“You were so confident in your ignorance.”
In which we talk about our sexual misconceptions and how much we tried to get Barbies to have sex as kids. Maybe now, as adults, we will succeed.
Sexual Misconceptions References
This is a loose topic, and we talked about everyone’s misconceptions, including but not limited to “our friend’s” misconceptions…you know, definitely not things that we thought. Definitely not.
We began by discussing words that Sex Positive Families called out on Instagram as being referred to euphemistically because they’ve been deemed embarrassing by society. Can you say them?
So some of the body part euphemisms we’ve heard or use/d are
- Frau Garten
- Thing
- Foot (for penis)
- Hotdogs (for penis)
- Hamburger (for vagina)
- Petunia (for vagina)
- Wee Wee
We really don’t think/hope that Aunt Petunia was the genesis for Petunia as a euphemism for vagina. Aunt Petunia probably doesn’t encourage anyone to think about vaginas… she’s having sex with Vernon Dursley so she probably doesn’t even want to think about her own vagina.
We’ve taken a tangent into words that make us uncomfortable. Tangents. It’s our thing. (If you will.) You’re welcome.
Gina’s first story comes from a logic-based line of questioning about how she was related to the men in her family. She asked her mom how she was related to dad, and his parents, and those cousins, and on and on till her mom nodded and smiled and avoided the question.
Kelly wanted to know how babies were made. So her grandparents gave her a pregnancy book. This didn’t answer her question. So she asked again and the options were in-vitro fertilization and sex. Her parents had sex. End of talk.
She also had an interesting progression on her understanding of the mechanics of sex. A childhood friend told her sex was the guy putting a thing inside of girl. Kelly confidently denied it and accidentally gaslit her friend, assuring her that it was wrong and didn’t happen that way.
She didn’t fully understand female anatomy, and definitely didn’t understand thrusting. Her best guess was that you just got under the covers and the penis found you like a lamprey.
(Uh, yikes.)
Gina didn’t really understand that you moved? You just touched or were near each other? And how was insertion of anything involved?
Sissel is a 13 year old girl and has been giggling this whole time.
Hannah doesn’t remember her perceptions of sex, but wonders if because she had an older sister, she was exposed to sex earlier. When she watched Cabaret as a 10 year old she did not understand anything that happened sexually, and it blew her mind when she rewatched it in high school. All the sex she missed!
(Kids don’t care about stuff they don’t understand, as they don’t tend to pay attention to it or perceive it. At least according to Malcolm Gladwell in the Tipping Point and Sesame Street. Don’t listen to Sissel and let your kids watch porn though, lol.)
Whatever our differences, we all made our Barbies fuck. Hannah, for one, knew that something was missing down there.
Sissel recounts hanging with a 6 year old who concocted a mermaid love triangle story about a lady mermaid being mean to her boy mermaid which caused the boy mermaid to leave for a new better mermaid and relationship. Which was awkward because her parents were having troubles. (We think she knew and was processing it.)
We all kind of want Barbies that could simulate sex. Once upon a time, there were pregnant Barbies, but they got recalled to get a wedding ring. *eyeroll*
Lucy and her sister would sometimes role play Barbies together, as they were close to the same age. Not necessarily sexual scenarios, but things that led up to it, according to a kid–marriage, falling in love, et cetera. Her Barbie looked vaguely like young Donna from Mamma Mia 2, so who could blame her for thinking about sex?
Maisie and Sissel both took baths with their opposite gender sibling, so they knew that penises existed. Maisie is sure that her mom used the correct terms because she knew that they were called Penis and Vagina. She took baths with playmates during sleepovers till some random point in middle school. Late enough that they started comparing pubic hair.
Which leads to us comparing when we started growing pubic (and other body) hair. Our memories were all slightly fuzzy, though Sissel remembers trying to dry-shave her armpits. (DON’T DO THIS PLEASE.)
Always be lubricated, good advice for everything!
What misconceptions did we have about other sex acts?
Gina was once very confused about the purpose of blow jobs. She knew that it would feel good for a guy, but what was the point for the lady? This was something she was considering in late middle school and high school.
(But actually though, she had a point.)
Sissel doesn’t really remember her misconceptions, she just remembers the emotions around sex. Aka wanting to have it.
She does, however, mostly remember her much-told (in middle school or elementary school) story entitled Johnny Deeper. She’s not sure where she got it and she’s not sure about all the details.
But this is basically what happens: Johnny has the new girl in school over to his house. New girl jumps his bones, and then his parents come home and hear the racket coming from behind his locked door. “Johnny Deeper!” they yell, which he takes as a command to go deeper into his lady friend.
Sissel was a weird child. She’s not sure what she really understood about that story. She is sure she rewrote it to fit her needs. She isn’t sure how people who heard it felt about it. Was she entertaining people with her bold sexual humor? Or was she creeping everybody out? She’ll let listeners know after her high school reunion.
