I never had any abstinence only classes in school but my mother was very abstenence only at home.

I think the best thing that I ever heard from one of my sister that our mum said to her was, "You do know that your vagina is for your husband, right?"

The thing we chuckle about together is that first of all my sister prefers the ladies and second of all her response was, "I discovered my vagina was for me a long time ago!"

This is about the only sex-ed I got (I was homeschooled by Catholic parents);

My dad: "Condoms don't work. People skew studies to make them say what they want."

we did get the biological facts about periods in maybe, fifth grade so i'll give my public school credit for that. the boys were in a separate room, so i don't know what it is they learned about.

after that though, not so much with the facts of life.

then i think at our orientation going into ninth grade, a nurse came in and showed us a bunch of slides of diseased genitals and talked about the dangers of STDs. i'm not necessarily opposed to such scare tactics, but without any other information, kinda useless. they also told us that condoms wouldn't prevent the transmission of STDs.

and i think that's it. i can't remember exactly, but i think when i took health class in high school there was more of the crusty naughty bits, but definitely not any actual information about any forms of contraception or how to prevent STDs. no jesus or purity lectures about duct tape, thank goodness, but just like, no advice other than "wait until you are married to have sex, otherwise you'll get chlamydia."

this is why at a sleepover in tenth grade, a group of my girlfriends and i had to sit one of our friends down and explain EVERYTHING to her because she had strict catholic parents (and since school taught us nothing), she thought you could get pregnant from kissing. seriously.

i learned way more about sex from seventeen magazine and movies in my teenage years than i ever did from any adult in the education system.

I sent in mine. My teacher flat-out LIED to us and told us if we had sex we'd go to jail.

I had "comprehensive" sex ed, and all I learned was that STDs are horrible, terrible things and if you get one you'll be scarred and filthy for the rest of your life. So use a condom.

I had really good sex ed I think. It was co-ed and I have a vivid memory of a fake breast being passed around so we could check it for lumps (and that there were lumps in the nipple area that we all missed). I also remember my female teacher telling us that blue balls didn't exist and that we should never "give in" to a guy who tried to pressure us into sex by telling him that it hurt to wait.

er, I meant, by him telling us that it hurt him to wait.

The state of Washington requires all schools who receive state funding to teach comprehensive sex education, and so in 5th, 7th, 9th, and 10th grade we were taught sex ed. I have to say that the best class was the one in 5th grade where they taught all the biological facts (anatomy, etc) and how sperm+egg+uterus+incubation=baby.

In 10th grade "health class" though, (my high school was special) I remember these 20-somethings came in to talk about sex. They had us all get up and go stand around the edge of the room next to a sex-related topic. They talked about STIs, but the general idea was "don't have sex, or you'll die". It was bullshit. ...especially since I think I was the only person in the entire class who was not sexually active with anyone but myself. The teacher who brought these 20-somethings in to do her job for her did not return the following year. I can only imagine it was because she didn't teach us anything.

Sex was never really mentioned in public school sex-ed either way. I think we got the facts of life about eggs and sperm and the like, but no talk of the actual act either endorsing it or forbidding it.

When I hit my all-girls Catholic high school run by nuns, there was no discussion of sex at all. No surprise, but I was actually impressed that we didn't get the whole "save it for marriage" routine. It was there in the Church's teachings, but it wasn't drilled into us by speakers or in religion classes. (I do remember being offended that there was such a pro-life message in the religion classes, but I think it was more the teacher's personal ideals than the curriculum of the school). Our nuns were wonderful, brilliant, educated role models. They instilled a sense of power and achievement into all their girls, and I'm truly blessed to have had the education that I received.

I went to a public school in Tennessee. In I think 7th grade we took a sex ed. class that really didn't teach us much of anything (surprise!) Some of the things I remember:

There was a graph of "sexual arousal" and it showed where you should stop to prevent yourself from going "to far". I think it was between french kissing and heavy petting.

There was no information on condoms, and I think the general message was "if you have sex you will get HIV and die" It didn't really mention marriage, or when it was okay to have sex EVER, at all. It just painted this picture of sex being a horribly bad idea for anyone.

There was no info on contraception, just on how to prevent yourself from having sex in the first place. I guess if you went ahead and had sex you were already a lost cause?

But I think the only thing most of us ended up remembering was the phrase "Pet your dog, not your date". Yes, really. It was in the workbook under a illustration of a cute puppy. We could NOT stop laughing at the hilarious wrongness of that phrase.

