Daughter of the Patriarchy by Sierra

Emotional Incest: The Mama’s Boy and the Other Woman

April 17, 2012
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by Sierra

I have already written about the ways that growing up in fundamentalist-evangelical culture made me especially vulnerable to covert incest from my father. There is a flip side to the father-daughter craze in Christian patriarchy, though. I am here to bring you two stories: and one of them isn’t about me!

In what would have been my high school years, a miracle happened. Sven, my best friend from my early childhood, came back to my church. We were fourteen. We had been estranged for about three years while his family lived in another state. But we quickly reconnected (not least due to my idealistic hopes that we could pick up where we left off, and some aggressive book-lending). But the stakes were so much higher now.

Sven’s mother had all but declared me a slut at seven years old, a fact I’ve alluded to several times as it was formative for my conception of myself (in a quite negative way that required overcoming later). But now that we actually had secondary sex characteristics, my apparent sluttitude was all the more threatening. Who knew what debaucheries my round, pimpled face might concoct? Meanwhile, I dreamed that Sven would take me away somewhere to live in childless bliss in the mountains. In retrospect, Sven could hardly have taken me across his driveway without asking his mother’s permission. But who is better at sustaining ill-fated wishes than a lonely fourteen-year-old?

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Emotional Incest: The Junior Wife

April 12, 2012
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[Editors' note: At the time of writing, Libby Anne and Sierra were unaware of the controversy surrounding Hugo Schwyzer. The discussion of his critique of emotional incest is not an endorsement of Schwyzer by NLQ.]
by Sierra

Libby Anne has begun a series on Emotional Incest at Love, Joy, Feminism. In her latest post, she also links Hugo Schwyzer’s striking analysis of the problems with the “Daddy’s Girl” myth and princess culture. The following is my attempt to confirm and add more perspectives to the issue they are bringing to light.

As a child of a believer and a nonbeliever, I walked a confusing and sometimes torturous line between the prescriptions of my church and the realities of a divided household. Additionally, I was the only child, and female. For the first couple of years after my mother joined our fundamentalist church (while my age was still in the single digits), we basked in fellowship and preoccupied ourselves with the joys of home. Fundamentalist culture is extremely good at fostering an environment that feels like shelter, with clearly-defined expectations and an emphasis on the “simple life” – about which I’ll write more later. So for the early years, I happily did my homeschool lessons, read books, played outside, and ran to the door yelling “Dad’s home!” whenever his pickup truck began the descent of our long rural driveway.

Then puberty hit like a bombshell.

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Daughter of the Patriarchy: Admissions

December 15, 2011
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by Sierra

“When I was your age, my parents wouldn’t send me to college,” my mother was telling me. “I had to work my way through on my own. I don’t want you to have to stop. I will do everything I can to help you keep going to school. Your education is the most important thing to me.”

We stood in the kitchen, a printed letter lying on the counter between us. It was not good news.

I glanced up at my mother with a strained smile. I knew that if wishes could be cashed at the bank, I’d be writing my admissions essay to an ivy-coated castle. Instead, I was trying to find a way to pay the bill from my last semester of community college in time to register for fall classes. It was already August.

My work at Wal-Mart paid eight-fifty an hour: better than all the other work options for teenagers in the area. My schedule was already as close to full-time as it could be without requiring the company to offer me benefits. My hands were tied: I could take another part-time job, but when would I go to school? It was all I could do to keep our car paid for and insured while my mother handled the rent and utilities. College tuition had slipped between more pressing matters like food and transportation, and dragging it back to current status again would not be easy.

Still, I was grateful to have a mother who dared to disagree with the life track laid out before me. A Catholic turned evangelical, my mother was a radical believer in forging new paths. She had, after all, followed her heart out of her family’s religion when I was still a toddler. Going to college was my chance to discover what God had in store for me as an individual, she thought. I knew already that beliefs like these made my mother an outsider, a liberal and a radical in my church of stay-at-home daughters and unremitting parental supervision. What I did not yet know was how short and how tight the bonds were that held my friends.

“Why don’t you fill out your FAFSA?” my mother suggested. “Maybe you can get grants or student loans. They might offer you more if you apply to a four-year school. Let’s drive around and look for a college where you can transfer your credits.

I loved Rowling College on sight. The sprawling green lawn, ancient shady oaks and dark grey stone of its oldest building washed over me in a wave of color and charm. “It looks like a little Harvard,” I told my mother breathlessly. A more culturally adept young woman might have said it looked like Hogwarts.

