When I recounted for her the time my youth leader slid his hand up my minor thigh under the covers on a bus trip, I told her that his second wife once asked me if he’d ever touched me, and that I, at first, denied it, then minimized it. Not just because I didn’t want to ruin her upcoming wedding, but because I loved him like a father and had let him walk me down the aisle at my wedding. My therapist nodded knowingly and without judgment, then patiently helped me separate his misconduct from our relationship. She helped me realize I had a long history of minimization and compartmentalization, and that I came from a long line of minimizers and compartmentalizers.

When a friend from my youth asked me about another priest we both knew who had molested me for about a year as a teen, I was, by then, the mother of a small child. I had locked those memories in a box in the back of my closet, so, naturally, I minimized it to her too. I told her it was no big deal. But after she left, I pulled that box of memories out, read the journal I had kept, and felt my whole body shake and my stomach sicken at what I had squashed down and minimized to the point of forgetting.

It’s amazing what we do to ourselves to survive.

Since therapy, I’ve talked with other survivors. Some who’ve had to be talked out of seeing their teenage or pre-teen selves as mistresses, as scarlet-letter-bearers, instead of as the victims they were. And here’s why they felt that way. When you recall your minister untying your swim suit and fondling your privates, when you recall your mother’s boyfriend raping you on the way home from school, when you recall that wonderful, respected, patriarch of the family molesting you, you are, at once, 14, 17, 12, 10, 9, and 30, 40, 50 years old. You may have dissociated in some ways, but it’s still a mental and emotional hodge-podge of who you are now and who you were then. When a therapist or an understanding friend has you swap out your child or a kid down the street for yourself in that same situation, who is the victim here becomes clearer, and that clearer understanding of the victimization can evoke more anger than it did when it was just ____ and just you.

So . . .

Dear woman who thinks your great-uncle grabbing your butt and saying nice things about your bottom was no big deal: Your great-uncle molested you. You have minimized it for yourself because that’s something we survivors tend to do. But I guarantee you would not minimize it if he or somebody else’s great-uncle did it to your pre-teen daughter or the neighbor kid down the street. Your *no big deal* would be a very big deal to them.

It would be their #MeToo.

Photo Credit:  Eric Murray — Shower Head

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A  sweet friend of mine recently found out that she can bear children. That’s great news, right? And it is, it totally is. We’re giddy happy for her. But to say we’re also stunned, dumbfounded, amazed, including her, is an understatement.

You see, my friend is a transgender woman. Or was.

I say “was” not because she’s not with us anymore. She is. But because a transgender female was what she honestly thought she was. She thought she was a dysphoric male transitioning to her more authentic female form. She’d just had the surgery to remove the gender-dysphoria-making male bits she was born with, had consummated a marriage with, and helped create children with. But in the midst of a somewhat serious complication that necessitated a trans-vaginal ultrasound on her newly surgically constructed vagina, her doctor discovered an intact female reproductive system — including a womb, ovaries, and a cervix.

Let that sink in. Cuz she currently is.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. “If you have a penis, you’re a male. If you have a vagina, you’re a female. XX means female. XY means male. Don’t get mad at me. It’s not bigotry. It’s genetics. It’s science.”

Now think back to my friend.

You can’t tell me it’s as simple as XX is a girl and XY is a boy. You can’t tell me the presence of male or female genitalia tells us all we ever need to know about someone’s gender. You can’t tell me we know everything about everything and there’s nothing left to discover in this world let alone within our own bodies. My friend, who’d had the shit beaten out of her as a little boy by the one relative she’d trusted enough to confide in that God may have put him in the wrong body, that he should be a girl, and could grandpa please talk to his Mommy and Daddy to help him fix it — this friend, who had been dysphoric and suicidal for years resignedly trying to live life as a male, but since transitioning has bravely and blessedly remained alive and happily married, raising their children together – this friend just found out she’s intersex, has been both male and female all along, and may be perfectly able to conceive and bear a child inside her own body – at 40.

We don’t know what we don’t know, ya’ll. So how about we stop acting like we do and give some more damn grace to one another.

