The school stuff was pretty much what's been described here as amongst the most minimal--it was the late 70s early 80s, so pre-AIDS, basically, and almost no mention of "venereal diseases" as they were still mostly then called (well, in the Midwest). So I got most of my sex ed done in several other places
1) as a child (5-7?) with my cousin (we were both girls) we would play "date." Naked. In bed.
2) a slumber party when I was about 10 I found out about the whole "a boy has to stick his penis inside a girl to make a baby" and having all those predictably freaked out thoughts: "so my parents did this disgusting thing? my GRANDPARENTS did it? At least 5 times???",
3) a copy of the horrible horrible horrible book "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" which someone had clearly given my mother as a joke gift, hidden right where I'd be sure to find it, in her top drawer under all her scarves and her old jewelry box. I'd hide in a closet and read it.
4) reading women's magazines (maybe Seventeen, too?) and finding out that "it's normal for many girls to have fantasies about other girls but probably just a phase" (with the implicit "if you're NORMAL and not one of those sad perverts..."). Which was certainly a mixed message, at best, and at the time even I remember thinking "but what if you don't grow out of it?," but at the same time, given that everywhere else in my life it was pretty much just not talked about, at least it recognized that fantasy itself existed and wasn't bad (which was helpful, especially given source #5, below), and that same-sex fantasy has its place, needn't be repressed.
The weirdest one, however, was: 5) Church. Am I the only one who endured sex-talks in youth groups at church? I was probably 15? 16? 17? somewhere in there. We had a book that we were assigned to read, and it described the different levels of sexual activity and intimacy one might engage in--solo masturbation and private fantasy, hand holding, light kissing, open-mouth kissing, "light petting" and "heavy petting" (those terms I particularly recall because I don't know if I'd ever heard it called that, and they always still brings a kind of slobbery dog to my mind...), oral sex, and, the pinnacle as always het.pen.sex.
I remember that part of the agenda, perhaps a biggish part of it, was definitely to get us to "save ourselves for marriage" but there was a lot of gray area--what about all that light and heavy petting (and all those dogs who keep nosing their way into the mix)? What about the oral sex we were all having and not thinking of as sex, really, I mean...if it's not het.pen., it's not really...?
The thing that sticks with me about that is that, in the end, it wasn't that horrible--which I know, sounds really weird. Yes, there was a moralistic and way strongly heteronormative edge to it, but also (and I think it was led by a "youth leader," not the pastor), as I remember it, it actually amounted to kind of a "think about this and realize that it's a kind of moral/ethical territory." It did at least take us seriously as human beings, making choices about issues that matter, and it at least acknowledged that all this stuff is pleasureable. Which I don't think anything at school ever did.
Maybe it was also because, for me, it was a real, 100-page book, and that's always worked for me (probably really didn't work for some kids) as a way of encountering ideas and sorting them--so much better than the "talks" with some generally fidgety, uncomfortable, embarrassed or downright terrified adult trying to act like this educational topic wasn't weird for all us, in that context. |
