David understood. He did notice women’s bodies, and the shame was tantamount. He recalled, “On warm days I would walk across campus feeling like a monster, because I believed that noticing a girl’s body was the spiritual equivalent of something like sexual assault.” Every accidental glimpse of cleavage or a little extra leg was terrible. And at the same time, wonderful. Eventually, he found himself walking around campus, the library, the supermarket, perpetually “hoping to see another accidental glimpse of . . . something.”
Finally, he admitted his secret to his pastor. His pastor advised him to go to Sex Addicts Anonymous. When David, a twenty-two-year-old virgin, told his story to the group of gathered sex addicts there was, as one might expect, “an awkward silence.” A few days later, he went to a Christian counselor. The counselor advised him to go home and masturbate, to David’s great shock. He bought a porn magazine, went home, masturbated, and, as he tells it, was immediately cured. “It felt like a miracle,” he said. “It was so fast, so life-changing, that it was like converting all over again.”
I don’t believe that stories such as David’s and his friend’s are as uncommon as many might first assume. As my interviewee Jo said, “women are taught their bodies are evil; men are taught their minds are.”
But when I listen to stories like Rosemary’s or that of the Duggar family—whose reality show 19 Kids and Counting regularly reiterated the family’s commitment to ensuring their kids’ “purity” only for it to come out that one of the sons was accused of sexually assaulting several girls, including some of his sisters—I cannot help but wonder if, while some men worry that they are monsters because of this gender-based messaging, others may feel their monstrous behavior is justified because of it.3 When boys are repeatedly taught that they cannot control their sexual impulses and that it is a girl’s responsibility to protect her own purity, how logical it must seem for perpetrators attempting to justify their actions to come to the conclusion that if a woman dresses or acts a certain way she is “asking for it,” making rape at least partly (if not totally) her fault?I
* * *
At the insistence of the adult Rosemary first confided in, Rosemary’s parents sent both her and her brother to therapy. But when Rosemary begged her parents not to leave her alone in the house with her brother anymore, she found “it was inconvenient for my parents to make sure they were in the house with me. Their attitude was just minimizing, like I should just get over it.”
Again, it is important to note that Rosemary wasn’t the only one receiving the message that she should just get over what happened to her in moments like these. Her brother received that message too—making it more likely for him to follow the very common pattern of abusing again. So Rosemary began house sitting for people around town, moving from couch to couch, anything to not be left alone with her brother. Between house-sitting jobs, she stayed with the adult in whom she first confided.
“I had to survive. I felt I was just going to die. Just drop dead. It just felt like things were going to be over. Or that they were. Like somebody had just dropped me in someone else’s head with someone else’s memories and I could play them all in my head but they didn’t mean anything. It felt like I had just been beamed into my life. Sexual assault is so degrading. You treat a person like they’re not a person. It was just hard to fight my way back to feeling like a person. And that was really what kind of started my break with evangelicalism. Because the church makes abuse easy. Elizabeth Smart, the kidnapping victim, talks about this,” Rosemary said, referring to the child safety activist who was kidnapped at the age of fourteen. “She was raped by her captor repeatedly,” Rosemary continued. “They found her alive, which is amazing because that doesn’t always happen. But she talks about being raised in the Mormon church [where purity culture also thrives] and feeling like she was worthless because she was no longer a virgin after the rape.”
In Smart’s own words, spoken at a human trafficking and sexual violence conference at Johns Hopkins University:
I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other. And that’s what I’d been raised [with], that’s what I’d always been determined to follow: that when I got married, then and only then would I engage in sex.
And so, [after] that first rape, I felt crushed. Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily, all too well, why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone. . . . Can you imagine turning around and going back into society where you’re no longer of value? Where you’re no longer as good as anybody else?4
Elizabeth Smart’s sexuality “education” included an object lesson. She remembers learning that a virgin was an unchewed stick of gum and that a person who has sex is a chewed-up stick of gum. After being raped, Elizabeth said, “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum. Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”
“Did you experience that feeling of worthlessness that Elizabeth Smart talks about?” I asked Rosemary.
“Yes,” Rosemary responded. “I remember, with shame and the whole purity culture thing, I just kept thinking, ‘If someone I loved and knew that well could treat me like that . . . what if they’re right about me?’ I never considered pressing charges, ever. Supposedly it’s one of the most underreported crimes, and I totally believe that. You just want to move on with your life. But the really awful part,” she said shaking her head slowly, “is I would come back and stay at my parents’ house when my brother was gone. But when he would come back, I had to leave again. It was like, ‘Really? Your rapist kid, maybe he could get a hotel. Yes?’ ”
“Or he could couch surf,” I insisted.
