I was never told about the “birds and bees” when I was a kid, with the result that I harbored many misconceptions until I was in my early teens. I won’t go into the gruesome details of my ignorance and their consequences, but if you’re a parent, talk to your kids. They’re gonna have sex whether or not you tell them the facts, so they might as well know the facts.
I’m backed up the The Reasoning Atheist, who tw**ted this:
I used visits to my brother’s farm to get across the basics of reproduction. When a goat would mount another goat, I’d explain what was happening, and that this is how animals made baby animals.
And then I’d point out that humans were animals, and I’d leave it at that until the next occasion arose to push things a bit further…
I did this when they were very young, so that reproduction would seem normal and not so taboo that’d they’d feel acutely embarrassed about the topic.
We’ve always been very matter-of-fact with our daughter, even from a young age. It seems silly not to, it’s just a fact about the world. I really can’t fathom my parent’s “never talk about it” attitude. Did they really think if they explained these things to their kids that the kids will have more and/or riskier sex? Surely,if it has any effect at all, hearing these facts from your parents is bound to make it seem a less appealing, not more. Hearing my mom’s voice in my head describing the process probably would have kept me chaste for another year or two at least. 😉
Oh, this reminds me of Julia Sweeneys “The Talk”,
Julia Sweeney “Sex Ed.” Monologue
I don’t know how many times I have watched that clip by now, but it never fails to put a smile on my face 🙂
That’s hilarious. “People figure the legs out.”
A dreadful story, probably untrue, possibly not…
In the late nineteenth century, an Anglican priest from London was on holiday in the Devon countryside and excitedly taking long walks every day. One day, he was walking down a lane, when he met, coming from the opposite direction, a girl of seven or eight who was leading a large cow on a piece of rope.
‘Where are you taking that great big moo-cow, little maid?’ enquired the priest.
‘I’m taking her to the bull,’ replied the girl.
‘Couldn’t your father do that?’ said the priest in shock, his face going puce with embarrassment.
‘Oh, no,’ said the little girl slowly and calmly, as though explaining things to the village idiot. ‘It has to be the bull, you see.’
I’m sure there’s an Archer’s (*) fan fiction presentation of Ruth wielding a turkey baster, or something similar.
(*) The Archers ; bucolic British radio soap opera broadcast since the 1940s. If you don’t know it, you don’t know how lucky you are.
Very nicely told! An oldie but a goodie. (I think I saw it in the Readers Digest decades ago – if so, it would have been as daring as they ever got).
cr
Very amusing!
LOL
The reminds me of a story Noel Coward told during an interview. He was with one of his god-children. The child saw two dogs in flagrante, and asked Coward, What are those two dogs doing? Coward replied quickly, One of them has just gone blind, and his friend is helping him to St. Dunstan’s (a hospital for the blind).
No no no, *that’s* not how you go blind… 😉
cr
Can’t recall who gets credit for saying it but when it comes to sex, it goes: I’ll learn it the way almost everyone does, from the other kids at school.
Yes. If you don’t know in 1st class (which is now 5 years or younger) over here, you are tardy, though the biology lessons start in 3d grade I believe. Sex ed is later, but before most kids start trying it, for best effect.
Having the parents go over it especially would have been embarrassing.
I think that one comes from Sargon. Or possibly Minos.
Ha ha! I have to say that tortoise sex is really gross too. When my family discovered that our tortoise, “Esther” was now and adolescent male, we thought something happened to him & his intestines were hanging out.
The sex Ed curriculum was updated in Ontario and this raised the heckles of many a religious, uniformed or bigoted parent. When one looked at the details it was pretty benign (teaching kids the names body parts for instance) yet people, like a colleague of mine, said things like it was “explicit” and full of “LGBTQ propaganda”. There were even deceptions of the actual content disseminated to Muslims. Awful. Sad.
The bigots in Canada wear uniforms? Not a bad idea!
Damn autocorrect.
🙂 But this is one of those instances where the autocorrect sort of works.
