I Asked About the Clitoris at My Christian High School
And got a surprisingly helpful answer
At a religious school, you’ll find more than reading, writing, and arithmetic.
You take classes with God himself.
From kindergarten through high school I attended a Christian school, and so religion and academics melded into one murky soup:
- The Lord took center stage in Bible class (for obvious reasons.)
- In history class, my teachers traced every historical event back to God’s plan for the world (think manifest destiny rhetoric.)
- And in science, we learned “intelligent design” which referred to literal 6-day creation by God.
Our science textbooks from Bob Jones University Press even featured a section on creation.
Using the Adam and Eve narrative from Genesis, the textbook supplemented the biblical story with scientific “facts” to support intelligent design.
I memorized a host of cherry-picked arguments that seemed to handily disprove the theory of evolution. We read about the lack of fossil evidence, zero proof of macro-evolution, and the fact that 99.9% of genetic mutations are detrimental to life.
Oh, and no dinosaurs. That was specifically on the test.
Though I no longer believe in creationism, back as an “on fire for God” 15-year-old Christian in 1995, the explanation made sense to me. Since God created the human body, each anatomical part fits perfectly together like a puzzle.
Structure and Function
Our biology class covered two facets of every part of the body: the structure and the function:
Structure (what is the physiological makeup?) and function (what is the purpose?).
Take the skeletal system, for example. Our skeletal system is structured from bones, cartilage, and ligaments. Its function is to provide support and shape for the body.
Structure and function.
Day in and day out.
The Evolution of Classroom Technology
To further set the scene, remember that 1990s classroom tech was… “primitive.”
PowerPoint was just a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye. We learned from transparencies displayed on humming and blurry overhead projectors.
To display material with an overhead projector, our teacher undertook a time-consuming multi-step process. Before class, he crafted his lecture outline for the day. Then, using a fine-point Vis-à-Vis marker, he neatly wrote the outline point by point on a transparency sheet.
During class, he placed the transparency on the warm, lit glass. A piece of blank white paper rested on top of the transparency to cover up the text. As he lectured, he slid the paper down to reveal his outline one line at a time.
Because I was determined to get an A in both biology and Christianity, I dutifully copied down each note word for word. My color-coded notes for class mirrored my highlighted and annotated Bible devotionals from my nightly quiet times. Believe me, I was not messing around!
The Dawn of Man
Apart from the relatively exciting time we talked about dinosaurs, most days in biology class passed uneventfully.
But on this hot, spring day, energy charged the air.
Today we studied the reproductive system.
We actually wrote down titillating things like “function: produces semen for reproduction.” And the word “testes” was uttered more than once.
Half of the (woefully sexually under-experienced) boys hunched over, obviously semi-erect. Some of the girls (*raises hand*) shifted in the seats, tingly and turned on from thinking about such racy things, in mixed company no less.
Our biology teacher — a nerdy, very slight, soft-spoken young middle-aged man sporting horn-rimmed glasses and tight curly short hair — wore pleated grey suit pants with a short-sleeved plaid shirt neatly tucked in.
He reached up to the overhead and carefully touched the white paper. Then he slid the sheet down and uncovered the word “clitoris.”
My heart quickened.
We wrote it down.
He uncovered the next line on the outline which said “Structure: tissue comprised of dense nerve endings.”
I watched with slightly wider eyes as he slid the paper down again.
Instead of stating the function of the clitoris, the hand-written words introduced another topic altogether.
I blinked.
The learning model drilled into us was structure and function, structure and function.
So where was the function??
Independent Study
At age 15, I knew about the clitoris.
I had been intimately involved with my own for years.
So why were we skipping over the body part at the center of my physical ecstasy, the sole purpose of the standing after-school date I had with myself from 3:30–4:00 pm daily in my white framed day bed under the rainbow comforter?
I wanted to know why God intelligently designed this body part. What was its function? Intuitively, I desired for my pleasure to be named.
I quickly made the mental calculation that it was worth the risk and that my chance may never come again.
It was now or never.
As our teacher opened his mouth to introduce the next topic, I raised my hand. Heads in my peripheral vision snapped toward me.
The teacher looked up and visibly started when he saw my hand. An electric shock passed around the room.
The class saw him seeing me.
The world narrowed to this one moment.
It was a western at high noon.
Me with my hand raised and the teacher staring at me, paralyzed.
Silence, except for the sound of the American and Christian flags beating outside side by side in the hot desert wind under a solid blue, cloudless sky.
High noon.
The teacher saw no way out.
“Hope?” he said tentatively.
I decided to speak my confusion, my shame, and my body into existence. I stood up for girls everywhere and I made the world see.
“And what is the function of the clitoris?” I asked.
The whole class took a collective breath in.
Though the teachers at our conservative Christian school taught the curriculum with an extremely religious slant, I have to give this teacher credit. In that moment, his response did not include a “biblical reading of the clitoris” which would include references to pious reproduction, childbirth, a woman’s wifely duties, or even condoned sex in a biblical marriage.
No, he did his own mental calculations and decided to go the most succinct and honest route in order to get the whole thing over with.
He plainly stated two words that I will never forget:
“Sexual arousal.”
Imagine all the 15- and 16-year-old penises fully erecting as every student in the class adjusted in their seats.
I gave a little nod back to him as if to say “got it.”
And then I wrote it down.
He turned back to the transparency and continued on to discuss the next body part.
But the power in the room shifted.
The Missing Link
With that one question, I spoke the secret life of my body and its chaotic capability for pleasure into existence in the most male-dominated, Jesus-saturated organized outline of human experience.
In the middle of class.
In front of a middle-aged man.
In the middle of the day.
There it was in black and white. It was chronicled with purple pen in my Mead Five Star spiral-bound notebook. God designed something on the female body with the only function of sexual arousal.
The boys around me didn’t have that, at least that I knew of. All of their flopping shafts had other important jobs to do like making babies and transporting urine.
I had a 100% pleasure-dedicated organ moving with me at the ready all the time.
And that to me was power.
Confusing, shameful, and frightening, but it was power.
That day I learned that the knowledge I need is not always going to be the knowledge that is offered. Sometimes, I would have to take risks and ask what exists outside of an authority figure’s pre-written outline.
This experience also sparked a tiny flame of doubt about the information I had been given… why was the function of the clitoris not on the transparency, anyway?
Who decides what goes on the transparency and what stays off?
And how will I learn what I am not taught?
My search for answers, both bodily and spiritual, eventually reached beyond the walls of my Christian school. But it took many years.
Just like my eventual breakup with creation, I broke up with shame about my body and its capability for pleasure.
