I Never Hated My Sin, I Just Hated Me

thoughts on how patriarchy breeds self-loathing and bodily shame

There was a boy who liked me who I liked back, whose father told my father we were talking too much. After the Sunday sermon, the thanksgivings, and the announcements, we’d find our way to each other, chatting about the most benign, innocent things in the company of other chatty congregants. There were no rendezvous, no make-out sessions, no secret texts. We never so much as hugged—I would have been too terrified to touch him, especially under his father’s watchful eye.

I don’t know the language his father used, if he was worried our public conversations were a slippery slope to pre-marital sex and teenage pregnancy (in hindsight, he probably was). That day, I adopted a new form of self-loathing. I learned I was problematic for simply existing, for talking after church about Christian music and Christian books and homeschool life with a boy.