By BERN MORLEY
The sex talk I had with my own mother went a little something like this: “If you do it, you will get pregnant and then you will die.”
Well maybe not exactly like that, but it was pretty close.
Basically, it was a very closed and off-limits subject. As a result, as a young adult, I was terrified of ‘it’.
One day, rifling through her drawers looking for something I suspect I shouldn’t have been, I found The Joy of Sex just casually sitting there beneath her flannelette nightie. I, of course, devoured it and walked away even more horrified. THAT is what sex is? Why was there so much HAIR?
That being said, once I eventually got on the horse (so to speak), I discovered it was quite the opposite of terrifying. Done right, it’s exhilarating, and beautiful, and certainly nothing to ever be ashamed of. Let’s just say I took to it with some abandon.
So when it came to my turn as a mother to teach my own daughter, I didn’t want to ignore it. I wanted to confront it head on, to make her understand that it is completely natural.
So, I did one of the most awkward things parents ever do their children, I tried to casually interject an everyday conversation with the ‘sex talk’. Before I could even get to the words ‘sexual’ or ‘intercourse’, her eyes had ‘literally’ (that’s a gag for all the parents of teenagers out there) rolled so far into the back of her head, I thought she may never see again.
When she returned to face me, her exact words were “Mum, I already know. Okay?”. She felt embarrassed and this is EXACTLY what I didn’t want. So I looked at her and said only this, “Honey, you’re going to do it, maybe soon, maybe not for a while, but just make sure of two things: one, don’t EVER feel pressured to do it and two, always use protection.”
Top Comments
My own mother slut-shamed me as soon as she found out I was having consentual relations with my long term boyfriend of nearly a year. We were both above the legal age when we started.
She told my younger brother and sister (12 year old twins) to call me a slut and told them and my older sister to spread rumours about me at school. She was 52 years old when she did this.
No amount of therapy has managed to fix this trauma yet.
Yikes hon - sounds like your mum had some serious issues! I hope you've gone on to live a happy sexy fulfilling life x
That's so sad that she could do that to someone that she should have loved.
It seems to me that all this talk of 'reputations' and 'tarnishing good names' is highly school age based. I only say this because I moved a lot and in year 11 went from Catholic school to ballet school to an Arts college. Let me say no one at my uni gave a fiddlers who you slept with or how many. Incidentally I was a virgin until I was 22 but no one cared. I went on to have a career as a dancer in musical theatre and still no one gives a flying fit, even my side jobs in hospo men and women all shared their stories. We all understand that multiple partners can mean that you have no self esteem but it can also mean you have loads and just like having sex. Not all people have the same path in life as long as you learn how to make the choices that suit you then that is all you can do.
But reserve the judgement for people's terrible taste in music
There is a lot of judgement that is planted and sowed by religion. Whatever kind. They're all so patriarchal and all about power and control. Funny how the Christian ones disregarded the story of Mary Magdalene and throwing the first stone, Seems so many line up to pitch them.
Absolutely but when you grow up and move away from school and get a job surely all that happened in high school stays there?? Or was I smart to move the hell away from everyone?
Not sure if you were smart or not to move away for you it worked out others maybe not so. I am just over religions damning people. Religions are organisations that are about power and control through fear. Fear is not love and judging others is not love. Why cant we all just respect each others choices.
Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. It's a commonly held belief, but the prostitute in the story to which you refer also was called Mary, so the two women got conflated. Mary of Magdala was a wealthy woman of independent means who apparently bankrolled the disciples, not a prostitute! Off topic, I do realise, but it's a great example of how things ''in the Bible'' can get... misrepresented and twisted around (the original error was one of the popes in the mists of time and of course, no one dared correct him on account of him being infallible and all... so the error was perpetuated...).