In Reply to: Commentay on "The Girl Who Wouldn't" posted by Alan on September 09, 2003 at 12:36:23:
The Girl Who Wouldn't was one of the scariest letters for me to have read when I was 15. It was the basis of my attitudes towards myself in regards to sex and having sex with men. The effects of it have been long-lasting and I have only recently been able to overcome the negative repurcussions it had in my life.
To be left with the impression that one MUST give their body to whoever asked it, and if one did not do so they were no more than an immature baby Christian, to have that sort of spiritual coercion laid upon you is a crime. The Girl Who Wouldn't made it quite clear that if you couldn't handle the sexual beliefs of the Family then you were a baby, a girl, not a woman or mature adult.
I gave up all hope of myself ever becoming anything of much importance in God's eyes or the Family's because I just could not bring myself to have sex with anyone who wanted it. I lived in continual condemnation of myself because this was my one 'huddersfield'. It was the area I couldn't yield in. Everythign else I did, even if I hated it, dishes, JJT, childcare, witnessing, group confession and desperate prayer.
The one time I finally got up the courage to have sex with someone to whom I had no attraction, I ended up crying through the whole thing, and felt awful for the poor guy, and decided that huddersfield or not, I wasn't going to put myself or another guy through that again, it just didn't seem fair to him and I preferred to live with my own condemnation that to make someone else feel 'unloved' to such a degree.
So, even if sex was not physically coerced in the lives of the first generation (though I do know stories of rape and physical coercian), sex was coerced spiritually, by laying on the guilt trip and convincing someone of their own lack of worth if they did not 'give unselfishly' in this manner.
Is this the God I was taught to love?