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As you can imagine talking about what misconceptions one’s had about sex in their lives can be a bit embarrassing, but I’m going to own it and bask in the fact that I wasn’t given the best sex education, abstinence-only. Here are some of the things my abstinence-only education left me confused on:
Semen in the eyes may require surgery to prevent blindness. (I never really believed this, but I heard it.)
Masturbation will cause the penis to bend towards the hand most used. (Typically, this is not true unless one is overly aggressive and causes damage to one of the corpora cavernosas. Penises most often curve due to corpora cavernosas development, the pull of the frenulum, or the tightness circumcision.)
A penis can never be too big. (The word “ouch” explains it all.)
Puberty occurs between the ages of 11 and 13 for boys. (This should be rephrased to say "usually". There are outliers from the mean ages.)
The male foreskin is disgusting, unnatural and harbors STIs. (Proper hygiene should remove anything that’s not clean. Armpits need attention after the start of puberty, so do genitals. The removal of the foreskin is technically an amputation of something very normal. A penis is a penis. Be smart handling one and you shouldn’t have to be too concerned about catching an STI.)
Gays will never be happy. (I’m pretty happy. But when I’m not, I don’t think it’s because I’m gay, and I don’t believe I’m any less happy than the average straight man.)
Shampoo is a good lubricant. (Good thing I was told this was a bad idea from a friend. He said he was chafing for weeks after he used it.)
Young people don’t have STIs. (A person can have an STI from birth or teens may lie about their previous sexual experience.)
I know I wasn’t the only one who had warped views on sex and sexual health with what we learned, or in our case didn’t learn, in school, but what I didn’t know about these subjects I was fortunate to find a way to learn. Unfortunately, many students will be getting inadequate sex education at school and no sex education from other sources. Well, that’s not entirely true, there’s always TV and gossip.
Cross-posted from The Buzz:
http://blog.tellthemsc.org/2011/05/tims-list-of-misconceptions/
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