i never really looked at chalk the same way after that

While reading sf_drama, I had a flashback from high school. I don't know if I've ever shared it, possibly because I was being kind or something. Who knows?

My comment:

Two separate high school teachers pointed out that men prefer to marry virgins. The second one used a piece of tape against the blackboard to illustrate how sex with more than one person caused a woman--I cannot believe I am typing this--to lose her ability to bond with a husband, which is similar to how women bond with their children, while sticking it and removing it from the chalkboard in a live-action sequence to show how bonding is like tape, and sex is like chalk powder.

This. Actually. Happened.

She was my Spanish II teacher, I was a senior, I have no fucking clue what the hell that was about. She also talked with truly unnecessary detail about waxing. The first teacher who was on the virgin kick was a football coach who taught health.

Granted, it does not lessen the power of this memory to share it, but I feel better knowing that image is now implanted on other people's minds. Tape = bonding, chalk dust = sex.

You're welcome.

Comments

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between sad and nauseated.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Retrospectively, I'm torn between the utter inappropriateness (which as a high school student just did not occur to me), disgust, and hilarity because of the sheer wtfery of not just her opinions, but going the distance to provide the entire visual sequence in real time. Not to mention at this point in my life, the bizarre science being cited.

[jamethiel]

... wait, so does this mean that we need to get virgins to clean our blackboards? I'M CONFUSED.

Also, what she said is true. For a value of bonding that equals "Puts up with shitty sex and bad behaviour because said virgin doesn't know otherwise and partner deliberately chose someone inexperienced so they could behave badly"

*cough* Not that I'm bitter or anything. *goes off to listen to Poe's "Not a virgin"*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Your interpretation of bonding makes a lot more sense.

*sends hugs*

Also, your icon? Adorable.

[mylittlehottie.livejournal.com]

well, tape, chalk and pie. that's actually 3 more pieces of info than i got as a teenager. not sure which is worse. lol, your child! i told mine that getting a girl pregnant was the least of the terrible things that could happen from unprotected sex and that even if they were ax murderers on death row i would still love them!

[alwaysaddled.livejournal.com]

Waxing? Seriously?

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

Tape = bonding, chalk dust = sex

I am fairly sure I read that sga fic. The example explains so much.....

[inteligrrl.livejournal.com]

haha, I bet the tape lady was a Gothardite. http://iblp.org/iblp/ - The founder, Bill Gothard, uses almost that exact same illustration. At the church we went to in Arkansas everyone had to go through the basic seminar at least once (my mother actually shipped me back there after we'd moved so I could have a refresher course). Seriously creepy levels of guilt and control there.

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

I second this opinion. From my lurking on the Free Jinger board (http://freejinger.yuku.com/forums/2) I've become aware that this is a pretty standard view of sexuality of Gothard followers. (Non sequitor: I love the fact that there is actually a board for folks that like to snark about fundy blogs. It's proof positive that there is a fandom for EVERYTHING.)

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

Whaaaaaaaaaat?

[aurora]

...........

[serrico.livejournal.com]

Your teacher fascinates me with her inappropriate metaphor! Fascinates and *appalls*.

My mom was really close friends with the woman who taught sex ed at my elementary school. I still don't know how I feel about that.

In high school, sex ed included disturbingly hand-drawn diagrams of reproductive systems. How disturbing? To this day, I cannot think of the uterus (...as you do) without thinking of how a friend of mine dubbed its diagram "The Happy Alien".

Still, "The Happy Alien" makes more sense than chalkboard/tape virginity. o.O

[aslin.livejournal.com]

That's about as bad as what I had to go through... we had to sit through an abstinence video every year where the lady talked about how "when a guy says he loves you does he mean it like when he says he loves pizza?" yeah.... watched that three years in a row. so i completely understand where you're coming from.

[auroramama]

...I feel guilty because I kind of like that line, though I don't see what it has to do with abstinence. There are all kinds of reasons not to have sex with the first random bozo who says I luv U, but not having sex with anyone may not be the most elegant solution.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Fortunately I went to high school in the early 80s, when we still had sex-ed so good we actually compared the pros and cons of different contraceptives.

Side note: seems like there were a whole lot more types of contraceptives available back then. I haven't seen a contraceptive sponge in 15 years.

