Catholic Schoolgirl turned Feminist

I grew up in Ecuador. It may not be the first country that comes to people’s minds when they think of South America.

I went to a Catholic school where I was taught by people who believed it was best to keep educating yourself when it comes to academics, but not so much when it comes to being open-minded and less judgmental of people who were “different”.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a good childhood, and I can’t complain about my school in the sense that I wasn’t bullied, I had a great group of friends and I was happy overall, and enjoyed the privilege of having an innocent approach to life, which is more than most teenagers experience.

Thinking back, as much as I have a few good memories that mostly involved my friends and being a kid/teenager enjoying my childhood. There are many moments and beliefs that I have a hard time remembering now.

When I graduated high school, I attended a liberal arts college and met people who to my surprise wasn’t afraid of speaking about things that I had been too afraid to admit when in high school. I was never in agreement with some of the things that I was taught to “normalize” when to me “normal” wasn’t exactly black or white.

I remember going to mass with my family one day and seeing this woman my mother knew at the door. She had a pen and a paper and urged my mother to sign a petition. When we asked her what it was about, she said: “the government is going to let two foreign lesbian women adopt an Ecuadorian child!! We have to stop this! It’s so immoral!” My mother signed and then she came to me, I was relieved to say: “I’m not 18 yet” when what I really wanted to say was: “what is so wrong about two women trying to give an orphan baby a family”. To my surprise, she said: “It’s okay, you’re allowed to sign at sixteen”. And I did, I signed it. But I knew I had done something wrong. I’ll admit, I wasn’t the first to speak my mind back then. Maybe because I was taught that straight = normal, and gay = not normal, and therefore I should hate it. But I didn’t think like that.

This one anecdote made me think about the kind of people I was surrounding myself with, and the lengths they will go to defend and protect their beliefs. It was more important for the Catholic movement to stop two women who were taking every legal step to adopt and give an orphan child a home, a better chance at life and most importantly love. Then it was to admit and stop the catholic church, the Vatican from covering up the fact that for centuries priests have sexually harassed and raped children and women and continue to do so to this day.

I couldn’t, and still can’t wrap this idea around my head. As a devout Catholic you can’t support the idea that two people who love each other should be able to get married. However, you can and should turn a blind eye when it comes to pedophilia and rape.

Another moment that is still stuck in my mind, happened during my weekly religion class. My teacher was the mother of five boys. I can’t remember what the class was about, but I do remember her speech. She started by saying that even though she has a degree in theology she believes that it is her husband’s job as the “man of the house” to educate her children on matters of religion, morals, and life. She claimed that as a woman and wife, she had to be behind her husband and that as a woman she couldn’t have her children thinking she had more authority than him. Because, he was the leader and main authority of the house, in other words, because if she tried to educate her children this would emasculate him, and god forbid men to feel less masculine. I remember arguing with her and respectfully trying to explain that this was sexist (she’s lucky at that time I didn’t use the word feminism as often) and that she was assuming that women in all households couldn’t teach their children anything because they weren’t as intellectually capable of doing so as the men. I can’t remember how the argument ended but I do remember feeling uncomfortable about this notion for the rest of the day.

I want to end this essay by saying that some things need to be discussed no matter how odd and difficult they might seem, even if you’re going against the “norm” and what you are supposed to believe. Growing up I always heard people say things to me and my female classmates like: “cover yourselves up, your skirts can’t be too high!” or “a lady should never swear” or “how do you expect to find a husband looking like that!”. I understand that many people do this out of habit, or they do it because they believe these are the right things to say. But, for once, I would like to live in a world in which girls aren’t judged by how they look, and boys are taught to respect girls and women no matter what they do or look like. If we put as much attention into correcting and educating boys as we put into judging and trying to put girls in a box, the world would be better. If we tried to accept people for who they want to be (whether you’re catholic or not) instead of who they should be according to society, the world would have more love and fewer problems.