#exmosuggestion
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i'm not going to pretend that i understand what it's like to be flds, nor will i equivalate brighamite/corporate church trauma to flds trauma. but damn it is exhausting and triggering seeing people who have never lived a day in a high-demand group (hdg) treat documentaries and fiction based on irl groups like it's the latest release of their favorite show.
you people need to be fucking careful about how you interact w/ hdg media. you know someone who was in one if you live in the so-called united states. we see how you treat our trauma like a new marvel movie, or the latest season of stranger things, or like a rerun of goosebumps. yes, be horrified, but your pain and shock will never be the same as the lives we had to abandon and rebuild. if you're white, your rage should never take up more space in conversations about hdgs as the voices of those who have been harmed by hdgs, and the voices of people directly targeted by their (very often) yt supremacist beliefs.
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A convo between @exmosuggestion and I. We have the same exmo brain cell
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What are some good exmo blogs to look into? I've recently begun to leave the church, and I'm looking for some support. Preferrably LGBT and still religious, but that's not necessary. Thanks!!
@exmormonrants is really good
@questions4queerstake is also good, even though I don’t personally follow them, and it’s more focused on current LGBT members
@latterdayqueer
@growingupmormon
@exmormonthoughts
@iamanemptychair
@exmosuggestion
@exmormongirl
@myinlawsaremormon
@beegerbucket-blog
@bittergayexmo
Honestly, I’m probably missing a ton, but I’d also recommend going through the queerstake and apostake tags to find more. The exmo tag is also good. I’d stay out of the mormon and mormonism tags though, unless you’re okay with looking at porn (yes, I said porn. Idk why that’s a thing in the mormon tag, but to each their own)
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so. for all the nonmormons in the room wondering why your favorite blogger is now having a panic attack.
november 2015, the mormon church releases a policy which says that anyone living in a same-sex relationship is considered an apostate, and their children cannot be baptized until they 1) are 18 years old and 2) publicly renounce their parents relationships and gay people in general.
today (4/4/2019), the mormon church redacted it.
of course, this didn’t change anything; in their literal actual article with their church-owned newspaper, they made a point of this being a policy change, not a doctrinal change. which, one, is something they’ve been doing forever as a way to prove that the church is unchanging, two, is apparently the gift-giving and apology part of the abuse cycle (thank u @exmosuggestion for making me remember that), three, doesn’t actually change anything.
why do i say that? because policy and doctrine is not the same.
think of church policy as the law, and the doctrine as the purpose for the law. if you don’t change the purpose, you aren’t actually fixing anything. in mormonism, gay people are still considered sinful, confused, etc etc etc. this is just their way of convincing the public that they’re actually gay-friendly now. it’s also a huge gaslight, because now, all mormons will pull this out as an example that they arent homophobic, actually, and blah blah blah.
so to all you nonmormons who heard this: this does not change anything. this is a ploy to get public opinion with them, and an attempt at compromise. please, please, please, for the sake of LGBTQ+ teens, LGBTQ+ mormons, LGBTQ+ exmormons, and just LGBTQ+ people in general, do not excuse their actions. there’s so many stories of mormons and exmormons, LGBTQ+ or not, being abused and the abuse being dismissed. the mormon cult is not good. they dont do good things. please dont excuse them.
#exmo stuff#mormonism for nonmormons#homophobia tw#transphobia tw#im. guys im so exhausted of this#please dont excuse them
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Are there any tumblr tags/any other blogs you can recommend to me for exmormon community? Also any advice for getting people to fuck off with the annoying, patronizing missionary efforts without being rude or outright telling them to leave me alone?
Hmm well the blogs I follow are @unpackingexmo , @exmormonrants, @the-art-of-leaving, @exmosuggestion, and @beegerbucket-blog, and those are all pretty good ones (the art of leaving isn’t mormon specific, but it has an ex mormon tag that’s pretty good and they give good advice). If you want more I bet if you go through the blogs they reblog from, you’ll find some stuff. I’ve also got an ex mormon tag on my blog that you can look through and see if there’s any blogs there that you like.