I went to Catholic school, so not only did we get to go on a chastity retreat, but we also had a short chastity program once a week during religion class my sophomore year. They actually gave us "Pure Love" handbooks, which were designed to be small, as to be easily carried at all times, AND "Sex is not a game" frisbees (You know, because it's okay to give kids an unhealthy, distorted view of sex and their own bodies, as long as you throw in a free toy). Who could ever have to time to have dirty, sinful thoughts when they're so busy playing frisbee?!

I believe it is pretty easily imagined the ideas 100 sixteen year olds could come up with to add to their frisbees.

I had sex ed in both private and public school (in Mass.).

The public school education was pretty good--facts of life, periods and such in sixth grade, and then continuing information about STDs and birth control through the ninth. I wouldn't say it was revolutionary, but i think it was pretty factual and useful.

When I went to private school in 10th grade (non-parochial) there was a sex education class that was excellent--probably because at a private school, some state laws regarding education didn't apply.

They showed us how to put on a condom (on dildo-y looking thing of course) about other forms of contraception, talked about homosexuality (showed how to use a dental dam), and told you where you could get contraception (the nurse's office for one). I will say that they did stress that the only way to be absolutely positive you didn't become pregnant or get an STD was to abstain, but it wasn't a scare or guilt tactic.

But the thing I thought really made it comprehensive was the sociological view of sex and sexuality that was also part of the course. We looked at the sexualization of advertising, the prevalence of gendered stereotypes, dating violence, and even dating and personal communication skills.

They didn't just give us the facts, but gave us context and skills to apply what we learned in our own relationships.

In the 8th grade, my health class received sexual education. They told us that we should "pet our dogs, not our dates" (creepy, right?). They also stressed that if you have sex with two people, and have sex with somebody else, it's basically like they had sex with three people, therefore putting that person (and yourself if vise versa) at risk for STDs. They never told us what STDs were, but went so far as to show us a chart if you had sex with thirty people and the other person had sex with twenty people, it was like you had sex with fifty people and so forth.
They ended the first day of their two-day presentation by giving us a single Hershey kiss. This was our symbolic virginity. (Why, exactly? Because chocolate is as tempting as sex?)
If we still had our virginity/Hershey kiss the next day, we would receive a prize.
I remember one girl lost her virginity when some boys threw it to a cow. I gave mine to my boyfriend. I bought a bag of the kisses later that night, and replenished virginities to all who had disposed of their forbidden chocolates before class started the next day.
(I suppose that could be symbolic to the rejuvenation surgeries many women undergo now!)

We did our sex ed in grade 7, and I *think* it was actually pretty comprehensive, but it was our first year of French Immersion (about half our classes were in French, we were 'immersed' in the language in order to learn) so I don't think I had the vocabulary to really understand what we were talking about at the time!

My school system was really big on doing field trips to Discovery Place for educating us about sex and babies (This was in Charlotte, NC - can't tell if it's anywhere else, but it's an interactive museum kinda thing to teach kids about science, basically). When I was in fifth grade, before our education stopped operating in reality, we went on a field trip to learn how babies are made. There was a big display of fetuses at different stages of development, and we got to hold/look at them, and there was a video of sperm swimming to an egg. This is when they finally explained the actual mechanics of sex and how those gametes found each other. This was a huge "holy crap" moment for me as a 10-year-old, and i remember thinking "ahh I'm never doing that!" lulz.

Then in middle school, we went again for a presentation on the menstrual cycle, which was also very interesting and informative. The point where it turned into abstinence-only propaganda was when they tried to "prove" that there was no safe time during the cycle to have sex because it would ALWAYS get you pregnant. It wasn't until a few years ago that I decided to look up real information and figured out that no, sperm don't always survive for 6 days (in a woman's body) and eggs for 3 days. They took their maximum life span, the probability of which is rather small, and talked about it like that was the case 100% of the time, then did some fancy number manipulations. They also neglected all the ways that the cervix makes it difficult to impossible for sperm to get into the uterus in the first place. I understand the importance of pointing out to young people that the risk of pregnancy makes it a bad idea to have unprotected sex, especially since there are so many rumors about homemade ways to keep from getting pregnant, but this was some serious distortion of the truth.

