Exponent II's Blog, page 266
April 15, 2018
New Permablogger – Trudy
Hello everyone! I’m happy to be here as a new permablogger. Some of you have probably seen me hanging around the bloggernacle for a while now; I’ve been around since 2005, first lurking, then occasionally commenting on some blogs, then starting my own blog, then abandoning my blog, then guest posting. Now I’ve found a home here. It kind of feels like giving a talk at church – “for those of you who don’t know me…”
I grew up in Silicon Valley and joined the church as a Beehive. I have one sister, and I was raised to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. What I wanted to be was a scientist. However, there was this notion permeating the air, both in religious and scientific circles, that I couldn’t be both a believer and a scientist. I had to choose one. I decided to be a lawyer instead, so I studied political science and philosophy. I went to college at Santa Clara University, which was a remarkable experience. The university was dedicated to both excellent education and the glory of God. Many of my professors were Jesuits, and I wish I had met them before I changed my career path because they showed me that it’s possible to be both a scientist and a deeply dedicated follower of God. Philosophy is my second love, and I’m glad I took the time to study it, which I might not have done if I had gone the science route. But science, to this day, is still my first love.
After college, I served a mission in North Carolina. I joke that I said on my mission papers that I didn’t want to learn a foreign language, but they didn’t listen to me because I got sent somewhere where I had to learn to speak Southern. After my mission, I returned home to California and went to law school. I graduated into a terrible job market for lawyers, and eventually I had to leave. I moved to a large city in the southwest, and I’ve called it home for four years now. I can see the hand of God in guiding me to where I am, and I’m excited to see what’s in store next.
I’m kind of a mass of contradictions. Politically, I’m a libertarian (with a lowercase l), which I often say makes me too liberal for church and too conservative for the bloggernacle. In my career, I represent disability claimants before the Social Security Administration, which on its face seems like a strange job choice for a libertarian, but I still think it fits. Theologically, I believe in the central tenets of the LDS church, insofar as those tenets are compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, if anything at church, either culturally or taught over the pulpit, is in contradiction to the gospel, I feel free to reject that particular teaching or practice. If the church and the gospel ever conflict, I will choose the gospel every time.
I’m single with no children. I hope one day to marry and have children, but I’ve made peace with the possibility that it might not be in my future. I look around at how many single women there are in the church and how many single men, and I know how to do math. My current ward is really wonderful about including single people, but I’ve been in some wards that have been very bad about it. It’s the church of Jesus Christ, not the church of Married People, and sometimes I think we forget that.
I’m looking forward to being a part of the community here. Thanks for having me!
April 14, 2018
Broken Things
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Guest Post By Amelia Christensen.
Amelia likes podcasts, ripping up gardens, and whale watching. She has two beautiful, curious, and emotional boys with her husband, and aspires to work in the mental health sector. Her heroines are Daria, Emma Smith, and Audrey Hepburn.
At twenty-two years old life stretched before me full of hopes and dreams. I was sure about my future and how certain events would make me feel.
I dreamt of the callings I would be offered as I grew in age and experience. I imagined sending my two sons off on missions with pride and a few tears. I imagined my own mission: maybe my husband and I could be the temple president and matron one day. I could offer patrons the warmth of a smile and a hug. I could sweep through those sacred rooms with clumsy but willing steps. I could be the gentle Mother of that space.
Things break. Glass that is beautiful and strong can shatter into thousands of glittery pieces. A mighty gumtree can explode and blacken with the flames of a deadly bushfire in the hot Australian sun.
It wasn’t just one day or one event. It was two years of everything I’ve ever known becoming unrecognisable. A scary, disjointed figure, often brought on by “would God really do this?” The answer was mostly “no, I cannot believe that They could do this.”
God does not esteem men above women. I cried when I heard frontier women were traded like commodities and told their righteousness depended on their practice of polygamy, but I likewise wept tears of joy when I heard accounts of them giving healing blessings and advocating for the vote. This journey into my own feminism has come with questions. So many questions.
Why don’t we give blessings anymore? Why is it bad to expect curriculum and General Conference talks to be less gendered? What good reason is there to exclude women from policy making? Why do men want me to keep Heavenly Mother hidden? My God isn’t sexist.
God doesn’t create mistakes, and They surely won’t allow Their LGBTQI+ children to feel like they are one. I won’t believe that anymore. I can’t believe that.
What if my sons aren’t looked after on their mission? What if they are gay or trans, and every minute of the two years is excruciating and confusing?
I can’t believe God restricted people of colour from having the priesthood and receiving ordinances, nor can I believe that They don’t want diversity in the church leadership. My God isn’t racist. My God embraces all that makes Their children unique.
