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

[blubberball]

I was at school in the late 90s. I see things online now about "body count" and how that can be used by some to shame people (women). I don't know about your school and the general attitude around at the time, but it really seemed like the opposite was true back then. The cool people at school were the ones who had experience. Admittedly my town did have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe at the time. Was this the case when others were at school? People didn't seem ashamed of sex when I was at school. It was the opposite, they were very proud of it and laughed at the inexperienced people.

If a male was saying it, the number was exactly how many it took for her to have sex with him. If she said no but hadn't had sex with anybody else, frigid virgin, if she had, slag. And, of course, if she did but dumped him, that made her the Whore of Babylon.

Left school in 1993 (age 18). I don't remember an attitude that people who had sex were cool, in fact it wasn't really talked about. I think most people who had a boyfriend in sixth form were sleeping with them, but it was generally kept pretty quiet. The lower sixth was the prime time for losing it! I didn't know anybody who slept around or talked about doing so, it was all done between dating couples. Maybe everyone was too terrified of pregnancy and messing up their uni plans!

Equally, I don't remember any negative attitudes towards people who were sleeping with their boyfriends.

Yes, being gay was not talked about. In later years, several of my classmates were out and proud, but it was very different at school in the early nineties. Absolutely nobody admitted to being gay then, or talked about it.

Went to school for 14 years in Ireland, catholic school taught by nuns and there was absolutely zero sex education, but we were all terrified of having sex because God would know.

I taught in an all girl Catholic school overseas. Sex ed consisted of a Nun telling the 6th Form girls that sex was allowed after you were married AS LONG AS YOU DON'T ENJOY IT! One of these 17/18 year old girls asked if that meant sex with anybody, once you were married. The saying about stable doors and bolting horses sprung to mind.

I remember too. I also went to neither also, but I still hold the view that single sex schools don't seem healthy. I might be wrong there, but I always thought that it could make the opposite sex a bit too mysterious for some kids. Some boys were terrified and didn't know how to talk to girls, and some girls had heightened curiousity about boys. In the mixed school, you could just realise that they're all just people, and nothing especially exciting

I attended my local state secondary girls school at a similar time (at sixth form in the late 90s) and yes absolutely those 2 words frigid and slag were applied to lots of girls at the time. Never any of the boys!

I remember clearly that there were girls in my class (sat at the back) who would openly & loudly discuss their sexual adventures from last weekend & blow job techniques, often with older boys/‘men’. They were just 15 at the time!

My feelings were of disgust on hearing that but also some intrigue…at that age my weekends were spent participating in various sports matches/tournaments, not going out drinking or shagging boys

At my school there were probably around 3 teenage pregnancies/births by the time we collected our GCSE results

Personally I didn’t lose my virginity until I got to university although I was ‘sexually active’ with my boyfriend in the year above at the local posh boys school…but I don’t think we ever had the guts to do the deed properly!! 😂

Just to add I think I was/we were too terrified of becoming pregnant/we were both very focused on university plans/not cocking up our A-levels!!!
We both attended prestigious universities in the end- him Oxbridge, me Russell group

This really. It’s not stigma per se , more seen as stupid , worthy of an eye roll and “nobody wants to hear about that”.Definitely not seen as cool/a status symbol, but not necessarily worthy of derogatory language either.

I have no idea about whether it's more or less stigmatised but it felt like quite a few of my peers became sexualised at a very early age. I attended secondary school late 90s and 00s. Mixed, reasonably "naice" northern comp in small town, so I don't know if that had anything to do with attitudes. It seemed like a lot of people spoke about sex and that the lads were especially up for it, but like other posters have said, many girls felt they had to strike a balance between avoiding being called either "frigid" or "slag". The girls that had a lot of sex were both popular and called slags.

The only protection you seemed to have from name calling is if you had a long term boyfriend. I and a few of my friends lost virginity before 16 to boyfriends but we kept that as quiet as possible. However as most of the lads suspected that we were regularly "shagging" boyfriends, our boyfriends got a quiet level of respect while we didn't really get commented on much (as we were neither slags nor frigid). On reflection this was a very weird dynamic.

By sixth form we used to have lots of house parties and parties in local clubs and there was a lot of sex happening at those. By that point, because most people were having sex, it was less commented upon. However sadly there was no real concept of consensual vs non consensual sex and you certainly wouldn't have said anything if you had suspected you had had sex but had been too drunk to remember it.

A tiny number of girls got pregnant however this wasn't common and we were always a bit shocked and felt sorry for them. Looking back it was always to older lads as well. Anecdotally I have known of more teenagers in my local area getting pregnant recently.

I found girls couldn’t win. I was at secondary in the 00s. If a girl didn’t ’put out’ she was frigid but if she did it too much, she was a slag. You literally couldn’t win at all. Boys, on the other hand, were revered for sleeping around. Teenage pregnancies were pretty common in my school. I went to a failing comp in a deprived city.

I think in my year alone three girls had children before we turned 16, I remember their school blouses struggling around the bump. It wasn’t normalised though, we definitely all stared and felt kind of bad for them. A disabled girl got pregnant at 16, I think she ended up having three children by 19. She had learning difficulties, as did the dad.

I got pregnant at 15 and sat my GCSEs pregnant in the 2010s. Younger siblings were bullied about it for years afterwards.
“frigid” was also used in the 2010s. I doubt it’s gone anywhere now.

I imagine a lot of other girls secretly were pregnant and had abortions. Abortion probably become less stigmatised from the 90s-10s

The emphasis in my friendship group in the nineties was very much on finding a boyfriend, dating for ant least a year and falling in love and losing your virginity. I think we’d watched too much Dawson creek and it was an all girls school.

Agreed.....but not cool to brag about blow jobs either at 15....silly immature girls (keep it to yourself)

I also think sex education (or whatever it’s called in schools now) has much improved since the 90s when I was in Secondary, with far more focus on body autonomy, consent, peer pressure etc. This means teens feel better informed and more empowered to not become sexually active prematurely and/or under duress.

By comparison, I can only recall learning a little bit about male and female puberty (balls dropping, periods etc) and then a demonstration by one of the PE teachers on how to correctly put an extra safe condom on a banana, before being pointed to the local Youth Advice for free condoms and the morning after pill.

Yep this was my school word for word, same sort of time too although in the south west.

I’m sorry to report being gay was painted as a fate worse than death at my school in the early/mid 2000s.

Kids were ‘accused’ of being gay if they hadn’t had a girlfriend/boyfriend by 14, or if they happened to make eye contact with anyone else in the PE changing rooms. Gay was used as a diss word for everything, nasty songs were made up about this or that pupil being gay. Open disgust was expected. Nobody came out until well after they had left school. The teachers turned a blind eye to the lot, we were never told off and in some instances they even joined in.

Yeah, I was in secondary 1986-1993 and we had no sex education. We had one lesson about periods, and I can't even remember if it went into sex or not. It was one short lesson and totally un-memorable. I was 12 or 13, so I knew the mechanics of it, anyway. I remember being 9 and my friends and I wondering what sanitary pads were. We decided that they went in your bra, but we didn't know why! My poor older sister started her periods at 11, and she had no idea what was happening. She'd never heard of periods.

Dreadful really, looking back, the total dearth of information on the topic.

I agree. I was horribly embarrassed when as a teenager, I saw my (male) GP about going on the Pill - I only knew what friends told me and what I'd read in magazines! Luckily, he was really nice.