Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (28 page)

At about 12 years old, I remember playing with myself occasionally. It felt so good, but somehow I knew it was wrong. Touching myself gave me many sensations I had not felt before, but I always felt terrible afterwards. When I was about 12 ½, I was at school one day and suddenly got a really nauseous and creepy feeling. I excused myself to go to the restroom and discovered that I was bleeding. I went crazy, became hysterical and started crying in the stall. Someone heard me and tried to talk to me, but I was horrified that they would find out I was bleeding, horrified that I had done something terribly wrong and that someone would find out I had been playing with myself. When someone finally
got the door open and figured out what was happening with me, they laughed at me, then scolded me for trying to hide it and not knowing what it was
.

When I got home that day, my mother already knew. She was derisive and cold. Her only comment was something like, “You should have known how to handle it. We talked about it years ago.” I felt like a total loser. No one had told me anything; yet I was supposed to know everything. Now with my own daughter, I find it extremely embarrassing to talk about. I look back on my marriage of almost two decades and realize that my husband has suffered because I could never get hold of what sex should be for myself, let alone him. I am frozen when it comes to sex. I love my husband, but can’t even imagine anything positive about sex with him or anyone. If we get divorced, I would understand
.

Among the most religious, there is an epidemic of sexual alienation and misinformation.

A married religious couple that is not having sex still has sexual energy. The sexual energy goes toward the church, the Sunday School, toward more vigorous prayer or teaching the children. It also goes into anger and frustration, expressed as depression or unhappiness, affairs, spousal abuse, child porn or molesting children. Even if one partner in a religious marriage is capable of turning off his or her sexual side, it is unlikely that the other is. The emotional satisfaction derived from good sex is sought in activities that are far less rewarding. As one person said about her previous religious life:

We had sex as teenagers before we got married, I didn’t ever want to feel that kind of guilt again, so I just avoided my husband and put all my attention on the children and teaching church school. The guilt got worst once we had children. He suffered and our marriage suffered until we left the church for good. Things are much better now, it [leaving the church] has renewed our entire relationship in ways I could never imagine when I was religious
.

Women are both powerful and powerless in many religious marriages.
They are subordinate to their husbands but have the power and the obligation to control sex. Their sexual desire and gratification are seen as unimportant and maybe even evil. One minister preached, “The woman
is a sacred vessel into which the soul of a new infant is formed. You should always keep that in mind when loving each other.”

Such ideas create all kinds of barriers to sexual enjoyment and creativity, to say nothing of making a woman into an object to be used for religious propagation. With this idea, sex can never be just for enjoyment but must always be a threesome with some god. As one wag put it, “God is watching you while you have sex, and may be pleasuring himself as well.”

From the beginning, religious girls are taught the sacredness of sex is in bearing children,
not
in having fun. This is, of course, totally backward since a woman may have thousands of sexual encounters and orgasms for every time she conceives. To claim that reproduction is the most important part of sex goes totally against our biology. For women who do not or cannot have children, this sends an even more insidious message – you are either selfish or barren. A selfish woman, in religious terms, puts her own pleasure above having children for god. A barren woman, in religious terms, is often seen as being punished by some god. Being barren may also be seen as a crime or a sin against her husband. In many parts of the world, a woman who chooses not or cannot have children is treated as second class. A woman who chooses not to get married is the most selfish of all.

While there is little doubt that women suffer the greatest oppression and restriction from religion, men are victims as well. Much of what we discussed about guilt, shame and indirect communication applies to boys, too. Many religions start with the notion that the deity is male and that, therefore, males are superior to women. This irrational idea informs boys’ sexual map as they grow into men and breeds ideas such as the following: women are subservient to men; men have control over women’s bodies; and men are more intelligent and closer to their god.

This thinking, in turn, sets the stage for behavior that leads to abuse and conflict in relations between the sexes. For example, boys are seen as superior to adult women in many contexts. Many Baptist churches believe a woman should not be allowed to teach boys older than 12 years old. In Saudi Arabia, an adult woman must be accompanied by a male relative in public. Her 12-year-old son can accompany her – he is more adult than she is. These kinds of messages often lead boys to believe that they can act superior and intimidating toward girls.

At the same time, boys receive messages about masculinity that force them to deny their sexual urges. Most adolescent boys (and girls) masturbate, but religion says this is forbidden. Adults preach against it, and comments are made by peers and older adolescents telling the child it is wrong and a sin. Boys make fun of one another, calling anyone who masturbates a homosexual. “Real men don’t masturbate.”

With constant messages tying masturbation to homosexuality, boys learn to be ashamed of their sexual urges. They often take that shame and direct it toward anyone who they believe is homosexual.
I believe that most homophobia among adolescents is really intense shame about their own masturbatory behavior.

Even if a boy is not necessarily religious or from a religious home, he is surrounded by a culture that perpetuates these ideas about women, masturbation and homosexuality. As a boy I was terrified of being called a homosexual. No one admitted to masturbating so I pretended I didn’t either. I saw boys harassed unmercifully because they were somewhat effeminate. Most of all, I saw the source of these ideas coming from preachers, Sunday School teachers, church camp counselors and my grandfather, a country church minister. With the rise of Evangelical Christianity in the United States, Africa, South America and other places, these messages are probably stronger today than they were when I was an adolescent.

