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| Printable Version of Topic Click here to view this topic in its original format ExChristian.Net Open Forums > Sex and Christianity > The Undoing Of A Beautiful Girl Posted by: vugizoview Nov 10 2003, 08:01 PM Following is an essay I wrote a number of years ago when a friend asked me to tell him how it was I became a stranger to my erotic nature. How I came to womanhood without a sense of my own femininity, and why I felt bereft of what I knew was a vital aspect of my being. And why I ached to be whole. I haven’t changed the text. It’s an interesting marker for me in my spiritual journey because it has only been in the last year that I’ve been able to fully articulate my rage at the contrived religion of Christianity that skewed my entire life experience. I now understand the awful truth of this cult, and can put into words what I was unable even to bring completely to the surface of my conscious mind most of my life. But I have now. And I’ve got a very big something to say about all of this. (I called myself home, by the way. You will understand.) If you want to know the sound of this moment for me, listen to “My Little Demon” on Fleetwood Mac’s CD, The Dance. And turn it up . . . really high. I was raised in a Christian home on the mission field in equatorial Africa. My physician-parents served hospitals in Burundi and Rwanda over the course of two decades. I heard the stories of Jesus all my life and loved them. I embraced them in the rhythmic telling and retelling of them that was the sound and movement of my world. I lived the bulk of my life in the fold of a deep and profound faith, but there was one part of my life always missing, that was not embraced by the Christ. A puzzle piece for which I was searching and for which I longed, which remained always beyond my grasp. Even as a girl I intuited that part of me was not acceptable; part of me could not be seen. It was the part of me ignored by the adults around me. Tender, open, curious…budding…I moved easily among them in the protective culture of mission life. Watching the adults, the women in particular, I looked for clues to inform my growing wonder at the Mystique beginning to stir in me. A mystery I saw full-blown in the Belgian women who were my teachers in town. Did missionaries not feel these same things also? Were their bodies not awash in the same fleshed-senses which made the world alive to me? In the deafening code of silence to which they gave resolute ascent I felt this part of me judged if not completely rejected. This part of me I only glimpsed from afar, that slipped the safety of the ties that bind. A part of my glory exiled before it was ever mine. Far beyond the reach of the love of God no matter how many times I sang How broad, how deep the love of God . . . Instead of emerging into the light of day, I felt the quivering of my body’s senses relegated to the shadows and to dark places I had not yet known. There was no one to rejoice with me at the tingling I felt inside. No one to reveal Wisdom’s secrets to me, nor to sit beside me in my dawn and sing the sonnets of Eros sounding in me. I began to feel ashamed for what I felt. For what I wanted to look at. For what I wanted to know. A life force seemingly from behind matter itself flooded me, gushing somewhere deep inside, seeping into my warm flesh and hot blood in daily increments. Awakening me. Making me feel. Making me notice. Making me respond. Making me need. It was a tsunami I was powerless to stop, a wave everything in me wanted to ride. IT WAS A CATACLYSM! This one thing I knew: the lust of the eyes and the desires of the flesh—all things passion—were the stuff of sin itself and had the power to send me straight to hell. In words read to me right out of the bible I learned that in order to live forever with God in heaven I must suicide this part of myself. I must put to death my flesh and all its sinful appetites. Just how far wrong can nine-year-old girl go? The spirit of God, I learned, was at war against my body and its many dark wells of evil which came with me out of my mother’s womb. With an invisible sword of the spirit I was armed to slay the enemy of my soul. If your eye offends you, pluck it right out of your face. Better to go to heaven blind than to burn in hell forever with seeing in your eyes. Chop your hand off if it makes you sin and you will go to paradise. What will be left of me, I wondered, when I am done slaying, mutilating and maiming? With Jesus Loves Me fresh on my lips I fled my essential self. For the first time in my life I was introduced to the comfort of hiding. I learned to wear shame like a shroud. I perfected the art of feeling one thing and saying another. In girl-days, in this very world where God is bursting out all over, I began a vigil at the door, leaning hard against it, desperate for my eternal soul to keep this relentless entreaty from flooding through my veins and erupting into eternal flesh-burning hellfire. My mind, I learned, could be a friend to me, offering me respite and safe harbor. In this hidden place, in innumerable private ceremonies I was not always aware of, I blessed a vessel that was mine, cutting it loose to drift to deep