this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
290 points (95.9% liked)

News

23430 readers
3317 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Some mental health experts are advocating for religious trauma to be considered an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”

“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.

At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Lath@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Bish, please. Religious trauma haunts everyone.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

“Everyone” doesn’t have to worry about being subject to a cottage industry of legal child abuse/indoctrination camps meant to change their sexuality or gender identity and are rife with sexual abuse.

[–] Lath@kbin.social -4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the rest of the kids have to be taken to church regularly in order to be sexually abused. How privileged of them.
Then there are those extra lucky ones who get home visits instead!

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Are you actually comparing being taken to church with "conversion therapy?"

[–] Lath@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you unable to take into consideration the idea that the religious staff didn't need special camps in order to assault children? That they could and did do it on church grounds or even in the victims own homes?

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you really not understand the difference between taking a child to a church where they may possibly be assaulted and forcing a child to be sexually tortured? Really?

[–] Lath@kbin.social 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Dear cephalopod, you're too focused on comparing who gets harmed the most. It's not a contest. None should be harmed at all.
The division is unhealthy.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You cannot make it any more illegal to sexually abuse children in church than it already is. Conversion therapy is legal in a majority of U.S. states. It is legal sexual abuse. That's a huge difference.

[–] Lath@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Converting "deviant behaviours" was a mainstay of psychological practices up until recently. It wasn't limited to sexual identity. Anyone who didn't conform to social norms of so-called 'morals' and religious background was subjected to this kind of torture, one of its more famous victims being a daughter of the Kennedy family.

There is no legal sexual abuse. There is lack of information, lack of evidence or complicit corruption. Any judge that respects the spirit of law will treat abuse as such when presented to them.

Yet if by chance, any abuse is legal then you are also allowed to perform it on those who practice it on others. I recommend you do so if there is such a situation.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Conversion therapy is sexual abuse. It is legal. Therefore it is legal sexual abuse.

https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/conversion-therapy-sexual-violence

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The irony of the person who came into a post specifically about the trauma that religion causes LGBTQ people and tried to make it about other people saying this is too unreal.

Pot, have you met kettle?

[–] Lath@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I didn't try to make it about other people. Being a victim of religion is not an exclusive membership. Or are you proud of being an abuser's favoured one and I'm threatening that position?
If so, then I apologize. Please, segregate yourself. Stand out. Be different from any other victim.

My bad.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, you did. When speaking about a specific group being affected by something, we don't have to talk about every group affected by the same thing. To not do so isn't ignoring them or segregation or whatever, or else every time you talk about starving children in the US, you have to mention all the starving children in every other country as well. Nobody here or in the article said anything about how straight kids aren't harmed by religion.

This is just "I am uncomfortable when the conversation isn't about me" because you aren't included in a conversation about LGBTQ experiences.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No. They were talking about organized sexual abuse.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

Conversion therapy is organized sexual abuse. In fact, it's sexual violence.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago

Did it make sense to you when you wrote this comment to suggest that kids subjected to conversion therapy camps are somehow less exposed to abusive religious practices?

[–] oDDmON@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

TY. Came here to say the same.

Doesn’t matter your orientation, guilt and shame are the tools of control and clergy wield them to great effect.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

That’s absolutely true, but there’s an added dimension for queer people because it serves as an additional original sin.

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago

The lgbt person's story is just an example. The article goes on state religious trauma may affect as many as a third of US adults. It's not saying this hypothetical new dsm diagnosis would be specific to only lgbt related religious trauma.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 4 points 10 months ago

That seems very dismissive of the actual trauma many people experience. Lots of people grew up without abusive religious authority figures, or without any religious authority figures at all. I'm one of those people and I don't want to downplay other people's suffering by acting as if I experienced it too.

It sounds like you probably experienced religious trauma yourself, and part of how you cope with it is telling yourself it's just normal. It's not.