Be a Good Girl, Put Your Lips on the Dildo, and I Will Love You More

After reading Aspazia's last post, I have some comments. Aspazia's post strikes the core of Christian men that promote feminine objectification and demoralization. I assume that my position in the undergraduate realm gives me a different perspective than some of the other individuals who post on this site. While I was completely disgusted by the young Christian guy pushing his girlfriend to use a dildo and perform oral sex on other men, I was even more appalledd by his assertion that he would love her more for doing so. This kid must be reading a different Bible. No Bible I have ever read says anything about making your girlfriend perform oral sex on six men in one night.

Last week, I had the pleasure of going to lunch with an amazing girl, May, and her mother, April. April and I were waiting for May who just got finished running at the track. As we were sitting on the bench conversing, we heard bagpipes in the distance. April decided we should check it out. April and I found bagpipers in front of the campus dining hall protesting the film to be released on the book The DaVinci Code.

"Why are you protesting the book and movie?" April asked.

"It's blasphemous. It alleges Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene," the young man replied.

"What if they did have sex?"

"Ma'am, that's blasphemy."

"Hey, I am a Catholic, and I know it's just fiction," she replied. "How do you feel about Opus Dei and corporal mortification?"

"I think it's fine," he replied.

"What about women as priests?"I interjected.

"It's not what the Lord wants," he stated simply. "It's not a woman's role."

Before we could continue our increasingly heated conversation, May came and swept April and me away for a wonderful lunch.

I was raised Catholic. But my religion often injects me with an unhealthy dose of cognitive dissonance. When the church doesn't even allow women to be priests, how can we expect a society that sees women as equals?

I must admit, my discomfort with the particularities of religious fundamentalism extends farther. A great deal of my formative years were spent in a South-Central Pennsylvania town that proudly labeled itself as part of the "Bible belt." The upside to the Bible Belt was a wonderful sense of community and connectedness. The downside was the all-too-present occurrence of dehumanizing, if not misogynistic views of and actions toward women. Women often found themselves confined in straightjackets--straightjackets with methaphorical modern scarlet letters that read you are lesser, you are here to serve, take comfort in my strength, obey my commands, and you will be protected. Sounds like religious doctrine, except these women are expected to serve men. Indeed, these letters are placed on women's bodies with promises of protection and strength, a female homage to men that mimics heavenly salvation. Except this salvation is manifested in human imperfection. As humans are expected to serve God, women are told to serve men.

I have seen this straightjacket become eerily attractive to young women. At a young age teens find themselves struggling with existential questions in a society that asks them to grow up and compete all too soon:

I am searching for my place in this world. Who am I? Where am I going?

The structure of religion makes simple answers all too accessible. Enter the hierarchy. Take comfort in God's grace. Suspend disbelief and jump into faith. These are, by my own admission, beautiful and brave concepts for the spirit of human uncertainty and fear to embrace.

Yet these concepts of divinity and faith are neatly tucked into dogmatic doctrines and human institutions. When the institution devalues women and dilutes their ability to stand as a representative of God, one can fault the institution and the constituents. This is the issue I take with Catholicism and priesthood. When the members of the institution use the doctrines of faith to mimic the supremacy of God in the veiled supremacy of man over woman, it is a societal problem. Serving God and serving other men are two very different things. How do we reconcile egalitarian beliefs with institutions and individuals who attempt to subject women to a "natural role" that defines them in simplicity, and limit their abilities to influence society as they so choose?

I often reflect sadly on the experiences of one of my closest friends. She fell in love with a mutual friend. He was an evangelical Christian, and she was a Cathloic. He decried her Catholicism, and that was something she could handle. But when she applied to college and had the good fortune of receiving admission to the University of Notre Dame pre-med, he attempted to put his foot down. She would not be going to college. She was supposed to be a mother. Fortunately, she took off in pursuit of her future and left him. However, I saw just how painful it was for her to find out the man she loved didn't love or appreciate her for who she was and what she aspired to become.

Another friend, also pre-med, was asked by her Christian boyfriend to drop the charade, drop out, and come live with him at his college ten hours away. Her aspirations were expected to take a back seat to his. He asked her to pray over it.

While these few stories may not reflect religious institutions as a whole, they do reflect saddening trends within the institutions.The power of religion is the power of belief. The power of religious institutions is the power of persuasion. We are seeing both formal and informal institutional methods of persuasion that fly in the face of human dignity and women's humanity.

The example of the dildo as anniversary gift in Aspazia's post is sickening. How can we reconcile the great respect Christian theology endows for each human and "Be a good girl, put your lips on the dildo, and I will love you some more?"

I wish I knew. I do know that the young man's requests are vile, and his girlfriend's submission is saddening. I do know that my friend's expectations that their girlfriends sacrifice their futures is also saddening. These young men obviously do not recognize the value and worth of these women. Even worse, the young woman in the Dickinson story doesn't recognize her own worth.

As Aspazia's post shows, teaching people to disconnect from sexuality is rarely effective. Aspazia has often commented on religous opposition to sexual education. In the pursuit of promoting abstinence, I wonder if some religious institutions have forgotten to teach about healthy relationships and boundaries. Perhaps the pitfall of some modern Christian institutions is that they ask their unmarried followers to set aside their human desires and abstain from sex, instead of teaching their followers about healthy, egalitarian relationships.