Sub
I am a retired high school math teacher. I had great rapport with most of my students. One day at lunch, two of my students walked into my classroom. Now my school did not have an extended sex ed program. The teenagers wanted to try oral sex. They wanted to practice “safe sex”. They wanted to know if the condom went on his tongue or her tongue.
Oh boy. Sex ed in the US is abysmal, but I wonder if there was another factor in that particular case?
In 5th grade the military run school I was in for military dependents out of country included extensive, in depth, sex education (I aced it). It was much more biology than admonishing you not to have sex.
Generally speaking the US is almost hopelessly prudish and backwards. One of the most important things in life, one of the most impactful things in life, a thing that can bring the greatest pleasure and happiness or the worst pain and hardship (and I mean both sexual congress and having children in all of the preceding), and this is the thing that these backwards prudes want to keep young people ignorant about and lie to them about.
As Geoerge Mikes informed everyone, we British don’t sex, have hot-water bottles. I have never been embarrassed talking about hot-water bottles.
Just read something to the effect that it was not until the domestication of animals (they said it was only d*gs at first) that our ancestors realized the connection between the sex act & the much-delayed blessed event. That was supposedly around 15K-12K yrs. BP & also marked the end of those Venus figurines & the beginnings of patriarchal religions. Not sure if there’s anything to it.
The funniest sketch I’ve seen about the disastrous consequences of being ignorant of the birds and bees is “The Facts of Life,” written and performed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore for their show “Not Only…But Also”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z1QGpTZSo
You’ll never look at chairs the same way again…
Love Pete and Dud!!! Saw them live in a small club in SF in the seventies and almost died laughing.
There are giant tortoises on the Island of Cousin in the Seychelles. One started moving remarkably rapidly towards another. I joked to anyone within hearing about tortoise lust; well… I was reminded of this by that photograph.
Price:
“What we should have done instead is to have engineered the exact opposite of a reputation trap – perhaps an X Prize-like reward for the first reliable replication of the Fleischmann and Pons result…”
Utterly preposterous.
We need a financial incentive, in addition to the trillions of dollars deriving from the greatest revolution in energy production in the history of our civilization and the guaranteed Nobel Prizes?
The reality is precisely the opposite: the financial incentives are so great that a discredited idea still attracts interest out of all proportion to its plausibility. And rightly so – even if the probability of success is so small, the benefit to mankind would be immense.
But those same financial incentives also attract fraudsters.
Oops, posted in the wrong thread.
PCC, if you notice, could you delete this.
I cannot let the opportunity pass, without sharing a favorite bit of doggerel, from Ogden Nash.
The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
My favourite Ogden Nash:
The cow is of the bovine I’ll
One end is moo, the other milk.
AH, yes. the spell checker…”ilk”, of course.
How about: I objurgate the centipede, A bug we do not really need. At sleepy-time he beats a path,Straight for the bedroom, or the bath. You always hit him where he’s not- Or if he is,he leaves a spot.
Poor centipede!
Centipedes give me the creeps. I’m fine with spiders, and millipedes, but there’s something about the swiftly-moving wriggliness of a centipede that gives me the horrors.
In ‘Dr No’ someone put a big centipede in James Bond’s bed. The description of it crawling up him was enough to give me nightmares. In the movie they changed it, almost predictably, to a tarantula, which I thought lost a lot of the shock value.
cr
I’m sorry infiniteimprobabilit, but as a Fleming fan I can’t resist quoting from the nightmarish passage in question:
“Bond lay frozen. He had once seen a tropical centipede in a bottle of spirit on the shelf in a museum. It had been pale brown and very flat and five or six inches long –– about the length of this one. On either side of the blunt head there had been curved poison claws. The label on the bottle had said that is poison was mortal if it hit an artery. Bond had looked curiously at the corkscrew of dead cuticle and had moved on.
