I was mercilessly and relentlessly bullied from the day I moved to El Paso and started second grade until I began junior high school for every reason imaginable.
I was an easy fucking target. I was tall and skinny, with paper white skin, auburn hair and hazel eyes hidden behind enormous coke-bottle old-biddy glasses, a know-it-all attitude, a penchant for books that were way over my head, and a Central/East Texas accent that, thank Jesus, is no longer present. I wasn’t athletic (no, ballet didn’t count as a sport) and thanks to my huge-ass glasses (really, hipster girls, you had to bring that shit back didn’t you?) the only sport I was good at – basketball – came with a sense of inherent peril. As an only child, I had no idea how to negotiate playful banter. I took everything personally. And I fought back in possibly one of the least socially acceptable ways possible — by cursing my tormenters in Arabic and Armenian. Yeah. You can imagine how that went over.
How bad was it? The cholas took pity on me. I was their cause célèbre. They just couldn’t understand how I could take it every day and not beat the shit out of my tormentors — the upper-middle class white kids and fresas from all over the West Side who were bussed to the school. My homegirls gave me the nickname “La Casper”, and the other kids turned it into a slur. Every time I was tripped down a flight of stairs, called a “sand nigger” or a “towel head” in the halls (remember this is in a military town shortly after Desert Storm),a 14-year-old sixth grader named M would tell me in no uncertain terms that I needed to fucking stand up for myself because no one else was going to do it for me.
I got my chance when the boy who sat behind me in music and math, J (who’s now a stock broker), made fun of my mother having breast cancer, and told me I, too, was going to die of cancer. I had enough. I ran to the bathroom followed by my teacher, Ms. B, who totally reminded me of Governor Anne Richards in accent and attitude, and told her what happened. I suspect she told the Teacher’s Lounge because there was not a lunch monitor to be found on the playground. After the little dickhead repeated what he said in Math, I grabbed him by his douchy little popped collar on the far side of the wall ball court and pounded him with the aid of a ring watch decorating my middle finger. Given that I was somewhere around a foot taller than him (5’6”), tossing him aside was an easy affair, and my homegirls were waiting for me at the wall ball court. They gave this kid the death stare to let it be known that I was protected. The next period was Advanced Science with Mrs. G- a tough lady from the Valley, who let me know that she knew what happened. “Don’t lie to me, mija. I know you’re a good girl. But his forehead tells it’s own story…And you- (pointing to J) you deserved it, pendejo. Man, I wish I had gotten that on video.” That last quote was verbatim.
[For the record, of course I’ve seen that South Park Episode. All I could think the whole time was, “holy shit. How did they know?”]
That summer I got contact lenses, woke up with a rack sometime around August, and my interactions with my peers improved dramatically as I entered 7th grade. I got into punk rock, and later Goth, where being paper white, enjoying The Brothers Karamazov and Jean Paul Sartre, and having a penchant for the dramatic and period costume is virtually required. I had found my people. Let’s be clear, though, I’m more a Cocteau Twins/Joy Division/Siouxie/early Christian Death kind of Goth. Not a Type O Negative/Rammestein/Crüxshadows kind of Goth.
Okay, I’ll admit I like Sisters of Mercy. Don’t judge me…
Anyway… Let us state as a fact that kids, when left to their own devices, are horrible little monsters (my kids included). We all know their capacity for meanness needs to be mediated by an environment that encourages tolerance and empathy.
This is as good a time as ever to mention that I am LDS. I’m not practicing (obviously) but I am still technically a member. Yes. That was another thing I was teased for in Elementary School. I will preface this by saying, unequivocally that a) I harbor no ill feelings towards the religion in which I was raised, b) that my experiences are my own and may differ greatly from those of other non practicing LDS. I was raised far away from the insular cocoon of Utah, so results may vary. And c) there are many lovely, genuine members with whom I was friends with then, knew, or whom I am still friends with. A lot of us really are genuinely nice people.
But I’m here writing this because as we get to know more and more about Mitt Romney, the less I am surprised by his behavior. As someone who’s been on the receiving end of it at school and at church, His behavior doesn’t shock me in the least, because I’ve seen it at every level.
One of the many, many reasons I stopped attending Church was the increasing sense of disgust I felt for my fellow members thanks to the wholly un-Christlike ways certain populations delt with anyone who didn’t conform to their image of a perfect Mormon family. My father, a Bishop, implored me to remember that: The Church is full of people, who are fallible, so don’t discount it for the members. Try to be a better example, hon. But the culture of intolerance is so ingrained, and encouraged- specifically by those who moved here from the Deseret and who can’t accept being a tiny religious minority- that they act out in ways that they probably wouldn’t otherwise.
