Now the state Supreme Court has upheld Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys.
Love Stuff, a Hoover purveyer of such toys that has fought the ban, remains open. It goes on as before, making sex toy customers sign a statement declaring their purchase is for medical, scientific, educational or other legal use.
Yes ma’am. I’d like that pink battery-operated 9-incher with the rabbit-ears. It’s for, um, educational purposes.
It has to be. A contraption like that would invariably teach you a thing or two.
via Archibald: Morality … and other Love Stuff – Archiblog
I just read the story about a girl telling her family members about a vibrating doodle pen and I had to share my own story about the things.
I had my first orgasms with one of those pens as a young teen! I got it for Christmas a few years earlier, as did all of my younger cousins, but I noticed that the adults were snickering and knew there was something naughty about them. I don’t remember what persuaded me to slip it into my underwear one night, but I remember making quite a habit out of it.
I knew that girls were supposed to masturbate by putting their fingers inside themselves, but I was scared to put anything inside me because I knew that I could hurt myself if I stuck my fingers into my other orifices (or so I was told). I was especially frightened when I first began to get aroused and found myself getting wet, because somehow in all of my sex-ed classes (including a pretty detailed sex-ed book for teens!), no one had ever mentioned that women get wet when they are aroused and I thought I was sick. I had been told that if anything strange came out of there, I should tell my mother or ask to go to the doctor. I wouldn’t get my period for a couple more years yet.
It never occurred to me to rub my clitoris with my fingers, and even when I got older and tried using my fingers inside myself, I didn’t feel anything special like I thought I was supposed to feel. But the pen worked. I used to steal the batteries out of all my old toys to power the thing. When I burned out the motor after a couple years of frequent use, I rode my bike to all the stores nearby that might carry another one, because I was too young to buy a real vibrator. Heaven forbid a sixteen year old girl be allowed to masturbate!
Hopefully by the time I am a parent I will figure out a graceful, caring way to give my teenage daughters their own safe vibrators without totally mortifying them.
–Submitted by M.
Awesome post from random babble… explaining how she learned about menstruation:
I spent the next few nights holed up in my room reading about female and male anatomy, puberty, necking and petting, snickering to myself and re-reading the part about intercourse and ogling the scientific drawings of penises. The books were full of pictures of sanitary napkin belts and never even mentioned STIs or contraceptive. I am absolutely sure it taught that one should abstain from sex until marriage.
And that was that.
That was my big sex talk.
My big lesson on the “birds and the bees”.
I didn’t even know that periods didn’t last forever.
Read the rest of this post at Talking to Kids about Sex.
It makes me so sad to think of a child — any child — worrying unnecessarily about what’s happening to his or her body. Read the rest of the post for the authors quite sensible suggestions on how to bring up sex-ed topics to kids. (Hint: She suggests starting before the age of the first menstrual period.)
random babble…
The following story lay dormant in my memory for many years. It, along with other experiences, explains a lot of things about how I relate to my family. I have recounted this recollection in the third person. That is just how it came out, and who am I to argue with my muse?
***
“Jon showed me something strange today.”
The little girl, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, addresses her family as they drive in the car together. Bellies filled with eggrolls, wonton soup, fried rice and the like, they are motoring home from the local Chinese buffet in Dad’s trusty old Oldsmobile Delta 88.
Dad, a solidly built man with a blond thatch of curly hair atop his large head, is in the front seat, driving. Petite, dark-haired little Mom is riding shotgun, though the little girl wouldn’t learn that term for another five or six years.
In the back, the little girl, little in stature as well as age, sits behind her Dad, while her teenage brother sits behind their Mom. All was customary.
“What was it, honey?” Mom asks.
“It was this vibrating pen. He said he got it from the dollar store.”
Lanky framed Brother begins to giggle.
“Yeah, I bet it was a pen,” he chokes out between guffaws, that mocking, know-it-all tone all teenage boys use in his voice.
“No, no, it really was. Beverly looked at it. She said it had four different colours and that her little brother had one.” The little girl valiantly defends her story, wanting to convey that if a little boy from a Fundamentalist Christian household had this mysterious toy, then it must be okay. It couldn’t be whatever Brother was thinking it was.
