We’ve all been pummeled by current events this month and Cape Cod was not far enough to go to get away from it. The few weeks since I’ve written have been chockfull of bulls**t—some of it is related to sex, much of it not. Here are some of my favorites in neither chronological order nor order of importance:
I will write about some of these things in more depths in the weeks to come, but I’m not quite ready to unpack the horror that is our current reality, and I haven’t even made it halfway through my news feed. As I scrolled, however, I came across this great clickbait headline from BuzzFeed: “Medical Professionals Are Sharing the Shocking Things Women Didn't Know About Their Own Bodies, And I'm Ashamed of Sex Education In America.” I love me a good listicle. Obviously, we don’t know how many of these stories are true as they’re secondhand at best, but they are all sadly believable. While I present these stories for our collective amusement, please know that I’m not blaming any of these people—many of whom were likely teenagers—for getting it wrong. Somebody needed to teach them. Still, it’s exactly the absurdity I needed today. Here are some of my favorites:
I’m not sure most people make the logical connection between babies in tummies and anal sex, but she’s not the first person to get fooled by the dumb pregnancy explanation we give children. There was a politician a few years ago who questioned a doctor as to why an endoscopy couldn’t see a developing fetus. One high school teacher quoted in the article was asked if taking Pepto Bismal could help end pregnancy (by coating the fetus in pink?). And a nurse practitioner who worked in a clinic that performs gastric bypass surgeries was asked by a patient if there would still be room for a future fetus once they made her stomach smaller. The baby-is-growing-in-mommy’s-tummy trope isn’t cute. It’s tired and dumb. Uterus is not a bad word. We should use it more.
In fairness, the NuvaRing does look like one of those jelly bracelets that has come in and out of style every decade starting with “Like A Virgin”-era Madonna. But she’s not the only one mentioned in the article who was using her birth control method wrong. There was also the woman who dissolved the whole pack of birth control pills in water and took a sip every day, the one who took them all in one day, and the one who carefully put each little pill in her vagina. And then there was the woman who told her provider that she forgot her pill a couple of times, but whenever that happened she’d just texted her boyfriend and he’d take it for her. (It’s kind of sweet, but maybe they shouldn’t have kids.)
I’ve heard this one, though in my day it was Mountain Dew. Neither beverage works as a post-sex contraceptive, but douching with them will likely give you one hell of a yeast infection. Of course, the itch might be better than the acid burn of lemon juice which is what one young woman’s boyfriend apparently suggested for killing his sperm after sex. Ouch.
That either felt terrible or kind of nice. I remember one college student I had who did not realize that pee and menstrual blood came from two different holes. We weren’t talking female anatomy that day, but it came up so I quickly threw a picture on the screen and explained why you can pee when wearing a tampon. Of course, I would expect a little more knowledge from someone who’d gone to nursing school.
We have a joke about maternity tests in my house because when I was leaving the hospital with our oldest daughter, our security bracelets didn’t match. They let me take her home anyhow. She sometimes asks how I can be sure I’m her mother. I reply, “Well I can’t, but you were the spitting image of your father and the likelihood that he had another baby with another woman on the exact same day is fairly slim.” There’s a reason Jerry Springer never did a show about mistaken maternity. Yet at least one person on the internet believes that if a man has sex with two women without showering in between the first woman’s eggs could be on his penis and “implant into the second woman who would carry the first woman’s child. It’s the same idea as medical egg donors.” Umm, penises get nowhere near eggs no matter how much deep dicking is involved. Can we have a collective “that’s not how it f**king works!” I admit that I’m finding re-entry from vacation harder than usual this year because there’s too much going on and so much of it is bad. But if this article is any indication, there is still a lot of work to be done. Okay, fine, I’m back. Sex on Wednesday is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Sex on Wednesday that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Okay, Fine, I'm Back
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