Catholic Sexual Suppression

From as young as I can remember, I was taken to Catholic Mass every Sunday morning by my mom and dad. I was sent to private Catholic school from kindergarten until university, and everyone in my immediate and extended family is Catholic. Throughout my childhood, we prayed as a family before meals, and in school I studied the Bible as doctrine. Despite all of this, I was a skeptic, even when I was young. I remember being six years old and asking my teacher why gold ornamented our church when, according to her, millions of people were living in poverty. I pondered aloud to my classmates and within earshot of my teachers why women weren’t allowed to be priests. And it was this question in particular— after my teacher told me I was breaking a moral tenet in even asking it— that prompted me to question all that I was told never to doubt.

My parents never spoke to me about sex. We never watched movies as a family that mentioned it, and they never acknowledged it. As a result, I grew up thinking that sex was wrong, that speaking about sex was wrong, that embedded in just that syllable there was something wrong. Though I was outspoken in some ways, this didn’t seem like a topic that I was even allowed to think about, let alone talk about in school or to my parents. And so I was shamed into dealing with the confusion myself. My resulting ignorance led to years of frustration, confusion, sadness, anger, and resentment, and this experience is not unique to me.

I remember so many nights when I was young; my friends and I would sit on each other’s beds asking the same questions over and over, guessing, hypothesizing, wondering without satiation, without answers, ever. We would keep our voices hushed, always, checking outside the closed door and down the hall to make sure that no parents were lingering— but never asking what it would mean if they were.

“When are we going to learn about puberty? When are we going to learn about how babies are made?” I remember asking those questions, verbatim, to older girls who had finished Catholic grade school and moved on to high school. They all told us the same thing: that they weren’t comfortable talking about it, but that there was a section in sixth grade science and religion classes that would answer our questions.

Finally, sixth grade came, along with its much anticipated section: Family Life—not “Sex Ed,” unless you wanted to be chastised by a teacher after class. A few days before this new unit was set to begin, my peers and I were sent home with slips to be signed by our parents, soliciting consent for the school so that we could learn about sex. I gave the paper to my mom silently. She asked, “Do you have any questions?” to which I said that I didn’t, because how could a 12-year old girl who had never learned what sex was have any questions beyond “What?” “Why?” or “How could you?”

I expected that after this class I would have a firm understanding of what sex was. By this time, I still didn’t know how I had even come to exist. I was told over and over that my parents prayed to God and after that my mom miraculously had my baby brother in her womb. At one point, when I was ten, my friend tried to explain sex to me. I didn’t believe her, figured she was trying to deceive or corrupt me, but I was too nervous to ask anyone else or to ever bring it up. I wasn’t even aware enough of my own biology to know whether or not what she described could be possible.

Needless to say, I was very excited for the class section. But once the program began, I was continuously dissatisfied. In gender-seperated units, we talked about hormones, about the endocrine system, about puberty and the very, very basic parts of human anatomy. We kept waiting until eventually one student just brought it up: “What is sex?” she asked. But my teacher refused to answer. Not only would she not tell us, but she revealed that she didn’t think that this unit should exist in schools at all. In the religion component of the program, our teacher told us to dress modestly and to avoid boys.

The curricula that came later, in 7th and 8th grade and then throughout my high school years, were equally horrifying. I learned that contraception, abortion, premarital sex, and gay sex were wrong; somehow, though, natural family planning is okay, which means that “pulling out,” or strategically having sex and hoping (maybe praying) that you don’t get pregnant, is okay. But using a condom isn’t. I came away with the understanding that sex is wrong, that I shouldn’t think about it or engage in it. I left the program convinced that I would never enjoy sex and that— more importantly— I shouldn’t.

To feel suppressed, stifled, and shamed into not being able to openly talk about sex is both dangerous and deeply damaging. For years of my life, I literally did not know how I had come into this world. I was forcibly exposed to sexualized bodies of women in the media but never offered an explanation for why this was happening or how I was supposed to feel about it. I couldn’t understand my own biology; I couldn’t understand evolution. Sex for me was a highly charged word and concept. I really believed that it was wrong to even think about it. As a result, I developed severely negative perceptions of anyone who I’d come to find out had engaged in it, and held the burden of resentment in my heart for years. I felt betrayed by all the adults that I was supposed to trust, by anyone with children, even.

What has maybe been the hardest part, though, has been understanding my own sexuality. Parts of my body, so intimate, were foreign to me. I was unfamiliar with my own composition, and unfamiliar with any kinds of emotions or feelings attached to it. All of these situations, and the problems and frustrations that accompany them, are avoidable. Sex is not inherently charged with negativity, despite how it has been treated historically.

If you are in this situation too, or something like it, know that you are capable of and responsible for creating, developing, and deciding your own views on sexuality. You are not responsible for upholding anyone else’s perspective. This means that you are allowed to talk about it and to ask about it. It is not your responsibility to censor yourself for the sake of other people’s comfort, especially when it means cutting yourself off from vital information that you deserve. Not your parents, not your school, not your peers, not a millennia-old tradition like the Catholic Church has authority over your curiosity.

Eventually, thanks to conversations with friends and reading that I did on my own, I became familiar with and developed my own opinions on sex. Throughout my first few months at university, I realized that I do not deserve to live with residual fear or discomfort. I don’t deserve to feel like I can’t ask questions, and I certainly don’t deserve to feel like my curiosity is anything other than healthy and right. Neither do you.