This week's topic was too close to home to be recorded. I became emotional on my attempts. My apologies. My tone is angry. My tone is defiant. If that is what you hear in your head, you hear it true.
I was born vibrant, emotional, beautiful, colorful, proud, highly intelligent, compassionate, with deep desire to be loved, and female. These are my core personality components. They aren't broken. They are not sinful. There are those that hate them. There are those that constantly try to take them from me and give me, "timid, humble, malleable, weak, and pastel." For years, I tried to take those things on as something I have to be. All those in charge of me felt that it was the best way for a woman to be. Easily controlled.
I could only be intelligent if my mind came to the same conclusions as their minds did and honestly, often, mine did not. In one "science" class I was taught that the speed of light was a trustworthy measure. My teacher said a "constant in the universe. Unchanging." She said that there were stars we were just now seeing whose light came from millions of light years away. She then said that God made the stars with the light already coming here just so we could see them. I started to feel that that was really a wrong thing for God to do. I raised my hand. "Why would he do that?" She said, "We don't know it is just the way that he had it written down in the Bible. The time does not allow for another answer." I knew that the Bible was not written when God made stars. I was in the 5th grade. What happened next to me was a hardcore brainwashing scheme from the Ken Ham training camp. I was beaten with stories of humans and dinosaurs, 6,000 year old universe, and lies that covered the truth of the universe. I was taught I must believe that or not be a "real" Christian. OH! I wanted to be a REAL Christian! I shoved doubt aside and honestly stopped thinking. I then met Pete. He had all the same thoughts I did on Creation and the actual REAL science to back it up. He knew physics and big bang and fossils and ages and provable, repeatable science. I almost ended our relationship, but then I decided to override the deep brain programming and listen to this boy. I did. I drank in deeply the knowledge that fed and freed me.
This was unpopular. This made us not liked. I started to think about the other things I was taught and I saw how the church treats women. I remember a woman in the congregation shaking her head, "no" vehemently during a sermon she did not agree with. This woman was then called by the pastor on the phone and was told she needed to let the "head of the home" show agreement or disapproval of a sermon in a public setting. I was livid when I heard. This showed me that women were not allowed to have opinions in church and that never changed. Not once. In every church I tried attending women were not to be "thinkers."
Continuing on treatment of women, there are the insidious views of cheating and sex. In 2013, out of academic interest, I started looking into information and advice from all sources on the Christian take on cheating men. The journey into that clap trap has been eye popping. The best book offered up in that genre was the still odious "Every Man's Battle." I thought that it, out of all of them, offered real help to the struggles of men and the responsibility they have to not be animals, but there was still blame. Still there was the pointing finger at the wife and women who like to dress in fashionable clothing. The author's plea to women was to please cover cleavage and wear loose clothing so as to not draw attention and "cause brothers in Christ to lust after you." My shirt caused this? My desire to dress in a fashionable manner to please myself, "CAUSED HIS LUST?" This was also not new to me.
When I married Pete 16 years ago, I was at a conservative Baptist church with a conservative Baptist preacher. We had to undergo "marital counseling" before he would conduct the ceremony. So as not to inflame our passions, (Please note I was 21 and Pete was 24), he saved the "birds and the bees" for last. During this most awful and embarrassing discussion with this man, he said these odious words in such a loving and paternal voice, "There is no such thing as rape in marriage, only selfish wives." My internal response was "You bastard. Your poor, sweet, wonderful wife." Her stunning face was instantly in my mind. What had that lady suffered? I stuttered, "No, rape is rape. If I am sick or uninterested at the moment, forcing me isn't going to make me love Pete more or make me be more available to him." He then went on to explain that if I weren't available to Pete enough, Pete would be tempted to cheat on me. Pete then got upset, but being a hater of conflict, he just got us out of the conversation as quickly as possible. THANK HEAVENS Pete is a better man than that odious preacher. He immediately reassured me that he would never treat me that way. He loved me too much. I knew that I had chosen a worthy mate. And in all of our history, he has never treated me like that pastor implied he treated his own wife.
Now onto the ever darker and uglier side: rape victim blaming. Recently here in Lafayette, IN, there was a teacher that molested a 16 year old girl multiple times over the course of 3 months. She did brag of her "relationship" but in this setting, he groomed her, bed her, was 22 years older, and was her school teacher. That is not a relationship. When the local news station, WLFI, posted the story to their wall, the responses were mixed. I landed on the side of, "What a deplorable human." Many of my fellow Hoosiers commented on how the girl was a "slut," "she knew what she was doing," "He is a great teacher and should not be fired for this," and my favorite, "she is 100% to blame wearing trashy clothes and already loose and easy by that age, my kids know her." The trashy clothes were picked out by him for her. I was stunned at how many people thought that in the circumstance of a 38 year old school teacher bedding a 16 year old student, the student was to blame and had it coming. What was interesting, a month later, an Asian employee at a different school molested a girl and was properly vilified by the same exact people. There was no, "Great teacher needs to stay," crap. I stood in horror at the entire brutality of the moment. Not only was the support and condemnation HORRIFYING, it was racist. "We only support white molestation."
I often feel that I must be cautious with my identity; it is important for me to stay safe and take caution when out at night. Mainly because there are scum that do take advantage of women. I can not help but wonder if this kind of victim blaming ups the freedom to commit acts of violence. If males of the species repeatedly hear how tight clothes and a vibrant, flirty personality is a cause for them to act worse than baboons, maybe we should stop talking about the clothing women choose to wear and focus on the fact that those males are at fault and need to be in jail. The only woman that "wants it" is the one that actually says, "Yes."
We have screamed and screamed as a society that, "No means No," but still the males that want to hear, "No means Yes," are affirmed by the consistent message, "Women need to behave differently to be treated differently." Whether there is truth in that statement or not does not matter. If males refuse to look at or come on to women in their moment of shame, the cycle of shame would stop. Men need to step up and show respect when the woman has little or no respect for herself. Then the damage done by woman blaming and rape/molester excusing will start to be undone and women will see they can be confident and free without fear.
Link to the comments on the WLFI page about the white supported molester. Click the replies to Robb Hayword's comment, "Victim blaming in 3, 2, 1…." They are SHOCKING:
https://www.facebook.com/search/str/WLFI%2C%20News%2018%20student%20molested%20by%20teacher/keywords_top
Link to the story of the Asian and soundly condemned molester:
https://www.facebook.com/search/str/wlfi%2C%20news%2018%20student%20molested%20by%20former%20employee/keywords_top
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