When I (23M) was growing up, my parents hated whenever I locked my door for privacy. Like most adolescent boys, I had a libido and things that I liked to look at when I was taking care of that.
When I was 15, my dad would lean against my door every day to listen in. One day, he heard I was in the middle of it, and as quickly as possible, he picked the lock of my door and caught a glimpse of me watching some pretty crude and wacky rule 34 that was sorta ambiguously gendered. He immediately closed the door and retreated to his room. When I cleaned up and asked why he “knocked,” he said “nothing” with an unsettling smile.
7 years later, when I came out as passionately heterosexual because I finally figured out what my type was, he became very angry and told me I was REALLY a [f-slur], and he could prove it by revealing what he caught me watching all those years ago. I actually thought he would be glad to know how I turned out, but it seems that he, a conservative, was angry that I wasn’t queer.
Recently, my older brother got into my journal with all of my private thoughts. The first thing he read was the dozens of pages of sexual fantasies I wrote down for my sole enjoyment and reference. When I confronted him, he justified his intrusion into my most intimate thoughts with “God told me to do it.” He nitpicked my fantasies and told me that my openness to choosing my gender and sexual expression instead of forcing myself into the cishet box would inexplicably turn me into a pedophile. It seems that 5,000+ unfiltered words exhaustively proving my heterosexual attraction for strong mature women and wholesome consensual lovemaking style were not satisfactory. Not that any of it was ever his business.
I’m curious if others have have experienced this dynamic of family members violating someone to “test” their sexuality and look for evidence of deviance, or if this is a complete “WTF” situation that isn’t even a thing among most conservative households.
Hi! This was very similar to my situation! Yeah, it took me until my 30s to understand what happened and think of it as abuse. You survived abuse.
This isn’t normal, but it’s also no unexpected from a background of people who need the control over other’s lives. In this case it’s mostly because of religion, but it isn’t solely that.
If it’s any help, I would recommend keeping your private life, well, private.
This is wack yo!
It’s not common at all. What the fuck, dude
you grew up in hell
You have a fucked up family full of fucked up people doing fucked up things and pretend fucking god told them to do the fucked up things.
Man, my heart goes out to you, you got some weird family members.
Me personally, I would write them off untill they can treat me with the respect I deserve.
Still there? Find a chair or board you can use to prop under your doorknob so it’s unopenable even if it gets unlocked from outside.
Diaries aren’t safe, ever. It sucks but it’s true.
Use codes.
Or go digital. (Standard Notes for example)
I seriously doubt a bunch of hillbillies parents/siblings can decipher even a basic homemade code.
Still not safe.
I wrote one coded entry in a new journal, and my mom brought it to me the next day and told me to decode it for her. She “just wanted to understand what I was writing about to make sure it wasn’t anything bad.”
I lied about it and then didn’t write anything down again. Helicopter parents are the fucking worst.
For an American Christians™️ this is disturbingly common.
This is toxic as hell.
I suggest therapy to deal with your family. It sounds over compensating to prove yourself to them, a form of people pleasing that often comes from abused childhood.
It’s likely there is so much more abuse in your childhood that went down but you do not have the perspective on to see how terrible it was.
That sounds typical for conservative Christian households, but is deeply unhealthy. It’s a huge violation of both trust and privacy, and also extremely, overtly bigoted. So, common? Yes. Normal? No. Healthy? Absolutely not.
(It’s probably not a majority of conservative Christian households that do this, but it’s not seen as bad in that community, and is therefore relatively common compared to the overall population. It’s also not unique to Christians. Many fundamentalist religions exhibit this sort of strict, spying-enforced behavioral control.)
Wicked people do wicked things. Good people do good things. But for a good person to do wicked things, that takes religion. (Paraphrased from Steven Weinberg.)
That’s insane person behavior
Those people are bad
I’ve read stuff like this online and was hoping it wasn’t real
No, this is not normal. Or at least my upbringing was nothing like this. I grew up catholic (until 12) and my extended family is fairly conservative. While I did fall into the cishet paradigm, no one was spying on me and looking for evidence I wasn’t.
Is there anything you didnt share that would explain further why they did what they did? Can you think of any reason they would suspect you?
yea sorry about your hell
my dad would lean against my door
Creepy, not normal at all.
he picked the lock of my door
He’s fucked up in the head. No one does this.
he said “nothing” with an unsettling smile
He’s a pervert. You’re not.
he could prove it by revealing
He’s a psycho, no one does this. Ever.
my older brother got into my journal
Another psycho.
“God told me to do it.”
Yep, psycho.
I’m sorry you had to live through this but it’s not a normal behavior. I wish you the best for the future without them though because I know that it can destroy someone.
Even in conservative households, that’s weird. If your dad had blown up right there about the sinful things happining in the room, I’d get it more. What he actually did was inexplicable. And the older brother thing is just awful.
Since it was two incidents total, I won’t go straight for hell, though. Like maybe it was but I’d need more information.
Absolutely. This is not just some bible-thumping “you will burn for your sins if you don’t repent” stuff, otherwise the logical reaction would have been to have a serious conversation on the spot. I would have kind of understood that reaction, from a certain frame of reference, although I of course think it is wrong. But this is someone collecting blackmail material in his own imaginary world where things are what the voices tell them they are.
Run, don’t walk. Seriously.
Or maybe that was his plan, but he chickened out once it got too real? You’d expect it would still change things if he was at all homophobic, though. As it is, he acted like it didn’t happen until he thought he was being lied to and decided to pull it back out.
That is what I mean. Imagine being an otherwise decent person who just happens to strongly believe in the whole conservative-christian system of values. Wouldn’t you want to act on your son being potentially gay?
Or even if you convince yourself that it is better to sweep it under the rug for the sake of peace or something, wouldn’t that be something you take into the grave? And, secretly feel relieved if your son “came out” as straight to you? After all, your own son apparently managed to get back to the “right path”.
I am not a psychologist, and I believe that it is not appropriate to diagnose people who didn’t ask for a diagnosis. But the father has some serious issues, and for his own safety and sanity, I can only tell OP to run and CYA as best as possible in case the family lashes out.
