I was 11 years old when I had my first period.

I don’t have a clue as to who told me about periods or what they were. It definitely wasn’t my mother. Nor was it one of the nuns.

Maybe I learned about it from Sixteen magazine—that’s where I learned everything in those days.

I was lucky that the first time I started bleeding I knew what was going on or I might have thought I was dying or something.

I had 12 years of Catholic education, the last four of which was at an all girls high school where the nuns wore black habits with skirts that went to the floor and veils that went to their waists and wimples that kept them from having peripheral vision. I think those wimples were so that they could keep their eyes on Jesus or something like that.

Didn’t matter though, they worked quite well when it came to the nuns not being able to see us passing notes around the classroom.

As Freshman there was a special “Health Education Class” that was considered to be quite progressive for 1955: there, we were taught about menstrual periods (a little late) and about the mechanics of intercourse. We were also shown where babies came from via diagrams and pointers that the nuns would hold as dispassionately as they could when pointing to vaginas or penises or breasts.

“Father Reidy is coming next Friday to give the class his talk on Sex Education, girls,” Sister Leo Francis announced from the front of the classroom. Everyone knew that “Sex Education” was a euphemism for “How to Be a Good Girl and Not Get Pregnant Out of Marriage,” but of course, we could still hardly wait for the class.

To this day, I remember a lot of what Father Reidy said in his so-called Sex Education class. It basically amounted to a class on repression, sin and what Father referred to as the temptations of the flesh, a subject on which he was considered an expert.

Hopefully that was because he had been teaching about it for 20 years—not because he had personal experience of it or anything.

Extra classes were usually held in the school chapel, but the Sex Education class was held in the chapel on the convent side of the building, an indication of just how important it was considered to be. All the freshman girls trooped in and filled up the front pews.

On the altar, facing us, stood a huge poster of the Holy Family who I guessed, for some reason, were supposed to be people who didn’t have sex. In fact, they didn’t look like people who had sex. They looked like people who were rather— bored. Next to the poster stood Father Reidy in his Roman collar and black suit.

He was a short squat man with a bald head, thick glasses and a soft Irish accent.

I couldn’t help but wonder how in the world a celibate priest from Ireland would know anything about sex education but he did…at least everybody thought he did.

Given the depth of the indoctrination/brainwashing he dished out that day in the name of religion, it would take me almost two decades to shake off what he covered:

1)  All high school boys will tell you absolutely anything to get you to have sex with them; they are desperate, hungry and insatiable and they lie.

2)  All high school boys think about is sex—not football or baseball or grades, but sex.

3)  If he tells you he loves you, he doesn’t mean it.

4)  If he tells you that “it” hurts and you have to do something about “it” don’t believe him. First of all, if you don’t do something about “it” someone else will and second of all, it doesn’t hurt.

5)  All high school boys talk. Whatever you do with him, kiss him, hug him, hold his hand, whatever, he will talk about it to his buddies the next day no matter if he promises you that he won’t and your reputation will be ruined.

6)  Since high school boys want you so much, you have all the power. This means that you are in charge of whether he sins or not. So if he sins it’s on you not him and you have to confess it.

6)  Don’t ever go to the back of the bus, the back of a movie theater or the back seat of a car with a boy. It’s an occasion of sin if you do and you will have to confess it.

7)  Marriage is a different thing. While you spend your entire high school career telling boys no, when you get married never say no to your husband. It’s disobedience to your husband if you do and you will have to confess it.

8)  Don’t ever touch yourself “there,” fondle yourself “there,” or caress yourself “there.”  Don’t touch your breasts in such a way as to give yourself pleasure and don’t look at yourself naked in the mirror. Remember, “If it Feels Good, It’s Bad,” and don’t do it. If you do you will have to confess it.

9)  A good Catholic girl always wears stockings, girdles, and white panties and bras; she doesn’t wear makeup, doesn’t perm her hair, doesn’t shave her legs and doesn’t wear her skirts above her knees and “you all want to be good Catholic girls” because if you don’t when you die you will go to hell—or at least purgatory—where all of the women who fondle themselves and wear colored underwear are.

10)  Under no circumstances should you french kiss anybody, even when you are married. French kissing is a sin and you will have to confess it.

11)  If you get pregnant before you are married it is your fault, you should have said no to the boy. Nobody will talk to you, your baby will be a bastard and no good Catholic man will want you. You’ll definitely have to confess it.

12)  Finally, “I’ll be hearing confessions this afternoon right after lunch.”

 

 

 

More awesome from Carmelene: 

The Top 15 Things a 12-year-old Boy should know About Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll—from a 73-year-old Grandma.

 

Relephant: 

The Childhood Moment that Screwed up my Sexuality.

Revolutionizing Sex Education.

 

 

Author: Carmelene Siani

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: patti_heck at Flickr