I can’t believe God does not bless all Their children, regardless of this “status” we call “active Mormon.” God doesn’t have a club for the most righteous, where They hand out blessings like candy.
I refuse to believe God would separate families because one of the members decided to go down their own path, away from Mormonism. How could that be fair, especially when I’ve seen so much hate and contention within the walls of chapels and temples? I can still hear the gossip outside my change-room door.
Could God possibly call men They knew would abuse Their children? I can’t believe that, either. Imperfect is one thing, robbing the agency of a human under your power is another. Maybe not everything is completely inspired. How can it be?
The questions I now ask once had easy answers. They were privileged answers, dismissive answers. Alienating answers.
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Burnt trees can bring new life. Shattered glass can be swept up and melted down into new things.
In me there is new hope. It is not the same, but it is just as beautiful. God looked upon my genuine heart and said, “it is good.” Because this is where God looks, into my willing and broken heart.
Maybe I’m a little rougher around the edges now. Maybe I don’t live the way other Mormons think I should, but does that matter? I have never felt closer to the Saviour and my Heavenly Parents. If the cultural and doctrinal things threaten my relationship with Them, I will choose Them every time.
My faith crisis has dropped seedlings that have developed into new faith, new testimony. I have carved out a spot in Mormonism for myself. It works for now, and though it’s not easy, it has blessed me to connect with other women in sacred rawness.
Should I choose to leave, though my feelings about Joseph Smith are complicated, there is one quote my friend shared with me that fills me with determination to make the most of things:
“And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are, if the society be good?”
In this life alone, Zion has already been found for me. It is full of queers and questioners who love deeply, no matter what. I send my blessing to this diverse community and thank the heavens and earth for you.
April 13, 2018
Guest Post: On Advocacy in the Church #MormonMeToo
[image error]by Anonymous
Recently, our ward executive secretary asked my husband if the Bishop could meet with us at our home. My husband set a time for that evening, and we wondered what the Bishop wanted. Was it a calling? My husband had just been released from one of his callings, but we already held a joint Sunday School teaching calling.
The Bishop arrived and chatted with us for awhile. We aren’t unused to meeting with the Bishop casually. Only a few months ago, I held a leadership calling which required frequent meetings, emails, text messages, and phone calls with the Bishop. It’s not like we didn’t know each other.
After a few minutes of casual conversation, he told us why he wanted to meet with us. The answer surprised and almost floored me. It was my blog. My Bishop had called a private, personal meeting with my husband to talk to us about my blog.
At first I was flattered that he even read my blog. It is not a hugely popular blog, but one that is relatively well read with people who deal with issues similar to my own. It takes into account my Mormon perspective, yes, but I write about things unrelated to Mormon culture and doctrine as well. I had never considered that my blog could land me in a private meeting with the Bishop.
Apparently, the blog post in question was related to my sharing of an experience with #mormonmetoo and the Joseph Bishop case. In it, I briefly and respectfully recounted how I dealt with a case of unwanted advances and comments from a ward member and how, since multiple women from the ward had also had similar experiences, we brought the situation to the attention of our Bishop.
Now, here he was, sitting across from me, telling me that someone had come to him having read my post. According to him, they were concerned about being in his ward, considering how he had handled the situation (which wasn’t terribly, but it was difficult to get the gravity of the situation across to him at the time).
While he did not ask me to take down the post in question, he cautioned me against posting when I was passionate about something and asked that I consider what others might infer from my posts. He gave what appeared to me to be a veiled warning that I be careful about leading others away from the Church and their “eternal salvation” with the things that I write.
After he left, I felt shocked and confused. What had just happened? I, and many other women (and youth) in our ward, had negative experiences with a man bordering on sexual harassment, and now I was being rebuked and cautioned by the Bishop for publicly reporting it.
Was I being told, in a roundabout way, that if I continued to post in such a vein, I was in danger of Church disciple and potentially excommunication? Did I need to fear for my Church membership because I posted a #mormonmetoo experience?
It all seemed so ludicrous, and as I pondered further, I strongly felt for the individual who came to him asking about my post. This person had the right to make her comments as well. She—or he—deserves to be led by someone who is proactively and eagerly seeking to make women and children feel safe from abuse and harassment, instead of trying to minimize damage and keep secrets.
Further, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being called out for making him “look bad.” Here I was, being further victimized by the person who should be caring for my spiritual welfare. Instead of being concerned about me, asking how I felt about this situation and how I was doing spiritually, I was being treated as a threat and a potential enemy to “the Church.”
For some reason, the experience made me reflect on Christ’s experience in the Garden of Gethsemane, following his Intercessory Prayer.
