I read this blog post because a Facebook friend shared it in his wall. In summary the article talks about how growing up in a baptist house left the author in a black-hole of self-body hatred and a sick sense of paranoia to the outside world and how feminism provided a respite to all this. Her father has difficulty in comprehending the consequences of such an upbringing and argues that all he did was for their own good (and to his defense this might be all he knew and as such, his truth). But the wisdom that Madonna shares with us suggests that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
Reading about this, I thought of my own weird catholic upbringing and how it affected my body image, my views on sex. masturbation, urges and life in general. In a nutshell, one can say that Catholicism is all about guilt. But I want to elaborate on this by illustrating my experience with the Roman church.
Catholicism back home is so nuanced and embedded in everyday life, that we have no idea that it really exists until it slaps you in the face. We don't have spring break, we have holy week off; Christmas time is almost a two month long celebration culminating some time after Epiphany; the church is in the news and in the newspapers from time to time, etc. All this translates to a sense of religious omnipresence that many people feel they belong to, even without actually practicing catholicism. This means that though my family rarely went to Church on Sundays, we were still catholic and so are the many other Puerto Ricans who behaved like us. Not going to church on Sundays, did not mean that their spiritual communion with the Catholic God was broken/damaged in any way (and this is me dodging the issue of how some old folks actually still practice some kind of African-influenced catholic syncretic beliefs); being a catholic is just a state of 'just being' by practicing some basic and crucial beliefs (most often conservative ones) about God and its message of personal salvation. Again, though my family rarely (I mean like 15 times total in my whole life) went to church, me and my sisters were baptized and had godparents with lavish and communal celebrations; my sister and me had our first communion; I did my confirmation when I was 13; my sisters' Quinceañeros parties started with a special mass on church; funerals and wakes were done according to catholic rites; etc... We were as Catholic as we could have been.
Since Kindergarten to 8th grade I attended a Catholic school near my home. I was a nerd and though I was a straight A student, I had problems respecting authority and talking back to teachers; which led to many letters to my parents and month-long military style groundings after parent-teacher meetings. Despite all this, the nuns loved me and so did a couple of teachers with whom I behaved well, one of which was the Religion class teacher. She paraded me around the school as I was well ahead of my classmates in terms of the knowledge I could master about religious teachings, the catholic dogma and the insight the bible provides to human nature. I became the uber-catholic boy and could have given Henry VIII a good run for the title of Defender of the Faith. In my role as defender of the faith I was always proclaiming the infallible standing of the Catholic Church and its sacred origins with Jesus. I started reading in mass and became the youngest catechist in my church at 14 (I had a group of nine year olds), participated and worked in retreats, led christian youth groups and was the epitome of Catholic dogma embodied in this young teenager extraordinaire!
As much as I defended my beliefs in public, I constantly engaged in debates with nuns, teachers and priests about the constructed nature of Catholic dogma and its shady representation in the bible; they welcomed these debates, but always backstage. All this time that I spent reaffirming myself as a son of God, I felt a struggle with my own opinions and how I felt doing and thinking about everyday life. In school we were taught that our bodies were temples that housed the Holy Spirit, and that by thinking, saying or doing anything against our chastity, we were violating the 6th commandment: masturbation, among other things was indeed included here.
Something as natural (I remember doing it as a little kid without even knowing what it was) as exploring your body, was now something to be ashamed of. Fighting these urges was something I struggled with every day; and when I finally indulged in it, the guilt swooped in. It left me in a horrible state of mind because I could'nt fathom the idea that someone as committed to the church as me was indulging in such a disgusting sin. I prayed and fasted, until I felt I had punished myself long enough for the sin I committed. I don't remember ever looking at myself as multifaceted person: I was just this catholic boy that had to fight his urges in order to be spiritually communing with God and as such, gain entrance to Heaven. And I won't even discuss how I felt about my homosexual 'tendencies'...
Sex was a non-issue in my home, and while it was not widely discussed it was certainly not prohibited. My mom gave me books about human biology and I pieced information together along with books about puberty I took out of the library. My older half-brother also gave me lots of unsolicited information when he visited us. Through different outlets I received disparate information about what sex was and how it was supposed to happen. Though I didn't think of myself as a homosexual back then, I definitely repressed those feelings as well. Sex became this sick ordeal; I definitely was scared of sex as I had been repressing it for so long, and even though I distanced myself from the church and its teachings sometime after my mom died, I still felt its grip in my decisions and thoughts.
This manner of growing up with this guilt and fear of discovering sex and your body, leaves us with a distorted way of looking at ourselves and others. While the guilt is not there anymore, the manner of how to approach people and my own issues regarding this topics is still affected by all this. Acknowledging that this is not an isolated event, or even a singular particularity of my life I still believe that this Catholic omnipresence and upbringing adversely affected my body image and the way I (used to) approach this topic and my sexual/romantic relationships.
So, some more thoughts:
- How are little kid's view on their 'self' affected by this 'temple' body discourse?
- What happens to people who are prey to this discourse if they are later in life raped or molested? Will they think it's their fault because their temple was desecrated? How will they feel about having their body/temple besmirched by extraneous doing? Again, will they think is their fault?
- If this body/temple belief is deconstructed and accepted by mainstream thought, will it mean a less traumatic experience of rape/molestation? Will it mean a less traumatic view of sex in general? Will it be the end of virginity as we know it?
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