Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Wait, That’s Not True? Common Sex Myths We’re Still Believing

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

In this episode, we unpack some of the most common myths you’ve probably heard—and maybe even believed—about sex and sexual health. From not being able to get pregnant on your period, to sperm surviving in hot tubs, we unzip many of these ideas to get to the truth of the matter.We talk about misconceptions around condoms, withdrawal, lubrication, oral sex, and STI testing, and explore how myths can lead to confusion, awkward conversations, and risky assumptions.We also challenge familiar narratives about gendered sex drives, virginity and hymens, and the idea that having an STI makes someone undesirable. No scare tactics, no shame—just candid conversation, shared responsibility, and the space and permission to ask better questions.If you’ve ever wondered whether what you were taught about sex is myth or fact, this episode invites you to laugh, rethink a few things, and keep unzipping those taboos.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get into today's episode, I do want to share that we have partnered with JackandJillAdult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code unzipping 20. So go check them out. So now that that's done, I am here with Dr. Sue. Hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. How's it going? It's cool. It is cold. We are recording. We are recording this the week of wintermageddon or something.

Yeah. Across the country. Yeah. So hopefully people are staying safe and warm. yes please um i just realized i skipped over today's episode it's time to to visit revisit sex myths and not and not revisit in ones that we've talked about before although that may come up but um it's time i think it's a good it's a good time yeah to talk about some sex myths but before we do that you want to give our listeners a little bit about your background sure um so i have a bachelor's and a master's in health education because I always wanted to be a health teacher like that was my jam um and then I realized that like sex was this thing that everyone really wanted to well most people wanted to talk about and no one would do it

in a legit way and so I decided to get my PhD in human sexuality education and I have been working in academia doing the academia thing the professor thing so I told that thing that thing I teach, I speak, I write. I do those things. I do the things people think of professors. Well, anyway, I don't know where my brain went there. But I realized a few years ago that I was a little frustrated that I was only reaching the students in my class. And so I had a little crisis of conscience. And I started doing Hey Dr. Sue, where folks can submit anonymous sex questions to me. And then once a week on Sundays at 9 p.m., I answer one question. And I do a lot of work in the community. So I'll work with youth groups. I've done bar trivia.

I think you and I should take this act on the road and do some live events. I work with folks who work with senior citizens. I just, it's kind of become my mission to bring good sex education to anyone who wants it. And part of what we do in both my classes and when I'm out in the real world. Out in the wild. Out in the wild is talk about sex myths because so much of what I do, and I know this has come up a lot for us as we talk about literacy and digital literacy. So much of what I have to do is combat misinformation. So I'm excited to go kind of back to our roots.

this is one of our beginning ones yeah and some myths are popping back up again so so that's me in a very big nutshell my brain just went somewhere sorry there's a roomy in there i know but i'm not here on my own so for those of you who do and do not know our fantastic co-host charlie um charlie is just she's always really curious about all these things that we talk about and is never really shy about addressing some of these topics that a lot of our culture finds so difficult to talk about for reasons that just for reasons but you should tell us more about you okay i am charlie i have been friends with dr sue for many many a year um and one of the things that we found right from

like almost instantly practically instantly was a comfort talking um talking about any any and everything um even if maybe we didn't agree it there it was met with curiosity rather than a motivation to be right um or to convince the other person that that they were wrong sometimes thank you for pausing yeah uh but beyond that it is really just being staying curious and um and staying aware of the things that we're taught um especially as a woman in society i have always felt this just kind of innate rebellious nature around what's expected uh what society tells me I'm supposed to be and how I'm supposed to move and operate. And then that gets me going through

the layers or down the rabbit hole, so to speak, to figure out, well, where is this message coming from? How long have I been hearing this message? How long have I bought into the message? All of those things. When did this conditioning start? Are we still perpetuating these things? It's a, it's very, it's very fun rabbit hole to navigate sometimes. But it's also it's always exciting to meet people that are willing to have the conversations, meet my curiosity with their expertise or like curiosity. And then I, I do like to describe myself as a psychology hobbyist. um it's just a it it's something that i i find that i'm drawn to so that i think lends itself to that curiosity and that d deconditioning quite well but that is not to say that i am a mental

health professional because lord knows those uh those professionals those people are doing incredible work out there so i do not want to in any way represent myself as a mental health professional. You're my mental health amateur. That's not to say I'm not an emotional support human for many, many people that I love and care about. So there we go. Yeah. That's Dr. Sue and Charlie. And today, let's talk about sex myths again. Because Dr. Sue just needed to rest her head on her microphone for a moment. I just, it's not even that I get frustrated that the myths exist. Myths are always going to exist. For me, the myths with these is that they have really important implications to your health. Like it's not that I believe that the moon is

made of cheese and that has no impact on me. It's the, I believe this about pregnancy or STIs and then, oops, I'm pregnant and or I have an STI. So that's just the frustration for this field is that the myths have pretty big repercussions. Thanks for not correcting me if the moon is made of cheese you're welcome whatever I can do to help you feel supported and also cheese sounds really tasty right now right sorry that's all right so I I know when we did uh we did this episode I think it was one of our foundational episodes as you said and then we did an episode because the BuzzFeed article that you had contributed to had popped back up in rotation.

