“I think it might actually be worse than what I remembered”: Sexual Repression Fostered through Fully Alive

Angelica Casarella

December 2022

Abstract

Catholic schools in Ontario are a publicly funded institution, and Ontario taxpayers contribute to this education system whether or not they subscribe to Catholicism. Fully Alive is the curriculum used from grades 1-8 that teaches a variety of content, including sexual health education. Focusing on its sex and gender content, this paper asks: What does Fully Alive teach, and what effects do these teachings have on students? Through a content analysis of theme three of the grade seven curriculum, as well as four interviews with former students and one interview with a current teacher, the textbook is found to encourage traditional gender norms and roles, reinforce a gender binary, discourage sexual diversity, and operate with a lens of heteronormativity. For interviewees, the teachings resulted in a degree of sexual repression, associating sex with shame and taboo. These results are then explored through the conceptualization of shaming as social control, as identified by Mercer (2018), in which I argue that the Church curriculum shames anything outside of heterosexual and cisgender as being a threat to its belief system and procreation of future members.

Keywords: Ontario, Sexual Health Education, Catholicism, Shaming, Fully Alive

Introduction

            In Summer 2022, Twitter’s algorithm offered up a tweet that would prompt me to reflect on my Catholic upbringing, specifically the topic of sexual health education. This tweet linked to an article in an online magazine by two former students fact-checking the Fully Alive curriculum, used in Ontario Catholic schools. Seeing their findings of the grade seven curriculum as reinforcing “a lot of outdated ideas about queer and trans people, women, and sexual attraction” (Lenti and Martis 2019), sparked my interest in determining the effects that these teachings have had on former students of the curriculum and how they have navigated their sexuality as they became adults.

            With the increasing secularization of Canada, publicly funded faith-based institutions such as Catholic schools in Ontario may seem something of an anomaly. Yet Ontario taxpayers, whether they ascribe to Catholicism or not, fund these institutions to teach future generations. Given the Church’s views on sex and gender, what exactly are they paying for? Fully Alive is used to teach elementary school students about sexual health, among other topics, and is sponsored and developed by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario. From their website, its goal is to “pass on a distinctively Catholic view of human life, sexuality, marriage, and family” (2020). These textbooks have been circulating in Ontario Catholic schools since the 1990s, were updated in the mid 2000s, and again beginning in 2012. The Institute for Catholic Education (2019), states that “we teach the curriculum established by the Ministry of Education… some subject areas, such as Religious Education and Family Life Education, deal more directly with the teachings of the Catholic church” (p. 4). Since the topic of sexual health falls into the category of family life education, the Institute admits to straying away from the provincial curriculum and teaching this education through the lens of its belief system.

            This research, situated at the nexus of digital anthropology, anthropology of religion, anthropology of education, and medical anthropology, asks the question: What does Fully Alive teach, and what effects do these teachings have on students? The content analysis of the grade seven curriculum and five semi-structured interviews show that Fully Alive encourages traditional gender norms and roles, reinforces a gender binary, does not embrace sexual diversity, and operates with a lens of heteronormativity, since the only legitimate form of sexual intimacy it promotes is within the marriage of a man and a woman. The interviews by the former students will identify a degree of sexual repression as a result of being taught this curriculum, with shame and taboo associated with sex. This shaming will be conceptualized as a form of social control the church employs to its members, using the terms as presented by Mercer (2018).

Materials

            The material used in this research is one of the Fully Alive student textbooks. This version of the textbook was published in 2014 and is geared towards a seventh-grade audience.

Though the Teacher Resources were updated in 2016, this version of the student textbook continues to be used. The content analysis is of theme 3 of this curriculum, “Created Sexual: Male and Female” from pages 71 to 104 (Figure 1). Five passages from this section were shown to participants during semi-structured interviews. The participants would read the passage and share their thoughts on the content either throughout their reading or once they finished each passage. The first passage from page 74 entitled “The Male Brain, The Female Brain” states different generalized ‘scientific’ findings between the sexes, without citing the source of these findings (Appendix 1). The second passage from page 84 entitled “The Virtue of Modesty” discusses modesty through clothing, posting images on the internet, gossiping, and bragging about talents or achievements (Appendix 2). The third passage from page 94 entitled “Homosexuality” discusses attraction to the same-sex as one that is ‘temporary’, highlights stereotypical signs of homosexuality and talks about homophobia (Appendix 3). The fourth passage from pages 95-96 discusses masturbation as something that requires ‘self-discipline’, as sexual pleasure must be reserved for the marriage of a man and woman (Appendix 4). The final passage from the textbook that was reviewed by participants on page 98 entitled “Chastity” talks about the necessity for unmarried people to be chaste, and that the virtue of chastity is being threatened by various media sources (Appendix 5).

