Diaries of a Middle School Eunuch

When my school district’s sex ed curriculum reminded me how much of the world prefers I remain invisible

People talk about intersectionality as though it mostly pertains to one’s skin color and/or genitalia. However, one of my first truly intersectional patterns of experience as a kid recurred throughout my middle school years.

Last month, I alluded to this experience in an op-ed piece I’d authored about the role of discussions within K-12 sex education pertaining to consent:

I attended middle school from 1993 to 1996, and then started high school in Autumn 1996. And while I enjoyed a certain degree of privilege from being White and male in a school district with very few Black, Latino, or Asian students — the 1990s had a whole other identity crisis in store for me.

Being gay, autistic, gender nonconforming, and working-class, I hadn’t fully come to terms with these four aspects of my life except for maybe the latter one. I was about to be “schooled” in how my presence simply wasn’t acknowledged by much of the world.

Dipping Preteen Toes Into the Pond

My middle school had a course called F.A.C.E. (Family & Consumer Education). It was a modernized coed version of “home ec” — but infused with discussions on teen social issues. That included sexual education.

Our teacher, Mrs. Nortman, had a rather droll personality and a glaring lack of self-awareness. In my opinion, her idea of beneficial classroom activities left a lot to be desired. Despite those flaws, she seemed to have a good heart and possess an honest intention to see her students be healthy and mindful.

Unfortunately, intentions alone don’t always cut the mustard.

As Sixth Graders, we had F.A.C.E. once per week as part of our afternoons of rotating courses. I was in the Friday class. Most of our weekly sessions involved learning about basic subjects such as alcoholism, hygiene, dietary guidelines, consumerism, and familial structures. Once or twice a month, we’d have a “lab” where we’d use the kitchen facilities in her classroom to prepare simple nutritious snacks.

During our entire Sixth Grade year, we had a grand total of one class session where Mrs. Nortman taught anything resembling sex ed. And even then, it was a very rudimentary rundown of human anatomy.

A well-intentioned course offering, but rather lame in execution.

Anticipation of Our Raging Hormones

In the Seventh Grade, we had F.A.C.E. every day for nine weeks straight. I was in the Second Quarter rotation, which ran from October through January. Since most of us were 12 or 13 at this point, sex ed had a more prominent role in our curriculum.

Some of the activities Mrs. Nortman designed for us included:

• Taking care of “flour babies” — sacks of flour with faces drawn on them — for two weeks while journaling about it;
• An entire class period where we got to write anonymous questions for her about sex and puberty, and she’d answer the questions out loud — someone literally wrote to her: “When was the first time you had sex?”;
• Watching a cheesy 80s-style educational video about human anatomy and biological changes;
• Role-playing as mock families while we cooked breakfast for our familial units, as Mrs. Nortman videotaped us;
• Reviewing facts and myths about AIDS/HIV;
• Watching the episode of Who’s The Boss? where Samantha gets a hickey — it had originally aired eight years earlier (there were clearly commercials from 1986 on the VHS tape); and,
• Role-playing “mock dating” simulations in front of the class.

There was some factual information mixed into these activities. But I found most of it to be useless. It didn’t help that I was stuck in a rotating session amongst classmates who hated me during what would become my most traumatic year of school ever. Mrs. Nortman didn’t seem to pick up on this; but, given her lack of self-awareness, I can’t say I’m surprised.

When she touched upon the areas of dating, lust, and sexual contact, Mrs. Nortman at least presented the same data to all of us, regardless of sex or gender. Yes, in monotone and with a cadence disconnected from our generation. But she didn’t solicit personal details from any of us as her students. Although, it was rather disheartening that she failed to model behavior in terms of nutrition.

Tasking us with the preparation of homemade nachos, chocolate chip cookies, and monkey bread wasn’t exactly a prototype for dietary excellence.

Preparing Students To Breed

In the Eighth Grade, we once again had F.A.C.E. every day for nine weeks. I was in the Third Quarter session that ran from January through March. Once again, I was surrounded by classmates who preyed upon me due to the fact that I wasn’t part of the “in-crowd.”

My undiagnosed autism contributed to my status as a social outcast, as did my family’s low income level — which prevented my then-burgeoning cystic acne from being properly treated. I was closeted, trying to convince myself I might be bisexual since that wasn’t “as bad as” being gay. My effeminate characteristics made it all the more difficult for me to hide my homosexuality.

Meanwhile, as Eighth Graders, our F.A.C.E. curriculum shifted away from puberty. We began to learn skills such as sewing, marketing, entrepreneurship, and conflict mediation.

