The Trauma Of Belief<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lauren Hemphill<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I met god as an eighth grader. The cream carpet beneath me formed abstract lines against my skin, the open window spilled light across the books strewn open on the floor. My spine curled against the hard metal of my golden bedframe, and the dancing tan curtain indicated a light breeze spinning through the room. A change of seasons approached. Crisp air held a coolness to the otherwise warming day. I looked up, towards the twinkling outside world, towards the tree that arched near my window. And stepping across the threshold, I believed that god entered to fill the space with joy, with happiness, with unbridled bliss as I worked on my assignments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I laughed and smiled and rushed to tell my mother that the holy spirit just visited me. I wonder now if, perhaps, for a few moments, I experienced how neurotypical people experienced life. I wonder if, for a moment, the fog of chronic illness lifted to allow me serenity, and I believed this to be the divine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Depression entered my ribcage at the start of seventh grade. It made a home there, atop my lungs, weighing down all that I did with a certain exhaustion, a sadness and weariness that would not depart. According to a study done in 2014, women are more likely to experience an earlier onset of depression than their male counterparts (Park, Seon-Cheol et al, \u201cDoes Age At Onset\u2026\u201d<\/em>). Coupled with that the higher chance of suicide attempts and a number of other horrifying statistics, it\u2019s no wonder I wandered through life in a haze, my mind riddled with an illness no one would take seriously. Not when I told them I thought I needed help, not when I said I bore all the symptoms of depression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As an adult, now I see this so-called godly experience in my bedroom as a moment of breakthrough, a moment of relief from a mind who failed to understand the given responsibility of ensuring that we wanted to live. In the midst of piles of homework, nature whispered to me through my window. It spoke to me with the promise of transformation, with the promise of something new. It captured my heart and, for a moment, my mind was well. I found myself attributing my clarity to a deity I grew up learning of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Four in ten Americans identified as white and Christian in 2020. This is less than it has been in subsequent years, indicating a loss of \u201croughly 11% per decade\u201d (\u201cThe American Religious Landscape in 2020,\u201d PRRI<\/em>). Those that aren\u2019t religiously affiliated have grown in numbers for numerous years, before their growth leveled out and dropped a few percentage points. In Christian extremism, this swell of godless citizens is horrifically alarming. The idea that less and less people subscribe to Christian beliefs emboldens them to go out and preach more, to clutch their pearls a little tighter, to feel as if the world itself is fallen, demonic. Nothing shows this more clearly than their fear around education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Questioning beliefs, or even the dreaded \u201cdeconstructing\u201d of beliefs, is seen as someone abandoning god altogether. Often, these people are met with distaste or hatred. The largest gathering of these unholy individuals is in secular colleges, where it is widely believed that they actively denounce god. These places of learning and knowledge become villainized as institutions that lead Christians who aren\u2019t strong in their faith away from their sacred deity, where atrocities such as women\u2019s rights, equality, queer people, and different view points are normalized and welcomed. For this reason, I committed myself to being solid within my beliefs to withstand college, so I might not falter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is 2021 now, and I graduated from the University of Idaho in 2018. I no longer call myself a Christian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m also incredibly lesbian, which is something that always seemed to be a risk when attending a secular school. Those leftist homosexuals might make me gay, might recruit me into their lifestyle. But I\u2019m lucky. School didn\u2019t make me gay, according to my mom\u2019s mom, knower of all things. In fact, according to her, it was my childhood that twisted me onto this dark path. My poor upbringing resulted in my queerness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So why don\u2019t we look at my upbringing? Why don\u2019t we uncover what it is that made me who I am today, made me angry, made me gay? Why don\u2019t we dissect just what was so terrible about my childhood that would have ever resulted in me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to two studies, children know they aren\u2019t straight at a young age. Nemours Children’s Health states that children know this near middle school (Dowshen, \u201cSexual Orientation\u201d), with Pew Research indicating a medium age of 12 years old (\u201cA Survey of LGBT Americans,\u201d Pew Research<\/em>). In regards to my sexuality, I learned this queerness about myself during my freshman year of high school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Enrolling in an all girl\u2019s school seemed to be the best way for me to focus on my studies and not be distracted by boys. St. Mary\u2019s provided a harsh curriculum, with fast-paced learning and almost no time to breathe. Homework buried me most nights, restricting what I could do outside the occasional sleep-over with a friend. A bond formed between me and another student, who I\u2019ll call Ghost. A short gal with enough sass and spunk to silence a room, with a boisterous laugh and an even more powerful singing voice that landed her in the prestigious, hand-picked choir of the school. I found myself drawn to her, and our friendship bound us together with iron links. I did not know why my heart fluttered around her. I did not know why I liked when she flirted. I had no words to explain why I got jealous when she gushed about upper classmen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t until late one school night that I realized, perhaps, there was a word for someone like me. I laid on my side, facing my bedroom wall, smothered by layers of blankets. My phone buzzed on the nightstand behind me, lighting up my room in a dim blue glow. I hesitated, wondering if I should just commit myself