Joseph McBride believes that forcing young men to repress their sexuality is unhealthy, ineffective, and ultimately abusive.
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No kidding—the title of a sex manual I had to read when I attended Catholic high school in the early 1960s was Modern Youth and Chastity. It was written by a Jesuit priest, and its lesson was simple: “Don’t Do It.”
… the old specter of sexual repression has reared its vicious head in new ways, so our “modern youth” often are caught in a similarly painful vise between what their bodies demand and what society tells them.
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That advice didn’t prove very helpful to me at the time. My anxieties over how to reconcile the repressive teachings of the church with my naturally developing sexual desires led me to a physical and psychological breakdown in my senior year. I learned some valuable lessons in that process about how not to deny the sexual impulses common to us all, but it took me longer to learn how to handle them. Today, we like to think we live in a more enlightened age, but the old specter of sexual repression has reared its vicious head in new ways, so our “modern youth” often are caught in a similarly painful vise between what their bodies demand and what society tells them.
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When I read my memoir of that tumultuous period in my life, The Broken Places, I tend to look at my younger self as a boy I once knew, someone I like and wish I could help, as me-but-not-me. That kind of distancing is one reason you write a memoir. It also helps you understand your past and exorcise your obsessions. Although that is a helpful process, it doesn’t entirely work, since there is no such thing as “closure.” But I hope that my experiences in the sexual Dark Ages will be of some benefit to younger readers today. I offer here five hard-won lessons I gleaned from my struggles with sexuality in the days before the Sexual Revolution of the late 1960s.
1) Don’t Do It is advice that simply does not work.
Today we hear of the “abstinence movement” being foisted on young people. Sure, they need to learn how to handle sexual desires responsibly and carefully, especially in a time when sexually transmitted diseases are more rampant. But counseling the denial of basic sexual impulses is a fool’s errand. It can only lead to terrible fear and confusion, as well as to evasiveness and rebellion. Few people today become priests or nuns, and even in the Catholic Church, as we’ve seen, celibacy often is honored more in the breach than in the observance. Leveling with young people about their changing bodies and emotions is much more valuable advice than the kind of warnings we received in Modern Youth and Chastity and its variant edition, Instructions on Dating for High School Boys.
The rule says that kissing, or, for that matter, any physical expressions of affections that are frequent, enduring, and ardent, are invariably directly stimulating.
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That pamphlet, which I read while attending Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, was taught to us by its author, our school disciplinarian, the late Father Jerome Boyle, S.J., a grinning sadist who also whipped our asses with a sawed-off golf club for all manner of transgressions.
It’s obvious that there was a strong sadomasochistic component in that kind of discipline, which would get an educator arrested today but was approved of by our parents in a misguided attempt to keep us in line. Father Boyle’s sex manual, or anti-sex manual, warned against becoming aroused by the near occasions of sin, which lurked just about everywhere: “A few cannot read a decent book, or a magazine like the Catholic Digest, without getting into a tizzy.” His apocalyptic rhetoric took on familiarly harrowing Cold War overtones. “Controlling sex,” our rod-wagging school disciplinarian pointed out, is “like controlling an atomic bomb.”
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As I write in The Broken Places, “What Instructions on Dating for High School Boys drilled most indelibly into my mind was its explanation of how one can tell when kissing becomes mortally sinful. This was known as ‘THE FEAR RULE.’ That rule came into play whenever I found myself in dangerous proximity to a girl: ‘The first three letters stand for frequent, enduring, and ardent. The final letter R stands for the reason. The rule says that kissing, or, for that matter, any physical expressions of affections that are frequent, enduring, and ardent, are invariably directly stimulating. Therefore, no reason apart from marriage can justify them. Bestow such marks of affection, and you appropriate to yourself privileges to which you are not entitled. You are putting your sex faculty into actual operation. This reasoning is hard for many young couples to see. It is still harder for them to accept. But accept it they must. It is God’s law.’
“So what I took from this sacred formula was that kissing passionately was mortally sinful, and you would burn in Hell for it, at least if it was Frequent, Enduring, and Ardent: FEAR. As Father Boyle told us personally when we timidly queried him in class, all three states had to occur simultaneously: Kissing was not mortally sinful if it was frequent but not enduring, or if it was enduring but not ardent. Apparently ‘THE FEAR RULE’ sanctioned occasional, brief, tepid kisses. At least that way you wouldn’t burn in Hell just for making out; you’d only go to Purgatory for a couple of years.” I took this all mumbo-jumbo very seriously.
2) Prior evidence that repression doesn’t work began to accumulate for me in Catholic grade school.
