Guys: What did you do while girls were getting The Talk?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Interesting stories, y’all!

As I mentioned, girls had the Getting Your Period film in grade 5, while the boys had a Talk with the One Male Teacher. I’ll never know if they discussed anything relevant, or just shot baskets for an hour.

In grade 8, we had co-ed sex ed, except for the day we were shown genitalia drawings. When the teacher put up the slide of the male equipment, she said, “Jeez, you’re laughing more than the boys did!” Later, during the discussion of contraceptives, she said, “Guys, quit laughing and pay attention. We’re telling you this because you need to know. Some guys in my high school thought Saran Wrap was as good as a condom.”

In 11th grade (different school district), we went over the subject again, when it was more relevant. While discussting AIDS, the female teacher explained how HIV can be contracted from an open wound. “I’m not judging,” she said, “but the anus wasn’t designed for intercourse.”

Neidhart, I hope you realize that if you read “EYAWTKAS…BWATA”, you didn’t learn much of anything. That so-called doctor should have been publicly stoned for what he said about homosexuals.

Cervaise: Good for you!

Mr. Rilch tells me that in his 8th grade, sex ed was sex segregated. A useful bit of advice he remembers is what to do when you get a hardon at an inappropriate time. “Think about the dead squirrel in your backyard, or your grandma’s chin hairs. Anything that makes you sick.” He says it worked.

False_God: Yeah, cramps that made me dry-heave and pass out were magical too. The GYP films never talk about that. Unless the recent ones are more enlightened.

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Maybe it’s jsut ‘cause I’m a youngin’ (how does one spell youngin’? I’ve never tried to before) here, but my sex ed classes were alright (I went to high school from 95-99). I mean, there was, of course, the “unbutton your pants in front of a boy and you just risked pregnancy!!!” propaganda which made, I’m sure, more than one virgin into a paranoid crying wreck when her period was a week late, but in general, I guess it was fairly informative. We had a video on breast self-examinations. If you were an eighth grade boy, it was law to make several hilarious jokes about how you wished you’d seen that. And then carry these jokes on until your senior year of high school.
I believe the boys watched a video where a young man found a lump in his testicle. Personally, I would like to see that video just to witness the incredible maturity of that actor.

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In 5th grade the girls left the room to watch their film and we just stayed behind and did homework. The next year the guys and girls were seperated again and we got to see the video the girls saw the previous year, plus we saw a video meant for guys. We were told the girls were watching the guy video too. Then the teacher handed out pamphlets and answered questions.

All of it was pretty factual, but the diagrams were incomprehensible. I mean, I’m pretty good at visualizing, but it was impossible to determine what girls were supposed to have “down there” by using the diagram.

I did discover one interesting thing in one of the pamphlets, an actual discription of intercourse. It was in terms as dry and clinical as can possibly be imagined, but for a 12 year old boy it was solid gold.

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I had sex-ed in both 7th and 8th grades. We, the girls, got a female science teacher and a nurse; the boys got the other female science teacher and a local pastor.

The girls were taught abstinence, completely, until marriage. The boys were taught abstinence, but if they just COULDN’T wait, they discussed contraceptives.

And I did not go to a religious school, either.

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Ah, the breast examination video. What fine, fond memories…

Oh yeah, and we watched a guy roll his testicles between his fingers in front of a mirror. Quite enlightening. I think it was hosted by a soccer player, but the name elludes me.

One time, in 5th grade, we were handed out pictures of the insides of a penis. This was during sex ed, by the way, the teacher wasn’t randomly distributing porn and gross anatomy diagrams to the class.
Anyway, I saw that the tube that brings the urine up and out of the penis loops around once near the base. So I raised my hand and asked “why doesn’t the pee just take a shortcut?” and the entire class cracked up. I still don’t get what was so funny.

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In the seventh grade we had a week of “girl talk” from the school counsuler. I have no idea what the boys were doing. She was one of these hyper-feminine ex-prom queen types. She started by talking about menstration, but all she managed to do was make it sound more terrible, more tramatic, more life-altering than it really was–she started with the assumption that we were all totally and completly tramatized by the idea, and managed to convince me that I shouls be. After a day of that she spent the rest of the week talking about the really important part of being a girl: makeup and associated beauty regimines. Most of the girls in the class either didn’t wear make-up or were still in the lip-gloss and eye-liner stage, but she advocated full coverage at all times. Her own face had about a quarter inch of base on it, and you could tell she thought it was a crucial responsibility of all women to Look Pretty.