"Abstinence only sex education. That's a little like saying 'just hold it' potty training" - Roy Zimmerman. (click link for youtube vid)

i went to a catholic school and in ninth grade we had this woman who came in and set up a little game. she went around the room and gave us each a hypothetical situation in which we could either engage in premarital sex or remain abstinent (ex. you are sixteen and you and your boyfriend/girlfriend have been dating for so and so long etc...).
Every time a student agreed to partake in hypothetical sexual intercourse they received a card with a hypothetical result of their decision written on it. by the end of the game i had three cards: hypothetical herpes a pretend baby and some sort of irreversible emotional damage that wasn't on the card they gave out to the boys...
The weird thing was that condoms and birth control didn't factor into our decisions at all. I can't remember whether i asked the teacher if i could hypothetically have my imaginary future boyfriend (who in the pretend situation was "pressuring" me to have sex, of course ughgh} wear a condom...but this was a long time ago and all i can really remember is feeling enraged. Oh and at one point the woman called my [female] friend a "skank" for her many hypothetical partners.
since then at my high school we've had abstinence only lessons factor into our religion classes and it often simultaneously provides comic material and indignation...this year i learned that if you are catholic you can donate any organ to science you want to after you are dead except your brain....and your gonads. [???] i also learned that onanism [or pulling out] is a grave mortal sin and that war is sometimes permissible but abortion never is. oh and that foreplay of any sort is evil. EVIL I SAY i graduated a month ago (YAY) and despite our abstinence only classes and school attitude, at least seventy percent of my senior class was sexually active or at least not virgins. [i didn't take a poll of anything we just had a really gossipy small class, like forty kids] so yeah, not very effective... but luckily no beh behs either because there's enough information available to kids outside of school, in the media and at home. [thank god]

When I was in the 9th grade, gym and health alternated. So for our sex ed, girls had health for TWO weeks straight, then boys had it for ONE week straight. We did learn actual information about STDs and contraception. Apparently the reason girls had sex ed longer was because "Girls are more likely to get an STD." (my nurse friend says that's not true). I thought at the time, but don't know for sure, it was also because the boys didn't learn how to put in the female condom and the other female contraception.

I was fortunate enough to have sex ed in sixth grade, before my state (NC) went nuts in the mid-90s and mandated abstinence-only. I also lucked out in that the 900-year-old science teacher who'd taught sex ed since time began was moved to fifth grade that year, so our teacher was a PE coach who hadn't been around long enough to be indoctrinated (I think it was only his second or third year). His self-designed curriculum was memorable because it acknowledged that we were going to want to have sex at some point (shocker) and needed to understand how to protect ourselves.

I can remember one thing pretty clearly...One was a chart up on the blackboard listing various methods of pregnancy and disease prevention, placed in descending order of effectiveness against both. Abstinence was at the top - 100 percent effective against babies and STIs - followed by condoms, the pill, sponges, etc. The message I took from that was, while abstinence was the only sure-fire way to not get pregnant or catch herpes, there were other methods, too, though the risk would increase. I also remember him telling the girls in class that we should never, ever rely on the guy to have a condom because, assuming he even has one, it's probably been in his back pocket for months and has holes in it. (Advice I still follow, by the way.)

I'm still surprised that a teacher in a rural elementary school was able to get away with that level of frankness, and that my classmates and I were mature enough to handle it (evidenced by minimum of snickering). Of course, by the next year the school had moved him to some other class, so the experience was short-lived.

I was also lucky enough to be in Girl Scouts, where the troop leader - my mom - emphasized self- esteem building, the reasoning being that if young women saw themselves as having worth beyond simply being sex objects, they'd be less likely to have sex for male approval. (Ironically, Mom was pretty abstinence-only with my sisters and I at home...) My church's youth group also had a session on sex-ed, believe it or not, led by a minister who framed sex in terms of responsibilty - with all gifts come the responsibility to not abuse the privilege; sex is a great gift from God and therefore requires great responsibility, etc.

So pretty much all of my sex ed came from a place of "sex is wonderful, but you should wait until you're mature enough to handle it," rather than "sex is evil and filthy, unless it's with your husband."

I'm completely jealous of the commenters who had cool, useful sex ed classes with teachers worth remembering. When sex ed comes up, I generally get a giggle by pointing out that my Catholic school didn't have Sex Education--it had Family Life. I shit you not.

It was as boring and pointless as it sounds (more so, perhaps; at my partner's all-boys Catholic school that class at least involved learning how to do checking/banking stuff and plan an inexpensive wedding, but apparently girls don't need to know about money). Mostly, I remember pointers for assertively saying 'no'--whether you wanted to or not.

