Inspired by an excellent post at Laura’s place, I’m going to write what my sex ed experience (or semblance thereof) was like. I figured it would be better to do it here than to take up her whole comments section, since this might get long. Also - Jenny and Niki, if either of y’all remember things differently than I do, please chime in. My memory ain’t the best, especially because I know I’ve blocked out parts of those years. :P
Early on
When I was about 6 years old, I remember asking my mom, “Do you have to be married if you’re pregnant?” (I don’t remember what prompted me to ask this; probably just natural childhood curiosity.) She answered, “You don’t have to be, but it’s a good idea.” I felt very alarmed and thought, I’d better hurry up and get married as soon as possible!! Because, I had no idea how pregnancy actually happened. I thought you just woke up one day and were pregnant, voila.
My parents never talked about sex at all. By the time I was about 7 or 8, I had a book called “So That’s How I Was Born,” but I had asked for it as a present - because I thought it was about babies, and I loved babies and thought they were cute and so on. I didn’t know it was about sex and pregnancy, but thank god they ended up buying it for me, because otherwise I would’ve been really in the dark.
5th grade
This was the first time I had any kind of sex ed. They herded the girls into the cafeteria - or “cafetorium” as it was known; the cheap suburban public school combination of cafeteria and auditorium - and told us about periods. No idea where the boys went, or what they talked about. I remember the lesson only vaguely, but what I remember very clearly is one girl asking, “When do you grown your sex organs?” She was completely serious. Even with what little education I’d had, I somehow had picked up enough to realize that was a ludicrous question. I felt a little concerned that someone my age (10-11) would be asking that. But then again, I didn’t know there was such thing as an erection until 6th grade (happily informed by a loud, obnoxious boy at lunch), so who am I to talk?
Later that year, we had an after-school thing for girls and their moms, also about periods. The woman who led it was personable and not at all nervous, like the school teacher had been. I think she went around to different schools doing this. Also around that time, my mom bought me a book about periods. Everything was very period-focused. I really can’t remember anything else being discussed.
Middle school
Separated us out again by gender, a few times, although I can’t remember much of what was said. Probably mostly periods again, which bored me because I’d already gotten mine by that point. I remember at one point we watched a video called “I got it!” about three best friends who were so excited about getting their periods. Periods, periods, periods! You would think there was nothing else to talk about. We probably looked at a scientific diagram of male and female parts in science class at some point, though I don’t remember specifically when. At some point we also learned the basic mechanics of conception (which I already knew, thanks to my book about babies) - sperm and egg, the whole routine. Blah.
Jenny will remember this: my 7th grade science teacher had this really interesting, sci-fi-looking poster on his wall. It looked like a scene from outer space. Jenny and I asked what it was. He said it was a close-up of the AIDS virus.
Somehow we knew what AIDS was, vaguely. I don’t remember how - honestly, I probably first heard about it on MTV. In the early 90s everyone was still freaking out about it, and fortunately MTV didn’t suck as badly back then, and had a lot of stuff about safer sex. They also had that “Sex in the 90s” show which I stayed up to watch a few times, clandestinely.
In 8th grade we had health class, with a horrible male gym coach as the teacher. It was at least as wonderful as you would think. Same old, same old - periods, diagrams, but now with some talk of STIs thrown in. There were vague references to condoms, but we never saw a real one, much less learned how to put one on a banana (and certainly not on a dildo; heavens!). There was much uncomfortable giggling and trying to disappear into the desk. I don’t remember the clitoris being mentioned in any of the diagrams of female anatomy.
High School
In 10th grade we had health class again - Jenny and Niki definitely remember THAT! How about the time we tried to get our lovely health teacher fired for showing a film called “The Jesus Factor” (in public school). How about her routinely saying “prostrate cancer” instead of “prostate cancer,” and us asking whether that was when you couldn’t lie down. Getting Saturday school and in-school suspension for reading. And, of course, ritualistically burning our health notes once the semester was over!
Yeah. I think that pretty much says it all right there.
Still, no mention of sex as something pleasurable. No condom demonstrations. No clitoris, of course. No talk of masturbation, homosexuality (aside from condemning it, in “The Jesus Factor”), emergency contraception, abortion, orgasms, the definition and importance of consent, or anything else. Plenty of talk about periods, which was downright insulting at that point, because we’d all had ours for years. Basically, we learned, sex could kill you.
In 11th grade, after I transferred to a private school, things weren’t much better. We had an assembly in the library and were shown slides of untreated STIs. There was no mention of the fact that, if caught early, none of them would ever escalate to that condition. There was no mention of the various treatment methods, and no specifics about how each was transmitted in the first place. There were just these horrible close-up slides, intended to scare us away from sex. “Don’t have sex before marriage,” they said, and as an afterthought murmured, “But if you do, use a condom.” Of course, they didn’t show us how to actually use one. Also, of course, half the junior class was already sexually active by that point.
And that’s, well… pretty much it.
Is it any wonder a bunch of girls got pregnant when I was in middle and high school?
Fortunately, for whatever reason, me being me, I had taken the initiative round about the time I was 16 to educate myself about this stuff, because I knew no one else would. I was still lacking in some information until I got to freshman orientation at NYU - but nothing horribly important or life-threatening. (I didn’t know what a dental dam was until then, for example.)
And if that was all I got, and it was before the days of “abstinence-only education,” then I really fear for kids nowadays.
As for what I think good, comprehensive sex ed should consist of, well, just read Laura’s post. She’s outlined all of it already.
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9 Responses to "Sex ed and me"
I remember the MTV stuff. Did you guys have to watch Magic Johnson’s Big Ass AIDS Special, with the Banana Condom?
