5 Ridiculous Sex Myths Everyone Believes

5 Pregnancy Happens Immediately, or Not at All

Have you ever watched an episode of The Maury Povich Show that involved paternity tests? Rhetorical question, they're all about paternity tests. Anyway, at some point you probably heard this:

"Well, Maury, I know it was Ray Bob because I remember exactly six weeks earlier to the day from when my doctor said I was six weeks pregnant, Ray Bob and I didn't use any protection. I don't use protection at all, actually, because it's a sin. But Ray Bob was the only person I had sex with that week. I didn't sleep with the other three since the Friday before that. It was a party."

Call her a slut all you want, but you'd have to admit, that logic seems at least sort of valid, right? Six weeks pregnant means the guy she had sex with exactly six weeks ago is the lucky winner, simple as that. How are they ever wrong?

But Actually ...

If it were really as simple as that, Maury wouldn't even need paternity tests, just a staff full of people who can decipher hillbilly speak and count backward. But what people fail to take into account is that sperm doesn't die just because you've zipped up and moved on to the next suitor.

In truth, sperm are hardier than the fragile balls that birthed them. They can stay alive and viable for days after ejaculation, watching and waiting for their opportunity to make a happy accident. Just how long can a sperm survive in the wild and terrible world? BabyMed says five days, WebMD concurs. The Mayo Clinic allows that they can survive "perhaps even longer."

In reality, sperm have been found to survive longer than a week hiding out in the reproductive tract. If you (ladies) have sex at all in the seven days leading up to ovulation, some of that sperm could be making its way up your fallopian tubes just in time for that new egg to pop in. (Eggs "pop," right?)

What's more, at least one study has shown that sperm can keep on sperming for as long eight days and still remain viable. That means that a lag between the time when you make the biggest mistake of your life and when that mistake actually results in an unwanted pregnancy is totally possible.

Just something to keep in mind when you're trying to do the math.

4 Men Like "Casual" Sex and Women Like Committed Sex

If a character on TV is infamous for sleeping around, odds are good it's a he. Charlie Sheen was a loveable womanizer on Two and a Half Men. Sam Malone from Cheers got all kinds of ass, and Captain Kirk was, well, Captain Kirk. You'd have a lot more trouble drawing up a list of promiscuous female main characters on television (unless we're talking about HBO, but that's not television, it's HBO).

A half century of feminism and women's liberation haven't changed the fact that women consider sex to be a step toward a long-term relationship and deep emotional commitment, while men consider sex to be nothing more than scratching an itch.

And there is plenty of scientific basis for this; a 1989 study showed that men were far more likely to accept solicitations for casual sex than women. Male and female students were approached by "moderately" attractive students of the opposite sex and awkwardly propositioned. The men, being 18 and in immediate proximity to a vagina, said, "Fuck yes." Most of the women said no. Obviously.

But Actually ...

A University of Michigan psychologist named Terri Conley decided to dig a little deeper. Her study found that women were no less likely to be down for some consequence-free coupling, as long as it was in a safe situation with a sexually competent partner. The difference wasn't in the expected commitment, but in how much harder it is to bring a woman to orgasm.

So both genders seek sex for the awesome, toe-curling pleasure it brings. But the difference is that men know they're going to get an orgasm no matter how bad the girl is in bed, and in fact know that it will happen even if she leaves halfway through. But women only orgasm 35 percent as often in first-time sexual encounters. Why commit yourself to a night of getting some guy off if you aren't getting anything but filthy sheets out of it?

Studies of bisexual women showed that their hesitance to bone disappeared as soon as the partner wasn't a man. That infamous female prudishness all came down to the fact that most men have awful cocksmanship.

They call it the pleasure theory -- it says simply that our desire for sex comes from the joy it brings us, not the raw evolutionary need to make babies. In other words, men and women both screw because it feels just great. And if we aren't confident we'll enjoy the experience, it isn't worth having.

3 College Is Where Girls Go Wild

For many kids raised in the cloistered confines of suburbia, college represents the first real chance for freedom. That means getting shitfaced, staying up late and, if you're a young woman, engaging in some sexual experimentation. The term "lesbian until graduation" didn't earn its own Wikipedia entry for nothing. Those liberated years of university life bring about a very real change for many women.

That's the accepted public perception, anyway.

But Actually ...