Brother keeps giggling… Mom joins in.
“What…what’s so funny? It really was a pen.”
The little girl is starting to tear up, as she is wont to do when she is confused. Dad remains silent, as he is wont to do when he doesn’t want to get involved. Brother and Mom continue to laugh.
A child’s toy that has adult implications. A child’s story that isn’t taken seriously.
What the family doesn’t know, what the family can never learn, is that when Jon, one of the “big boys” (at sixteen or seventeen years) said to the little girl that morning:
“Robin, hold out your hand. I want to show you something.” That when he had said that, she had been fearful, fearful in a way she only half understood, of what he would show her. Holding out her hand, reluctantly, but with fascination, to feel something round, and long and hard, but blessedly buzzing and plastic.
The Delta 88 (a 1985 model) pulls into the driveway, and a normal family gets out. Yet at least one member of the family isn’t the same as she was when she left for the coveted treat of a trip to the Chinese buffet. She has learned subtly, from her usually loving mother’s laughter, that there are some stories she should keep to herself.
Submitted by RM
I have Asperger syndrome. It’s a lifelong condition, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. It’s only now that I can look back at the way I learned about sex as a child and as a teenager that I can see how it made things difficult. One particular way this happens is the need to order one’s life with rules, and not to be able to understand when they should not apply, as others might.
I know my parents must have had The Talk with me at some point, but I retain only one memory: my father reading a sentence from a book saying, “the penis becomes hard and filled with blood.” I responded with disgust at the phrasing. I was young enough at the time that no other memories remain: having had the one discussion, there were never any more.
The Talk presumably focused on penis-in-vagina sex. It’s true that everyone needs to learn about that, but it would have no practical relevance to me until my mid-twenties. About the far more topical issue of masturbation, I learned nothing. Nor was much useful information forthcoming from school sex ed; the TV programmes we were shown explained only that “a boy may hold his penis and get a tingling sensation. A girl may get a similar tingling sensation by stroking the front of her vulva.”
But at the age of about ten, I discovered masturbation independently: I had my own name for it and rules about how to do it, and I thought I was the only person in the world who knew how to do it, or I’d surely have heard about it before then. So for a few years, I masturbated happily with no regrets. Meanwhile, my parents took me to church every Sunday, and I was trying to pray and read the Bible. One day I came across the line in the Book of Revelation which describes heaven– “Outside the gates are the murderers, the idolaters, the sexually immoral…” I realised clearly that what I had been doing was something to do with sex. And a terrified voice in my head asked, “Is that *me*?”
For the next six or seven years I had no peace. If lusting after other people was sinful, it had to go: I made myself stop fantasizing. If sex before marriage was sinful, and masturbation was a kind of sex, it had to go. That wasn’t so easy: I put dozens of rules into place and none of them worked. I tried giving it up permanently, and failed every few days, hating myself more each time. I tried throwing dice or coins when I was horny, so that if God didn’t want me to do it, he would have a way to stop me. I tried praying for wet dreams every night, to no avail. I tried only masturbating on Fridays, as a stepping stone to stopping entirely, but I *lived* for those Fridays.
In short, I spent most of my teenage years in the certain knowledge that I was an evil person, and that part of my very self, my sexuality, was inevitably going to send me to hell. And I don’t know how I could have been loosed from the trap. I wanted to talk to someone about what was troubling me, but I had nobody except my long-suffering diary. I would have been mortified to talk with my parents about it, I didn’t have any teachers I could raise the issue with, I had no friends at school to speak of, and though I read everything in the library I could get my hands on, nothing would reassure me as to the morality of masturbating. Maybe if someone had raised the issue at the beginning, or maybe if I’d had someone from the start that I could talk over any problem with, things would have been better. I don’t know.
I knew I liked girls when I was in junior high, or even younger. But because I still liked boys, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know there was a such a thing as “bisexual,” that I didn’t have to choose one or the other forever and ever.
I finally realized that somewhere in high school, and though I admitted my attraction to women, I very commonly said that I couldn’t see myself dating one.
At 18, as a weird, strategic way out of an argument with my mother, I blurted out “Oh yeah? Well, I’m bisexual!”
Her reaction? “But, I don’t want you to be!!”