In John 18, it states, “Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. […] Then Simon Peter, having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. […] Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (verses 3, 10-11) In Luke 22:51, it records that Jesus then “touched his ear, and healed him.”
Even when Christ was being falsely accused and arrested, He still took the time to heal one of those who had come to take Him. He still cared about people and their welfare, even when they were coming to betray and crucify Him.
On another note, Christ nonviolently accepted those false accusations, knowing that from this cruel, unfair, and inhumane experience would come greater—even the greatest—good.
As I continued to think about this experience I had with the Bishop, an answer came to me in from the story of Esther and Mordecai. When the Jews were threatened with a decree of death, Mordecai pled for Esther to talk to the king, despite the fact that doing so might lead to her own death. Mordecai’s question for Esther came clearly to me, “who knowest whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)
Many of us are at a crossroads, and many of those crossroads are different and unique to us and our circumstances. Some of us wonder if we should continue in the Church, despite seemingly horrible allegations and revelations about Church leaders or policies. Others wonder how outspoken we should or can be while still remaining active.
A few months ago when I embarked on a path of public advocacy for another cause, I had the distinct feeling that I had set a ball rolling and wasn’t sure where that ball would end up or take me. I simply knew I had started a journey that I needed to go on, regardless of where it finished.
I still do not know what mountain I will die on, so to speak, but if it is the mountain of that particular advocacy or of protecting and standing up for victims of sexual harassment and abuse, I will say as Esther did, “if I perish, I perish.” (Esther 4:16).
Of course, my hope is that I—and none of us—need to perish on these mountains. I hope for a Church that embraces the gospel of Christ’s love—the Christ who healed the ear of a man who came to arrest Him.
I hope for a community where the choice is not “either/or.” I long to build and be a part of that community, one where our passions and voices are honored, where leadership asks us how they can help rather than trying to silence our cries. If this Church community doesn’t yet exist, I hope that we can build it together without being warned and rebuked. I believe that it is the community Christ wants for us, and I hope I’m not wrong.
An Interview with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
[image error]When I first found out about Exponent II fifteen or so years ago, I began reading all the old editions of the paper I could get my hands on. I was starved for thoughtful, nuanced discussions of Mormonism and gender, and Exponent II satisfied that need. It also made me feel like I had finally found my people. Claudia Bushman, Judy Dushku, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, all founding members of Exponent II, became my Mormon feminist heroes. Eventually I heard about the wonderful All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir, a book of poems, essays and dialogues by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, and Emma Lou Thayne, peace activist and poet. To this day I credit Ulrich’s “Lusterware” essay in this book with helping me wrap my head around the church, its fallibility, and my decisions to remain a (somewhat) practicing Mormon.
My favorite part of this “Lusterware” essay is when Ulrich writes about a young woman writing to her about her changing beliefs. This young woman wrote, “I used to think of the Church as one hundred percent true…. But now I realize it is probably ten percent human and ninety percent divine.” Ulrich writes, “I gasped, wanting to write back immediately, ‘If you find any earthly institution that is ten percent divine, embrace it with all your heart!’ Actually ten percent is probably too high an estimate.” That kind of pragmatism and perspective have helped me immeasurably.
LDS writer Kurt Manwaring recently interviewed Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, professor of history at Harvard, about her life and career. Below is an excerpt of this interview.
Kurt Manwaring: Richard Bushman initially advised you not to pursue a Ph.D. because he felt it would ruin your writing style. Did you ever talk with him later in your career about the way your doctorate affected your style?
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Dick wasn’t the only one who saw me as more of a popular writer than a scholar. I don’t think his comment was sexist, but the advice I got from one of my undergraduate professors reflected common ideas of the time. “Your business is to delight,” he said.
One of my UNH mentors even suggested (at a dinner after I successfully defended my dissertation) that it would be nice if I got a job but that it was more important that his male students did so because that was part of their “identity.” For me it was optional.
I was horrified at the time, but was too polite to say anything.
He always supported my work. That wasn’t the issue. He thought that as a married woman, I didn’t really need to support my self. His own wife worked collaboratively with him and he must have considered a viable option for a woman with children. Unfortunately, my husband was an engineer! We wouldn’t have made a very good scholarly team!
Kurt Manwaring: A popular phrase owes its creation to you: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” What was the original context of this quote and how did you feel when you first realized it was gaining a life of its own?
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: It came from the opening paragraph of an article on Puritan funeral sermons published in American Quarterly in 1976. It “escaped” into popular culture in the 1990s after my work became better known.
I thought it was amusing, but after getting lots of inquiries from all sorts of people I decided to explore it in more detail in my third book, a sort of survey of women’s history everywhere in the world and in every historical period!