It was bad enough we were given hellfire-and-brimstone indoctrination that sex was evil per se (I never really understood why there had be two commandments out of ten warning against sex, but I got the point). But I also had an insane nun in third grade at St. Bernard’s Grade School in Wauwatosa, a disturbingly attractive woman named Sister Magdalena, who took out on me her obscure frustrations (probably at least partly sexual in nature; the word “sadomasochism” again comes to mind). She assigned each girl in the class a long wooden ruler to whack me over the head if I did anything wrong; all day for the first semester I was being beaten over the head by the bruiser of a girl sitting next to me and other girls passing my desk.
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In the second semester, my desk was moved to the front of the classroom, with my back to the other students, which was even worse because I felt so ostracized. And one day the nun shoved me into the broom closet and had the rest of the class push on the door to keep me inside. Part of me feels as if I am still in that closet.
My fascination would become an obsession with what passed for pornography in my high school years (1961-65), i.e., the girl-next-door nudes in Playboy and airbrushed nudist magazines.
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Just as damaging in my early days was the strict segregation of the sexes. We were discouraged from talking with girls, and once when I walked a girl home at lunch for a few days, I was warned by the pastor not to do so again. And we were warned by the nuns not to look at “dirty pictures.” There was a drugstore down the hill from our school that sold magazines with semi-nude pictures of women, the tame sort allowed in the fifties. Naturally, because they were prohibited, this piqued my interest, and I began studying the skin mags intently every day after school.
My fascination would become an obsession with what passed for pornography in my high school years (1961-65), i.e., the girl-next-door nudes in Playboy and airbrushed nudist magazines. I was learning how unhealthy it is to be discouraged from having curiosity about seeing what the other half of the human race looks like in its natural state. Prohibiting such curiosity leads to both guilt and rampant prurient obsession as a substitute for actual interaction with girls. Because I hadn’t been able to talk with girls in grade school and was physically abused by them, I naturally was inept and afraid about dealing with the opposite sex in high school. I went to a couple of dances, but when the girls behaved rudely, I stopped going and never talked to a girl again until I had the good fortune to crack up and be put in a mental hospital.
3) That experience saved my life. Partly because a girl came up and talked to me.
Kathy Wolf was a troubled but brilliant young woman who in that benighted age had been poorly diagnosed. She was labeled as “schizophrenic,” had been subjected to shock treatments, and was suicidal. We had a giddy romance that turned sour by the end of that summer, when her demons became more and more uncontrollable. She had three personalities; for two weeks, she thought she was Barbra Streisand. But in my process of relaxing with her and sharing thoughts and feelings, and enjoying making out with a young woman who had few sexual inhibitions, I was learning about life. Unfortunately, Kathy was too troubled to survive. While I was getting better, she was destroying herself. But I owe everything to her.
4) Although our relationship inevitably fell apart, it readied me for the Sexual Revolution of the sixties.
I did a lot of sexual experimenting in college and beyond, after I moved to Hollywood in the seventies, but I was still overly fixated on sex as fallout from my earlier warping. My libido was spinning out of control in other ways; too much liberation can be as daunting and confusing as too much repression. Eventually I managed to find some balance between my uncontrollable impulses and the realities of dealing with adult women with needs of their own and with whom I could develop a more mature way of relating. I learned how to treat sex as a natural component but only one aspect of a healthy relationship.
5) My nightmarish early experiences with sexual repression in an era that systematically misrepresented human nature might seem more troubling than what most young people go through today.
But human nature doesn’t fundamentally change, and adolescents in every time and place have many challenges to deal with as their bodies and emotions evolve and society fights back against those natural impulses. Today’s youth may not often be given chastity manuals (except in certain fundamentalist circles), but they are inundated with sexual imagery that must seem bewildering. They also are faced with questions about gender identity that most kids in my generation didn’t have to deal with because we didn’t know they even existed. Gay, lesbian, and transgender youths now face issues more complex than we most of us could have imagined in the days when masturbation was considered the most urgent sexual problem for Catholic teenage boys.
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I can only advise frankness between parents and children and teachers and the most generously understanding attitude by parents toward what their kids are going through as they struggle toward adulthood. Any attempt to stifle that process is doomed to failure and runs the risk of damaging and even destroying a young person. The choices between “Modern Youth and Chastity” are not that simple. In a world full of psychological imperatives and social choices that seem to keep multiplying every year, when we deal with youthful sexuality, we need to be open to complexities and careful experimentation and, above all, to absolute honesty rather than indulging in evasion and denial.
