My mother does NOT like to talk about sex. She is someone who lowers her voice when she says the word sex. And, there are clearly aspects of the whole process that even she still finds mysterious.
I was once deeply scared during the most direct conversation about sex that my mother ever had with me. When I got my first college boyfriend, she somehow found out (or maybe just assumed) that I was sexually active. So, she tragically pushed herself past her discomfort, got drunk and pulled me into an empty room during a family party. I would like to note here that, also tragically, I was not drunk. Once she cornered me, without any preamble, she said, "Jane. When I was your age, I had unprotected sex with 3 different men in one week and I got pregnant." And then, before retreating back to the party, left me with the moral of the story: "Be careful, Jane. We are fertile people."
After 5 minutes of blank confusion, I had so many thoughts. Chief among them: three guys in one week. You would not need to be SUPER fertile, right? Just standard, average fertility would suffice. Also, just, why? I am really sex positive. But, there are certain things, certain details, you don't need to know about your super Catholic mother. Yes, Catholic. Which, led me to my third thought: was this the story that Mary gave to Joseph after she turned up pregnant?
"I'm so sorry, Joe. I come from really fertile people."
Ultimately, this conversation made me reflect on this family legacy of fear around sex and how it has impacted us over time. My mother was clearly left with some important gaps in knowledge about how to avoid pregnancy. For me, I was left with two, arguably less catastrophic, but still very unfortunate, misunderstandings.
My mother tried very hard to be informative. But, again, she was so uncomfortable with this topic. So, when I started to ask about where babies came from, she tried to outsource the conversation and found a book. This thin purple book starts with a cartoon picture of a rooster and a chicken with exaggerated genitalia. Then, it shows a cross-section picture of the rooster and chicken having sex: the rooster with his penis inside the chicken. Then, they do the same thing with two dogs. First, a picture of the male and female dogs with these exaggerated genitalia and then a cross section of the two dogs having sex. Next, they show a cartoon picture of a naked man and woman. On the next page, they are in missionary position in bed, but there is no cross-section this time. Instead, they are under a blanket. Obviously, the authors were hoping we would make the mental leap: the chickens and the dogs have sex like this, so obviously, two humans...
But, I was clearly not that bright. My 5 year old brain thought, "Yes. The two people then make a baby by the man lying on top of the woman and then they maybe both wiggle? Kind of weird that they included the stuff about the chickens and the dogs, but, whatever, grown-ups are strange."
So, my mom read me the book, gave it to me and then asked if I had any questions. My brain said "yes," but my mother's eyes said, "please, God, no." So, I shook my head no and tried not to think about sex for the rest of my childhood.
This misunderstanding was not cleared up until a sex ed video in my eighth-grade science class was accidentally allowed to play too long and this vagina-cam suddenly showed a penis thrusting in and out of it. This blew my fucking mind. And, how awful is it that we do this to kids? I was having to reorganize 8 years of misunderstandings about sex and then, BOOM, off to history to learn about the Continental Congress. No! Not ok.
That, at least, was a privately mortifying realization. I was not so lucky with the second one.
The other problem with this purple book was that, in their quest for simplicity, the illustrator wasn't strictly anatomically correct. So, in the cross-section pictures of the chickens and the dogs having sex, they only showed one hole. Which, as a 5 year old with a limited understanding of my OWN anatomy, I assumed was an asshole. And, dear readers, I am so sad to report that this assumption that all animals reproduced through butt-sex, persisted, uncorrected, until I was 21 years old.
It just lived as this unexamined, unchallenged idea until I got into a argument with a college boyfriend. This boyfriend was, as many douchey college boyfriends do, trying to talk me into having anal sex. And, as a throw-away comment, I said, "I bet you wish you were a dog-- then all you would get is butt-sex." This comment was met with stunned silence. He then said, "I'm sorry-- what?" I doubled down. "Yeah. You know, all female animals but humans have only two holes: one for peeing and one for sex and pooping."
He argued back and we went, like, 10 rounds over this. At one point, my certainty was such that I saw him questioning his own sanity. But, in the end, we Googled it. And, I lost that one. I sometimes think this was a contributing factor to our eventual break-up.
Now, do not judge me! How was I supposed to have casually corrected this one? I never got into animal husbandry! I didn't spend a lot of time on farms! Bestiality is not my kink!
Anyhow. There are two morals of this story:
1) Don't tell traumatizing stories of your "fun years" to you children. Especially at family parties.
2) For the love of God, buy clear, anatomically correct sex education books for your children.
