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feature JUNE 2018
A sign on the wall of the chocolate café reads ‘Sweeten thy soul’. As we sit down for a hot chocolate and a chat, Patricia Weerakoon, a Christian sexologist living in Sydney, said “what better place to talk about sex than where we can ‘sweeten our souls’.”
SEX a sweeten says christian se “Even better than sweet chocolate is chilli chocolate,” she said. “That’s an aphrodisiac, you know.” In 2011, Patricia retired from a weighty academic career in sexual health at The University of Sydney, having run its graduate program in Sexual Health. “I have a double passion,” Patricia said. “I’m passionate about sex. And I’m passionate about God. It’s what brought me to where I am now.” Almost everything Patricia says could be included in a romance novel. In fact, she has penned several such novels already, published in Sri Lanka. She talks of growing up on a tea plantation in Sri Lanka in the end days of the British Raj as if there was still mist on the hills. “My father was a factory tea maker, a native Sri Lankan. And there were layers of society which still existed around that time of independence. The British weren’t allowed to mix with the natives. And the natives weren’t allowed to mix with the indentured Indian workers.” A bright student, Patricia was accepted into medical school, despite an upbringing which groomed her to become a Sri Lankan housewife, with plans for an arranged marriage. At the same time that Patricia met her husband, Vasantha, at a camp for Christian university students, divisions among the native Sri Lankans, between Tamils and Sinhalese, were rife. “My husband is Sinhalese, and I am Tamil, which were the two groups trying to kill each other. It was a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing.” Ultimately, the fact that Vasantha was a Christian resulted in her parents’ consent. Patricia said God has been in her life for as long as she can remember. After her marriage, Patricia and her new family moved to Hawaii, where she undertook postgraduate studies in sexual health.
“It’s where I got into sex, where I got my sex passion.” “It’s amazing, really. I was already five years married with a two-year-old son at that time. But apart from ‘it doesn’t go in the belly button’, I didn’t know very much about sex at all. Nobody ever talked about it. And, you know, things aren’t that much different now.” Patricia worked under a professor and sexologist in Hawaii who specialised in gender. She said the professor encouraged ‘desensitisation’ to gender issues by taking them out on the town. “I’ve basically seen everything,” she said with a shrug. “From gender bending, partial and full gender transitions and surgeries, live shows, pornography. I’ve seen it all.” Patricia said she is often asked how she managed to keep hold of her faith and values amongst the things she saw. “It was actually my husband who kept me grounded. And to all of the places I went, he would say, ‘I’m coming along if you’re going.’ Half the time he’d just have his eyes closed. ‘Oh no’, he’d say ‘Not another sex show!’” “When we came home, he would always say ‘We must read the Bible and pray together.’ He pulled me back, grounded me in the faith. And we had a wonderful church too.” During her time in Hawaii, Patricia said her eyes were opened to the beauty of the human body. She talks freely about the penis as an “engineering marvel” and the clitoris as “the only organ created solely for pleasure”. “How can we take something so beautiful and make it so ugly?” she questioned. Patricia went back to Sri Lanka in the 1980s, to a region bursting at the seams with 18 million people. She felt like she was the only sex therapist in the country. But ethnic problems in the country moved them on to Australia, where
Patricia began teaching sexual health to graduate students in Sydney. “Other sexologists would ask how I can be a Christian and do the work I do, speak about the things I speak about. And I would say, we all research sex, but as a Christian, I know the Creator.” “I look at the Bible and seek the biblical truth about our sexuality. And now, the more I learn about the brain science around sexual desire, there is a beautiful fit with God’s purpose.” “If desire is used as intended, it’s a wonderful urge.” Patricia said bringing all the thoughts on the mechanics of sex within a biblical framework is what she has worked towards in her career. “After 30 years of studying sex and retiring from university life, I’m able to talk about how God’s purpose and the biology and research actually come together.” “The world can pick at it and distort, but that doesn’t take away how the Bible presents sex, how your brain and body have been formed.” Talking about sex for so long, and to so many, does come with its fair share of challenges. But her family have been her constant support. “Oh, my poor darling husband. He’s always been my greatest supporter. We’re friends and lovers, but of course we have our own ups and downs.” Patricia says her husband, Vasantha, has had to have a great sense of humour, being married to a sexologist and also being a ‘subcontinental’, from the home of the Kama Sutra. Perhaps more so, as he worked as an engineer for the fire department – with a lot of other men. “They often said to him – ‘here comes the sex therapist’s husband’ and ‘no wonder you’ve always got a smile on your face!’”, Patricia laughed cheekily. Looking back, Patricia said she was crazy to even think about coming to
Australia – an entirely different culture – and say “I want to talk about sex”. But God has guided her, and she said she prays constantly that everything she says and does will be to His glory. “I constantly take things to the Lord. ‘To live is Christ and to die is gain.’ – especially now that I’m 65. Every time I’ve done a crazy thing, I’ve asked God before, during and after.” Being so audacious about sex also means there are times of potential embarrassment. Though, after speaking with Patricia for almost two hours, it is clear that when it comes to sex, nothing fazes her. Giggling, she recounts one such incident: “We had a new minister at our church a little while ago now, and we walked out after church to greet him. He asked me whether I worked, and I said ‘Yes, I work in sex’.” “My husband said later, do you realise that poor minister could barely greet the next person after what you said?” “To this day, that minister says I told him I was a sex worker! I know I wouldn’t have said that, but I guess ‘I work in sex’ was stunning enough.” Patricia talks about sex like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Which, in her view, it is. “Look at Genesis – we are created in the image of God, we are created with gender, given a command to procreate. And God made it fun!” “Imagine if sex was like doing your tax return – who would bother? We would have died out a long time ago. It’s because it’s fun – and God has made it that way – that we actually do it.” She said she has been overwhelmed, as she moves further into sex therapy and counselling, by the number of Christian couples who want to talk to her. “The cross is a good place to start when you’re hurt as a couple. Forgiveness, repentance, grace.