The admissions counselor radiated warmth and hope. She beamed at my community college transcripts. No, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have SATs, she said. My grades proved that I could handle introductory classes. I felt a bubble of excitement rising in my throat, and firmly swallowed it. I would assume that this all was beyond my grasp, I decided. If it proved true, I would be pleasantly surprised. If it didn’t, I would not allow myself to feel the disappointment. I can go back to college later, I reasoned. There is a manager position opening at my store.

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Daughter of the Patriarchy: Daybreak

September 15, 2011
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by Sierra 

By the time I turned in my final remedial math exam, my family had settled into a tiny rental house in Pennsylvania. I was now eligible to start community college, getting prerequisites out of the way while finishing up my high school diploma. For my first semester, I was registered for Basic Problems of Philosophy (my mother, snickering, said, “There are a lot of problems with Philosophy,” implying that it was a godless discipline), and Earth Science.

Community college was a dazzling experience. Not only could I drive myself there three nights a week and not have to worry about tiptoeing around my father’s ever-simmering rage, I could talk to normal people face-to-face. I became painfully aware of the conspicuousness of my long skirts and hair, and went out of my way to dress up for college. I preferred to have people think I was simply overdressed than advertising my religion.

On the first day of my Philosophy class, our professor walked in – a tall, lithe woman wearing a fedora. “You may call me Professor V.,” she explained. “You may also call me Dr. V., if you need medical assistance, which I can provide.” She had three doctoral degrees, she explained. My eyes kept widening as she introduced herself. She seemed like a creature from a higher dimension: poised, collected, professional, and utterly unlike any other woman I’d ever known. Our first exercise was to probe the foundational source of our own identity in a one-page essay. I answered that, as a Christian, my identity came from within the imagination of God, the source of all Creation. I wrote easily, but afterward began to think. Was I being honest in my answer? Or was I only reproducing someone else’s thoughts?

Integrity became an increasing fixation in my life. Every day, I worked an eight-hour shift at Wal-Mart, and despite my best efforts to vary my wardrobe and to solicit comments on being overdressed rather than appearing strange, inevitably somebody noticed that I didn’t wear pants. “It’s Biblical,” I sighed. It was a shortcut other women had taught me to say when I didn’t want to have a long conversation about my dress. “If they’re thirsty, they’ll keep asking,” my mother and her friends had instructed. Inwardly, I was sick of inspiring thirst.

I felt as though the Holy Bible were plastered to my chest. There was nothing I could do to avoid mentioning it. I began to obfuscate when strangers and friends confronted me. “It’s religious,” I said sometimes. Other times, “I just like skirts.” As I looked around at my coworkers in cute jeans and tank tops, I felt less and less inclined to “witness” and wanted desperately just to go about my business without incurring questions from strangers.

I couldn’t see the other girls as evil, depraved, captive or on the prowl to destroy men with their bodies. I saw people that I liked, people I wanted to be like, and the conspicuous nature of my dress burned in my conscience. “I don’t really believe wearing jeans is wrong,” I dared to think between fearful bouts of repentance. “This skirt I’m wearing is a lie.” But I quickly stuffed those thoughts into a hidden place in my mind, a place it would be safe to probe later, when I wouldn’t have to explain a pair of jeans to my mother or to God.

I want to be authentic, I thought. I wanted my actions to reflect my beliefs. And yet there was no room to examine my own heart in private, to sort out what I really believed about women’s dress. Every time I got dressed in the morning, I took a stand for the Message by donning yet another floor-sweeping handmade skirt. To dress otherwise would be to send up a battle flare, declaring my apostasy in one stroke. I’d be set upon instantly by a horde of Message women, all reminding me why Brother Branham said women shouldn’t wear pants and praying that the Lord would lead me to repentance. “Aha!” I could imagine some of them smirking. “We knew she wasn’t saved. She’s probably Serpent’s Seed.” I wasn’t ready for the drama I knew would instantly fall on me, so I hid as best I could: by wearing fancy skirts and answering, “I’m comfortable this way,” while inwardly chafing at the failure of my integrity. Wearing skirts meant always performing: I never had a moment’s privacy to sort out what I really believed.

