When did you first find out you had a vagina????

My mother was of the ' dont talk , dont tell, and my daughter will never want sex or learn about it" ..
Even when I had my first period, I still had no concept of what was goin' on down there in them parts.

I think I began to understand, as much as a 11 year old could, when I found a book at the school library that had a black and white drawing of intercourse.
It explained penis in vagina sex and how ejaculation caused pregnancy... No, not any more detail then that.. It was a simple clear cut book probally geared to scare kids away from sex instead of inform.

It was also about that time that the other girls who were a year or two older then me started talking about 'making out' and ' going all the way'
I think, it would be safe to say that.. I was 11-12 when I finallyknew what was goin on down there and could articulate it.... instead of calling it my "booty"

Noooo way!!!Youd think someone would tell them!!

Erm, think I only knew when i got told about the birds and the bee's at school tho it didnt make me curious..

I can remember when my period started, my immediate thought was 'cripes whats that??!!' whilst standing up trying to stop what felt like a wee but from the wrong place running down my leg.
And there it began.Every girl at school had started but mine hadnt, I used to pray for it to start, over the years Ive regretted praying so hard.

My mum didnt tell me about periods until after it had started, that narked me off a bit, what if I hadnt learned at school before it started!

You were discussing names for that area.
I heard a kid say to her kid brother the other day 'DOnt say that word(which turned out to be willy!)its rude'.

I thought how can such an innocent word be considered rude.

Sometimes I think adults say innocent words are rude so the adult wont have to deal with their own embarrassment if the kid says them in public.

At dinner each night, our family went around the table asking about each persons day, what they learned, etc. One night, when I was in third grade and my oldest brother in fifth, it came to J.'s turn and he looked right at my father and asked, "Is it true you have to F-ck a girl to get her pregnant? (There were some very foul mouthed boys in my brothers class, and we all understood immediately that they had informed him of this.)

My father very calmly said such was not appropriate talk for the dinner table but that he would explain after we had finished eating.

I remember great anticipation of this discussion. I couldn't believe my brother had used the "F" word! I could not at all believe my father allowed him to do so without flinching or correcting him right then and there! All of the children seemed to be eating faster than usual!

After dessert, he asked us all to join him in the family room. He sat in his chair and we all sat cross legged on the floor in front of him. He began by saying "It is called 'making love' because it is something very special between two people that really love each other..."

I don't really remember details of the rest, but I do remember knowing exactly what he was talking about. Afterall, we were on a farm and I had already experienced many a mating and subsequent birth due to all of the animals running around.

I wasn't surprised to learn that I had a place for a man to put his penis just like the mares had for the studs. It made sense that I would. It was still several years later (probably age 12 or 13) that I accidently scratched just right and went "Wow! That felt pretty good!" But it scared the bejeezus out of me when my legs felt like they went numb and I thought for a minute that I had paralyzed myself!

thanks dlowan, I thought I was the only one who hadn't discovered their vagina by the time they were 5.

Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't know I had one to this day, menstruation aside.

Now the clitoris, THAT's a different story entirely. After discovering that, I didn't feel the need to stray any further.

I mean, I Read about them and all, in that musty book with pictures at the library, but really, I couldn't imagine looking for it, let alone seeing where it went.

I never had "the talk" with my mother, I had read about that in the same book also. Didn't seem like something to look forward to.

My parent went on vacation when I was 11, and I had the bloody nerve to get cramps that night, and at some point Aunt Flow came to visit.

I had no idea what to do (that wasn't in the book), so I went to my older sister, who was very put out at having to address this.

She asked me "Well, you know what this is all about, don't you"

Me: "uh, yeah"

she "fixed me up" and I went off to school, wishing I had started carrying a handbag before this, because now EVERYONE would know.

My younger sister told me that she started menstruating when she was 8. She never told anyone, apparantly she read a different book that told you about Kotex.
When she was 11 or 12, she was on a trip with my mother when she got her period, and wasn't prepared.
She told my mother, who assumed this was her first one, and was all proud and everything. She never told her she'd been having them for years. Eight! And she was such a skinny little thing.

Well, I guess I was about 15 or 16 before I got the nerve to poke around up there.

Years later, I was watching that dreadful movie Blue Lagoon, you know, where 2 kids grow up on an deserted island and discover the innocent beauty of screwing around?

I turned to my bf of the time and said "you know, if I was on that island, I never would have figured out how sex worked."