Sure, my friend is rare, documented cases-wise. But how rare? I mean, how many men ever get to have or will ever have a trans-vaginal ultrasound?

The complexities of and within our bodies are amazing. Medical research/scientific research is still being done on what causes someone to be or identify as other than the gender they seem to be born with. Our developing bodies and brains are bathed in hormones and enzymes in utero, and even to some extent afterward, that trigger processes we are still discovering and exploring. What’s happening with my unicorn friend here should at least give us a clue to the complexities that may be involved.

It should remind us that rare is not a reason to dismiss possibility or to dismiss a real person’s humanity. Rare still exists. Rare walks around and has feelings, faith, needs, and rights. No sense in denying that it does and trying to shame or legislate or beat it out of people, deny them entry into bathrooms and changing rooms, deny them membership in our churches, or refuse to perform their weddings. If anything at all, rare should move us to expand our horizons along the planes of love, grace, and acceptance.

“We are gradually coming to understand that gender identity is not necessarily contingent upon ones genitalia, and that those who identify as transgender are not flawed or disordered, but rather experiencing something natural and biologically driven.” — Author, Pastor, and Activist — Brandan Robertson.

To which I say, “Hell yeah, they are.” And my friend is proof.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. There are broader spectrums within God’s creation than some of us are willing to acknowledge, let alone allow. Embrace the rainbow, people. Embrace it. And stop trying to use what little you know or think you understand about science to justify your bigotry. Ask any geneticist, science teacher, transgender, or intersex person. They’ll tell you, “The world is way too weird for that shit.”

Photo Credits:

www.jpartno — baby

Gilberto A. Viciedo — Diversity

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

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One that had all kinds of whacky rules, beliefs, and mores against going to movies, dancing, playing cards, going to college.

Men in black wrote the rules, drew the lines, and underling men and women towed them and helped enforce them.

Among the rules was this one: Women weren’t allowed to wear pants to church.

Even to go and clean it.

We could clean the altar and place flowers there, but we could not stand directly behind it, let alone speak from it, because we lacked a penis.

And even when they relaxed the no pants for women rule, they still frowned upon the wearing of them and judged the wearers disapprovingly.

And though I had permission to wear dress slacks to play my viola with the orchestra for a visiting church dignitary, I was pulled from my place by a disapproving man in black just minutes before and ANGRILY ORDERED to borrow or buy a skirt or I would not be permitted to play.

Ordered to wear something without that offending seam winding its way up one of my legs and down the other. Something regimental that would, paradoxically, show more flesh than I was currently flaunting with just my hands and face uncovered.

Meanwhile, the “swinging” that had been going on between some of the ministers and their wives and members, possibly even involving a minor like me, yeah, that wasn’t anything anyone needed to pay any attention to.

[insert eye-roll here]

So, yeah, I’m not particularly impressed with “modesty movements” or arbitrary dictates about sleeveless dresses, skirt lengths, or whether or not our feminine ankles or toes can show.

I’m more impressed with those with the temerity to challenge such dictates, pad, pencil, microphone, or viola in hand.

Who show up ready to roll up their non-existent sleeves and do the work anyway.

Who, when stopped, very reasonably say, “No. We’re not changing. Let our shoulders, knees, and toes show, and let us fucking do our jobs.”

Who not only say “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” – Don’t let the bastards grind you down – but who refuse to allow the bastards the power to do so.

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Went to my room earlier and unloaded all I’m concerned about to my God.

Told him how disappointed I am in my fellowman.

The violence. The abuse. The racism. The lack of compassion. The stinginess with wealth, health, power, rights, and grace.

The brutality of those who are supposed to serve and protect us, the wicked wielding power, and the wealthy willful and willfully ignorant fueling and fomenting it.

White Supremacy. Why, Lord, is this even allowed to rear it’s pointy white head again? Why?

Why is a Handmaid’s Tale-like theocracy seeping out now along the sealed edges of our democracy, and an American Oligarchy rising like a yeast bread, lusting and legislating to reduce the rest of us to peasantry?

Good gods, I feel like David watching the wicked prosper.

Watching a president lie *literally* every day, obstruct justice, profit off his presidency, and expand his pyrite embellished brand rather than edify our nation or its standing in the world.