My first abstinence only class was when I was in 6th grade and I had already gotten my period. My very old female science teacher separated the girls and the guys into different classrooms to talk to us. When she got to the girls, she pulled out a pad and started to explain how to use it. Me, being a smart ass, raised my hand and announced that I already knew how to use it, because I had already had my period. The teacher glared at me and told me that I couldn't have had my period yet because I was too young, and that if I wanted attention I should go to drama class.

:D

In 1986 in Michigan at a catholic school, we 6th graders were informed that we would have a sex ed class [my mom told me some info in 4th grade]. In preparation, we were told to write down 1 or 2 anonymous questions that would be answered. My friends and I thought up the weirdest questions we could imagine - one was "can you get pregnant from looking at a picture of a naked man?" Probably not too imaginative given our sheltered lives.

I don't remember the content, but I do remember my teacher telling us to imagine we had a bright red stop sign in our crotches - when a boy got that close, we were supposed to tell him stop, just like a crossing guard. I was fascinated with this stop sign imagery, and asked if we could make stop signs during art class - I wanted to be ready to say stop! How would we attach the signs so they wouldn't fall off? Would we need 2 smaller ones for our chests? This all seemed to confuse the teacher - not used to being questioned.

Molly: Did we go to the same Catholic school? I also had 'family life'. Think Long Island, NY around 1989/1990. In middle school we were broken into male and female groups. Family Life class was 'taught' by an Indian Priest. I'm mentioning his ethnicity only because we could understand 35% of what he was saying. The girls were subject to a video of painful child birth - natural of course. Not sure what the guys had to go through. We had all waited patiently until we got to the 'intercourse' chapter but it was grazed over by the priest with a call for abstinence until marriage. Never really found out what sex was. I thought Mary the Virgin Mother dropped seeds from the sky and women would somehow take one and implant one in their stomaches. TOTALLY BIZARRE IDEA but I was a creative kid.

I had to read it three times to realize she was talking about a hug from dad replacing sex with a bf.

I didn't have any abstinence-only classes, thank gods. But for the purpose of comparison, I'll give the rundown on Ontario's sex education in the eighties and nineties as experienced by me:

My white-collar parents were fairly honest about answering my questions, and good about sticking to proper terminology. When I asked "Where did I come from?", my mother said, "You grew inside my womb." (I like that she didn't say "tummy", which can cause confusion between pregnancy and eating.) Along with nature and science shows, they also sat me down in front of a few of those "Miracle of Life"-type programs.

In fifth grade, a very nice woman visited our school to give some special classes about puberty, which, as well as covering physical changes, also touched on the changing social scene and self-esteem. There was a separate class for the girls about menstruation. There was also a separate class for the boys, but I don't know what it covered.

In seventh and eighth grade, our gym teacher taught a unit of sex ed as part of health class. This involved labeling diagrams of the human genitals, another "Miracle of Life" video (then having a better idea of what I was seeing, the birth scene freaked me right out), and long, rambling lectures by the teacher. He wasn't an abstinence freak, and was quick to silence the boys' sniggering by labeling their reaction as embarrassment, but he was still kind of a jerk -- bragging about impregnating his wife, snapping condoms at the class instead of showing their proper use, and warning us girls about "revealing clothes". On the upside, our female music teacher showed us an excellent video about love, sex, and peer pressure, whose message was basically not to delude yourself or others, and to wait until you felt ready.

In ninth grade, I had yet another sex ed class. This time gym class was divided between the sexes, and the girls had a female teacher, while the boys had a male one. This class was pretty good, with comparative anatomy and lists of birth control and STI protection methods, with abstinence as the top-rated method on both of those lists. There was no discussion of homo- or bisexuality, nor abortion, nor any practical discussion of condom use (beyond "don't keep it in your back pocket", but at least they gave us many of the facts we needed to stay healthy.

I learned later that the boys' class didn't include any information about female anatomy. I don't know how much info about contraception or STIs they got.

My high school had very few pregnancies. One girl in my year got pregnant and decided to carry to term; she's the only one I can recall.

sex education? what sex education????

i honestly don't remember having any (from school, that is).

Actually, I got my first sex-ed when I was in kindergarten. I asked my mom the standard "where do babies come from" thing, and, since she was a biology major, she whipped out her old human anatomy text books and explained about vaginas, uteruses, ovaries, testicles, the whole shebang.