waters far away. To a place I did not know. In the words of the lyricist, why had I become afraid to live in this temple God had made? In a myriad of ways, every day and every day, I learned that in order to say hello to Christ I had to say goodbye to my humanity. In order to love God perfectly, I had to renounce that which was so near and dear to me. My body self. I knew that things would be well with my soul if only I didn’t have this living flesh of mine. I came to adulthood profoundly estranged from myself. And from God. Feeling disembodied, my spirit longed to be at peace in the world while my body longed to be at home in God. In the intervening years since girlhood a deep and penetrating angst settled inside me, etching itself in sharp relief on my soul. Like a fallen cloud, a cold, damp sadness made my bones ache. A pallid gloom permeated my most inward self born of grief for this lost part of me. There was no one to call me home. ---------- Pursuing the Mystery with my hair on fire. At our essence we are energy expressed as LOVE. And love expresses itself as an urge towards UNITY. Collin Tipping Life is alive. Posted by: pitchu Nov 11 2003, 09:14 AM v, Too many beautiful girls and boys have been made and are still being made sexual amputees in the names of jesus and Allah. Thank you for your heartfelt story. Posted by: I Broke Free Nov 11 2003, 09:39 AM QUOTE (vugizoview @ Nov 10 2003, 11:01 PM) I perfected the art of feeling one thing and saying another. Thank you so much for sharing your story. it truly touched me. Your quote above describes my stay in the cult of xtianity perfectly. Self-loathing is one the greatest tools used to control the members of the christ-cult, I am glad to have been able to shed the shame and learn to enjoy life to its fullest. Thank You.. Posted by: Guest_copyboy Nov 11 2003, 01:03 PM Augustine did'nt help matters as concerning sex.He raised hating yourself to whole new level.Terms like"hideous erections"and the "vile desires of the flesh"Hell this guy said he disliked the pleasure he felt when he ate food because it reminded him of the vile desires of the flesh.Calvin said"we are mud and filth inside and out".Both of these men are held up as great men of the faith.Go figure.They sound anti-life to me. Posted by: CrashingOverTheTop Nov 12 2003, 07:21 AM Copyboy, QUOTE They sound anti-life to me. They are. The issue of human sexuality is being pressed on the christian mythology very heavily right now. Because the mindbody connection is abundantly evident these days, thanks to science. I think it's what's going to ultimately shatter the foundations altogether, or morph a compelling vision strong enough to draw people to a worldview consistent with what science is showing us about the laws of nature itself. A unifying model that shifts human consciousness toward an understanding that sense of self as speparate from source (god for the chirstians) is not Real, but is the "tool" we use in the world of opposites which makes any experience possible. The only way any of us experience anything is through our senses which are processed through the brain/mind. That we experience life at all is because of our senses and the ability we have through our brain/mind/conscious awareness to know ourself and to know life external to us as well. It's a dilemma for the orthodox christian religion because if they say that they are the body of christ on earth, god's very own body and that they think with christ's MIND, then they must look at themselves and realize god is erotic and sexual and god reproduces god's own self. Now this is way too much for the religionists! This is alarming! Eros is absent from orthodox christian theology precisely because it's designed this way. It isn't an oversight or something that got sort of forgotten. At the time of Constantine and the various counsels that shaped christianity and divinized jesus, paganism was well-balanced in its recognition of both the feminine and the masculine. Divine love was fully realized in human lovers. Heaven and earth, so to speak, came together in humans. This would have been well known to the early church fathers, and if you want to amass power, there's nothing quite like brokering eternal destiny. Partly why they decided to divinize jesus was so they could keep god as other than who we are, and break up this "unholy" aliance between human feminity and masculinity. They were successful on a very large scale. It is up to us to pursue the findings of science and to make the mindbody connection that integrates humanity. I think -- this is my opinion -- that life knows itself because of us, and as us. I think there is source, source's objective self, us, and consciousness. Mind and consciousness are what make life itself possible to know its own life. We have power to choose. And THIS is what the evolution of the human brain is about. Because our brain makes consciousness possible, and self reflection, we can now "see" alternatives, and choose between them. We are now in the driver's seat as to human evolution. I think this is just the beginning. Where we're headed is to other planets and further unimaginable evolution. Well . . . that was quite a meandering. I understand better now why human