Watching my congressmen, churchmates, friends, and family excuse, ignore, and promulgate it all.

And I’m left here lamenting. Pissed. Wanting to bark and to bite, but not wanting to bark or bite because of the Jesus I know and desire to be like.

So I lament to my Lord . . .

. . . call my congressmen

. . . bake banana bread

. . . and pray for whatever it is I need — we all need — to resist this, get through this, overcome all of this, and . . . 

. . . like June Offred of The Handmaid’s Tale . . .  

Not let the bastards grind us down.

 

“Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum, bitches.”

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“They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” ~ Jesus

Most readers of this account in Matthew tend to focus on the miracle of little-to-no food becoming plenty and more than plenty. Of how five loaves and two fish, barely enough to feed Jesus and His twelve disciples, came to feed five thousand men, plus their families. The miracle.

But what about Jesus’ compassion? What about his directive?

Jesus had been traveling through all the towns and villages, teaching, preaching, and healing. Crowds of people were drawn to him.

“When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36

Did you catch that? Jesus did not see them as a nuisance. He saw their need. And he had compassion for them.

Even after the brutal decapitation of his cousin and co-laborer, John the Baptist, and Jesus’ subsequent and understandable wish to withdraw to a solitary place, Jesus still did not view the needy masses that swarmed him as a bother.

“He had compassion on them and healed their sick.” Matthew 14:14

His disciples’ reaction on the other hand? Yeah. Not so much.

“As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Matthew 14:15

You see, the disciples saw the crowds’ need too – dinner.

The difference? They thought to themselves, “Their dinner is their problem.”

Compassionate, right?

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. We can only guess at the disciples’ tone and intent here. But what we can see is that Jesus’ way of handling this situation was not the way any of His disciples had considered at the end of a long, weary day.

“They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” Matthew 14:16 

To the problem of ten to fifteen thousand hungry people, Jesus’ surprising solution was, “You give them something to eat.”

You.

Can we keep this directive in mind as we watch certain political parties in power systematically pull the government out of, dismantle, and discard programs designed to meet the needs of the hungry, the marginalized, the young, the poor, the elderly?

Can we?

Now, this is where the more conservative among us will dig in their heels, decry the evils of socialism, and declare such needs-meeting as the role of “the church” not the government.

But think about it, Christian. Have you been in a situation where you saw a need – the need of a person, a family, a group – a need you felt unequipped, unprepared, maybe even too inconvenienced to meet? Or maybe, like the disciples, you simply saw it as their problem, not really yours. Maybe you felt a gentle or not-so-gentle prompt from the Holy Spirit to not just pray but act, but then you reasoned your way out of it, or allowed yourself to be distracted until the prompting passed.

Goodness. I have.

Yeah, it’s not so easy to be quite so self-righteous in our judgment of Jesus’ disciples when we realize we have soooo done the same, is it?

Now . . . Multiply such scenarios a billion times over, and that’s about how well “the church” – which includes you and me, by the way – has been doing at the whole “needs-meeting” thing.

“If feeding and caring for people is the role of the Church not the Government—why are so many of them starving and hurting? You’ve been open for 2,000 years now.” ~ John Pavlovitz

Can we own that?

Can we note the difference between our way and Jesus’ way and choose the better?

Can we ask for better from our churches, our temples, our mosques, and our representatives in government – city, state, and federal?

“But the deficit!” the conservatives among us cry. “We can’t afford it!”

“‘Bring them here to me,’ he said . . . Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.” Matthew 14:18-20

Jesus took the little his disciples did have to offer, and he made it more than enough.

“But that was a miracle!”

It was a miracle, yes, but one that started with a proper view of others in their need, compassion toward them, a willingness to act, and trust in the Lord God to meet and to multiply.

*blink*

. . . Uh huh. What else ya got?

Miracles like this can still happen, ya’ll, and they have been happening through programs like Meals-On-Wheels for the elderly, Medicaid,  the National School Lunch Program, and after-school programs that feed and provide for otherwise hungry children.

You know. The least of these.

And if you are still balking at allowing the federal government to contribute to the basket or lend a hand in delegating the distribution and demanding they stay out of it, I want you to consider what you are really and effectively doing.

