after his transition.I Though Eli is a man, I am including his story in this book because he was raised with the same girl-specific messages that the rest of my interviewees were. Whether or not he felt like a girl growing up, he was certainly treated like one. So Eli’s story too sheds light on the impact of the purity movement’s gender-specific messages for girls.
* * *
Elizabeth was raised in the South. She thought of herself as a good Christian girl who’d never break any of the church’s rules. Then, in high school, she got her first crush. On another girl. “And I wa
s like, ‘This does not compute,’ ” Elizabeth told me the first time we met. When the feelings didn’t go away, Elizabeth volunteered to join an ex-gay ministry. Some of these ministries focus on trying to get queer people not to think about or act on their sexual desires, whereas others go so far as to literally try and turn queer people straight. Elizabeth’s was more in the former category. “There wasn’t even a question about whether or not I would go to the ministry,” Elizabeth continued. “I had been taught this was my problem, and this was what I had to do about it, because . . . of course I do. I didn’t even think to question it.”
Elizabeth participated in the programming from late high school to early college. “Part of me was totally not believing any of it and then, another part of my mind was just, ‘What if they’re right? I could go to Hell. Oh no! I should do the right thing, the biblical thing. I should try to get straightened out.’ No pun intended,” she smiled.
When Elizabeth began attending a state college in the South, she stopped going to church as often; she came out to her friends as a lesbian; she even got a long-distance girlfriend.II But she kept attending the ex-gay ministries, holding out hope that one day they would cure her of her attraction to women so she could go back to being a good Christian girl.
“I was just bouncing back and forth all over the place with no sense of groundedness at all. I loved growing up in the church. That’s the thing. It hadn’t been this horrible, traumatic experience for me. I hadn’t gone to one of these mean, scary churches that was overtly angry or hostile. My church put on this face of, ‘We love everybody and we’re all about grace.’ That was always the message. But when I started confessing to people in church, ‘I’m dealing with this right now, it’s really hard for me, I don’t know what to do,’ the only thing that they could seem to think about was how to convert me back to their way of thinking: ‘Well, you’re wrong, because we already know the answer.’ Nobody was like, ‘Okay, let’s just talk through this. It’s your life, and whatever you decide we’ll still care about you.’ The only thing they cared about in the conversation was giving me ‘the answer’ and making sure that they got me back on ‘the right path.’ Treating the whole thing like a debate instead of a conversation.
“I realized, ‘This community’s ideology is more important to them than anything else. It’s more important than people. It’s more important than keeping their relationships with each other intact. The ideology is the only thing that matters here.’ I guess on some level I knew that they would respond that way. But there was a part of me that was like, ‘But surely, I’ve grown up in this church. All these people care about me—surely they’re not going to react that way to me.’ When they did, I felt like, ‘Other than being a person who comes to their church and believes all the right things, do I have any value to these people? And if I stop believing the right things, then do I lose all my value to them?’ ”
This inner turmoil took a toll on Elizabeth. Her depression became so severe that her therapist put her on an antidepressant that she now thinks made things even worse. Second semester of her first year of college, Elizabeth began cutting herself.
“I kind of zoned out. And when I snapped out of it and realized I was cutting on my arms, I freaked out. I was like, ‘I can’t believe I was doing that!’ ”
“Do you remember what you were thinking when you would cut yourself?” I asked.
“I remember exactly what I was thinking about. I was thinking about all my struggles with the whole sexuality thing. That’s what was on my mind when I did it. It was sort of this self-punishing thing. I was thinking about all these things that I had been taught were bad and wrong—like having a crush on somebody. Some weird part of my mind thought, ‘Well, if I punish myself, maybe it will go away. Or maybe I’ll feel better. Or something.’ Once I started doing it, it was hard to stop. I was just very depressed about the whole gay thing. And honestly . . . I still haven’t completely stopped.”
In her book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think” to “I Am Enough,” Dr. Brené Brown writes about the way in which shame and subsequent isolation can drive an individual to desperate acts.
While dealing with shame and feelings of disconnection can be a normal part of developing and growing relationships, disconnection can become more serious when it turns into feelings of isolation . . . Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver, Relational-Cultural theorists from the Stone Center at Wellesley College, have beautifully captured the overwhelming nature of isolation. They write, “[. . .] In the extreme, psychological isolation can lead to a sense of hopelessness and desperation. People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness.”
