There is a meme on facebook about how some people appear to be the holiest of holies with what they post on their wall. Except that some of their friends actually knew them in high school and know what they actually did do in high school. Let’s just say it wasn’t all that holy.
A few months ago I got into a conversation with one of those people on Facebook. Someone I’ve known since elementary school, through junior high and high school. Lets just say what she advocates now is not the life she lead in high school. The meme she posted to her wall, that started off this conversation was about ending sex education. Because, as the meme goes, you end sex education teens will stop having sex.
[insert snarky comment here]
She and I attended the same sex ed class starting in 5th grade. The three classes of 5th graders were separated by gender. The boys went to the gym for their class. The girls went to the auditorium. With that our first sex ed classes began.
Actually, considering all the information covered, or not thoroughly explained until high school, the BEST sex ed class I ever attended was done by the United Methodist church my family attended. There were several sessions, and they were segregated – not by gender but by role. Tweens and early teens had their own sessions, and parents had their own sessions. In these role segregated sessions not only did we kids get good and accurate, honest, science based information (and a book! “Love and Sex in Plain Language,” by Eric W. Johnson, which I still have) we were also to write questions to the parents anonymously on index cards, and they to us. These questions would be read to the receiving group in the next session and we would answer the question, honestly and anonymously.
For some of us (me) it was the first time I learned that the Sunday after church and brunch nap my parents always took was not or did not start off as a “nap.” The question from the parents that helped disabuse me of the notion that my parents may be doing something more than napping (as they always said) was “What do you think when you hear noises coming from our bedroom?” I have no idea if that question came from my parents, but it was the first time I began seeing them as sexual beings.
Anyway, I digress. Well maybe not, because the conversation I got into with my former classmate had my family history as the example of what a lie and misguided thinking that conservative meme is.
The proof comes from my Dad’s side of the family, whose interpersonal relations and history are as dysfunctional as they are rich with examples of why conservative (dis)utopian ideas and policies based on ignorance, pie in the sky thinking and rejection of human reality don’t really work. (prime example = "If we don't teach kids about sex, they won't have it. Sex education gives kids permission to have sex.")
My grandparents came over to this country as part of a faith community, the Mennonites. This community of Mennonites had been given land in the Ukraine by Tsarina Katherine to farm for 100 years. Before that time was up however her son, now Tsar, kicked the Mennonites out (Yes “Fiddler on the Roof,” for both Jews and Mennonites). Looking for a new home, this faith community moved en masse to the new world. Some settling in Canada, some in Pennsylvania (which is the group kossack** smellybeast is descended from), and some in Kansas (which is the group I hail from), and others in other places.
Once in Kansas my group of Mennonites founded their own towns (Gossell, Heston, etc) or enlarged towns, especially a town founded by the railroad, Newton. In fact it was because of the railroad that the Mennonites got to Kansas in the first place. Renowned farmers, the railroad wanted them to start farming the great plains, to produce food for them to haul.
All this background is necessary to understand the world in which my grandparents grew up. Most of the people they came in daily contact with were from their own Christian denomination, because their parents (and they) set up their own towns they didn’t need to speak English (in fact only those who dealt much with “outsiders” had to – another “Murican utopian” inconvenient truth), went to church every Sunday, and everyone knew everyone else.
They were not any of the invectives the conservative right likes to use to marginalize and dismiss women/teens who find themselves in the following situation.
As a teenager my grandmother had dreams of becoming a missionary, and of traveling the world. Her family was very dysfunctional, full of arguments, pettiness and cruelty. Her sisters looked to “marry out” as soon as they could as their salvation, but my grandmother’s plans didn’t seem to include that. At least not for a while. It was partly because of the tumultuous nature of her family that my grandfather’s family felt that he was courting “beneath him.”
Then one day, without benefit of sex education, without benefit of marriage, this teenage girl, who was devoted to her church and wanted to be a missionary, turned up pregnant. Since (most of the time) you married the girl you got pregnant, she and my grandfather wed. My aunt Nancy* was born in early 1921.
I can’t really tell, because all the people who know when it started are now dead, but it seems that from the date of their marriage forward my grandmother held a grudge against my grandfather. She laid all blame for her pregnancy and destruction of her dreams on him.
And she made him pay for it his entire life. Toward the end of his life her hatred of him was unconcealed. When he fainted in front of my cousin, my grandmother said “He does that all the time,” then stepped over him and walked away.
Along the way she not only had my aunt Nancy, but (in order) two more girls, and four boys. Two of the boys would die, one when he was 6 of Ether Pneumonia, and the other at just a few months old from “lockage of the bowels.” My Dad remembers the deaths of his brothers. With the death of the baby, he was now the youngest living child.
My grandmother’s anger and blame over her life didn’t stop at hatred for my grandfather, but permeated the whole house. It especially visited itself upon the two remaining sons, who were physically abused and emotionally neglected and abused by their mother.
Life with my Grandma was toxic. She held a lot of self hatred. When she died, as we went through all her photographs it was rare to find one that she was in that she hadn’t scribbled out her face with a ballpoint pen. She wasn’t all darkness though. She poured what light she had out into her arts and crafts. She made the most wonderful and beautiful quilts and ceramics. She also loved to fish. But she herself was toxic.
Two of her daughters (aunt Nancy and aunt Alice*) who also did not have sex education whispering in their ears “giving permission," repeated the legacy of pre-marital sex and pregnancy before marriage. My Grandpa wishing to spare them the same fate, shipped aunt Nancy off to the Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers in Denver, and then in her time, aunt Alice.
I have often wondered what would my Grandma’s and Grandpa’s lives have been like if they had had sex education. If they had had access to contraception? Clearly the lack of both didn’t stop two unwed teenagers from having sex.
Condoms are ancient. The first rubber condom came out in 1855. The first latex condom in 1920 (the year my aunt was conceived). In many places however they were illicit and illegal.
My Grandpa died in the 1960s, my Grandma in the early 1970s. Given the legacy of pain that union caused, which redounds to this day to her children, grandchildren and the great and great great grandchildren she never met, I wish they had had the opportunity, the knowledge and access to both sex education and contraception.
Yes I know that means I might not be here, but given all the pain I have witnessed through the years because of that (forced) marriage, that has even found itself in one murder, I am good with that.
I would much rather my grandmother had been able to practice "self determination." And my grandfather too, instead of having to get married.
Both may have then had a happier life. And the pain that was(is) inflicted on several generations would never have happened.
My family's history points to the truth of this meme
addenda:
With the exception of a few blips, my Mom’s side of the family is so functional and normal as to be boring – YAY boring!
* Not their real name
** yes I am aware of the irony
Though my grandparents pre-martial pre-wedding pregnancy was a well kept secret in my family for years, I learned about it when doing a genealogy chart for my junior high English class (When Roots had come out).
It was then I noticed that the dates of my Grandparents marriage didn't count to at least 9 months before my aunt's birth. A slip of the tongue let me know about my aunts (also a well kept secret) and another odd count lead to knowledge of my aunt Nancy's daughter's (much the same) situation.
My aunt Alice's situation was such a well kept secret (that I kept as well) that her daughter, 7 years my senior, didn't know about a sibling until I accidentally slipped and spilled the beans when I was 19. I slipped because I thought that at the age of 26 she surely had been told already.
My cousin's sibling had been looking for her mother. They met and all three have a good relationship, with grandchildren and nieces/nephews.