I became involved with the Plymouth Brethren as a teenager. It was no big deal at the time, my parents wanted me to mix with other young people, and the local Gospel Hall had started to run a group called ‘My Word’, which was a social gathering and Bible study. Now, none of this seems out of the ordinary, as most churches run similar groups, but most churches are not like the Plymouth Brethren.
Why they did this, who knows? They had a leader who was something of a ‘control freak’ and he had faced a lot of opposition from the Elders for letting the ‘worldlies’ in, but he had his motives, and that was to swell the ranks with impressionable new blood.
I first started attending at about 12 or 13, and on the cusp of puberty. I had a couple of older girls, who I considered to be my friends, and they used to pick me up in their car, and everything seemed cool and grown-up. The meetings were more social for me; yes we had the Bible reading and a quiz which mostly went over my head, but it all felt innocent enough.
The leader, a self-appointed pastor I’ll call Phillip Watkinson had a weird sense of humor, rather dark, but he and his wife provided us with cookies and cupcakes so it was all good. Or so it seemed. A lot of the kids were very impoverished and came from the old ‘council houses’ so food was always a bonus.
The group was mixed, an equal number of boys and girls, but it wasn’t until my older cousin, who had been my best friend since I was about 4, started to attend that things got weird. He had always shied away from religion. He was frightened of the concept of God and sin so chose not to think about it. He never went to Sunday School even, and hated RE at school.
My cousin spent most evenings after school with me, playing video games and watching movies. Some people thought we were inseparable, and I guess we were. When he started coming to My Word, I thought, like me, he was there for the sandwiches. Nothing could have prepared me for what came next.
It seemed that now the group was divided. We still had the same Thursday night meetings, but there was an undercurrent. The boys became distant and distracted, and my cousin started making excuses not to come to my house to play Super Mario and watch Disney movies. I thought, always blaming myself, that I had upset him; but I did not know the truth about what had really happened until years later.
The public face of the youth group appeared to be a cover. Once a few of the boys reached their mid-teens, they were ‘recruited’ to start attending the serious ‘men only’ meetings, the Elder’s meetings, and be groomed for leadership. The Brethren only accepts male leaders, and in their services, women are not even allowed to read the notices. They are expected to sit at the back of the assembly hall and learn in silence. All this went on behind my back, as myself and the other ‘sisters’ were never included in this conspiracy.
My cousin became a different person, started wearing a suit and tie, and even started affecting the style of the leader, Phillip Watkinson in his speech. He started quoting the Bible all the time, and instead of listening to 90’s house music in his car, he started listening to hymns. It all got very weird.
He actively avoided spending time with me now, as he and a select few of the young men only socialized with the older men from the Brethren, going to their houses to attend secret men only meetings. When my cousin saw me, he was hostile and seemed to be possessed. I had no idea why.
Going through puberty, I had my own struggle. I did not feel as if I fitted into the ‘female’ role and felt more like I was supposed to be male. My own interests reflected that; I was interested in Sci-Fi, computers and electronics, and had even started to study electronic engineering at college. I got a lot of fallout about this from the other women at the Plymouth Brethren, who did not think it becoming.
I was told that it wouldn’t prepare me for being a wife and mother, and it would prevent me from getting a husband. I took their criticism on board and felt such a struggle. I felt that God hated me, and never wanted me to be happy. When I cried, I was told that I was being ‘convicted of my sins’, and that if I were obedient I would be happy. It all felt so very wrong.
I tried to seek counsel from one of the elders who was a doctor. I trusted him, thinking him to be a professional who was not influenced by religious doctrine. I told him how awful I felt about being female and he told me that I should not worry.
The Brethren teach a doctrine of ‘headship’, which means that the man is the head of the household, and the women and children are under his umbrella of protection. The natural order is Christ – Man – Woman. The realm of man is public, leadership roles outside the home and the role of women is to be a nurturer and a mother, her role is domestic and inside the home. This was nothing to do with IQ, he explained, women can be intelligent, but about the roles we were designed to do, and to the Lord we are equal. Separate but equal in the eyes of God.