“Yes,” Rosemary replied. “He had friends in the area. I’m sure he could have stayed with people. I slept on a futon in my bedroom when I was home, but I wasn’t sleeping there while my brother was there. So, one time I’d taken the sheets off the futon, put them away, and put the futon back up into being a couch before leaving. My mom called me, and she was mad. She thought I’d hidden the sheets, and she wanted to make up the bed for my brother. I was like, ‘He doesn’t have to sleep in my bed. He raped me in my bed!’ And she was just pissed at me about the sheets. ‘For evil to succeed, all that is needed is for good men to do nothing,’ ” Rosemary continued. “That’s Churchill or someone.II To side with the perpetrator we must do nothing, but to side with the victim, we’re asked to stand with them, which is so much more emotionally taxing.”
“So they chose him,” I said sadly.
“Yes. They chose him. They chose his comfort over my security.”
“You deserved better,” I responded.
“Yes. I did,” Rosemary replied. “A lot of people do.” She reached across the table for the Tupperware container I had set there earlier. “Are you familiar with Harry Potter?” she asked me.
“I’ve read the first few books,” I answered.
“Did you read the third book, with the dementors?”
“Yes. Or, I saw the movie.”
“Okay. Remember how the dementors bring out horrible memories? And the way to deal with the aftermath of that is to eat chocolate?”
“Okay, yes, I totally remember,” I said.
Rosemary picked up the Tupperware filled with fudge brownies and dropped it in her lap.
* * *
Listening to my interview with Rosemary again now, I am struck by how appropriate the metaphor she drew about the dementors really is. In the Harry Potter books, the dementors are like trauma-triggers. They “force their victims to relive the worst memories of their lives, and drown, powerless, in their own despair.”5
For many of my interviewees, the church has become just such a de
mentor. The way in which it wrongfully classifies sexual violence, for example, can re-traumatize survivors, making the church—a place that many would hope to be a safe haven—a very dangerous place for survivors. Laura, whose story is shared in chapter four, illustrates:
I have this really weird reaction of crying every time I enter a church. Uncontrollably. Embarrassingly. It’s just like everything boils out. I just feel it coming out and I can’t stop it. I think part of it is I really wish someone could see my pain. I don’t know if that’s exactly why I’m crying when I’m there, but . . . I just feel . . . like . . . all the pain I’ve ever felt, and I can’t keep my face on anymore. The songs are all about God’s love, redemption, different themes. But as someone who was raped, the church doesn’t have any message for me. I used to think, “Maybe there’ll be a message for me there someday,” but I don’t think it exists. (Laura)
Even those who have not personally experienced traumatic shaming can be affected by the church’s purity teachings in this way. For instance, one former evangelical woman who told me she has a panic attack every time she enters a church has no explanation other than the fact that she saw her sister pushed into marrying a man she had slept with and who later abused her. When the woman’s sister went to the church for help, she was advised not to report the abuse. Having watched the way that the purity message contributed to her sister marrying an abusive man, and later not leaving that man, is enough to now make the woman cry every time she enters a church.
But the church isn’t always and certainly doesn’t have to be a dementor. It can be a healer, as the continuation of Rosemary’s story illustrates.
* * *
Near the end of her summer of couch surfing, Rosemary prepared for a trip to Europe, where she would spend her sophomore year of college. By the time she was packing her bags, she told me, she was so depressed that she was seriously planning her suicide. She would kill herself in a European library, she told herself. She had always loved books so much. But when Rosemary arrived overseas, things began to change.
“I think evangelicalism means something a little different where I was in Europe than it does here,” she explained, her tone growing light again, as it had been at the beginning of our conversation. “Evangelicalism here is about purity culture: you don’t have sex; you have to wear these clothes; you only listen to this music; you only watch these movies. In the part of Europe I was in, they were more concerned about creating fellowship with each other and doing service. It was one of the few times that I was really in a ‘Christian fellowship.’ Not everything about it was perfect, but it was really honest. People didn’t try to fake who they were. There was a lot of love. We cared about each other a lot. Some of us were European; most of us were Americans; and the fourteen of us on the program just got very close.”
One day, Rosemary told me, she and her peers were given the assignment to share their testimonies, the stories of when they were first born again. The structure of a testimony story, which is often shared publicly, is strict: it begins with a review of the individual’s former life of sin and/or suffering, during which people’s most painful life experiences are often shared (for as the saying goes, “no test, no testimony”). Next there is the story of the moment in which the individual gave his or her life over to God. And finally, there is the blissful picture of the individual’s new life as an evangelical Christian—which, though not without struggles, is so full of grace, love, and support that the storyteller can truly say some version of: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”
Becoming born again can literally be lifesaving for some people, and many people’s testimonies are the most intimate, heartfelt stories they can tell about themselves. But other people’s experiences simply don’t adhere to the structure. And some of these people find they need to bend the truth a little—or a lot—to make their stories fit, which some have told me makes the testimony structure feel more like a marketing pitch for evangelicalism than anything else. As a result, testimonies have waned in popularity over the years, making people like Rosemary say: “I’ve never been a big fan of the testimony-sharing thing. I think they’re kind of the worst.
