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Ever feel like there’s a mass market for wrong information about sex? Do you leave a conversation with a friend or reading an article or website and wonder if what you’ve learned is the truth or one of those nasty myths? Just about any subject you’d hear about has them … but sex, many people would say, has more than its fair share of myths. Now Scarleteen’s taking the time to debunk some of the most common misconceptions.
We believe that all sex should be something anyone chooses for themselves, based on sound, realistic information. In order to do this, it is vitally important to be able to distinguish between the facts and the myths about what is safe. Do you know the facts about sex, or have you fallen for some myths?
FACT: It’s actually very difficult to describe an orgasm and how it feels.
Orgasms are not exactly the same from one person to another, but can also vary from orgasm to orgasm in one particular person. The sensation can be described as a tickle or hiccup, but also like a heavy head rush or a wave of dizziness throughout the entire body. What is known is that it’s a release of pressure that your body builds up, mostly in your nervous system, but something you can feel the effects of in your genitals and other parts of your body. So, not only aren’t they always explosive feelings in all people, but not every orgasm will feel this way in the same person from day to day.
Check the research: The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality by Shere Hite, About.Com: How Can I Tell if I've Had an Orgasm?, Scarleteen: Sexual Response and Orgasm: A User's Guide.
FACT: It’s such a frequently asked question, and yet one of the most common myths around. The most recent and conclusive studies done to date say that most women do not orgasm from vagina-only stimulation. Whether it be fingering based solely on vaginal insertion or vaginal intercourse, at least 70% of all women do not reach orgasm those ways alone. The vagina, all by itself, is not all that rich with sensory nerve endings. The sensory nerve endings it does have are not only within the first couple inches of the vagina but actually tend to be more responsive to targeted stimulation, where vaginal intercourse tends to provide a more generalized stimulus.
Check the research: BBC: Difficulty Reaching Orgasm, SOCG: Orgasm Myths, Teenwire: Some Facts on Female Orgasm.
FACT: The pain that any one person feel -- if they feel pain at all -- with first intercourse tends to vary from person to person. Some women feel a very slight pain that goes away rather quickly, and others may feel a good deal of pain. An important fact to note is that everyone has their own pain threshold, and there’s nothing wrong with not feeling pain and it certainly doesn’t mean that you weren’t a virgin.
If you’re ready for sex, aroused and relaxed, and taking time to become comfortable each step of the way then any pain may be greatly reduced or absent. If there’s a great deal of pain and you notice problems like not being able to use a tampon or insert a finger into your vagina then you may have a hymen that’s very resistant and your gynecologist can take care of that for you. On that same note, if you’re aroused and relaxed and your partner’s taking things slow you may have some bleeding but it should be minimal. You may find that it’s enough to wear a menstrual pad for a few hours afterward.
Check the research: Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 14, No. 5, Go Ask Alice: Painful Intercourse, Scarleteen: From OW to WOW!.
FACT: Not all women’s bodies are exactly the same, and so while one woman’s body may self lubricate enough another woman’s body may not.
It’s not uncommon for a woman to be lubricated at the beginning of sex but to not be lubricated enough for comfort after some time. Some medications, for instance hormonal birth control methods like the pill, and health conditions also inhibit self-lubrication. For many women, the use of a good water based lubricant is essential with the use of condoms. Self lubricating without condoms is one matter, but the natural lubrication that a woman’s body forms isn’t made to work with condoms. Friction and dryness are the two leading causes of condom breakage – and lubricant is the way to ensure that these two matters don’t become a problem.
Check the research: CNN: Vaginal Dryness, Salon: Wet is Best, ShineSA: Lubricant and Condoms.
FACT: Most surveys and studies taken state that 95% of all adults – which means 95 of every 100 people, have or continue to masturbate. So if we look at a group of 100 people, 95 of them would prove to have unsightly hair growth and be blind (not to mention the hunchback stance and shrunken sexual organs that is also said to be a result). Actually, the American Medical Association has long declared masturbation a normal and healthy sexual activity. As long as it’s something you want to be doing, masturbation is actually healthy not only sexually, but physically and emotionally as well.
Check the research: Coolnurse.com: It's Normal, Healthy and Okay to Masturbate!, Scarleteen: Going Blind A Masturbation Memoir.Scarleteen: Is Masturbation Okay? YEP
FACT: Some women actually ejaculate sometimes as well. When arousal or orgasm occur the vagina produces more lubrication and vaginal liquid. This is not ejaculate, and is a different consistency, but is quite normal and helps to prevent vaginal tearing. Some women also find that certain sexual stimulus for them may result in a thin watery whitish fluid. This fluid is expelled from the urethra (the same place that ejaculation is expelled from men). Not all women will experience this, and not all that have will experience it every time. many women like how it feels when it happens, but some don't, and most that do ejaculate find that it happens most commonly with direct stimulation of the G-spot. Women ejaculating also doesn't mean that a woman has had an orgasm yet.