But I recall a quote from an old Texas Ranger via Molly Ivins: The three things in life that are the most overrated are Mack trucks, young pussy, and the FBI.

off on a tangent re: sponges

[merrilily.livejournal.com]

Fun fact! The Today Sponge has been discontinued - but the 1-800 # for it is still active! I found this out when I was trying to call the customer service number for a publisher, was off by one digit, and then heard, at the other end of the line "Thank you for calling The Today Company. The Today Sponge has been discontinued. If you are experiencing problems with a sponge that is stuck [emphasis mine], please go to your local emergency room."

I didn't know what to be more WTF about -- that there was still an active phone number, or that there was still an active phone number because people had stockpiled the sponges and were still using them.

Excellent Texas Ranger quote. :-) That should be on a t-shirt.

[lurkerlynne.livejournal.com]

But what color was the chalk powder? Inquiring minds need to know!

And what happens if the tape was duct tape? Or if there wasn't a lot of chalk dust? Is this how stable, long-term relationships are made? With duct tape stuck to a chalk board with a little bit of chalk powder trapped underneath?

But what color is the duct tape?

[margi-lynn.livejournal.com]

You've made my brain crash and reboot. Also coffee came out my nose.

[formerlydf.livejournal.com]

I feel like my life has just been enriched. The next time someone mentions sex, I may have to share this, just so that they can truly understand what's going through my head.

...But why on earth was your Spanish teacher talking about virgins?

[ratcreature]

And yet this is still less creepy than the art teacher I had who liked to talk about shoe fetishes and whores, and asked pretty girls whether they showered with their boyfriends (in front of said boyfriends), and also always, always stood too close. On the more hilarious side I had a biology teacher who pitied us for having to deal with AIDS because back when he was a teenager he could fuck his girlfriend during her period without a condom and not worry about pregnancy whereas now that fell under really high risk behaviors. (He also overshared that he'd got stoned for courage before he had sex with his girlfriend at our age. Really he shared far more about his sex and drug habits than I ever wanted to know.)

[eponymousanon.livejournal.com]

Wow, this sounds analogous to my middle school health class... My town was probably THE conservative bastion of the local metro area, and this is the version of sex ed that I got in 7th or 8th grade:

9-Months Pregnant Guest Speaker:

*holds up a paper heart*
"This is your heart. When you have sex with people before marriage, this is what it does to your heart."
*tears pieces off the heart*
*blahblah sex before marriage is cheap and bad for the soul*
*holds up the tattered heart*
"THIS is the heart that I gave my husband when we got married."
*holds up whole heart*
"This is the heart he gave me."
*practically starts crying*
"I just WISH I'd given my husband the heart that HE GAVE ME."

(yay abstinence-only education and born-again Christians)

I ended up opting out of sex ed in high school b/c they let you make up the credits online from BYU (lol at using the fundies' option to fit more science classes into my schedule) and, well, an online "health" class from BYU meant I knew the various organs, and the process of like, meiosis, but NOTHING about, y'know, safe sexual practices, contraception, or the actual process of reproduction. So that speech? Literally the only "sex ed" I got from my school district. But hey, I know a lot about the downsides of drugs!

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

*cackles* Oh, I'm so glad someone else got that sort of trauma!

One of my high school English teachers frequently told us about how he had been a terrible promiscuous non-Christian person, but his now-wife made him keep it in his pants. And that he would always regret not having given her his virginity but that he *gave her a clean STI test report instead*. HOW ARE THESE COMPARABLE THINGS, I ask you????

And my French teacher had a prophesy involving bumblebees (to whit: you are flower, your husband is bumblebee! Flowers do not seek bumblebees! God leads bees to flowers!). And then her now-husband showed up and gave her a stuffed bumblebee. CASE CLOSED.
Also she thought we shouldn't wear sleeveless tops because "shoulders are the biggest possible turn-on to young men". LOLWHUT?

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I think I'm quite a bit younger than you, and I'm sorry to say I heard that analogy a couple of times at school (usually with tape and arms! Weird arm dirt = sex).

[airglowsgold.livejournal.com]

this happened to me in 8th grade - instead of sex-ed, they just had this speaker come to us and talk about how awesome sex was, BUT ONLY IF YOU'RE MARRIED, and they got us all up in a circle and put strips of packing tape on our arms which we then had to rip off, pass to another person, rip off again, and then try to stick against other pieces. needless to say, they didn't stick very well after being on like twelve people each

tho to be fair, they were more talking about the incidence of sexually transmitted disease, but there was still a really nasty undertone of virgins are worth more as people! that my 13-year-old self probably would have been more disgusted by if i didn't get to stick my tape on tape of the boy i had this GIGANTIC crush on :(

