Father's Day

When I was 12 my parents divorced. My parents had always fought a lot, but I was particularly devoted to my dad and was heartbroken by the split. My sister, then 18, moved in with some friends in Dallas, and my mother and I moved to Denton where my grandmother lived. Our lovely house in the country near Celina was sold.

My dad had suffered from a crippling form of arthritis for several years. I could remember him being able to pick me up, to work on cars together, to mow the yard and to build bookcases using a handsaw and a drill. But as I grew stronger, his back grew more bent, and by age 12 I was the muscle in the house, doing the yard work and the heavy lifting in the barn as well. I enjoyed physical work and took pride in my ability to take care of things.

I loved Denton and quickly made friends there, which helped make the transition a little easier. But two years after the divorce, my dad no-showed for our weekly Saturday outing. We would often start our Saturday morning with a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts, and then we would scour junkyards for Ford Thunderbird parts. This was a special Saturday because it was Valentine’s Day, and I had gotten Dad a really nice card that I was anxious to give him. When he didn’t show up, Mom called his apartment. No answer. She tried calling several times. No answer. Day turned to evening. Mom called Dad’s best friend, who went over to his apartment and found him there, dead. When the policeman knocked on the door, I already knew the truth, but it was still shocking. I vaguely remember lying in my bed sobbing while one of Mom’s friends gently rubbed my shoulder to comfort me.

The next few days were a blur of misery. My friends were my great comfort. They came to the funeral to awkwardly witness my grief. When I got back to school they respected my wishes to not talk about my dad. They wanted to help, but I wanted school to be a place where I didn’t have to think about it. It felt like the pain would never end, but I did manage to compartmentalize it. Sometimes I would be overwhelmed with grief, but at other times I could laugh and be lighthearted and fun. 

The rest of my teen years were pretty tough. My relationship with my mother deteriorated to the point where I left home at 16. At 18 I joined the army and embarked on adult life. Somewhere in my late teens, my mom told me that my dad had sexually abused my older sister, and that was why she had divorced him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a hard time believing this. Thinking back, I could remember certain odd moments and things that ‘felt weird.’ Like my dad ordering me to change clothes in front of him when I was 12, or him buying me a lacy nightgown when I was 11. As my grief for his death receded, it was replaced by grief for my sister and the harm that was done to her. 

Many years later, I was sitting in my cousin’s garage in Oklahoma. He was smoking, I was enjoying a cold beer, and we were talking about whatever. He expressed dismay that neither my sister nor I ever visited my dad’s grave to pay our respects. I gently explained the reason for our ambivalence. He digested this, then revealed that he and his brother had also been the victims of abuse perpetuated by another family member. With our grandparents and all their children dead, we could only helplessly wonder what on earth went wrong, what sort of hell our parents and their siblings had experienced that had led to this misery. There is much that we will never know.

But what I do know is this; sharing our stories is extremely powerful and healing. And keeping them secret is a cancer that damages us and our relationships with others. Years of misunderstandings melted away in that hot Oklahoma garage because we had finally gotten mature enough to be honest with each other. Depending on your personal beliefs, you may think my father will burn in hell for his sins, or perhaps you believe that he will be reincarnated into another life where his damaged soul will have a chance to learn and heal. All I know is, my focus and my allegiance are with the living, for where there is life, there is hope for redemption and joy. And I’m glad to say, whatever the dark secrets of our family’s past, the legacy of abuse has ended with my generation. Our children will not know the nightmare that we lived through.

Find out what it means to me

I am not a member of any religion. I claim no affiliation. But growing up and living in a mostly Christian country in nominally Christian family, mainly my rejection of religion is a rejection of Christianity. I don’t have any problems with Jesus. I’ve read the stuff he supposedly did and said and he seems like an okay dude. I don’t for a minute believe that he’s the one son of God or the only path to grace or any of that stuff. But that’s not the reason I reject the church.

