having "the talk"

Sep 26, 2011 17:34

I somehow stumbled today from reading Autostraddle's NSFW Sunday to reading an advice article for mums who are trying to have "the talk" with their daughters ( Read more... )

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Comments 16

gingasaur September 26 2011, 09:05:32 UTC
I remember the talk we got in... was it 5th grade? And I don't even remember what happened but it was Texas so all I remember is, "This is a penis, this is a vagina, OKAY WE'RE DONE GO BACK TO CLASS." And then in high school it was better because the main message was "don't have -unsafe- sex or you will get std's/pregnant and die" but I don't remember any talk about, like, orgasms and stuff. I do remember we watched this miracle of life video where it showed you eeeeverything, from sperm going up a vag to the grand ugly birthing process.

I'm only just coming to terms with the fact that it's okay to talk about sex because let's face it, when you grow up Catholic, it is no picnic. The sex education I got there was that a.) I'm a slut solely because of my having a vag, b.) really don't ever have sex because you will get pregnant and will KILL A LIFE if you don't want to stay pregnant, and c.) don't enjoy sex because it's for making babies with only the person you're married to. So I would say if anything, it wasn't school that fucked ( ... )

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tendre_posion September 26 2011, 09:24:10 UTC
Oh man. Growing up Catholic. I had public education for primary school (pre-school to 7th grade) and then for High School I went to an all girls catholic school because that was where my mum wanted me to go and get a 'good catholic education'. I took Biology in my senior years, and my teacher actually told us that she wasn't allowed to teach us about condoms or how the pill worked because it was against the Catholic faith, and I think that was the first time that I ever got really angry over what the Catholic school system was teaching us. Most of my friends by senior year were having sex, and one of them, I remember her telling me, had already taken the morning-after pill THREE TIMES. I mean. I wasn't even having sex and I knew that you should just make him wear a goddamn condom or tell him no ( ... )

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halfbloodme September 26 2011, 10:05:20 UTC
Followed the link on tumblr (realjerseyboi on there just so you can connect the dots ( ... )

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tendre_posion September 26 2011, 10:14:33 UTC
Thanks for coming on over :)

I think the 'no sex before marriage' thing is pretty much universal in school sex ed, without it being said. "when a mummy and a daddy", which to any 8, 9, 10 or 11 year old really means "when you're married"

LGBTQ sex ed being missing from every sex ed program makes me really disappointed. I have this inkling that one of my cousins, who is not even 13 yet, might be gay, and he's at a Catholic All-Boys school, and I can bet that he'll get no support, or be told where he can find support if he is gay.

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halfbloodme September 26 2011, 10:20:08 UTC
They say one in every ten people is Queer. If that's the case, on average in every UK classroom, three students are missing out on the education they need. Probably the same in other countries as well. It's disgusting.

And as for single sex religious schools, they're about as much help with sex ed as a chocolate teapot sadly.

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ext_758237 September 26 2011, 11:10:22 UTC
This was really quite interesting to read. I'm cozcat from Tumblr, and I've never really gotten any sort of proper sex ed. In primary school we got the standard anatomy-and-that-crap that's probably fine for year fives and sixes. However, we got to the end of year nine, which is when we decide our own subjects (as the next year is the year before VCE), and the only health ed we'd had was part of a program that we did for a term, which was nutrition. So the last sex ed my school offered was in year six. I'm now coming up to the end of year 11, and the only thing resembling sex ed I've had since then is biology (did 1/2 in year 10), in which we discussed the logistics of human intercourse for purposes of reproduction, which was applied to all species that reproduce sexually, and humans were just used as the application to what we already know ( ... )

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vamp926 September 26 2011, 18:13:42 UTC
We got the talk in school in 7th grade, I think, if I remember correctly. They showed us a video which explained what basically happens with the sperm and and female reproductive parts ( ... )

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ahkna September 26 2011, 22:08:39 UTC
This is an interesting topic. I think I had The Talk with my parents at a very young age because I don't remember it but my mom says that when I was young I asked about babies and she straight up told me. This made it extremely awkward for me when we finally got sex education in whatever grade in elementary school (maybe grade 5?) because it seemed like every girl was making 'EWWWWW' noises at demonstrations of tampons and whatnot. And I had gotten my period at 10, in grade 4 and this was part of my daily life. It got even more awkward in high school when in grade 9 sex ed the teacher was talking about vaginas and whatnot and the girls were STILL grossed out. Like they had absolutely NO working knowledge of their own anatomy and constantly made loud, disruptive noises about how they found their own vaginas gross and didn't know what was going on there ( ... )

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tendre_posion September 27 2011, 04:44:08 UTC
I think that's an awesome attitude towards sex ed that your family has, and it's such a healthy one as well. I don't think that anything makes kids feel like there is something wrong with sex and sexuality more than their own parents completely ignoring the fact that eventually their children will be teenagers and adults and have the wants and needs of them ( ... )

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ahkna September 27 2011, 05:37:25 UTC
I think it's a pretty awesome attitude, yeah. It's actually really funny because my mom and her sister are basically the same person who spend every day together yet my cousins have no body or sex confidence at all. And we were all raised together. Apparently your body image and self-esteem is tied to your father so there's that. In my personal journey I found that the people who love you are going to continue to love you no matter what you look like and potential partners are going to get crushes based on you not your body too.

I hear that a lot about people with parents with Catholic upbringing, that there's a very conservative, compartmentalized mentality towards sex. And a reticence to broach the sex and, specifically, gay sex topics. (I went to school in a backwater place where everyone was very, very French Catholic)

Oh man, how much do I wish there was more LGBT education in general. I think there's a greater chance of pigs flying then that being taught in school which is a rather depressing thought. :/

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tendre_posion September 27 2011, 06:47:36 UTC
I've always found it weird that while I'm not particularly body confident, I am sex-confident. Although it's a whole different story when you get drunk and try to lose your virginity, only to be thrown out of the guys room because you didn't want to blow him. 17 year old me was so great :S

The only way that I got any kind of LGBT sex ed was because I actively saught out an LBGT youth group and part of what they do is actual proper sex ed for LGBT teens. I mean, I knew all about condoms and the pill and the morning-after pill, and I knew that gay guys needed to have safe sex because they were at a higher risk of aids, but I pretty much just thought in my teen stupidity that girls who had sex with other girls didn't have to worry about any of that stuff, and by the time I found out I was sexually active with other girls.

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