The centipede had reached his knee. It was starting up his thigh. Whatever happened he mustn’t move, mustn’t even tremble. Bond’s whole consciousness had drained down to the two rows of softly creeping feet. Now they had reached his flank. God, it was turning down towards his groin! Bond set his teeth. Supposing it liked the warmth there! Supposing it tried to crawl into the crevices! Could he stand it? Supposing it chose that place to bite? Bond could feel it questing amongst the first hairs. It tickled. The skin on Bond’s belly fluttered. There was nothing he could do to control it.
But now the thing was turning up and along his stomach. Its feet were gripping tighter to prevent it falling. Now it was at his heart. If it bit there, surely it would kill him. The centipede trampled steadily on through the thin hairs on Bond’s right breast up to his collar bone. It stopped. What was it doing? Bond could feel the blunt head questing blindly to and fro. What was it looking for? Was there room between his skin and the sheet for it to get through? Dare he lift the sheet an inch to help it. No. Never! The animal was at the base of his jugular. Perhaps it was intrigued by the heavy pumping of his blood …”
I think house centipedes, the ones with all the fluffy legs, eat spiders & silverfish. They startle me if I see them & I don’t wan them on me, but I’m not too scared of them in general.
Outdoor centipedes can bite you viciously so I stay away from those if I see them.
Millipedes to me just look like long pill bugs so they aren’t creepy at all.
There is one quite savage centipede in Japan – the mukade – that grows to up to fifteen inches: they were trundling around the corridors of an onsen we once stayed at in Kyushu… Then there’s the geji-geji, or house centipede, which is rapid and red and, though harmless (I think), looks frightful, much worse than the mukade….
I think I’ve seen those centipedes in zoos/aquaria somewhere….I want to say in Sydney but it could have been anywhere.
I like that they seem to have moustaches but I would certainly run away a fair distance if I saw one out in the wild & not behind protective glass in a display.
Those house centipedes that look like mukada would be terrifying too even though they are harmless…..I like warm places but they often involve scary arthropodes.
A 15-inch centipede…
I am *never* going to Japan!
🙁
cr
These things are all over asia (including Russia) & the Caribbean as well. Yikes!
We also have hornets the size of small humming birds here, in Japan… They are the ruin of bee-keepers – those that are foolish enough to keep the European Apis mellifera. Twenty or thirty hornets will slaughter a whole hive, and then feast on grubs and honey. The Japanese honey bee – Apis cerana japonica – has evolved to be able to deal with these hornets, which they do by piling on to it (not like the foolishly heroic European bees which believe in single combat) and then virtually cooking it to death. If you don’t believe me, you can find some YouTube videos of this happening. The sting of these hornets was, as I recall, described by someone who had suffered one (not more, luckily, since he would probably have died) as like having a red-hot skewer plunged unto you.
Oh yes I’ve heard of those gigantic hornets & the natural defence of the native bees. I think I’ve seen the videos too.
If I was an old-style creationist (of the ‘God put everything there for our benefit’ school) I’d be saying ‘God you utter bastard, what the hell do you think you were doing?!!’
🙁
cr
House centipedes don’t worry me. I saw one a few months ago – first time I’ve ever seen one, oddly enough. It’s the regular outdoor ones I hate.
cr
Oh, and millipedes I quite like. They trundle across the floor, minding their own business.
Pill bugs? (Had to google that, but my guess was accurate). We call them woodlice, and I think they’re really cute.
cr
Another word for pill bug is “rolly polly” which is a cute name. You hear that in the US more often, especially in the south.
From Britain: grammasow, chiggypig (‘grammasow’ seems to mean ‘grandma sow’).
Great! I had never heard the centipede one before:-)
At least it probably didn’t ultimately lead to you watching creepy videos on YouTube showing centipedes eating frogs, snakes & biting humans as it did me.
Tim has introduced me to all new nightmares & made me appreciate living in a colder climate. 🙂
Creepy videos – I remember one on Pharyngula showing a giant millipede eating a mouse. I rapidly turned the thing off. The millipede was so slow…
I kept watching. What was I thinking?i felt itchy after.
