Florida Republicans Pass Bill Banning The Word ‘Gay’ In Schools

[Yoused]

I was thinking that too. There was no internet or smartphone tech in the 50s when I was a kid. Children who were not told some version of "the facts of life" by their parents learned a usually somewhat more explicit version from friends on the playground.

When I was in third grade, my parents took me to a house 5 blocks away before school, which I returned to after school until the came and got me (it was about 2 blocks to school from there). There was a book on the coffee table, A Baby is Born, or somesuch. It was nice bright and inviting, no one told me to read it, they all just let natural curiosity take its course.

It had medical-style illustrations of genital structure and explained the basic reproductive function of the parts. It said something to the effect of "the husband and wife lie very close together and he passes his sperm to her", but left the concept of PIV up to the imagination. I mean, my parents would never do that, eww. I visualized a son with his microscope on the couch as his parents were on either side (fully clothed, of course) and suddenly the boy sees a cloud of sperm pass under his lens.

Oddly, the woman's 5-year-old daughter liked to lift up her dress to display herself to me. I am not sure if that was a coincidence or if she was trained to further my education with real imagery. But no one ever gave me "the talk". My parents never discussed sex with me at all, they just made sure I was able to get the appropriate misinformation.

And, of course, how do you teach children about coping with the emotional vectors? Is it possible? In a culture where sex is supposed to be confined to wedlock, how would one deal with young people's desires and feelings in a pragmatic way? Especially given that children are naturally rebellious and doing the bad thing makes it that much more fun.

 

[Roller]

Makes me wonder: Is the theme song from The Flintstones allowed in Florida classrooms? After all, they had a "gay old time."

 

[lizkat]

Farm kids more or less get how it works when they're so young they don't later remember having asked "why is that kitty doing that to that other kitty?" and hearing "that's how they make little kitties." But sure enough, and not that much later either, mama kitty was a bit fatter and then little kitties popped out of the mama kitty's nether parts.

I was living in a suburb by time I was taught the facts of human sexuality and reproduction, but when I was younger we had lived on that farm, so... I do remember in part of that discussion, my mother noted with a bit of embarrassment "...but people do it face to face, not like the kitties." OK mom.

We had moved to a suburban area by time I was in middle school. Some parents there didn't always bother teaching sex ed for humans to their kids, it wasn't taught in school and the playground versions of pregnancy avoidance were pretty unreliable. Birth control was not available to grown married women, never mind teenagers. I remember a few shotgun marriages when the older sibling of one or another grade school friend got pregnant, dropped out of high school and straight into parenthood. One girl was not quite 16 and was shipped off to stay with an aunt until old enough to come back and be stuffed into an artfully designed if kinda boxy wedding gown "in time to make things right" as I remember some neighbor saying. Translation: ink was dry on marriage license before the baby arrived.