The worst conversation

On sexual violence and collatoral damage

CW: SA and CSA Please be kind to yourself.

A month ago, standing at the top of the attic steps, wrestling panic, I knocked on my kid’s bedroom door to have one of the most frightening conversations a parent can have with their children: “Did X ever touch you inappropriately? Did he ever ask you to keep secrets or make you uncomfortable?” The child in question was old enough to understand what I was asking. I watched the realization dawn, the horror hit. The answer, for him, was no, but I will never forget that conversation.

This week, another Duggar son was arrested for sex crimes against a minor. Dolores Huerta made a public statement about being coerced and raped by Cesar Chavez, about keeping quiet for sixty years, because she knew that speaking out would hurt the labor and civil rights work to which she was so deeply committed. And here in Topeka, another person queitly messaged me to ask if I knew what X, with the complicity of his wife, church, and the Christian homeschool organization he had been involved in for decades, had been accused of and had admitted to.

Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi The painting hits differerntly when you know that the artist was raped by her mentor as a teen, that she painted herself as Judith, and her rapist as Holofernes

There are scads of folks talking about how about purity culture is rape culture these days, but I don’t know that we really get it yet. STRONGWILLED has a phenomonal, heartbreaking series about how authoritarian parenting creates the conditions for pedophilia. Bare Marriage is doing episodes on how framing lust as “Every man’s battle” both belittles men and drives the objectification of women. In To Steal Kill and Destroy, I state my belief that purity culture, with it’s obsession with sex and sin doesn’t merely excuse sexual predators, it creates them:

“In the slurry of my rage over the harms of toxic religion, I don’t have condemnation strong enough for purity culture. There’s no language sufficient to express its harms. Presented as a safeguard, a protection, this system of sexual ownership does not shield. It strips its victims of autonomy and stretches them out bare for predation.”

To steal, kill, and destroy

Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture

The bottom line is this, purity culture pathologizes normal, healthy things—the body, desire and arousal, and normalizes the pathological—lust as an unstoppable hunger, an unavoidable drive to consume and conquer that is hardwired into men. It teaches that this is the way God created us: predators and prey, righteous actors and collateral.

I watched Casablanca for the first time this fall, and the film was not what I expected. What struck me most was was not the tragic romance between Ilsa and Rick, but the character of Captain Louis Renault, the man who, in the end, becomes a noble resistance hero, the man who has regularly used his ability to get refugees to papers and flights to safety, to coerce women and girls into sex. I’m not sure what would be worse as a terrified sixteen year old, knowing that you had to let a governemnt official rape you to buy safety for your family, or knowing that if you were only prettier, you would have had the chance to do so.

The Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorah is most commonly used as some hackneyed proof that God hates Gays, despite passages explicitly stating that their destruction was becasue of their treatment of the poor and foreigners, despite the attempted gang rape having nothing to do with sexual orientation, despite the fact that we’re meant to compare the angels’ welcome in these cities to the angels’ welcome from Abraham in the previous passage. But in the middle of these warring interpretations, I have never heard anyone preach on how seeing the story as a condemnation of homosexuality also supports the idea that horrifying violence towards women is acceptable collateral damage.

In Genesis 19, Lot, the “righteous” man, tells the raving crowd demanding to rape his angelic guests, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Imagine hearing that story over and over. Imagine hearing rape equated to queer sex. Imagine entire congregations hearing that it would be better, righteous even, for girls and women to be violently assaulted than for men to be gay. Imagine the slow realization that sexual violence towards women is so acceptable a cost that no one even notices when it appears in our foundational stories.

Louis Renault helped refugees flee Nazis, and he was a rapist.

Cesear Chavez helped farm workers rally against oppression, and he was a rapist.

Lot protected the angels, and he offered his daughters up to be raped.

Violence against women and children is so baked into the system, that even when we claim we want to protect women and children, we don’t always see it. On one side, it’s painfully predictable. Did the predator in question, like X, lobby against marriage equality, vote for “family value” politicians like Kobach and his ilk? Was he rabid for bathroom bills, like pastor, businessman, and Kansas State Senator Rick Kloos, who argues that the multiple accusations of sexual assault swirling around his adult son are attacks from Satan? Or was he a dynamic leader like Chavez? Someone who became the face for a liberating movement? Someone whose importance was used to silence victims?

In the church, every man is more important than anyone he might hurt, because any accusations against him will hurt the cause of Christ. In the rare moments we do have disclosures, these are often treated like confessions of sin rather than confessions of a crime. The stories become a redemption arc with no real work on the part of the perpetrator, the criminal, because “Jesus paid it all.” If the victim insists on legal repercussions, well, the reasoning is that the sin of bitterness is just as bad as giving in to sexual temptation. And it is framed as temptation rather than violence, because, again, purity culture maintains that men are wired in this way, which means we can hardly blame them, especially when they are so very sorry. As Sheila Wray Gregoire posits in that Bare Marriage article, purity culture views men’s lust is a sin that men themselves are the only victims of.

How do we sit with this? How do we change this? While my primary focus is the purity culture I painstakingly disentangled myself from, SA and CSA happen in secular spaces too. Predators build networks designed to prop them up, to shield them from accusations. If you care about a cause, pay attention to the power structures driving it forward. Spread that power out, put safeguards in place. Pay attention to the concerns of the most vunerable—that’s generally women, and always children. Risk intensifies with queerness, with race, with class, with disability. So many of us grew up in homophobic spaces. Please remember, that while homophobia and transphobia are bad enough on their own, where they show up in institutionalized ways you can bet there’s also sexual violence against women and children being covered up, dismissed, and excused. Protecting these groups is not at odds. Don’t trust Lot to protect girls.

Remember that if your community treats sexual assault primarily as a sin to be repented of, rather than a crime to be reported, that community is not safe for you or your children.

Locally, LifeHouse Child Advocacy Center provides education and support in Topeka and the surrounding communities.

RAINN or Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network is a nonprofit anti-sexual assault organization with a hotline, support, justice, and education elements.

GRACE or Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment is an organization that trains churches in abuse response and prevention, and carries out independent investigations. They were integral in the revelations of abuse cover ups in Sovereign Grace Ministries in the 20teens.