Purity Culture, the False Gender Binary, and Abuse at Heritage Christian School

Heritage Christian School recently wrote to parents, alumni, and supporters asking them to contact their representatives to oppose the Equality Act. This excellent and necessary video from Eliza Rose is the response to Heritage everyone needs to witness. Rose leads by defining some terms and explaining the false gender binary, and then gets into the misogyny, grooming, sexual violence, racism, religious manipulation, spiritual abuse, and weaponized shame at Heritage Christian School.

Selected quotes:

So to them, and you will see in the video, any folks that are LGBTQIA+, darkskinned, indigenous, non-Christian, struggling with addiction, rape, etc., those folks don’t matter.

Their stance is that they do all of this to “protect women”, but Heritage Christian, historically, does not protect women. In fact, they enable male abusers.

And it is because of the same religious manipulation tactics that justify coercion, abuse, and oppression and marginalization of trans folks.

You can’t create a reason to oppress and marginalize people and then say it’s okay because, “That’s what God wants.” That’s just not how things work.

The harm and miseducation that is being perpetuated by Heritage Christian School has caused many of us to need to seek therapy outside of the school.

What they’re doing is not helping children get an education. What they’re doing is enabling abusers, not teaching consent, holding victims accountable for the trauma they experienced at the school.

You cannot simply pray away abuse and abusive policies. You have to take action to end them yourself.

The history is grim. The culture of “praying away abuse” has lead several former staff and students to take their own lives due to inaction on behalf of the Administration members. Many of the students that did make it out have had to seek therapy with external resources as a result of the abuse that occurred on campus. We demand that Mr. Terry, Larry Curtis Meyers, and Dave Watt never be allowed back to work at the school or attend school events after continued sexual exploitation of students and forced-silence onto the survivors. The phrase “boys will be boys” should be abolished from all classrooms — as it encourages a lack of male accountability and is a formative function of rape culture.

Source: We need to talk about abuse at Heritage Christian School + the false gender binary (CW: SA) – YouTube

Purity culture and the false gender binary pervert everything. They are “formative functions” of bigotry and abuse, and they are curriculum at Heritage and its ilk.

Thank you, Eliza.

Via:

My alma mater, Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis, recently wrote to parents, alumni, and supporters, asking them to contact their representatives to oppose the Equality Act.

HCS is a 501(c)3 and receives voucher funding 😒https://t.co/9CAv95szaQ #ExposeChristianEd
— Chrissy Stroop (@C_Stroop) March 30, 2021

This video also describes @TheElizaRose's experience being told by the physiology teacher, Mr. Stephen Terry, that all women have one fewer ribs than men. She talks about her cognitive dissonance and how she concluded that God did not want her to be a doctor.#ExposeChristianEd
— Chrissy Stroop (@C_Stroop) March 30, 2021

As @TheElizaRose summarizes it, the message was "Not to be like those girls, because boys will by boys and will want to have sex with you," which left the girls with guilt and shame.

This is the purity culture we've been talking abouthttps://t.co/1iDAWbDW1H #ExposeChristianEd
— Chrissy Stroop (@C_Stroop) March 30, 2021

That thread has corroborating receipts.

Previously,

There Should Be Social and Economic Costs for Bigotry

Major League Baseball announced on Friday that it will relocate the 2021 All-Star Game and MLB Draft, originally scheduled to take place in Atlanta, to a to-be-determined location. The decision comes a little more than a week after the passage of S.B. 202, a Georgia law that President Joe Biden criticized earlier this week, saying that it will restrict voting access for residents of the state.

Source: 2021 All-Star Game, Draft relocated

Yes! There should be social and economic costs for bigotry.

Republican behavior is outside society and must be rejected. Liberalism, pluralism, and democracy are non-negotiable.

Via:

No fucking around on MLB’s part. Good for them. Here’s the deal: enact shameful laws, and the rest of society is going to react accordingly. Shame is powerful, and MLB is shaming the state of Georgia appropriately.

Source: Daring Fireball: MLB Moves 2021 All-Star Game From Atlanta, in Protest of Georgia Law Passed by Republicans to Restrict Voting Access

A People, Not a Problem

Lines like “With any luck, your group identity will be the least interesting thing about you” from techbro rationalists and other assorted white boy whisperers wrapped in reason bother me for many reasons. This from Tressie McMillan Cottom’s “Thick” captures a big one:

In a discussion of methods and theories and other such things that comprise a significant part of my job, one of the women—we were all women—said assuredly that we have moved on, past black and white. Hence, “black people are over.” I did not feel over and I am most certainly black. But it was said so casually because of the kind of black that I am presumed to be in rooms such as these. There have been many such rooms and I end up in more of them, more frequently, the more I inch up the class ladder. The proclamation makes a mistake of assuming that black people, like me, were only ever a problem and not a people.

Source: Thick | The New Press

“Only ever a problem and not a people” resonates with my disabled, neurodivergent experience.

Disability’s no longer just a diagnosis; it’s a community.

Source: Liz Jackson: Designing for Inclusivity – Adobe 99U