I grew up fundie evangelical Christian. I was told repeatedly that I would go to hell for having sex. And other things, but that was the biggie when I was a teenager. My youth pastor made it very clear how big a sin premarital sex was. I remember he once said that it was better to not even kiss because it could lead to sex. Which, even at the age of thirteen, I knew was ludicrous. Or rather, I knew that there were so many steps between kissing and sex. He was a piece of work in many ways, and this was one of them. I never really believed in the Christian God, but I spent a large chunk of my childhood desperately wanting to believe. And thinking something was wrong with me because I didn’t.
I used to pray at night that God would make me a boy because I hated being so restricted as a girl. Let me be clear. I don’t feel like a man. I know I’m not a man. I don’t actually want to be a man–and I never did. I just did not want to be a girl/woman because of all the things I was not supposed to do. Top of the list was climbing trees at the age of eight. Running around and shouting in glee are two other. Sitting with my legs open in yet another. Not ever having to wear a dress is at the top of the list, too.
I would pray earnestly for God to change my gender, and I was crushed every morning when he hadn’t. It must have been because I hadn’t prayed hard enough! That was a trope pushed hard in my church, too. If God didn’t do what you requested, it was because you didn’t have enough faith/didn’t pray hard enough.
I had sex for the first time when I was twenty and that was also when I lost my religion. Or rather, when the wool fell from my eyes. Because, you see, the thing that I had been warned against my entire life, that was classified as the very worst thing I could do and would send me to hell for infinity, was one of the best feelings I ever had in my life. I wanted to do it over and over again until I was rubbed raw.
Once I realized how I’d been lied to, there was no going back. I started questioning everything else I’d been taught and the chips went flying everywhere. See, that’s the problem with perpetuating a lie at the core of your religion. Once that gets exposed, it’s impossible to make up for it. This was emphasized so much when I was in church, there was no way they could hand wave it away.