There were the bitches who would snicker that a fellow sister wasn’t “Temple Worthy”. There were the jokes at the expense of a member who suffered from Dwarfism, the general douchebaggery of the Aaronic Priesthood holders: 12-18 year-old-boys who somehow had passed a Bishop’s interview and were charged with blessing the sacrament, regardless the typical foul teenage behavior some exhibited towards their juniors and the girls in their age group…
There was one group of women who took to systemically shunning a Sister who moved here from the Ukraine with her husband (a principle danseur who got the top spot with our local ballet company) for daring to nurse her baby in Sacrament Meetings rather than excuse herself like a civilized Anglo to the “Mother’s Room”.
The “Mother’s Room” is a place of self-imposed exile where new mothers take cranky babies to nurse, cry uncontrollably and get a nappy changed. That’s all fine and good, (Brigham Young once said, “A crying child is like a good intention- It should be carried out.”) but I saw nothing wrong with this woman nursing in the pews, and neither did my mother, a former Relief Society Councilor and Ward Young Women’s President who excoriated two ladies whom she heard gossiping for their insensitivity. “It’s none of your business how or when she feeds her child. What do you think they’re there for?” She hissed after she overheard them chitting about it in the pew in front of her.
As a convert who was not Anglo, who worked and who had only one child, she empathized with that poor Ukrainian woman who was held to the margins of the Ward. My mother, out of a sense that she needed to assimilate, always tried to ingratiate herself to these women. She, who really was an educated liberal elitist, who knew how to make a good remoulade, and missed her mealtime glass of Bordeaux with every fiber of her being after her conversion, even learned how to make Jello Salad for her new peers.
These ladies (more the younger ones- in their early thirties at the time) liked to make a contest of who was the better housekeeper, who’s kids were more in-line and devout, and who was the handiest crafter. “Margaret’s snickerdoodles were a bit dry at last Wednesday’s Fireside, weren’t they Judy?” Mom felt she had to keep up appearances to deal with these women, many of whom she called “baby factories” under her breath.
But in the Young Women’s program, my nerdy, historian proclivities which evolved into a leftist, liberation theology did not gel with most of my YW teachers or the majority of fellow students. Some of my fellow YW took to smearing my name as well they could to ostracize me, called me a dyke and a weirdo, and parents started boycotting me- disallowing the few friends that I had there from hanging out, because I was the bad influence. (Hey, I wasn’t the one blowing half the Aaronic Priesthood members over 16 in the bathroom of Reno Rock in Juárez.) But I was fine with that. I started skipping Seminary and MIA. I had no interest in playing that game. Oh, yeah, and there was that whole Word of Wisdom thing, too. I was keeping up appearances while developing a taste for nicotine, strong coffee, and, well, it is El Paso. I’ll let you figure out what my biggest problem became at around 16 years old.
I eventually cleaned my act up, but the nails were already in the coffin and there was no going back for me.
This kind of shit is not solely the realm of the LDS. The Church Gossip is a stereotype wholly ingrained in American culture. What is interesting though is the pervasive nature of the bullying, the way it is encouraged by the community, even within families, while portraying the image of wholesome tolerance and niceness to the greater public. Nice is our brand.
Well, we try to be, but it doesn’t always work out that way. As I’m sure you know, homophobia is rampant. Even my father- whom I would consider a liberal, has his issues with it. It’s something I’m working on with him, but he’s very much a product of the 50’s, and a lot of the church’s more conservative views are as well.
Openly gay members are excommunicated and some families–even their mothers– will refuse contact with them. There have been many times I’ve heard of families cutting off a family member who’s an “apostate”. That hasn’t been my experience, but it does happen.
There are tons of unspoken rules about how a member should present his or herself, specifically in regards to dress. Modest, obviously, but not flashy. Little jewelry. Facial hair is discouraged, as is any counterculture-associated style. The phrase bandied about Sunday School classrooms is: Living in the World but not of the World.
There are many examples in Church history where the Church has compromised its core values to fit in with mainstream society, to avoid persecution, and that’s where this stems from. Mormons are obsessed with fitting in, being accepted, so that we can increase membership and to avoid scrutiny, while simultaneously keeping the rest of the world at arms length. And it’s really bizarre to see that fervor come around full circle and replace anxiety of the outside with anxiety from within.
So, yeah, when I read about Mitt assaulting and cutting that poor kid’s hair, I wasn’t terribly surprised. He let that anxiety come full circle, and in his desire to fit in and avoid persecution (I suspect he’s closeted), he became the much bigger bully, trying to force a young man into submitting to normalcy by any means necessary. And I’ll bet you he had a Temple Recommend.
BTW, I totally wish I could have used this as the opening photo…
