Comix/The Birds & the Bees

[desayunoencama]

Heard back from the editor, Jennifer Camper, accepting "The Anniversary," the 6-page b&w comic Sara and I did for her follow-up queer comics anthology JUICY MOTHER 2: HOW THEY MET. Yay!

The book will be out from Soft Skull Press next Spring.

I'd like to do some more shorts with the same characters, maybe eventually have enough to pull together as a collection.

The protags are two kids: one (Thom) adopted from Asia by two gay men, the other (Jason) who lives with his biological mother and her girlfriend (with the biological father remarried and still in the picture, although not in the abovemtnioned 6-pager). Lots of potential for all sorts of comparisons of different alternative family environments. And the kids are very self-aware and irreverant... to make it more fun.

One of the other pieces I'd like to do would be "The Birds and the Bees," broken down into four 2-page segments (to maybe be able to run them in a magazine somewhere, since a 6-pager is much too long) comparing how the two dykes (one of whom was formerly married) explain sex to their son with how the gay dads explain sex to their son with how Jason's father explains sex to his son, and, of course, how the kids talk about sex amongst themselves.

So, I'm curious (and also looking for background material which might be incoprorated into a future comic):

How old were you when your parents had "the talk" with you?
(If you prefer, or in addition: how old were your kids when you had "the talk" with them?)

Which parent was it (same-sex parent or not)?

What euphemisms, if any, were used?

Any other anecdotes or memorable situations/lines from these sorts of parent-child discussions about sex you want to share?

Comments

[misia.livejournal.com]

First, congratulations!

Second, my parents never had "the talk" with me, ever. My father is an anthropologist, and he used to teach Intro to Human Sexuality classes among other things. I used to be taken along to them when my dad had us kids on the weekends (he taught at a commuter school that had saturday classes some of the time I was growing up) and plunked down in the back with crayons and paper and expected to keep myself busy. I did, but the subject matter wasn't lost on me. Nor was the availability of various textbooks, which I read when I was able to (roughly third or fourth grade, IIRC). Also the books had pictures, and there were additionally books like Gray's Anatomy which helped make everything more than crystal clear.

The closest either of my parents ever came to having a sex talk with me was when I was about 14 and my mother and I were watching a television movie of "All Quiet on the Western Front" and she turned to me and said "I think you probably know everything I could possibly tell you about sex, but just make sure that whatever you do, you don't get pregnant unless you're ready because children can ruin your life."

That's it.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

I can't recall ever having "the talk" with my parents, either.

Although I remember my sister having the Visible Man and the Visible Woman dolls...

So you're a second generation sexologist, then? :-)

And... ouch! What a thing for a mother to say to her kid!

[misia.livejournal.com]

My father's niches as an anthropologist were pre-Columbian Ohio River Valley cultures and C19th epidemiology in working-class immigrant populations in a few Midwestern cities. He never did sexology as a discipline, just taught an intro class as part of the anthropology department offerings because someone had to -- stuff like menarche/ejacularche rite of passage, menstrual taboo, marriage customs, that sort of thing. But the books, particularly the textbooks, were around, and 70s intro-level human sexuality textbooks were pretty decent all things considered.

It's funny, it didn't occur to me until much later in life that I might've taken my mom's comment as meaning that having children (me!) had ruined *her* life. At the time I knew exactly what she meant when she said it, which was essentially "have children before you're at a point in your life where that makes sense and you'll regret it because there are things (like college, establishing a career, etc) that you will want to do and if you have a child it may be impossible for you to do them the way you'd like to."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My parents were gradualists. They fed me information at a fairly steady rate from the time I was in preschool. I had a really great book about bodies when I was 3-4, and it didn't make a big thing of sexual organs more than any others, just matter-of-fact, here are the basics of who has what, and here's how babies are made. (I should make sure they saved that.) They were also completely non-euphemistic, which has made dealing with some other women confusing ("A hoo-hoo? I don't think I got one of those! Is it fun?").

Mostly the information came from Mom, but my dad periodically came forth with such tidbits as he thought Mom might have forgotten. What to have a guy drink if he wanted to drink and I wanted him to be any fun later, for example. Very practical stuff.

When I was 14, before I started dating, my mom told me, "If you've met someone, and you're sure he's the one, and you're still in college -- have sex with him! Marry him later! Don't drop out of college!" I said, "Mom,", and she said, "I know what we've taught you about premarital sex, but I'm just saying, God and I will forgive you if you have sex, but not finishing college is a really big deal!"

[athenais.livejournal.com]

What to have a guy drink if he wanted to drink and I wanted him to be any fun later, for example.