She was more worried about my father, who is an ordained Southern Baptist minister (ooooh) and advised me not to tell him unless he just absolutely needed to know.
A year later, I met a girl. We were friends at first, but that turned into a year of on again/off again sex. At some point during that time, my father became aware of what was going on. At the end of that year, we started actually dating.
In less than a month, we’re having our 10-year anniversary. And she loves to remind me that I swore I would never seriously date a woman. The joke is most DEFINITELY on me.
So Thursday I have to give my fifteen year old cousin the “sex talk.”
I have to talk to her about sex because no one else will.
Not her mother, my Aunt, who believes you shouldn’t discuss those things. Not my mother, who barely even knows how to discuss sex and sexuality with me.
I have to to talk to her about sex so she doesn’t go through what I did in my early teens. I have to talk to her about sex so she knows how to protect herself — from an unwanted pregnancy, from an STI — and what to do in case either occurs.
I have to talk to her about sex because she needs to know what is right, what is wrong, in terms of being comfortable and not allowing anyone to go past her limits. That sex is not for making someone else happy, or because someone else wants you too. That sex is pleasurable, and can be a wonderful experience, when you are completely comfortable and aware of what you are doing. That being a sexual being is nothing to be ashamed of.
I have to tell her what no one told me, and what I had to learn for myself.
Any suggestions on what else I can say to her?
“Lookit, Ama!”
“What, baby?”
“My penis comes out.”
“Oh yeah?”
“And it goes back in.”
“That’s awesome.”
These are the things one learns from their three-year-old boys in a clothing-optional household. Or in a house that doesn’t cut the penii of the children in it. Or in a house that lets the children explore their bodies with an innocent freedom. Or in a house that allows the children to masturbate to shows such as SpongeBob, Phineas and Ferb, Cars – or whatever else happens to be on and the penis is in reach. Or in a house that — well, you get the idea.
I love raising my boys. I love staying home with them. I love the freedom they have to discover their bodies — to explore them. I love that I have the opportunity to raise them without shame.
This was not the case when I was growing up. Bodies were hidden by clothing at all times, unless when bathing. And even then, doors were closed, boys and girls bathed separately, and one made sure the towel completely covered all parts that should never be seen by the opposite sex. I never saw my mother in anything less than a full-length slip. I never saw my father without an undershirt on — with sleeves, never without — and certainly not without pants of some kind or other. And with the exception of being very young (under three) and bathing with my brother who was one year younger than I, I never saw my brothers without a fair amount of clothing.
I would say it was because my parents believed that our bodies were sacred and special. But it was because of the version of Christianity that they believed in, and still follow. Our bodies were sacred alright, and should not be shared with anyone — ourselves included — until we were married. Really.
Which meant that I didn’t see what the opposite sex looked like. While I knew that boys were different than girls (because one needed both boy and girl parts to have a baby), I didn’t know that the outside sex parts came in different shapes and sizes. I didn’t know that it was normal to feel desire, or to want to touch myself, or to explore other bodies, or to have tingly sensations every now and then. I didn’t know because I wasn’t allowed to know. Not from my parents and not from a class in school. Remember, not until I was married.
I was in my teens when I discovered the books that my mother and older sister read and tried to hide in their closets. I learned a little then. I was an older teen when I was asked if I was a virgin — and then had to ask my best friend what that meant, because I didn’t know. And I was sixteen when I let a boy touch me in the seat of the school bus — and I got to touch him back. Yeah, I learned a lot then. And I learned that I craved that touching.
I don’t know how much of the freedom I allow myself and my children can be attributed to the denial I grew up with. But I do know that I couldn’t raise my kids with the thought that their bodies were something to be ashamed of. I couldn’t put the restriction of “not until you are married” on them. I couldn’t expect that they would adhere to that, and not try anything else. And I really wanted them to be ok with what their body looked like, felt like, and did.
And they are.
My baby boy, at three year old, is excited to share with me what he has learned about his penis. My six year old is not ashamed to change in and out of his suit at the side of the pool. I can only hope that this openness will continue as they get older. Not that they should share with me the latest and greatest trick their penis can do, but that they are able to come to me with questions or share what they have learned in general.
