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.
That’s not normal. I’m sorry you had to go through that mate.
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.
you grew up in hell
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.)
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What has therapy been like for you? I’ve never done therapy before, and I’m kind of worried they’ll try to criticize and gaslight me into playing nice with people who I’m 90% sure are narcissists or try to get me to ignore the limitations that my health problems give me. (But then again, I can’t help but notice that I was socially conditioned to expect shame, punishment, and destructive guidance if I ask for help.)
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Sounds like both your dad and brother are gay and also extremely abusive. Fun fact, just because someone is a blood relative doesn’t mean they have a free pass to be in your life.
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.
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?
That’s not normal behavior for family members
That sounds pretty fucked tbh.
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.
Have a bunch of innocent looking books (as in novels, textbooks, etc…), then write in some of the books with UV pen lolol.
It kinda sounds like you’re doing your best to just live your life and that’s what they are so intrusive over. Sounds more like they want you to force yourself to suffer for religion as they have and it pisses them off that you’re doing you (figuratively and literally). I’d guess they are very sexually repressed.
I’d guess they are very sexually repressed.
My dad DOES have a tendency to make an unusual amount of phallic jokes, to the point where one day I responded with “You know, it’s okay to be bi, you can just say it” and boy he did NOT like that
That’s incredibly controlling behavior from them. The privacy violations are egregious.
It’s not common at all. What the fuck, dude
That’s insane person behavior
Those people are bad