I really wish I could have turned out to be the butchest dyke on God’s green earth so that I could blame it on that woman. Instead I only let my legs and armpits grow wild. She probably thinks that is illegal.

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Oh, False_God, you just reminded me of what my mother said when I got my period for the first time. I was ten years old, doubled over in pain, crying, and my mother said:

“Isn’t it like magic? Honey, you’re a woman now!”

And then she went out to the living room, where we were having our one and only family reunion, and announced to approximately 25 assorted relatives, including my cousins, all of whom are male:

“Isn’t it wonderful? Deepbluesea just got her period!”

She said it so loudly I heard her in the bathroom, where I was already praying for death rather than have these cramps a minute longer. After I heard that, though, I seriously considered seeking death more actively.

Hint, for people with daughters out there: do NOT do this. Anything else you can come up with has got to be better.

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This is really awful, but I got my period for FIVE MONTHS before I told my mother. I still can’t figure out how I pulled that one off.

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I just remembered something else!

But before I tell you, it is interesting to read this thread today and get a general impression of what period of time it was each of us are talking about. Rilchiam talked about HIV being mentioned, so that talk was obviously in the late 80s or the 90s.

The caped sperm films have to have been made when? - late sixties?

Now what I forgot to say was that when we had the general boys and girls talk (early sixties) there was a plump, freckly lass in our group named Regina.

As the instructor went through the names of body parts we were all *thrilled * to hear what the female rude bit waas actually called. Nobody said anything, or giggled, or even turned in their seat to stare, (we New Zealanders were a gentle lot) but poor Regina went very red.

Very red.

Deepbluesea and MandaJO you guys have an amusing turn of phrase - thanks for the laughs. And thanks for listening,

Vaginaboss

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** I suspect, Redboss, that these were the same films used to educate youthful dinosaurs about the superheroic nature of sperm. But I watched them in the mid-'80s. (Side note: my LO, who grew up in the same town as I did but attended different schools, reports that the only thing wearing a cape in her sex ed class was the teacher. He dressed up for Halloween as Captain Condom. Mrs. R was not, thank god, standard issue.)

We were also supposed to cover HIV/AIDS in Mrs. R’s class, but naturally we didn’t, aside from a brief mention that said ‘trouble’ did not concern us, since it only happened to ‘certain unfortunates.’ My father took her to task for that one on Parent Night, but to no avail. (My parents were horrors on Parent Night, but that’s another thread.)

Fortunately, we had the whole business over again in 9th grade from one Ms. Johnson, who took no prisoners and minced no words. She covered everything in graphic, realistic, and honest detail. She also demonstrated, in class, her ability to put a condom on over her head. Even as jaded as we thought we were, we could not help but be impressed.

Pity, though, that Ms. Johnson’s class came too late for some; one of the girls in that class was already pregnant, and most of us had figured out sex on our own initiative by then.

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originally posted by Rilchiam:

Oh, even then I recognized the patronizing, semi-homophobic tone of that section. If I’d been gay, I suspect I’d have thrown the book across the room.

But it was written in the '60s, before Christopher Street even.

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As I was reading this thread, I had a sudden flashback to Recruit Training - or bootcamp, if you prefer - summer of 1973. We were being lectured by one of the petty officers about how to walk and sit so as not to “excite men” - those were her exact words. I swear, the entire company struggled not to laugh out loud at this woman - we didn’t want to be assigned extra marching. She also referred to the clitoris as the “turn-on button” - I believe she had some issues…

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ThisYearsGirl, I was class of '99 also (YEA!).
If you had ‘not bad’ sex ed class in high school you were just lucky. Mine was the epitome of political agendas shaping education.

The big scare that they used to try and convince us not to have sex was HIV, not pregnancy. Pregnancy was almost portrayed as an insignificant consequence by comparison. They talked about using condoms and things, but they made it seem like there was virtually no way you could avoid contracting HIV if you were sexually active, and that it didn’t matter whether who the person was, you had an equal chance to contract the disease with any partner.

They of course made the case that having sex is just a horrible risk to everyone and something that you should avoid until you’re married, but then the next day, in an effort to teach a sort of tolerance of homosexuality, they would tell us that there’s nothing wrong with homosexual sex.

The most disturbing thing was that they told us that there was absolutely NO risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion.

With my habit of arguing with teachers, I told the teacher and the whole class that the CDC Reported that you were 24 times MORE LIKELY to contract HIV from a blood transfusion than from sex, and of course got in trouble for ‘disruptive behavior’.

Needless to say, that class was tons of fun :smiley:

34

Jeeziz, reading some of these tales I’m grateful for the sex ed we got! Class of '97 here, thanks to Quebec’s odd school system (if I’d stayed in Manitoba I’d be the class of '98, or dead of frostbite).

