Metaquoted: Sex Ed 001
I've been metaquoted:
Context: sabotabby asked whether wasabi-lime mustard goes well with pear-and-brie sandwiches (we haven't tested this yet), and how people first learned about sex. I responded (in comments):
[M]y poor seventh-grade Catholic school teacher sent the boys to the library and informed us that the Ministry of Education said we had to have sex education, since we were in Grade 7. Sex happened, he told us, when the man inserted his penis into the woman's vagina, and we each had a slip of paper on which we could write an anonymous question that he would answer.
I thought about it for a while, and wrote, carefully, "Why?"
It was much, much longer before I figured out the answer to that. Mr. P. apparently didn't feel qualified to attempt an answer.
So, in response to some of the commenters on metaquotes:
deliriousminuet thinks Catholic education was pretty effective, given that I hadn't figured out the whys by Grade 7. Yeah, grade 7 is kind of late to be learning about tab A and slot B. Oh well.
It might have been grade 6. I'm pretty certain it wasn't grade 5, and I know it was while I was at Catholic school. Yeah, a more astute, less sheltered kid might have figured it out earlier. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid doing so -- I certainly read a lot, but I didn't read much that was graphic, and I'm pretty sure anything that referred to sex kind of slipped over my head.
noelleithe Is thankful that her parents were "sensible" about the entire topic:
I swear, I get more and more relieved all the time that my parents saw fit to give me good, complete sex education starting when I was 9 years old. They made things easier all around by buying a set of well-done books and telling me to feel free to ask them any questions. That worked out particularly well because the books explained things so well I didn't need to ask questions. Yay for freedom from both ignorance and awkwardness! *g*
To give my parents some credit, having come late to the understanding of the mechanics, the whys, and the wherefores wasn't that damaging to me. Sure, my early sexual experiences weren't entirely pleasant or satisfactory, but that wasn't because nobody had explained things to me by the time I lost my virginity at age 16. There was a whole 'nother gap in my sexuality education, and a larger gap in my self esteem.
Warning: The following may contain TMI. This is a post about my sexual development, after all. You've been warned.
The first factor contributing to my astonishing, and blithe, ignorance is probably that I was adopted. So when I asked my parents where I'd come from, they told me true: The Catholic Children's Aid Society. They even showed me photos.
My kid brother is my parents' biological son. I'm pretty sure I asked about how the baby got into Mommy's tummy, but I was only two years old when he was conceived, so I don't remember what they told me. When you're two or three, there's a lot weird about the world, so one more weird thing kinda slides in. So my brother's birth and conception didn't tell me much about the birds and the bees, though it did solidify my views about how people got babies: They could grow one in the mommy's tummy, or they could adopt one. Babies could be born or adopted. I was adopted, my brother was born. Apparently I caused some distress in the neighbourhood, when I was a bit older, asking my friends whether they had been born or adopted-a question I considered entirely legit.
Anyway, when I was about seven, my mom had a hysterectomy, so I never had other siblings to provide an opportunity to discuss sexuality and the making of babies. I grew up knowing that it took a man and a woman, and that kissing and touching had something to do with it, and the mechanisms by which any of this happened were kind of fuzzy.
By age eleven or so, I knew about fertilization-I knew that it happened when Mr. Sperm met Miss Ova in the woman's uterus. I knew about embryos and gestation, and umbilical cords. I'm pretty certain I had a vague idea what the birth canal was and how infants got out, but didn't want to think about that (ew). I just hadn't really considered how sperm got into the uterus. I sort of figured it was one of those adult mysteries and would be revealed sooner or later. No worries-I had other things to think about, and other books to read (I think I was really into Mozart at about the same time I was reading about eggs and sperm. That was the year I read everything I could about Mozart, including that when he was little he'd played for the kings and queens of Europe. I had only the haziest notion of where Europe was, and in my brain had it conflated with Egypt-they both begin with "E," and the past was all just old-so for a long time I had the strangest image in my head of a young Mozart in powdered wig and embroidered coat playing violin for some extremely Middle-Kingdom-looking pharoahs
I'd heard friends discussing periods, so I asked my mom about them. She gave me a book called Sex, Love, and the Believing Girl, which she had apparently bought a long time before and stored against the day she'd need to have The Talk. It was written by a priest, and was unutterably dull. So I didn't read it. She gave me another book called Growing Up Feeling Good which was a pretty standard secular guide to puberty. It had chapters for girls about vaginas and cervixes and urethras and clitori, as well as sanitary napkins, tampons and bras. Okay. So I was up on menstruation and bras. Great. I also learned that some people referred to differently sized breasts by the names of fruits: melons, lemons, cherries. Whatever. Nobody I knew did this, and I couldn't imagine doing so. How gauche.