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Daughter of the Patriarchy: Doing the Math

September 6, 2011
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Print Friendlyby Sierra Turning eighteen was magical. Suddenly, all the job applications I seemed to be throwing down an empty chute were bounced back with interest. Sven had already landed a job at Wal-Mart in his town. Now it was my turn. I nervously sat through my job interview, not daring to hope that I might actually be on my way to earning money. When they called back with an offer, I could hardly contain my excitement. Not only did I have a job, I had a real driver’s license. No longer did I need Full post …

Daughter of the Patriarchy: The Waiting

August 25, 2011
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by Sierra

I loved driving. I’d always known I would. As a child, I collected Hot Wheels cars until they numbered in the hundreds. When I was twelve, my mother decided to teach me to drive in case my father’s rage spilled over completely and I needed to escape. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. The car felt huge and seemed to move so much faster when my hands were on the wheel. I crowed with pride as I successfully navigated the winding roads of our rural neighborhood, passing a UPS truck with wide eyes and short breath.

As I grew older, I periodically stowed away money for a car. At my bakery job, I thought I might finally have a chance when I amassed $1,000 – a year’s savings. Anxious to get wheels, I researched motorcycles and mopeds, which were both cheaper and had a younger age restriction, but was repeatedly told that young ladies shouldn’t ride motorcycles – how could I, in a skirt? I was prepared to make it work until winter convinced me of the foolishness of that plan. I focused my energies again on hunting for cheap cars.

Time and again my savings evaporated: my father took the thousand; rent and food took the rest. I was a contributing member of the household; that meant petty savings for a teenager’s car was low on the priority list. Each time my mother’s outdated and under-maintained car ran itself into the ground and she was forced to buy or lease another, she promised that next time, I’d get to keep the old one. It never happened.

When I was sixteen, my mother and I moved to a farmhouse apartment in a rural area with only one general store within twenty miles. I applied for a summer job there, but was last in the queue of several farm kids and was never called back. My mother commuted to the bakery, an hour’s drive, and I was left to fend for myself in the house. My halfhearted attempts to master Algebra II soon dissolved, and I began to spend my days online, as I had done three years earlier. This time, I was playing a video game: Dark Age of Camelot, an online roleplaying game. All pretense of homeschooling was silently dropped. Our house was not in order; public school was not an option. And so I vanished into a game.

Sven and I played the game first together, igniting no small controversy in the church. The fantasy genre was already suspect: everyone knew that good Christian kids didn’t read Harry Potter, much less play any game resembling (God forbid) Dungeons and Dragons, where kids practiced actual incantations and learned to command the legions of the devil. (Oh, how many high schools would mysteriously burn to the ground if that were true!)

Sven and I defended our pastime vociferously: we knew no occult spells. Sure, there was “magic” in the game, but we were only pressing buttons to launch imaginary fireballs at opponents. There was no devil here. Our loudest opponent, a 26 year old, insisted that the only way to avoid witchcraft was to avoid the appearance of magic.

He was holier than we were; he only played Grand Theft Auto.

As my life dwindled to Sunday church services and fellowship, occasional trips to northern New Jersey to work at the bakery, and the closed Algebra book on my nightstand, I investigated more areas of Dark Age of Camelot, playing in zones where Sven didn’t play, and interacting with other people. Eventually, I made friends. I joined a group called “Lema en Estela,” where I found I could live in another world: one where I didn’t have to demonstrate my piety. I could be imaginative here. I could compete and win without being told that I was violating God’s order. I could make jokes without being told to be sober and serious, for the hour was late. More important, I could have long, friendly conversations with people who accepted me for who I was.

Soon I’d abandoned Sven’s realm to spend all my time with Lema en Estela. I was hiding, but I was safe there. Safe from the impending failure that was my high school education. Safe from my father’s intrusions back into my life. Safe from the judgment of the adults at my church. Safe from the false girl friends who used me to get to Sven. Lema en Estela, as ephemeral as it was, was a beautiful refuge from what otherwise was an empty time.

Daughter of the Patriarchy: Surveillance

May 22, 2011
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by Sierra

Thick summer haze blended with the spirals of smoke belching from the backyard grill. A teenage girl in a sepia-colored seventies outfit poked at the flames with a stoic face, silently urging them to gulp up more pages from the notebooks she fed them, one after another. The fire surged with joy and then abated, leaving only charred fragments sinking into dust or drifting lazily into the air. The grill was stuffed, but not for long. Soon the makeshift altar had reduced its sacrifices to embers. The girl sighed with relief, though the anger blazing in her chest had not subsided.

Her mother had read her diaries. They had to be burned. Her most private thoughts unmercifully exposed, her trust breached, the girl vowed to herself that no one would see those words again. As I would discover thirty years later, she also made a promise to her future daughter: she, unlike my grandmother, would never so mistrust and mistreat her own offspring.