This is the deal. The church is an organization that reinforces the social norms that support authority. It is an arm of the patriarchy that has murdered and marginalized women, gays, and anyone else deemed superfluous or dangerous to prevailing power structures. 

Sure, we can all read our history and agree that the crusades were misguided and murderous, that burning witches at the stake was horrific, that Pope Pius enabling the Holocaust wasn’t exactly a bright spot in Christian history. But, modern Christians would argue, that was in the past, that wasn’t me, I’m a good person and I try to follow the teachings of Christ. But I look at the church that you are a part of, and I don’t see that much has changed.

On a daily basis I see the church actively involved in efforts to eliminate my rights to my own body and healthcare choices. I see the church involved in preventing my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from enjoying the equal rights promised them by our constitution. I see churches promoting child abuse by encouraging parents to hit their children. I see ministers and priests involved in the sexual abuse of children. I see churches promoting sexual shame and dysfunction by teaching that the body is evil. I see ministers making a fortune off of their congregations.  I even see some churches still working against racial equality and integration. 

Any ONE of these things is enough to make me see red. Add them all together, and I really have to wonder how any decent human being would align themselves to these organizations. But my biggest issue with church is its attitude towards me as a woman. According to the teachings of the church, I am the source of sin, I am created of man and for him, I am to live for man and be ruled by him. And none of these things are actually true. It doesn’t matter whether anyone wants them to be true; they just aren’t. These teachings attempt to deny my power, my intelligence, my agency, my biology, even my humanity. 

The society that embraces this dogma is a society that rears men who think of women as lesser beings, as property. Rapists and abusers believe this. But so do nice men who don’t think of themselves as being misogynists. It’s very difficult to truly escape this paradigm. 

My husband would describe himself as non-sexist, a real supporter of women’s rights. He thinks the anti-abortion crowd are a bunch of wingnuts. But, true story, a few years ago we were having a disagreement. Our daughter, who was then a second grader, was very unhappy and bored in our awful rural Oklahoma school and asked to homeschool. This was something that she had been considering since kindergarten, but for one reason or another she decided to keep sticking it out. My husband wasn’t happy about the homeschooling idea, but after some discussion and thought, given that our community didn’t really offer any alternatives to public school and at the time I was unemployed, I decided to attempt it. Some months later we had a fight about it, and he said something that I’ll never forget. He told me that by ignoring his wishes I had ‘emasculated’ him. There are lots of other ways he could have expressed his disagreement, but that’s the word he used. So, when a man and a woman disagree, if the woman defies the man’s wishes and makes her own choice, he is emasculated? If the only choices are 1) agree with him and do what he wants or 2) disagree with him and do what you want, then any time you take choice 2, following your own instincts and doing what you believe to be right, you are taking something away from him. 

This is what systemic misogyny has given us – men who believe that when women exercise their agency, they are taking something away from men. And, so help us, we have women who believe that when women exercise their agency, they are losing something of value. The pressure to submit is there, every day, in our school yards and our media and our churches and our offices and even in our homes. Every woman alive has at some point just shut up or given up or compromised for the sake of keeping the peace. Misogyny doesn’t only reduce our paychecks or pressure us to go on a diet, it actually corrupts our personal relationships, the most intimate and personal parts of our lives. For some this erupts in violence or can even result in death, but even the most fortunate of us have found ourselves, at some point, staring at our partner in disbelief and absolute frustration, realizing that we’re not just arguing with our lovers, we’re arguing with thousands of years of a tradition that disrespects and dehumanizes us.

Once people worshiped the goddess and the god, the lady and the lord, the earth and the sun. The toxic triad of monotheism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, have robbed us of half of who we are. I am told by friends that I must respect their religion even if I don’t agree with them. This is rather like telling a black man that even if he disagrees with the Ku Klux Klan, he has to respect their philosophy as valid.  Your church has been at war with women for over 2000 years. My sisters are dying in this war. I’m not playing nice. I’m fighting back.