writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

Part One: Magnificat and matrimony
The first myth I wanted to debunk was the idea of Mary’s de‐sexualization. Like her forebear,
Eve, 21 Mary thirsts for knowledge, including the carnal. The highly dubious notion that she neither
conceived Jesus through the sexual act nor knew Joseph after the birth of the son, seemed an absurd
fantasy of men frightened to death of women’s sexuality and ability to conceive. Witness Francisco
Suarez, the Church’s first systematic theologian, who wrote: “The Blessed Virgin in conceiving a son
neither lost her virginity nor experienced any venereal pleasure… it did not befit the Holy Spirit
without any cause or utility to produce such an effect, or to excite any unbecoming movement of
passion…On the contrary the effect of his overshadowing is to quench the fire of original sin.” 22
And so, in defiance, my Mary revels in sex and her sexuality, presented here in her teenaged
voice:
Jeremiah lay back on his cloak…then I reached for him again….I climbed on top of him
and rocked and rocked until I gushed all over and around him. I love to learn about my
body through his body. I don’t believe that such knowledge is wicked. 23
In fact, throughout her formative teenaged years, Mary determines to break most of the social
and sexual taboos of her time:
All you have to do is read Song of Songs to know that God wants us to celebrate each
other. I don’t feel dirty when I’m with Jeremiah. I feel beautiful. And I’m not ashamed of
anything we do….If I ever have a daughter, I’ll bring her up differently. I think a lot about
these things. Thoughts like mine can get you killed. 24
She knows too well how disobedient women become pariahs, or worse, are killed in the village
square:
So how come I’ve never heard of a man stoned for adultery, no matter what the Torah
says? Doesn’t happen in my village. Only women and girls. Unmarried girls like me who
lose their virginity. Women like Jez, paid for their services. I wonder how many of us
there are. Bad girls and women, that is. Probably quite a few. Hiding. Hiding from men
and their stupid laws. 25
Yet Mary audaciously writes these dangerous thoughts in her diary (a series of scrolls presented
by her mother, Anna, for her fourteenth birthday), sneaks out to parties at the village brothel to
meet her lover Jeremiah, defies the laws of men and Yahweh, and is critical of the disparity between
a woman’s and a man’s world: “my father Joachim the merchant, gets to do all the important stuff.
Bartering with the growers, travelling, drinking with the dealers. My mother, Anna, works all day in
the square. Roosts over the house in the evening.” 26 Mary’s rebellious tone and much of her
behaviour are that of a 21 st ‐century teenager. She balks at her arranged marriage‐to‐be with Joseph.
When she discovers her pregnancy and learns that Jeremiah is a weapons and narcotics dealer,
already married and newly arrested, she writes:
Please. I’m fourteen. What do I know?
Here’s what I know. I am fourteen‐going‐on‐fifteen with a bun in the oven and a
nebbish for a fiancé and my parents would sooner have me killed than return their fucking
barnyard friends. And the man I love is locked up and maybe he’s going to die, and he
doesn’t deal in perfumes or spices or herbs like any self‐respecting merchant, he sells
opium and hashish and not only that Jez tells me he uses it and not only that but he
knocks me up and not only that but he’s married to another woman whose name for
fuck’s sake just happens to be Mary.
Ha ha ha. Very, very funny, God. Just what do you have in store for me, Mary, your
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