"I Fell for a Lie" : Sexuality and Catholic Women Religious in Australia, from the Late 1940s to 2008

Bronwyn Lee, Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY)

Women religious' celibacy as a perversion of nature animates anti-Catholic propaganda and pornography. Advertisements for religious life that feature young, attractive women wearing the habit connect spiritual purity with the subordination of sexuality to devotion to God or service to the Church. The long history of competing representations of women religious' sexuality cannot be separated from the history of efforts to define and regulate sexuality in general. However, historians of women religious typically consider sexuality as a distraction from the reality of women religious' lives; or as an element of society that influences, but is external to, religious life. Neither approach contemplates the evidence for how women religious experience sexuality. I argue that sexuality is not merely projected onto women religious by others. My research makes visible the ways that women religious construct sexuality. I extend the sexuality as a social construct approach to examine how women religious understood and negotiated the meaning of their sexuality in Australia between the late-1940s and 2008. I analyze three types of primary sources: advice literature, women religious' voices, and oral history. I treat each as artefacts of the time in which they were produced. I find three distinct phases in the conceptualization of celibacy that shaped women religious' negotiation of their sexuality in Australia: spiritual motherhood, mature heterosexuality, and antidote to feminism. Women religious challenged existing definitions of celibacy and constructed new ones. They did so in relation to the specific historical conditions of each phase: the long 1950s, the era of liberation, and the backlash era.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 244. Exploring Gender and Sexuality: New Methodological Endeavors