It was fun to work on that book, which grew out of my teaching. I’m not sure my effort to complicate people’s notions of which women were and were not “well-behaved” was entirely successful, but the opening history in the book has been used as a writing sample in some advanced placement courses. This book allowed me to do some more expansive and playful than my more focused micro-histories.
Kurt Manwaring: In your essay, you say that when Mormons write about Mormons they run the risk of being perceived as apologists. Has this reality ever manifested itself in you leaving things out of your work you would otherwise include — simply to avoid being perceived in a manner different from your intentions?
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: I try very hard to apply the same scholarly standards to my writing about Mormonism as to my writing about any other subject. If I am concerned about my own blind spots or biases, I enlist the help of readers I trust — my own husband, members of my scholarly community, and friends who are not scholars or who work in different fields. But I never intentionally “mask” my Mormonism or my religious beliefs.
Kurt Manwaring: What is feminism?
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Feminism is simply a belief in the equality of the sexes, and a willingness to challenge practices or attitudes that restrict opportunities for women or diminish their accomplishments.
Kurt Manwaring: What would you say to men who sincerely want to read feminist authors but feel a measure of discomfort for reasons they cannot identify?
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: I’d tell them to “get over it.” They have nothing to lose but their own insecurities.
April 12, 2018
Guest Post: Is Forsaking Masturbation Really God’s Law?
[image error]by Mahlah.
As a student majoring in Child Development, I remember wondering and discussing, if masturbation is a part of normal sexual development, at what point does it become a sin? In light of recent dialogue surrounding the petition to protect LDS children, and how many of the stories relate the shame of masturbation, I have reflected again what it means if the church (whose only official stance I can find is in the For Strength of Youth pamphlet) is truly saying that masturbation – across the board – is a sin.
What does it mean for the children of parents and leaders unversed in human development and sexuality that find this behavior inappropriate and want to stop it before it becomes habitual? What does it mean for my friend with extreme menstrual cramps, who won’t masturbate, even though she’s found orgasm is the best way to relieve the pain? What does it mean for the relative who has been divorced for twenty years and included complete sexual repression on her list when making that decision? What does it mean for my friends who struggle with orgasm, but are tentative to masturbate because they feel guilty every time they do? What does it mean for my gay brother who has little hope for sexual expression if he decides to remain in the church?
Is God really asking for no form of sexuality outside of marriage, or has masturbation been interpreted by man to be wrong and is an unjust law?
There are many professionals writing on this topic, such as Natasha Helfer Parker, but the voices that are heard in the church are those of the authorities. Those of men. Voices such as Elder Tad R. Callister, whose BYU-I devotional was reprinted in the Ensign: “The Lord condemns self-abuse. Self-abuse is the act of stimulating the procreative power of one’s own body.” If someone decides for themselves that masturbation is not what God wants them to do, that is fine. But to condemn and judge others who have decided it is beneficial in their lives is very harmful. To shame children for a normal behavior borders on child abuse. I believe people need to know how the church’s opinion has evolved and changed on this issue and be given accurate resources so they can determine for themselves what is appropriate behavior.
I think “Be ye therefore perfect” is one of our favorite passages in the church. We love to apply it to ourselves and we love to apply it to others. We, and many other denominations, often use the verse on lust and adultery from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, as an argument against masturbation. In my search to understand masturbation, I read an article by two Catholic psychologists, who point to the Sermon on the Mount as “part of the overall plot of the Gospel to draw attention to the futility of a Christian’s moral efforts and, thus, the need for continual dependence on God’s grace… Through his unequivocal moral directives, Jesus is effectively raising the bar so high as to make God’s ethical standard humanly impossible to attain. His purpose was to remove the unforgiving yoke of religious law from the people by offering himself as the ultimate source of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God.” I have been pondering that interpretation a lot lately, grateful for additional scripture and insights from leaders. I was deeply touched by Elder Holland’s beautiful talk at Conference on perfectionism and grace and loved how he also tied in the parable of the unforgiving debtor.
Is an absolutist approach to masturbation what God wants? Is it possible to separate masturbation and pornography? And make a distinction between lust and arousal? I think it is.
In the process of searching for answers – Why masturbation? Why did God design things this way? – I have found many answers from the medical community, sex-ed experts and even theologians. But I’ve come to recognize that ultimately any external information I found would be filtered with a lens of limited knowledge. What I have focused on is the purpose of religion to lead us to Christ and become one with Him, so anything that falsely separates us from His love must be discarded. We should not say masturbation is a sin if it is not. We must correct our mistakes if they are leaving people feeling hopeless or drowning them in shame. What Christ warned of in Matthew 5 was the sin of lust, which sex-educator Al Vernacchio describes as “just a physical and sexual attraction. We don’t often think about them as whole people – that can even ruin the lust.” A reduction to parts is in my mind one of the biggest dangers of pornography. But not seeing a whole person can easily happen to any of us and I believe Christ is not saying in Matthew 5 that we have to be perfect to access Him. He is saying we are only whole through Him.