The part about this definition that really strikes me as critical to understanding shame is the sentence “People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness.” Shame can make us feel desperate. Reactions to this desperate need to escape from isolation and fear can run the gamut from behavioral issues and acting out to depression, self-injury, eating disorders, addiction, violence, and suicide.1
“A week before Thanksgiving I checked myself into the hospital because I was starting to get really worried about what I might do,” Elizabeth continued. “I’m not very good at asking for help, and it kind of felt like a way of asking for it. I was having thoughts of suicide. I was just cutting constantly. I wasn’t getting any better, and I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid.”
“Did your parents know you were in the hospital?”
“My roommate called my dad and let him know.” Elizabeth’s parents were divorced. “I was on my best behavior in the hospital and I convinced them to discharge me after four days because I was scheduled to see my dad for Thanksgiving. Over Thanksgiving, I was just sleeping and not talking to anyone. The day I was scheduled to go back, my dad brought me to the airport. I had all my suitcases and stuff. I had already told him that I wanted to leave school and my dad said, ‘Well, go back and finish the semester. It’s just a few more weeks.’ But then I just freaked right in the middle of the airport. I broke down crying and I couldn’t even walk up to the plane. I was like, ‘I can’t go back.’ I couldn’t even function at that point. I was doubting my ability to even just go to class and sit there for a few more weeks. So my dad said, ‘That’s fine; stay with me.’ And he drove me back to his apartment.”
It took Elizabeth a year and a half to recover to the point that she was able to begin school again. In that time, she got a job, changed antidepressants, quit attending the ex-gay ministries, and church as well. “I was like, ‘Wow! There’s this whole world of people who don’t care if I’m gay, or if I’m bi, or if I’m whatever. They’re just going to let me do my thing. And I’d rather be around people who aren’t going to always be trying to influence me over to their way of thinking.’ I took one little step away from the church, and then another little step, and then another little step . . . and then everything fell apart and I just never went back.”
When Elizabeth did begin attending college again, it was as an out lesbian.
* * *
Eli scooted his chair away from the air-conditioning unit, having sufficiently cooled down.
“Deep down, did you always feel like you were a man?” I asked him.
He cocked his head. “Looking back, I had some thoughts of that nature as far back as my early teens,” he responded. “But the idea that I might be trans seemed so ‘out there’ compared to the idea of being gay that I managed not to think about it for a long period of time. I knew I didn’t want to be a guy’s girlfriend. That just felt too weird. So I just said, ‘I don’t like guys.’ ”
“You were only aware of two options at that point: being a lesbian or being a straight woman,” I offered.
“Yes. And the straight woman option was the least-preferred option. It was actually when I was in undergrad for the second time that I started
thinking about transitioning more. By the time I started grad school, I had changed my name, but I was still trying to decide whether to take testosterone.” This was when Eli first realized he wasn’t only interested in women. He was attracted to individuals across the gender spectrum. In other words, it wasn’t until Eli knew who he was that he could identify who he wanted to be with.
“I guess I was ready to come out with being bisexual around the same time I was coming out about being trans,” he explained. “And I became very quickly a lot less prone to depression after I started taking testosterone. It was like I had gone on some kind of mood-lifting drug or something. Literally a few weeks after going on testosterone I felt like I’d been put on uppers. Suddenly I felt different. Just bang. Moods leveled out, more energy, depression gone, just immediately. Now I have the physical and emotional energy to deal with things that used to upset me or stress me out.” Eli said he also became much more comfortable with himself—a fact which was obvious when he walked into my apartment.
“I’ve always had problems with the physical aspect of performing,” Eli—who is a professional singer—illustrated. “I could stand there and sing, but when I had to get up and act, I used to freeze up. It’s like I couldn’t relax and loosen up and sort of get into it before. I would just kind of stand there, very stiff, because I was never comfortable in my own skin. But now that I’ve become a lot more okay with myself, I can actually perform instead of freezing onstage. I can actually do the whole theatrical thing that I was never comfortable with before.”
But there is one area of his life around which Eli still isn’t comfortable.
He grimaced at me across the table. “Since this is what this interview is about, I guess we should probably talk about the sexuality thing, right?”
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