choosing to love – Feminism and Religion

***Trigger Warning: Discussion includes sexual violence***

Father Ted and his friends helped me move in 1978. I have a bandanna on my head and Father Ted is behind me.

In early 1977 when I was 21 years old, I was followed into a building and attacked with a knife. I was raped. It is hard to express the rent in your soul when something like that happens. And yet it is a common trauma in our patriarchal world, used as a weapon of war and, in general, to control women’s bodies. When I think of Israeli women being raped even as they were murdered, I don’t even know how to process that level of evil. As for myself, I was an easy mark as victim because I had been groomed to be meek by childhood abuse.

A month or so ago I wrote that women need to learn what it means to choose our lovers and partners. I have just learned another lesson in this process. When I wrote about the power to choose, I was in love with someone I thought was a good, respectful, and honest man. In other parts of his life, he may be, but in relation to me he was not.

Suffice it to say that this man “neglected” to tell me a very important piece of information about his life. This detail was so unusual that no one could have anticipated it. If he had told me this fact from the beginning, I would never have entered into the relationship with him, and I am pretty sure he knew that. As soon as he did tell me, I ended the relationship. As we were saying goodbye, he tried to seduce me. I opened the door and shoved him out. In the past I might I might have given in, or if I hadn’t, I might have felt that I was the victim, that he rejected me. In a delightful clarity, I felt absolutely no confusion, regret, or ambivalence. I chose. Continue reading “Choosing to End Love by Carol P. Christ”