I was going to mention this. Both my kids, now in their 20s (one female, one male) went thru whatever typical sex-ed was given during their middle-school years. We were open and honest about these topics at home anyway, so whatever the class covered was mostly not really news to either of them. However, they both reported a not-insignificant number of kids being opted-out of these sessions by their parents. It appeared to be a mix of religious and cultural barriers, at least in our community. My wife was especially annoyed that girls were opted out, as she suspected many of them were totally ignorant of what was happening, or going to happen naturally, to their own body, and suspicious that those kids’ parents were not at all going to fill-in the blank spots at home.
I remember seeing a Baroness von Sketch sketch which implied that menstruation huts were invented by ancient women who just wanted a break from their husbands and families.
I wonder if the company had a pamphlet on menopause called “You’re an Old Lady Now”?
I kinda wish I’d gotten that pamphlet. Did not expect perimenopause at age 42.
I think women are more open about biological health/reproductive health than at any point in history, and I still have “why didn’t anyone tell me…?” moments.
Maybe some people have never seen Disney’s Story of Menstruation
“No matter how you feel, you still have to live with people.”
Sex ed ( astonishingly symplistic) 5th and 6th grade. Some students were having sex by 6th grade.
I was later than some of my friends, period wise. It was a sign of bei g grown up.
Hated the debilitating pain.I
Wow.
- That is an extremely white baby.
- I like that the “heavy” girl is just a regular girl in a sweater.
- At first I thought, “This is actually pretty good for 1946.” That impression did not last.
When i was 40 and my daughter was 10, i talked with her about menarche just a few days before my doctor talked to me about perimenopause. I was keenly aware of the synergy.
I didn’t hit perimenopause until well into my 50s, and was well past my 56th birthday before i was well and truly menopausal. I maybe could have used a refresher talk in the interim. 
But i didn’t define myself as an old lady until i turned 60.
My Aunt went through hell and back during menopause until she finally got her hysterectomy and hormones, and she has been an evangelist ever since. The last time I visited her she ripped a page out of a monster coloring book, drew ovaries on the monster and started making graphs of hormone fluctuations while telling me Everything I Needed to Know. It was like sex ed all over again. I, a 42-year-old woman, now have a monster-themed menopause reference sheet.
I didn’t really have any symptoms other than, “I’m still bleeding every month” until my 50s. But I’m a big fan of hormone replacement therapy.
Yeah, her 40s were a nightmare. But she had a condition like endometriosis (where the bleeding stays in the uterus, I guess? Still incredibly painful) plus PMDD, and she said menopause is like nonstop PMDD. I have PMDD and presumed endometriosis, currently controlled by birth control, so that’s my future, I guess.
My Aunt is the first woman in my family to make it to menopause. My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all had hysterectomies due to everything just being a mess in there.
Endometriosis is a condition where bits of the tissue that’s supposed to line the inside of the uterus grows in other places, too. So when it swells up monthly, it presses against sensitive organs, and otherwise causes problems. The bleeding when that tissue sheds its monthly bounty can cause problems, too
Yeah. My mother had endometriosis, my Aunt had the bleeding inside the uterus thing.
In both cases they were told there was nothing wrong with them until they said, “If you don’t cut this thing out of me, I’m going to kill myself.” And oh what a surprise! Turns out they were in excruciating pain for a reason!
Yup. I’ve told y’all this before, but I remember as a child seeing the neighbor’s dog in a “diaper” every now and then, and our own female puppies leaving blood spots on the floor before we got them spayed.
I absorbed the message that the bleeding was a sign of being in heat and the diaper was to help ensure she didn’t get mated if they didn’t want to deal with puppies.
That was about all the information I was directly given concerning menstruation, and I remember when I learned about unwanted pregnancy as a middle-schooler, I thought “Well for goodness sake, why are some people so careless? Just avoid sex for a while once you “go into heat” when the menstrual bleeding starts, and you’re guaranteed not to get pregnant! Couldn’t be simpler!”
Fortunately, I had a seventh-grade sex ed class that clarified the time lag between menstrual bleeding and ovulation in the human, as opposed to canine, reproductive system, so I knew not to rely on my original assumptions about “natural fertility control” once I was old enough to test those hypotheses in practice.
But I have to wonder how many inadvertently pregnant girls and young women who grew up around pets and/or livestock made exactly the same natural but erroneous deduction that I did.
No. Rabbits for example only ovulate after sex, and have no menstrual cycle at all.
Unfortunately humans are stuck with the reproductive system we are issued, not the one we want.
The rhythm method is obviously terrible, but I’ve used “natural fertility signs” to track my cycle both times I got pregnant, and both times, I got pregnant the first time I had unprotected sex. There are a dozen apps that do this. The one that I used had me record my daily basal metabolic temp, cervical mucus, etc. to determine peak fertility days. I don’t know if I got lucky or what, but man it worked.
I wonder what would be the effectiveness of using an app like that to avoid pregnancy?
Oh absolutely, I didn’t mean to suggest that actual natural fertility control methods using indicators like basal temperature and cervical mucus etc. are ineffective. Clumsy wording on my part, sorry.
I was just joking that my pre-teen interpretation of how “natural fertility control” would work, based on the canine version of the estrus cycle, would have been disastrous if I’d ever tried to implement it.
Yes, I’ve used fertility monitoring as a (supplementary) method for contraception, and the combo was totally successful, zero preggery. It does help if you’re somebody with a pretty regular cycle and quite noticeable ovulation-related changes, natch.
Discussing certain bodily functions and bodily fluids are taboo at the Thanksgiving Table.
Why we don’t discuss them is odd and I’m not trying to dismiss that menstruation is a uniquely female issue.
But we don’t discuss our bowel movements either. Simply sneezing is frowned upon. Spitting mucus? Vomit? Urine? Sex? The list goes on. All disgusting. All 100% perfectly natural things everyone does.
I’m not sure why society is ashamed of male/female reproductive topics specifically or certain bodily fluids in general. But everything gets addressed one way or another. The system should be better. But the monthly visit from Aunt Flo is not unknown to adult humans. Should we be upfront about it with adolescents? sure.
My mother never wanted to discuss menstruation or anything else related to going through puberty with me. She went through a very religious phase when I was a pre-teen. We had a girls-only presentation at school when I was in fifth grade and Mom wanted to opt me out of it but eventually allowed me to attend. Afterwards all she said was “Do you have any questions?” I could tell she really didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t ask. I did somewhere along the line get a subscription to “Seventeen” magazine, and that’s what I learned the most from. Mom would have to flip through the magazine before she’d let me read it to make sure there wasn’t anything she didn’t want me to see in there but I don’t remember her ever actually censoring anything. I knew next to nothing about my family history women’s health-wise because of Mom’s attitude. What I have learned about the family history I learned from an aunt.
I’m very glad that my sister is open and honest with her girls about women’s health issues. When I had my hysterectomy both of my nieces peppered me with questions that I was happy to answer for them. My health history could affect them too and they have the right to know.
If you can’t find the clitoris, remember, like other lost items, it’s in the last place you left it.