A millipede? I thought they were vegetarian. Was it a centipede?
cr
Yes, sorry: centipede.
Oh that’s a relief. Centipedes are already in my catalogue of hideous unspeakable loathsome horrors. I don’t think I could have stood it if I had to add harmless cute millipedes to the list.
cr
I should be more accurate, the centipede was very rapid in its strike and seizing of the mouse, but then a sort of slow nibbling began…
It always seems especially creepy when an invert snags a vertebrate. I’ve seen pictures of praying mantises catching hummingbirds at nectar feeders, and of a giant sea anemone engulfing a diving bird of some sort. In Costa Rica I watched a spider catch a frog.
You’re just trying to creep me out, aren’t you? Remember, you live in the same country as those delightful horrors. I don’t [vbeg]
cr
The centipede,
When it doth feed –
0h, heartless crime –
It takes its time
And chews away
At its poor prey
Which squeaks and screams,
As the red blood streams
And mandibles bore
In more and more,
And tries to writhe
While its captor, blithe-
ly intent on taste
And blind to pain,
Bores yet again
And yet again…
Until at last
Poor life is past.
Ooh, that’s excellent, in an absolutely macabre way!
Or, more simply:
The centipede,
When it does feed –
Oh, heinous crime! –
It takes its time
And slowly munches
Living lunches.
*applause* !
(Sticks hands over eyes)
I’m not reading!
I’m not reading!
(Risks a peek)
Oh. Aaagh!
You’re evil!
cr
Among the Nash poems I remember are the last two lines of a poem about a big cat:
If called by a panther
Don’t anther.
That’s a good one. I wonder if Ogden Nash was just full of these things & talking to him was this entertaining.
I’d like to bash
Ogden Nash –
He spurs you on to waste your time
Fiddling with some stupid rhyme
Until your head is all a-buzz
Trying to find a word that does,
However badly, assonate –
Yes, that’s a word, and it needs a mate,
Although there’s always ‘masturbate’,
Which suits the subject of Jerry’s post,
And suits the sort of versifying
That Ogden Nash gets you trying,
Rhyming and with a bouncing metre
That never falters or seems to peter
Out till you give up the ghost…
I’d like to bash
Ogden Nash.
I think WEIT now has its official poet laureate!
Somebody stop Tim, he’s spinning out of control! 🙂
Will stop. Actually, I like Ogden Nash and don’t really want to bash him. He was very clever and funny!
My religious parents didn’t explain a thing. When I asked my mom where babies came from she would say ask your father. That made it seem like it was bad somehow, so I never asked him. I wonder if he would have explained it.
I learned from friends, classmates and my older brother’s porno mags.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, I don’t see myself or my wife having trouble explaining the birds ‘n bees.
I’d find it acutely embarrassing talking about sex with any of my immediate family, younger or older. It would just be too personal.
Much better leave it to porno mags and classmates. (I know that’s all wrong).
cr
I just never didn’t not have (if I may triple down on the negatives) “the talk” with my sons. From the time they started asking where babies come from and why their girl cousins didn’t have schmekels, I tried to give them as full an answer as they seemed to be looking for.
I still remember when my dad, who for his day was ultra-progressive on these things, had “the talk” with me — on the drive home from our weekly Tuesday nights at the public library (where, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure he had been checking out a how-to manual while I had been reading the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift). Even then, when I was
a college sophomorein fourth grade, he had been beaten to the punch by some older guys from the neighborhood, who had limned the human reproductive process for me while they were up at the playground smoking cigarettes.Yes damn spell checker!
To be honest, I think we were lucky, learning partially from friends, porno mags and partners,long ago. The readers’ experiences ‘articles’ did actually reflect what goes on; whereas modern porno movies show an unrealistic view of sex and relationships that might not be benefitting those who learn from them.
Different cultures have different approaches. One that I’ve heard of appoints an old woman to teach the young men, and an old man to teach the young girls.