St. Aldo
Purity culture and modesty are bullshit
St. Aldo or Aldobrandesca was a Seinese woman in the 13th century. Her parents arranged a marriage for her, which she reluctantly agreed to, but she grew to love her husband anyway. Many such cases. Her husband died young, though, and left her with no children. So Aldo gave away her possessions, joined a religious order, and tended to the poor and sick in Italy.
It is also reported that Aldo had a particular penchant for reforming prostitutes and that she wore a hair shirt as penance for her sometimes erotic memories of her husband. She was regarded as a mystic and served her last years of life as a nurse in a hospital.
I don’t know if Aldo was like dwelling on her erotic memories of her husband or what was going on, but it’s good to remember that just having a memory is not a sin. It could be a temptation, but even that is debatable. In Aldo’s case, she went the better safe than sorry route and penanced away her temptations.
Two things strike me about this: 1) Men aren’t the only ones who struggle visually and 2) Why do we get on women so much about sexuality?
As a very visual woman, I’ve always been a little off-put by the sentiment that men are the visual creatures and women are not. Do we not all have eyes? And brains? And imaginations? I went from loathing myself as less than a woman because of this line of thinking to being angry that such stereotypes exist to push people on the margins further away. But I’m a bisexual, so what do I know.
I won’t say that women are hounded about sexuality more than men, but we are looked at solely sexually more than men. It’s part of the Fall. Man no longer looks upon woman as helpmate but as someone to be dominated and controlled. This can and does go both ways, just more in one direction than the other. As a woman whose value to the world has been placed in my sexuality or sexual availability in the right circumstances, I sympathize with Aldo. We want to have nothing to do with that! But I think the answer lies more in freeing ourselves from the constraints sin has placed upon us and looking at each other with pure eyes, rather than making a bunch of rules to let sin and temptation lock us in. (I could go on a whole modesty and purity culture rant here, but I’ll spare us all). Aldo was radical in that she wouldn’t let temptation lock her in. She found a way out. May we all find a way out.
St. Aldo, pray for us!
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