Hearing about the news of James Dobson’s death reminded me of a conversation I recently had with my sister while we were making our way to an Ethel Cain concert.
We were conversing as we hurried to the car, excited to profess our love to Willoughby Tucker, and I told my sister she was the only reason I knew about Ethel Cain—whose real name is Hayden Anhedönia. We then indulged in some cynical jokes about the “woke” impulse to cancel Anhedönia because of old social media posts, which she has since apologized for and described as “deeply shameful and embarrassing.”
As our cynicism died down, my sister got real. “I mean, the big reason all of this got dredged up is because she’s trans.”
I stopped walking. My sister had gotten 6 feet in front of me before she turned around to look at me quizzically.
“Trans in what sense?” I asked. I honestly had no clue.
“Trans in the sense that she is a trans woman. Now come on, we’re gonna be late,” she responded, annoyed. I saw the perfect opportunity for a bad joke. I turned around and pretended to walk back home.
“Josiah, where are you going?”
“Sorry, but I don’t believe in trans.”
It was, to be clear, a joke. And if that bit of stupidity strikes you as absurd and wrong, that’s good. My views around sexuality and gender have drastically shifted and progressed over the years, but there was a time in my life when that joke would’ve been a true representation of my actual beliefs. And while my parents have some responsibility for instilling homophobic and transphobic beliefs in me—a mistake that they are now attempting to make reparations for—the real person to blame is the recently deceased James Dobson.
To say that Dobson’s teaching emphasized a strict gender binary, or that he merely held a non-affirming stance toward LGBTQ+ people, would be journalistic malpractice. Dobson, who received a doctorate in child psychology from the University of Southern California, frequently made headlines for pathologizing and villainizing LGBTQ+ people.
I grew up believing the lies that Dobson told about LGBTQ+ people—that they were inherently deviant, that they were the reason for the United States’ decline, that they needed conversion therapy, and that they ultimately didn’t exist as there were only two genders and only one type of sexual orientation (heterosexuality). I would describe these beliefs, which I didn’t deconstruct until college, as deeply shameful and embarrassing.
“Poor you,” you might be thinking. “What about all the queer kids who were traumatized by your beliefs, Dobson’s beliefs, and the legislative efforts of the Religious Right, which took its cues from Dobson?” That’s more than fair.
One of those queer kids who was traumatized by this version of Christianity is Anhedönia, who grew up in the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. Anhedönia, who grew up singing in the church choir, left the church at 16 and would eventually come out as a trans woman on her 20th birthday (Anhedonia is a word meaning “inability to feel pleasure”).
Whether it’s the fact that organizations associated with Dobson sought to restrict trans rights or the fact that Dobson himself encouraged violence against trans women for using women’s restrooms, a major piece of Dobson’s legacy will always be about the trauma he inflicted and encouraged other Christians to inflict on trans people.
“[H]ow many queer children are you crucifying to save your faith?” Anhedönia asked in a 2021 interview, seemingly speaking directly to Christians, like Dobson, who trafficked in anti-LGBTQ+ dogmas. “How many of us are you putting up on that cross so you don’t have to go up there?”
The cross, and all the baggage that comes with it, looms large over all of Anhedönia’s work. Outside of the dust bowl wall-of-sound that has become her signature, the main reason her music resonates with me is because of how focused it is on exposing the ways that American Christianity willingly crucifies the working class, women, queer people, and those disaffected by the church. At the concert I attended, Anhedönia’s mic stand was in the shape of a cross, and I wondered if the reason for this was to remind people of the pain that Christians are still inflicting on people today.
A major theme in Anhedönia’s work is the trauma of American Christianity. In his 2023 review of Preacher’s Daughter for National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners’ multimedia graphic designer, Ryan McQuade, asked the following: “Where can you confess that the trauma has turned to dreams; dreams of burning down a church or smashing a statue or running away or cursing the Divine?” Many of us don’t know how to heal from religious trauma or process our dreams of revenge, so we turn to Ethel Cain.
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Others turn to social media. You might have noticed that Dobson’s death has fueled trauma-inspired daydreaming that involves him taking his final rest in bodily fluids. This is the part where, as a Christian who is supposedly all about peace and love, I condemn Dobson’s actions but entreat people to cease the “divisive” rhetoric. But I can’t get mad at people for despising the wicked or breaking into song at the news that Pharaoh is sloshing around in a liquid grave—just as long as people are jamming to something from Ethel Cain.
Yes, Dobson is gone, but the long-term impact of his work is very much alive. No one has described the long-term, traumatic impact of his work better than journalist Sam Thielman, writing for Forever Wars:
Dobson’s war on children continues. In many ways, despite his recent receipt of his eternal reward, it intensifies. Emboldened and enabled by his networks of finance, communication, and distribution, social conservatives have made life much harder than it might otherwise be for gay, trans, pregnant, and mixed-race children. His influence on survivors of child abuse extends beyond evangelical communities … and can be seen in the wider culture in the mainstreaming of anti-trans rhetoric, and in the networks of severely traumatized former Christians and their support groups. In death, Dobson becomes a kind of reverse saint, a name to invoke every time a child is struck, or goes into labor, or tries to take their own life.
I hope people don’t remain trapped in the trauma that Dobson inflicted; I hope people can shoot off a few trauma-inspired posts that provide some comic relief and catharsis, but I also hope that we recognize that philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is right when he says that trauma cannot offer a viable political program. And considering Thielman’s observation, we are in desperate need of a viable political program to counter the fascist movement that Dobson helped create.
For Anhedönia’s part, she’s decided that she’ll confront that movement and the trauma it inflicts through her music as Ethel Cain: “Everything I do through my art is a way to get my thumb on top of what’s happened to me in the past,” she told Pitchfork in 2021. “Because now, I’m in control and I can’t be hurt by it again.”
Many of us don’t know how to heal from religious trauma or process our dreams of revenge, so we turn to Ethel Cain.
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