Hmmm… maybe. That does sound vaguely familiar.
mine essentially consisted of my father letting me watch horses mate, and my science teacher (who’s husband was one of my father’s grad students) telling me babies came out with dresses on and bows in their hair.
I mostly remember that we were separated by sex in 6th grade, together in 7th grade and separated again in 8th grade. We all kept commenting on how stupid it was that we were separated again since we’d all giggled and blushed together the previous year.
I had totally forgotten about that AIDS poster in Mr. Willis’ classroom but it was a cool poster. I wonder how he’s doing. I liked him a lot. I’ve actually wondered from time to time if I would like him now, but he was a really good teacher for me to have then.
I think with two older sisters I just absorbed a fair amount of information. Plus I had a pretty down to earth mom who grew up on a farm, so I understood the mechanics…early enough that I don’t actually remember learning them. The conversation I definitely remember best was with my mom when she said the (now infamous), “Sex is fun. You can’t do it yet.” I was 14. Good advice.
It is more than a little horrifying to me that people just a few years younger than we are (and I guess by “we” I mean you, me and Niki, Amber, since, well, that’s the “we”)…that people in their late teens and early 20s managed to grow up without the innate terror of getting HIV.
Let me be clear, I’m not afraid of people living with HIV and at this point I’m not terrified of HIV.
However, those of us who grew up in the 80s had the fear of HIV instilled in us from the beginning, because you just didn’t know. The lack of information really was terrifying. And somehow those just a few years younger got to grow up in a world where HIV wasn’t a big scary mystery. And without that fear and with the lack of education that seems to be prevalent…
I am officially old, because I’ve started to worry about the younger “generation” and their sexual behavoir. My cousin, whose ultra conservative parents never mentioned sex, thought it was just ridiculous that I freaked out when he told me he used condoms “some of the time” with his constantly changing list of partners. I ran a quick (oh-so-scientific) survey, and it does seem to be an age gap.
I’m stopping now, because this isn’t what this is about…except that, Amber, I think we all knew a little bit about HIV because of Life Goes On. I still love Chad Lowe for that role…
So yeah. Gotta say though, Amber, you left out my favorite part of the in-school suspension story. I got 2 days of in-school for reading in class and, upon finishing 2 days of work in the first 3 hours (high school was a real intellectual challenge for me), what did I do for the next day and a half?
Read.
Best two days of high school I ever had.
End: usurpage of the blog.
Oh, wait, wait, wait!!!
The best part of our virtually abstinence-only sex ed in high school was that by the time we got to that part, Barbara (whose last name I have now forgotten) was already showing a significant baby bump.
She and her boyfriend had been practicing my all-time favorite method of birth control since 7th grade. I clearly remember her saying, “He pulls before he comes over.”
I hate the phrase “white trash” but I just felt that a little right now. Yeah. I really did have a classy kind of childhood.
They never mentioned the clitoris in any of my “sex ed” classes either — and, like yours, we never learned that most STIs if treated early will never reach the stages of “Oh look, bits of your body are rotting off and oozing” stage.
We learned about condoms, but were sternly urged not to use them because they had a majorly high failure rate. (They gave us an actual percentage too, but I can’t remember what it was.) No mention that condoms could be used to prevent the spread of STIs.
I remember a poster in one of the hallways en route to the cafeteria. It had a guy and a girl making out in a car, and the caption said something like, “Carrie was in a fatal car accident last night. She just doesn’t know it yet.” It was an AIDS-awareness thing — but it freaked me out because for the longest time I thought it meant that you could get AIDS by kissing. Nobody bothered to correct that assumption.
Pretty much … my sexual education matches yours, except there was a lot more emphasis on virginity and abstinence as virtues for the girls and there was mention of how it was our duty to control those unruly boys. Periods, periods, STIs, periods, abstinence, periods … yeah. It got old.
Unlike you, unfortunately, I didn’t bother to seek out age-appropriate information until I was at least nineteen, despite the fact that I’d become sexually active the year prior. Thankfully it didn’t cost me anything other than my own shame over not having applied my usual bookwormy standards to one of the most important areas of my life, but I know now how easily it could have gone so very wrong. It scares the hell out of me that we all left high school with so little information — and it frightens me even more that that lack was by design.
>How about her routinely saying “prostrate cancer” instead of “prostate cancer,” and us asking whether that was when you couldn’t lie down. >
heh, sharp kids…
After reading all this, I have a much greater appreciation for my mother who actually taught me well, and early, about sex in a non-scary, honest way (including very detailed discussions and what wasn’t covered in those talks were covered by at least three books that somehow found their way onto my pillow without me knowing about it). I just don’t fully understand how it’s the school system’s fault for this — parents don’t teach their kids about sex and then they freak when the schools try to do it, so the school doesn’t do a good job of it. If you want something done right, do it yourself!
Some of my experiences were similiar, some different. Health class was always pretty lame; luckily, my parents were pretty open and gave me lots of age-appropriate reading material whenever I had questions.
Maybe I’ll have to write my own post, but one thing this post brought to mind was this one “book” (really a booklet) my mother gave to me to read about menstruation. She must have sent away for it and then held onto it until I was ready. It was published by this feminine hygiene products company called “Modess” and it was called “Growing Up and Liking It.” (Yes, that’s right.)
And look, someone’s been kind enough to scan the entire booklet online (but sadly, in grayscale)! (This is the 1972 version. I think I had the 1978 version pictured at the bottom of the page here, but the content appears to be more or less the same.)
Looking at it now, it’s SO tacky. Supposed to be letters written between three friends about periods. Yeah, right. But at the time I loved it and read it a billion times.
Take a look, it’s funny.