Tag: jehovahs-witness

Kingdom Hoe: When Men Get Off in More Ways Than One

photo credit: Bethany Leger

You’re sixteen. You had sex. Someone snitched.

Now, you’re sitting, nervous, at a conference table in the back room of a church. Three older men in suits are facing opposite you. One is the head honcho. Two are hunched over a yellow legal pad. None of them have been laid since the Dust Bowl. They proceed to ask graphic questions about your body and first sexual experience. You’re humiliated, and they don’t care. You’re denied the presence of a parent, or even another woman.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own judicial system run exclusively by male judges, and every trial ends the same way: you a hoe. If you’re a former Witness reading this, it’s no secret that women are disproportionately punished in comparison to the men who fuck them, then fuck them over. Whether he fessed up, moved on, or in the rare case, cares about her, seeing the guy publicly shamed and excommunicated for premarital sex is like a Bigfoot sighting—as elusive as the orgasm we know she didn’t have.

And, they don’t just target high schoolers. Girls who haven’t even begun to menstruate are told to cover their shoulders lest they lead grown men into temptation. Back in the seventies and eighties, married couples were chastised in front of the same tribunal of geriatrics for “unclean acts”, anything where he showed some love to the wrong hole. It’s a misogynistic tale as old as time, a system designed to control women and protect a line of perpetrators that start at the top. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a chronic, systemic child sexual abuse problem. Eleven men, known as the Governing Body, or ruling board of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are complicit in the obstruction of justice. They are: Stephen Lett, Gerrit Lösch, Geoffrey Jackson, Samuel Herd, David Splane, Kenneth Cook, Jr., Gage Fleegle, Jody Jedele, Jacob Rumph, Mark Sanderson, and Jeffrey Winder. I imagine Jeffrey Epstein would’ve been a welcome addition. Like Epstein, I’m guessing more than one of these names are on the list of sex offenders that have yet to see the light of day, a database that has been amassed for decades. 

In 2024, Taylor Swift wrote a song about another loser she dated, this time, a loser in “a Jehovah’s Witness suit.” I couldn’t care less who the guy is. I have zero interest in decoding the subject of her cryptic jabs. My only hope is the whispery hit ballad doesn’t encourage clueless, pubescent Swifties—in some counterintuitive twist— to crush on their own loser Jehovah’s Witness boy. It would have been nice to see the indisputable Queen of Pop use her influence to address a few of the scarier things about the Witnesses if she was already going out of her way to burn them. Maybe she could sing about the countless Jehovah’s Witness women who have been raped, then excommunicated for reporting it to law enforcement. Or, she could collaborate with Serena Williams—celebrity Jehovah’s Witness and ambassador for the Allstate Foundation’s domestic violence program, Purple Purse—to allocate funds to Jehovah’s Witness women who are being beaten, then coerced into staying with their abusers. Maybe on the next album.

Of course, there are men who are not immune to the trigger-happy whims of authority. One guy in my congregation—we’ll call him Scott—became a widower at thirty-five. After the death of his wife left him a single father with five boys to raise, Scott developed a heroin addiction. Instead of extending compassion and facilitate his rehabilitation, the elders disfellowshipped him. Young boys have been preyed upon and abused in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And, sometimes, women who are unhinged or calculated manage to get away with bad behavior; the congregation politics were such that the stars aligned in her favor, and when this sort of thing happens, you can bank on it that it’s a case of the elder having reason to protect his ass, not hers.

Young women around the globe continue to be subjected to purity culture and double standards. They were born into a world of criminals, men who have made it their goal to keep her sexually repressed and silent. To the young woman in that back room who had to sit there and eat it, you’re not alone. As more Kingdom hoes unite and courts lose patience, the only thing he’ll be eating is subpoena.