It is scary to challenge our assumptions. It can leave us wondering if one thing isn’t true can I trust any of it? We don’t have all the answers – and perhaps that’s not the point. In their book, The Crucible of Doubt, Terryl and Fiona Givens point out, “’There is no pain so awful as the pain of suspense,’ said Joseph Smith. That is why we will do almost anything to escape this suspense. We feel unmoored if our religion fails to answer all our questions, if it does not resolve our anxious fears, if it does not tie up all loose ends. We want a script, and we find we stand before a blank canvas. We expect a road map, and we find we have only a compass.” There is value in the process of laying on the table what we thought with a surety to be true and asking to see with God’s eyes.
I believe that as members we are capable of embracing goodness and using sexuality wisely. I hope we can rely on wisdom greater than ours and ask God if this shame is necessary.
April 11, 2018
Guest Post: On a Platter #MormonMeToo, Part II
Photo credit: Nathan T. Gross
by Rena Lesue
Part I of this essay can be found here.
Two-and-a-half years after I’d been taken advantage of, my family moved to Mississippi. My sister, Mary, and I made many Mormon friends and became infamous for our girls-only sleepovers. The summer after we moved there, we hosted one with a dozen teenage girls. We spread out our blankets on the living room floor to watch Better Off Dead. We painted our nails blues and greens, and had whole conversations in movie quotes.
Inevitably, boys came up. Who are you crushing on? Oh, he has Kurt Cobain hair! Does he grab your butt when you kiss? One of the girls, Mika, found my yearbook from Missouri and held it up with both hands. “Rena, ‘do you realize the street value of this mountain?’”
We gathered together, our legs pretzeled, and rated the guys on looks, smell, personality—all the details I happily filled in. When Mom skedaddled to the store for more Doritos, a girl with big Bambi eyes said, “Can I axe y’all a question?” Bambi traced phantom lines between moles on her thigh. Her other hand shook and she fisted it. Her demeanor dropped a thickening agent into the air that rippled over each girl. Smiles vanished, good humor stowed. My hands froze over the dread I braided in Mika’s hair.
“Y’all ever been moe-lested? Or raped?”
I felt myself tuck small, my heart cowered into a tomb of denial. Throats around the room, Amanda’s tallow neck, Hannah’s caramel one, ribbed like a tin can, undulated, swallowing something deep inside.
“Mm-hm,” said an older girl. “My stepdad.”
I tugged at my shorts to cover Australia.
“Me too. An uncle,” said another. She gave PG-13 details.
My neck turtled. Should we be talking about this? Bambi shared her tale. She’d always been a sweet girl and naïve about topics that should remain private. And now she was a brave voice in the pool of girls who bonded over common traumas. The girls shared several moments of sympathy, empathy, and discomfited hugs, and I sat a little ways off trembling, stamping down the zombie memory of that monster hand, the rot, my sin. I kept it buried, writhing beneath the weight of my repentance, my absolution. I was free. He said I was free.
Bambi’s gaze circled to me. She’d made the rounds, marauded the girls’ minds and spilled rotten memories as if paraphernalia from bad relationships, ready to ignite on a pyre. I crossed my legs at my ankles and shook my head. Nothing to see here. She moved on to Mary, whose pitiful expression, even framed in ridiculous-looking tin foil-tipped dreadlocks, said everything. I could never tell her.
Under my lashes, I stole glances at the other girls, other victims. To them, I prayed to God to comfort them. How awful, I thought. How awful that must have been.
***
Ten years after I was victimized, I carried the weight of my firstborn, a daughter. I lived in Utah, finishing my degree in English Education at UVU. I wrote my first novel about a Mormon woman who was raped and impregnated, but who chose to keep the baby. She navigated rebuke from church members who encouraged her to get an abortion—as this was one of two circumstances in which a forced miscarriage was condoned. It was my research for this novel and a literature class at UVU that put me in contact with other rape accounts. I read The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr and recall the pages where she, at a very young age, had been lured by a neighbor boy to a garage and raped. The parities in conditions, his audacity, her confusion and fury, I knew it all. I had felt it on the floor of that farmhouse in Missouri. I threw it across the room. An inexplicable sense of loneliness followed. So I retrieved the book and clutched it to my chest like a dear friend. Or the twelve-year-old me. It’s not your fault, I wanted to tell her. You’re going to be fine. But whispers to a past-self snag, like everything else, on Time’s forward momentum.
