Was sex at school less stigmatised in the late 90s?

We live in increasingly polarised, contradictory times.

Sex has never been so ubiquitous so it’s probably lost its coolness / mystique among certain younger folks. A bit like booze has lost its appeal for many who’d prefer a gym date followed by a matcha tea.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten I was automatically a slag because I had big boobs.

Was fucking horrible.

I left school in 98.
Everyone was pretty desperate to lose their virginity.
The cooler girls were definitely revered for having sex.
I was not a cool girl and when I had sex in year 10 which (which didnt seem early compared to my peers) I was slut shamed as it was gossiped about.

No one mentioned body count then either.

I was at a private convent in the 80s and I’d been to a state girls school before. Lost my virginity partly due to pressure from my 2 best friends. At the convent they were mostly virgins and I didn’t dare tell them I wasn’t! A few went wild come age 15/16 though.

Girls shamed other girls for being slags. Boys were happy to have a go if the opportunity arose.

Bodycount just wasn’t a thing people mentioned as ruling in or out a partner. This whole red pill high value bullshit wasn’t an issue at all.
But then porn was a magazine from the newsagent and most men didn’t even think to ask for anal.

In the early 90s a 12yr old girl in our school left abruptly and it was rumoured that this was because she had got pregnant by her stepfather so had left to have the baby.
Incredibly to modern eyes, the gossip surrounding this was "wow, she must really hate her mum to steal her man like that" rather than "omg poor victim of CSA/rape, we should support her".

I went to Maplesden Noakes.

The cool people were definitely people with experience, but too much and you were a slag

Although it wasn't taught as part of Sex Ed, a few people were openly gay at my sixth form in the early 1990's and it wasn't considered a big deal. I lived in a medium-sized town, so it surprises me that this acceptance was unusual for the time. Makes me feel better about where I lived, I thought it was pretty backwards at the time.

I knew it would be 🤣 The private school boys I went to uni with were nothing like that

Really? You see, with the benefit of hindsight and maturity I think that the people at school with ‘experience’ were mostly vulnerable kids. Particularly the girls. And as per, the boys with ‘experience’ were lauded for it, and the girls were shamed. And my school was no Malory Towers.

Yes, it wasn't precisely illegal to talk about it but a lot of schools erred on the side of caution to avoid accusations of 'promoting homosexuality'.

Section 28 meant it was difficult for schools to talk about it.

Gawd no it was far worse.

girls were called slags for having too many boyfriends and judged in every way

being gay was still very much a secret

Definitely, it was absolutely a term of abuse, being gay in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Only the 2000s it seemed to start to change.

The Sun were particularly homophobic in the 1980s though and a lot of people read that nonsense.

I remarked to the school that DDs' Y6 sex education in the 2010s still didn't mention that you might be attracted to someone of the same sex and that was ok. I think their material was about 15 years old.

A common thing I found in the 1980s and early 1990s as a younger teenager was that people considered you promiscuous if you had noticeable breasts. I was always absolutely outraged by that! 🤔Even adults had that attitude sometimes.

I found that as a girl you were shamed whatever in the late 1980s and 1990s. Either a slag or frigid or a lesbian (oh no! 🤔) and nothing in between. The portrayal of women on TV was not great really either. I didn't find there was a lot of peer pressure to have sex younger, it was more that girls were routinely more sexualised in the media at a young age and this was not questioned, so if anything the pressure was coming from there.

Then lads were influenced by the misogyny in TV and tabloids and just the casual sexism and double-standards which pervaded society. Now it's social media and a lot more shite coming out of the US and crappy influencers which is a lot more fucked up than most European countries in terms of sex and sexuality, IMO, and a lot worse than the UK.

I had a fair bit of sexual harassment and name calling at school and if anything that has got worse. Schools on paper take it more seriously now but in reality they can be absolutely awful in dealing with it. Back then I probably thought it was normal, unfortunately.

Underage sex was something to be proud of when I was at school, to the point that the pupil "having an affair" with the Chemistry teacher gained all sorts of kudos for it. He did eventually go to prison for it, but it was a very open secret at the time, and it took 30 years to prosecute him. He was asked to leave the school, but only to take a similar positon at another local school.

I agree @blubberball.

I behaved in a quite questionable way occasionally as a teenager. I was desperate to have a boyfriend and have sex, although numbers and stuff like that didn't really feature.

As an aside, the term "body count" is heinous.

I was a teenager in the early 70's and it was definitely considered "cool" if you'd shagged someone by the age of 14. In fact you were laughed at if you hadn't. But then it was the 70's and nobody cared about anything very much (except your parents).

All through my childhood and teen years my mother's mantra was that older men are not interested in your mind. If they are hanging around, and flattering you, it is for them and not you.

So for me, when I saw those situations, they were very clear. I used to feel very sorry for young girls with the older guys.

Why do you think I'm using ChatGPT? 🤣 Because I accidentally added a bullet point?
However, I apologise for misreading your post. I see now you did talk about both sexes. I was tired last night and read carelessly - I stand corrected.

OP I am sure we hear these terms like’body count’ and ‘ran through’ because terminology spreads faster than it used to now re social media. And unfortunately young men are targeted by some pretty nasty algorithms that spread some horrible ideas about women, and teach them that these are normal terms that it’s acceptable to use.

so overall attitudes will always be mixed but there is definitely a louder portion of society these days who openly talk about women solely in relation to their ‘value’ to men