“If obedience requires disappearance, I opt instead for vivid, unapologetic visibility. Consent, sacred and uncompromising, anchors my reformation. Rage becomes my holy sacrament; selfhood, my eternal benediction.”
Chaotic Goodisms ~V
Let’s begin with a pew. Splintered, stained, spiritually over functioning. A five-year-old girl in tights engineered by sadists, squirming on oak compressed by centuries of unspoken suffering. The air: incense-flavored regret. The pastor: a human drone strike in beige slacks, eyes half-lidded with the weight of his own authority, voice lubricated by holy testosterone. The sermon: an exercise in divine micromanagement, in which the fate of male souls rested squarely on the elasticity of a little girl’s waistband.
The theology: modesty, submission, chastity, each a euphemism, each a control panel disguised as virtue. This was not metaphorical; this was weekly. This was formative. This was the curriculum. A syllabus written in fear ink and illustrated with pastel warnings: Thou shalt not distract men with your shoulders. Thou shalt not weaponize your existence.
And so began the indoctrination. God, apparently, doubled as a cosmic dress-code enforcer with a penchant for legacies of blame. Modesty functioned less like a spiritual practice and more like an industrial liability waiver, one that declared girls the default culprits and men the unfortunate casualties of our morally negligent kneecaps. No one said it quite like that. But the logic was airtight or at least suffocating. If he stumbled, it was because she shimmered. If he sinned, she had clearly failed to swaddle her inherent temptress-core in enough denim.
Boys received pep talks about responsibility. Girls received laminated warnings. And by high school, we were signing purity pledges with the solemnity of statecraft. Except instead of nation-building, we pledged our sexuality to men we hadn’t met yet, who would one day exchange rings with us like stock options. Our bodies, in this economy, were dowries. Autonomy, in this economy, a heresy.
The system claimed protection. What it delivered: surveillance. They framed obedience as strength, silence as wisdom, discomfort as proof you were doing it right. Resistance meant rebellion. Bitterness meant backsliding. Rage became diagnostic a symptom of spiritual deformity, not an alarm bell.
They called it protection. What they meant: preemptive control. What they practiced: theology as lingerie policy. Apparently, God omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent still loses composure over a shoulder blade. He made the galaxies, but spaghetti straps? Too much.
I learned early that submission meant goodness. Obedience meant virtue. Silence meant spiritual depth. Questions, especially the ones with teeth, meant rebellion. And rebellion, in that world, meant hell. Or at least youth group exclusion and passive aggressive prayer circles.
They gave me metaphors dressed as mandates. Told me to "guard my heart" as if someone else had purchased the deed. Told me boys were "visual creatures" as if girls lacked corneas. Told me modesty would protect me. From what, exactly, remained vague. Vagueness, it turns out, functions like a divine NDA.
So, I became very good at disappearing.
I mastered the art of being seen just enough to be approved of, but never enough to be known. I learned how to shrink without leaving the room. I practiced smiling while metaphorically choking. My personality folded like origami into something decorative, something holy-adjacent. Not messy. Not angry. Not disruptive. Because disruption meant consequence. And consequence, in religious speak, always traced back to you.
The math never favored us. Boys had urges. Girls caused them. Result: boys sinned, girls repented. Authority never examined male impulse, only female visibility. I never once heard a sermon titled “Men, Control Thine Eyeballs.” I heard sixteen on skirt lengths.
But here’s the dirty little secret: obedience has a shelf-life. Eventually, expiration arrives, and you're left clutching fragments of an identity the church never authorized. Anger, suppressed long enough, ferments into clarity. Sensitivity, dismissed often enough, sharpens into wisdom. Submission, enforced without consent, is simply coercion sanctified by tradition. Modesty becomes just another control mechanism, and suddenly your quiet discomfort erupts into a full-blown existential tantrum. You begin doubting their claim to divine authority; maybe God never asked for submission in the first place. Perhaps obedience isn’t a prerequisite for worthiness. Maybe modesty isn’t armor but an emotional straitjacket.
Then comes the reckoning: not the flashy apocalypse promised by Revelation, but an understated insurgency that begins with small rebellions, simple refusals, quiet defiance. The revolutionary act of a woman saying "no" without flinching becomes seismic. Your healing ceases to look docile or agreeable. Instead, it appears stubborn, feral, defiantly human. You rebuild your temple not from stones of submission, but from foundations of authentic choice.
The original script claimed submission was sacred, consent an inconvenience. But I’ve since edited that thesis. Sacredness isn’t compliance. Holiness never demands humiliation. Authentic spirituality doesn’t require erasure. The real sacred text isn't passive obedience; it’s active agency, radical permission, consent as sacrament. Submission without consent isn’t holy. Its trauma masked as scripture; an atrocity wrapped in hymnals.
I will not pass it forward. I refuse to indoctrinate another generation into modesty-as-weapon, obedience-as-virtue, silence-as-grace. I opt instead for noisy autonomy, messy boundaries, holy rebellion. I offer no apologies, no explanations, only quiet blessing for every woman taught her worth equals invisibility.
They gave me submission before consent, called it sacred, and left me to wrestle alone with a God who seemed suspiciously invested in skirt lengths and distressingly indifferent to autonomy.
But I have rewritten their theology.
Consent is now my creed. Choice, my hymn. Rage, my holy psalm. Healing no longer means docility; it means wild reclamation. This temple of mine? It has doors that open only from inside, a voice that no longer whispers apologies.
If this sounds blasphemous, perhaps your God is too small. If modesty requires my silence, then I choose immodesty. If submission demands my disappearance, I choose rebellion.
Because consent isn’t just sacred; it is scripture incarnate. My body, my doctrine, my terms. Amen, Hallelujah, and pass the sacramental wine.
