Here is the male genitalia – color drawings (no photos), scientific terms used.
Every boy in the class turns bright scarlet, fidgets in his seat and tries unsuccessfully to surreptitiously cover his crotch. Nobody needs to
see my stuff!
Here are the female reproductive organs – again, color drawings (absolutely no photos), and scientific terms were used.
Every girl in the class holds her head in her hands in abject embarrassment.
That’s inside of me?
Here’s how the two fit together (drawings), and how a baby is made, grown, and born (actual full-color photographs).
Entire class: Eeewwww!!!
These are contraceptives (mild interest shown), and these are all the HORRIBLE DISEASES YOU CAN GET from having unprotected sex (enlarged full-color graphic photos of pustules, sores and other gross symptoms of STD’s).
Entire class: EEEEWWWWWWW!!! Boys and girls eye each other
with mutual suspicion.
You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t it? I mean, all the basics are there. Doesn’t that pretty much cover everything? Not likely. Here’s what they missed:
1) The breaking of the hymen. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t include this; in my opinion it’s a great way to prevent kids from having sex too early. This would especially give girls the power to say “no” more forcefully: “It’s going to hurt like hell AND bleed? Forget that!”
2) Cramps. The menstrual cycle was discussed, as were pads and tampons, but at no time did they say anything about cramps; it was as though they just didn’t exist. It might have been nice to know why I felt so nauseous when my period started. It might also have been nice to know how much cramps can vary in intensity! Plus, all the other period symptoms such as bloating, pimple breakouts, emotional roller coaster – yeah, that might have been nice to know, too.
3) Orgasms. Now this I can kind of understand why they didn’t mention it. Pointing out that sex can be really, really pleasurable to a classroom full of hormone-ridden preteens going through puberty is just asking for trouble. Still, I would have liked to have known what it was in a “safe” setting, as opposed to in the heat of the moment when I didn’t know what exactly was happening.
4) Menopause. Nowadays, this topic is all over the place, but in the late 70’s, even after the sexual revolution, it was still somewhat taboo. So taboo that it was never brought up in my class; the “m word” simply wasn’t mentioned. To explain the significance of this, allow me to clarify exactly what I did learn about the female reproductive system in that class:
I understood that once your period started, you were sexually mature and could get pregnant. If you didn’t get pregnant, then you would deal with your period every single month. FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, even if you lived to be 100! I was never led to believe that there was a time limit on a woman’s ability to procreate; there certainly wasn’t one for men. It was never brought up! To add to this, I even had “evidence” to support this theory. My maternal grandmother was placed in a nursing home about a year or two after I took this class. My mother would go to her mom’s apartment to clean it out, and come home with various things weren’t needed anymore because the nursing home would provide them: furniture, food, toilet paper, etc. Anyway, my mom came home one night and handed me a bag of sanitary napkins, and some weird piece of really old elastic with plastic clips on it. I had no idea what the elastic was, but eventually I figured it out. It was an old napkin belt, and I completely freaked out and threw it in the trash. I mean, it was really old – have you ever seen old elastic? It gets crumbly and doesn’t spring back when you pull it – and this is what my grandmother used to wear with her napkins. Flashback to 7th grade: EEEEWWWWWW!!
The creepiness of the belt aside, the napkins were what drew my real interest; they were unlike any I’d ever seen. They were considerably thicker, about three times the thickness of the standard pad of that time. Pads have gotten much thinner over the years, but if you put two classic iPods on top of one another, that’d be about the right thickness of these pads. They also had no adhesive on the backs of them. Now this was unprecedented – I’d never seen a pad without adhesive. Instead, they had extensions on each end of that linen-like fabric that covers the absorbent material. Once I figured out that those end pieces were what fitted into the clips on the belt, I was amazed; the human mind can be ingenious.
I was especially impressed with whatever company it was that still made these kinds of pads, for those stubborn elderly customers that just didn’t like “new-fangled inventions”. I figured their customer base must constantly get smaller and smaller, but it was nice that they still produced a small amount of these just for older women. I came up with all this because these pads were NEW – I mean, they were in absolutely pristine condition. The original packaging was nowhere to be found, they were in a plastic grocery bag that must have been kept away from the elements for who knows how long; they were bone dry and in perfect shape. Acquiring these for me to use also fitted in nicely with the nursing home providing all matter of consumables for grandma; she wouldn’t have to go buy them anymore. It never once occurred to me that she’d bought them ages beforehand and just never finished out the last pack; I thought she still needed them. My own mother didn’t need pads any more as she’d had a hysterectomy after I was born, so there was nothing at home to contradict this nice little theory of mine.
To make matters worse, I wasn’t even certain what the word “menopause” actually meant. The dictionary we had at the time was really old and incredibly vague on “sensitive” subjects. I knew menopause was something that affected only women, but exactly what I couldn’t say. For quite a while there I thought it was an STD, but couldn’t understand why only women got it! Fast forward another year (!!) and I read a story in my English class where the main character (a teenage boy) was pissed off at his aunt, because one summer she was a total bitch to him. When he mentioned this to his parents, their response was “oh that was the year she went through The Change.” Can you hear the capital letters in that phrase? The Change. It just sounds so final! I’d heard this phrase before, but that story seemed to indicate to me that this “change” was something ALL women went through. Hmmm. Interesting. Since that didn’t actually illuminate anything for me, I went to The Source: my mom.
I walked up to her and asked her straight out: “Mom, what’s menopause?” She blinked, chortled a bit in surprise, and then said “that’s when your period ends.” Imagine my shock. For years I never understood the “biological time clock” phrase. For years I had thought your period didn’t end, that I was destined to bleed every friggin’ month until I died. Suddenly, that wasn’t the case. I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and, quivering with excitement, I asked her when it would end. Her response: “probably in your 50’s.” =heavy sigh= Great. From the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair, in two seconds flat. I was in my mid-teens at the time, so that meant I had another three decades (at least) of this crap to put up with. Wonderful. But, at least now I knew; the mystery had been solved! Still…it might have been nice to know about it ahead of time.