“But then,” she warmed, “I got into the classroom. And someone stood up and said a bunch of things that I had never heard someone say in a testimony story before, things that must have been horrible to share. And I just felt like I could stand up and say exactly what was going on with me. And so, I did. I don’t really know why. I think I just thought, ‘It can’t get any worse.’ I was open to anything at that point. And I think everyone else went there with this kind of mind-set too, just embracing whatever came. And everyone in the room was amazing. One random guy even came up and told me that if I ever needed to talk, I could talk to his wife, which I always loved. Because of course I wouldn’t want to talk to this random guy about how I’d been raped, but he was just trying to do something. He didn’t know what to say, so he was like, ‘Here. Have my wife.’ ”
We both laughed.
“And a bunch of other people said, ‘We’re really glad you’re here.’ And they didn’t say anything else. I thought, ‘Okay. They don’t hate me because, I don’t know, I was abused.’ That just felt freeing. So the class was great.”
The next day, Rosemary’s class joined another class for a weekend retreat. There, she and her peers were asked to share their testimonies again, this time with the larger group. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to share my testimony again. It’s exhausting. I’m tired of crying,’ ” Rosemary said. “But I was sitting on this hill, and I just felt like it had been so freeing to tell my story. And I realized there was no reason not to tell any part of my story. I would tell people if I survived an earthquake, so why hide this? And I thought, ‘All right. You know what? I’m going to. Why not?’ So I did. This time with forty people instead of fourteen. And the room reacted really well again. And I think after that retreat thing, I just started feeling free. Really feeling like I didn’t have a secret anymore. I think the more you tell your story, particularly within safe spaces, the freer you are. That’s part of the reason I’m willing to tell you my whole story . . . within reason, I’m not going to give everybody all of my dirty laundry. But if there are things that you can’t tell anyone, they have power over you.
“Then I got my testimony paper back,” she frowned, though her eyes were still light. “And the teacher told me my testimony wasn’t ‘happy enough.’ ” Rosemary began to laugh. “That my testimony wasn’t going to inspire people to want to be Christians. I was suicidal at that point, and miserable, but I laughed. Because it was just so ridiculous. And fortunately, everybody else was lovely, so it was not traumatizing to get that response, but it stands out. Let me tell you how ‘happy’ I was, laden with PTSD that had been totally not dealt with. I was like, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing right now! I’m miserable. Fuck no, I’m not happy! I’ve just lost my family. I’ve been homeless for a summer.’ But I was still there. And that alone was the accomplishment of my life. That summer, I felt dead. But in Europe I felt alive again. I was walking around and trying to figure out everything from scratch. And it was a good place to start doing that. It was a safe place. I was cared for there. But that’s a snapshot of evangelicals, right?”
“It is,” I said—both the students’ warm embrace, which literally saved Rosemary’s life, and the teacher’s admonishment that her life didn’t look like it was “supposed to” and that she had best go back and rewrite it. It is a tension I suspect most evangelicals and former evangelicals would identify with.
“When I came back to college after my time in Europe, I felt like I had to fake it in order to be accepted in the evangelical community again,” Rosemary continued.
“Fake what?”
“In Europe we all wanted to know who each other were, but back at my evangelical college in the US, it didn’t feel like that was an option. You’re just supposed to be ‘a happy Christian.’ ”
Rosemary
gave her evangelical college another year, and then she dropped out.
“I felt like I was starting from a blank slate,” she told me, “and it was terrifying. I believed in God, but I didn’t know what that meant at that point. I started researching some other spiritualities, looking into Native American spirituality, Celtic, neo-pagan spiritualities. I’d always loved mythology growing up. Some of the time I was praying. Some of the time I was journaling. Sometimes I was reading. Sometimes I was just looking for space to just be. My brother had moved out and I moved back in with my parents while I was looking for another house. And then my brother—surprise!—came home for a month, and I ended up couch surfing again.”
Rosemary still lives in the east coast community in which she grew up. She’s maintained a relationship with her family, which sometimes forces her to see her brother, which she hates. But she does it, because he isn’t her only sibling. Rosemary has another brother and sister—both much younger than she and her brother—over whom she is understandably very protective.
“I actually have a picture of them,” she said to me. “Want to see them?”
“Yes,” I smiled.
“Yeah,” she said, holding up her phone. “That’s my little brother and sister.”
“Aww. Cuties!”
“They’re great. I love them. Zach is a teenager now. He’s super cool and will only talk when he gets excited, and my little sister is just adorable.”
Rosemary held her phone in front of her for a moment longer and just looked at it.
* * *
“Today, I am a feminist,” Rosemary told me near the end of our interview. “The first time I heard in feminist circles that ‘an enthusiastic yes is standard consent,’ it was freeing. With my brother, it was always, ‘Oh, I could have done more. I could have screamed. I could have run upstairs where my mother was.’ But it never even occurred to me to ask for help. Not even remotely.
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