***
Over the years, Rick, my husband, urged me to tell my parents, but it wasn’t really polite conversation. Molestations don’t usually come up at family functions. Nevertheless, it eventually did.
We’d gone to Mom’s house during the day. She and my dad had retired to Springville, Utah, a quiet artsy community with an old-fashioned soda fountain on Main Street. Mom and Dad lived in a two-storied Nantucket blue home wrapped at the base in brick. I sat at the table with them, chit-chatting about the old times in the Ozarks when a mass slumped in my gut. It was time. I told them.
They were silent, processing, and my mother’s face flashed an uncomfortable recognition: Now it makes sense. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what, pray tell, suddenly made sense about me? What switch had been flipped? What gross error could be forgiven now that I’d revealed myself as a victim?
“Do you need…want to see a therapist?” she asked.
For years, I’d been hoarding courage to tell my parents, and the act drained my reserves. I couldn’t imagine sharing with a complete stranger. Besides, writing salved my wounds. I declined.
“We’ll pay whatever it costs.”
Dad’s lips tightened, his rage compressed between them. “I’ve still got friends on the force in that area,” he said. “Do you want me to take care of him for you?”
Dad had recently retired. His career began in Vietnam where he intercepted and decoded messages in the service of the US Army. Over the years, he was employed by several branches of the government, including Customs, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI. Earlier in his career he’d worked in the Pentagon and had even debriefed the Joint Chiefs. So the weight of that question, its implications… Take care of him how? From the darkness in his eyes, I knew the lengths he would go to protect me were much broader than I’d imagined.
“No, Dad. I’ll be fine,” I said, but not because it wasn’t that bad. Rather, because I didn’t want him to make a choice that would irrevocably alter the course of his life and, by extension, the whole family’s. My dad’s reaction did beg the question: if it was bad enough to traumatize me and drive my father to vengeance, why didn’t we do anything about it? What could we have done? If the statute of limitation hadn’t expired, I could’ve taken the asshole who fondled me to court, but what were the laws regarding a seventeen-year-old abusing a twelve-year-old? Legally, we were both in that gray area between childhood and adulthood. Besides, I had no evidence except for the testimony of my bishop, who hadn’t recognized sexual abuse when he heard it from the victim’s mouth. Even if I wanted to enlist his help, a lawsuit meant a lot of invasive prodding and uninvited pity. If I hadn’t grown up in a religious culture that led me to believe I’d been liable for my own sexual abuse, maybe then I’d have divulged it to Mom immediately afterward and we’d have had more of a leg to stand on in court. But isn’t that what molesters count on? Cultures that place responsibility on the wounded. It is that bad.
***
Twenty years post-molestation, while in Barcelona and after my encounter with the St. Agatha statue, I went on a walking tour with my grad school associates. On one street, there waved a banner of a woman, bare-chested with purple rails in the place where her bosom should have been. Our guide translated it, said it was an ad for a photography exhibit featuring survivors of breast-cancer. This I understood. Women removing their breasts to cut out a disease that dissolved her to a pale, veiny shell. This was a good reason to remove one’s appendages. To fight cancer. (I daresay we ought to be able to quell the other, cultural cancer without disfiguring ourselves.)
“What does it mean?” I asked, reading the caption. “Costures a flor de pell?”
She rubbed her fingers over the seam on her shorts. “S-seams on tha surface of tha skin.”
“You mean, like scars?”
She shook her head, pointed to where my shirt-sleeve met my shoulder, and insisted on the distinction. “Seams.”
I let the difference float and settle like a feather over my heart. Seams were not scars. I had had a scar on my psyche. It ripped through logic and fed on shame. But literature, time, and experience unraveled bits of the ropey disgrace I’d carried, and then it was me who undid the rest. Me, who ironed out the roughness until only a watermark remained, because it never comes out entirely.
Rena is an English professor at Utah Valley University and former correspondent for The Daily Herald. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and her prose has appeared in Ruminate, Segullah, Superstition Review, Gris-Gris, Pinball, Bloody Key Society, Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington Post. She was a semi-finalist for the 2016 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize and finalist in the 2018 Writers@Work CNF Contest. She can be found at renasprose.com. This essay was originally published in Gris-Gris in Jan. 2016.