Methods

            Various methods were used to conduct this research. A content analysis was conducted on theme three of the grade seven student Fully Alive textbook, “Created Sexual: Male and Female”. This content analysis involved reviewing each page of the section and noting what information was inaccurately depicted in the textbook, informed by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada’s Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education and Questions and Answers: Sexual Health Education in Schools and Other Settings, as well as question and answer documents produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada on gender identity and sexual orientation in schools. I also identified information that the textbook deemed as being scientific or being ‘the most reliable statistic’, but not providing citations for this data, putting into question the credibility of the textbook and its content. A digital copy of the textbook was highlighted using the same colour-coding methodology illustrated below for the interviews (Figure 2). This task also led to some unplanned self-tracking of my individual reactions to the content as someone who was a previous student of it.

            Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four former students and one current teacher of the curriculum. Each former student shared their perspective of the curriculum from different geographical locations across Southern Ontario, and one perspective from Northern Ontario. The current teacher of the curriculum teaches grade three students, so she had less experience teaching the sexual health aspect of the curriculum as it is limited for that age-group. Once all interviews were transcribed and reviewed, a coding exercise was done to find themes in the interviews that pertained to my research question (Figure 2). Once the coding exercise was done, the interviews were analyzed to find common themes and differences among them.

Results

Both methodologies yielded interesting results in terms of answering the question of what Fully Alive teaches, and what its impact on students is. The content analysis of the grade seven curriculum and five semi-structured interviews indicates that Fully Alive encourages traditional gender norms and roles, reinforces a gender binary, does not embrace sexual diversity, and operates with a lens of heteronormativity, since the only legitimate form of sexual intimacy it promotes is within the marriage of a man and a woman.

Examples of these ideas can be found throughout the chapter, but one concrete example of each will be identified. For gender norms and role, the passage on page 74, “The Male Brain, The Female Brain” uses the uncited scientific data as a way to reinforce that “the male brain seems to be inclined toward arranging, analyzing, and figuring out how systems work… the female brain seems to be inclined toward empathizing”, even though they state that individual differences exist, they provide these statements for the gendered group, reinforcing that women are more nurturing and men are more logical (Appendix 1). An example of them reinforcing the gender binary can be seen on page 71, the cover page, where it repeatedly states a male/female dichotomy (Figure 1). There is also no mention throughout the chapter of intersex, non-binary or transgender individuals, only cisgender individuals. No sexual diversity was identified in this chapter, and the one passage on page 94 that deviates from heterosexuality, entitled “Homosexuality”, identifies it as “temporary attractions to the same sex”, and no other sexual identities were discussed in the chapter (Appendix 3). Lastly, an example of this textbook operating with a lens of heteronormativity can be found on page 96, where they talk about sexual pleasure, they state “sexual pleasure is a wonderful gift that each person must learn to understand and respect. It is one of the many gifts that a man and a woman experience and offer each other within the committed relationship of marriage” (Appendix 4). These were just one example of each idea, but they are reinforced overtly and covertly throughout theme three.

The four interviews with former students indicate a degree of sexual repression connected to having learned this curriculum, in that they felt shame and that there was a taboo associated with sex. A grade three teacher who teaches the curriculum was also interviewed, and her responses indicate a degree of taboo when discussing the topic of sex with her students. It is beyond the scope of this research to compare this repression to those who did not study Fully Alive. What I can state is that when asked about if they discussed what they were learning about sex with their parents or other trusted adults, all of the former students indicated that it was an awkward topic for them to discuss. Two students indicated that they did not talk to their parents at all about it, one student indicated that she may have discussed it with her parents briefly, but that it was an uncomfortable topic, and another student indicated that family members who were a bit older, but close in age to her, had to approach her about the topic since they were familiar about the inadequacy of the Catholic sexual health education system having just gone through it. The grade three teacher indicated that herself and other teachers she talks to usually saves this theme for the end of the year, as it is uncomfortable to teach. She also stated that she will sometimes just have them read the material and have them ask questions to their parents as opposed to during class time, stating that “it’s the parent’s responsibility first to teach their children” (Interview 5).

