Did your guardians ever give you the birds and bees talk? Did you learn about it in school? Did you have to rely on early 2000s internet to educate you?
My parents never mentioned anything related to sexuality or puberty. My school system had the policy of educating kids in fifth grade and again every two years after that, so I had what I now realize was a very comprehensive education.
They covered all relevant biological parts, sexual disease prevention and treatment, cancer screenings, healthy relationships, domestic abuse, abortions, and sexual assault. The only criticism I have in hindsight is that LGBT+ still wasn't "mainstream" enough to discuss in class.
I had. private christian sex ed featuring such stunners as 'why abortion is bad' 'how you can get STDs from kissing and no protection is good enough' 'is The Pill basically abortion?' 'masturbating won't make you grow hair on your hands to commit you to hell but it might still be a sin, ask your parents!'
I was fairly lucky in that my parents rewarded curiosity and around age 5 let me regularly rent my favourite VHS from the library - a cartoon educational video about the human body and reproduction
They were always very frank but definitely preferred to put a book or push me towards a movie to educate me than necessarily sit down and properly talk to me about it tho
I got a tastefully done picture book when I was younger about how assorted babies were made (I think it covered plant reproduction too just to emphasize the whole "this is just a natural/neutral fact of life" thing) and then when I hit puberty like five different sex-ed/"how to handle your body doing Some Shit" books
I don't remember having a discreet talk to anyone about it. I think in like, fourth grade there was some very... puberty focused sex talk where they gave us deodorant. I had a biology teacher in middle school though who was VERY OPEN and wanted to MAKE SURE WE UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING
I had basically zero education from my parents and, sadly, very little from my otherwise chill and progressive private school. It was at least 75% the internet for me. And we were early adopters so it was like... late 90s/early 2000s internet lmao it's kind of amazing I didn't end up getting trafficked or something
that biology teacher had a whole day before we covered the human body and reproduction (or maybe it was after?) where she let people submit any kind of questions anonymously and answered them for the whole class
...now that I think about it, in grade school in puberty class I think the person in charge actually showed us boys the girls video too, which I think was a good call on their party
Absolutely the internet. Like almost all of it. I got like a really direct biology explanation of like “ciswomen has ovaries etc” but it wasn’t really sex ed
I don't remember mom doing anything. I do remember being on a field trip the day the entire fifth grade was split so girls could learn about periods and watch The Birthing Video, and boys likely talked woodies
Sixth grade was Reproduction and they brought in a doctor. I had already read the chapter three times and actually done the research/homework, so I hated it. "Everyone HAS to ask him a question!" Well I don't have any. "You DO and you HAVE TO" Ok, why do some babies have an extra chromosone "THAT DOESN'T HAPPRN"
I learned it through educational cartoons/VHSes and some in school. I didn't really know about menstrual cycles until I read it in a Sweet Valley Teen book. For the most part it was all via media, but my parents never restricted access to anything or even knew how to monitor what I consumed 🤔
my dad once misunderstood something I said and spent an awkward ten minutes trying to give me The Talk before I said I JUST WANNA GO WATCH SAILOR MOON and then I fled. Other than that, I learned everything on the internet. School was of no use there because I moved around too much and never caught sex ed in any of the curriculums.
slightly conservative public school sex education (so they talked about sex, focused on abstinence, and didn't go into preventive stuff like condoms and whatnot other than to say it wasn't 100% effective so just don't have sex). everything else I learned through internet and fanfiction
I got a bland anatomy lesson in 5th grade, with deodorant. 6th grade was them scaring the hell out of us with STD's and AIDS. My dad...wasn't prudish, but the things he decided to tell me were weird, gross, and straight cisman-centered
Things like "if you want to turn a man on, don't go to Victoria's Secret, go to Frederick's," and weird reflex tests to ward off your garden variety stray sexual predator
the only other thing I remember about my sex education was in middle school where they played us a video about ~changes in puberty~ and one of the characters said "some girls even masturbate. you know, touch themselves" and my literal-minded ass took that to mean that masturbation meant literally any intentional touching of any part of your own body
[pokes own chest] [is that masturbation? why is that a big deal? why does that only happen after puberty? it was clearly significant or they wouldn't have mentioned it, but I don't understand, wh]
I didn't read Harry Potter smut, but I did start with Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho and Fruits Basket. Pretty sure Hiei/Kurama was my first slash ship
5th grade we got split into "boys and girls" for tittering/privacy reasons but both classes were shown the same video. in all subsequent grades the content was identical except for what didn't physically apply, like I'm sure the boys' class didn't get the self-breast exam segment lmao
5th grade was how do puberty, how your body works, nuts and bolts talk about sex and pregnancy, and a 20-minute actually really quality video about HIV that wasn't couched in scare tactic.
7th was more puberty detail, sex, contraceptives & safe sex, a strong emphasis on abstinence but they also made sure we knew all the options and that we could get condoms for free at any health department and all the middle and high school nurse's offices. The Birth Videos, STDs, uhhh I don't think we talked about female masturbation literally at all tho
9th/10th grade was some rehash plus nutritional health, and also this incredible I think European? animated (possibly claymation?) video featuring a sex-pos 18yo ciswoman traveling the country and having a ton of wild sex. like. animated (minimal) sex onscreen. I have a very vivid images of one scene where she had sex with this one guy like 8 times-
my parents were useless lmao I never spoke a word about anything like it to my dad, I had to find out I had hit the point of needing deodorant from girls in gym class, ditto bras, Mom tried to discourage me from using tampons and keep me using pads and when I finally pressed for why she was like "because once you try tampons you're never gonna wanna
LGB sex was mentioned in classes but I had almost no frame of reference for gender anything until college, I'm pretty sure. also medical misogyny: there was never once any mention of the fact that "this is how your period flow should be" meant "if your period doesn't act like this baseline talk to your doctor" which is how I learned about PCOS at age 23
that is my personal 1 criticism, maybe someone should have told us that bleeding through a Super tampon in 1.5 hours for the first entire two days of your period is not only "not as described" it's a medical issue
Being asexual and learning about sex via 2000's fanfiction was an EXPERIENCE. NO ONE BELIEVED ME THAT PEOPLE BONE IN WAYS OTHER THAN HETERO AND MISSIONARY.
[is that masturbation? why is that a big deal? why does that only happen after puberty? it was clearly significant or they wouldn't have mentioned it, but I don't understand, wh]