But it's always good to come back and revisit this whole umbrella of sex myths and sexual health myths. Because I think those are two distinct things when we're talking about this. So where shall we begin to pull on this sweater? or unzip. Better analogy, metaphor. I feel like we should probably start with some of the pregnancy stuff because that seems to just never, and then we talk about contraception with, and then that just goes into STIs. Interestingly, I did an exercise with my new students

recently about this, and most of them were about pregnancy STIs. Very few of them were about sexual behavior that didn't relate to that. I'm trying to think of them off the top of my head. Yeah. I get some interesting ones over the years when I do this. I always do this as kind of a welcome to this class. Here's what you're getting into. Drop their guard. And I feel like this year was really a lot that were based on pregnancy STIs. But I think that that's a lot of what they learned growing up. And so that's where a lot of that came from. So maybe we start there. short so i know a couple of pregnancy myths that i have heard um can be related to if you want to make sure air quote that you're having a boy or a girl a baby of a certain sex stand on your head

right after during that's like straight out of the kama sutra i think yeah so yeah so i i mean there's so there's that there's um just run away yeah there's i can't get pregnant if i'm on my period there's i can't get you can't get pregnant from pre-cum like where where shall we begin the adventure on unzipping sex pregnancy myths let's start with the the sex of the baby if you were to get pregnant so it's the sperm that's going to choose the the sperm the sperm is going to dictate the sex of the baby sort of because it's never as simple as that because we're humans and humans are just not that simple so biology is not that simple she's talking about um so you know you have sperm that has an x and sperm that has a y and theoretically i think if like you stand on

your head the stronger sperm will be able to somehow withstand the graph the upside down oh no that would actually make it easier if you're on your head because then it's not fighting gravity so maybe the easy sperm would be able to that's not how this works it's not how it works and here's the other thing you can have a y sperm fertilize an x egg because all eggs is eggs are wow yeah this the sentence is going to be hard i apologize folks all eggs are x is can you say that for me in English? Sure. What Dr. Sue is saying is that all eggs carry the X chromosome. Thank you. I think more words there would have been more helpful. Even if you have a fertilized embryo that turns into a fetus from an X egg and a Y sperm, it does not always become a boy at birth.

We're all girls by default. So if the fetus isn't exposed to the correct hormones and excuse me, this the the correct um i'm blanking on the word yeah of of things in in in utero even though it has x y it will still be born female so it's not even like just standing on your head or doing a pirouette or i i don't i yeah there's not really much you can do now if you want to pay thousands of dollars and get in a lab yeah absolutely your chances are better so there's a way that you can do it it's um i am not going to bore people with with the words it's icsi and you can go look it up or you can ask and i'll do more on that i think we should do more on assisted reproduction um but basically what you do is you go in and you say i want a boy or i want a girl and they go find a

sperm that is an x or a y and they literally inject that sperm into the egg and go here fertilize doesn't always work by the way actually most of the time it doesn't So there are ways that you can try and force to have the fetus with the correct sex chromosomes. But again, it still doesn't mean it's going to turn into what matches its chromosomes. So this idea of you can do certain things to, yeah, no, not so much. so myth debunked there is very little to nothing that you can do physically externally to ensure that you're going to have a baby of a certain sex it is all about it's all about the biology yeah it's all it's uh it's all cellular yes so i mean you can like you've had a cellular level And as Dr. Sue said, through assisted reproduction, perhaps, but even then, there's still not guarantees.

Yes. All right. So just love whatever you get. Yeah. That would be the hope for a healthy baby. Hope for a healthy baby with all the parts. And if it doesn't have all the parts, healthy baby, healthy mommy after delivery. Yeah.