For godssake, share!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have not done experiments myself, but my dad recommends red wine, brandy, or vodka as superior to other options.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

When I was 8 I had tonsillitis and decided to look it up in my mom's huge comprehensive medical book. While I was flipping through I discovered the chapters on sexuality, including line drawings depicting (hetero) couples engaging in "The Four Basic Positions for Sexual Intercourse" (which would be Man on Top, Woman on Top, Side to Side, and Doggy Style, though I can't remember what they called Doggy Style hence the use of the term.)

I read those chapters with great interest, including the diagrams of female and male genitalia, checked, made sure I had a clitoris somewhere, and then took the book into the kitchen and told my mom "hey, I've read all about it, you don't need to have a talk with me when I get older. Look, here are the four positions and everything, so I know how to do it now."

Thus I learned about sex, and also about the word "blanche."

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Let's see: age seven when my mom became pregnant and my six-year-old brother and I (who were adopted) demanded to know what was going on. I was deeply confused by the explanation. Dad stayed out of it. Mom used the words vagina and penis, no euphemisms. Unfortunately, her body shyness or embarrassment led to a serious misunderstanding of where babies emerge. She pointed to her thigh where it connects to the torse. For years I thought babies came from an incision in your thigh. I was fourteen when I finally got the right information and understood surgery was not inevitable. Too late, though: I'd already decided no power on earth could make me want children. And I never did.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Never had the talk with my parents. I was around seven when I was in the bathroom and my mother left her cupboard open, and there were her tampons. i had no idea what those were, but by seven I knew that if we asked any questions about anything we suspected was a grownup thing, it inevitably led to a beating with the belt, no questions, no answers, so I examined one, couldn't figure it out, then I saw the instruction sheet, and figured out from that that it had something to do with the part of the body we absolutely did not talk about nohow no way.

My brother finally put it all together for me when I was 12, with a crude joke. (This was around the time my little brother was born.) I then turned to books to find out more, but of course on the sneak, as any sign of any sexual curiosity on the part of us girls would earn a beating.

With my kids, I answered questions as they came up. With my daughter I made the mistake of giving her TMI at first, but learned to answer simply, and if she wanted more detail, she asked. If she accepted the simple answer and moved on, it meant that was all she wanted or could handle at the time. This worked with my son, as well. There has been no trauma or stress about it that I am aware of.

[seainni.livejournal.com]

All my sex ed came from Mom, but I suspect that's true for all my siblings; it wasn't something my Dad would have ever even considered talking about.

Mom first attempted to have the talk with me around four, though I don't remember it. She tells me that when she was through, and asked if I had any questions, I said, "Does the egg have a yolk?" At this point, she realized it was probably a bit too soon.

I don't remember any specific talk after that; I'm not sure there was one after that attempt when I was four. At some point my Mom told me the mechanics of where babies come from, and I explained this to my brother and sister, and we amused ourselves one afternoon by shouting/laughing at/mocking at my parents through their bedroom door, pleased with ourselves that we finally knew what they were doing when they closed same. (Mom told me after they were in fact talking, which if it didn't start out true before we showed up I'm sure became true once we did.) I think I was probably for many years was better educated about menstruation than about sex; I suspect that's true for many girls.

At any rate, mostly sex ed was a gradual thing--I always just sort of knew I could ask any questions I wanted, whenever I wanted. I did learn about the methods of birth control out there from my biology book rather than my Mom, but only because at the point I got the bio book I hadn't had cause to ask about same yet.

No euphemisms; Mom made a point of always using the real words for everything she talked about.

(Using my alternate account because this is probably more than my readers want to find out on a web search. (g) --jls)

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

When I was around four, my parents began incorporating How Babies Are Made and The Human Body: What it is and how it works into my bedtime story reading material. I don't remember ever asking detailed questions about it, but I was given the clear impression that it was okay to know about. Of course, my parents later admitted that they had done this in hopes that I would be inspired to become a medical doctor. Later on, they signed off on the parental permission forms for me to learn about sex ed in health class in 5th, 7th, and 9th grades, without ever discussing it with me. When I was a teenager, my father did take it upon himself to teach me the social rules of dating (for example, bring flowers, do not honk the horn, call if you said you would, hold the door, meet the parents, wait to make sure that the car starts or that they get into their house okay when dropped off) which I discovered were mostly not expected by my peers, but I still use to this day. He never indicated that dates could include sex, though, and I kind of had the feeling like there would at some point be a discreet fade out (like in the movies) and that I would magically know what to do. It took quite an awkward while to acquire the practical knowledge to supplement the book knowledge, and it wasn't something I talked about with most of my friends until college.