It’s Beautiful, Dammit: Why Blue Skies and Sunshine Made Me Want to Die

I’m driving home from the coffee shop when I look out the window. The neighborhood is bathed in a soft, early morning glow. Everyone is still asleep. Bursting cherry blossoms bristle in the crisp spring wind, the sidewalks peppered with the pop of purple coneflower. Suddenly, the sky yawns, big and blue and beautiful. As I soak in the view, I feel slightly unsettled. Fingers coiled around the steering wheel, I examine each passing house: the one with a brick porch that’s a different color from the other bricks. The one where the shutters have a half-moon carved above the slats. Espresso wafts through my Volkswagen as I coast down the lazy, bohemian boulevard. I notice if the front door has a screen, a brass knocker pinned at the top, or is propped open and ready to greet whomever may come moseying along. It’s going to be a perfect day for preaching, only I escaped the cult seven years ago, and I don’t have to knock on another fucking door for the rest of my life.

Every Saturday, I’d wake up at 7:30 am, begrudgingly, throw on a skirt, take a nervous shit, gather my Bible and a stack of dog-eared magazines, and haul ass to the Kingdom Hall. Granola bar hanging out of my mouth, I would relish the last bite of breakfast and moment of silence before heading in. Next, I would say hello (begrudgingly), sit through an obligatory pep talk about saving humanity, then brace for the heat or blistering cold, depending on what we were subjected to that month. On the way to the “territory”, I would jerk my car into a Quik Stop, take another nervous shit and dry heave. Twenty minutes later, I parked my broke (but enlightened!) ass on WASP country, with irritated stares already peering through their fancy blinds. Jehovah’s Witnesses infamous door-to-door ministry is a nuisance at best, certainly for the disoriented homeowner jostled awake by a religious zealot, but also for the one doing the knocking. I used to pray, not for salvation or world peace, but for rain. Please rain, I thought, and spare us all.

I grew up in Dallas, Texas, where most of the year is oppressively hot. Like a vampire, I recoiled at the sun, pining instead for cool, overcast skies. I rejoiced in a thunderstorm. I had been known to frolic in a puddle, or two. But most notably, rain meant those crazy people wouldn’t be out proselytizing. Rain was the sole qualifier, the one get-out-of-jail-free card we had where Jehovah’s Witnesses in suburban America wouldn’t be pressured to preach to strangers that day—at least not on foot. We also did ‘phone witnessing’, the Jehovah’s Witness equivalent of telemarketing. Hello, you live in a gated community, which is why I’m giving you my unsolicited religious advice through this method instead. And, we did ‘letter writing’: hand-scribbled junk mail punctuated with scriptures and stickers, letting grown women with a Lisa Frank obsession express their creativity in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to. I, however, risked the guilt trip that came with opting out of these alternatives, and went back to bed. Preacher on the streets, sinner in the sheets, indeed.

But, if it was beautiful outside, say, 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, you were screwed, destined to spend a rare, sparkling two hours now tarnished by the drudgery. No one wanted to talk to us, and if we were honest with each other, none of us wanted to be there, either. We descended on neighborhoods, uninvited, to arrogantly shove our brand of religion down someone’s throat on their own doorstep. At least a fraction of us knew this was wrong, but we were following orders; the door-to-door ministry was mandatory, and anyone who didn’t report for duty would answer for it later. People cursed, slammed doors, or would simply notice us from a distance and quietly head inside. I hated blue skies and sunshine because it meant I would be seen in the daylight doing something that, in fact, put me in a dark place. My religious life isolated me from the rest of the world, and preaching on a stunning, panoramic morning only served as a reminder of how lonely I really was.

Occasionally, I’ll get a faint hit of PTSD on a bright day, though it quickly subsides, replaced by a rush of relief—I’m free. Spring and summer are very different now. Lounging in my plastic Adirondack chair in a tattered bikini, I welcome the warmth on my cheeks. (My face, pervert.) I’m enjoying my little patch of land uninterrupted, happy to let my neighbor do the same. No more doors to knock down, souls to save, and if I take a shit, it’s for the pure joy of it.