There was, however, one follow-up section to the previous year’s human growth & development unit, during Eighth Grade F.A.C.E.

For approximately one week, Mrs. Nortman led us Eighth Graders in discussions about abstinence, dating norms, and even more exact scientific maps of human anatomy.

On one watershed morning of classroom activity, she divided us into two groups: girls in one group and boys in another.

Mrs. Nortman then instructed us to collectively brainstorm and create a list of traits we found to be desirable in the opposite sex. She told us how, afterward, we would stand in front of the other half of the class and share our group lists aloud.

Most of the boys in our group were listing features such as soft lips, slender waists, large breasts, and shapely buttocks.

My contribution to our group’s list was “manageable hair.”

The girls were interspersing personality characteristics alongside of the physical ones, on their list. They included some thoughtful items such as: good listeners, sense of humor, nice manners, and cleanliness. But they also had their own share of superficial items, including: buff torsos, ripped muscles, athletic butts, good skin, and toned legs.

So, while the girls were taking the activity slightly more seriously than the boys, both groups were making shallow contributions to these lists.

I realize that Mrs. Nortman’s intent behind this activity was probably an attempt to help foster a climate where girls and boys could better understand each other’s desires and psychology. She wanted to foster dialogue between female and male students.

One girl, Sarah, at one point asked us: “Is this seriously what you guys want in a girlfriend? Is this all you see in us?”

To which Casey, one of the most popular boys — and a class clown — responded to Sarah, deadpan, “Yes. We’re pigs.”

Side-note: 28 years later, Casey is now a staunch progressive political activist.

But the whole ordeal was humiliating and insulting, from my point-of-view. Why should I have to pretend I’m heterosexual in such an intrusive and public manner, facilitated by ONE OF OUR TEACHERS?

Did Mrs. Nortman stop to consider that not all of her students would necessarily be heterosexual — let alone cisgender?

In hindsight, my dopey answer of “manageable hair” was an extremely generous contribution on my part. If it had been up to me, I should have been able to share the physical, emotional, and spiritual traits that I valued in other boys — without fear of being shunned, maligned, or physically attacked.

And That’s a Wrap! (But Not the Condom Kind)

Freshman year of high school, we had a one-semester health class. Our teacher, Mr. Augustine, did nothing other than have us record notes from an overhead projector. This content was mainly on how the body worked, in the most technical terms possible.

Throughout all four of these grade levels, there was absolutely zero talk of what consent actually meant. Granted, it was the 1990s…where a lesbian actress couldn’t even come out on her sitcom without her bosses — looking at you, Bob Iger! — going out of their way to disavow her.

Furthermore, there was a Human Growth & Development Committee appointed by the school board. That committee, composed mostly of parents, determined what the sex education curriculum for F.A.C.E. students would look like. It’s entirely conceivable that this committee — either consciously or subconsciously — excluded any references to LGBT+ issues by design. If that was the case, then Mrs. Nortman was only teaching what she’d been directed to teach.

However, I can’t get past the reality that Mrs. Nortman still had leeway over HOW she taught the content mandated by her Human Growth & Development Committee. I seriously doubt the committee specifically commanded her to design a classroom activity where students would be compelled to publicly reveal our sexual desires along a heterosexist framework.

She was the same teacher who, while supervising us on the playground during Sixth Grade recess one day, yelped and joked/pleaded with me to “kill a bug” when the insect startled her and a cluster of girls. I was the only boy in their proximity.

Recently, I read a Facebook post where my old school district had celebrated Mrs. Nortman for her retirement at the end of the 2019–20 academic year. A whole legion of former students and colleagues congratulated her on 31 years as an educator. Comment after comment praised her about what a talented and high-quality teacher they felt she was.

It’s entirely possible that many of these students were loyal to her, since she’d been the middle school adviser to FHA (Future Homemakers of America). And, in the years that passed once I’d gone away to college, she could very well have modernized her classroom activities and made them gender-inclusive and sexuality-affirming.

All I know is that, while most of her classroom activities were rather silly and a waste of time, they were usually harmless.

On the other hand, that Rate-What-Attracts-You-To-The-Opposite-Sex exercise only served to push me further into the closet. It was a stark reminder to me how — in the eyes of my school district and fellow Americans — I was invisible, deviant, disposable, and, essentially, nothing more than a semen-dispenser who was expected to perform as part of a heteronormative gender dance.

Go squash your own beetle, Mrs. Nortman!