Blessed Zine
Indoctrination demands constant engagement through materials, like television, music, bibles, statues, crosses, and through lived experiences and behaviors, like marches, masses, prayers, preaching, etc. Deprogramming requires that you not only separate yourself from the constant feed of whatever grips you (in my case, Catholicism), not only that you resist its attempts to draw you back in with arguments, guilt trips, and manipulation, but that you strengthen your ability to think critically and maintain emotional and ideological independence by experiencing the “difference” and “deviance” you were secluded from. Which is why this course has been so important to me, representing the chance I’ve been given to read texts alternative to the hundreds of religious books I read throughout my childhood, books which nurtured me deeper and deeper into the fold, and into the identity of a “Good Catholic Girl.” An identity which I dissect through my zine “Blessed Amongst Women” with the help of Adrienne Rich’s analysis of “compulsory heterosexuality.”
“Blessed Amongst Women” is a horror comic which focuses on myself and the Virgin Mary, as the Virgin Mary is an important icon of womanhood for me. As she was who I was raised to worship and mold myself into the image of, she is also my object of self-analysis and critique of Catholic doctrines of womanhood. The zine’s cover is of an Iron Maiden torture and execution device designed to look like a statue of the Virgin Mary, draped in modest cloth, hands gently unfolded with her palms facing forwards in a gesture of peace and generosity. My metaphor here is not at all subtle, as gory and bold as my dripping title letters; the body of the Virgin Mary is a torture device which will only hurt me if I try to force myself to fit inside.
Pages one and two tell a short story of my childhood, typical of indoctrination; my family protested outside of an abortion clinic, taking the children with them and giving them signs to hold too. Of course, as the zine says, I had no idea what sex was, much less abortion, much less pregnancy, much less the political motivations to restrict female reproductive health systems. This is the core of a “true belief” that I was raised as a crucial behavior of a Faithful Disciple; you don’t need to understand this fully, you don’t need the whole explanation, you just need God’s word. This is also the nature of anything “Compulsory” as Rich describes; what is “Compulsory” goes without explanation and demands itself to be exempt from questioning. This story was titled “THE MASSACRE OF INNOCENCE” as both a reference to the story of King Herod killing all the babies in his kingdom (called the “Massacre of Innocents”) and a reference to the abuse of my own childhood ignorance.
I retell the Annunciation of Christ next from a more personal perspective, of fear and invasion. The Annunciation is when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and it is usually painted joyfully with golden trumpets and rays of sunlight upon Mary’s accepting and submissive face. Be Not Afraid. I am afraid though. Especially now after what’s happened with Roe v. Wade. Mary’s virginity represents perfection and holiness within Christianity; she is the most holy a woman can be. And she is impossible. A virgin mother. Not only are women denied queerness but participating in heterosexuality makes them lesser too! The point I am reaching here is the exclusion of women from sexuality – not just the erasure of lesbians from queer history as Rich righteously points out, but the separation of women from sex entirely. It’s that exclusion which is also the crux of invalidating lesbianism in many cases, splitting into the many reasons for saying lesbian sex isn't “real” sex; “If it’s not penetrative, you’re still a virgin”, “If it’s not reproductive it’s not real”, “Women can’t orgasm anyways.” The idea that sex belongs to men and that they occasionally “share” it with women also dictates that women can only have “real” sex through heterosexuality. This is what I discuss throughout pages 6, 7, and 8, arriving at the conclusion that “Sex” as I was taught, simply is not real. “Sex” eliminates itself through its many phallo-centric conditions, but I also challenge that lesbians are merely virgins then, and I challenge the authenticity of “Virginity” as an identity dependent on the existence of “Sex.”
The presence of Compulsory Heterosexuality as it relates to my own queerness is explained in a cycle of thought on page 5. The cycle is a much abridged and edited depiction of the way I reasoned within myself as a child that I could “choose to be Good over being Gay”, prompted by the conflict of feeling between crushes on women and the Compulsory Heterosexual Truth I has been raised to believe in. Deeper than this comic goes however, is the fact that for a very long time I could not even recognize my feelings towards women to be romantic or sexual, despite the physical and emotional traits of them. So Compulsory was Heterosexuality that it obscured my vision of myself. My back cover is less relevant, more of a joke that becoming more “holy” requires the stabbing of holes into one’s skull.
The Virgin Mary never consented to her pregnancy; it was a “blessing.” To be pregnant without consent and to deny myself sexuality was once my blueprint to holiness, however, I now recognize this grooming as a horror story. Reading Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence was like reading a diametric opposite of the doctrines of sexuality and gender which I had internalized and followed for so much of my life.