I suddenly began to realize that this religion was very different for men than it was for women. Men could basically do whatever they wanted careerwise, as long as it wasn’t a woman’s job. My ambitions had all involved music and computers, and when I was young it had never occurred to me that this was outside of God’s design for my life.
Women were supposed to go courting and get themselves a good Christian husband and raise a family, and always be at her husband’s side as his ‘helpmeet’ and not a person in her own right, cowering under a hat like a character from The Handmaid’s Tale. They even defended cases of DV, such as with my abusive father, as the woman had not been submissive enough and not respected him. I felt very alone and scared, and my faith did not bring me comfort but despair.
This enforced segregation made me extremely lonely. I was no longer allowed my male friends, and my cousin had been given strict instructions not to spend time with me because, as a woman, I was a ‘Jezebel’ who would lead him as into sin. Women were sexually objectified that way and were always being blamed for leading the Brethren astray, even when the woman herself was the victim.
They liked to play up the supposed differences between males and females, and for a long time I actually believed that men had one less rib than women, because that was the rib that Eve was fashioned from. I felt different and vulnerable and did not even have the other sisters to turn to, as I could not relate to them. It made me feel awful.
Some people call this viewpoint ‘complimentarianism’, which means that men and women are ‘ontologically equal, but functionally different’, but it usually descends into nothing more than chauvinism. My father married my mother because he wanted a good housewife, not a partner, and I do not believe there was any love in their relationship. A lot of the Brethren couplings seemed to be marriages of convenience, and many were proud of the fact that their wives did not have jobs outside of the home.
This seemed to be a form of control more than anything, and a way to keep them in line. For someone like myself, who did not have any interest in domesticity, I thought this future would be a fate worse than death. They see it as a fulfillment of the ‘curse of Eve’, that she was destined to be subject to her husband, suffer pain in childbirth and yet still desire him. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, doomed to fall into spousal abuse and sexual coercion by the entitled man of the house.
I did eventually enroll in an electronics course at the local college, where I found myself to be the only female. This made me feel alienated, as it was, but the sisters at the Brethren assembly made it even worse, some saying I was ‘brave’ going to college with so many men, and others looking down their nose at me, as if I was asking for trouble doing something so unnatural and unwomanly. I stayed the distance and got my City and Guilds, but it felt subversive, and nobody was on my side if even congratulated me. This doctrine turned brothers against sisters as the boys were shown favouritism and praised for their achievements, whilst the girls were demeaned and ignored, and treated like they were poison.
The stance which they held as ‘separate but equal’ only regarded equality as equality of the soul in God’s eyes. They believed in the subjugation of women, and the total supremacy of men, because of the fact that Eve was the person who brought sin into the world. Women were taught not to question or stand up to their husbands, even if their husbands were wrong.
Women do not have equal rights within the assembly as they are not allowed to preach, speak in meetings or hold office. They believed that true happiness was achieved through being completely submissive, and some even believed women to be beyond redemption, they could only be saved through childbearing. This was a very scary environment to be brought up in, and caused me to fall into depression.
I do not know if it was this which made me transgender, or that it was because I was transgender that I felt particularly threatened by it. I knew that I could not be happy as a woman in this environment, and the thought of having to marry a strict disciplinarian and bear his children for the sake of my salvation felt very uncomfortable. I was not allowed to just get on with my life, as my male cousin could, I was expected to be obedient and give up the things which I was skilled at and talented in because they were wrongly suited to the opposite gender.
I really think that had I been a cis-male I would have been recruited to the eldership and it would have been great. This is why most of the cis-men in the assembly do not see a problem and think that myself and others like me are overreacting. They will not criticize an institution which they personally benefit from.
I suppose all Brethren assemblies are different, and this was my personal experience with the one I was involved with, but the clue is in the name. The fact that they call themselves Brethren means they have diminished the role of women and do not really consider them worthwhile other than as child bearers and housewives.
I would not recommend anyone bring up their daughters in this hostile environment if they wish them to grow up with any self-esteem. Most Christian groups have managed to accept women leaders and are able to have open discourse on the roles of women in the Bible. The Brethren in their adherence to patriarchal values leaves them behind in the dark ages.
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Originally Published on Naked Emperor Blog and is republished on Medium.
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