When I got older she and my dad had planned a contraception/STDs, etc., but had already read the book they bought to help*. My brothers got a very thorough talk, though, plus a semi-joking promise of a pocketful of condoms on future dates. Yay mom and dad!

*Actually, that book was pretty awesome. It was very positive about masturbation and homosexuality (though it only talked about it a little), and didn't do that "sex is best in marriage" bit.

I honestly don't know if I got comprehensive or abstinence only sex ed at school in gerneral, but when I was in sixth grade, there was a big assembly where people sang and danced and did presentations on how awesome it is to be abstinent. It had the usual save yourself for marriage so you don't disgust your future spouse with how much of a skank you are thing going on. It also had the required tips for turning down someone trying to get into your pants.
In retrospect it seems strange (but good) to me that they didn't assume that the pursuers would always be male and that the girl folk would always have to say no, but there was one phrase that stuck with me: "They might say, 'it feels good.' I bet you can guess who (male/female) is more likely to say that!" People laughed. I laughed. I still don't know which gender he meant.

I remember thinking it was strange that all of the peppy people encouraging us to keep our pants on were self-proclaimed virgins. It seemed to me that a non-virgin's evaluation of a non-abstinent lifestyle would likely be more valid than a virgin's. It was all a bit like being told, "Sushi sucks and I know because I've never tried it! You shouldn't ever try it either!"

I had a mix of public and Catholic education. All my sex ed was in Catholic school. In third grade, we learned about the mechanics of reproduction. Mr. Chicken and Mrs. Chicken love each other so much that they wanted to make Little Chickens. Then we substituted Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with the primary difference being live birth vs. eggs. We also got to recite the names of body parts, with a stern teacher staring us down to prevent giggling. I can still hear her voice followed by a chorus of children: "Penis." "Penis." "Vagina." "Vagina."

I wish I'd been there in eighth grade for the lecture from Monseignor about how God would vomit you out of his mouth if you fornicated. Had to hear it second-hand.

In senior year of high school, our religion teacher spent one day on sex. She wrote four columns on the board: Love-giving but not Life-giving, Life-giving but not Love-giving, Both Life-giving and Love-giving, and Neither Life-giving nor Love-giving. In the Love-only column went homosexuality and birth control. In the Life-only column were rape and seduction. Under Both was sex in marriage with the goal of conceiving, and under Neither was masturbation. Homosex and BC could be expressions of love, but in each case something (the baby roulette) was missing. Rape and seduction were awful but could create life; the idea that pregancy from rape made the rape better was horrific enough to stick with me for more than 20 years. The pinnacle of human sexual expression was getting down with your marriage partner to make babies. And masturbation had zero redeeming features. It was apparently worse than rape in that regard. At the time I was coping with fallout from my evil ex-stepfather, and I ended up breaking down sobbing during the stilted class discussion that followed. I haven't a clue whether the teacher believed any of the crap she was selling or if she was just toeing the party line. Either way, it was disgusting beyond description.

In contrast to most of the posters here, my sex-ed started at home with those wonderful Peter Mayle books about babies and puberty, and continued at school, starting in maybe 5th grade. I was in high school in the mid 80's when AIDS had just become the big story, so I remember lots of condom talk in Health class. And then my Senior year, when the second semester's credits are all derived from a senior project, I volunteered at our local abortion rights PAC. That was my senior project, abortion rights. I remember sitting in class helping to organize the busses that went to DC for the '89 march on Washington.

Although I'm sure things were different at the Catholic high school across the street......

I went to Catholic school and they required you to take health class--although you could completely avoid it by taking an art for all four years. The health class did its best to avoid reproductive health. I think we may have had to learn the reproductive organs and be able to label them for a grade but there was absolutely nothing on pregnancy. All that was included in the book were depictions of sexually transmitted diseases and their ill effects (one picture that sticks out in my mind in the guy who was covered in syphilitic marks). You could get extra credit points on your report card if you went to the March for Life in Washington trip that the school sponsored every year.

They loved having speakers from Generation Life. Not only did they pass out the "I'm worth waiting for" stickers, they passed out the little cards with the pledges to future spouses that we would keep ourselves pure. Once, the speech was directed to only the senior girls, and the woman passed around a notebook asking us to fill in the names of our "fallen" friends and family members so she could pray for them later.

If I learned anything about sex, it was despite the school's best efforts.