In a boys’ locker room, it takes only one boy with foot fungus to infect a lot of others, if there are no preventive measures. In that same locker room, it only takes a few boys infected with religiously inspired ideas about masturbation, homosexuality and women’s inferiority to infect many other boys. The prevention is a few well-educated, assertive and secular boys who can and will call out this behavior and stop its spread. A few students standing up to religious sexual intimidation can make a huge difference. That is why such initiatives as the “It Gets Better” campaign, started by Dan Savage, are so important, giving support to students to stand up and challenge sexual bullying.
¹⁴⁷

Wherever religious ideas are taught, there are higher levels of sex abuse, child abuse, divorce and spouse abuse. If we wish to address the problems
associated with sexual crime, abuse and harassment, the place to start is in solid, non-religious, sexual education of children and adolescents. This means that religious ideas about homosexuality, masturbation, male superiority, female purity, etc., must be directly challenged.

145
National Survey of Family Growth, 2006. Available online at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/48
.

146
See pp. 19-20 in Ray and Brown, “Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion.” See
IPCPress.com
for the full report.

147
Dan Savage is the host of the nationally acclaimed Savage Love Podcast. Here is the pledge of the campaign: “Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are. I pledge to spread this message to my friends, family and neighbors. I'll speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work. I'll provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that ‘It Gets Better.’” (See
http://www.itgetsbetter.org/page/s/pledge/
)

Why do some people catch religion and others don’t? Why is my son religious when I didn’t raise him that way?

In earlier chapters we discussed genetic and epigenetic influences on sexuality. In this chapter we will narrow the discussion to the three main sources of influence on a child’s personality. These can be labeled as genetics, shared environment and non-shared environment.

First genetics. With modern genetic research, there is little doubt that genes have a big influence on behavior. My son hated bananas from the day he first had a taste and never enjoyed playing with dolls. My daughter loved bananas, music and dolls from very early but did not take to baseball. A good deal of research in animals and humans over the past few decades shows that those kinds of interests are genetically influenced.

The second area of influence is the shared environment, which includes all the rules and preferences of the parents or adult guardians. My parents had a rule that every child in the family was to take two years of piano. In that shared environment all four boys in my family took two years of piano, even if kicking and screaming. My mother suffered as much or more than we did in enforcing that rule. In the end, my three brothers dropped piano as soon as they could and did nothing with music. I went on to do a minor amount of singing. Music just wasn’t going to happen for us. We were much more intent on playing baseball and building forts, model cars and airplanes. The shared environment did not influence us much with respect to music, at least not the way my mother had hoped.

The third area of influence is the non-shared environment. While siblings may grow up in the same home, they actually live in very different environments. First, they are born into different times (except for twins). This means they have different peer groups, classes in school and opportunities, based on when they were born in the family. Second, their gender tends to create and attract a very different set of peers. Third, each child lives in a unique world mentally and physically.

When I was growing up, I shared a bedroom with one brother. We were born in the same family and shared a bedroom, but we chose very different peer groups and activities. I was always reading a book, doing scientific experiments or chumming with a limited number of friends. In contrast, my brother was always hanging around with friends and was into much more
physical activities. My mother tried to force my brother to help me with my scientific experiments, but he had no interest unless it involved blowing something up. We chose very different types of friends and joined different groups and clubs. Within those groups and clubs we were exposed to many ideas and practices that had nothing to do with our parents or with each other. Our non-shared environments were as different as if we had lived in different homes, let alone the same bedroom.

In 1997, Judith Rich Harris published an article that reviewed the literature on the influence of environment, genetics and parenting on human development, concluding that shared environment had almost no influence. Instead, she found that genetics and non-shared environment accounted for virtually all of personality development in the child. This has come to be called the 50-0-50 principle.
¹⁴⁸
Simply put, it says that parents have little impact on the development of a child’s personality. Genetics have about 50% and socialization apart from parents accounts for the other 50%. This controversial conclusion took the psychology world by storm. At first it was disputed and doubted, but it has since been corroborated in many ways and has become a central idea in personality development research. What she discovered and documented was that children have a mind and genes of their own. Parents’ role is to provide a protective and enriched environment within which the child can experience and sample the world, but that is about all.

This conclusion violates many assumptions about childrearing, especially those of religionists who believe the Old Testament “spare the rod, spoil the child” philosophy of parenting. If parents have such little influence, why do so many think they hold such sway over their children? It is an illusion that is easily explained. If a parent loves playing baseball and her child turns out to love it, the parent tends to take credit for the interest. After all, she taught and supported the child in learning the sport. The truth is that the parent had genetically programmed athletic abilities and passed those genes on to the child. The same parent may have a second child who stubbornly refuses
to play baseball and goes on to become a concert pianist. In this case, the parent may be disappointed in the child.

The parent did not “influence” the child to become a baseball player any more than she influenced the resistant child to become a concert pianist. Many parents fool themselves into thinking they were a key influence in a child’s success but had no part in a child’s “failure.” The reverse can be true as well – some parents think they played a major role in their child’s failure.

In reality, in both cases, the parent played a small role. Parents teach and expose their children to many different possible activities and interests including providing for and supporting their education. As children grow, they decide which interests are important to them. This does not mean that parents have no influence over their children, but that influence is not as direct and controlled as they would like to believe.