to going to sleep, or see who was texting me. My curiosity got the better of me–it was nearly eleven, after all, who needed me so badly at this time of night? The sheets whispered as I rolled over. The smell of oncoming winter in Oregon lingered in the air around my mattress. I pulled my phone from its charger and squinted against the harsh light to read the long message that awaited me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ghost. Ghost told me she loved me. Ghost told me she wished I was gay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The words refused me sleep beneath the midnight moon. I laid there, my phone on my chest, staring at the ceiling. I read her message over and over until unconsciousness took me, and I woke the next dawn with bags under my eyes and a heart that twisted around the confession until I could not breathe. I remember looking at her the next day. I remember how I wanted to tell her how I felt. I remember realizing that dreaming about kissing her might make me gay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping this secret killed me, day in and day out. I could not let these feelings spill, let them slip, let alone to those who knelt at the altar of the far-right Christian god. A fact sheet published by the Religious Institute cites that as much as 14% of teenagers engaged in religious communities are LGBTQIA+ (\u201cFact Sheet on LGBT Youth,\u201d Religious Institute<\/em>). Only a small fraction of them discuss their identities with others in these congregations. I can see why. In the churches I attended, more and more I noticed the sermons on queerness, on the perversion of sexuality that was gay people. Condemnation, promises of hellfire and eternal suffering, followed my steps into the catholic school of St. Mary\u2019s Academy. As I climbed the cement stairs, Scary Mary, the metal statue without eyes, watched. She knew as well as I what existed inside my heart. She knew the secret I kept. And she hated me for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, I could not tell a soul what I realized I was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGod knows your heart,\u201d is a well-cited phrase in Christian circles, a phrase meant to indicate that you should watch your thoughts, and keep them pure, too. However, for someone terrified of herself and her feelings, these phrases became threats, threats that god knew and saw exactly what sort of evil I was. When a youth pastor approached me one morning after church and told me god said that I needed to let go of a friend, that this friend was causing turmoil in my life, my mind went to Ghost. My mind lingered on her name, on her face, on the way she made my heart race. I stared at the youth pastor and realized that even if I kept my secret, god did not care. This deity would tell others, so that all may condemn me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fear chased me wherever I went. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Desperately, I wished for classes to be a safe place for me to forget about what sort of sinner I was, what deviancy lingered in my heart that would exclude me from love and grace. I let myself be me there, as if religion did not seep into the fabric of the Catholic private school. I blushed unabashedly, I lingered beside my crush, I held hands with those I wished I could kiss. Then came the one fateful afternoon, where Ghost asked me to attend a club with her. Geography club. She didn\u2019t tell me what it really was. She didn\u2019t tell me it was a place for people to question their sexuality. She didn\u2019t tell me that our homeroom teacher oversaw it, and reported names to the head nun, who then called the child\u2019s parents. I don\u2019t think she knew that last part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Safety and understanding and community lingered with me for a moment. I sat at that long table, working out how to explain who I was, what I was doing there. I wanted to sink into the chair when it became my turn to introduce myself, but those around me smiled, welcomed me, and told me I was safe. I met Crow there, another girl I would later develop a crush on. I learned it was okay to question myself, to be different, to be gay. I learned there was nothing wrong with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until, in a flash, all of it was denied to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I sat in the booth of P.F. Chang\u2019s, between both my parents, and I listened to them insist that they knew I wasn\u2019t gay. I listened as my mother admitted she read my journal. As they told me being gay was wrong, a sin, wicked. I insisted they didn\u2019t know. I could <\/em>be gay, I was just trying to figure it out. I just needed time. They said they knew I had feelings for Ghost. But those were friendship feelings. I liked her as a friend. I was straight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They trapped me in that booth. They refused to let me leave. They refused to let me go to the bathroom alone. We would stay in the restaurant until I admitted the truth. Until I admitted I wasn\u2019t gay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n School loomed now as a place of danger. No longer did it rest as a place of safety, a place where I could be myself. I dressed in our school uniforms, I wandered the halls with my head down, I nibbled the edges of my sweatshirt until they grew frayed and stained with saliva. I could not let my feelings show. I buried my attractions in hopes they would never be experienced again. I pretended not to notice when Ghost wore street clothes, when she dressed up, when I could see her cleavage. I pretended I couldn\u2019t hear the drumming in my ears when she leaned close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The head nun who outed me to my parents watched with scornful eyes. Sister Linda, along with others of her flock, patrolled the halls on Friday mornings, when, sometimes, we would be free to wear dress-code appropriate clothes, and not our uniforms. Linda followed my friends like a shark trailing blood. She criticized our bodies. She told Ghost that certain clothing was off-limits to busty girls. She told another not to wear tights, as they were too sexual. She told the artist of our group to stop drawing the curves in female form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned from her that our bodies were weapons. Perhaps that was why Ghost\u2019s body allured me. Perhaps it was normal for straight girls to notice other women, to be attracted to them. That was why we had to cover up. That was why our bodies were