The Birds + The Bees

New to Tattle Life? Click "Order Thread by Most Liked Posts" button below to get an idea of what the site is about:
My background - Asian and Roman Catholic. And I’m in my late 30s. The first draft of my 20000 word dissertation was hand written. Internet was mainly MSN messenger. My mum was adopted by a single female doctor - a forensic psychologist who then went on to study the brains of dead people. This was in the 1950s in Asia. My grandmother was amazing but she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. And neither did my mum.

I never got the birds and the bees talk. I remember asking if I could use tampons when I was about 16-17 (it became popular in my friendship group for some reason). My mum said only married people could use tampons.

Whatever I’m a cool kid so I didn’t listen (I was naive but not stupid) and I wore tampons but I also wasn’t given a period talk beyond a quick intro from school when I was about 10 years old (I had my first period maybe at 11 and my mum just passed me a pad, didn’t have another one for ages and was in secondary school by then and had peers to talk to) - and my best friend had a similar upbringing so Dumb and Dumber inserted a new tampon after each trip to the toilet. And both wore sanitary towels with our tampons because (and I know this now) we weren’t inserting them properly. Just assumed we were bleeding through cos we had heavy periods. Anyways, luckily the novelty ran out and the tampon phase quickly died out (lucky we didn’t die out!).

Fast forward to 2008-2009. I’ve just purchased my own place and excited to furnish it. I’m trying to work out my budget and figure out what all the various bed and mattress options are - my mum tells me that only married people can have a double bed. I told her I’m probably not getting married (I was right) and that I was not going to sleep in a single bed for the rest of my life. And that was that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3
My mum took me to an exhibition about sex in the science museum when I was about 3 or 4. So there was never an 'ah-ha' moment, I just knew. My mum and grandmother were very open about periods too, as we all start early in our family. So I knew about periods from very young-I also read a lot of Judy Blume lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1
My mum took me to an exhibition about sex in the science museum when I was about 3 or 4. So there was never an 'ah-ha' moment, I just knew. My mum and grandmother were very open about periods too, as we all start early in our family. So I knew about periods from very young-I also read a lot of Judy Blume lol.
Used to love ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret’. In fact, I am sure I have kept my copy and it is on a bookshelf somewhere.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2
Being of a typical Asian upbringing, I never ever had the sex talk from my parents. In year 4 or 5 I remember looking up 'rude words' like sex in the dictionary with my friends and giggling endlessly. My most mortifying primary school moment is taking the permission form home for my parents to sign to say I was allowed to be in the sex education lessons! They literally said nothing and put the signed form on my bed the next morning 😂

Even from sex ed lessons I got the gist but I still thought sex was just lying next to each other with penis and vag rubbing against each other... was horrified when I discovered the D actually goes IN!!!

Period wise I was horrified to discover girls have one every month. When I first learned what a period was I thought you only ever have it once and that's it 😂. My mum was slightly better with this stuff and was more supportive than with the sex stuff . Although she did tell me tampons are only for married women. Years later I discovered its because tampons are still quite taboo in parts of Asia as they think using them means you aren't a virgin any more 🙄
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1