On the funny side, in sixth grade the school had the nurse come in to tell us all about reproduction and periods and how boy parts worked. She would NOT allow us to laugh. If we happened to snicker or giggle at the terrible animations of erections we were sent out of the room and got a note sent home to our parents. After the video we were able to write anonymous questions and she would answer them. It's important to note this lady was the real life embodiment of Dana Carvey's "Church Lady." Everyone's questions were very serious and cliched. But my best friend and early feminist (thanks to Lisa Simpson) had a real doozy, "How do you tell the difference between labor and severe gas?" The lady was pissed to say the least. It seems mild now but back then it was hilarious.

On the not-so-funny side: My freshman year of highschool everyone was required to take a semester long "Health Class." We talked about not smoking and the effects of alcohol, and nutrition but alot of time was spent on sex-ed. Mostly it was boring and textbook "how male parts work" and "menstral cycle" stuff. But I remembered that we were told during the STD section that latex condoms DO NOT prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, because the virus particles were so small it could get through the latex. Not kidding. I knew it was bullshit, but alot of people didn't. I wonder how many of them still believe that. Also to note, a nearby school who recieved similar teachings had the highest rate of high school HIV infections in the LA area. I wonder why. If condoms don't work, why bother using them?

xtine's comment made me have a flashback (though, no, my Family Life experience was in mid-90s Kentucky, not 1989/90 New York)--I totally forgot about the birth-video-as-scare-tactic aspect of my sex ed experience. I'm now trained as a birth doula, working on a scholarly book about childbirth narratives in contemporary culture, starting a feminist reading group on childbirth culture, etc.--and I find it deeply disturbing that an adult would show children birth for (probably) the first time with no context and in a deliberate effort to frighten them. The message is not just 'sex is bad; you'll definitely get pregnant' but also 'childbirth is scary, disgusting, and to be avoided at all costs.' Gee; I wonder why so many women in our culture approach not just sex but also childbirth with fear and shame, and with no clue that it can be intensely pleasurable?

My education was exclusively Christian schools from preschool to graduation. We had no formal sex education classes, but STDs were mentioned once or twice in our health class in 7th grade, I think. Everything was approached from a 'virginity-is-good,' 'pro-life' viewpoint. Girls at our school who did get pregnant all wound up leaving the school. My senior year, this woman came to our school to talk about sex (to the guys and girls separately, of course). I think she showed a couple of slides of STD-infected genitals, but only lady parts (of course). Anything I learned about sex, I learned from books or websites like chickclick (RIP).

I had a sex ed class in 8th grade, and I absolutely hated it. My teacher deliberately avoided talking about female orgasms even when I asked her directly in front of the whole class (I already knew, but I knew others didn't) even though we spent an hour discussing male orgasms and watched a movie about it. That really pissed me off. I think her excuse was something like "We're only talking about human reproduction, not pleasure." Even though that's total bullshit. (The movie, Human Reproduction or something like that, only showed sex from a heterosexual male perspective. There was never any discussion about homosexuality.)

I also remember that we had to act out little scenarios where a teenage guy was trying to get a teenage girl to have sex with him but she didn't want to because
A) Her parents wouldn't approve
B) It went against her religious beliefs
or C) It went against her moral beliefs.
There were about ten scenarios and they were all like that. No teenagers actually just wanted to have (safe, fun, consensual) sex--the guy was just a sex-obsessed asshole and the girl was just a demure virgin.

Then we got these little pamphlets, one about STIs and another titled "50 Reasons Not to Have Sex," I'm not kidding. The first two were "It goes against your religious beliefs" and "It goes against your moral beliefs" but there were others about how you would feel guilty and ashamed afterwards and contract a terrible disease and you deserve it, you filthy whore.

The only time we discussed rape and violence toward women it was because the teacher told a joke about rape (I won't say it here, but it was disgusting) and some of the guys (and girls) in the class said that no doesn't always mean no. I interrupted the teacher to tell everyone that the only time it's ok to have sex is when the other person CLEARLY says yes. Any other time is rape. Of course the teacher made us move on quickly from such a controversial subject.

We also had to watch a movie from 1992 about a teeange girl who goes to the store to buy tampons (all the while looking furtive and ashamed). There she meets a boy she likes. The next scene is their wedding eight years later. After that, they go into a hotel room and put a "do not disturb" sign on the door. Then it shows the woman with her infant daughter. That was the whole movie.

On the last day we had to make posters, one by the guys and one by the girls, saying why we liked to be the sex and gender we were. The responses were typical gender stereotypes--the boys said they liked being strong and natural leaders and the girls said they liked wearing dresses.

God, I was happy when that class ended.