Rejecting myths

I grew up in a suburban neighborhood south of Salt Lake City, Utah. The dominant religion - and the religion of all my neighbors - was Mormon. In the doctrine of the church, there are clearly defined gender roles. Men hold the priesthood and the leadership roles in the church and family, and women's primary responsibility is in the home. According to the religion, your relationship to god differs according to your genitalia. In the temple wedding ceremony, men covenant to obey god, and women covenant to obey their husbands. These roles were deeply ingrained in my psyche, and I believed that my deep hunger to educate myself, and to see the world and to impact it in a major way derived from unrighteous desires. It was vainglorious to wish to accomplish something large with my life and I was cautioned, in my personal Patriarchal blessing, that I should, "beware the things of the world" and that I would lose the blessings of family if I wasn't careful. I felt that it was unworthy for me to pray for assistance, so my prayers to god before physics exams was, "please don't stop me yet."

I think it was the articulated gender roles which first caused me to resist the religion. The women they described, and the ideal that women in the church aspired to, bore no resemblance to the truth I saw in my own soul. I was taught that I should try to become the person who accepted this church-sanctioned version of my female self. If you doubted this version, you were supposed to pray and let god realign your heart. I lived with other Mormon women in Boston, and we attended church together. They accepted these roles and tried to be good Mormon women and find husbands in the local congregation. But some fundamental source of self-knowledge in me rejected what I saw and what was required of me. I didn't know another way, but something in me cried out, "not this." I quietly walked away. 

As I read about sexual selection, and the role of agriculture and property in patriarchy, it becomes clear to me that any organization which defines people along gender lines is man-made. Literally: "man"-made. Because men are in the power seat and benefit from the status quo - and gender roles reinforce this power position. Any organization which encourages a person to accept the organization's version of themselves above their own judgment - and to believe that any misalignment between these versions is due to their own personal failing - is using a particularly insidious form of social control. This is not benign. It malevolently undermines a person's confidence in his/herself and insists that he/she expend increasing energy forcing her/himself into the artificial standard and then, because this standard is not achievable, blaming themselves for the failure. 

This rejection of Mormon gender roles was the first time I saw behind the curtain and stepped away from an externally imposed assumption. There have been many times since then. I rejected the undermining efforts of a sadistic Advisor in graduate school who shamed me publicly, ridiculed me behind closed doors to other professors, and wanted me to believe I was worthless, and another graduate Advisor who felt that my graduate thesis was looking great and on-target for dissertation defense - up until the moment he solicited me for sex and I refused.

It can powerful tool to introduce doubt into a person's psyche. I was infected with a thorough doubt of my abilities in physics, after years of negative reinforcement and outright verbal abuse. This may be why I couldn't bear to become a full-time theoretical and computational physicist. But I have been able to fight my own doubt in other arenas.

Through the years, I've learned to stop interpreting the failings of the men around me as something that I've caused. It was their problem, not mine. 

It was an object lesson on personal doubt when I visited my fiance Jeff in the hospital when he was admitted for manic psychosis and in the months and years afterwards. He developed a pointed fury at me. He was angry at me for so many reasons, and there wasn't anything I could do to appease him. For a long time, I accepted that the fault was with me and tried to comply with his unreasonable demands until a friend reminded me: "you're the sane one".

This has been a helpful insight for me to remember. On June 22, 2012, I had cut off all communication with Mac and looked to file a criminal complaint. MIVD had no way to reach out and rattle my chain. So they used Sjors. In July, he suddenly started writing to me (he had been silent before) and tried to imply that I had imagined the events which we had witnessed and I'd recorded. He wrote in July 2012: "I think you need help and I offer you my friendship. I feel you created your own reality but it is far from the truth". I remember how hurt and angry I felt. Not only angry that he would deny what they had done, but that he would participate in a campaign to discredit me. As the correspondence continued, he continued to imply that the fault was with me. I never doubted myself or my evidence. And I always responded with anger. 

I also responded with anger (rather than doubt myself) last October when the corporation I worked for tried to get me to agree with their version of the MIVD lies. In exchange for continued work and paycheck, they required that I sign a document admitting fault and accepting censure. I had told them the truth of all events. I recorded the minutes of each meeting and e-mailed these to all participants. I was not afraid of the truth. This unnerved the VP of HR who was much more comfortable in the realm of fearful, self-doubting women who were far more easily manipulated. I recall that, after a particularly ugly meeting with the company president, Pearl (the VP of HR) stopped me from leaving, and told me in a simpering voice intended to sound sympathetic, "You know, everyone has such good things to say about your work."

She was blocking my way out of the room, and I remember looking at her with dead eyes. 

"That's because I'm a fucking good analyst," I told her. And I walked past her. 

I sometimes wonder if Sjors has ever rejected the myth he was handed. I know that he rejected the status of MAVO - and got himself educated and promoted. So it seems that he was able to move beyond some early assumptions. But, in general, it seems to me that this was a muscle he didn't tend to use. He wanted to be part of the club. And the club required that he accept their mythology. He fucking married a woman because the club told him to. He attacked me when I threatened the myth. He's fit himself neatly into the lie now.

But I know the man who fought to get out and who longed for a bigger truth than this. May the god who sees the truth of all hearts (regardless of gender) let you see behind the curtain - and help you to liberate yourself from the lie.