sexuality is so very threatening to christianity. They're on the fence on the subject of whether they are or aren't the body of christ on earth. god's actual body. Precisely because of the issue of sexuality. It's our job to push them. And it's our job to live out of a paradigm that integrates us rather than fractures us. Posted by: JezebelLeFey Nov 23 2003, 12:56 AM Then of course with the church fathers' view of women and with that sex, the first temples attacked were those dedicated to goddesses like Astarte, Inanna, Ishtar, Aphrodite, etc. Because, can't have us womenfolk liking what we see, feel and taste, and especially, knowing we do have some power. The priestesses in those temples were thought to be the embodiment of said goddess so that whoever was in their presence had the goddess' attention, not just a select few. More than that is the fact that sex breaks down the very barriers they were busy creating. Posted by: JezebelLeFey Nov 23 2003, 12:57 AM Sorry, double post. Got an error message, so I sent it again. Posted by: Vixentrox Nov 23 2003, 06:52 AM Welcome to the forums JezebelLeFey. Posted by: Aphrodite Nov 23 2003, 10:20 AM Be with you soon. . . Posted by: michelle Dec 7 2003, 05:03 PM Vugioview, Now listen, I am a tough woman, much has been stolen from me through Christianity. I live in what some people might refer to as a ghetto, theres no weaklings around here. Im no softee, but this thing you wrote here made me get tears in my eyes. I wish every girl between the ages of 9 & 16 could read it. More importantly, I wish girls that age could be exposed to people like you. You know whats goin on baby, unfortuneatly some of us have had to learn the hard way. I just wanted to tell you how good it is, what you wrote. Now, lets hear from the guys! Did Christianity affect theyre sexuality like this? Posted by: Antonia Dec 13 2003, 01:04 AM Michelle asked, "Did Christianity affect their sexuality like this?" Sorry, Michelle, not a guy, but I have another perspective to offer. Christianity, specifically Mormonism, affected my sexuality in a deep, profound, and sad way. When I was 9 years old I was systematically raped by a man in the congregation who baby-sat on a regular basis. (This man was later jailed for molesting his own children.) Four years later, when I confessed this to the Bishop during my yearly interview for purity (*VOMIT*), he told me that I must have done something wrong to attract his attention. For the next 6 years I wore baggy clothes to hide my shape, was never alone with a male, and did not date; this behavior continued even after I had left the Borg. I was so afraid that I had done something wrong that I put out signals of being undesirable. I became depressed and suicidal, and finally received therapy. I am much better now, and married to a great guy who loves my body. When we started having sex, it took me months to be able to orgasm. The man who raped me would often masturbate me to orgasm, probably as a means of control, ie, if you like it then you must want it and so you're just as bad as I am. This created so much guilt for me over the issue of pleasure. As a result of the abuse, and the lack of concern over it from church leaders, I was a VERY unhealthy sexual being for over a decade. The sexual repression and neglect of women in the Abrahamic (not just xtian) cults can be so unbelievably awful. Women are so often seen as nothing more than walking respirators, inferior to their husbands, and a cause for lustful sin. This creates a sick, sick mentality of "I am woman, therefore I am bad." No one should have to go through what I did. It's abuse, and it's wrong. Posted by: Lokmer Dec 13 2003, 05:31 AM You wanted a male perspective, here you go: I grew up in the evangelical church. My father is a theology professor who, in the course of his carreer, worked at CMA and Conservative Baptist schools (though he was too liberal for either), because of which we hopped denominations a few times (CMA, PB, EPC, non-denom evangelical), and I also attended a non-denom Christian elementary schoool. My mother is a missionary kid who grew up in the Amazon (Peru) with Wycliffe (SIL). Growing up in the house was a weird mix of conservative devotion and rationalistic secularism - my father (though I didn't realize it at the time) spent a goodly amount of time deprogramming me from the ultra-conservative indoctrination I received at the hands of my teachers, youth leaders, and various ministers who formed the bulk of our social circle because of his work. This is not to say, of course, that he did not or does not believe, but his belief is tempered by a measure of cynicism and reality (he has, as near as I can make out, a Neo-Orthodox bent, which is another way of saying "Theistic Christian minimalist agnostic"). The sexual messages I received growing up were remarkably mixed. On the one hand, my parents were (and are) deeply affectionate towards one another and were not shy about making out around the house, and did not freak out when one of us would occasionally stumble into their room while they were having sex, but rather politely asked us to give them a few minutes. They were open about their enjoyment of their sex life, and as we all got older and