April 10, 2018
Guest Post: On a Platter #MormonMeToo, Part I
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At the beginning of our two-week residency in Barcelona, my writing cohort met for cocktails in the home of Bob Antoni, a West Indian writer whose fame, if it were a cyclone, would hover over central Europe. His renovated third-floor walk-up featured hardwood floors, exposed beams, and one wall of the building’s original brick. A minimalist, Bob had accessorized the home with carefully chosen and sparse antiques. In the parlor, I became entranced by a statue—dead center between two balconies (a castle sprawled in the view beyond them). The figure, bronze, two-feet tall, and modestly robed, stood on top of an armoire. She balanced in one hand a tray of two small domes. Though they had been nipple-less, my first thought was, Boobs? They were a distinct shape, rounded, supple, even a wee gelatinous—impressive for a solid medium. The rosary draped from her robes and the fierce demureness to her expression confirmed: Catholic. As a Mormon, I didn’t know much about the religion, but it seemed to me that a Catholic statue with breasts on a platter was an oddity.
I tracked down our host and tossed a thumb at the statue. “Are those breasts on the platter?”
“Yes,” Bob said in a way that almost sounded like ‘jes’. His Caribbean accent was obscured, like molasses in a ginger cookie. “She’s St. Agatha of Sicily, patron saint of Barcelona.”
He spoke of the legends of St. Agatha. In one, she pledged her virginity to God, but when she wouldn’t give in to a Roman ruler’s sexual advances, he ordered her breasts to be detached with pinchers. In Bob’s preferred version, St. Agatha had grown tired of the constant attention from men and sliced off her own breasts. His statue depicted her offering them to God, a symbol of her unwavering devotion.
I spent a moment imagining I was St. Agatha, bent over an array of kitchen knives trying to select the instrument that would slice through my flesh. Would I select something small for its agility? At what angle would I hold the weapon? Would I start from the bottom up? Would I cut out only the rounded tissue and fold the skin back into place and stitch it closed? Less scarring that way. I didn’t once, in my abstraction, question her motives. Even in Bob’s favored tale, the “attention” St. Agatha received was almost certainly a watered-down way of saying “abuse”. To resort to self-mutilation, she likely had been sexually assaulted multiple times, perhaps violently. Maybe she tried other deterrents first, or maybe that had been her first attempt to solve the problem. Either way, I understood the conviction to remove the thing that lured lecherous men.
I hadn’t thought to cut off my own breasts in 1994 when I was twelve, living in rural Missouri, and enduring the unwanted “attention” of a man five years my elder, but then I had been as flat as a Bible cover and not entirely sure what I’d worn to tempt him.
***
A week after I had been molested, I flipped through my copy of the For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet, an addition to my religious texts when I turned twelve, and trailed my finger under the section on Dress and Appearance. “The way you dress sends messages about yourself to others and often influences the way you and others act…” I had followed the guidelines, eschewing bikinis and revealing or provocative trends, such as low-cut or off-the shoulder styles. “Immodest clothing includes short shorts, tight pants, and other revealing attire.” I slipped into my mother’s bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror, wondering what he had seen in me. I imagined myself in the shorts I wore that night, analyzed the level of tightness, concluding that there should be a chart to compare your pants against to see if they broadcasted wicked signals. As a robot, I mimicked my body movements during the game of Hot Lava I’d played the evening he stared at me. I paused in certain poses and imagined my mother’s past admonitions. “Hon, don’t stand like that. It’s too…” and her mouth twisted up from the lemon of the thought. Why hadn’t I cried out that night? Said, No means no, buster! I couldn’t explain my sudden paralysis, how my limbs had ossified when he’d slid close to me, his head even with my belly and breath hot on my skin. The Australia-shaped birthmark on my hip had been exposed and still I hadn’t moved.
In the weeks to follow, when I had to leave the house for school and church, I ensconced myself in jeans and flannel shirts that I stole from my brother’s closet and wore my hair slicked back in an asexual ponytail. I had acquired a couple of baby tees, the latest in 90s trends, but I hated their snugness. I much preferred to wear a genderless cocoon of oversized sweatshirts.
At some point it occurred to me that he might not have been baited by my clothes, but by my face. I had blue eyes, a nose I hadn’t grown into, and a valance of bangs. I was hardly the stuff of magazines. I’m no Topanga. And if my face had betrayed me, it wouldn’t matter what I wore.
I anesthetized with ice cream, monkey bread, and whatever sugary foods we had or that I could bake to fill the abyss in my soul. Everything had a waxy aftertaste. Abiding by the teachings of my religion, I knelt in supplication in my closet, pleading for forgiveness until my knees became bumpy from the carpet. To put it out of my mind, I filled my head with scripture verses, hymns, and articles from The New Era, a Latter-day Saint (LDS) teen magazine whose anecdotal features stressed the importance of preparing for a proselyting mission if you were a boy and temple marriage if you were a girl. I didn’t think I could do either. In church, a teacher used gum in an object lesson about our sexuality. What I learned: someone had chewed me and now no one would want me.