For tags, there’s #ex mormon, #exmo, and #apostake which seem to make up most of the stuff. Don’t go into like, #lds or anything that’s just gonna have a bunch of TBM crap
Advice for telling people to fuck off? I would definitely say to go to quitmormon.com and get your resignation processed if you can (I know home life and family can be really hard to deal with), so at the very least you’ll have a piece of paper that you can wave at them to say you’re 100% NOT INTERESTED. It’ll also get rid of your records from the church so no one will be able to look up your address and phone number from the church’s directory
(I still can’t believe there’s a fucking directory and steps to “reactivate old members” by going to their address that they basically make public… but yeah, definitely #notacult /s)
You could also tell them how happy you are now that you’ve left the church and that you’re really thriving without it strangling you, that usually throws them off their rhythm. Or say that it was driving a wedge in your home/family, they don’t like that either.
In the meantime, listen to podcasts and rant online about how stupid The Cult is, and try to stay sane with the rest of us to ignore the fucking reactivation efforts. Good luck!!!!
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hymnal number 3
even nearly six years out from my formal resignation from the church, with most of my life being restructured as far from the church as possible for me, i still get a few hymns stuck in my head. mostly, i find them annoyingly monotonous: "ah right, this is the primary propaganda dirge", "this is the rejoicing at the end of times", "this is the rejoicing at the end of times but sorrowful", "some more propaganda", "this is the rejoicing at the end of times". but one line from "now let us rejoice" never fails to stick out in my mind in all-caps, bold impact type face, obscuring every other thought in my brain, shout-sung at conference.
"and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n"
and i sit and think very hard about that.
(cw discussion of sexual abuse, bishop "help line", inaction)
the associated press received 12,000 pages of sealed records from a west virginia civil case about sexual abuse within the lds church, alongside the intimate details of an ongoing case in arizona of a particular family's sexual abuse history. rundown here: https://apnews.com/article/Mormon-church-sexual-abuse-takeaways-f01fba7521ddddffa89622668b54ac10. this links to the main article that features several paragraphs of details of horrific sexual abuse. within the main article are sections with statements from church officials through both the mainline church and the legal representatives through kirton mcconkie. one of those people was my bishop as a younger teen, and then the stake president.
within his sealed affidavit statement, he explains that maintaining ecclesiastical disciplinary proceedings as separate and confidential from law enforcement is to maintain the trust that a perpetrator has with their ecclesiastical leaders, in order to allow for the perpetrator to repent and make spiritual amends for their crimes.
which implies: the physical and emotional safety of victims of crimes like sexual abuse are less important in at least one person's mind than the spiritual welfare of a perpetrator of abuse.
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while my family's personal history of abuse and pain is not fully my story to tell, i do think that a church culture that is fundamentally focused solely on spiritual redemption and not material restitution and protection led to the heinous abuse that a sibling of mine endured. and this particular stake president, who was likely made aware of the abuse because he was in our ward, was a coward, alongside the current bishop at the time, and my parents. the ball of "secular justice" didn't roll until i was confided in about the abuse by the perpetrator years after it happened. and thankfully, the bishop at that time, said that it had to be reported. i credit that mainly because he was apparently a convert to the church as an adult.
how many families have been ruined by the cowardice of the church and its lay clergy? how many children have been kept in harm as a result of these inactions? how many sins must church officials commit to keep the church afloat?
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now let us rejoice in the day of salvation
no longer as strangers on earth shall we roam
good tidings are sounding to us and each nation
and shortly the hour of redemption will come
when all that was promised the saints will be given
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
and earth will appear as the garden of eden
and jesus will say to all israel, "come home"
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
and none shall molest them from morn until ev'n
why should we wait until the millenium?
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if your brain is repeating lines from specific church hymns like mine does in response to/in reflection of events that seem like they should be a lead up to the millenium, and your brain is going haywire:
1) the songs were made to intentionally invoke a particular emotional response
2) the church plays those specific songs at conference because they're powerful manipulation tools
3) it is not a sign, or a signal, or a call from the holy ghost. it is emotional manipulation that has been hammering at you for many years with devastating effects.
distract your brain as best as you can. talk to trusted people. the world is in turmoil but it will not end, and it will not go the way the church wants us to think it will go.
