#obligatory note that i am not catholic myself but

[proosh]

in another life i would have been a merovingian girlfailure in an abbey cooking up the most heretical of biblical genderfuck yaois but we make do with what we have

[katscratches]

Nice Girls Don’t, & Other Lies I Was Taught (part 1)

-- a comparison of sex education between generations --

Disclaimer:

I don't claim any sort of sociological or psychological background. My sole qualification for writing about the impact of a lack of sex education is, frankly, that I've had a lot of sex. This has turned into more of a memoir than anything, is certainly more opinion than fact, and draws heavily on my own personal experiences. Names will be changed as needed or requested for the sake of privacy.

Part 1: The Boring Yet Obligatory Introduction

Now that Pride month has drawn to a close – yes, I know it's been a week already, but it's me, and you might have expected I'd come sliding in just after the last-minute, clothes askew and hair all mussed – I have been thinking quite a lot about how attitudes have changed regarding sex, gender, sexuality, sex education (all the fun stuff!) since I was a kid.

See, I have kids of my own. Teenagers, really. Two of them are even technically adults! I know, I know – I can't believe it either.  And the things they've learned in Canadian public schools over the last decade or so is a far cry from what I supposedly learned in 1980's Catholic school. They've learned about the mechanics of sex, the fluidity of gender, sexually transmitted infections, safe sex, etc. It's an eye-opener, let me tell you. The stuff they're taught now could fill volumes!

The stuff I learned wouldn't even make a satisfactory introductory paragraph.

When I originally conceived this idea, I was thinking of some sort of brief essay. But as I began actually sketching out ideas and outlines, so many memories surfaced, most of which I'd completely forgotten. I really felt they were too important to the subject as a whole for me to discard them, and this little idea grew. And grew. And before I knew it, this was turning into some kind of half-assed memoir.

This was not my original intention.

However, how can I possibly explain differences between my kids' sex education and my lack thereof, without also explaining how those very differences directly impacted my whole life?

I'd like to give you a little bit of background about myself, so you have some idea of where I'm coming from. I hope that's not too boring. I'm sorry if it is; I'm truly not a terribly exciting person. But the way I was raised and the people who raised me – and how they were raised -- do actually have a great deal to do with my attitudes toward all things sexual.

I was born in Toronto, Canada, in the summer of 1970 to a pair of rampantly horny teenagers – Catholic mum, Protestant dad. Birth control was not considered, clearly. And abortions were certainly not readily available. What was available was adoption, and I was made a ward of the Catholic Children's Aid Society quicker than you could spit. For a brief time, I lived with a foster family who had wanted to adopt me themselves, but decided against it as they already had eight kids of their own. Yes, EIGHT. They must have been very loving people; that's all I can say. Really loving. Like... all the time.

When I was roughly 3 months old, I was adopted by an older couple – they were both 40 years of age at the time of my adoption – who already had one natural child of their own, aged 4. My new parents fought a lot with each other when I was young. Most of the time it was verbal abuse, although there was one memorable time where my dad had slapped my mum across the face because she'd bitten his arm. I don't know what precipitated that fight. It may have been finances, as it was right around the time my dad had been laid off from work due to an economic depression in the early-mid 1970s. But who knows? They argued over nearly everything. They'd even once had an argument over Jello-O, which resulted on my dad deciding to sleep on the couch for the next twenty years! (I wish I was exaggerating that.)

Needless to say, they did not share a bedroom.

My brother and I used to pray for them to divorce. Although we always ended up having to take those prayers to Confession, what we really wanted was some peace and quiet. We were too young to know what went on behind closed bedroom doors, but we had an idea that maybe most parents at least shared a bed. All we could figure was that if they couldn't get along well enough to share a room, maybe they shouldn't be together at all.

Believe me when I say there was nothing sexual going on in that house, and I was about as innocent as you could get.

There were two main reasons my parents never divorced. First and foremost, they were Catholic. Divorce would have been a sin. The other reason was that it really never would have occurred to my mother at that time to want something different. Here's your bed; lie in it.