The book discussed sex, but I wasn't all that interested, because I was pretty certain that sex wasn't something I should be thinking about. Yep, I was an eleven-year-old prude. so I skimmed that chapter, then skipped it once I got to the bit on masturbation, tried it, decided that the book was wrong, lying, or weird on the subject (either I wasn't very good at masturbation or I just wasn't ready yet-it did nothing for me), or that maybe I was just weird, and read the chapters on homework and socializing and dating instead.
In retrospect, I suspect that my mother figured that I would read the book cover to cover, as I read almost everything, and the school I was just cottoning on to the fact that not everyone's parents told them about sex. Also, I didn't have a lot of friends in school, so I had nobody to gossip with about sex, and was profoundly uninterested to boot (I guess I was a late bloomer, of sorts). I read a lot, but don't remember anything explicit enough to penetrate my fog of ignorance and squicked-outedness. So when Mr. P. sent the boys to the library and explained about tab A and slot B, my thinking, as best I can recall it, was "That's what all the fuss is about? Huh? Why would anyone (or any two, I suppose) ever think to do such a thing? Weird."
My poor teacher was clearly uncomfortable with teaching his pre-adolescent and adolescent students about sex-I'm betting he hadn't had a lot of preparation for this, and he clearly didn't have any resources. The phys ed teacher at my next school (a private girls' school), did a much better job explaining things the next year. I was still profoundly uninterested and generally unimpressed with the entire concept of sex, but her mention of orgasms did send me back to Growing Up Feeling Good (which I figured I'd outgrown, but which was my best resource on the topic), to see whether orgasms were mentioned in the parts I'd skipped or skimmed. Yep-it did mention nerve endings and really good feelings that might happen if said nerve endings were sufficiently stimulated. Okay, so now I knew "why" in a theoretical way. It still seemed a weird thing to do, and I continued to wonder for a very long time why anyone had thought to do this bizarre thing in the first place.
Yeah. Late bloomer. Doesn't seem to have done too much permanent harm.
Context: sabotabby asked whether wasabi-lime mustard goes well with pear-and-brie sandwiches (we haven't tested this yet), and how people first learned about sex. I responded (in comments):
[M]y poor seventh-grade Catholic school teacher sent the boys to the library and informed us that the Ministry of Education said we had to have sex education, since we were in Grade 7. Sex happened, he told us, when the man inserted his penis into the woman's vagina, and we each had a slip of paper on which we could write an anonymous question that he would answer.
I thought about it for a while, and wrote, carefully, "Why?"
It was much, much longer before I figured out the answer to that. Mr. P. apparently didn't feel qualified to attempt an answer.
So, in response to some of the commenters on metaquotes:
deliriousminuet thinks Catholic education was pretty effective, given that I hadn't figured out the whys by Grade 7. Yeah, grade 7 is kind of late to be learning about tab A and slot B. Oh well.
It might have been grade 6. I'm pretty certain it wasn't grade 5, and I know it was while I was at Catholic school. Yeah, a more astute, less sheltered kid might have figured it out earlier. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid doing so -- I certainly read a lot, but I didn't read much that was graphic, and I'm pretty sure anything that referred to sex kind of slipped over my head.
noelleithe Is thankful that her parents were "sensible" about the entire topic:
I swear, I get more and more relieved all the time that my parents saw fit to give me good, complete sex education starting when I was 9 years old. They made things easier all around by buying a set of well-done books and telling me to feel free to ask them any questions. That worked out particularly well because the books explained things so well I didn't need to ask questions. Yay for freedom from both ignorance and awkwardness! *g*
To give my parents some credit, having come late to the understanding of the mechanics, the whys, and the wherefores wasn't that damaging to me. Sure, my early sexual experiences weren't entirely pleasant or satisfactory, but that wasn't because nobody had explained things to me by the time I lost my virginity at age 16. There was a whole 'nother gap in my sexuality education, and a larger gap in my self esteem.
Warning: The following may contain TMI. This is a post about my sexual development, after all. You've been warned.
The first factor contributing to my astonishing, and blithe, ignorance is probably that I was adopted. So when I asked my parents where I'd come from, they told me true: The Catholic Children's Aid Society. They even showed me photos.
