When I (23M) was growing up, my parents hated whenever I locked my door for privacy. Like most adolescent boys, I had a libido and things that I liked to look at when I was taking care of that.
When I was 15, my dad would lean against my door every day to listen in. One day, he heard I was in the middle of it, and as quickly as possible, he picked the lock of my door and caught a glimpse of me watching some pretty crude and wacky rule 34 that was sorta ambiguously gendered. He immediately closed the door and retreated to his room. When I cleaned up and asked why he “knocked,” he said “nothing” with an unsettling smile.
7 years later, when I came out as passionately heterosexual because I finally figured out what my type was, he became very angry and told me I was REALLY a [f-slur], and he could prove it by revealing what he caught me watching all those years ago. I actually thought he would be glad to know how I turned out, but it seems that he, a conservative, was angry that I wasn’t queer.
Recently, my older brother got into my journal with all of my private thoughts. The first thing he read was the dozens of pages of sexual fantasies I wrote down for my sole enjoyment and reference. When I confronted him, he justified his intrusion into my most intimate thoughts with “God told me to do it.” He nitpicked my fantasies and told me that my openness to choosing my gender and sexual expression instead of forcing myself into the cishet box would inexplicably turn me into a pedophile. It seems that 5,000+ unfiltered words exhaustively proving my heterosexual attraction for strong mature women and wholesome consensual lovemaking style were not satisfactory. Not that any of it was ever his business.
I’m curious if others have have experienced this dynamic of family members violating someone to “test” their sexuality and look for evidence of deviance, or if this is a complete “WTF” situation that isn’t even a thing among most conservative households.
Every day, my dad liked to call me the f-slur and threaten to kill me or kick me out of the house “if he found out” I was gay. Apparently, I wasn’t in on the joke: in his head, he ALREADY KNEW I was gay, and so his words weren’t meant to prevent me from being gay, but rather to make me terrified of him.
It seems like he was angry because he lost a critical control mechanism over me and desperately sought to bring it back. I will never forget how shocked he looked when he saw me actually happy for the first time in years and I playfully deflected his insults instead of engaging with them. He sort of shut down and became depressed for a couple days before he came up with a new way to control me.
It seems that there is nothing that he and my brother hate more than my genuine happiness. Since they believe that they define who I am, how I feel, and what I am capable of, any feelings I am “not supposed” to feel will be violently crushed by them.
I am not supposed to feel happy.
I think you put it well already. Those people have issues. Try to build as much independence as possible, and run. This has nothing to do with conservatism or religion (other than maybe weaponizing those things), and everything with manipulation and mental illness.
As I said it in another comment: Run, don’t walk. You owe them nothing. But you owe yourself and the good people you met / can meet to live a good life.
Understanding they need to feel this way but you dont need to be part of it is major. That is far more than others your age have been able to do. Find revenge by solidifying that happy life without them. It will remind them how useless they are without any cost to you. Win win.