Wednesday 14 November 2012

Sex Education In The 1950's.

Me and Alan Deacon are walking to school one day in 1958. We are eleven years old and have just started at the 'big' school. Blimey it is big too! Two thousand pupils. All boys. I don't like it. The junior school I was at last, only had a hundred or so kids.

Alan and me walk up the long hill to the school backwards. We walk backwards because we like to look at the girls who go past on their bikes. On a good day, with a strong wind in the right direction, we get to see lots of stocking tops. Sometimes one or the other of us will say that we saw a bit more than that. But it is mostly wishful thinking.

In the 50's kids never had sex education at school. Most of what us boys knew, or thought we knew about sex was garnered from playground conversations with boys who didn't know anything either. Or if we were lucky we might somehow get hold of what we called dirty magazines. These were heavily censored. Pornography, and having pornography was a serious offence, and carried heavy penalties, so we very rarely got to see anything really horrible. What we would see were the so called art photos of nude women. You could see tits and bottoms, but the bit we really wanted to see, what we called the hairy bit, or the fanny,  was always hidden or erased so that it was just a smudge. This was really annoying and only served to make us even more curious about what it looked like.

Of course there were always some boys who liked to make out that they knew all about sex. I'm naming no names here. But I always tried my best to answer Alan's questions. He was very naive about the subject.

"Ere Bain?"

"What?"

"You know when you do it to a girl?"

"Yeah course I do."

"Ow d'you get it in?"

"Easy. You just push it in."

"Yeah but 'ow d'you get it in before the spunk comes out?"

"What!"

"Before the spunk comes out? Ow'd you get it in? I mean you'd 'ave to be really quick wouldn't you?"

"Deacon! You 'ave to put it in first, and then spunk."

"Yeah but 'ow can you rub your nob when it's inside?"

"You just have to wobble your bum up and down, and then it 'appens."

"'Ow long does it take?"

"If you are good at it it only takes a few seconds, but if you ain't done it much it takes a lot longer I think. Anyway you won't be able to get spunk til you're twelve"

"I know but I will be twelve in three months, so I need to practice a bit. Manley can spunk and 'es not twelve."

"Manley's a bleedin' liar. Boys can't spunk til they are twelve."

"What about the girl? What does she do if it takes ages?"

"I dunno really. I s'pose if they get bored they read a book or something."

"Ere Bain?"

"What?"

"'Ave you ever seen a girl's regina?"

"Yeah, loads of times."

"Where d'you see 'em?"

"At Sunday school."

"'Ow many reginas have you seen?"

"About four, and they ain't called reginas."

"My bruvver told me that's what their proper name is, reginas."

"No they are called fannies. Reginas is something to do with the Queen I think."

"So the Queen is the only one who is allowed to call her fanny a regina?"

"I think so. And her servants and the Duke of Edinburgh."

Deacon puts on a posh voice and pretends to be the Duke of Edinburgh, "I say Your Majesty. May I 'ave a butchers at your regina?" We both start laughing fit to burst, and keep on walking backwards hoping for a glimpse of the elusive 'airy bit.

"Ere Bain?"

"What?"

"What Sunday School d'you go to?"








butchers: butchers hook. Cockney rhyming slang. It means, look.











19 comments:

  1. Does this mean Victoria Regina is a spoonerism?

    ReplyDelete
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  3. That makes me think of the time one of my grandsons and my youngest nephew (they are the same age)were in the back seat while I was driving them somewhere. Out of nowhere their conversation turned to sex. Seems that is what boys of that age are interested in. So I just drove and listened until they started to talk about bi-sexuals. I was chuckling to myself. Then they were talking about tri-sexuals. I had to ask because I had never heard of a tri-sexual. They acted like I was really stupid when they explained. My family is raising a disturbed bunch of children.

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  4. John, John, John, seems like I'm on an X-rated blog today, but I was forewarned...Thanks for the LOUD chuckles this morning.

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  5. There's your answer John, you started at a young age, had fifty odd years at it, now you don't have to bother any more, ha ha. Enjoy your freedom.

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  6. My nephew was filling out a form in a comic(he wasn't ordering anything...just being grown up looking). He answered the question 'Sex M/F' with "Don't know not done it yet".
    Jane x

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  7. That was so funny John. I can just imagine those two boys.
    I was lucky and was told the basics at home and the biological stuff at school. The Profumo affair (1963) with its fairly explicit coverage in the press filled in some of the gaps. I was 13 at the time and found it all quite interesting. LOL.

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  8. So funny and yet so true of those days, The comments also make good reading.

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  9. we did have sex education in school but everyone still learned it from their friends who pretended to know more than what they really did. Well except for that one girl I knew who seemed quite popular

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  10. :-/

    If it's any consolation, I work with young women who have the most interesting stories to tell!

    And the most silly names attached to body parts. LOL

    I might have to add 'regina' to the list of silly ones.

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  11. Well, you do get naughtier and naughtier. We girls didn't even have magazines to look at. But there was always the back of the schoolbus.

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  12. Thanks for the laugh today, that was a good one.

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  13. Brilliant John, so funny !

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  14. While I had to read the post a couple of times, John, it was so funny and yiu have such a way to telling us about your life, which while difficult at times appears to hold many fond recollections.

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  15. Too effin' funny. I was laughing out loud at this post. Thanks for the chuckles. It also does take me back to that time in my life when I was so scared and confused about what to do and how to do it because everyone was doing it according to the playground. Take care buddy.

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  16. Most insightful, John! Hope it was a good book. A great post! Love your direct and humorous approach to a sensitive matter.

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  17. I don't remember having any sex education in school during the late 60s and early to middle 70s, either.

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