Three of the four student interviewees could specifically identify harmful ideas that have stuck with them from this textbook. Though the first interviewee could not identify specific thoughts or beliefs from the textbook that stuck with him, he was very uncomfortable discussing the subject matter, from the detailed transcript, there were hesitancies and awkward chuckles when asked about certain aspects of his sexuality, which could be a result of the sexual repression fostered through Fully Alive and his Catholic upbringing. He was able to identify that this subject was taboo and he didn’t want to seem ‘weird’ by being curious about sex, which made him turn to the internet to view naked images of the opposite sex, delving into pornography use. The second interviewee still actively participates in Catholicism but was able to identify the abstinence-based messaging as harmful and the one thing that stuck with her, as it was a topic that was taboo and stigmatized. She did not report looking at other resources at the time for questions about sex, as the internet was not too prevalent when she was learning this content, but she did have books about puberty and talked to her friends about the subject.

The third interviewee shared the following quote during her interview “I think being taught what was taught in the way I was taught it has like led to all of these like taboos about my own body and my own sexual health and my own sexual relationships”. The ideas shared in the modesty passage stuck with her too, as she has had to unteach herself to not judge others or herself for wearing something that could be perceived as ‘too revealing’, as well, she stated that she suppressed feelings of same-sex attraction, as she “didn’t know that was an option”, because she was taught through the lens of heteronormativity. A source of information for her was to talk to her peers during recess. The fourth interviewee was able to identify the ideas of modesty and self-discipline as having stuck with her. She states that she sometimes questions clothing that she wears and if its appropriate, as well as having trouble with sexual intimacy in relationships because she comes back to the ideas of being self-disciplined. She also identified Tumblr as a source for her to learn more about sexual health, as she felt that it was a safe space to get answers to questions that teachers did not want to answer or address in class.

Discussion

            Mercer (2018) discusses shaming as social control. They state that “shame then is a powerful (and negative) emotion often associated with sex and sexuality, shaming is a mechanism for social and personal control. Shame is internalized, pervasive and pacifying, we both feel shame and are subjected to shame” (p. 1304). The cover page of theme three of the grade seven Fully Alive textbook states “each person is created to be a life-giving and loving male or female who respects God’s gift of sexuality” (p. 71). The goal of this theme, by shaming anything outside of a cisgender, and heterosexual norm, is to prevent anyone from threatening the livelihood of the church. By encouraging sex as a means of reproduction through phrasing it as ‘life-giving’, it reinforces article 2357 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (Catholic Church)

Because the church’s concern with homosexuality largely has to do with the inability for same-sex relationships to ‘naturally’ reproduce, this could perhaps be seen as an act of self-preservation by the Church, though further research is needed to confirm this theory.

            These textbooks ingrain heterosexuality and being cisgender as the norm over eight key developmental years for children, trying to mould their ideas of who they can love and what they can grow up to be, to align with the ideas of the church. By shaming anything that falls outside of the norm by ostracizing them and pretending they do not exist, the textbook acts as virtue signalling for youth to base their moral compass upon. Since this textbook has been around for over thirty years, multiple generations of families have been taught this curriculum and these ideas, causing what I view as an intergenerational cycle of sexual repression. Children do not know any better and are taught to trust their teacher’s knowledge, and parents are too uncomfortable having discussions with their children about these topics since they were also taught that this was a taboo subject. Teachers in the Ontario Catholic education system, as observed by the teacher interviewed for this research, may also be uncomfortable teaching this subject. This shows the church’s overarching control of all parties involved in educating youth in Catholic schools about their sexual health: parents, teachers, as well as students in being able to learn about themselves and their development in a way that is accurate and informed by science.

