The Sperm and the Egg

As I sat quietly at my desk studying, my fellow freshman roommate passed through the doorway with my Anatomy and Physiology textbook open in her hands. In response to my curious look at her nervous giggles she burst out courageously, “I have questions.” Unbeknown to me my inquisitive roommate had spent the past 45 minutes pouring through the chapter on reproductive systems. For the next two hours I found myself answering question after question about genitals and the “miracle of life” as our other blushing roommate shook her head quietly in disbelief. That day I realized that learning appropriate terminology and discussing sexual terms as a family had influenced my healthy thought processes regarding sex.

My mind flashed back to the first time I understood how sex worked. My mom and I were reading a children’s reference book called The Human Body. Mom was very frank with me: “This is a uterus,” “That is a penis;” and just like that we talked about sexuality. Throughout the years we kept on talking about it, but always with an understanding that sexual intercourse was private and sacred as were the involved body parts. In my family we talked about the meaning behind words and the context in which we use them. A eunuch was a man who had been castrated. Castration was a removal of the genitals. In the Bible he was probably a harem guard or maybe a palace official. With the help of our unabridged Oxford English dictionary we could even discuss some of those unsavory four letter words.

Fast-forward a few years from The Human Body book and I was sitting nervously in front of my computer waiting to watch a Nova documentary called “The Miracle of Life.” For part of the curriculum for my high school health class we would watch a live birth, I chose to do so with my mom. As a teenager surrounded by inappropriate and sometimes graphic sex talk at school I was a little apprehensive. In one preparatory conversation just before we pressed play my mother helped me appreciate the proper process of creation in a way many of my adolescent peers did not. The obstetrician gynecologist wasn’t a sicko he was a doctor; the baby wasn’t ugly, it was miraculous; the birth wasn’t disturbing it was natural. The parents had married, consummated their love, and together created another human life, and now I had the opportunity to witness the birth of the product of their love thanks to educational TV. For years some of my peers cringed at the thought of that nasty, unnecessary rite of passage, but for me it was a simple and beautiful memory with my mom when I learned to appreciate “the miracle of life.”

In high school I had a teacher who liked to joke about sagging boobs and the active sex lives of students, coaches who literally read dirty sex jokes from a book to the team, and peers who whispered and laughed at my obvious virginity. In contrast, at church I remember one brother who couldn’t even bring himself say the word “sexual” when discussing “sexual intercourse” before marriage. I believe, along with Professor Douglas Thayer, that “good, family approved words dispel secretiveness, suggest the moral basis for sexuality, and provide a reasonable objectivity when talking about it, and, in general, make discussion possible." We can talk about sex and breasts and testicles in a realistic and reverent way; and I think we should.

The accurate and respectful vocabulary I learned at home has inspired a deep appreciation for the wholesomeness and sacredness of the body and sex. For me language about sexuality has provided a level of objectivity that facilitates my fascination with and study of the human body. I realize not everyone wants to study cadavers or shower disabled people or talk about menstruation cycles on a regular basis like I do, but if the word “penis” had been forbidden in my home I would have felt pretty wicked staring at a picture of one during biology lessons.

I believe when we know the words to use we can describe the feelings and behaviors. My roommate needed a direct and open talk about reproduction, and probably would have benefited from one much earlier on with her family. Sexual stimulation, dating, marriage, fornication, homosexuality, pornography, kisses, and wedding nights are easier to talk about when we know how to talk about them. Without squirming in my chair or blushing at the words, I am grateful for the wholesome sexual terminology that helps me understand that menstruation is normal, marriage is beautiful, sex is fun, the egg needs the sperm, and babies are miracles.