Sexual Myth Busting

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Let's talk about sex. [00:00:02] I'm Dr. Laura Prescott, Associate professor for the Clinical PsyD Program at the Chicago School of Los Angeles. [00:00:10] Today we're going to be doing some sexual myth busting. [00:00:14] It's easy to have lots of information on sex, either through friends or online or goodness knows where. [00:00:22] And so today I picked out four common myths that people tend to have about sex, and we'll go ahead and talk about them and see why they are myths. [00:00:31] The first one is checking the hymen to see if somebody's a virgin or not. [00:00:38] So back in the dinosaur days, when people didn't really know that much about biology, it was a common practice. If somebody on their wedding night had sex, they wanted to see, oh, was she a virgin or not, did the hymen tear? Their tell tale way of doing that was to see if there was blood on the covers of the sheets. And so if somebody bled, then, oh, okay, yeah, the hymen tore and they were a virgin on their wedding night. [00:01:02] But if a hymen wasn't there to tear, or if it was there and it didn't tear, they would sometimes get chicken blood and put the chicken blood on the sheets and be, oh, look, here we go. Look, everybody. And no one was the wiser. Well, we think, and the issue with that is that the hymen is not a reliable indicator of whether somebody's a virgin or not. [00:01:26] There are a few things that can happen. Sometimes a woman can be born without a hymen. [00:01:33] A hymen can be torn in various activities. For example, if somebody does a lot of horseback riding or gymnastics, it's possible for the hymen to be torn in one of those ways. [00:01:44] It's also possible for the hymen to just kind of stretch and not really be torn at all. [00:01:49] Even if it is torn, it may not have blood come out. [00:01:54] So it's really not a reliable way of telling if someone's a Virginia. [00:01:59] The second myth is masturbation is bad. [00:02:04] Masturbation gets a bad rap and has for many centuries. There's all kinds of interesting and weird things people say will happen. If you masturbate, oh, no, you're going to grow hair on your palms. Oh, no, you're going to go blind. Oh, no, you're going to get erectile dysfunction. But none of those things are true. [00:02:21] Masturbation doesn't cause any of those harmful things. [00:02:25] And masturbation is actually quite a healthy way of learning your own body and learning what you like. [00:02:32] In fact, sometimes people are worried and say, oh, no. But if you masturbate, even if you are in a relationship and you're having sex, that means you're not satisfied or that means the sex isn't good. But that's not true either. You can still be in a happy and sexually satisfying relationship and still want to masturbate. [00:02:52] The third myth for today is that porn is an accurate portrayal of sex. [00:02:58] Porn is an interesting beast. [00:03:01] It's often created because of fantasies that people have or fantasies that certain porn making companies think people have. [00:03:10] And it doesn't involve acting in a way that people typically have sex. It involves acting in a way that plays to certain fantasies. [00:03:20] And a lot of times, people in real life don't like to do what people in porn do. [00:03:25] And it may not just be an issue of, oh, you know, these are certain positions you don't like, or there's certain acts that aren't really to a person's liking. But also, bodies don't always look perfect and orgasms don't always happen. [00:03:41] They aren't simultaneous every time. [00:03:44] And oftentimes, women in porn are portrayed doing things that a woman in real life may not want to do. [00:03:51] So it's important. If you watch porn and see something on a porn site that somebody's doing, you'll want to double check and say, okay, is this something that is realistic? Is this something my partner would actually want to do and not just proceed as if everybody would behave exactly as they would in porn? [00:04:10] The fourth myth for today is I can't get pregnant if. [00:04:15] And I say if with a dot, dot, dot on the end because there's so many different things people think that they can do and not get pregnant. Oh, well, if you're on your period, surely not. Oh, no, you can get pregnant if you're on your period or, oh, if it's the first time, surely. No, no, no. If it's your first time, you can still get pregnant. [00:04:33] A lot of people think that if they pull out. So if the man pulls his penis out before ejaculating, then, oh, well, that should. No, he. You can still get pregnant from that. [00:04:45] Also, some people think if it's in the shower that some people can't get pregnant from that. But no, that can happen too. [00:04:52] So I could go on and on forever about things. People say, oh, but this could happen and I couldn't get pregnant, Right? [00:04:58] Well, no, just be careful and realize that there are many different things you can do and many different ways to get pregnant. [00:05:08] That's all for today with our sexual myth busting once again. I am Dr. Laura Prescot, Associate professor for the Clinical PsyD Program at the Chicago School of Los Angeles. Thanks for tuning in.