And lots of love. Yes. All right. so check yes check that one off the list it's weird because most of what i hear about myths is about how you can't get pregnant and so hearing one it's about well if i want to get pregnant with a certain sex baby like that's always the the anomaly that kind of comes in so i like that we started with that yeah good all right so um what what like what are myths around um how about you can't get pregnant on your period

when you're on your period so here's the i don't want to math people because i feel like if i'm going to do this i want a whiteboard with numbers because it's super confusing that's when we get picked up broadly by like our i heart radio or something yeah right you'd have a whole workout with a whiteboard in the background that'd be fantastic um i want to just do i want to do some quick things because i know people are going to be coming and going out of this episode so i don't I don't want to get bogged down in the math. If we talk about the menstrual cycle, which is a huge if now in this country in schools, but if we talk about the menstrual cycle, we make the mistake of saying that women have

a 28-day cycle. And that is not true for the vast majority of women. And the problem with that is that the, I'm going to make up this number. I make up all my numbers. If this is your first episode, I make up almost all my numbers. Like 99.9% of women will ovulate 14 days before the start of their next period. And the problem is your body knows when that is, but you don't know when that is. And it can change from month to month, although for most women, once they hit the age of like

mid-20s, it kind of becomes very set. If you have a very short menstrual cycle, like you have an 18-day cycle, that means that you are ovulating on day four. And it is possible that you are ovulating and can get pregnant if you come into contact with sperm through your vagina, not if you're doing blow jobs or things like that. Because that's the other thing. People are like, can you get pregnant from a blow job? And I'm like, no, not if that's all you're doing. So you can get pregnant on your period. You can get pregnant while you're bleeding. You can get pregnant standing up. You can get pregnant all different ways all different positions all different places all different

things but that one about because i've heard people say that like well if i'm bleeding i'm safe and that's that's not how that works um and if you are having unprotected intercourse while you are bleeding it also means that you're having increased risk of stis so you gotta throw that in the mix but yeah you can get period you can get pregnant on your period it's not common because most people have a longer menstrual cycle but it is absolutely possible so if you are bleeding it is not 100 guaranteed yes correct you are not uh there's not a possibility correct and i think that's the thing especially surrounding pregnancy um that that people tend to look for 100 certainty or interpret certain things with 100% certainty, like the pill.

Dr. Sue, if I take the pill, I'll never get pregnant, right? As long as I'm on the pill. No. No. No. There is no 100% effective method of contraception. And I know some abstinence-only person is about to, like, yell at me. mm-hmm but i don't believe that not engaging in a behavior is a safe way of engaging in a behavior

so to me i don't include i don't include absence avoidance of the behavior is not yeah um the pill in perfect conditions is actually not bad not the best option we have but it's actually it's not bad so when we look at contraceptive methods we look at two numbers we look at like perfect world everything's done exactly as the descriptions and the and the instructions you know the big like 15 000 page instruction book says where it's this big yeah so so there's the that perfect number it's what we call theoretical effectiveness it's the perfect number and then there's actual effectiveness which is what happens when humans get involved variables yes because humans fuck things up um and when you're looking this number i'm actually not making up well that's

a new one. This number I'm not making up. In a perfect world, it's like 99.2% effective. In a non-perfect world is 92% effective, which means eight out of 100 women are getting pregnant using that method, which is what? Four out of 50. Oh, this is where my math fails me. Let's just stick with eight out of 100. Okay. Sorry, mom. Mom's a math teacher. Sorry. So it's not perfect because we screw things up. And even if we didn't screw things up, it's still not perfect. And so I think people need to understand that no matter what method you're using, and with some of the methods like the hormonal IUD, the chances of getting pregnant in a perfect world are like 0.001. I mean, that's great. And actually, that's almost the exact same as in the real world. It's 0.001

or 0.01. Still not 100%. So I think you need to kind of keep that in mind. If you don't want to get pregnant if you absolutely positively do not want to get pregnant um i don't want to say don't have sex because i don't but that would be what i would have to say or combined methods so like use a condom and the pill because that's going to be better or another hormonal method and a condom yeah okay but the pill's not 100 effective neither is the condom there's a whole friends episode about that yeah um can i get pregnant if i have sex in a spa in a jacuzzi like if you're having sex in a jacuzzi or like the sperm got into the jacuzzi water and are navigating their way like i mean there's those are two those are two separate ones i feel like so uh so the myth that

like the water's too hot or whatever so the sperm won't i mean the water's hot and ideal sperm production is a couple of degrees below body temperature and so normal body is 98 degrees ideal speed production somewhere in like i'm making this number up like the 95 to 96 range so being in a jacuzzi would stop sperm production and it may make it harder for but it's not going to make the sperm like die instead it's not it's not like a sperm death trap yeah right and actually there's a really interesting method for men that i really wish we were doing more exploring with but there's nothing to sell at the end so we're not doing a lot of testing on it but it's um essentially putting your nut sack in a really hot thing of water for x amount of time