My kid brother is my parents' biological son. I'm pretty sure I asked about how the baby got into Mommy's tummy, but I was only two years old when he was conceived, so I don't remember what they told me. When you're two or three, there's a lot weird about the world, so one more weird thing kinda slides in. So my brother's birth and conception didn't tell me much about the birds and the bees, though it did solidify my views about how people got babies: They could grow one in the mommy's tummy, or they could adopt one. Babies could be born or adopted. I was adopted, my brother was born. Apparently I caused some distress in the neighbourhood, when I was a bit older, asking my friends whether they had been born or adopted-a question I considered entirely legit.
Anyway, when I was about seven, my mom had a hysterectomy, so I never had other siblings to provide an opportunity to discuss sexuality and the making of babies. I grew up knowing that it took a man and a woman, and that kissing and touching had something to do with it, and the mechanisms by which any of this happened were kind of fuzzy.
By age eleven or so, I knew about fertilization-I knew that it happened when Mr. Sperm met Miss Ova in the woman's uterus. I knew about embryos and gestation, and umbilical cords. I'm pretty certain I had a vague idea what the birth canal was and how infants got out, but didn't want to think about that (ew). I just hadn't really considered how sperm got into the uterus. I sort of figured it was one of those adult mysteries and would be revealed sooner or later. No worries-I had other things to think about, and other books to read (I think I was really into Mozart at about the same time I was reading about eggs and sperm. That was the year I read everything I could about Mozart, including that when he was little he'd played for the kings and queens of Europe. I had only the haziest notion of where Europe was, and in my brain had it conflated with Egypt-they both begin with "E," and the past was all just old-so for a long time I had the strangest image in my head of a young Mozart in powdered wig and embroidered coat playing violin for some extremely Middle-Kingdom-looking pharoahs
I'd heard friends discussing periods, so I asked my mom about them. She gave me a book called Sex, Love, and the Believing Girl, which she had apparently bought a long time before and stored against the day she'd need to have The Talk. It was written by a priest, and was unutterably dull. So I didn't read it. She gave me another book called Growing Up Feeling Good which was a pretty standard secular guide to puberty. It had chapters for girls about vaginas and cervixes and urethras and clitori, as well as sanitary napkins, tampons and bras. Okay. So I was up on menstruation and bras. Great. I also learned that some people referred to differently sized breasts by the names of fruits: melons, lemons, cherries. Whatever. Nobody I knew did this, and I couldn't imagine doing so. How gauche.
The book discussed sex, but I wasn't all that interested, because I was pretty certain that sex wasn't something I should be thinking about. Yep, I was an eleven-year-old prude. so I skimmed that chapter, then skipped it once I got to the bit on masturbation, tried it, decided that the book was wrong, lying, or weird on the subject (either I wasn't very good at masturbation or I just wasn't ready yet-it did nothing for me), or that maybe I was just weird, and read the chapters on homework and socializing and dating instead.
In retrospect, I suspect that my mother figured that I would read the book cover to cover, as I read almost everything, and the school I was just cottoning on to the fact that not everyone's parents told them about sex. Also, I didn't have a lot of friends in school, so I had nobody to gossip with about sex, and was profoundly uninterested to boot (I guess I was a late bloomer, of sorts). I read a lot, but don't remember anything explicit enough to penetrate my fog of ignorance and squicked-outedness. So when Mr. P. sent the boys to the library and explained about tab A and slot B, my thinking, as best I can recall it, was "That's what all the fuss is about? Huh? Why would anyone (or any two, I suppose) ever think to do such a thing? Weird."
My poor teacher was clearly uncomfortable with teaching his pre-adolescent and adolescent students about sex-I'm betting he hadn't had a lot of preparation for this, and he clearly didn't have any resources. The phys ed teacher at my next school (a private girls' school), did a much better job explaining things the next year. I was still profoundly uninterested and generally unimpressed with the entire concept of sex, but her mention of orgasms did send me back to Growing Up Feeling Good (which I figured I'd outgrown, but which was my best resource on the topic), to see whether orgasms were mentioned in the parts I'd skipped or skimmed. Yep-it did mention nerve endings and really good feelings that might happen if said nerve endings were sufficiently stimulated. Okay, so now I knew "why" in a theoretical way. It still seemed a weird thing to do, and I continued to wonder for a very long time why anyone had thought to do this bizarre thing in the first place.
Yeah. Late bloomer. Doesn't seem to have done too much permanent harm.