[serrico.livejournal.com]

get to stick my tape on tape of the boy i had this GIGANTIC crush on

This makes me laugh. You subverted the system of Sticky-Tape Virginity! Or, at the very least, a large part of its symbolic message. :D

[mischief5.livejournal.com]

Mr. Koch, tenth grade biology. We had to bring bananas to class so we could learn how to apply condoms. If you could get a condom on an unpeeled banana without ripping it, you got an A. (That taught us to be careful.) If you could get a condom on a peeled banana without breaking it, you got an A. (That taught us to be gentle.) Both the boys and the girls had to do that one. I won't go into lube, foams, IUDS, and other forms of birth control but it was all hands on, all very matter of fact, no judgments, and a lot of fun. He even had us track our periods so we would know when we were ovulating and thus more likely to get pregnant. Even the boys had to do it with "assigned" days. It was great. (This was all pre-AIDS.)

Sadly, once the parents got wind of his teaching methods, they made him stop. It was a shame since everyone wanted to take his class and those that did take it were all much more careful than those that didn't. Looking back, his insistence that we all know what it was like for the other gender was a very subversive -- and supportive -- message about being gay. When everyone has to learn about the clitoris, the prostate, anal sex, and lube, it makes a subtle but real difference. No wonder they shut him down.

[pocketmouse]

Man, I have no idea what we learned in health class. Whenever someone brings up something like this, I try and remember, and I just can't. There were definitely no demonstrations with props, but I can't remember if any of this even came up verbally, and you'd think it would, being a Catholic school.

But I do remember reading an article about someone who got a lesson a lot like the torn-up paper heart, except it was 'who wants a cookie?' *teacher smashes cookies 'NOW who wants a cookie?' sort of thing.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha! My health teacher used the tape/glue metaphor too! I think it must be a common one.

Basically, sex causes bonding to people, so like, you leave behind little pieces of your heart behind when you have sex. Awwww. Also ew. And not really accurate. You can get your heart broken without sex, it happens all the time, and you can have sex with someone you don't love.

Actually, it reminds me of this quote:

"I'm not very good at saying stuff like this, but I think you need to hear it. There's a difference, Sam, between somebody who wants you and somebody who loves you."

Sam closes his eyes in shame.

"And there's nothing wrong with having sex just because you want to. It's a good thing, OK? Totally natural. But you have to know the difference, you have to know that sleeping with somebody isn't going to make them love you."

"I know," Sam whispers. He's on the verge of tears but he won't cry, he won't let himself.

"And you have to...you can't make somebody think you love them when you don't. You have to be honest, all the time, OK? You can't take advantage of anybody and you can't let anybody take advantage of you."

http://sneaky-sena.livejournal.com/51260.html (Crown and Anchor me (or let me float away)

[aivilo-18.livejournal.com]

I...oh man.

This is like that time my elementary school brought in a priest to talk to our class about how masturbation turns girls into whores. I think he had a pie chart and, like, biblical statistics? Like, "three out of every four shepherds agree that masturbation turned one of their eighteen wives into a total prostitute."

I told my mom, she boggled, then sat me in the kitchen with "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and basically told me to take two and call her in the morning.

[ladyvyola.livejournal.com]

biblical statistics? Like, "three out of every four shepherds agree that masturbation turned one of their eighteen wives into a total prostitute."

This is possibly the best thing ever. Now I want a Daily Show-style documentary with shots of forlorn shepherds tending their mournful flocks and talking-head pundit-prophets giving us these totally factual stats.

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

The county health department actually pulled this shit on we girls before my prom, which was less than ten years ago. Ah, small towns. I don't miss you.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

There's an entire generation of kids from that school who gather at a club devoted to their eraser banging fetish.

[huzzlewhat.livejournal.com]

The only things I remember from my high school health class are the transparent human models in the window of the classroom, the slides (I think we were still using filmstrips in those days) of the guy passed out in his own techni-colored vomit, and the teacher telling us that "abortion isn't a contraceptive!" Everything else is very vague. I do remember that it was taught by one of the gym teachers, and that she always wore her whistle to class.

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

Okay, so that might have been even more traumatizing then my Catholic School gym teacher (who looked like a man in a skort, I kid you not) pulling us girls to the side to show us an outdated film strip about what happens when you get your period and how you have to use these massive pads because you don't want to risk your virginity and something about how they now come without belts but stay away from tampons because they're too close to what you do when you get married and that was the sum total of our Sex Ed until I switched to public school and got a teacher who pulled out examples of everything with a squealed "Ooh, this one's lubricated!" and blew my mind.

Er [/TMI]?