#METOO

I remember when the movement started, and I remember thinking immediately what an impact a movement like that would have in the church, instead of just in Hollywood. My Facebook feed started to fill up with hashtags from people I’ve known my whole life, people I’d just met, people that I only knew through social media – they had all been affected.

It was then end of the day when I saw it. One of my male friends, someone I’d known since high-school – no story, no long explanation, just a simple hashtag. I remember how it rocked me, and how my mind screamed at me: ME TOO.

As the days passed and Twitter became the center of this conversation, I read story after story, told in 140 characters, of people who’d experienced sexual assault and abuse. I wrestled with my own stories, my own memories, my own pain.

I couldn’t shake it – ME TOO.

At first, I felt like I needed a moment, a story with details and a painful climax, to identify with everyone else feeling this pain. Unintentionally, my mind began to trek back through experiences I’d been trying to bury for years. Admitting it to myself was difficult, but it was unavoidable – ME TOO.

Independent Fundamental Baptist Christianity is a society rife with sexism, machoism, and chauvinism. It’s a patriarchal community where men hold absolute power, and, while encouraged to “love” (a term that is often open to interpretation) their women, they are told repeatedly that the man is the head of the home, that his rule there is absolute, and that women are meant to serve their husbands.

It is a twisted approach to the nuclear family, and it creates deep-rooted attitudes men, not only towards women, but to each other as well. With such low views of women, especially as teenagers, it was easy to disparage, ridicule, and verbally abuse those around us. I went to a very small, closed (e.g. only members of the church were allowed) Christian school, that functioned as a ministry of the church we attended. There were maybe 160-180 students in the entire school, Kindergarten thru 12th grade. It was a tightly knit community that naturally bred all manner of emotional difficulties. I’ll talk more about this in another post.

For this story, however, I want to focus on the dynamic between the teenage boys, and the men who led literally every aspect of our lives.

The school did what they thought was their best to ‘normalize’ our school experience, at least where sports and some extra-curricular activities were concerned. Sports were a big deal for us. As you can imagine, in a male-dominated, heavily machoistic culture, sports, competition, and stereotypical manliness were given a social premium.

I was not good at sports. I was smart. I worked hard in school. I took my work seriously. But, not being a part of the sports teams was not an option. Skill level was unimportant – only participation mattered to the powers that were. However, in the complicated social labyrinth of high-school, skill still held the most social equity. The jocks held absolute power over those who were not as proficient, and they wielded it ruthlessly. Communal showers were rife with cock-shaming, body shaming, and all manner of verbal, sexual abuse.

It didn’t stop in the showers at high school though.

We went to camp every summer. Men and boys only. For a week. I remember growing to dread this week of the summer, until I was at least 17 or 18, and felt good enough about my body and strength to defend myself. There was a ritual to the week. A long bus ride to our destination, where “wedgies” were given to the point where the underwear was ripped off completely. If this could not be accomplished while the victim was wearing pants, then the pants were removed first so that the attackers could proceed. It was encouraged and expected that the victim would fight back – failure to do so meant further ridicule and punishment.

Arrival at the camp turned the punishment up a notch. Typically, everyone would bring their own personal tents. Starting on the second or third nights, the older teenagers would seek out the tents of the younger men, and take turns climbing into those tents, while their fellow attackers helped from outside the tent, to slide their bare ass up and down the bodies of the victim, with extra points given when one was able to get their ass on the victim’s face.

It was humiliating, and the victims were singled out by name the next day. Once again, failure to fight back guaranteed that the victim would be labeled as a pussy, a fag – “he must like it” was the given idea. So, we were left with a choice – accept the punishment quietly, hoping it would be over soon, and face sexual ridicule; or, fight back pointlessly, usually earning worse treatment in the process.

The adults watched it all. They laughed with the attackers the next day. My dad was there, most summers.

It was common for our genitals to be discussed. By teachers, by the pastor, by friends. Everything we did was rated on a scale of unknown manliness, and our achievement of and failure to that unknown standard somehow equated to the size and virulence of our cocks. This was a common point of discussion, even in mixed company. I’m sure you can imagine the effect that this has on an adolescent boy who has just started to care about what girls think of him.

There might follow here, and maybe rightfully so, many, many comments comparing my experiences to those of women and men who have been raped, violently assaulted, and in other ways more dramatically harassed. Certainly, if there are readers who are, in fact, still part of the IFB movement, who will condemn my story as trivial, lacking in manliness and backbone, or attention-seeking. Others, may think that these experiences don’t qualify me for participation in the #METOO movement. That’s something I’ve struggled with myself.

I don’t know the answer to any of those accusations. All I know is that I spent my adolescence desperately trying to achieve an unknown level of masculinity for reasons unknown past its ability to spare me from the abuse of my peers and my elders. I spent decades ashamed of my body and insecure in my manhood – emotionally, sexually, and mentally.

This is not a post seeking pity. I have dealt with my past, I’ve dealt with these experiences, and I’ve found value in myself, my body, my person. But, the church is rife with sexual abuse, both physical and mental. This is my story. #METOO