I had to take a “Sexology” class in order to get my master’s in counseling. I wondered why there was no study of “love-ology” or “compassion-ology.” Probably people are more interested in sex than in love or compassion, still there seemed to be something brutal and beastly about “Sexology.”
“Any time, anywhere, huh?”
“That's the ideal,” he said, speaking as if he were a wise old tribal elder giving the prudish, innocent little girl good advice.
“If I say it all sounds totally insane,” I said, “you would simply reply that this was more indication of the bounds of slavery in which my mind was held. You would not respect my viewpoint (though you claim you want freedom for me to have my own viewpoint) because my viewpoint differs from yours. You would explain my viewpoint away as being irrelevant until I agreed with you and your viewpoint. Only then would my viewpoint be rational and acceptable to you. Only then would you say I was 'free,' when I agreed with you! And you call that freedom?”
“You're making it all so difficult,” he said petulantly. “All I want to do is free you, and help you not to be a prude.”
“And of course,” I said, “if I don't want to be 'freed' according to your definition — which to me is a worse kind of slavery than any prudery might be — you will give me a poor grade for the class. Our grade now is not based on how well we learn something that is true, but it is based on how successful you are on getting us to conform ourselves to your beliefs and imitate you, or at least how well we convince you we are doing that. What you are really doing is grading us not on how well we have learned facts or our personal ability and desire to learn, but you are grading us on how well we imitate you!”
As it turned out, the great professor left all the real work to his assistant, including the grading. I wrote a paper explaining and defending my reasons for not wishing to yell the f-word at my classmates and defended my values. I read the textbook well, parroted its contents, and got an A for the class. The assistant told me my paper was the best she had received. I admired her integrity. I knew it was by pure grace I got out of that class unsullied, at least I hope I did.…
Lord have mercy on all who did not.
Patricia Devlin, totally blind since shortly after birth, has loved writing since she was a child. Patricia worked many years in the mental health field, despite constant pain, and was two classes and a dissertation short of her doctorate when she had to stop because of the chronic headaches with which she still lives. Some of her poetry is being featured this month on CE’s Poetry channel.
(This article was adapted from a forthcoming book.)
Of course “sex” is important. But why is it important? I turned the question over in my mind before the first class. Sex is important because it is the means by which the human race is propagated. Secondly, it is important because it is (besides intimacy with God through the Blessed Sacrament) the most intimate act one human being can experience with another person. It is therefore, or certainly should be, the most intimate, wonderful, binding act between two people.
For animals, it is an instinct. It is the way their species is carried on. What about human beings? Unless people become hardened and twisted, an emptiness and sadness grows in the hearts of those who have had many “partners.” Love has little or nothing to do with it and the most beautiful human act of love and commitment becomes a performance, a dreary, dusty, undramatic play with the same ending: ashes, and more ashes.
The agony of promiscuity is one our society does not want to face, mainly because in facing the pain we would have to acknowledge that we have been taught and accepted the lie that when one is truly free, one should be able to go from partner to partner, “relationship” to “relationship,” without being hurt in our deepest hearts, wounded unto hardness and dehumanization, insanity, and sometimes unto death. We should, the lie states, be able to calmly and “casually” say to the person with whom we have shared the greatest human intimacy, “If you find someone you like better, go ahead. It's fine with me. I'm cool about it all. I want what's best for you, and if someone else is best for you, don't worry about me.”
It is better, we think, to encourage the temporary “partner” to take us lightly and be on his way than to die of pain because what we have given is taken so lightly and casually. Better to give permission for the inevitable breakup than to break our hearts. Better to be indifferent, hard and cool than to care, to be alive in loving — warm and truly human.
The increased permission throughout all societal roles to treat other people as objects, nothing but objects, to obtain whatever one wants for the moment is bearing horrible fruit. But this is hindsight. “Sexology” when I was in college was to be a new and exciting field. We were all to be liberated from past prudishness and inhibitions. It was never doubted that this was a right and good thing, and if anyone did dare voice a reservation, the fact the question was asked at all was used as evidence of the prudery to be annihilated.
[Editor's Note: Kinsey, the recent movie about Kinsey’s life starring Liam Neeson, offers a sugar-coated version of this man and his evil ideas. Respond to this challenge to truth and decency with The Kinsey Corruption, a new publication of Catholic Outreach.]
So now here I was taking a “Sexology” class. The instructor was a well-known professor who was considered an expert in his field. He hinted to the class that this expertise “went further” than teaching, books and articles, and it was only the silly, rigid rules of society which prevented him from “sharing” his “enhanced knowledge.”
We were told that the early Egyptians had gone naked and it was considered perfectly natural. The class was informed that in Egypt and Polynesia, brother-sister marriages were perfectly acceptable, and it was only our societal attitudes towards incest and promiscuity, polygamy and polyandry, that had created our “hang-ups.” In other words, our belief that faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman extended to love and commitment to their children and their extended family members was something to be gotten rid of, and he was there to help us get rid of it.
(In truth, brother-sister marriages in Polynesia and Egypt were for the same reason: these marriages were between members of a royal family who were believed to be descended from the gods, and their godhood was to be passed on to their children undiluted with commoners' blood. Brother-sister marriages were never the general rule in either society, rather it was totally forbidden in both cultures. Nudity in both cultures was acceptable for young children, but loin cloths, at least, were worn by both men and women at the approach of puberty. But telling students the truth was another hang-up that had to go in this class.)
Our exercise on the third day was to yell the f-word at the person next to each of us. We were told we would be graded as to how well we cast aside our inhibitions. This was a smooth and subtle change from a grade based on how well we learned something. I honestly could not see the difference between this and brainwashing. It might be said that what we experienced was not violent. I would argue that it was indeed violent: it was a mental and spiritual violence against the heart, mind and soul.
I literally felt physically sick and degraded, and refused to do it. Afterwards, I went up to the professor.
“Why do you want me to get rid of my inhibitions, as you call them?”
“So you can be free of them.”
“Why should I want to be free of them?”
“They block you from expressing yourself and your true feelings.”
“No, they don't. I am sickened by your exercise of yelling obscenities.”
“It is only your idea that words like [the f-word]” (he enjoyed saying it) “are obscenities.”
“If they aren't obscenities, why bother with them at all? It makes just as much sense to yell, “toilet paper!” or “ginger ale!” if there isn't anything special about them.”
“We are doing this,” he said gravely and pompously, “because our society considers them obscenities, and you must be untrained from this societal attitude in order to be free.”
“I'm sorry,” I said gently, “I still don't understand. What is it you think I must be freed from?”
“From the bonds of thinking that sex is bad or dirty. If you can yell this or other words you have been taught to think are dirty or bad, and you can use them in your conversation as easily as you would use any other words, you will be free of your inhibitions and societal baggage.”
“First of all,” I said, “I don't think “sex,” as you call it, is dirty or bad at all. Not in itself, I mean. It can be made dirty or bad when it is perverted…”
“That's just what I mean,” he interrupted. “You have set ideas about what is right or wrong in sex, and a lot of other things. Our goal is to free you from these chains. You have been a prisoner to these ideas all your life, and I want to free you to be yourself.”
“And what does being myself mean to you?”
“It means doing or saying whatever you feel like doing or saying whenever you feel like doing or saying it, with whomever” (he really said “whomever”) “you feel like doing it with.”