Catholicism and Sex
The majority of us were raised in Catholic households, which effects how we learned about sex in relation to marriage. Because when you’re Catholic, most of the time, sex is explained as a thing that happens AFTER marriage.
Sissel was at one point totally convinced that virginity was important… THAT IS A MISCONCEPTION!
We also discuss Lucy walking out of Religious Ed because they were saying that witches were evil regardless of their intentions and that lesbians were bad. Sissel didn’t walk out but she was angry and wearing her protest outfit of fishnet stockings and a sheer blouse.
Lucy took a really long time to dissassociate sex and marriage and took even longer to take away the stigma.
Maisie feels like she retained that stigma of sex out of marriage for a long time, and even today has to catch herself passing judgement on people having sex out of marriage occasionally. Brainwashing is strong, huh?
Kelly talks about how a lot the talks in religious ed were very indoctrinating and very convincing because they were later at night when they were all tired and malleable. She was convinced! Till the next morning when she’d wake up clear headed again.
Maise, Lucy, and Gina all attended Catholic school. Maisie recalls the sex education she received in that course and all of them being excited to finally get to the sex pages of their textbook!
Gina was quite proud of her progressive Catholic School sex ed. It featured a lesbian and taught monogamy over marriage. So, better, but still some room for improvement.
Hannah the Heathen
Despite not having a religious upbringing, Hannah, too, remembers sex and marriage were linked and probably cast some judgement, but by high school she was done with that nonsense. She was gonna get laid! (Eventually… see our other episode, 9 – Hidden Valley to learn more.)
Sissel is sure she also had weird sex marriage links in her mind, and that she and her dad are both similarly sexual. But they don’t discuss it because, uh, that’d be a weird talk and also boundaries!
Hannah also wonders if her lack of bathing with her sister and her dad created weird pathways in her brain. She wanted to shower with her dad but she wasn’t allowed to and didn’t understand why for a while. Maisie also distinctly remembers the gendered divide in her bathing.
Let’s get off the bathing train
We discuss more misconceptions we had about non heteronormative sex.
Maisie did not understand queer sex at all. She and Hannah watched some tv show talking about lesbian sex and it was her first time thinking about it. She wasn’t yet masturbating, and she didn’t understand her clit. What was the point? Lesbian sex was a new thought.
Hannah thought understanding lesbian sex was harder to grasp than male gay sex…
AND THAT’S BECAUSE SEX IS EXPLAINED FROM A PHALLOCENTRIC VIEW POINT! #thepatriarchy
Sissel definitely had a misconception that scissoring was more of a big deal till recently. She also thinks sex was so closely linked to her concept of virginity and she had to deconstruct both of those things to understand lesbian sex.
Scissoring isn’t really a thing… just watch Orange is the New Black.
Sissel has never really understood how blow jobs work. First she thought you were literally blowing air, then she thought sucking, and now she maybe understands the theory but still can’t do it all that well. Shrug.
Maisie is just gonna chew on any dicks that end up in her mouth. This is a warning.
We all think that this is disturbing, for the record. Even Sissel with her “Bite Me” tattoo on her hip. Also don’t bite labia, unless someone asks you to nicely.
The Biggest Misconceptions
A lot of these come from romantic books and fanfiction, including but not limited to:
Immediately great sex! Mutual amazing orgasms! It’s a magical experience! She always orgasms! Magical dick power! Virgin experiences no pain! Masturbation for women is only penetrative!
(Gina knows that you don’t need penetrative stimulation to experience an orgasm. A pillow or stuffed animal will do. P.S., see Booksmart! Great movie!)
Sissel got a lot of misconceptions about relationships… mostly from Mary-Kate & Ashley. Mainly the idea that wherever you go, multiple boys and men will fawn all over you at once. Sadly, life is not as beautiful as the life of New York Minute.
Maisie says that she strongly perceived a link between relationships and sex in the media that she’s still trying to unlearn. She feels like maybe she needs to rewrite her definition of relationship to not include sex as much, because she doesn’t really like sex and she has been very duty bound when she’s had sex in the past. Sex and a relationship do not need to be connected.
Sissel thinks part of the reason she doesn’t remember her misconceptions is because she’s spent so much time unlearning them. But who knows?
Kelly brings up the very old-fashioned third date have sex model. Which isn’t something anyone needs to adhere to and, basically, you can make sex a part of your relationships if and however and whenever you want.
There’s so much weird stuff to unlearn.
Thank You For Listening!
We are all able-bodied, cisgendered white women. We know our background and experiences only cover a percentage of those around us which is why we want to supplement this with guest speakers, research, and you. If you have opinions and experiences you’d like to share we would love to hear it! If, however, you just want to spew hate at us then we can’t stop you but instead we invite you to suck our collective clitorises. Hater. This podcast also contains mature sexual themes and swearing. No, clitoris isn’t a swear word.
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