I found out young I think, about the vagina that is... I think around the time my brother was born and he had his "hootie" as he called it... haha

The clitoris.... I knew I had one, but I never knew what it could do until my friend gave me a detailed description and told me what she did with the showerhead..... It was quite shocking at the time

that and I hang out with almost all guys, lots of porn is watched

Oh... if we are talking clit..

oh jeezzee.... I didnt learn about my little friend until i was.. 16? 17?


aiont forgotten about her since! ;-)

God,am I completely years behind everyone about everything!!!
I learned about sex/periods when I was 11ish.
Period started at 12.
Never had teenage sex!!

I didn't get my period until I was in the 8th grade... I think I was 13 going on 14.... I lived a very suger coated life until I was about 16.... and that is when I found out about the clit too I believe....

Wow ...I'm feeling like a late bloomer. I didn't play with the candlestick until I was 15, and I didn't learn the word clitoris until I was a freshman in college (which is probably why I spelled it incorrectly in an earlier post) ...
a philosophy/english double major kindly gave me a demonstration ...she did an okay job. :wink:

I learned early enough that I don't have any particular memory of learning. My parents were big with the books, too. The first one I remember was "Show Me", evidently rather controversial, lots of naked people explaining various things. Educated many of my friends, too. Then "Our Bodies, Ourselves" when I was in high school, I think.

I always seemed to be the one offering correctives/ instruction to my friends, but I don't really remember how I got the info. Doesn't seem like all of it was books, but don't remember conversations, either.

Sozlet has known all of it for a while, pretty much as long as she's known words for any other body part. E.G. was scandalized that I included "clitoris," (she asked!) but oh well.

We had referred to the whole thing as "vagina" for a while, but then since what we were actually talking about when we do talk about it is usually the vulva, (outside, not inside) we're using that more now.

I remember that book "Show Me"

I was in high school and my girlfriend Linda and I were in a bookstore at the mall.

One of us picked up the book and started flipping through it.

At first, it was like, "oh look, a picture of a little naked kid", turn the page.

Very soon, both of us looked up at each other in shock. We quickly put the book down, and walked out of the store.

We actually sat down to talk about it. Neither one of us could express it well, but it just seemed so wrong.

Both of our stomachs were all clenched up.

I honestly can't remember what exactly we saw, just remember I didn't want to look again.

What exactly was in that book? Unless I'm totally out of touch, right now I'm feeling weird even thinking about it.

I can't remember but I too was pretty young and definitly not sexually active with anyone else. I remember having an orgasm but not knowing it was an orgasm.

So I learned about the glories of the clitoris before any pleasure derived from vaginal penetration.

As for knowing boys and girls had different parts, I was probably 5. Didn't understand really at that age but my little brother was born.

this is a most fascinating topic. I had no idea girls were as ignnernt as boys.

It's a very hippie book. It's basically a kid's "Our Bodies, Ourselves" with an emphasis on sexuality, and more pictures.

The main controversy is that it shows naked kids in a quasi-sexual light -- especially, one of the many casual pictures of naked kids not doing anything in particular shows a little boy with an erection. (It's presented in a silly way, he hangs an undershirt on it or something and is giggling.) The focus is overwhelmingly kid-to-kid, (not kid-to-kid sexual contact, but "this is what I look like" sort of explanations) but as an adult I can see how that would be a bit queasifying.

I think the book is a little bit overly Utopian, in a very 60's-70's way -- it was genuinely useful to me as a kid, learned a lot, but I also think that there's a certain "well if you think it's sick it's because SOCIETY has conditioned you to think so!!" response from supporters of the book that is disingenuous. That response doesn't recognize certain realities, IMO.

The only book I ever saw was "Joy of Sex" and I was in my late 20's, I was married and literally shocked by the book because I knew so little.

Ate least us boys knows right away that we got penises! That ain't no secret!

Well, it seems as though, all in all, the younger we are, the earlier we tended to be goiven reasonable information...but not always.....so kinda phew.


I think I would have been a Blue Lagoon person who never figured it out, too.


It's just WRONG that it's all so close to the plumbing! Like...who looks at their toilet all that much, except when cleaning it....


Dys, one of the saddest things was, when I was staying in Sydney with a couple of gay doctor friends (who worked in the AIDS service), finding, tucked away in the spare room book case, a copy of "The Joy of Gay Sex".....with a tiny addendum about being cautious re the info in the book, because there was a teeny concern about a new illness that MIGHT be spread by sexual contact. Kind of a happy period that was over almost before it began.......


I loved "The Joy of Sex".....

You are a VERY lucky man.

Yeah Deb, I was fascinated by Joy of Sex as well, my wife at the time, thought it was "gross", actually she was a major "christian" and thought any and all "sex" was simply a wife's duty to "submit" and there should never be joy. We parted paths not long after that and then in my early 30's I found out there was "joy" as well as "fun" in sex.