            Even though the Church believes it is justified in using shaming as a way of virtue signalling to control and ensure the legacy of its belief system, these teachings have a harmful effect on those learning them, as witnessed in the interviews. Interviewees were made to feel shame for a number of different aspects, such as questioning their sexuality, dressing a certain way, or being interested and curious about sex. These have had lasting impacts on the students who learned this curriculum, with many having to try and unteach themselves so they can think outside of these normative boxes. As part of describing the impacts that these teachings have had on her, the third interviewee talked about how she gets anxious buying tampons, condoms, or seeking birth control methods, meaning that other individuals who grew up learning this curriculum may also feel uncomfortable doing these, as well as other preventative sexual health care such as seeking regular testing for sexually transmitted infections. This indicates negative mental and physical health resulting from this curriculum and its shaming as control. 

Conclusion

Each interviewee was asked about what changes they would like to see to the curriculum, two former students stated that faith should not be a part of sexual health education, with one of those students saying “I don’t think there is any place for religion in the teachings of something so secular. My body has nothing to do with religion” (Interview 3), and that they hoped it could be taught by a nurse who is knowledgeable and open to talking about the content. Another student believed that spirituality could still be part of the discussion, but that the textbook should move towards inclusive language, acknowledging the difference between sex and gender, and accepting other gender and sexual identities. The teacher, as well as another former student believed in changes to how it is taught, including more interaction, creating a safe space for group discussion, as well as using new media to show videos of youth talking about the material to make it more relatable.

In summary, through the content analysis and all five interviews, this textbook encourages traditional gender norms and roles, reinforces a gender binary, does not embrace sexual diversity, and operates with a lens of heteronormativity, since the only legitimate form of sexual intimacy it promotes is within the marriage of a man and a woman. The impacts of these teachings on former students are numerous but can be understood through the umbrella term of sexual repression. The churches use of shaming as a form of social control does more harm than good for its members. Future research with a younger population, such as new graduating cohorts of students could provide more insight into how technology and new media can supplement the education they are receiving in the classroom. Other research with more members who identify as being part of the Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning and additional sexual orientations (2SLGBTQ+) community would also provide further insights into how they were affected by this curriculum refusing to acknowledge their existence.  

References

“A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Family Life Education in Catholic Schools.” 2019. iceont.ca. Institute for Catholic Education in Ontario. September. https://iceont.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ICE_Parents-Guide_Final_Whole-FINAL-September-16-2019.pdf

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014.

Catholic Church. 2000. Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

“Educational Resources.” 2020. acbo.on.ca. Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario. http://acbo.on.ca/educational-resources/#:~:text=Fully%20Alive%20is%20a%20Family,starting%20in%202006%20and%202012.

Lenti, Erica, and Eternity Martis. “Two Catholic School Graduates Fact-Check Their Sex-Ed Textbook, ‘Fully Alive.’” Xtra Magazine. Pink Triangle Press, March 20, 2019. https://xtramagazine.com/love-sex/two-catholic-school-graduates-fact-check-their-sex-ed-textbook-fully-alive-148915.

Mercer, John. “Sex Positivity and the Persistence of Shame.” Sexualities 21, no. 8 (2018): 1304–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718770443.

“Questions and Answers: Gender Identity in Schools.” 2014. Canada.ca. Public Health Agency of Canada. March 7. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/infectious-diseases/sexual-health-sexually-transmitted-infections/reports-publications/questions-answers-gender-identity-schools.html.

“Questions and Answers: Sexual Orientation in Schools.” 2014. Canada.ca. Public Health Agency of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/infectious-diseases/sexual-health-sexually-transmitted-infections/reports-publications/questions-answers-schools.html.

SIECCAN. 2019. Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education. Toronto, ON: Sex Information & Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN).

SIECCAN. 2020. Questions & Answers: Sexual Health Education in Schools and Other Settings. Toronto, ON: Sex Information & Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN).

Appendix 1

“The Male Brain, The Female Brain”, p. 74

Source:

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014. 

Appendix 2

“The Virtue of Modesty”, p. 84

Source:

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014.

Appendix 3

“Homosexuality”, p. 94

Source:

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014.

Appendix 4

Passages on masturbation in the highlighted boxes on pages 95 and 96

Source:

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014.

Appendix 5

“Chastity”, p. 98

Source:

Catholic Bishops of Ontario. “Created Sexual: Male and Female.” In Fully Alive, 71–104. Pearson Canada, 2014