You are obstructing Jesus.

You are rising up out of your place in the pew to boldly and belligerently stand in the way of the care and feeding of the hungry and vulnerable. You are ridiculously and cruelly slapping the food tray out of the willing hands of a federally funded program in front of the hungry child and elderly shut-in.

That’s not the behavior of a compassionate Christian, Christian. That’s the behavior of bullies.

Nothing, Christian, NOTHING has ever been stopping local volunteers and churches from donating time, money, resources, and warm bodies to fully fund and support these programs.

So if that’s true, if that’s the “conservative way,” if that’s the answer to every blessed need but the military, then WHY aren’t these programs for the young, the poor, and the elderly ALREADY fully-funded and in need of nothing in the way of support? Why?

THAT’S why federal funding is needed.

Face it. We humans are notoriously bad at being consistently other-focused and unselfish, and every loaf, every fish, every helpful hand here counts. Especially during seasons other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, when our collective sense of charity runs low and leaves the needy among us lacking.

“Charity is great, but it is no substitute for institutional justice.” ~ Thomas A. Earthman

Institution fills in the gaps in our charity. And all such justice requires is that we bring the needs we notice, our Christ-like compassion for the hungry, harassed, and helpless, whatever loaves and fishes we have in our basket, and set them before the Lord. Bring them before the Lord just as Jesus instructed, and delegate, delegate, delegate, just as Jesus did with his disciples. And wouldn’t you rather have a government that is willing to fill in those gaps in our charity than a government that refuses to?

Please. Let’s stop slapping away the already willing and helping hands of “We the people.” Instead, let’s join hands with our government – as many hands make light work – do the distribution, meet the needs, and “give them something to eat.”

We’ll all surely be amazed at what the Lord can do.

Photo Credit: Mait Juriado – Lemme

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No matter who comes knocking when I’m home alone, I’m walking to that door with a pen, pencil, butter knife, “Mischief Managed” coffee mug, something, anything, so that the triggered portion of my brain feels I’m not without some means of defense.

My husband knows to make noise when he enters the bedroom where I’m sleeping. If he jingles his keys, drops them on the bureau, trips over the cat, and says “Hey, baby, I’m home,” I’ll not rouse. I’ll sleep through it. But if he turns the knob quietly and tip-toes in . . . I’m a bolt-right, gasping, freaking mess he then has to reassure.

And that’s just a glimpse of the PTSD that rides along with me through my day-to-day life. My brain is hard-wired to defend me against sexual predators. I own that. It’s mine to cope with. And I appreciate the compassionate response of family, friends, and community as I do.

But when I hear people like Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick say things like, “Legislation to protect women’s privacy and business is essential to assure that sexual predators…will not be able to freely enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms or showers,” I’m fully aware they’re trying to play on my basest fears and hyper-vigilant reactions to support their legalized-discrimination agenda.

I’m also aware that this is where some of my more radical feminist fellow females of the trans-exclusionary bent will rise up and use rape anecdotes to demand “penis-free zones,” and the religious right will hold the microphone for them with one hand and hold their nose with the other.

And I am having none of it.

Yes, I was raped as a child. But I’ll thank you to stop using my sexual abuse as an excuse to discriminate against transgender people. I may instinctively be aware and vigilant when men of any stripe are around, but I recognize that my reaction, my prejudice, does not and should not infringe on any of my fellow citizens’ human, civil, or equal rights, cis, trans, or otherwise.

That I reflexively lock my car doors when a man walks past my car in the parking lot or as I sit at a stop light is no reason to bar men from walking past me in public. That my brain is a-buzz and ready for fight or flight when a man steps into an elevator with me is no reason to segregate elevators for men and women.  My fellow citizens — with or without penises — are committing no crime in walking past me, riding an elevator with me, knocking on the door of my home, peeing in the stall next to me, or “triggering” me, any more than radio stations are committing a crime by playing 80s hits like Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like A Wolf” or my husband is for making his way to his side of our bed at night or the bathroom just beyond it.

They just have to pee, ya’ll.  And I have no problem with letting them.

