saturday, march 18, 1944

dearest kitty,

i've told you more about myself and my feelings than i've ever told a living soul, so why shouldn't that include sex?

parents, and people in general, are very peculiar when it comes to sex. instead of telling their sons and daughters everything at the age of twelve, they send the children out of the room the moment the subject arises and leave them to find out everything on their own. later on, when parents notice that their children have, somehow, come by their information, they assume they know more (or less) than they actually do. so why don't they try to make amends by asking them what's what?

a major stumbling block for the adults -- though in my opinion it's no more than a pebble -- is that they're afraid their children will no longer look upon marriage as sacred and pure once they realize that, in most cases, this purity is a lot of nonsense. as far as i'm concerned, it's not wrong for a man to bring a little experience to a marriage. after all, it has nothing to do with the marriage itself, does it?

soon after i turned eleven, they told me about menstruation. but even then, i had no idea where the blood came from or what it was for. when i was twelve and a half, i learned some more from jacque, who wasn't as ignorant as i was. my own intuition told me what a man and a woman do when they're together; it seemed like a crazy idea at first, but when jacque confirmed it, i was proud of myself for having figured it out!

it was also jacque who told me that children didn't come out of their mother's tummies. as she put it, "where the ingredients go in is where the finished product comes out!" jacque and i found out about the hymen, and quite a few other details, from a book on sex education. i also knew that you could keep from having children, but how that worked inside your body remained a mystery. when i came here, father told me about prostitutes, etc., but all in all there are still unanswered questions.

if mothers don't tell their children everything, they hear it in bits and pieces, and that can't be right.

even though it's saturday, i'm not bored! that's because i've been up in the attic with peter. i sat there dreaming with my eyes closed, and it was wonderful.

yours, anne m. fran

k