and that will actually stop sperm production um but if you're just going into a jacuzzi once it's not going to like make someone sterile and yeah yeah and as for like someone you know ejaculated in there before me and then i got into the jacuzzi is the sperm somehow going to figure out where i am swim across the jacuzzi and find a way to get me pregnant up the birth canal up the up the vagina yeah no that's the past the cervix no it's that at that point it has been damaged by the heat um and if you think about how teeny teeny tiny sperm are like that's a really long distance to swim um they can survive in the water chamber but they don't i mean the sperm sperm is in semen and it's in semen because it needs things in the semen to survive and if it's just in this

like a hot chlorinated yeah it's no environment that's not no so yes to having sex in this in the in the jacuzzi although if you always have sex in the or someone hangs out in the jacuzzi for an hour a day then he may not be producing sperm at that point there you go but if it's like a one-off then yes it's possible but if you're asking like can the sperm like find me in a pool or a jacuzzi no not so much um withdrawal prevents pregnancy pulling out i'm not anti-withdrawal which i think throws some people off i know throw some people off because i was doing a presentation with a friend of mine at a conference and we were talking about withdrawal as an option and people were getting angry like interesting yeah interesting yeah like

why are you talking about that i'm like because i'd rather someone do that than nothing if that's all they have um it's not great it's not 100 effective even under perfect conditions i think the number is 95 but i would have to look that up and then when you make it under human conditions it's like closer to 80 um so it's like 1 in 20 people who are getting pregnant using that method but if that's all you've got you weren't planning to have sex you're not on a hormonal method there's not a condom anywhere in sight and you're not willing to leave the situation you're in to go find a condom it is better than nothing however asterisk asterix there's also an sti risk that i think we forget to talk about and the reason i keep bringing up

stis is the sti rate in this country is just going through the roof and but we're so like pregnancy focus on pregnancy and I'm like okay but our pregnancy rates have been going down like why are we talking about the thing and not the other thing so there is a risk of STIs from that because sperm can live in pre-cum

STIs can live in pre-cum so there is a chance of both pregnancy and STIs but if that's all you got you got nothing else better than nothing better than nothing all right yeah people got really angry i was really taken aback because it was a bunch of

sex educators and these people were getting really mad at us i was looking at my co-presenter like what the fuck is happening like you think we just like curse their moms or something right yeah that's very interesting yeah there are things that apparently i guess i wasn't supposed to say to college students and that withdrawal is an option i don't think it's the best option i think it's it takes a lot of trust first of all yeah and control right because it could feel so good you don't want to for both people and i think so right now since we're talking pregnancy we're talking male body parts and female body parts yes i know you can have a vagina and identify as male we're just talking about kind of the sex assigned at birth um when we're taught and there is a risk

of stis if you're withdrawing anally as well so that still kicks in um but if we're talking male female you know everyone's like oh the guy the guy I'm like she has to be willing to stop too like she made orgasm and he's like gotta pull out like that there may be pressure from her on him like no wait yeah um it takes a lot of control takes a lot of it takes a lot of willpower it takes a lot of trust that I'm going to be able to know my body well enough to do that and that you will you know or i'm trusting someone else to know their body and i don't think anyone's going to be surprised by this it's a whole lot easier when you're sober just let that sit there for a second not you know you want to drink and use like that's on you but

recognize that it makes it harder for you to to withdraw at the right time because you have to withdraw before the pre-cum not even just before ejaculation yeah all right well um i think that's enough time on pregnancy myths okay okay i just want to point out that like uh that just a moment ago you know we're focusing you were talking about we're not focusing on stis but we led with the pregnancy myths i know i just want to get those out of the way but but that's also a great segue to sexual health and sti myths so i i think that um one of the perhaps more harmful one well uh is that you can tell if someone has an STI like you just look at them and you just know I mean just instantly know if they're naked and you're looking and you see a rash or a drip or

blood or smell well you smell a smell you don't you know what I'm saying um or you see lesions or you see a shanker then yes in that situation you can actually look and tell that's not what most people mean or and you have to know what you're looking for and what it means right right right i i used to do this exercise way back in the day i kind of stopped doing it well i'll tell you exactly why i stopped doing it because there was one day went very very wrong um i i was saying like like just think of a guy who has an sti um what does he look like and the people used to give me like a man wearing a trench coat and i don't know where the trench coat came from like to me that's flasher yeah it was always a guy wearing a trench coat and then one year someone named a