“I trust you.” My mother said, over and over again. “I will never invade your privacy.”

I kept journals sporadically, largely as an outlet for childhood frustrations. When other girls shut me out of their circle, I scribbled furiously about it. When I realized guiltily that Christ had commanded us to love everyone, I hastily amended, “Ignore my last entry. I love everyone, those girls especially!” Sometimes the pages were filled with incoherent childhood rage: “STUPID STUPID STUPID!!” I vented. I knew more emphatic words, but good Christian girls never swore.

Despite knowing that my diaries would never be read by mortal eyes, I nonetheless resisted uttering any religious fears or insecurities. I had been told that Satan could not read our minds but could definitely hear what we said. I surmised, though I was never told, that the devil was probably smart enough to read, too, so I avoided showing fear or doubt in the pages of my journals. I alluded in the vaguest possible terms to crushes I had on boys, convinced that to have a crush was to succumb to sinful lust and thus to leave an opening for Satan. Those thoughts were evil, and must be repudiated and denied.

In time, new media burst on the scene. I sent my first email at 11 years old. My mother, still adamantly adhering to her promise to trust me, didn’t stand over my shoulder or vet my communication. I was free to email my friends at church as though we were having a private conversation. At least, that was my assumption. I was quick to discover, yet slow to appreciate, how different the lives of my peers were.

The internet was new to most people I knew, but some guidelines had been established rather quickly: the first rule was to remember that the people in chat rooms weren’t always who they said they were. The second was related: never share identifiable information. Armed with this common sense, I boldly entered chat rooms and held conversations with strangers. Their potential wiles and innuendos flew over my head like a fleet of supersonic jets. If they were there at all, I was none the wiser for a long time.

Among the interests I pursued on the internet were websites for other children who played the Catz video game, which allowed the player to raise and breed virtual pets and show pictures of them to others. I also discovered MIDI files, which exposed me to music I had never heard before and yet held none of the threats of Satanic infiltration like rock music on the radio. MIDI files had no beat or lyrics. They couldn’t infiltrate my brain with images of sex and drugs. This latter discovery soon led to my first jolt of surprise at the exceptional quality of my mother’s trust.

Daughter of the Patriarchy: When Dreams Become Promises

March 15, 2011
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by Sierra

As followers of God’s final prophet and members of the elect Bride of Christ, we made a lot of promises in God’s name. We promised safety to a world we presumed was in its death throes, ready to face tribulation, destruction and ultimate renewal. We promised healing, hope and happiness to those who accepted God’s provided way of escape. We promised individuals that their broken families would be restored, that their financial problems would vanish when they tithed, that God’s will would give them purpose and the strength to deal with the wearying parade of everyday troubles. We promised Alissa that God would heal her daughter.

Alissa was a single mother of two young boys. She worked as a clerical assistant in a faceless grey office. It paid the bills, but not all of them. She had a husband, too, but not all of him. He brought home other women, parading them in front of her face. He took them out to places she would never see. He riled up the boys, then refused to parent them. He made them despise and curse her. He probably took her money, too, but I don’t know. I was a kid, and I wasn’t supposed to listen to these kinds of stories, even though my dad was doing the same thing.

Late in the 1990s, Alissa found out she was pregnant. A third baby for a man who hardly noticed the first two. But Alissa had dreams for this one: this little girl would charm her daddy’s heart, bring him back, make a real man out of him. And our church turned those dreams into promises. God would honor her faith and restore her marriage, since she had submitted to her husband despite all the trials and was ready to bear him a daughter. Just wait and see, we promised her, God has a special miracle for you. How glorious it will be when he reveals his power through you and your family!

Within weeks, Alissa learned that there was a problem with the baby. The child had a genetic abnormality: an extra chromosome, perhaps. She was expected to live only a matter of hours, if she wasn’t already stillborn. The doctors recommended abortion. They said it would spare Alissa the pain of saying goodbye to a daughter who would never hear her hello.

Everyone at church smiled knowingly at this point in Alissa’s story. Doctors loved to recommend abortion, especially unnecessary abortion. It made them money, after all. Alissa ought to ignore them. They were part of a culture of death and hated motherhood. Worse, they didn’t believe in the power of God to heal the sick! Not even cancer could stand before the prayers of God’s elect. Heads wagged along with the tongues. Those doctors might think they knew what they were doing, but they didn’t know our God. He could turn Alissa’s dreams into promises.