Saturday, August 26, 2017
Nuns And Sex Education
By Donovan Baldwin
Warning, R-rated, mature audiences only.
I grew up reading, and attending Catholic schools, in Pensacola, Florida in a sexually repressed era.
I read from one end of the Pensacola Public Library to the other.
Read a few things that might have appalled my parents, and the nuns, had they known.
Well, maybe not.
For all their strict moral code, the nuns were pretty open about life and literature.
A nun once lifted up part of her habit and poked herself in her breast so that we would understand a line more fully in "The Highwayman". Another once told a class that a woman in lingerie was more attractive and sexually appealing than a naked woman.
Another got mad at a girl reading Macbeth because she was embarrassed to read Lady Macbeth's line, "Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums...", and, don't get me started on sex education with nuns!
Anyway, I did NOT start out to give a sex education class, and that's sort of the point.
From the nuns, I actually learned how to accept life, and sex, honestly, reviewing it openly, thinking and speaking frankly, and later, as a mature adult, about life, sex, death, love, in ways that may make some uncomfortable.
Part of that lesson was from nuns, part from life, and, part from all the mysteries, westerns, historical novels, and sci-fi stories I read so avidly and copiously.
I learned that there were different ways to look at things once you knew about them, but, that there were facts you had to face.
Thanks, nuns.
I grew up reading, and attending Catholic schools, in Pensacola, Florida in a sexually repressed era.
I read from one end of the Pensacola Public Library to the other.
Read a few things that might have appalled my parents, and the nuns, had they known.
Well, maybe not.
For all their strict moral code, the nuns were pretty open about life and literature.
A nun once lifted up part of her habit and poked herself in her breast so that we would understand a line more fully in "The Highwayman". Another once told a class that a woman in lingerie was more attractive and sexually appealing than a naked woman.
Another got mad at a girl reading Macbeth because she was embarrassed to read Lady Macbeth's line, "Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums...", and, don't get me started on sex education with nuns!
Anyway, I did NOT start out to give a sex education class, and that's sort of the point.
From the nuns, I actually learned how to accept life, and sex, honestly, reviewing it openly, thinking and speaking frankly, and later, as a mature adult, about life, sex, death, love, in ways that may make some uncomfortable.
Part of that lesson was from nuns, part from life, and, part from all the mysteries, westerns, historical novels, and sci-fi stories I read so avidly and copiously.
I learned that there were different ways to look at things once you knew about them, but, that there were facts you had to face.
Thanks, nuns.
Labels: article by Donovan Baldwin, donovan baldwin, Macbeth, nuns, Pensacola, Pensacola Public Library, sex, sex education, The Highwayman
# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 7:20 AM 