sinful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They could cause anyone to fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Modesty prevailed wherever I went. The services on Sunday morning reminded women of all ages–minors to adults–that we were temptations for men. How we dressed could cause a brother in Christ to fall into sin, and we, with our bodies, would be partially responsible for it. Harsh words, uttered in whispered breaths, left the lips of family members who saw women on the street dressed in shorts, in crop tops, in dresses that showed cleavage. In the confines of religious education, I understood that men hungered for me, and if they chose to bite into my flesh with lustful fangs, I, too, would descend into hell with them. My body served as a weapon, whether I wanted it to or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hated looking at myself in the mirror. All I saw was a child with a body of sickness. All I saw was everything purity culture told me not to be–gay, whore, woman. I didn\u2019t want to be perceived. I didn\u2019t want a single person to look at me. I<\/em> didn\u2019t want to look at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mom asked if I was anorexic. But I ate full meals, finished my plate at dinner, didn\u2019t throw up after. I consumed everything I packed for school, I bought cookies from the vending machine, I ate and ate and stared at my plate and wondered why I did. I bit into my apple. I lost interest. I chewed on what I could manage and found myself asking what the point was. I ate. But I only truly ate to sate the hunger. I went home and counted my ribs. I could feel and identify each vertebrae in my spine. Ghost wrapped me in her arms and picked me up, remarking on how thin I was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hated it. I hated being small. Yet the church told me my breasts, my legs, my curves all drew ire of those around me, and its words boomed louder. My interest in food waned still. I ate. But did I deserve to? <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2021, a video circulated of a pastor body shaming women from 1st General Baptist Church in Malden, Missouri. In this video, he stated that, \u201cGod made men to be drawn to beautiful women. We are made this way. We can’t help ourselves\u201d (Smith, \u201cPastor on Leave After Shaming Wives…\u201d). This rhetoric alarmed many. It did not alarm me. This man said aloud what I\u2019ve been taught all my life. Men are visual. They cannot help it if they assault me. It is my fault for being dressed the way I was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the last two years of high school, I attended a place called Resurrection Christian School in Loveland, Colorado. My first day, I loathed it. My parents promised I could finish high school in the same school I started it in, which was St. Mary\u2019s Academy, and that promise was broken. I moved away, away from the girls I loved, away from the city that accepted me, away from friends\u2019 families that would\u2019ve helped protect me. We moved to this square in the middle of the country, and I entered this new religious school, and I loathed everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The feeling was mutual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walking up stairs, I was told to ensure my shorts didn\u2019t lift, because the boys behind me might be tempted. In gym, I was advised not to wear comfortable clothing, as the tightness, the showing skin, might cause the other teenages to lust and be condemned. Walking through the halls, my friend had to wrap her jacket around her waist so a male teacher wouldn\u2019t stare at her ass. Our religion teacher told us women had periods because we caused the Fall of Man, and periods were our punishment. I was told I was to submit to the men, even the boys in my class, as it was my place as a woman to do so. I was told that I was to give my husband sex whenever he wanted it. I was told if I lost my virginity, I lost all my dignity as a woman. That no one would want me if I was filth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, I wrote an email filled with testimonies from my peers to Resurrection Christian School. I listed the toxicity of which they taught, I shared the stories asked of me to share. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFirstly, it has come to my attention that several of my classmates were exorcised by or at the school. This is not only horrifying and shocking, it is immensely inappropriate to do this to a teenager. Teenagers are growing into adults and are experiencing a lot of hardships during those years of change, and treating them as demons is a surefire way to traumatize them and give them negative impressions of self. What are your current policies and stances on exorcising a minor, and what assurances can you give that you are not wrongfully traumatizing minors in a space that should be safe for them?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn addition to being taught as a whole group that we were cursed from birth because of the actions of one, we were also taught that vaginal discharges, a healthy part of a woman’s body cleaning itself, was an indication that one such woman was living in sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot only that, there was an omission of knowledge about our own bodies as young women – many things we learned, we had to teach ourselves, or learn elsewhere because of the lack of proper anatomy and sexual education given out by the school. These include, but are not limited to, the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The difference between the urethra opening and the vaginal opening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Growing breasts and what sort of lumps to be concerned about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Consent and withdrawal of consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The amount of healthy period bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c-Married women can say no to their partner desiring sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Women who do not have children and do not marry are blessed by God and not going against His plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -What abusive relationships look like and ways to seek help outside the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -That our bodies are not sexual products created to be enjoyed by men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -That a divorce is not shameful or wrong, and is necessary to leave an abusive relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -How to seek help for abusive relationships, and what hotlines to call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -That God would not desire someone to remain in an abusive relationship, and would not be disappointed if they sought safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Sex is not supposed to hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Sex is not an obligation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Sex it not just for the creation of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -What vaginismus is and where to seek help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -What an enthusiastic \u201cyes\u201d is for consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -LGBTQIA+ topics, including what it isn\u2019t (pedophilia, morally wrong, or unbiblical) and what it is (loving relationships, human beings in a relationship, something as beautiful as straight relationships).