fraternity so it's like they're wearing the specific fraternity hat and i'm like okay we're not doing this anymore like um but yeah it was just like this guy that would be in a trench coat and i'm like no like look around the room it's like every fourth or fifth person in here like it's yeah it's this idea that you can look at someone and know yeah and that's just know which one they have yes right yes it'd be nice if it came with a sign like like a museum display you are looking at yeah you can't tell from looking at someone unless they're having an active outbreak on their genitals um or if they have herpes and they're having a cold sore outbreak you know they have herpes um but other than that there's no i don't know i don't know where the

trench coat came from that always bothered me i'm like where did this trench coat come from uh all right so um all stis are curable can i do that one oh that's right yeah yeah yeah yeah all stis are curable so not true um the bacteria most of the bacterial ones most because we are seeing an increase in the rise of bacteria-resistant gonorrhea. Yeah. So we're seeing, so I used to say all the bacterial ones and the fungal ones and the parasitic ones. And now I can't even say that because we're seeing this increase in antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. But things like herpes and warts and HIV, even though we're getting better at treating HIV, those are the

forever ones so anything that's viral because i think that's i think that's why it doesn't scare people which is interesting for me because i was coming of age in the aids epidemic and so for me like i was terrified of dying yeah um but like because there was a period of like 10 15 20 years where it was automatically assumed it was a death sentence yeah um and and now it's like well just get a pill and I was like okay but if you have to know you have it and so like when did you last get tested and with some and we do every single campus I've ever worked on has done free STI testing sometimes they do it once a month sometimes they only do it once a semester but every single university I've worked at has done it in some capacity and the vast majority

of my students have never been tested for an STI when I asked them or my favorite well I gave blood and no one called me. I feel like I might need to explain that one. So if you give blood, they will test it for HIV. And if you are HIV positive, they are supposed to contact, supposed to, supposed to contact you and let you know. That doesn't unfortunately always happen. And that is one sti it is not all of them but i still have students tell me that to this day yeah so there's there's a myth for you oh that's that is a myth yeah that is a myth yeah oh condoms prevent all risk no i feel like i'm waiting for you to throw in one that's true just to see if i'm like wait i feel like we do a disservice so i i'll just say i'm i won't do any gotchas because i don't want

that to be the well one is true and so it's so therefore there's the truth somewhere anyway so there will be no gotchas okay no none of the above all of the above combinations of a and c only okay yeah so condoms do you prevent against if you use it correctly which means that you are inserting it if it is an internal condom or putting it on if it's an external condom if you are if you are inserting it or or applying or not applying if you're putting it on before contact with pre-com which is the big mistake people make with condoms um if you are doing that beforehand it does provide pretty good protection protection against most of the bacterial ones gonorrhea chlamydia hiv um which is viral but it doesn't

protect around the sorry they're they're hand for those of you just listening they're hand gestures now this is where i want a model and a demo it's okay um an external condom which we used to call a male condom is only going to roll the base of the penis which means that if you've got lesions or sores or anything around the base of the penis on the on the nuts um if if she's got it on the labia we still have skin to skin contact and that's where it's possible with an internal condom which we used to call a female condom there's a lot more well there's a bit more coverage um so there's going to be more coverage around the base of the penis and part of the upper part of the scrotum which apparently is that hand gesture i don't really know what that is um and a little bit

more coverage around the labia but there's still a possibility if you have a sore on your upper thigh ain't no condom in the world gonna stop that contact so so no and two condoms are not safe for her please don't do that can i do the two condom one i kind of did okay yeah kind of did um two condoms are actually going to create micro tears in the condoms from the friction and it's it's not doing you any service um and i i had a student once tell me quite brilliantly like well i don't trust her so i'm double bagging it and i'm like why are you having sex then like are you well there's that part yeah um but yeah if you're if you're if you're double i mean if you want to use a condom in a hormonal method great go for it but two condoms together are not

it's actually putting you at more risk. Oral sex is safe sex. From pregnancy, yes. The look on your face. That's partly true. You are not getting pregnant from oral sex. That is not how the body works. Your reproductive system and your digestive system,

well, first of all, if you swallow, the sperm's getting killed off by the acid in your stomach. However, from STIs, you can still get gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, HPV. I mean, HIV is a risk, but I don't think we've ever had any proven cases through oral sex. But that gets complicated because if I'm doing three things, like if I'm engaging in three behaviors and I got HIV, I'm not going to necessarily be able to pinpoint which one it was but we we say oral sex is a risk for hiv but it's a relatively low risk um you can get a yeast infection so if she's got a yeast infection um and you're going down on her you can absolutely get that in your mouth yeah yeah so no oral sex isn't necessarily safer