Check the research: Go Ask Alice: Female ejaculate ('Ejilculate'): From where does it come?, Planned Parenthood: The Sexual Woman .Sexual Response and Orgasm: A Users Guide
FACT: Contrary to popular belief, sex is not about orgasm but rather about pleasure. It’s not abnormal for one or both partners to not orgasm from any type of sex for any given reason, even if they enjoy that sex. This doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with them or with you. If you’re mind and body are involved, and sex is something that you want to be doing at that point then it’s much more important that it feels good, physically and emotionally, than that it ends in orgasm. Communication can certainly help along the way in helping partners to understand what feels good. It’s certainly not unhealthy though and will not cause you any damage to have sex and not orgasm.
Check the research: Cornell Daily Sun: The O Zone,>.Sexual Response and Orgasm: A Users Guide
FACT: Maturity and adulthood can mean many things including being on your own and the need to support yourself financially while doing so. Many places have age laws for drinking, smoking, voting, driving, living on your own and even joining the military. Having sex doesn’t make you any older or any more mature. It’s much more adult to realize that being ready for sex and everyone involved wanting it is more important than forcing it when you’re not ready to make yourself seem older. This also means being able to understand that sex comes with consequences and knowing what to do the area of protecting yourself and your partner from any consequences that aren’t wanted.
Check the research: S.E.X. by Heather Corinna Blue Cross Blue Shield: Sexual Concerns, Scarleteen: First Intercourse 101 .Ready or Not? The Scarleteen Sex Readiness Checklist
FACT: Actually, using two condoms rather than one increases friction between them during sex and can cause both of the condoms to tear or break.
Condoms by themselves are 98% effective with perfect use and 85% effective with typical use. If you want to take some extra precautions or feel that condoms are effective enough by themselves then it’s best to look for another good method of birth control and use condoms as your back-up method.
Check the research: Kinsey Confidential: Correct Condom Usage, Planned Parenthood: Condom.Scarleteen: Condom Basics A Users Manual
FACT: The belief used to be that warm coke and especially diet coke was an excellent spermicide. Directly following sex, the urban legend is a woman would excuse herself and take with her a bottle of the warm coke product and shake it well covering the opening with her thumb or finger. Once shaken the tip and neck of the bottle would be inserted into the vagina and the pent-up carbonation energy from shaking would force the liquid upward and out of the bottle into the vagina. It was thought that the carbonation and sugar would kill sperm but this proved not to be a good method of pregnancy prevention but more commonly the cause of a really bad infection. Some people later thought that to save infection from happening washing with coke was a better idea. Either way definitely not something that should be put near your genitals!
Check the research: About.com: Vaginal Douching - To Douche or Not to Douche - The Douche Debate Continues, Go Ask Alice: Douching.Scarleteen: Can I Wask or Pee Away Sperm to Prevent Prengnancy?
FACT: It’s true that women are born with a hymen -- a very thin membrane which covers, wholly or partially, the vaginal opening -- but what isn't true is that the hymen is only worn away with intercourse.
By the time a woman chooses to become sexually active the hymen may be almost fully intact, somewhat intact, or tough to find anymore at all. Women menstruate and have vaginal fluids, which are both a normal healthy part of life and sexual development. Menstrual blood and vaginal fluids both need to have some way to exit the body, and thus small holes -- micro-openings -- are formed in the hymen. Those openings widen over time, and other things like hormones, exercise and general daily movement, masturbation, tampon use and -- yep -- vaginal sex, also aid in the erosion of the hymen. By the time the hymen is mostly worn away, only the edges of it will remain just around or under the vaginal opening.
Some women have what is called a "resilient" hymen: a hymen that has a tough time wearing away or, more rarely, even having those openings needed for menses and vaginal fluids. Women with a resilient hymen who try and have vaginal sex will often find it's painful, or that vaginal sex just 'won't work." Those women often need to have a simple outpatient surgical procedure, called a hymenectomy -- to incise that hymenal tissue.
Either way, we've long known that the state of a woman's hymen can rarely tell us much about her sexual history, save that if she is a child with a broken hymen, sexual abuse probably happened, and if she's got a fully intact hymen, we can know she hasn't yet had vaginal entry.
Check the research: Virgin: The Untouched History By Hanne Blank Scarleteen: And More With The Popping of Cherries.
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