That summer, my ward (church community) hosted a two-day youth trip to the Dallas Temple—my first one. In several vehicles, we would caravan southwest and in the temple perform proxy baptisms for the dead. I wanted to attend, but we sinners weren’t allowed. It was a special kind of sin to enter the temple knowingly unworthy, and yet, I figured I’d apologized enough to God that surely he’d forgiven me, and maybe I’d missed the confirmation in my heart. I pretended not to be dirty as I packed for the trip. I pretended when the Young Men and Young Women (the LDS groups between the ages of twelve through eighteen) divvied into minivans. And I pretended for eight hours on the drive to Texas. My memories of that trip are murky, clouded by remorse. I can recall a distinct image from the temple: my tentative steps into the baptismal font, a trough of luminous water on the backs of twelve alabaster oxen and the sense that my sin leaked from my pores, blackening the water upon my immersion.
On the drive back, the Ashley boys “accidentally” left a pimple-faced kid, Gary, at a gas station. They drove out of sight, watching him wave, drop his bag of Swedish Fish, and step futilely toward the road. I knew that feeling. Abandoned. He could’ve use the payphone, if they’d really left him. He could’ve called his parents, and someone would’ve made the drive across two states to save him. There was someone I could call too. The repentance process had been drilled into me since I was eight and had been baptized, cleansed of wrong-doings. Not forever. Life happened. Sin happened. And in that case there was the sacrament. We sinners were to pray for forgiveness and then, each Sunday, partake of the bread and water to renew our baptismal covenants and be purified by the metaphoric body and blood of Christ. But some crimes required another rung on the repentance latter. Egregious offenses needed a third party, the ward bishop, to hear a confession. My voice would absolve me.
Upon return, I made the appointment with Bishop Ashley, a weary man with a round face and promontory baldness. He had a reputation for being spiritual and honest. I trusted him. We sat across from each other, he behind a plain desk flanked by photos of the prophet and twelve male apostles, and I on the other side of the office in a cushioned folding chair. The carpet, flecked with sepia and sage threads, curved up along the walls and rose midway up in a peculiar wainscoting, coarse enough to draw blood if you raked an elbow on it.
The platitudes were dispensed, over too quickly, and I waded in the flood of tension surrounding his question, “What can I do for you?”
My tongue dried up, words along with it, and all the moisture seemed to transfer to my tear ducts. It got so silent, not even a clock ticked. I swallowed down a nest of remorse, heaved an inhale, and wept my confession. I disclosed my wickedness, whimpered out vague details about how my molester touched me and how I just let him do it. I plucked tissue after tissue, soaked up the snot, and dropped them wadded in my lap like dead moths.
Bishop Ashley rubbed his brow. “Is this boy in the ward?”
“No. He’s not a member.”
I hoped I’d said enough to thwart questions, because I didn’t want to give up the bit of information that I found most humiliating: the fact that I let a seventeen-year-old touch me when I wasn’t even allowed to date for three more years.
The skin around his mouth drooped in a frown, like a cartoon butler or a hound dog.
“As a bishop, the Lord has blessed me with the ability to forget some of the confessions I hear. In this case, I’m going to pray that Heavenly Father helps you forget what happened too. You are clean and Heavenly Father forgives you.”
I felt as if my spirit had been blasted with a wind. Mentally, I greeted it chin-first with arms stretched in the cross. I could breathe with ease.
He and I prayed together, and I insisted he promise not to tell my parents. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I left, grateful to have peeled the Devil’s fingers from my soul.
***
In the years after I was fondled, I suffered from a sort of palliative amnesia or at the very least compartmentalized the trauma. I never forgot it, as the bishop prayed I would, but I could set the ordeal aside so that it didn’t torment me daily. The violation had slashed the nylon of my soul, and repentance patched it back together. The relief seemed immediate at the time but, looking back, my eighth grade progress report for the fall semester showed that I earned three Cs and two Ds, one in Language Arts. My grades had never dipped that low and never in English.
Part II of this essay will be posted tomorrow.
Rena is an English professor at Utah Valley University and former correspondent for The Daily Herald. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and her prose has appeared in Ruminate, Segullah, Superstition Review, Gris-Gris, Pinball, Bloody Key Society, Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington Post. She was a semi-finalist for the 2016 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize and finalist in the 2018 Writers@Work CNF Contest. She can be found at renasprose.com. This essay was originally published in Gris-Gris in Jan. 2016.
April 9, 2018
“Healing the Wounds of Racism” by Darius Gray at LDS.org
[image error]“The first step toward healing is the realization that the problem exists, even among some of us in the Church,” says Darius Gray, a founding member and former president of Genesis, a group established by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that helps serve the needs of African-American members.
Read the complete article at LDS.org:
