In a recent post on his blog, Peterson Toscano explains why he describes himself as an ex-gay survivor but not as a victim:
In the nearly 20 years of ex-gay/anti-gay/de-gay treatment I endured, no one ever forced me to do any of it. I chose to submit myself to the unsound and potentially damaging practices designed to demonize and annihilate my sexuality (and much of my personality and gender differences along with it). I elected to go into these programs. I paid for them with my own money (except for when I turned to my parents or others to help with the expenses). I put myself into the ex-gay/anti-gay mess and I KEPT myself in that mess for nearly two decades.
While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the truth is that most of the GLBT individuals who have gone through ex-gay programs (including this writer) did so voluntarily. Admitting that does not diminish the harm that churches, peers, family members and the attitudes of society in general caused in leading us to believe that we needed to change who we were in the first place, but it does empower us to take control of our own stories.
We may not be able to change the past, but we can change how our past affects our present, and in so doing free ourselves to live fuller, healthier lives. In the process, we may just inspire some of those who now face the same pressures to be “normal” to avoid making the same mistakes.
This is a problem I often struggle with. I am a survivor of a biblical counseling camp called His Mansion, which is basically the equivalent of a Love in Action for the mentally ill, with the same lies told (Mental illness is your choice, you are not born that way, there is no biological cause for mental illness, mental illness is a sin, mentally ill people are in danger of going to hell, etc.). I voluntarily put myself in the camp, so in that sense maybe I bear responsibility, but at the same time I did not know what the camp believed, though I did know it was harsh. I got out as soon as I realized how warped it was, but I still have major psychological scars from it. So, am I responsible? I don’t know. I wonder often if I would be as messed up as I am (severe OCD) if I hadn’t grown up in an internally pscychophobic religion, where I was taught to hate myself. But then again, does denying my personal agency in my decisions ultimately harm me by leading me to blame others for my own decisions? I guess it depends on how much value we place on personal agency, a concept that I think American culture tends to overvalue and overemphasize
Also, Peterson converted at a relatively late age, which may explain why he feels he bears personal responsibility (though I personally am skeptical of that in his case, knowing his story). But many people are raised literally from birth in homophobic (or psychophobic) fundamentalist homes, so where does any personal agency come in that regard? I realize that perhaps I am denying my own agency in changing myself, but to me, at least, what ex-gay counseling programs do is abuse, and the people who survive them, though survivors, are also argueably victims as well. Just my two cents.
When I was a teen I did attend counselling sessions designed to get rid of my girlish self. It was my choice to burn all bridges with my girl self, and when the church applauded I felt I had done something right, and that vindicated my believes that there is something wrinog with me. But when I realized I was everyone’s toy by design I realized I have wronged myself.
I was cheated by church members to get into the ex-gay Real Love Ministry though. Trying to get rid of a smoking and drinking problem, I am instead coerced to “change” my womanhood.
Upon reading this post and the first couple of comments, I think it would be beneficial to make a distinction between responsibility and blame in these kinds of situations. Blame has to do with finding fault with past actions and deciding who caused or created the current situation by their actions. Responsibility is about assessing the current situation and trying to answer the vital question: “Now what do I do?” Responsibility is about determining how one wants a situation to change and taking action to affect those change.
The thing is, focusing on assigning blame — even if one is assigning blame to oneself rather than others — often gets in the way of taking responsibility and moving forward. It keeps one stuck in what happened and the current mess, when one would better serve oneself by looking forward and moving in a better direction.
In most situations — and this is certainly true of ex-gay programs, in my opinion — the truly faultless person is an astonishing rarity. There’s usually enough blame to be shared by all people involved. The distinct advantage to recognizing one’s own part in contributing to and reinforcing a particular situation, however, is that doing so also tends to shed light on how one can change that situation. That realization leads to the transition into taking responsibility and improving things.
In reality, while it is the shorter one in the original post, Eugene’s last paragraph is quite probably the more important one.
Jarred,
I completely disagree. I think the amount of personal responsibility an ex-gay survivor has is nil, especially if they grew up in evangelicalism. If one is enculturated to accept self-hatred, one will almost inevitably self-hate. Yes, a few people escape such indoctrination unscathed, but they are a priveleged minority. And your distinction between blame and responsibility, while perhaps theoretically true, is difficult for most people to sustain psychologically. Too often, taking ‘responsibility’ just turns in to another reason to blame, because one can not get over the effects of psychophobic, homophobic, or other forms of abusive therapy.
I think the whole notion of personal responsibility has largely become a Republicanconservative concept that the victims of the cult of personal responsibility have bought into. Gays should be “responsible” for their sexuality . . . and turn straight. Schizophrenics should be “responsible” for their mental illness . . . and cure themselves of the supposedly non-existent genetic problems that stand in their way. The poor should “pull” themselves out of povery by their boostraps, through good old American hard work and ingeneuity. Personal responsibility is a normative concept that the powerful use to keep those who support a more collectivist, less individualistic society, in bondage. And I note that many of these “personally responsible” conservatives refuse to take any “collective responsibility” for how we treat minorities, the GLBT community, the mentally ill, Muslims, non-American countries, etc. Personal responsibility becomes the gateway by which GLBT and mentally ill people achieve hetero and psychonormativity, something we should not want in the first place.
Look at Ayn Rand and Tom Cruise, the prophets of personal responsibility. Rand preached the most radical gospel of personal responsibility imaginable, yet failed to have any such responsibility in her own life. Cruise’s gospel of responsibility has encouraged many people to go off medications, some of whom have committed suicide because they were suppossed to be on those meds.
Obviously, I have no problem with you or Peterson. I think you’re both great people. But as a mentally ill ex-evangelical, I have heard too many times that I should take personal responsibility for having a biochemical imbalance in my brain. And to be frank, I’ve seen too many of my ex-ex gay friends blamed for going into ex-gay programs in the first place, by GLBT individuals who were fortunate enough to never have to undergo fundamentalist indoctrination. We live in a country where it is considered vitally important to take personal responsibility for stepping out on one’s wife (though I think we should take responsibility for that), but no responsibility for invading a country and killing 100,000 people. I would strongly resist any attempt for the gay community to take personal responsibilty for the actions of homophobes. The GLBT community has already heteronormatized too much when it fled the label of mentally ill without first questioning why that should be a pejorative term in the first place. Peterson, or anyone, taking responsibility for the actions of a homophobic culture, is noble, but in my mind, deeply misguided, as it merely perpetuates the lie that we are all free agents capable of doing anything we want to and overcoming any scar. But some scars cut deep and don’t heal, regardless of what we try to do.
John,
I understand what you are trying to say, but there is a difference between the “conservative/republican” version of “personal responsibility” and choosing to live your life on your own terms. My partner is bi-polar and takes medication to manage his disorder which is responsible. Also, I understand that he will have mood swings which are the result of the chemicals in his brain, so I choose to be understanding when those mood swings happen. There is help for him, collective responsibility, but how and when he uses it is also up to him, personal responsibility.
This is something known in religious circles as “free will”. I think we have a collective responsibility to help others when they need it and try to help them understand that they do need the help, but we should also let them decide to get the help themselves and not feel that “what others did to them” releases them from taking control of their own lives.
I think this is what Jarred was talking about.
John, bear in mind that I was born, raised, and indoctrinated in the evangelical culture to which you refer. I know a good bit about the damage it does and how hard it is to escape from it — unscathed or otherwise — from personal experience. On the matter of an individual’s personal responsibility in such a situation, I suspect we will have to agree to disagree.
On blame vs. personal responsibility, I did want to comment on the following statement you made:
I never suggested that taking responsibility requires one to get over the effects of abusive therapy. To be honest, I’m not sure what “getting over” such effects would actually entail. Again, I’ll point out that taking responsibility is simply a matter of deciding what to do about a given situation next. To me, setting realistic goals moving forward. That may indeed involve living with some of those effects you allude to. To put it bluntly, I understand personal responsibility quite differently than the Republican or conservatives you mention do.
Clancy: Yes, I’d say you are understanding me beautifully.
As an aside, my understanding of personal responsibility has been greatly shaped by my friendship a wonderful woman who survived the twin horrors of multiple sexual abuses throughout her childhood and “Christian counselling” of the worst sort.
Dear Jarred,
No, I realized you had probably had experience with evangelical culture, though re-reading my comments I can see how you got the opposite impression. And I wasn’t implying that you believe in the rhetoric of conservatism, nor Peterson for that matter. I know neither of you do. My point is that ultimately the rhetoric of personal responsibility serves a heteronormative purpose, whether people wish it to or not. I hope I didn’t say anything offensive (sorry, worrying about stuff like that is one of my OCD symptoms).
Sorry if I sound like I’m coming out of a wacky left field with all this stuff. It’s just that for surivivorsvictimsclients of the biblical counseling movement (a movement that considers mental illness to be the result of sin) like me, personal responsibility is often a codeword for telling people to go off their meds, stop seeking secular counseling, etc (which in many ways is the exact opposite of what they should responsibly be doing). Also, there’s no way of escaping responsibility in the movement. If you even just feel sad, they claim it is due to a lack of personal responsibility, which is sin in their eyes.
Sorry if this doesn’t make much sense.
Clancy,
I don’t want to be overly theoretical here, but I think free will is a bogus concept. We are the product of biochemical impulses in our brain, and those biochemicals response to outward stimuli. The ‘choice’ to think a certain way is not really a choice at all, since it is merely the firing of neurons, nothing more. I admit the ‘utility’ of the concept of personal responsibility, but as an idea it is empirically and verifiably false, and the main reason Americans insist on keeping the idea is so that we can continue to have a punitive, anti-mentally ill criminal system. Lawyers and neuropsychiatrists, not to mention evolutionary psychologists, know fully well that the idea is nothing more than pleasant fiction. But Western jurisprudence would collapse if we didn’t have such a concept, so we continue to use it.
I admit society still needs some definition of criminalimmoral behavior, which implys that we also need some concept of personal responsibility. But I wish people, particularly the powerful, would admit that these ideas are neccessary ideological fictions rather than some essentialist “Truth”.
This issue matters to me because it is the mentally ill who usually pay the most price for this charming fiction of responsibility. People hold women like Andrea Yates personally ‘responsible’ for the killing of her five children, even though its transcendentally obvious that her hallucinatory states made it impossible for her to truly know right from wrong. And beloved Texas almost killed her because of this fiction.
I admit that we should bear personal responsibility for what we do to others, even though again from a theoretical position that responsibility is of questionable validity. And as someone with OCD, I tend to take a lot of responsibility for those things. But unless one is deliberately, knowingly harming the self, I don’t know that taking ‘responsibilty’ for what we do to ourselves is productive, since usually these unknowing abusive behaviors (going to homophobic camps, psychophobic camps, etc.) are made under the assumption that we are trying to make ourselves better. This is especially true in the case of a mentally ill or sexually abused person going to counseling. They are in a vulnerable position, and it is the responsibility of the counselor, not the client, to at least not make them feel any worse about themselves. And obviously, I don’t think we should take responsibility at all for what others do to us.
I don’t know if this analogy will help, but here goes. Ex-gay programs, deliverance ministries, and biblical counseling programs provide what are essentially medical services, even if they claim not to be so. When you go to a doctor and your doctor screws up your operation and takes off the wrong arm cause he’s drunk, you don’t blame the patient, you blame the doctor. The only way you would bear personal responsibility is if you know he’s drunk and undergo the operation anyway. But most people who go into ex-gay or psychophobic programs honestly think these programs know how to help people. And these programs deliberately lie to them and tell them they do know how to help people, even when they know their program is at fault. Therefore, it is the spiritual malpractice of Christian counselors, not patients, that bear responsibility for these practices. I am responsible for when I have hurt other people. I am not responsible for what biblical counselors did to me, nor its effect on me.
John,
First of all, I have never been through the ex-gay program. When I realized that when I hit puberty I liked men instead of women, I just accepted it. Fortunately I was not brought up to believe the homosexuality was wrong, just not accepted. I didn’t suffer the damage that “Christians” have inflicted on gay people and the mentally ill.
Regarding your statement about biochemical responses, I agree that it is not anyone’s “fault” any more than it’s your fault you have diabetes. What you do going forward can make your life easier or harder. I liken my partner’s bi-polard disorder to being like diabetes. It a difficult, but manageable disorder which could lead to more difficult or fatal conditions in the future, but if you take “responsibility” for your treatment, which includes getting help from people who understand the disorder and can assist you in making your own life easier. To me that’s what it’s all about (I know up until now, I thought the hokey-pokey was what it was all about).
If you take control of your future and your recovery, you remove the power from those who made you feel liek you were worth less because of who you are. Then you are a survivor instead of a victim.
Dear Clancy,
I understand what you’re saying, even if I don’t agree, and thanks for your understanding. But taking control of my future seems pretty hopeless at this point in my life. I ‘accepted’ Christ into my heart when I was three, then escaped when I was 26. 23 years of childhood fundamentalist indoctrination into hating oneself can not be undone. For me, at least, recovery is a farce. Survival, as in making it through the day without self-harming behavior, is the best I can really hope for. I admit many people can recover, but not everyone. We Americans have this wonderful, crazy concept that everyone can find redemption and healing in this life. It’s a lovely idea (not saying its yours), and also a load of crap.
Also, the whole point of ex-gay and psychophobic therapy is to ‘recover’ through Jesus. They say the fault is yours when you don’t recover. You should just try harder. So, the harder I try to recover, the more I feel guilty now for not recovering, even though I’m in secular therapy now. Psychophobic and homophobic therapy is self-entrapping. Once you’re in it, its very difficult to get out of the therapeutic paradigms they set up for you, particularly when those paradigms are tied to one’s former religion (I’m an agnostic).
Anyway, Clancy, I really appreciate your comments. Not trying to be difficult, I just see so much of America’s “recoveryhealing” narrative as just modified evangelical Christianity. Hell, even the coming out narrative is just a butchered born-again testimony to convert the unredeemed. Whether queer or mentally ill, we all seem to have an obsession with not being labeled in the ‘damaged’, but in the ‘healeddeliveredredeemedsanctifiednormal’ category, myself included. Problem is, that whole narrative is written by the evangelical master class. I don’t know that anyone can get out of it, its so deeply entrenched in the American psyche. But perverse as it sounds, sometimes I feel that to be ‘healed’ of my experience means to admit that the abuse I suffered was justified. A great philosopher (actually just William Shatner) once said. “Don’t take away my pain. It’s a part of who I am.” I guess that’s as close to healing as I will come, this side of the illusory heaven.
Best wishes,
John Weaver
John, Thank you for your reply. I’ve had a few friends who went through the kind of Biblical counseling you’re describing, and I have sorely wished I could have met those “counselors” just so I could do a few things that would have surprised all my friends who think I’m a sweet guy who would never hurt a fly. So to some degree, I do understand what you’re talking about and would never discredit it, believe me. In the end, I just think we just all need to do whatever it is we can do. I know that if a friend told me that the best he could do is make it through each day without harming himself, I’d be inclined to say, “That’s great. Keep it up. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to help — especially on the days it’s an especially difficult struggle for you.”
Dear Jared,
Thanks so much. Sorry if I sounded off in these posts.
This is an interesting subject, responsibility. I understand it from both sides. I have been so entirely entrenched in one area of being and doing, that other areas of my life I have not had the ability to respond, same thing as responsibility, simply by not having enough energy, just shaking my head and moving on. Then there are times when I am gun ho at things and my ability to respond is formidable, able to tackle with full zeal whatever presents itself.
I see the thick and thin of it in both directions.
Regarding healing from past abuse, I took a line years ago from a book called A Course In Miracles, and to this day I live my life by it. The line reads “It is not your job to seek for love, but to seek out and find all obstacles to loves presence”. That line told me two things. One, all the love and peace I could ever want or be, was already inside of me. It was not located in any supposed object of my affection outside myself. Second, it told me that it was my responsibility, if I were to better myself, to find all obstacles that are in my way of realizing I was the very love I was seeking. The first part I have found, does not prove out until the work of the second part is embarked upon.
It was years after reading that line, (I took the scenic route) that I realized that all my programming had to be fully needled through, to find the obstacles to my self love and love of others, and discard them. But I had no tools. I had never learned in school how to deal with raw emotions and false beliefs, or things like OCD. So it was another few years just finding the tools. Then I had a package I could use to dive in and resolve each and every obstacle that my mind would throw at me. It’s been treacherous, yet I have had good success.
One thing I have also found is that healing rarely occurs for many, until the desire to heal outweighs the pain of stagnation and repetitive frustration that keeps one stuck. Until that happens, there is little use to try, because trying is not doing. The beautiful thing is it only takes a little willingness and miracles can occur. For me it finally became the responsible thing to do, for me and my sanity. And I put up every road block available to block myself from evolving. That was the first “obstacle” I had to own and overcome, just to get started.
Yukie, I really liked your line where you said “But when I realized I was everyone’s toy by design I realized I have wronged myself”. That is an amazing realization and removal of a great obstacle. You were no longer willing to live by false rules made by others. Many people go through life with programming that puts them at society’s whim, whether religious, government, school etc. I think we all do it to one degree or another just to “fit in”. Fitting in is one thing, but doing it out of fear is another. I saw this great tee shirt on a woman one day, it said “only dead fish go with the flow”. She was a perky mover shaker type obviously in charge of her own world. I laughed and thought how true it is sometimes.
I agree that some people will never “make it” out of their turmoil. But the truth be told, most people do not have the tools to even start, nor do they have enough desire, two very big strikes. That is very sad for me but it is the ways of our society. We have to become our own best therapist in many respects, and that can take some serious doing.
John, I really get how one issue (obstacle 1) after another can simply lead to more blame (obstacle 2). Blame causes more stress and stagnation. At times it can be so confusing that you just want to give up. And many do. I did. I’m sure Peter T also did, until he didn’t. But then I kept on because I didn’t want to remain disadvantaged, but that was my will and I had to push very very hard at times to get even one inch forward. But every inch, each obstacle, each blame removed, provided more response ability self love and freedom to be happy in any situation presented to me, my ultimate goal. Realizing that making love with a same sex partner after years of negative teaching about sexuality, then removing the false teaching around it, is a very big obstacle to remove, and a great one. One only needs to rest in a lovers arms to feel the truth within this paradox. We are not bodies, we are souls, and the love of a soul knows no boundaries. Evolving past difficult circumstances is not easy, but it will do you a will of good. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t ever give up and settle for less. Your actual worth is far greater than what you may be willing to let your mind tell you.
Sounds like an interesting journey, Devlin. Quite a lecture, actually.
But we missed some detail — like, about just how successful all this has been. And why. Etc. Also, the cost. Those details would be at least somewhat helpful, if not a warning.
We did understand how you’ve had ‘packages’ and burst through ‘levels’ and ‘achieved’ so much. But we quite missed what you were doing all this for. Forgive us if we’ve missed something — we both may be idiots — but we feel like we’re just taken a first Q&A at the door of a building near a bus-stop and you’ve already reached theta.
Not everything in life needs ‘therapy’. Or books written by unqualified plonkers.
Sometimes you should just kiss the guy. Sometimes he kisses you back.
You do it a lot Devlin — but we’re calling you on it: stop playing on people’s insecurities. ExGayWatch is not a recruitment agency. For anything. OK???
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Nobody needs therapy for being gay. You may need it for something else.
Grantdale,
My journey is of course my own raised in a moderate to nill Catholic household when homosexuality was not spoken about openly. I probably hit bottom moreso than the normal screwed up human but sexual religious teachings as a child had nothing to do with it. I had 5 people die to include my father and best gay friends (AIDS), a 20 ft fall off a roof onto concrete that put me in a coma, a family member financially betray me beyond belief, and the religious right galavanting their terrorist initiative attacks on gays in Portland Oregon, my home town, all of which over stimulated a male on male sexual abuse issue at 8 years old. All except that, happened within a one year period, putting me into an overwhelmingly deep depression. I worked consistently on phone banks to defeat the religious rights attempt at disassociating LGBT Oregonians at their core. We finally won many fights. The way out of my issues was tough and it took me years and a lot of dollars. I didn’t trust any “therapist” and did it on my own with help from colleagues and friends.
So regaining my sanity (the goal, “what I was doing this for”) I had before all those things happened was beyond tedious, and I did prevail, and I learned a lot and now I am helping others. My “tools” and recipe for regaining stability is an open book, but very long and David R would probably agree this probably is not the forum for it.
So if there is anything that sounds like a lecture, it’s really more aimed with the human condition in mind with compassion and desire to assist. I do have a particularly high charge (as I’m sure David Roberts would vigorously attest) on any religious right attempt to continue to sexually abuse through far-fetched dogma, fostering conflict and hate on any level, as I know the consequences of sexual abuse first hand. Hence my participation here is with total admiration for David and staffs Sherlock Holmes mentality at dogging religious sexual predators.
Not everyone needs therapy for being gay though I feel as a group we are under attack psychically from birth. Some gays don’t even register that and that is great if they feel resolved. And I do kiss a guy and he does kiss back, so I’m not quite sure what you meant by that, can you explain? Nor am I out for recruitment. I saw a guy seemingly in pain. Maybe it helps maybe it doesn’t but I felt inclined to comment.
We may be talking two different languages here G, so if there are any blanks that I fail to fill in, it’s not my intention. I am open if you somehow perceive me as needing to be called on something. Please do, as I do not wish to be misinterpreted.
Does this make things any clearer? I hope so as I do value your input. I can be wrong and misconstrued as easily as the next guy.