In grade 7, we had (boys only - it was an all boys’ school) health class, in one class of which we were made to watch this ancient video called Am I Normal? The teacher actually said, “This is a really, really old video. Tell me if you think it’s completely hysterical.”

In Grade 9, we had a whole (co-ed) class called Human Development, taught by the extremely cool counselor, Ms. Peters. It was mostly about hitting puberty, sex, and drugs. We got another video, slides, and whatnot. Ms. Peters said she wanted to conduct it as a seminar, so we got to ask questions. We even got a class on homosexuality, which was the one time we ever officially heard about it.

In Grade 11, now in my new school in Montreal, and all-boys once again (not the wondrous fantasy playground for the young faglet you might imagine), the class was taught by the very macho vice principle, Mr. Wearing. The usual safe sex and whatnot. No gay people to be seen anywhere. We had to go and buy a box of condoms and bring them to class, so we would learn not to be embarrassed to. (I was two years younger than everyone else in the class, due to various circumstances, so I was KINDA embarrassed.) Then we were shown how to put it on a cucumber, I think. He told us to try them on when we were “playing with ourselves”.

(After I graduated, and then came out, the reaction at that school that my straight little brother suffered through made him go on to win a Canadian public speaking championship with a speech on homophobia. The next year, they had in a great play called The Other Side of the Closet, some counselors from Project 10 (a local gay youth group), and things like that.)

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I forgot to mention two things:

  1. With all the talk about wet dreams, I was very alarmed to hit puberty, wait a long time, and still never get one. They neglected to mention, I think, that if you masturbate frequently you don’t have wet dreams. I didn’t learn that tidbit of information until I was 19.

  2. The sex ed class in Grade 11 was called Student Awareness; abbreviated - at an all boys’ school, I swear to Goddess this is true - as stud.aware.

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Oh, one last thing. I remember in Grade 11 we had a sheet comparing different birth control methods, with the benefits and drawbacks of each. I remember that abstinence was listed “Drawbacks: None.”

To a man, or boy, we all thought Yes there is, you’re not getting any!

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I found this which sells old sex education films on VHS, in case anyone is interested.

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No mention of HIV/AIDS for us. Couldn’t really expect them to mention it, as it didn’t yet exist. (Or should I say “wasn’t yet known”? - cira 1960.) Boys and girls were taught separately. It was a once a week class. Called Health, I think. I suspect the reason for separating us was so they could tell the boys things we girls were being sheltered from knowing.

We were told something about the changes that occur with adolesence, something about the reproductive system, nothing about contraception. I don’t remember if menstuation was mentioned. I would have probably spaced out on that if it was; for me, it had started a year or two before that class. I, at ten, had NO clue as to why there was blood on my panties. I knew about menstuation, but had vaguely assumed it didn’t start until you were grown up.

I remember a movie about STDs that made the point that all it took was for one boy to “do it” with a loose woman, and VD (as it was then called) would spread like wildfire through the whole high school. I’m not sure when this was shown, or to whom. Seems to me it was a few years after the health class year.

At no point was homosexuality even MENTIONED.

I, too (dispite my lack of any real knowledge) was dubious about the section on homosexuality in “Everything you always wanted to know…,” which I read shortly after it was published.

It’s my belief that kids (boys and girls both) should learn about STDs and contraception BEFORE they reach the age at which their bodies are going to start wanting to become sexually active.

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…as if that could actually be accomplished. As I recall, all a young female sailor had to do to excite a Marine was come within 500 yards or so of him. Gawd! Women in uniform! They could walk or sit any damn way they pleased!

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I remember this movie! It had this great catchy theme song that I still remember. Mostly, my sex-ed consisted of a lot of videos.

Of course there was “Am I Normal” which in my class was presented in a totally serious manner.

Then they took the guys out of the room, and we watched a video that involved a girl camping out in her friends backyard, when she starts her period. She works up the nerve to go inside and ask her friends mom for a pad, and then the next morning , the mom explains the whole menstration process to the girls. She made diagrams of the uterus with pancake mix, complete with maple syrup blood. Mmmm… Anyone hungry?

And then we had an HIV video with a bunch of cute fuzzy little HIV viruses trying to break in through the bodies defense (symbalized by a picket fence).

Oh, and then in 9th grade, we had a guy come in a tell us about becoming secondary virgins. I guess to let the kids who they had missed know that they could still be abstinant as virgins. I just couldn’t tell him that once you lose it, its gone for good. Sorry