The Seventies must have been an interesting time, I think, with all the strangely mixed attitudes toward sex. On one hand, people were still dealing with the sexual hang-ups of earlier eras, where sex was barely talked about inside the bedroom, much less outside of it. But on the other hand, suddenly sex was everywhere. Feminism was booming. Homosexuality was beginning to be decriminalized. The book markets were fairly bursting with all manner of sexually liberating books – Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Dr Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex, for instance. And while Playboy had been around since the early Fifties, suddenly there was Playgirl, and the much more explicit Hustler. All of this led to the 1970s being referred to as a decade of sexual revolution.

Sex was finally ceasing to be such a taboo.

Not in my house. I grew up blissfully unaware of anything to do with physical love. I was a mostly happy kid, though very shy, and very sheltered. And as the youngest child out of all my cousins, there was literally no reason for me to ask about how babies were made, as there weren't any around.

This strangely sterile upbringing had a very lasting effect on me. To this day – no matter how many or what kind of things I've done --  I can't begin a conversation with my kids about anything to do with sex. I don't mean rude comments or dirty jokes – that's no issue – but an actual serious conversation? Not happening. If one of them brings up a topic, then they've broken the ice, and it's smooth sailing from there on in.

But I just can't bring myself to initiate it.

Notes:

At the present time, the outline I have for this has come to 18 chapters, including this introduction. I will try to update as often as I can, but I ask you to keep two things in mind. One, that I work full-time at a mentally exhausting job (although I do actually love it) and can't manage to get time to write every day, although I'm trying. Two, I am going to be moving house over the next few weeks, and I have an absolutely dreadful amount of packing still to do! Updates may come more regularly after I'm settled in my new home.

If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to see covered, please message me about it!

[automatismoateo]

Advice​ Requested: Atheism​, Activism, and Apologetics via /r/atheism

Submitted August 12, 2018 at 11:07AM by Basic_Anywhere (Via reddit https://ift.tt/2MjbgrE) Advice​ Requested: Atheism​, Activism, and Apologetics

"My father is Catholic, my mother is a Protestant, and we go to a Lutheran church. So, I think I am Lutheran but I'm not sure why I'm not Catholic or Protestant. We change churches a lot, so maybe next time."

-My typical childhood response to "What religion are you?"

"Dear God, please send Peter Pan to take me to Neverland. I promise to do any chores as long as I can stay, I would like to say bye to my family but understand if I can't and am ready to go. In the meantime, please keep my family and all the kitties in the world safe. And please tell all my stuffed animals I love them even if I could not hug the ones on the top shelf."

-My typical personal prayer session ages 8-11

___________________________________________________

Something with religion has never clicked with me, even Sunday School always felt like an obligatory story-telling session and secretly I was always a little paranoid that the adults were just trying to distract us so they could eat doughnuts without us. To be honest though, I am not sure how serious I was supposed to take it. I struggled hard with the difference between the concept of a god just as I struggled with the concept of Santa and the Easter Bunny. Despite my internal struggle, I was fortunate to have 2 loving and well-intentioned parents that I trusted implicitly. I was a stellar at doing what I was told and when asked about God, Santa, or any other character my parents told me about I defended their honor and integrity. My parents said God was real so I believed them; that also meant I felt just as passionately about Santa and his entire crew of fictional characters.

2 specific events at ages 11 and 12 occurred that rocked my world; my first flight to heaven and my epic 7th grade santa debate.

My father didn't tell us until that morning, it was a surprise. Not only were we not going to school today, it would be all week! And wait for it, we are going to Disney World and we are flying! It was 1996 and I was 11 years old; in some way, I always thought that if I could get into the sky I could verify that heaven existed. I spent the next 4 hours (there was not much time between the news and getting on the plane) filled with this immense excitement to get some closure about this whole God and heaven thing. I had visions of angels lounging in the clouds playing their harps, but more importantly, I was extremely interested in figuring our the temperatue-control in heaven. I knew at a young age I didn't like winter and prefer a warmer climate. I wanted to see if it was hot in hell if that meant heaven would be chilly. Short story long, there was nothing up there and the flight was climate-controlled. I was silent for the rest of the flight and felt pretty disillusioned, but I brushed it off, just as I clearly did everything at that age if my parents told me to.