And yes, I hope their confidence about their bodies that they have now, continues to grow and be strong as they get older. I hope their freedom to just be who they are, does not get hindered by restrictions that make no sense at all.
My parents divorced when I was a young child and moved far away from each other. I lived with my mother who, in addition to being a single mom, turned to Christianity for comfort after the divorce. Growing up, not only was no one having sex in my house, no one was talking about it either. Even though I never remember my mother saying anything to me specifically about sex, I just knew I wasn’t supposed to be having it.
We visited my father a few times a year and because of my resentment and his distance, our relationship was strained for much of my childhood. However, he tells me that at one point he and my step-mom gave me a copy of Where Did I Come From? (I was around seven). Apparently after I finished reading it, I asked if I could read it again the next night because I liked it so much. Although I don’t remember this specific incident, I do remember finding that book and re-reading it almost every time we visited. They also owned The Joy of Sex, which they clearly left out where it would be easily accessible.
When I was in college, I told my dad that I was sexually active (I was asking to have a boy stay at his place). He had a momentary freak out and then immediately went into contraceptive counseling mode. Once he ascertained that I was using protection he said “Well…that’s fine then. We won’t walk around in our bathrobes if you won’t.” And that was that and has been ever since.
My mother, on the other hand, kept up her abstinence-only policy. When a boyfriend was going to visit over Christmas break she told me the only thing I ever remember her telling me about sex. Ever. She said “He can stay here but you have to sleep in separate rooms because I don’t want your little sister thinking that I condone that sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing.” My mother’s only acknowledgment in the 27 years of my life that I am a sexual being. Sadly, the little sister mentioned above bore the brunt of my mom’s obvious knowledge of my behavior and her guilt at not preventing it. She received lectures, incredibly restrictive curfews and an abstinence ring, handed to her one family Christmas partially for her and partially as a passive aggressive reproach to me. My sister lost her virginity her first weekend at college.
I work now at a feminist sex toy store, spending my days writing and talking about sex. I suppose my mom wouldn’t condone “that sort of thing” either, but she doesn’t know about it. I don’t talk about it.
I’m just following her example.
I never received “the talk” from anyone. In fact, my parents were so cagey about anything regarding my body, that when I was twelve and presented my mother with a story that a family friend had given me about tampons – that if you don’t stick one up inside you once a month, you become pregnant – she said tampons were nothing I needed to worry about. I got my period the month I turned thirteen, and waited three days of spotty bleeding before presenting my underwear to my mother while she was watching TV and asking if this was “the period thing” that I’d heard mentioned at school. “Yep, that’s your period,” she said, and turned back to the television. When I was around fourteen I found a copy of “The Joy of Sex” in my parents’ closet and asked if I could read it – my mother took it, turned to my father, and said, “We need to find someplace better to put this.” When I was sixteen, I became the brunt of merciless teasing for months, when I asked my friends after a health class what exactly an “orgasm” was, and whether people normally masturbated using their clitoris.
I also was told that I wasn’t permitted to date until sixteen. After that point, dating became a rather moot point, since I had begun boarding at an all girls’ school and knew no boys which weren’t either boyfriends or brothers of friends.
Which, if the stereotypes can be believed, would all end up making me either a sexually stunted wallflower or a raving, soon-to-be-impregnated nymphomaniac.
The truth was, I’d been having orgasms since I was twelve, having figured out that pull-ups felt “good” and going about learning how to deliberately manipulate my abdominal muscles to take that a few steps farther. I had a very, very active sexual fantasy life.
By the time I was out of high school, I was able to orgasm from several different nerve bundles, and I knew very well what turned me on and what didn’t. When I began having sex at 18 with my first real boyfriend, I was able to direct him to what I liked, able to figure out what he would like, and able to invent and be creative. My sex life has been very fulfilling. I credit at least part of that to having a sort of forced self-focus early in my sex life; because I had no one else’s desires or interests distracting me, I could focus on myself.
I now have two young girls. I plan to give them more information than I received. But I’m also going to encourage them to wait to date until they’re at least 17 or 18, so that they can have several years of no-pressure learning and happy orgasms before bringing another person into the picture.
I think that is an important lesson that everyone needs to hear: you can be single and still have a great sex life.
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