discovered dirty jokes my mother would occasionally bellow the orgasm song from Young Frankenstein when Dad got home from work or something equally light-hearted and silly. On the other hand, when I hit puberty both of my parents freaked out in very odd ways. My mother would no longer hug me and seemed to think there was something bad about me. My father became deeply insecure around me and began to occasionally seek validation (though I didn't recognize it as such at the time) for his own normalcy in adolecense regarding things like fantasies and masturbation et.al. Although they were both apparently well-adjusted sexual beings, my sexuality really scared them. They were open informationally on issues of anatomy and such, but became very concerned when I read historical novels with sex in them and (on one occasion) totally appoplectic when they discovered a draft of a book I was writing that contained a sex scene (I was not sexually active at the time). I got a LOT of abstinence talk - Dad particularly was very worried about potential promiscuity and was constantly asserting that sex was a drug that required increasing doses to get the high, and was only emotionally safe in a marraige relationship. Into that mix, throw the molestation of one of my little brothers by my (at the time) best friend, which nearly destroyed the family. Out of that came (after many years) the disclosure that both my parents had been raped (my mother on several occasions on the mission field, my father by his puritannical fundamentalist mother and a male cousin) and had their experiences covered up by their parents and church leaders, resulting for my father in a very obsessive attitude toward sex (hence the drug analogy) and my mother's terminal fear of any male but my father. But that I learned/worked out later. In the meantime, (I was 14 or 15 at the time I discovered the molest - I walked in on my bro and my "friend"), everything got severely fucked up. By osmosis, I had developed both a profound respect for women (most of the women I was exposed to growing up were academics or otherwise very interesting and strong people) and a tendency to divorce sex from any sort of context (I had gotten the distinct idea that it wasn't polite to the woman to be heavily involved with her before marriage, and that women don't like it until they have the guarrantee of secutiry anyway). This tendency really soured most of my relationships in high school. As the child of someone very well connected in the Christian church and academic community, I was privy to some very grotesque goings-on (rapes, adulturies, the occasional contract murder), things which (when you learn about them at the tender age of 10) tend to affect you in ways you don't expect. My Dad was one of the few men I knew who were trying to bring perps in this vein to some sort of justice, and the stories he can tell are truly horrifying. Although these facts did not impact my faith in any way (I just figured that people were people, and there would always be truly evil things wherever there were people), it did engender a fear of sex (particularly, of what I as a male might accidentally do to a woman) that played into a lot of what followed. I should add that (to my parents' great but fairly well-concealed horror) I was quite sexually precocious. I still remember at the age of four making out with my "girlfriend" quite vigorously under the back seat of my parents' van during a fireworks show. I have been aware of women in a sexual sense since at least that time, and have always enjoyed their mere presence. (My parents, of course, did everything they could to discourage my precocity, but that didn't stop me from having a lot of crushes and writing a lot of love letters between the time I was 5 and 10). By the time I was 12 I was reading the sex advice columns in Focus on the Family's "Breakaway" and Christianity Today's "Campus Life" as pornography. I had quite the vivid fantasy life and acquired a distinctive taste for dirty sex. Adding these various factors together - the shame and excitement, the holy/profane paradox, the perception of women as sexually breakable while otherwise very strong, the constant presence of platonic female friends who were VERY horny people while being appreciated for being sexually distant - at 15 I was a mess. Between 15 and 17 I had a series of very intense relationships that were, on the whole, disasters. My first two girlfriends were both very very sexual women who found my frigidity (I didn't want to break them!) unbearably frustrating. After my breakup with the second girl, I briefly got back together with the first girlfriend and had a very intense 2-week sexual realationship (making up, as it were, for the intimacy we both still needed from our time as closely bonded emotional siamese twins a year before) which I cut off very abruptly out of guilt for using her when I wasn't sure I loved her anymore (a guilt which paralysed me around women for several years). I then dated the woman to whom I was probably the cruelest - she was 15 and very curious, I was 16 and "knew better" than to play with fire. I refused to even kiss her. She had been my friend and confidant for years, and I loved her quite a lot. She left