if i don't have any sti sores then i'm i can't transmit anything no no no no so with the bacterial Real STIs, the vast majority of women are never going to actually show symptoms, which is one of the reasons I always recommend that, I mean, I think people of all genders should just get tested on a regular basis. If you're going to have sex on a regular basis, get tested on a regular basis. Just get in the habit. It's a good habit to get into. um a lot of times people are like well they didn't tell me they had it and a lot of times they don't know themselves because they're not going to necessarily have sores with things like herpes what we used to say was that if you were having an outbreak you should either make sure you're being really careful with condoms or just not involve that body part and then we realize there's this thing called viral shedding and viral shedding is where you can spread the virus it's harder to do because your viral load is low but you can spread the virus even if you're not

having an outbreak so yeah i mean i still think you should look i always i always tell every like if i'm ever talking about safer sex with people i'm like strip them down naked tell them it's foreplay they'll fall for anything i don't want to say they'll fall for anything take like a headlamp or like get a lab coat like play like role play have some fun lay them down do a physical and if you see something like bumpy or lumpy or or bloody or dischargey you know like go coddle in separate rooms like don't no touching no touching no licking no humping no nothing that's what I kind of I need a t-shirt that says that that's this week's t-shirt no I'm zipping taboos merch no what was it no no kissing no touching no humping no licking no whatever it is just don't

do it um so yeah I I think you should but the thing is you can strip them now naked and you can take a flashlight and that'd be a little mining helmet well those reflective mirrors you're taking a look around you can feel around it's also could be fun because you could touch them in ways that you're like oh i didn't know if i touched you there i'd get that reaction like you could totally work this in but even if you do all of that and see nothing it doesn't mean they have nothing but i think that's just a fun thing to do like hey what do we see today big spotlight yeah why it's you know the thing is people are so serious when it comes to this and i'm like with a new partner like it's already gonna be stupid awkward like why not just have

some fun with it yeah no i think that i think it's great i think it's i'm just the um the visualizations the images you could you could get like a stethoscope and like put it around your neck the pit is really like back in the pit the tv show is like i'm sure people have some role play fantasies around that so like in lab coat you could do a whole thing trying to think of some other role plays you could like work that in doctor patient massage therapist like there's a whole right it's the mind reels um sti testing is only for people who sleep around a lot not only i mean it is for people who sleep who have a lot of sex but if only yeah not for only and and i'm actually there you know especially with portals like i think you should pull up

your results like date one hi my name is here's my portal here's my screenshot of my portal result um yeah no it's i mean anyone can have it and some people have an sti from birth so you can get um herpes um hiv uh anything that's passed on like bacterial is usually treated right after you're born but um some of those viral ones you'll have from the day you were born and had nothing to do with who you slept with so um sti i think if you're going to be sexually active i think you should actually do before you become sexually active um but i think everyone should be getting tested on a regular basis get to know your people Like get to know the people at the clinic because when you have a scare, it is so much easier to go into a place that you've been before and deal with people you've dealt with before and been like, I'm really freaked out.

And you're not, you know, you're someone that they know and that can make it easy, you know, that can help them help you. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other STI myths that you can think of? We don't have a cure for HIV. That's not the myth. The myth is we have a cure for HIV and right now we don't. we've been doing some great work with stem cells and we've been doing, we've, I know we want to do

an episode on HIV, so I don't want to get too far into this, but we do not have a cure that's available to everyone right now. Oh, I didn't like that sentence because that makes it sound like we have it and we're reserving it for a few people. There have been some people who have made it very far in clinical trials and have managed to have amazing results, but there's nothing on the market. There's also no vaccine for it. I still hear that one a lot. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Oh, there's a vaccine. I'm getting a vaccine for everything. And I'm like, what vaccines are you getting that you think you're getting it for everything? I mean, I love vaccines. I think they're great. Yeah, absolutely.

Trying to think of any other STIs. Let me think about this for a second. Okay. if I have an STI I can't get pregnant later and I hear I hear that in more of my older population because they're trying to scare their kids or their grandkids and it comes from a period of time when we weren't so great with the testing and if you do have a bacterial STI can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which can be tied to infertility. It doesn't mean, because the odds are like one in four folks listening to this have or had an STI. It doesn't mean that you give up all hope just because, oh, there's the other one I want to do. Hold on. Let me write it down. We've actually covered it somewhere else, but I think it's good to say.