Look. Like you, I’m no fan of sexual predators — or creepers, as I call them — wherever they’re found, be that church pews, piano benches, or public potties. But here’s what I know: Creepers are gonna creep, and their creepy deeds are already illegal.

So I say. . .

Catch and prosecute the creepers. Let the rest pee in peace.

And leave my rape out of it.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights

Photo Credit: Michael – everyone’s gotta go some time

 Creative Commons License

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If you’re like me, you’ve seen Chonda Pierce’s response to the Women’s March shared a time or two in your Facebook newsfeed.

https://www.facebook.com/chondapierce/posts/10154132831081316

One of my friends shared it with me after I shared pics of my daughter and I and friends at our local Women’s March.

This is my response.

First off, high five for speaking your mind and sharing your view with a listening world. You go, girl! Big hugs! That’s awesome! Let’s hold hands, bow our heads, raise our voices, and thank God for the Suffragettes who marched and protested in civil disobedience so that you and I can make our own choices, speak and be heard, VOTE, work if we want, control our bodies, defend ourselves, and defend our families as you’ve said. The Suffragettes risked their own safety and security to have their say so that we can have ours in safety and security today. So go them! Go us!

Photo Credit: Anthony Najera — Women’s Rally on the Denton Square (Courthouse pic)

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That my LGBTQ friends and family will have their newly won rights slapped out of their hands by folks who don’t think they should have been handed them in the first place.

That my LGBTQ friends and family – especially the young ones – who HAD hope, will lose it, and their lives along with it.

That the KKK, who once subsisted underground but who now proudly celebrates their winning candidate, is emboldened and emblazoned.

That my transgender friends will continue to be openly attacked, intimidated, and discriminated against by folks who now believe they have both a biblical and a governmental mandate to do so.

That people of color, every shade other than white, have just been delivered the message that racist foot-soldiers have been spitting in brown faces for ages – “Your lives don’t matter.”

That families with undocumented immigrants are about to be torn asunder.

That my Muslim friends will continue to be seen and treated as enemy #1.

That victims of sexual abuse, like me, will have to look at him and be triggered daily for the next 4 years, degraded  and discounted by the president-elect  with his pussy-grabbing  excused to  “just words” and his power used to silence the abused in his wake.

That women will be criminalized and punished for making heretofore legal health-care decisions regarding their own bodies.

That we women who bashed our skulls against that glass ceiling, hoping to finally, FINALLY break through, now have to watch dazedly as some of our fellow men not just celebrate that denial, but happily replace it again with something maddeningly pristine and successfully shatterproof.

I hear the crying all around me. Little girls. Little boys. Transgender. Grown women. Grown men.  Muslims. People of color. All with fears absolutely rooted in past and present realities.  So pardon me if I don’t join you in celebrating our democracy or singing a round of Kumbaya right now.

I’m weeping with those who weep.

Photo Credit: Axel Naud — Don’t cry my love

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But the last two days, I’ve had to turn the news down or turn it off. Not because I don’t want to be up on the latest. But because Trump’s defense and surrogate defenders are SHREDDING*MY*SOUL with their dismissals, denials, and denigration of the women now coming forward with their voice-shaking stories of violation.

This is where some folks will want to come at me with, “Well, Bill Clinton did x, y, and z.”  So let me assure you, I am well aware that he did, and likely even several strings of letters beyond that.  I don’t doubt at all that he’s as guilty of sexual predation as Donald J. Trump.  So he gets no pass from me. There is no excuse for either of them.

But I wanna talk about what’s happening to those who dare to step forward now and say, “This happened to me.”

I listened last night as one of Trump’s defenders, a female, tried to argue that what one woman claimed happened on a plane couldn’t have happened at all because … arm rests. Yes, arm rests. Then a male talking-head chimed in that it couldn’t have happened without someone else witnessing it or saying something, anything.

Let me tell you something.

This shit happens with or without witnesses, with or without being noticed or commented on, and with or without fricking arm rests in the way. And whether it went on for fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds it’s wrong, criminal, and inexcusable.

And fifteen seconds feels like fifteen minutes when you’re being violated.

Ask any survivor.