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Photo: Getty Images
What Anthony said. I am a student in a Jesuit high school as of now, and it’s taken me until my third year here to realize the level of sexual repression that has wormed its way into my head. It feels like a thick cloud that follows me around, breeding claustrophobia and restlessness. This is a school that is known for being more progressive, but by nature of being an all-boys school, and having only all-girls schools nearby for female interaction, I have never had a healthy relationship. All of my public school friends have lost their virginity, and most… Read more »
“My libido was spinning out of control in other ways; too much liberation can be as daunting and confusing as too much repression.” I think this is the crux of this issue that the author so nicely stated. In our culture, we have an odd mixture of too much ‘liberation’ (which to me is really just another form of control) and too much repression. We repress the most basic things about the human body and sexuality that it becomes this twisted, strange monster that controls us instead and we ride that wave in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation” but… Read more »
On whom is the boy’s sexuality to be expressed? Professionals? Are we talking about lowering the age of consent? Has anybody run this past fathers of daughters? Pron?
Hi Joseph Thank you for bringing this important issue up to debate. Since sexual repression is not the healthy solution do deal with sexual feelings and longings, then what are the best alternativ teachings and values to teach children and teenagers ? And for adults as well…..? Franky I think it is difficult to say where should we set boundaries and where can we just feel free to do what passion and desire tell us to do? I do not know about any society on earth that has solved this problem. Do you? All societies have some rules and regulations… Read more »
Perhaps you can explain why more youth are waiting to have sex then in the past?
Hi Tom I see a person brought porn into this debate. Do we have any facts about the use of porn among the young that choose to wait to have sex? I mean, do you really wait to have sex if you use the kind of porn we find on the internet today? Personally I don’t think so. Not much purity left after some hours with todays online hard core porn . Sexual repression is NOT good thing , and does a not of harm, but seems to be hard for many societies to figure out what is best valuses… Read more »
sorry, a typo
Sexual repressin is NOT a good thing and does a lot of harm.
Oh man, with all the things about VR in the news recently, and knowing that sites like virtualrealporn (dot com) already exist, I’m sure this is only going to lead to some serious societal issues. Japan, for example, always seems to be slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to these kinds of things, and their issues are staggering. Example from a few year ago (but there’s been much digital ink spilled on the issue since then): http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
I always thought it would be war that destroyed the human race, but maybe I was wrong.
Abusive? I can only base my view on what’s worked for me and the people in my life and it was nowhere near abusive and certainly had no negative effects .
I think the sexual revolution, and particularly some elements of feminism, are doing exactly to today’s youth just what your Catholic school did to you as a young man. Shaming tactics are everywhere for men today. It’s like we don’t own our sexuality, that some women have appointed themselves arbiters of it. You need only read any thread on porn on GMP to see that
LOL …. Shaming? I grew up in the 60’s / 70’s and I can’t remember when I was shamed into abstinence. Not saying that it didn’t happen. We were raised with a very healthy attitude about sex. Never worried about STD’s, a girl getting pregnant … My then girlfriend, now wife and I got to know each other and fell in love without having to have sex. We’ve been married for 41 years. Older brothers #1 mirrored beliefs, married 47 years, brother #2 mirrored beliefs (deceased) married 30 years, brother #3 Mirrored beliefs (deceased) married 27 years. One brother and… Read more »
Boohoo, stop with the nonsense.
The only thing women, in general, “shame” (but still not enough!) is male sexual violence/entitlement and how most straight males still want to control, abuse and own women’s sexuality (and women in general).
The porn thing is about how horribly unfair FEMALES are being displayed and treated on mainstream porn – made by men for men. If you don’t think so, that is another proof straight dudes want women to be their sexual slaves and to control and oppress women’s sexuality as something made for the male pleasure and nothing more.
Frank – porn is something that influences the cultural of sex for not just males, but females as well. Men are not the only ones affected by porn. It affects women too. It’s not that women want to be arbiters of men’s sexuality. But a lot of women are concerned with how men choose to portray women in their media. We are concerned about how we are stereotyped and how men determine are value and worth. We are concerned by what men may expect from us sexually. Don’t you think that’s legitimate? Sex is not just about men. And it’s… Read more »
FrankS What do you mean? Do you say the sexual revolution caused a sexual repression of men? How? After the sexual revolution men could have sex also when they had no intention of producing babies. Men could have sex without being married. Men could have causal sex without any obligations. And many placed they could set up house and live with a woman without being married. It is impossible for me to see this a new supression of a mens sexuality . To me it looks like men have more sexual freedom and freedom to choose than ever before. They… Read more »
Thank you SO much for writing this. Although, judging by some of the date references, I’m about 15 years younger than you, I went through so much of the same. I was brought up Catholic, and went to Catholic schools for at least the first half of my schooling. I experienced many of the same things, right down to the part about a nun (sister Helen) making me feel like worm, and even the “girls hitting me with rulers” bit. Between that, and the feminist “all men are pure evil incarnate” rhetoric that surrounded me in the 70s, I’ve been… Read more »