Mild at Heart: Love, Sex, and Masculinity After Purity Culture: Ep 4
Brad shares an episode from his deconstruction when he began to date again. It was the first time he was out of church and single since he converted. What ensued was a crisis of self image and a crisis of masculinity. While he was overjoyed to be outside the narrow confines of the Evangelical fold, he also had no tools with which to understand himself in the world. When he tried to date "out there in the world," he immediately felt worthless, empty, and full of self doubt.
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What's up, y'all?
Welcome to Mild at Heart.
My name is Brad Onishi, and this is our series on love, sex, and masculinity after purity culture.
I want to talk today one more time about masculinity and sex, and I want to do so just by sharing some of my personal experiences.
As I mentioned way back in one of the first episodes, I, in many ways, on the surface look like the kind of man who fits really well into purity culture and to evangelical masculinity and so on.
I'm straight and I am biracial, but there are many contexts, or at least there were when I was younger, where I was
White passing and I think a lot of folks were able to and this happens a lot in evangelical churches to overlook my my kind of mixed heritage and perhaps just see me as white and it helped that I was taught to background my my Asian American identity and to kind of really leave that aside when it came to my faith and my participation in the community and I also grew up playing sports.
I was a basketball player in high school and grew up playing soccer and all that kind of stuff and so you know on the surface it would seem that like I was the kind of person who would maybe just fit in without any concern.
On the other hand as I mentioned I was very much into books and reading by the time I got to the late stages of high school.
I'm also dyspraxic and I know for some of you that may be a new term but dyspraxia means in essence that You have different neurological pathways.
Some people use the word neurodiverse or neurodivergent to describe it.
And what it means in summary is just that my coordination and my ability to do things In terms of dexterity are very different than others.
And so for me to when I was a kid learn how to tie my shoes or to You know color within the lines it was extremely difficult and it took a long time What that translated into as I got older is I'm just very it's not that I'm not good at it's that I'm It's I'm incapable to a degree of
That is sort of extreme to do minor house projects, hanging pictures or doing things around the house, like hanging a shelf or, you know, putting together IKEA furniture or whatever that seemed pretty minor.
Those things are very, very, very, very, very difficult for me.
So I was not the kind of guy who could help with construction projects or build things with the men or, you know, blah blah blah.
That was just never me.
Now, the reason I bring that up is because I always tried to hide in evangelical culture from the fact that I didn't do those quote-unquote man things.
You know, people would look to men to You know whatever whatever was going on in the church or the youth group right to help out with the new Building project, you know if we were constructing a new You know shed or a new something on campus you know some of the men would do that or when you're getting ready to go to To camp and there's tents to put up, you know, who's going to put up the tents and the stakes and who's going to make sure all the things are done the right way?
Who's going to drive the trailer and back it in in the right way and do it in a way that all the men approve of?
And who's going to do things in the most efficient and, you know, kind of smart way?
We did a mission strip one time and the goal was to build two houses.
And you know, of course, all the men were sent to do the heavy building and the women were sent to do all the other sort of stuff, you know, take care of kids and prepare meals.
And for me, it was just a week of trying to figure out how to make it so that no one could see that I really wasn't doing anything and couldn't contribute in any way without getting made fun of or called names or whatever, right?
There was so many spaces and so many instances on a daily basis where I was always just trying to make sure that nobody could see that I wasn't fulfilling the role of man.
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