Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters

If you find yourself feeling crabby or crampy around your period time, use it as a signal for you to do something nice for yourself, something you love . . . alone! Like to read? Play music? Watch the clouds? Curl up with your pet? Do it! Enjoy something special that gives you YOUTIME, and it will automatically make you feel a little better! You can use this time to focus on yourself. You may find that you actually enjoy and look forward to doing something special for yourself, even if it is period time. We hope that girls with Girl Power will celebrate their gift of girlhood, and having a period is just part of what makes all of us sisters special.

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Boy, Oh Boy!

Enough about periods for a while, let’s talk about boys! Now, for this whole thing about having babies—it won’t happen just because you have a period. It takes sperm from a man getting together with an egg from a woman to make a baby. Funny thing about guys is that they don’t start making sperm until they go through puberty. (Remember, we are born with all of our eggs. Guys have to start from scratch.)

So have you noticed your guy friends going through puberty? Girls go through it several years earlier than guys. You are probably already in the midst of it, but your guy friends are just noticing changes around ages eleven to fourteen. That’s partly why girls are sometimes “romantically interested” long before their guy friends are clued in to girls and crushes.

You’ll know they are catching up in the puberty scene when you notice some thin, whispy hair on their upper lips (trying to become a mustache). You might notice more acne, voice changes and fast increases in their height. What you don’t notice is one of their first signs of puberty. Their testicles enlarge and their penises grow (getting more information than you want?). It seems unfair that one of the first signs of puberty for a girl is obvious to everyone (we start growing breasts, and it’s hard to hide that!). For guys this early sign is not so obvious (well, that’s probably a good thing!).

Boy Parts

Well, we have to talk about it a little, so in case you didn’t know yet, a boy’s “private body parts,” or external genitalia, are different from yours, especially in one area (no kidding!). Here are the words:Penis (also known as a dick, a pecker, a unit, a johnson, a tally wacker, a weenie, a prick, a one-eyed monster . . . why so many names?!)— the tubelike thing that boys pee out of. It’s also where sperm comes out. It’s made of soft spongy tissue and is usually soft and floppy. When a guy gets sexually excited, the spongy tissue becomes full of blood (engorged). This makes the whole penis hard, and it “stands up” instead of flopping down—that’s called an erection (or a hard-on, a woody, a boner). The penis needs to be erect to allow it to go into the vagina during sex. An erection is an interesting thing . . . really! So interesting, in fact, that we have more about it in the erection section later in this chapter . . . keep reading!Urethra—connects the bladder (which is where urine is stored) to the penis and outside, so it’s where the urine (pee) comes out. It is also connected with the parts involved in sperm travel. That means it’s how the sperm gets out, too. It contains a valve that is like a door that lets only one of these things happen at a time. So when a guy is peeing, sperm can’t come out, and likewise, when sperm is coming out, he can’t pee. When we get more into the sex stuff later, this will seem more important!Testes (also called testicles)—where guys make sperm and where the male hormone (called testosterone) comes from. Testosterone is the hormone that causes boys to grow facial hair, pubic hair, larger muscles and thickened vocal cords that give them their deeper voice (after it goes through the squeaky phase while the voicebox is growing). Guys have two testes, and they often call them their “balls” or their “nuts.” They can be really tender and painful if hit or bumped hard. That’s why guys in sports have to wear a plastic guard called an athletic cup over their penis and testicles to protect those sensitive parts. Some guys in other sports may wear a jock strap, which holds the penis and testicles close to the body and keeps them from flopping and swinging too much. A jock strap keeps a guy’s privates comfortable and secure, like a jogging bra keeps our breasts snug and comfy during vigorous activity.Scrotum—the sac of skin that hold the testicles. It’s located behind the penis and between the legs. Did you know that sperm can only be made properly at a temperature that is slightly lower than our usual body temperature (in fact, they grow best at precisely 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit)? That’s why the scrotum hangs away from the body and keeps the testicles cooler, so they can do their thing. In really cold weather, the scrotum will pull closer into the body to keep the testicles at the right temperature. So guys kind of have this built-in incubator with its own thermometer . . . wow! But don’t believe for a minute that hanging out in a hot tub will kill a guy’s sperm and make it impossible to get pregnant!

Sperm—the little things that a male makes that fertilize a female’s egg. Sperm are so tiny that millions of them would fit into a teaspoon. You can’t see a sperm unless you look under a microscope. If you do that, they actually look like tiny tadpoles, and they swim! It takes about 90 days for a sperm to grow and mature in the male. When they come out of the penis, it is called ejaculation. For girls, only one egg is released each cycle, but for a guy, each time he ejaculates, he lets go of many millions of sperm. Some sperm will make girl babies, and some will make boy babies, so it’s up to the man’s sperm, not the woman’s egg, to determine whether a baby boy or baby girl will be made. (By the way, the plural form of sperm is sperm. So it’s one sperm, two sperm, five million sperm.)Epididymus—a very long, coiled-up tube on the outside surface of each testicle. It’s where the baby sperm spend a few weeks while they are growing into mature sperm . . . kind of like the incubator. When a male ejaculates, the sperm come from the epididymus, travel through some tubes and go out the opening at the end of the penis.Prostate and seminal vesicles—two glands that are inside a male that add fluid to the sperm so they have something to swim in and nutrition for the trip (have snacks, will travel!). Once the fluid is added to the sperm, the mixture is called semen.Semen—we just told you what this is, but we want to make sure you realize that semen is what comes out of the penis during sex or sexual excitement (the act is called ejaculation or “coming,” and the fluid itself is called semen, ejaculate or cum). When it comes out, it amounts to less than a tablespoon of liquid, but guess how many sperm are in it? MILLIONS!!! And it only takes ONE to fertilize an egg! When ejaculation happens, all those little sperm race to see which one can get to the egg first and make a baby. Talk about competitive!

Erection Section

If you are like most girls, erections seem like a really unusual phenomenon to you. For a girl, the closest thing that happens like that and can be noticeable to others is when you are wearing a thin shirt and your nipples get hard and poke out like headlights coming on! Sometimes embarrassing, sometimes not even noticeable. For guys, erections can be even worse.