The Role of the Sister
by Anonymous
My mother is a staunchly conservative, catholic, Colombian, and paranoid woman. She immigrated to New York in the 70’s and was in her twenties in the city in the 80’s. For me growing up, this meant she had an absolutely unbelievable horror story as a response to quite literally any plea of mine. Walking to the grocery store in our neighborhood, going to a friends house, going to the mall, not double lining a toilet seat in a public restroom - anything that involves leaving my house would solicit a slew of worst-case-scenarios from her, which would inevitably climax in the penultimate result: death. Once I got to a certain age, the penultimate hypothetical climax of her horror stories changed from death to rape.
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Being raised in the Catholic School system and cloistered in my Christian house hold, I honestly don’t think I fully understood what rape, let alone consensual sex, was. The first time I got fingered by a partner, I remembered being extremely confused. First intimate hookups are always confusing to some extent, but I was in that moment anatomically confused. I was aware of my anatomy, but not of the idea of penetration. (Upon reflection, I am astounded that I existed nearly all of my teenage life not knowing what sex functionally was. I guess my mom achieved her goal? That’s another essay.)
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because my sisters are about to be freshmen in high school. I came home for quarantine and when my sisters asked to walk to the grocery store, my mother launched into her precautionary monologuing, warning my sisters of pedophiles on every corner. My sisters rolled their eyes and protested. My mother looked to me for support and I, suddenly fear-stricken by their apathetic response to the hypothetical threat of rape, launched into my own monologue, detailing accounts of college roommates, friends, and friends’ mothers who have been victims of assault in all sorts of circumstances. I urged my sisters to understand my mom’s fears are not unfounded, assault can happen anywhere at any time to anyone. My compulsion to make them understand this tragically common place horror deafened their arguments. Now it was my sisters who were fear-stricken.
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This exchange shook me for many reasons. The first being that my instinctual response to a complicated parenting issue was to snap to my mother’s fear mongering technique, which I so viciously despised growing up. I guess we do become our parents. The second being that I, like my mother, begged my sisters to understand the threat of rape, but subsequently wonder if they know what sex is. I informed them of the infinite whos, whens, and wheres of assault, but if they are getting the same education I did, I doubt anyone has told them the mechanics of intercourse. That means they know they are at risk of being violated in some mysterious, unconscionable way by any man anywhere, but I’m forced to wonder what they think that means. Furthermore if my sisters haven’t been told the mechanics of intercourse, how can we educate them on what a healthy, sexual relationship looks like?
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As girls in my family, we are introduced to sex first as a violent act to be perpetrated against us by villains. I recognize this as a matter of necessity, but wonder if there is another way. I wonder what it means for me that still to this day, at 22 years old, I have never heard my mother talk about sex positively. I wonder if other girls have the same experience. I wonder if because my sisters are so much younger than me, it is somehow my responsibility to educate them in a
more sex positive way. Simultaneously, I wonder if that is overstepping my boundaries. They are my sisters, not my children. One day I too will be a catholic, Colombian, probably paranoid mother, and I have no idea how the hell I’m going to address this.