After my god-less flight, I think my parents could sense I was doubting things. They probably got this sense when I decided the following Christmas to write Santa a letter along with my list. In my letter, I not only asked but begged for the truth. I knew that when I sent the letter out in the special mailbox, it wouldn't be found by my parents and I would get some real answers. My real answers came in the form of another letter under my pillow on Christmas morning. The letter praised my faith and verified his existence. I was sold. I was so 'sold' with my physical evidence that Santa was real that I was even willing to prove my friends wrong. By this time I am in 7th grade and it wasn't the best idea. My intense desire to find physical evidence to support my parent's teachings led me to a straight-face debate at 12 years old in support of Santa. I lost, clearly. After this happened, I went home and told my mother. My mother at this point quickly realized that preserving my innocence regarding Santa and crew might impact my ability to fit in socially so she came out with the truth, "There is no Santa." I wish I could say that she only had to tell me once, but she had to go further. I was firm in my beliefs because I had proof now, I had a letter directly from the man and I brought it to her. I was now in a point where I was arguing with my mother in defense of Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. She confessed to it all and told me she wrote all the notes, cookies, tooth money, everything. I would love to say I was devastated, I would love to say I cried, but I didn't. My only question was, "Why?" Why lie? And how could you let me defend you tirelessly and not see or understand that all I wanted was the truth. God was not brought up that day, but to be honest, I knew my parents were not the ones I needed to ask about these things.

As an adult, I realize that these thoughts and beliefs are inconsistent with normal childhood development and I had a poor grasp on several life concepts. I would like to think I have changed, but a lot of my naive traits have carried into adulthood. I am a trusting person and will typically trust a person unless I have evidence to show otherwise. It has led to getting burned in the past, but I still value the learning experiences and like to think I truly learned from each one.

______________________________________________

More recently, in my mid-30's I have been reflecting on the community I surround myself with. While we physically enjoy similar lifestyles and careers, something always changes once people discover I am an atheist. Everyone seems okay with me not being a Christian (or Lutheran, or whatever), but when I reject a higher power completely I lose them, their eyes say "What on earth happened to such a beautiful woman that made her lose all her faith?" and I just want to rage back that I am not sure if I ever had it. I am not losing friends, but I am at the same time. There is a loss of closeness and I really don't want to get any closer to them, if anything as a human I am also trying to find a sense of community in my own way.

In an effort to preserve relationships, I decided to start researching ways I could tactfully express my beliefs without offending others; in my quest, I discovered The Athiest Experience in Austin Texas. I enjoy how the show is able to present excellent arguments in a respectful manner and their work has inspired me to want to become an atheist activist. How can a person be a good activist without a firm understanding of the bible. I feel like when a theist retorts with, "You don't know, you have not read the bible" that they are very correct. They are so correct and I don't want to read it either. How can I be a good activist without harming the atheist community with ignorance? I am ignorant to religion because I have rejected it oddly my whole life through confusing it with other fictional characters and a general lack of understanding of the world around me ::insert that cute emoji with a woman holding both her hands up as if she is asking a question in a confused manner::.

I am such a literal person and I can't wrap my head around anything they say to even start arguing. Unfortunately, I love to argue. How can I be a better advocate for the atheist community without sounding like an ignorant theist*? I am super able and willing to learn, I just need the correct information and to be helped with presentation methods. Ideally, I would like to protect and defend my views and be a resource for anyone that also questions what they were told to believe. Like an atheist apologist. I still can't tell if I just want to protect my beliefs in a professional manner or if I want to convert the world. I get angry and defensive when people try to convert me and I don't want to do that to others. On the flip side, religion truly can and does hurt our society and oppress people. I watch friends and family suffer through both physical and emotional abuse in the name of God. I see wealthy men become wealthier and the good ole' boy system is alive and well. Where I see religion is where I typically see the most corruption and pain. So, what happens now? I've been sitting and watching naively for too many years, how can I become an asset to this community?

*In saying "ignorant theist" I mean the people that blindly defend religion without having studied it either. The ones that place all faith in things their religious leaders simply tell or preach them without second thought. I have no argument myself, I just have a general lack of belief in a higher power that is supported by a "prove me otherwise" attitude which no one has been able to do.