me after a month - and in retrospect I don't blame her. I owed her a lot better than I gave her (beautiful words without soft touches are pretty worthless in a relationship). In frustration and shame, I declared that I would not date until I got my shit together, and stayed very distant from women for 2 years, working and going to college pretty much ate up my life. In the midst of all that, I worked a summer at a Christian camp and had the misfortune to witness the sexual assault of my dearest friend at the camp (whom I was in love with but too timid to tell) by my rommate. At the time (a darkened movie room) I wasn't sure if what I had seen was consensual, so I asked her about it the next morning, and the two of us wound up in the director's office filing a report. At the advice of their lawyer (the DA for the county!!!) they covered it up and threatened the witnesses. I quit my job in disgust - I never found out what happened to her (though she was a prodigiously strong lady, and I'm fairly confident that she turned out alright). During my self-enforced time of celibacy I read a lot of Robert A. Heinlein, one of the authors who was instrumental in changing my sexual consciousness. It was through his work that I first glimpsed the possibility of treating a woman properly - not as a weird amalgum of the respectable human adult and the breakable sexual child, but as a creature whose strength and beauty arose out of the interplay of her sexuality and her character. At 18, in my 3rd year of college, I went away to a 4 year residential school near Portland, OR (run by Quakers, who are even more deeply fucked up than the Plymoth Bretheren). To my pleasant surprise, I found myself - overweight, unattractive, boorish, overly-intellectual me - inundated with women. In my first semester and a half there I had eight women seriously vying for my attention, and a number of other snuggle-buddies who were merely very intimate good friends. I didn't quite know what to do with myself, but I muddled along as best I could and enjoyed myself, still trying to keep my overly-sexed nature in check. I still did things I now regret, but I regret them because they were missed opportunities - I was still treading lightly, though not battling with my sexual nature anymore I was still overly cautious. At some point during the semester, my reputation as a masseur got round among my "harem" (I have my roommate to owe for that lovely epithet), and I had, to say the least, my hands full. At a conservative Christian school, where you signed a blood oath that you would not have unmarried sex, it was the most amazing bit of prolific sexual intimacy I had yet run into. Being a man who takes my word quite seriously, I could not have sex during the semester, but the oath said nothing about oiling down and relaxing a beautiful woman with hours-long massages. It was here that I was able to move from theory (being a prolific reader I had the academic lay of the female landscape, but precious little recent experience) and learn the art of touching another human being for their pleasure. It's still one of my favorite things to do with a woman, and I occasionally look back on that time and wish I could live it again. They were all - tall, short, fat, thin, statuesque, homely - deeply deeply beautiful people. I've lost touch with most of them, and in many cases I wish I had loved them better than I knew how at the time, but I'll never forget any of them. Sarah was the lady who finally helped me break free of my reticense and shame. She was 24 - 6 years my senior (though she didn't learn my age until after we were no longer together), and we met my first day at school, and sparks flew. Brash, literate, crude, outspoken, sexy as hell, with a wicked serrated wit, she had me by the short-and-curlies and the gray cells by the end of our first Lit class together. We did everything together for three months, but I was still very un-confident and was afraid to touch her lest I offend her, and she quite sensibly moved on to greener pastures thinking I just wanted her for a friend. When that happened, I finally understood what sex was for, and why it mattered. I resolved not to let another woman of her caliber slip away (though we are still friends and correspond occasionally, we are both quite happily married to other people). It was as if someone had finally ripped the blinkers off my eyes. The next lady I fell for - and I fell hard - was Kitty. And it was not an easy relationship. Sarah actually worked on me for her when she saw us having dinner together one evening (they had known each other a couple years before). We were friends for about six months when I realized that when I looked at her I was seeing children and old age. She was everything I loved about people rolled up into a very small sexual fireball - one of those women who seem to be ordinary until you talk to them or see them walk, and then its hard to keep your temperature down. We wound up getting together in a serious way - 18 months later I married her. I was just barely 20. Because we are both stubborn, passionate, driven people it has been very difficult going much of the time, but I wouldn't trade her for the world. We've managed to struggle through 