Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

 0 items

• Login
• Join

Search this site:

When I saw Nicole Hardy's piece in the New York Times, Single, Female, Mormon, Alone, about the author's visit to Planned Parenthood as a 35-year-old virgin, my chest expanded with recognition. Yes, I thought. Yes yes yes. As I read, my pulse quickened in a rush.

The recognition was cultural, rather than directly personal. She was not telling my story. My adulthood did not include many years of celibacy. I took a different road from a similar starting place. But reading this account brought unexpected comfort and insight.

Discussions about religion and sexuality that rely on hefty doses of contempt, if not outright vitriol, leave me weary and discouraged. The underlying message usually seems to be, "if only those foolish people would wake up and shuck off the chains of silly religion, they would be free!" I find such a view frustratingly narrow.

In contrast, Nicole Hardy captured a tone that softened and opened my heart. The absence of anger left space for descriptions of what it's like inside the container of a religious culture, rather than critiquing the existence of the container itself. What does it mean, ultimately, to live with a belief structure that requires severance from sexual pleasure except under specific requirements?

When I reached Hardy's analogy of being a child trapped in a woman's body, the effect of not being touched, of the interplay between maturing emotionally and being physically and sexually awake, the bells in my head were clanging loudly. Ding-ding-ding. That's it, exactly. Accurate and compassionate.

The rigid disconnect I experienced between sexuality and wholeness has at turns enraged me, saddened me, paralyzed me, and in moments emboldened me to seek peace with myself and my body. As a queer person, whose Mormon people actively work to restrict the civil rights of people like me, I sometimes crumple in the crossfire. Holding space, not on this "side" or that, but here, where I am, in my experience - that is my intention and challenge.

In a brief email exchange, I thanked the author for her authenticity, for inspiring me to try again, to express what I often conceive to be a knotted tangle of messages, beliefs, experiences, and expectations surrounding sexuality and body-consciousness. I acknowledged dismay that I have resorted to anger and resentment when describing my journey from Mormonism. Such approaches fall short of capturing the fullness, the positive and valuable aspects of my upbringing that make me who I am. In her response, Hardy noted that although some consider it strange, she doesn't feel a lot of anger, but at the point when she left she "mostly felt relief."

Relief. The whoosh of an exhale, ready to inhale what is new, compels me. Breathing in, breathing out, listening with a compassionate heart to myself so that I can extend that compassion to others, I gather the courage to pull knotted threads from the drawer and tease them apart, a thread at a time.