So there used to be a time where if you had a bacterial STI, it could impact you. And it still can i mean if you have untreated chlamydia or gonorrhea it can do long-term damage which is why it's so important to get tested but it's not a guarantee of like oh well you got chlamydia now you can't have babies if that's what you want that's not true okay the one i wrote down yeah i want to phrase it as a myth because i screwed that up on the last one if you haven't if you have an incurable sti you can't have a good sex life that is absolutely not true it takes a lot of communication um talking to talking to potential partners being super honest with them making sure you know your body and know if you're having an outbreak if you're taking daily

medication making sure you're taking the daily medication but you can absolutely have a happy healthy sex life it's just don't require a bit of effort but please don't don't think that you're broken if you have an sti no one's ever going to love you the not true yeah we did a whole episode on that yeah and i but i think it absolutely bears always bears repeating yeah yeah um all right if you're aroused you shouldn't need lube oh god are we done this is the problem with the myth one i get so angry i feel like on this one i shouldn't have put the no judgment no shame in the introduction should we resend that yeah i can't edit it out so we're rescinding it

temporarily. So we're talking about women because men aren't going to get wet. Can you sorry, I was getting angry. If you're aroused, you don't need lube. Yeah, thank you. So lube is really important for women. We want women to be wet and we want them to be lubricated because it's going to usually feel better unless you like a little bit of pain and discomfort because some people are into that. But it's also going to reduce the chances of infection because when you are dry it's going to lead to micro tears in the vaginal walls this is like the least sexy thing sorry micro tears in the vaginal walls um and so lube helps prevent that but some people can get really turned on and just not get wet enough um and it could be because of

age it could be because medications you're on it could be because of stress levels it could be because you're dehydrated it could be a thousand reasons why you can be really turned on and just not wet at all or just not wet enough um so i feel like people should find their favorite lube and the lube should be the right ph um the right ph levels for your body but yeah i yeah that was popular for a long time i haven't heard that one in in a year or so i'm sure it's going to come back now um men have a higher sex drive than women no we did a whole episode on this i don't know you're just trying to piss me off now people have their own sex drives and we can't compare person a to person b um we also can't

compare person a on a monday to person a on a tuesday because like if i'm super stressed on a Tuesday my sex drive might be lower fatigue can lower your sex drive stress at work stress in the world stresses our world goes to hell I mean all of those things can impact sex drives but naturally speaking like just no

it's it's not that men have a stronger sex drive it's that men have the ability to express it more freely right I don't think we said that right in Charlie's wheelhouse about social conditioning so you should say something about that

proof to everyone this is not a scripted show yeah it's um i you that said that phrase just nails it it is more acceptable for men to be oh what sexually virulent have a drive talk about sex pursue sex um than it is for women or quite frankly non-hetero men yeah yeah so it's not that there's hetero men it is more sorry yeah it is more is normalized for hetero men to to be um on the hunt so to speak yeah for sex and partners and and i i think there is also that that expectation that they pursue sex yes because there can be men who just don't not they the they don't want that pressure they don't wanna they don't for so many reasons yeah yeah so we're gonna do can i give a hint what we're doing next yes so our next episode

is actually going to be sex myths around men because i feel like so often we're i mean men are involved in pregnancy duh um but i feel like so often when we talk about myths we're talking about things that impact women differently so we are going to do a whole thing on sex myths for men yeah so that's going to be our next we're excited i'm excited i shouldn't say we i'm excited what are some other myths that come to mind that if you have sex with someone you will like be imprinted on them and evil like like sex always has this like emotional tie have you do you know what I'm getting at here uh I mean that no I was trying to find it it felt like I did for a minute and

it just escaped me so so I hear this a lot for people with their first sexual partner it's like well once I have sex with someone like I'm forever bonded to them and I'll just be in love with them forever and like I have an emotional connection and some people are some people cannot have sex with someone unless they're emotionally connected and so once they have sex that emotional connection becomes stronger and it could be harder for them to leave that person that ain't true for everybody you do not need to have an emotional connection to have sex with someone well no I already said I was gonna say for some people for some people they don't need a requirement yeah it's not a requirement for some people it might be yeah but it's not a requirement and so

Just because you sleep with someone doesn't mean you're going to be emotionally bonded to them for the rest of their lives. I get that a lot for people before their first time. They're like, well, I have sex with someone. Like, they'll always have a piece of me. And I'm like, no. Not Twilight. No. No.

It's the girl's response, the woman, girl, woman's responsibility for contraception. Hell no. Hell no. Big miss. i mean i mean massive man so in the in the real world she's going to be the one who has to deal with the consequences more right immediately if she gets pregnant she can't get pregnant by herself yeah no no no no um i mean in the real world and let's be honest if someone gets pregnant and doesn't have an abortion then yeah it's going to be her that has to deal with the immediacy of it

so people like well it's her responsibility she ain't getting pregnant on her own like you just said she ain't getting pregnant on her own yeah the really interesting thing i find so when when i talk about contraception in my sex class specifically not every class that i because i talk about sexual health in lots of different places but when i do it in a classroom setting i will tell everyone like so i ask them anonymously because we do a lot of anonymous asking in my question in my class this is done through technology if you were a female and having sex with a man whether you like are straight or not like just for whatever reason you're having sex with a man would you trust him

