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
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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.
I'm already pretty set that I don't want to have children, but I had a conversation with my godmother the other night about how I want her kids to feel like they can come and talk to me about stuff they don't feel comfortable talking to her about, and her little girl is only 5 now, but I do not ever want her to get to 15 and not know what her goddamn clitoris is, or if she's gay, think that she has nobody to talk to about it for 5 years like I did.
I was 18. EIGHTEEN by the time I learned that queer girls need to have safe sex too. And it was only because I purposefully went looking for the only LGBT youth group in my city. The facilitator handed me this piece of thin latex that looked like someone had cut right down the middle of a condom and made it into a pretty square and goes "this is a dental dam" (unsexy name, I know) "you need to be using one any time you have oral sex with a girl that you don't know is clean. And if you don't have one, get a condom or a latex glove". I mean. It was like someone telling me that the sky was fucking blue. Gay sex ed only exists if you actively seek it out, and I hate that I waited so long to seek it out, because I was almost 16 the first time I had anything resembling sex with a girl, and it was only a year and a half later that I went off to Schoolies (a big week long party when you finish senior year) and watched all my other friends bring guys back to our room and thought "well, maybe I should just try it" and got drunk and almost slept with a guy who's name I didn't even know, and I still consider walking back to my room crying and having to tell my friends that he'd kicked me out because I wouldn't give him a blow job. Sex ed taught me nothing about either of those situations.
I'm already pretty set that I don't want to have children, but I had a conversation with my godmother the other night about how I want her kids to feel like they can come and talk to me about stuff they don't feel comfortable talking to her about, and her little girl is only 5 now, but I do not ever want her to get to 15 and not know what her goddamn clitoris is, or if she's gay, think that she has nobody to talk to about it for 5 years like I did.
I was 18. EIGHTEEN by the time I learned that queer girls need to have safe sex too. And it was only because I purposefully went looking for the only LGBT youth group in my city. The facilitator handed me this piece of thin latex that looked like someone had cut right down the middle of a condom and made it into a pretty square and goes "this is a dental dam" (unsexy name, I know) "you need to be using one any time you have oral sex with a girl that you don't know is clean. And if you don't have one, get a condom or a latex glove". I mean. It was like someone telling me that the sky was fucking blue. Gay sex ed only exists if you actively seek it out, and I hate that I waited so long to seek it out, because I was almost 16 the first time I had anything resembling sex with a girl, and it was only a year and a half later that I went off to Schoolies (a big week long party when you finish senior year) and watched all my other friends bring guys back to our room and thought "well, maybe I should just try it" and got drunk and almost slept with a guy who's name I didn't even know, and I still consider walking back to my room crying and having to tell my friends that he'd kicked me out because I wouldn't give him a blow job. Sex ed taught me nothing about either of those situations.
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