Pepper Schwartz - 50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality

Pepper Schwartz
and
Martha Kempner

This edition first published 2015
2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schwartz, Pepper.
50 great myths of human sexuality / Pepper Schwartz, Martha Kempner.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-67433-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-470-67434-5 (paper)
1.SexMiscellanea.2.Sex customsMiscellanea.3.Man-woman relationshipsMiscellanea.I.Kempner, Martha.II.Title.III.Title: Fifty great myths of human sexuality.
HQ21.S327 2015
306.7dc23

2014037290

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Not so long ago, a member of the US House of Representatives said that he knew that a woman could not get pregnant if she was raped against her will. He explained that there was some sort of organic process in the body that would prevent conception under legitimate rape conditions. We cant imagine where he learned this. He claims doctors told him but unless they were lying or joking we cant imagine anyone who had gone to medical school actually believing it. It so ridiculous that it would never have occurred to us to include it as a myth in this book. And yet a grown, well-educated mana member of Congress, no lessbelieved it firmly enough that he was comfortable repeating it as fact to a television reporter.

We dont think that this myth is sweeping the nation but it reminds us that there are some amazing misconceptions about human sexuality out there, many of which are certified by self-anointed experts and passed on as gospel, and some of which are even taught in our schools. Some are so misleading as to be dangerous while others may cause needless worry and anxiety.

We are all victims of swallowing a myth or two during some point of our lives; nobody gets all the right information, and sometimes early information sounds right until we learn it was actually quite inaccurate, but possibly not before weve told others what we first thought.

During Peppers freshman year of college, she was in a suite with a number of women, most of whom were virgins when they arrived. One by one, most of the young women acquired boyfriends or entered into an intense dating relationship, and got physical. One of the girls got pregnant the first time. She was shocked. She was sure that you could not get pregnant the first time you had sex, or that the odds against it were so great that she didnt need to worry. Like there was a sex-freebie, and after that things got serious. (That myth was very common in those days and still tossed around often enough that we did include it in the book along with the much newer myth that the soda Mountain Dew could prevent pregnancy when drunk in large quantities or used as a douche (see ).

Myths have consequences. If we believe that a woman cant get pregnant the first time or during her period, some of us wont bother with contraception at those times. Even seemingly innocuous myths can change our behavior. If we believe, say, that red-haired girls are naturally hornier, some shy redhead is going to get come-ons that she doesnt like, and feel like she has to live up to expectations that she cant, or doesnt want to, fulfill.

It gets even more difficult because many beliefs about sexuality are based on personal or societal values and not scientific fact. And values changes. A couple of generations ago, mothers would tell their daughters to stay virginal until marriage because, as the saying went Hes not going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free. That may not have been bad advice before the sexual revolution started to change womens behavior in the late 1960s and 1970s. It might not even be bad advice now, but it doesnt reflect todays reality in which virginity, not sexual experience, is often more of a cultural burden to women. Despite this reality and the fact that todays teens have sex earlier and get married later, the abstinence-only-until-marriage movement of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s told young people in no uncertain terms that premarital sex was harmful. While some may continue to value premarital virginity and should be allowed to act on their beliefs, it is inaccurate to say that not doing so is harmful.

Other myths were just never true. Sometimes the facts are distorted because of political agendas. For example, some antiabortion activists have literally made up physical and emotional consequences for abortion (see ) because they want to scare women enough so that they will not have an abortion. And still others have some basis in historical fact but are no longer true today. It is no longer true, for example, that young women and teens should avoid IUDs out of fear of their future fertility. The newest versions of this contraceptive method are safe for women of all ages.

For this book we picked 50 myths about sex. We admit it was hard to narrow them down. We picked them first if we thought that a lot of people believed them and might never know the truth unless we put them in this book. Second, we picked ones that had misinformation that was so dangerous that we were worried that peoples reliance on them could seriously hurt them (emotionally or physically) or others (through discrimination). Finally, we picked ones that had good research to the contrary; we didnt want to be guilty of the same thing our book is trying to address! You can probably think of a lot more. And wed be delighted if you wrote us and suggested others (theres always the second edition!).