Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 5

This concludes the answers of first group of participants in the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. Let’s have a hearty round of internet applause for Melissa, Haley, Lina, V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne for their honest, heartfelt responses!

You might want to bookmark their blogs, too!

You can find Melissa at Permission to Live, Lina at Finding Snooze, Latebloomer at Past Tense, Present Progressive, and Katy-Anne at Katy-Anne Wilson.

And right now, I want to personally thank each of you. Melissa, I have really enjoyed the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your responses. Haley, I am thrilled that you are finding yourself more and more free to express who you are. Lina, you have cracked me up throughout this whole series – you should seriously try stand-up comedy. V, it’s been such a pleasure to “meet” you and hear your story; thank you for being so frank. Latebloomer, you and I were separated at birth – I loved learning more about your experiences. Katy-Anne, I’m honored that you were willing to share all that you did and I hope that the process has brought some healing to you.

In the next few days, I’ll introduce the next six participants. The Sexuality Project is still open if you or someone you know would like to join in. Thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing and making this project successful!

Life Outside the Bubble

5. What, if anything, would you tell your younger self about sexuality and life outside fundamentalism?

Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 4

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Life Outside the Bubble

4. What (and how) do you plan to teach your children (if applicable) about sexuality?

Misogynist Pastor Doug Wilson Continues Gaslighting His Critics

From Gaslight (1944).

Gaslighting is a term derived from the 1944 film Gaslight. Here’s an excerpt from the plot:

Paula loses a brooch that Gregory had given her, despite its having been stored safely in her handbag. A picture disappears from the walls of the house, and Gregory says that Paula took it, but Paula has no recollection of having done so. Paula also hears footsteps coming from above her, in the sealed attic, and sees the gaslights dim and brighten for no apparent reason. Gregory suggests that these are all figments of Paula’s imagination.

Gregory does everything in his power to isolate his wife from other people. He allows her neither to go out nor to have visitors, implying he is doing so for her own good, because her nerves have been acting up, causing her to become a kleptomaniac and to imagine things that are not real. On the one occasion when he does take her out to a musical gathering at a friend’s house, he shows Paula his watch chain, from which his watch has mysteriously disappeared. When he finds it in her handbag, she becomes hysterical, and Gregory takes her home. She sees why she should not go out in public.

In short, gaslighting is a strategy abusive persons use to manipulate their victims’ circumstances and convince them that they (the victims) are going crazy and can’t trust their own instincts.

And gaslighting is exactly what Doug Wilson continues to do as more and more people object to his coercive, abusive, patriarchal model of Christian sexuality.

First he posts a cryptic message consisting of a blockquote from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength:

“I see,” said the Director. “It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told you that obedience – humility – is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be.”

Wilson makes no comment – how about a little context here, eh? – so it’s unclear whether he’s trying to enlist the name of C.S. Lewis to make his misogynistic beliefs about sex more palatable or authoritative, or whether he is attempting sarcasm or irony.

A commenter who’s apparently on Wilson’s side can’t even make sense of it:

I’m a little confused by this response. I agree that egalitarianism is wrong. But:
First, the denial of egalitarianism does not imply that we should use the language you use.
Second, in your previous post, you said that conquest is something that both do to the other. That is, an egalitarian could agree with it. But that itself is odd, since your original quote was trying to show the difference between man and woman, and you can’t do that by appealing to a commonality. 
The whole thing seems hopelessly confused.

Then there’s “Reading tjhe[sic] Word“, a post in which Wilson argues this:

This is why Christian worldview thinking is not an optional add-on extra. We must know and understand the gospel of John, of course, and the book of Romans, certainly. But we must also know what to do with rap music, sitcoms, neckties, tattoos, secular universities, sports cars, and eye liner. If we are steeped in Scripture, but cannot read the world, we are helpless. If we are steeped in the world, but do not know what the Bible says, then we are just worldlings, plain and simple.

The problem that many Christian young people is that they are familiar with the things the world is dishing up, but they are like a foreign student memorizing phrases, without any understanding of what they mean. Familiarity is not literacy. And one of the prime indicators of whether you are literate or not—if you are a true child of God—is whether or not you hate it. The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. If you don’t hate a good deal of what is going on, then it is clear you can’t read.

Actually, I believe the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Find another scripture to justify your hate.

Also, “worldlings”? Really? I wonder if this means Doug Wilson is actually Marvin the Martian:

Marvin the Martian says you’re the looney tune, earthling.

Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 3

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Life Outside the Bubble

3. Where have you found support? (New friends online, at school, at work, etc.?)

Daughter of the Patriarchy: Ripping the Moorings, Part One

My family’s most diligent deceit never worked on me. My father told me not to worry about money. My mother told me that my focus should be on getting an education. They both told me that they didn’t want me to end up the way they did, ensnared in a financial trap. They told me to let them worry about the bills and that it wasn’t my responsibility as a daughter to support us in the first place. But I knew that my going off to college would take a financial toll on my family, and I was right. After all, I was the one making the car payment.

The first semester of college was both euphoric and terrifying. I worked around the clock on my coursework and established myself as the president of my college’s History Club. I vowed to do everything in my power, to sniff out every opportunity and seize any that dangled within reach. I was pegged an overachiever before the first grades were in. But I still struggled with the knowledge that I had been an essential contributor to the family income. Within months of my departure for college, our car was repossessed. I took the news like a hard left to the nose. I had seen it coming, prepared myself for it, tried to prevent it by talking to my parents, but ultimately took their advice and plunged ahead into higher education. And we all had a price to pay.

Alvin, Simon, Theodore; in that order.

Another blow came a month later. My mother called in tears to tell me that one of our three kittens, Alvin, had been killed – hit by a car on our terrible street. We had nursed the kittens from the age of three weeks, when my father found them abandoned in his industrial shop. I’d bonded with one that I called Theodore, a little black kitten with a very long tail.

Theo followed me everywhere. He sat on my lap when I played video games. He would gaze up at me with happy eyes and drool on himself a little, bumping his head against my chin in that silly way cats do. He was ridiculous. He was adorable. He was mine.

I had promised myself from the moment he lay upside down in my arms, suckling on a doll bottle filled with kitten formula, that I would never show him anything but love. This kitten never heard a disapproving word in his life. He was never pushed away. He was never left alone. I kept him indoors, so he would never be exposed to the dangers of the great big world. And then I went to school.

Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 2

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Life Outside the Bubble

2. What strategies have you found for coping with friends or family who believe in purity, modesty, “traditional marriage,” etc.?

Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 1

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Life Outside the Bubble

1. What is your relationship with your family and/or fundamentalist friends like now?

Sexuality Project: Questioning, Qs. 4 and 5

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Questioning

4. (If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) Have you “come out” to your family? How did they respond? How long have you been “out,” and has anyone you knew changed their mind about sexuality after talking with you? 

5. (If you are straight) Have you discussed sexuality with your family or friends since leaving fundamentalism? (If you told them about changed beliefs) How did they respond? Have any of your family members/friends changed their minds since you left?

Sexuality Project: Questioning, Q. 3

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Questioning

3. What media (if any) did you read or watch that made you rethink your assumptions about sexuality?

Sexuality Project: Questioning, Q. 2

This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.

Questioning

2. How did your friends, family or church respond to your questioning? Did you talk to people or keep your doubts secret?