Eyes too Cold and Feet too Still

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I have watched: Eyes too cold and feet too still.
Her small eyes dry from hidden tears, she grins
into his crooked face with childish skill.

His tendon hands reach out — caressing sins
onto her head with guilted words of shame.
Sharp toys and blood, she fights his weight, he wins.

The play goes on, he wails and shakes, the game
wipes clean her solid face, her lips are pursed,
tight squinted eyes, he tells her the new name.

Then calls her by its rancid sound, coerced —
another consciousness he must instill
into her brain, preventing an outburst.

Now done, he points and says her mind is ill.
I have watched: Eyes too cold and feet too still.

Sexual Harassment and Mormon Culture

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines sexual harassment as follows:

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.

I wish that I had grown up in a culture that taught me self-respect and allowed me to be me. I that had been the case, I would not have been so vulnerable and men wouldn’t have seen me as a target. I love that I am learning to be a woman who is never targeted. It feels better — more powerful.

But it isn’t easy after growing up in Mormonism.

People acclimate to their environments and sexual harassment isn’t limited to the workplace. It happens in churches. It happens in families. For many it begins in childhood — at the hands of an adult wanting pleasure and personal gain. Sexual exploitation becomes a pattern in victims’ lives that can easily be taken advantage of by those with predatory intentions. They smell the vulnerable and set their targets, thinking that they will not be caught because the vulnerable have no protection, and will be too timid to defend themselves from public attacks of shame.

Predation doesn’t end when someone magically turns eighteen or marries. It happens any time someone with more power takes advantage of someone with less. Equality demands equal circumstances and benefit.

Some are groomed to be predators; other are groomed to be victims. Mormons come in both categories. A cycle of misery ensues.

A change in Mormon culture will require a recognition of the full scope of the problem and the necessity of implementing a healthier form of sexual education for both genders. It will require acknowledgement of the culture’s vulnerability to child sexual abuse and the implementation of collectively enforced child sexual abuse prevention strategies.

Until more action is taken to solve the problems, the Mormon people are a people caught up in a wave of sexual terrorism. Only the individual Mormon has the power to extricate the self from the system at the cost of loss of family, identity, honor and friendship.

Sexual harassment is the symptom of the wider epidemic.

Coerced Consent

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This morning I was telling a good friend stories from my marriage.

I told her how, when I was in my 20s, I’d allow my husband to have sex with me even though I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what else to do. I had small children and saying ‘no’ would have meant having to deal with a strong emotional reaction from him in front of the children. It was easier to allow him to use my body than to stand up for my real feelings and needs.

As time went on I got more used to not having freedom and sacrificing all of my desires and needs for my husband and my children. I didn’t really have any other choices. I had married in the temple and my family cared more about my temple marriage than they cared about me.

They believed I had fully consented to the situation when I was only just twenty. Twenty means legal adulthood after all. They didn’t consider the fact that there was no way I could have predicted how emotionally bereft my marriage would have been before I said “yes” in the temple. None of that mattered.

All that mattered to them was my membership in the church, whether or not I had a testimony, and whether or not I was worthy of a temple recommend.

My husband made sure I knew that if I tried to get a divorce, he’d fight me to keep the children and that the divorce would be expensive and long.

I remember lying in bed as he had sex with me thinking, “This is rape… marrying little girls off into unhappy marriages is much greater sin than sex outside of marriage. How did things get so messed up?”

Then I’d tell myself that Heavenly Father saw more than I did and that there was some purpose to all of it even if I couldn’t see it then.

Then I got even older and wised up some more. I realized that I really was being taken advantage of and that there was no god in the universe who would want that for any spiritual daughters whom he loved. I realized it was all about men in their search for mates. I had been drawn into another manifestation of human history. What was happening to me had been happening to women for generations upon generations… I was just experiencing the Mormon manifestation of it.

I eventually got a divorce and found a man I enjoy being with sexually. But it took me over twenty years and a lot of hell. Yes, the divorce was very long. It is seemingly never-ending. My ex-husband didn’t win the children but has managed to follow through with all of his threats. My parents didn’t initially support me. I still have siblings who won’t talk to me because I’m no longer married or Mormon.

Marrying little girls off in the temple before they understand themselves and what they’re really looking for in a husband is a far worse sin than than sex before marriage. My husband was over a decade older than me and was the “Elders Quorum President” when I met him. The bishop was sure he was a good man and I believed god had given him an important calling — so I trusted him.

Something is very wrong with this picture. There are problems in mainstream Mormonism just like there are problems in fundamental Mormonism.

Today I realized that I need a new word for what it’s like to be having sex when you want to say ‘no,’ but can’t because the person you’d be saying ‘no’ to has control over you in some way. It’s like rape, but it’s not rape. “Rape” requires at least a verbal objection.

It might be worse than rape, though. It’s a long-term sexual subjugation with a psychological bent to it.

I think the the right term is “coerced consent.”