We asked the BuzzFeed Community to share the most bizarre things they were told in their sex education classes. Here are the responses that will leave you gobsmacked, and also pretty concerned.
1. This ungodly falsehood.
"I went to a Christian academy and they said if you were intimate before marriage, God would strike you down with a disease."
2. This hodgepodge of crazy.
"The weekly visiting 'abstinence lady' told us that the oxytocin women produce is finite...so too much sex in or out of marriage would mean we couldn't love our babies. She also said condoms didn't protect against HIV, so don't bother (just after the AIDS crisis of the '80s–'90s!!!), and made us sign a virginity pledge. It's a wonder I made it out alive."
3. This dangerous misconception.
"You only need to go to a gynecologist if you get pregnant. This mindset almost killed my mom with breast cancer, and made me feel slut-shamed for having endometriosis. Believe it or not, there are actual issues you may need to go to the gynecologist for besides pregnancy."
4. This hot tub horror story.
"My sex ed teacher (a woman) told us that if we were to fool around in a hot tub, we could get pregnant. This was only fooling around, no insertion necessary."
5. This method of multiplication.
"We were told that having sex with someone meant we were actually having sex with them, all of their previous partners, and their partners' partners. Like, if your partner had slept with two people, and those two people slept with two more people each, then you were actually having sex with seven people, because sex never truly leaves you."
6. This misleading marriage philosophy.
"I was taught that the moment you were married, you could no longer get an STD or have an unwanted pregnancy. I guess the logic was that God had blessed the relationship so nothing bad could happen anymore? I don’t think chlamydia really cares if you’re married or not but whatever."
7. This outright exclusion.
"It's not an incorrect fact, but I was only told about heterosexual sex, which is quite unfair, in my opinion."
8. These...flat-out lies.
"We were shown a slide show of 'deformities' that 'illegitimate babies' could be born with as a deterrent to premarital sex. We were also told gay sex was illegal, and PMS was 'largely psychosomatic' and just an excuse for women to get out of their marital duties. We were told this by a woman."
9. This sex pyramid.
"I went to Catholic school and we had a textbook that showed a pyramid of ‘intimate acts,’ starting with smiles/flirting and ending with sexual intercourse at the bottom. There was a large red line at the ‘holding hands’ tier, labeling it the ‘Danger Zone’ because holding hands with someone always leads to sex, obviously."
10. This book that should be burned.
"The book they used in my class said, word for word, that in order to be healthy you had to be heterosexual."
11. This sticky demonstration.
"In eighth grade, some woman from the church came in for a sex ed class that lasted the ENTIRE school day. She told us the whole 'your virginity is like a piece of tape and every time you have sex before marriage, it becomes less sticky until one day it doesn't stick and then no one will ever want you' thing, and to demonstrate she had one of the boys come up front, pulled out a roll of packing tape and stuck a strip on his arm. She ripped it off so violently it drew blood."
12. This condom commentary.
"We were taught that there are holes in condoms and the 'holes' were bigger than sperm and the AIDS virus. Therefore, the only way to not get pregnant or get AIDS was to not have sex."
13. This pregnancy scare.
"I clearly remember being told in middle school that grinding could lead to ejaculation, and the tiny sperm could go through his jeans and then through my jeans, and THAT could lead to pregnancy!"
14. This philosophy on virginity.
"If you already had sex, you could renew your virginity by choosing abstinence. Once it had been nine months, you were a virgin again and your purity was restored!"
15. This masturbation miseducation.
"I was taught in sex ed that only 'mature women' with no sexual lives masturbated. If young girls did, it was rare and weird."
16. This spelling slipup.
"Our sex ed teacher was ancient, knew nothing, and couldn’t spell to save his life. He called the clitoris the 'cloitus,' and got mad when we tried to correct him. He wrote it on the board that way, pronounced it that way, and when we were given a test on the reproductive parts, we got points taken off if we hadn't spelled it that way."
17. This argument against ALL forms of sex.
"My sex ed teacher told us you can get pregnant from all forms of sex, including anal and oral. She also said you can digest the sperm if you swallow it and that can get you pregnant. When we asked about, like, gay sex, she just changed the subject and pretended it didn’t exist."
18. These rose petals.
"They invited some lady to come and talk about abstinence. She took a rose and pulled the petals off to demonstrate how much less you have to offer your future spouse if you give some to a bunch of people beforehand."
19. This concept that is not only completely FALSE, but also incredibly dangerous.
"We were told that it was impossible to get pregnant from rape because God wouldn't let that happen. Catholic school is fun."
20. This slut-shame-y "statistic."
"If you had sex with 10-plus people, it was an almost statistical certainty that you would contract an STD, most likely AIDS."
21. This sinister story.
"They made us read a story about a girl who had sex with her boyfriend who stopped caring about her afterward."
22. This separation of church and state.
"I grew up in Arizona, and our sex education program was actually an abstinence program funded by the Catholic Church (somehow even with the separation of church and state). I was told that if I had sex, I would go to both jail and hell."
23. This story about lunch that's just...what???
"We were told that eating lunch alone with a member of the opposite sex could and WOULD lead to an abusive relationship. This lady told us with a straight face that all abusive relationships began with unchaperoned couples spending time together. A guy in the class was genuinely disturbed, and said he’d never beaten a girl he’d eaten lunch with. The lady told him, 'It’s a matter of time, sweetheart.' This was in 2012."
24. These interesting pregnancy possibilities.
"I had a teacher that told us sitting on a toilet seat after a man was on it or wearing a man’s boxer shorts could get you pregnant. This was at a public school."
25. This insane generalization.
"In our first sex ed class (girls only), our school nurse REALLY drove home the point that men will try to have sex with you whenever, wherever, and will lie to you to get you to sleep with them. 'They don’t care if you’ll get pregnant, they don’t care about your feelings, men will LIE, LIE, LIE.' I went home that day terrified of men, with more questions than answers. In a nutshell, our nurse told us men ain’t shit and women are walking, breathing sex magnets."
26. This lesson in self-love.
"I was told if you masturbated too much you'd never be able to have a real relationship with someone else, because you'd fall in love with yourself."
27. This blatant lie.
"I was taught that having an abortion meant you were more likely to develop breast cancer and infertility."
28. This masturbation miseducation.
"If a boy masturbated too much he would go blind, but women didn't masturbate and sex was only a pleasure for men."
29. This troubling theory on the "first time."
"That you were meant to ‘break’ your hymen when you lost your virginity, and that blood and lots of pain was normal... Newsflash: It isn’t."
30. These outrageous ideas on orgasms.
"We were taught that you only orgasmed if it was between man and a woman, and only if you were married."
31. These determined sperm.
"My ninth-grade health teacher told us you could get pregnant swimming in the pool with a guy. She said the sperm would come and find you."
32. And finally, this...troubling implication.
"I think my health teacher said something to the effect of: Hitler had syphilis and it infected his brain and made him go crazy, and maybe that was why the Holocaust happened. And if we had sex we could get syphilis and turn into Hitler, but probably not."
