Sissylady

This is the word my friend Leslie’s family used for vagina when she was growing up. And penis was—you guessed it—sissyman. Oy. My family tended towards the more traditional weiner and the equal opportunity “weewee-er” for male or female genitalia. Of course, being Jewish, we had a disproportionate number of Yiddish words for penis at our disposal including shmuck, shvantz, shlong, petseleh, and putz—I guess the Jewish variations for penis is like the number of words Eskimos have for snow. And yet I can’t recall a single Yiddish word for vagina. What is that about? I think the phrase I heard most as a child for women and girls was the ever-popular “down there.” For a culture that is obsessed with male sexual organs (beginning with the circumcision or bris), Jewish vaginas get short shrift. The only reference I have from childhood are the stories my redheaded mother told us about being called “carrot crotch” by her girlfriends at summer camp! (Is this more than you wanted to know?)

I attended a lecture at Leah’s school this week given by Dr. Justin Richardson, author of the book “Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask).” With Leah swiftly approaching puberty, I thought it would be a good idea to hear what this guy had to say about the stages of development and what to tell kids at each stage about sex. It was a fascinating talk and helped me formulate answers to some of the questions Leah has been asking lately. I do try to answer her questions honestly, but like many of the parents in attendance, I worried that Leah’s replies of “Eww, gross!” meant I was saying something wrong and traumatizing her for life. Dr. Richardson said this was a very normal response at this age because children are not yet capable (thank God!) of eroticizing the sex act. And without that lens anyone in their right mind would say “Eww, gross!” if it’s just about putting a part of our body in a part of someone else’s body. He said that to kids of this age a description of intercourse sounds parallel to “and then the man puts his nose inside the women’s mouth and blows his snot in there.” No wonder they’re grossed out! Dr. Richardson said it was fine to tell kids you don’t know the answer to a question but you can look it up together, or admit that talking about certain things makes you uncomfortable, or tell them that there are some things you don’t want to share about your own sex life because it’s private. I find that it’s a daily struggle to set proper boundaries without turning into Mamie Eisenhower and passing along the message that anything to do with sex is BAD. The other day Leah asked me to explain what cunnilingus was (she didn't use that term). I hesitated and then gave the briefest and clearest description I could and silently expressed my gratitude for the “Eww, gross!” which followed. Richardson talked about how most kids masturbate in front of their parents at first and that they’re just doing it because it feels good, they don’t associate it with sex or arousal. Then all of a sudden they stop masturbating. Yes, we all shook our heads, that’s exactly what happened! Well, he explained, clearing his throat for dramatic effect, they didn’t stop—they just learned to stop doing it in front of us. Have you ever heard 60 parents gulping at the same time?

I remember when I was in fourth grade we were the guinea pigs for the new sex education program they were piloting in the Chicago public schools. They thought they were being oh so hip (it was 1968) but the information was steeped in so much awkwardness that it’s a wonder any of us ever lost our virginity. We did responsive readings from our ghastly sex ed textbook that made human bodies sound like grotesque undulating masses filling up with blood at every opportunity. We would all count the number of kids who were sitting ahead of us and then count the paragraphs in the book to find ours in advance, praying that we wouldn’t have to read the word “vagina” in front of our classmates. One time our teacher sent the boys out of the room and had a private session with the girls. When we returned, the girls, looking a little queasy and pale, were clutching thick plain brown paper envelopes. We would have given a year of our lives to see what was inside those mysterious packages. The next day during lunch some of the boys tackled Adrienne Becker on the playground and grabbed the contraband. We were all deeply disappointed by the nasty color illustrations of the female menstrual cycle. The uterus looked like a venus fly trap, waiting to snap its prey. The cross-cut view of fallopian tubes and ovaries looked like some kind of evil monster mask, a little like the disembodied head of the fake wizard before Dorothy discovers the man behind the curtain.

Our public school sex ed experiment continued into 5th, 6th, and 7th grade. By then we were immune to the embarrassment of reading certain words out loud and we even looked for ways to cause more discomfort to our well-meaning teachers, most of whom would rather have stuck forks in their eyes than teach us about our blossoming sexualities. I’ll never forget the day that my friend Helena, just to freak out our teacher Mrs. Pink, raised her hand during sex education and asked how homosexuals had sex. Mrs. Pink turned several shades darker than her name and tried to act like the groovy hipster she longed to be (earlier that month she had us singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Scarborough Fair” at our school assembly). Searching her brain for an answer that wouldn’t make her the subject of the next PTA meeting, she finally stammered, “They rub each other until it feels good. Next question?” Poor Mrs. Pink. Even her white lipstick and paisley mini-skirt couldn’t hide the fact that she was more Pat Nixon than Gloria Steinem.

Because Leah is half French, we ended up using the French slang “kiki” for vagina when she was very young. But, for lack of another term, we also used “kiki” for penis which even then I knew was likely to cause life-altering confusion. To screw Leah up even further, Kiki was also the nickname that many people called her French grandmother. Paging Dr. Richardson! Of course the good doctor does not approve of these cutesy names for body parts. In fact, he’s such a stickler that he said if you really want to educate young kids properly, you should explain that vagina refers only to the canal—what we often call the vagina is actually the vulva which also includes the labia and clitoris. Um…do we really have to make that clear, Dr. Richardson? Isn’t it okay for Leah to sort that out in her college-level biology class?

In spite of all our mistakes, Leah seems at ease when it comes to her ten-year-old understanding of the human body and sexuality. I wouldn’t be surprised if she starred in a production at her children’s theatre company of Eve Ensler’s “The Sissylady Monologues.”

Comments

[your sister]

Eww. I am so never letting Jeff blow snot inside of me again. Gross.

[David Gottlieb]

Danny:

We're about the same age and from the same neck of the woods. I grew up in Hyde Park, and switched from the increasingly scary public schools to the Lab School in 4th grade.

In 6th grade, we had the hapless and hopelessly uptight Mr. Benson for sex education class. This was like having Napoleon teach ethics. The already hysterical subject of sex was made even funnier by Mr. Benson having to teach it.

He put a question box in the back of the room so people could submit questions anonymously. He never got anything but preadolescent smut and idiotic questions meant to embarrass him. One day, he stood in front of the class, shaking with anger, holding a piece of paper.

"Today, someone submitted the following question," he said through his clenched jaw. "'Does it hurt when a girl gets kicked in the vagina?'"

Half of us were already on the floor, howling and holding our sides. He shushed us. "I presume," he said, his voice growing in volume, "that this is a reference to the fact that it hurts very much when a male gets kicked in the testicles." I began to cry I was laughing so hard, which made Mr. Benson just completely lose his cool.

"The answer to this idiotic question is: OF COURSE IT HURTS IF YOU GET KICKED IN THE VAGINA. IT HURTS IF YOU GET KICKED ANYWHERE!!!"

This is the hardest I have ever laughed in my life. Thank you for reviving the memory.

Regards-
David

[Danny]

Oh, wow, David, talk about repressed memory syndrome--I had completely forgotten about the infamous BOX for anonymous questions! Of course, like your experience, our class used the box mostly to taunt and embarrass the teachers. I can still remember watching their faces as they read each question to themselves and immediately crumpled up most of them in irritation.

My daughter's official sex education classes begin next year in fifth grade only now it's called Human Development. I can only hope that such content is no longer fraught with so much angst!

P.S. We always heard about those Lab School kids when we were growing up! Rumor had it that the kids at Francis Parker and the Lab School were all having sex by eighth grade!

[David]

Danny: I don't have trouble believing the Parker kids were having sex with each other. Down in Hyde Park, we were mostly having sex with ourselves.
David