2 novels and a feature film together (jury's still out on the film, actually, you can see a trailer at http://www.blenderwars.com/kestralmannix/gallery.html), and she continues to be my best friend and an incredible lover. And one of the beautiful ironies of it is that we are also united by a profound love of women - both of us are figure artists (she a sketch artist, me a photographer). A lovely, unthreatened, woman who encourages me in my friendships and professional relationships with women, where most women I have ever known would grow insecure and jealous. It is actually because of her that I have gotten into photography like I have, and have had the courage to go in the religious (or anti-religious) directions I have - where another Christian woman might freak out, she has not only supported me in my recent deconversion but has been there doing the research right alongside me (and joined me a couple weeks later). So, in a long, complicated, irritating draught, there you have my story of the wreck that Christianity made of me sexually - and the pain, rejection, and ruin that I introduced into the lives of women I loved because of it. Christianity, at least as it is practiced in the states, makes men into sexual predators, first by making them frightened of their own sexuality and then by teaching them to regard women as either inaccessable people or as sex objects only - and to regard women of high intellegence and character as inaccessable and bimbos as sex objects. Even in the more enlightened circles such as those that I usually traveled in outside of church (my father's academic community), there is a divorce of the sexuality from the person in the same way that you find extreme feminist philosophy divorcing the modern empowered woman from her sexuality. But I now believe that Heinlein was right - tits and ass do not make a woman, they make a masturbation toy. Intellegence and power do not make a woman, they make a person. A woman is the amalgum of her intellegence, her maturity, and her sexuality - all flowing one into another to create a human of surpassing beauty. The love of a good woman - or in my case, several good and patient women in succession - have taught me this. To them I am eternally grateful. -Lokmer BTW - for those who are interested, you can see a (very) small sample of my photography at http://www.onemodelplace.com/member.cfm/ID/59630. The photos at the bottom of the page credited to J. Daniel Sawyer and ArtisticWhispers productions are both mine. Posted by: bdpuffin Dec 13 2003, 06:36 PM I'm not going to go into a long history, but this has deeply resonated with me as I have been feeling the same sense of loss. I am male, 40 years old and still a virgin. Seven years ago I met an incredible pagan woman while I was still neck-deep in fundie Xtianity; we became closest, best friends but, 'of course,' the thought of a deeper relationship was out of the question because of all that 'be not unequally yoked' nonsense. This was part of what began my final pull away from religion - here was a woman I loved and respected who I had obvious chemistry with, but my religion told me god would be unhappy with me for pursuing a relationship with her because she was not of my belief. Skip ahead to this past March, and finally it seems a season may have been there for us to finally have that deeper relationship after all; as a pagan she had known her sexuality nearly all her life, had an active and fulfilling sex life and knew what her sexual needs were. What did I know? Only what I had been able to learn out of books or the internet, I had no experience and so no hope of being able to give her pleasure. I feel so cheated, I can't even put into words the range of emotions these events have stirred in me. She always told me 'experience makes the person' and I understand now so fully and deeply what she meant. We have drifted apart even on a casual level since then and if I let myself stop and think about it it still brings tears to my eyes - nothing more to say. Posted by: michelle Dec 13 2003, 08:07 PM Im sorry this happened to you. I hope you can find ways to move on. Posted by: Doug2 Dec 13 2003, 08:46 PM QUOTE At a conservative Christian school, where you signed a blood oath that you would not have unmarried sex I went to one of those terrible "sex is evil unless sanctioned by the church" workshops as a teen. I had to get up in front of 600 people or so and read some oath about not having sex before marriage. Then they tried to sell us all rings to wear to remind us of the oath. Half the teens there were terrified that they would have to say sex. Posted by: bdpuffin Dec 13 2003, 10:19 PM I agree with Lokmer's summation completely - Xtianity presents a picture of women that is so far from the reality, that whole 'breakable sexual child' analogy and, for me, the overriding need to treat them with 'honor' (and more to the point to show my own motives as 'pure' and 'honorable') above all, which ends up mitigating passion and sexuality. The things I'm finding out that I don't know about women, about how romance and sexuality really work... bdp Powered by Invision Power Board (http://www.invisionboard.com) © Invision Power Services (http://www.invisionpower.com) |