I was eighteen when I was subjected to an exorcism against a “spirit of lesbianism.” I hadn’t told the person praying for me that I liked girls. But I went to the girls’ school where our pentecostal church was held, and the school had a reputation for being liberal and feminist. The person praying for me must have decided on that basis that I was susceptible. To the sin of lesbianism. I had never said a word to anybody of the thing I had begun to know at puberty. That I could love a woman. That loving a woman felt like it would be the most natural thing in the world.
I feel as though we must surely have gone to the very same pentecostal church. Thanks for writing this. There are so many similar stories of sexuality, identity being judged, shamed, policed. I am heterosexual and was slut shamed by my pentecostal mother and by the church when I was 14 AND a virgin. I am going to write about my experiences because the church took away my childhood. As for the exorcisms! I was terrified that I was going to be dragged up the front of the church, possibly by my mother and pushed to the ground where I would wail and flail. I would always try to be in the middle of a row so that somebody else would be picked, someone foolish enough to be by the aisle.
I feel as though we must surely have gone to the very same pentecostal church. Thanks for writing this. There are so many similar stories of sexuality, identity being judged, shamed, policed. I am heterosexual and was slut shamed by my pentecostal mother and by the church when I was 14 AND a virgin. I am going to write about my experiences because the church took away my childhood. As for the exorcisms! I was terrified that I was going to be dragged up the front of the church, possibly by my mother and pushed to the ground where I would wail and flail. I would always try to be in the middle of a row so that somebody else would be picked, someone foolish enough to be by the aisle.