When I was 6th grade, they decided we girls were old enough to...well, I don't know, actually. I'm pretty sure they called it sex ed, but they didn't even really discuss abstinence that I remember. What I remember was it was more like charm school.
Let me back up a little further, actually. Our school had a policy that girls could wear nice slacks until a certain grade, pretty sure it was 5th, and then we had to wear skirts or dresses. Keep in mind, nice slacks means no jeans, even the black ones that are acceptable in some workplaces. But boys could wear jeans. Because jeans are for boys? I never understood. It was always unfair to me.
Somewhere around then, our principal retired, and his wife took over. And holy crap was she so much worse in so many ways. But the older girls in 7th and 8th grade successfully campaigned to remove the skirt restriction. We still weren't allowed to wear jeans, though.
This charm school thing happens when were still all in skirts. I'm pretty sure it was after Mrs. Principal took over, but that could be because I blame her for fucking everything. So you know, grain of salt. Also, I don't know what the boys did during this time. This class was girls only, so our gym instruction (who was male. He taught the boys and girls in one big class, and while certain things were gender segregated, it was mostly a co-ed affair.) took all the boys elsewhere. I don't know where, just elsewhere. Probably the gym. Maybe they had their own class about how to treat women. Maybe they just threw a ball around for 45 minutes. Fuck if I know.
Actually, it's kind of weird to me now that I don't know. Maybe they told us, and I've just forgotten. Anyway!
Now, my memories of this time are a little surreal. School was from 8 to 3, but in my head, these charm classes always took place at night. I know that they didn't. They happened towards the end of the school day. But in my head and my memory, everything is just darker during these classes. I can't remember who taught them. For some reason, I simultaneously remember it being Mrs. Principal and someone I had never seen before. The school wasn't real big on hiring new people, so it was probably Mrs. Principal.
I don't remember getting an abstinence only education, either. I know that, at some point, someone taught us that condoms always break and abortion is murder, but my memories from this class are reminiscent of a 1950s posture video. We learned how to get into a car without spreading our legs and how to show proper etiquette at a dinner table. And yes, we learned about good posture, although it wasn't quite as, uh...dystopic as the above link.
Learning to get in and out of a car is my clearest memory for some reason. The teacher pulled a chair to the front and demonstrated for us, and then called each of us up individually to practice in front of the class. Everyone else went slow, and in my memory, it was because they didn't get it. Looking back, maybe it's just because they were taking it seriously. But I wanted to show everyone how it was done, and so I went up with my head high and sat down sideways and pretended to lift my feet over the edge of the car, and then I got back to my seat in half the time it took everyone else.
Man, I was a little shit back then.
Other than that, I didn't find out what a penis looked like until I moved in with my pre-op girlfriend when I was 29. I still have no idea what sex actually looks like or how it works. In fact, I have very little interest and am kind of terrified of the idea of heterosexual sex. Everything I know about it is that it hurts, and I'm terrified of that.
And yeah, aside from that, I found out what a period was because a friend of mine was reading a book where a girl in a similar situation to me gets her first period and is afraid that it's cancer. My friend thought it was funny. When I started mine, I had some vague idea that's what was happening, but it wasn't like I expected it to be. I was afraid and resigned and knew that I couldn't possibly tell anyone. I think part of me was hoping it was cancer, so I could feel like a martyr. And then a week and three or four laundry cycles later, my grandmother and mother finally sat me down and talked to me about it. Days after it had stopped.
To this day, it's something disgusting and painful that I hate about myself, and it makes me just hate myself. I am never more self-loathing than when I'm on my period. I don't like my girlfriend to touch me, even in entirely nonsexual ways, because I'm afraid she'll suddenly realize how awful and disgusting I am, or that I'll contaminate her. Intimacy takes a lot of effort on those days.
And that was my experience with sex education.
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