Then earlier today, I heard Trump do something even worse — if you can believe it — than calling them liars. Referring to one alleged victim in particular, I heard him say, “I mean look at her. . . I don’t think so.”

And I about threw up.

You see, one of my abusers said something similar to me.  It was just a few years after the fact, we were talking on the phone and, not wanting to own up to his abuse of me, he said, “I was never really attracted to you.”

Now, since I was very much present all the times he molested me, I was as much baffled by his denial as humiliated by it. And those words of his went straight into a file in my brain labeled “cannot process THIS SHIT at this time.”

In fact, it was 20 years later before I could bring myself to admit to anyone he had said those words. And it took a wise and caring counselor-friend and confidant to explain to me that what his words had accomplished in me was precisely what he’d intended — shame and silence.

We are shamed into silence, ya’ll. From the first fondling finger to the last words our abusers and their defenders ever say to us about it. We are shamed into silence.

And I was.

For. Years.

And what’s crazy-making is I WAS THERE. I was there with him in the van, in the hot tub, and on his daughter’s bed. And I won’t lift the lid too high on the garbage pail here for ya’ll, but I can tell you… he can say to himself and anyone else who will listen that he was never attracted to me, but his erections we were both there for said otherwise. And that’s the rod of truth I get to measure his lying words by.

Nice, huh?  *Blegh*

So I feel deeply and intuitively for these women now coming forward. Same as I did when Cosby’s accusers were being nipped at, growled at, and torn by wolves in news segments, talk shows, and comment sections. I feel for the mindf#@% they’re going through and will continue to be put through.

And as I mute the TV for the umpteenth time today, shake the callous, dismissive, ignorant voices I just heard from my brain, and swallow hard against another triggered gag reflex, I want ya’ll to know…

This is not okay.

This is fifty-shades of non-fictional not okay.

Photo Credit: Brittany Smith – Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?

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And I might’ve, could’ve, stayed.

I was waiting.

As asked.

You never followed through.

And that told me everything I needed to know.

You said, “Hey, give us a couple weeks, just so we can get past graduations and such.”

You would talk with the ladies who had such a problem with me but who weren’t willing to sit down with me about it. Remember?

Months rolled by.

As you apologize now for the delay . . .  As you admit you saw my struggle, my disappointment, my decision to try to move onward, maybe elsewhere, maybe nowhere, and didn’t know what to do or say . . .  As you one part claim and another part confess you didn’t see hope for reconciliation . . .  Bear in mind, you didn’t reach out to offer it either.

You don’t think waiting for months like I did without follow up had anything at all to do with my disappointment with and disinterest in continuing on with my church family of 13 years?

Talk about losing hope. 

And your observation of my struggle, without comment or reach out, speaks volumes.

And here’s what I understand.

You found it easier to delay and avoid doing the hard work of addressing the issue of LGBTQ acceptance, the intolerance for differing views among your offended but favored leaders/members than to actually face the bigotry and do something about it.

You waited ’til I walked away. It was simply easiest for you. A relief, actually, and no great loss.

That’s what I understand.

Is there anything you can do now to bring peace?

Yeah. There is.

You can start by doing better going forward. Face the bigotry and correct it. Meet with those ladies who simply couldn’t bear that I was accepting and affirming of LGBTQ people rather than non-affirming and discriminatory like they were. Who couldn’t bear that I expressed that view alongside their intolerant ones on Facebook. And who couldn’t bear to sit across a table from me because of it. Let them know their “heart posture” could use some addressing, not mine.

Let them know there’s room at the table for those who hold a different view of LGBTQ people (for both biblical and human decency reasons) and are FOR welcoming the hurting and seeking marginalized and outcast with open arms and all the grace we claim for ourselves.

Do your part to educate about the very real and reasonable and varying biblical interpretations regarding the issue of homosexuality and gender identity and consider how maybe we shouldn’t be bolting and barring the door of salvation, or our churches, to the rainbow of beloved beings the Lord has wonderfully and fearfully made based on a handful of hotly contested, deservedly questionable verses.

THAT would bring a WORLD of peace.

And not to just me.

Photo Credit: nevermindtheend — shadow

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