Trigger warning SA
I (26 Trans male) always knew I didnāt want to be a JW.
Born and raised in this lovely religious cult as a 3rd gen elders kid, the highest expectations were placed on me to follow in my familyās path and marry a future elder. I however had other plans.
My earliest memory in the Kingdom Hall was at 3 yrs old watching the ceiling fan while my grandfather led the Sunday meeting. I was spanked, pinched, and bruised for not paying attention, I absolutely refused to comment on the watch tower even when the answers were given to me and rewards were offered. My parents could not force me to read any of the books if they tried not even the yellow āmy book of bible storiesā written in red. I was a dishonorable black sheep at 5. It was around this time I also started to form traditionally masculine preferences. Cutting my own hair to match my brothers and despising the dresses and skirts I was forced to wear to meetings.
I became the eldest of three, with a younger brother and sister. I started public school while they homeschooled my other siblings because they had given up on me. God had rejected me or I was a challenge from Satan to their most faithful followers as my parents often told me and I told them I never believed in God right back. Which was true. I didnāt believe in god or this wild paradise rapture.
At 10 years old I started to wear my brothers clothes to school as he was a chunky kid and I was rather tiny. My siblings and I all shared one room at the time but one night I fell asleep watching a movie on the couch and was alone. I then heard my mother whisper my name and woke up to her fingers inside me as she said it was time for me to act more feminine and learn of the joys that come with being a woman. This happened several times in my own bed while my siblings slept to which I froze each time not knowing what was happening to me. With zero sex education I had no understanding of what was happening to me only that it was wrong.
One day in passing conversation while out in service with an elder i trusted I casually mentioned what she did, unknowing that it was inappropriate. He said that it was okay because the only people allowed to touch me like that are my mother, my father, and a doctor.
Years later and countless therapy sessions i now know it was sa and My own mother did it me. I recently asked my siblings if she had ever done anything similar and they both said never, but they said they witnessed what was done to me.
At 13 years old it was time to prepare for baptism as my little brother and sister were baptized at 10 and 8. Sisters came to the house to study with me however I was disinterested to the point of going through 3 different books before giving up on me. When the elders asked if I wanted to Be baptized I said no. There was no point if I wasnāt going to stay in anyway and I would like to continue talking to my friends and family instead of being disfellowshipped when it happened. They were flabbergasted to say the least and hours of scriptures did nothing to change my young mind. But not wanting to upset my elder father, i was not listed as bad association. This is also when the showers started, as my mother would watch me shower with the curtain open to ensure I was cleaning myself properly and she would āhelp meā especially with my private areas. But only me and not my siblings. She also refused to let me put in or take out a tampon by myself as she needed to do it, but never did the same to my sister when she got her periods.
I felt like my body was not my own, but the religion always tells you not to trust the outside world so I never told my teachers. I told a witness sister who said all of this was normal as itās what mothers do to their daughters. My father also told me this was normal.
Later that year I was staying over my best friend (and future wife) from middle schoolās house. Letās call her Ana. I asked Ana if her mom also watched her because that was what my mom did. Ana said no and told me it was wrong. I told her maybe she didnāt understand because she wasnāt a JW. To which Ana told her mom. Ana and I come from a certain cultural background of being Puerto Rican living in an all PR enclave where the police are feared. So she went straight to my mother and threatened her to go to cps herself if she ever did that to me again.
She never did it again that I can remember so far.
When I was 16 and more and more masc presenting (still zero knowledge of lgbt and what it was), my mother and father had devised a plan to marry me to the only feminine boy in our Kingdom Hall who was a year older. Weāll call him Even. I adored Even as he was a very funny guy who was cool to hang out with. Evens parents, my parents, and the elders arranged a meeting to prepare for our wedding and I was expected to drop out of my worldly high school to care for him as a man while he graduated the same school and worked for another brother as an electrician for that brotherās company and i would be home bearing our children. In my Kingdom Hall, getting married at 16/17 was simply expected and normal.
Yearning to escape the lack of safety in my mothers gaze I agreed as I was told over and over again I had disappointed my family enough and this would be good for me with Evenās leadership in the home I could be baptized and make them proud. Evenās family was hoping to reverse him being gay by marrying him to the most masculine woman in the church and my family the same.
A month before our Kingdom Hall wedding back yard reception, Even drove to my house in the middle of the night and cried at my window telling me he couldnāt marry me because he already had a boyfriend and he was going to run away to be with him. I was happy for him as I sent him off with a squeeze of the hand into the night. But I was also devastated, not out of heart break but out of my hopes and dreams of escaping my family shattering before my very eyes.
In lighter news i graduated high school the next year and continued on to college to become an elementary school teacher a state away where I had forgotten about my childhood and abandoned the JW lifestyle for good. Even though my family continuously sent brothers and sisters to my dorm to change my mind.
I continued to remain in close contact with my family and Ana and after studying abroad in London I discovered I was indeed a transgender male I just never had the language for my feelings. Which was a blessing as the second I came out all of my family separated themselves from me. However my father also refused to cosign on my loans for my senior year of college forcing me to drop out. Willing to do anything to not go back I did another thing JWās are against, I enlisted in the us military which allowed me to go on hormone replacement therapy.
This year has been a year of growth and a year of pain, after I was SA in the military while serving the traumatic memories have come back forcing me to be on ptsd medications just to sleep and function. A lot of therapy has lead me to finally reach a standing ok. Including sex therapy since my body had learned from an early age to registered that kind of touch with a normal parental touch causing me to lose all sexual sensation with my partner which for years I thought was my fault and that I was just weird. But I finally can know itās not my fault and Iām blessed to have an incredible understanding wife to walk with me on this journey from the very beginning.
I married Ana and together we share two children which I now sometimes look at their sweet innocent faces when they fall asleep on my lap and it makes me sick to look at my babies and think of the vile things my mother did to me with the same face. But my children will never know the trauma of that religion, they will be able to marry who they please and are given an age appropriate conversations on their body parts as they are given full autonomy to say no to touch. That as their mother and father we donāt own their bodies.
They will also never know their paternal āgrandmotherā as weāve relocated to the other side of the country and have never posted them or announced them on social media because she has a history of stalking. Or their grandfather as he still believes my transition is just a rebellious phase and I refuse to invite that disrespectful mindset into my home in front of my incredible wife and children.
Which is fine, they have their maternal grandmother who adores them and was a supportive mother figure to me through my younger years.
My siblings have recently all left the religion because they became adults and disagreed with their disconnection with me becoming disfellowshipped in the process. we are now trying to mend the beautiful sibling relationship Jehovah destroyed. Breaking the generational cycle.
Even years later married the same boyfriend and I was the best man at his wedding. His entire family left the religion as they chose their son and Iām so incredibly happy for him.
Sharing because i hope all other victims in their stages of healing know theyāre not alone.
Edit 1: thank you everyone for your kindness. I did finish my college education without loans after using my military benefits. However switched my major.
Today I work as a victim advocate im a special victims unit embedded in a police force. Iām dedicated to helping others through their pain specializing in trauma informed care using what Iāve learned as a trauma survivor myself. And I have the most beautiful āworldlyā life
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