Lex
12. This demented, strange, and yet poetic thought process:
Our sex ed teacher also taught history and turned anal into a civil rights abuse.
“You know the Help had to enter through the back door back in the day but Dr Martin Luther King Jr fought so y’all could enter through the front. So stay out of the back of the bus and park your you know what up front.”
11. Wait, women aren’t all werewolves?
I read in a book once that women either have their period on the full moon or the new moon. I actually believed this for years.
Then one day I was out with my mom and I saw the full moon. I said, “I guess all you women are having a bad day today.”
She was like, “What do you mean?”
“Because all women have their periods when the moon is full.”
She laughed. “We’re not frickin’ werewolves!”
“Oh.”
10. That physical touch causes pregnancy and AIDS.
That you can get pregnant from hugging and that you can get AIDS from kissing. It was 1999 when it had been proven that HIV was not spread through casual contact.
9. The first issue here is the use of cassette tapes to ‘teach’:
My sex ed was cassette tapes of an old man basically just saying don’t have sex before marriage, but one of the things he said was “I grew up on a farm, and I learned all I needed to know about sex by watching the animals”
8. All of this:
If you have sex in a hot tub, you can’t get pregnant. When you go to sleep, your period stops. My friend also believed that girls only had their periods on the full moon cycle.
These are things I had other people come to me about, because they had no sex ed and I was the one friend who actually learned something from their parents.
7. That masturbation can lead to unwanted pregnancy:
First year of highschool.
In f*cking 2012.
“Women can get pregnant by masturbating. See, when they masturbate, they start to create spermatozoon and they get pregnant”.
Mind f*cking blown.
EDIT : To clarify, this wasn’t in the USA, it was in France and in a public high school. I’m not sure if the guy was a teacher or a special intervenant but he was a full blown grey hair mid 40’s/early 50’s adult.
Basically the guy asked “WHo believes women can get pregnant alone ?” and no one raised a hand, and then he explained us that when women get excited, they get wet, and in the wetness they carry little spermatozoon and can impregnate them.
The room was dead silence for 45 minutes, we got out of there like “wtf”, if it reassures you, I don’t think anyone believed what he said on the subject.
6. Basically, the idea that sex is bad and sinful and not for pleasure:
They taught us that if you have sex, you are dirty and disgusting. It became confusing to me as a child to be excited when someone announced they were pregnant, I thought it was only good if you ended up pregnant.
5. Post-sex aerobics leads is a nice way to prevent pregnancy:
Not me, but my suite mate in college. “Girls should jump up and down after sex to avoid pregnancy.”
Also, he told the girls to have an aspirin with Coke before or after sex to avoid pregnancy. They played a movie and said talk to your parents or preacher if you had questions.
She graduated with 3 girls who had children already. So, yeah, all that jumping up and down didn’t exactly work.
4. Periods last for half an hour:
I was a 20 year old guy, and had been having sex for a couple years before I found out that a woman’s period lasted for several days. I knew all the feminine mechanics of uterine wall build up and shedding, hormone changes… I even understood that vaginal discharge often changed at ovulation.
My mom was an RN and was pretty open about that stuff. When my girlfriend at the time kept telling me she was still on her period – once in the morning, and later in the evening… I was legitimately concerned for her. I had NO CLUE that the bleeding lasted for days, and thought she was messing with me when she explained. I thought it lasted for 30 minutes or so… about like a bad nose bleed.
And yes… she laughed her ass off and told her friends, who also found it completely hilarious.
Edit: Pro-Tip – Men, a woman’s period can last anywhere between three and seven days. Some women’s periods last even longer. Sometimes chunks come out along with the blood. Now you understand why some women need iron supplements… they actually get anemia from blood loss! Think about THAT in terms of a nose bleed for a moment.
3. That women do not like sex:
Probably the biggest thing that fucked me up was learning girls don’t actually want sex, it’s something they give up for guys they like. And guys who want sex from girls are manipulative assholes who aren’t interested in girls’ personalities.
I blame movies and TV, and a lack of openness about the subject from my parents. Eventually though I learned that it’s totally possible, as a guy, to both want sex and be a decent, respectful person. Another big one was that female sexuality isn’t just centered around men. Girls have a sex drive too and have their own needs to fulfill.
I had a bit of a wake up call when a girlfriend told me I can just say I want to have sex instead of awkwardly trying to romance her with random compliments. I also realized I’d been under the impression that when she asked me if I want to have sex that she was telling me what she wanted, not offering to do me a favour.