Unfortunately for our vast database of dorm-room-themed spank material, the truth is far less sexy. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (would it kill them to use a not-so-implicitly-horrifying name when studying hot girl-on-girl action?), women with bachelor's degrees were actually less likely to have dipped their toe in the pool of lesbian adventure than women who did not graduate from high school.

Of 13,500 responses, women aged 22 to 44 with college degrees admitted to having a same-sex relationship about 10 percent of the time, compared with 15 percent of women who didn't finish high school.

So how did we all get this so horribly wrong? Dan Savage, a Seattle-based gay sex columnist, weighed in on the article thusly:

"A lot of are out to prove something and want their effort to smash the patriarchy to be very visible ..."

That is, women with college educations aren't more likely to have had those experiences, they're just more likely to have talked about them because they think it makes them special. They like to brag about their girly time sexploits because they think they're reinventing the sexual wheel and can't wait to tell their less enlightened peers all about it.

But hey, at least they're using that college degree for its exact intended purpose ... to instill themselves with a false sense of intellectual superiority. Money well spent, indeed.

2 Men and Women Reach Their Sexual Peak at Different Times

We've all heard some variation of this myth, which claims that while men meet their sexual peak in their teens and early 20s, women don't hit the same apex of horniness until a decade or more later. Science that justifies cougars -- what could be wrong with that?

Well, everything, as it turns out. This myth likely originates from the fact that testosterone peaks at 18 and estrogen peaks in a woman's mid-20s. So boys tend to be at their age of maximum boning right around the freshman year of college, while girls don't hit the same peak until they're old enough to appreciate the humor of Courteney Cox.

But Actually ...

According to Dr. Marc Goldstein of Cornell University, hormones don't decide when you hit your sexual apex. People aren't soda bottles that just reach a point of maximum pressure and then pop. Your "sexual peak" has more to do with your attitude toward sex and level of experience, which is one reason millions of awkward young men spend their entire sexual prime on a computer.

Women who are more mature are more likely to be comfortable with their sexuality because they've had the opportunity to explore it. Women's sex drives are more vulnerable to social pressures, so the further they get from the drama and "slut shaming" of high school, the more open they'll feel. Women who have been adults longer than The Office (U.S.) has run are more likely to know how to have sex safely. And they're far distanced enough from the bullshit drama of adolescent love lives to enjoy the experience.

1 Sex Sells

Sex has an incredible ability to compel attention, there's no arguing with that. Tits and ass (or suggestively tight banana hammocks) guarantee eyeballs on the screen. That's the way things are now, that's the way they were for our horny grandparents and that's the way they'll be for our equally horny (but much freakier) kids. So, if you want to sell beer, or cars or body spray, stick some boobs on the screen.

But Actually ...

Once again, science is here to shrivel our erection of lies with the cold swimming pool of truth. Sex is a great way to get the audience to watch. But "watching" isn't the same as "buying."

Studies show that less than 10 percent of men who were exposed to sexual advertising could even recall the actual brand the ad existed to promote. And that's men, the gender that's supposed to get brainwashed by anything titillating, including the word "titillating." For women, sexual advertising cut brand recall in half.

Rather than being Miracle-Gro for brand awareness, sex appears to have a sort of "vampire effect." It numbs the brain to anything that doesn't get your Captain Hornblower in a Tallywicket (we're not sure if that's an actual euphemism). This trend even extends to video games, the one realm where we'd expect shallow smut peddling to have a real advantage. And yet that's not what we've seen. Games featured by Playboy tend to underperform, and titles that flaunt sexy characters (Age of Conan, we're looking at you) don't do any better for it.

Another study of beer ads found that throwing scantily clad women into the picture did nothing to increase consumer recall. Interestingly, they also found that pairing the ads with steamy (oh God, forgive us for using that adjective) shows like Sex and the City further decreased recall.

OK, so sex doesn't sell products. But it still gets you watching, which means that adding a little bit of the moist ballet to your new movie guarantees it some measure of success. Look at movies like Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers or Black Swan. The promise of naked boob is the only thing that got half their audiences to buy a ticket. Or so we'd think.

Movie scientists with the University of California studied over 900 films released last decade and found not one case where sex and nudity improved a movie's box office reception or sales. We're assuming Halle Berry's bare breasts' featured role in Swordfish was the exception, but we can't confirm that.

Robert Evans has a blog. If you'd like to hire him or talk about sex (ladies), you can do so here.

Let's talk about sex, baby, in 6 Ridiculous Sex Myths (That Are Actually True) and The 6 Strangest Objects People Were Caught Having Sex With.

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