The Carlisle Indian Industrial School -Superintendent’s Office. Photo from National Park Service website.
It’s been a problem for ages, in every situation where there is a discrepancy in the balance of power: women vs. men, children vs. adults. It came up recently in a class on Mary the Mother of Jesus: did this young, uneducated, disempowered girl in a society where a girl could be sold into slavery by her father if he did it before she was twelve really have the courage to say no to the angel of the annunciation?
It seems unlikely. Hard for anyone to say no to an angel…
And for college students at fraternity parties, the same issue emerges, much intensified by alcohol.
And for women in all cultures where we are treated as second-class citizens.
The power to say no. Without it, can we ever feel we are in charge of our own lives?
A friend of mine gave me another example: as a young Native boy in a boarding school run by the Roman Catholic church, he found a well-established tradition of certain monks, who were the teachers, taking a young boy as a lover. In fact the boys had even established a certain protocol, details of which I will not include here. There were benefits from this association: the monks could help and protect their boy lovers.
But could a boy ever say no?
When I asked this question, my friend was puzzled; I don’t think he’d thought of this before. His memory of his relationship, decades ago, with his monk was sweet; he has told me several times that it was love.
His answer was ambiguous. Yes, the chosen boy’s feelings were respected, to some degree, but not always in the heat of the moment. And of course since this form of love was accepted and codified in the boarding school, there were no bad results in terms of reactions from the other students.
But the story still makes me queasy. Is it right for a ten or eleven-year-old boy to be put in this situation? Coming often from chaotic reservation homes, the boarding schools offered them order, cleanliness, learning; but is intimacy with an adult male too big a price to pay?
I don’t know the answer. Perhaps one of you does.
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