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sometimes i miss the burning rage and pain and tears from being freshly out of the church. but mostly, i'm happy that i rarely think about it as intensely as i used to. it still lives in my head, but it's much less likely to cause problems, and when it does it's so much easier to mitigate.
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in light of recent events in the larger exmormon community (specifically harassment and apologetica from prominent exmormons [NNN and john dehlin, context here: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/minz9f/new_name_noah_sexually_harassed_me/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share]), here's some things younger exmos (and especially minors) should know:
1) the exmormon community is often a landing pad for any and all kinds of exmormons disgruntled with the church. this is a wide range of people, many of whom are incredibly fucked up from being in the church for so long. set boundaries and enforce them liberally with blocks if you get even slightly uncomfortable with how someone is interacting with you.
2) the church intentionally destroyed people's sense of boundaries, particularly sexual ones. combined with how many cis men are socialized to push sexual boundaries, sexual harassment is rampant when combined with social or structural power.
3) the exmo community is by-and-large made up of predominantly white people because the church is a white assimilationist structure. people of color get pushed out of exmo communities due to both overt and covert racist actions and statements. call that shit out if you can, and support BI&POC in the community when they call shit out or when they need to have someone listen to them. get educated on mormonism's racist history and work to confront the incredibly racist beliefs you grew up in or converted to.
4) your christian-centric religious trauma does not give you a free pass to be antisemitic, islamophobic, or participate in religious-based bias. conversations you can have about the harm of religion are inherently focused on christianity and specifically mormonism, you do not have the information or context to have those conversations for other belief systems. don't become even more hateful towards people mormonism has harmed in its conquest to ideologically dominate the world.
5) you do not have to interact with the exmormon community if it makes you feel worse. period. cathartic pain can help sometimes, but you do not have to continue immersing yourself in that pain if it stops feeling productive for you.
6) if you are part of a minority group, seek out exmormons who you share identity with outside of mormonism: find other BI&POC exmos, find other queer (or lgbtq+) exmos, find other women exmos, find other disabled exmos, find other neurodivergent exmos, etc. the mainline exmo space can cause more trauma because of the first 3 points, it's important to find spaces that aren't dominated by white cis men perpetuating the same cycles of harm they claim to be separate from.
stay safe. reach out if you need advice or help.
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sometimes revisiting mormonism can help you realize how much you've grown as a person, how much you've healed, how distant it all is. read part of the pearl of great price and realized just how nonsensically it was written, how alien its syntax was to me now. how immediate and unconcerned my "this is such bullshit" thought was, when seven or so years ago i would have felt confused and ashamed for not understanding it.
i don't think it will ever stop being a part of me. but the scar tissue doesn't hurt as much, and i can feel things besides numbness and pain now. i excised mormonism from my life like the plastic surgeon removed my chest last winter. but now i think i can finally start seeing mormonism's scars as neutral rather than as immediately horrible.
not everyone will want to get there, and not everyone will get there in less than a decade. but there is a life outside of this trauma, and once you learn how to live that, the scar care is so much easier.
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it's okay if all you can do today is survive.
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a gentle reminder that it is 100% okay to leave mormonism, and by extension, the exmormon community, behind. exmormons are not obligated to band together and define themselves by their mutual trauma if they feel stagnated by it, and many of the exmormons i know have found ways to grow their lives without revolving it around the church.
and it is also 100% okay to still use the label exmormon even if you don’t interact in exmo circles anymore. it’s not an all-or-nothing identity, and the joy of being an exmormon is that you get to define what that means for you now.
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“any form of transition will make the transgender person ineligible for a temple recommend” is the new “hate the sin love the sinner”
#anyways mormons suck#the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints#ex-mormon#exmosuggestion#transgender#transphobia
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Oaks: :exists:
Me: 🎶 I hope you die in a fire, I hope you die in a raging inferno of pain 🎶
(for those unaware, he defined gender as "biological sex at birth", this invalidating all trans people as well as intersex people)
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the church is lashing out to “the world” because its losing power in the world it reviles. remind yourself of this when they claim that something infringes on their “religious rights”.
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the church is abusive to lgbt+ members, and anyone who disagrees is an apologist and also being abusive.
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