<\/p>\n\n\n\n -That a woman does not need to submit, does not need to give their partner sex or children, and does not need to feel guilty or ashamed for doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlong with problems discussing sexual topics with students, there were many issues handling such topics by the staff. These include, but are not limited to, the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Allowing teachers who were uncomfortable with the topics covered in a health class to teach the student body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Having a cis male straight superintendent in attendance during an all-female sex education presentation, thus giving young women the impression that sex and their bodies must be overseen by a male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The inappropriate conduct conducted by a superintendent that would spray water on girls he deemed as acting unfit or inappropriately during school dances, thus not only humiliating young women, but policing their bodies, further imprinting the idea that they must act as a man sees fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -30 and 60+ year old, cis male teachers repeatedly reporting a female student for dress code violations, despite the student not being in violation. This thusly policed the young woman\u2019s body and made her uncomfortable enough to need to wear a jacket around her waist in order to simply walk past their classrooms, creating an atmosphere of sexual harassment that went unchecked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Not correcting or discrediting students making shameful remarks about LGBTQIA+ members, such as indicating that gay men will \u2018hit on them\u2019 if one of the community members came to speak at the school. This allowed for misinformation to continue to go unchecked that gay men will hit on any man or young boy, which is inaccurate and not indicative of godly love or grace as the school preached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Allowing abuse and harassment to go unchecked on suspected members of the LGBTQIA+ community within the student body by not only students, but teachers and coaches, degrading the foundation of which RCS stands upon, which is sharing God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn addition, there were many shortcomings of the school that has caused harm to many of the alumni and I. Because of the continual pressure upon young women to submit to men, there are alumni who have come forward to share that this message of submission was internalized enough that when a male student pressured a female student into sexual acts when they were teenagers, the woman submitted because the man insisted it was her duty to do so as his future wife. Many women have reached out to share their stories of internalizing the message that sex is bad, to never do it, and that when they finally desired it within their partner, that they were in pain and unable to relax and enjoy the act because of the pressure to never act upon such desires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOthers have shared stories of harmful teaching about submission, to the point where women have felt as if divorce\u2014even in an abusive relationship\u2014is wrong and sinful, guilting them into staying in relationships that are not healthy and, at times, are physically abusive. The pressure for women to submit was never clear[er] to me, personally, than when I attended my religious studies class and was greeted with a male student reading a passage of the bible where it was dictated for a woman to submit to her husband in all areas. When I contested this, and insisted that the male student read on, the teacher allowed the student to read the rest of the sentence about female submission before laughing and stopping the conversation, never allowing the student to read the passage about male submission, and never correcting the student for his outburst. Circumstances like mine happened frequently, though much of it was with the continually messaging of lessons by staff that women were sinful because of Eve, that women therefore had periods and pains during periods, and that women had to submit to their husbands in all areas. This fostered the toxic environment that has harmed several alumni and former students. This emphasis placed by the school that women are to submit to men in all manner of areas, including that of the marriage bed. Not only was the school dress code placed upon our shoulders not to “tempt” the young men around us, and that we and how our bodies were made were “causing the young men to fall,” but the idea that once we were old enough to marry that we would was in itself harmful. As you may be aware, many of us alumni are not married, and many of us do not have children. However, this was pushed upon us quickly, as this was what was emphasized as the thing only our bodies could do, and the only thing our bodies would do in the future. This has caused what I can only describe as great discomfort, or dysphoria, within my own body as I have grown. The emphasis by the school has caused a lot of pain within those of us who attended RCS. I feel I need not point out that there was a young woman who had her nudes leaked by her boyfriend while I attended the school, and the main blame and disgust was placed on her, and not her boyfriend for betraying her trust and treating her body as a commodity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (RCS Letter, Lauren Hemphill)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2704<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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