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56 is the new 15
Jul. 2nd, 2009 12:06 amSo, I just got off the phone with my mother. almost 2 hours.
she wanted to know about how to get tested for STDs and what she can do about living with Herpes and being sexually active since she has a new "friend" and I think it's really getting serious.
She's like a giddy schoolgirl about this dude. In more ways than one- the biggest being her sort of innocent ignorance because the last time she was in the market for sex, the world was a different place and sometimes things just weren't talked about, and sometimes the field of medicine just hadn't advanced that far, and we really didn't know.
It's really amusing. Here she is, trying to hint around questions that she wants to ask so bad, but can't bring herself to actually say the words sometimes because in her generation, it's like, *gasp*omgtalkingaboutsex. And to me it's like, "what, can't you just google it?"
She doesn't want to talk to her "country doctor" about these things. and was a little paranoid about having a public record of her test results. I had to remind her that health records are not exactly "public" (although with all the disclaimers they make you sign these days, they might as well be) but that no matter where she got tested, it would become part of her medical records and there's not a lot you can do about that, but it's no big deal because everyone knows everyone has sex and it's not a secret anymore, it's not a shameful thing.
I recommended she go to a planned parenthood, find a nice dike-y feminist-power liberal vagina-health-happy advocate, and tell them she wants to "learn more about her options" for getting tested and treated so she can lead a more active sex life.
I swear, she was so nervous and shy about this it's like... she's 15. And I'm like playing this weird, "Girl-Power" college campus educator role where I'm giving her pretty straightforward, scientific and factual answers in a non-judgemental way, and I don't think she's ever ever had anyone to talk to about that.
Which is funny, because when I was a little girl, she would tell me about her past boyfriends and sex life and I learned a lot about personality types and romance and sensuality and even physiology from her, and she told me early on that she had Herpes so if Mommy doesn't feel good, be nice, don't drink out of her cup if she tells you no, etc.
She used a lot of euphemisms sometimes, and sometimes she would realize she was telling me WAY too much inappropriate stuff for a kid my age, and then she would shut up and be all, "I'll tell you when you're older".
But I didn't realize her knowledge only went so far and then there's this... wall of fuzzy ignorance where the 1970's sexual science stops and the "goshit'sinappropriatetothinkaboutthis" begins.
Of course, with her anecdotal teachings, I was catalyzed into learning more, because my brain is always hungry and I need to know, need to learn scientific names for things, need to know what is what, as far as we currently understand it. That's one thing I love about being in this generation, and what I love about the internet- it's like the best Encylopedia EVAR. And I used to be that nerdy kid who actually sat and read the volumes of the encyclopedia that my parents were awesome enough to buy from that traveling salesman when I was young.
It's not good enough for me to know that there are transsexuals in the world. I want to know about every different type, and what type of operations they have (or don't have, and why), and how well it works physiologically and psychologically when they complete their chosen course of treatement... and I WILL read the long-ass Chinese white paper on how to perform laparoscopic total mesorectal excision for rectal cancer... and I will look up the online textbook that talks about all the different ostomy procedures commonly done and how each surgery is performed ...and when my mom shyly asks me if I've ever heard of people getting Botox shots "down there" or having surgery to make things "better", I can remind her that Botox causes temporary muscle paralysis so getting it "down there" is probably NOT what you want, and as for vaginoplasty, yes, I have heard of it, and yes, you can get things cosmetically touched up or tightened if you're really that hardcore about it, but really, you're probably better off doing Kegel exercises and they even make handy exercise tools for that.
(luckily, she did know about Kegel exercises.)
She would pretty much die of embarassment if she knew I was writing this down anywhere. But I thought it was too funny/sort of adorable not to log it somewhere, thus, my "superanonymous journal of doom" gets it.
she wanted to know about how to get tested for STDs and what she can do about living with Herpes and being sexually active since she has a new "friend" and I think it's really getting serious.
She's like a giddy schoolgirl about this dude. In more ways than one- the biggest being her sort of innocent ignorance because the last time she was in the market for sex, the world was a different place and sometimes things just weren't talked about, and sometimes the field of medicine just hadn't advanced that far, and we really didn't know.
It's really amusing. Here she is, trying to hint around questions that she wants to ask so bad, but can't bring herself to actually say the words sometimes because in her generation, it's like, *gasp*omgtalkingaboutsex. And to me it's like, "what, can't you just google it?"
She doesn't want to talk to her "country doctor" about these things. and was a little paranoid about having a public record of her test results. I had to remind her that health records are not exactly "public" (although with all the disclaimers they make you sign these days, they might as well be) but that no matter where she got tested, it would become part of her medical records and there's not a lot you can do about that, but it's no big deal because everyone knows everyone has sex and it's not a secret anymore, it's not a shameful thing.
I recommended she go to a planned parenthood, find a nice dike-y feminist-power liberal vagina-health-happy advocate, and tell them she wants to "learn more about her options" for getting tested and treated so she can lead a more active sex life.
I swear, she was so nervous and shy about this it's like... she's 15. And I'm like playing this weird, "Girl-Power" college campus educator role where I'm giving her pretty straightforward, scientific and factual answers in a non-judgemental way, and I don't think she's ever ever had anyone to talk to about that.
Which is funny, because when I was a little girl, she would tell me about her past boyfriends and sex life and I learned a lot about personality types and romance and sensuality and even physiology from her, and she told me early on that she had Herpes so if Mommy doesn't feel good, be nice, don't drink out of her cup if she tells you no, etc.
She used a lot of euphemisms sometimes, and sometimes she would realize she was telling me WAY too much inappropriate stuff for a kid my age, and then she would shut up and be all, "I'll tell you when you're older".
But I didn't realize her knowledge only went so far and then there's this... wall of fuzzy ignorance where the 1970's sexual science stops and the "goshit'sinappropriatetothinkaboutthis" begins.
Of course, with her anecdotal teachings, I was catalyzed into learning more, because my brain is always hungry and I need to know, need to learn scientific names for things, need to know what is what, as far as we currently understand it. That's one thing I love about being in this generation, and what I love about the internet- it's like the best Encylopedia EVAR. And I used to be that nerdy kid who actually sat and read the volumes of the encyclopedia that my parents were awesome enough to buy from that traveling salesman when I was young.
It's not good enough for me to know that there are transsexuals in the world. I want to know about every different type, and what type of operations they have (or don't have, and why), and how well it works physiologically and psychologically when they complete their chosen course of treatement... and I WILL read the long-ass Chinese white paper on how to perform laparoscopic total mesorectal excision for rectal cancer... and I will look up the online textbook that talks about all the different ostomy procedures commonly done and how each surgery is performed ...and when my mom shyly asks me if I've ever heard of people getting Botox shots "down there" or having surgery to make things "better", I can remind her that Botox causes temporary muscle paralysis so getting it "down there" is probably NOT what you want, and as for vaginoplasty, yes, I have heard of it, and yes, you can get things cosmetically touched up or tightened if you're really that hardcore about it, but really, you're probably better off doing Kegel exercises and they even make handy exercise tools for that.
(luckily, she did know about Kegel exercises.)
She would pretty much die of embarassment if she knew I was writing this down anywhere. But I thought it was too funny/sort of adorable not to log it somewhere, thus, my "superanonymous journal of doom" gets it.