if he said he was on the pill or on a hormonal method and then the next question and then i don't show the results and then the next thing i do is i ask the men would you be willing to take a hormonal method and i gotta tell you over the years i'm seeing more and more men who are like yeah, I'd be willing to take it. There was a small dip when they had gone through that testing for men's pills and like the side effects were being posted and suddenly men were like, there's no way I'm going to do that. By the way, the same side effects are the same ones that women go through on the pill. No, that's horrific. I'm not doing that. But outside of that, I had been seeing a growing increase in men who say that they would be willing to use a hormonal method to prevent

contraception. I have on the flip side seen a growing number of women who say they would never trust a man who said he was on a hormonal methamphetamine contraception. Because at the end of the day, she's the one who has to deal with, she's the one who has to immediately deal with the repercussions of that. But in my mind, it's shared responsibility. And I have, I think we talked about this in another episode. And if we did, I, well, I'm redoing it. I have a friend who is on the pill and her partner her male partner um has a reminder an alarm on his phone and so his phone because you're supposed to take the pill every day did have we talked about this the alarm noise is a screaming baby

that is amazing i love that so much if you look at like the name of the alarm it's it's literally called no babies um so what happens is that at whatever time it is and i should know because i've been around this a lot because the first time it went off i'm like what the fuck is that um it is a screaming baby and at that point if he is physically in the room with her he will go and get the pill for her to make sure that she's taking it and not because she doesn't trust him but because it's his it's his responsibility as much as hers team effort yeah if they're not in the same place um for whatever reason he will text her or call her whichever is appropriate and say hey you know make sure you take your pill and then he'll follow up usually from what they

told me i mean i'm not following these people around um usually within an hour so he'll he'll follow up with them and make sure that i got taken but that is a wonderful example of shared responsibility um it is except for that time the first time that alarm went off and i'm like why do i hear a screaming baby um it is it is a beautiful example of how both people can be involved and if your insurance does not cover your contraception which it should under aca affordable care act um men can help pay the cost or if you're not on insurance men can help pay the cost there are things meant they can go pick it up if it's a hormonal prescription there are things men can do to be involved in that process and i i just love that it's like

there's such great examples of that anyway all right i think there's uh one last myth that i want to i want to debunk oh dr sue for those of you not watching there's just a very big eye roll by charlie sexual relations is only penile vaginal sex oh god damn um so like yeah i did not have so god that's how old we are yeah right and and we had it we did a whole episode on what is sex and didn't we yeah yeah okay sorry sometimes i'm like wait did i do that in class or did you have that lecture go listen to that episode yeah did i do that on the plane with the guy sitting next to what we where was that um and the question is whether or not how we're defining sex if sex is about

someone potentially getting pregnant then yes that's only through penile vaginal intercourse penetration yes but in terms of sexual behavior i mean part of it is how you label it like there are some people who would not consider fingering to be sexual and some people are like absolutely not, I'll go to hell. So there is some discretion in terms of how you are self-defining it and how that matters for you and where you're putting it into your paradigm of what's acceptable and what's not. I know that when I used to work in reproductive health clinics, our intake form was pretty crappy about that because it'd be like, when's the last time you had sex? And we started changing it to, are you engaging in any sexual behaviors? And suddenly we were having very

different conversations with patients who were opening up to us about other things that they were doing, which some of them increased their risk of STIs that we hadn't been getting from just, are you having penile vaginal intercourse? Or keeping it, not even saying it that explicitly, just saying, are you having sex? And people equating that with penis enters vagina. Yeah. I mean, there are people who have really, I'm thinking about people who are separated by distance either because of work or military service or whatever traveling or whatever it may be like you can maintain a really intimate relationship with someone whether or not you call it sexual will again be based off your definition but it can be really intimate and

really vulnerable to do some of those things and i would put that on the scale of sexual activity because you're having these really intimate conversations and if you're doing it by video like you could be doing things at the same time um so i think that it really is a personal definition yeah i think it's a personal definition and i don't think we as a culture have a right to be like this is where that line is so oh i thought of another one no you already said there's one more and that was it no no no this one this one for sure decide you're gonna want it or i could save it for the when we do the women's myths but i don't feel like i don't know anyway um hymens can only hymens are a signal of virginity

an intact hymen no we have to we all right i'm going to answer this question but then we have to land on something that doesn't piss me off as much okay i'm not sure what that is um but we have to a hymen is not in in any way shape or form an indicator of whether or not a woman has engaged in sexual behaviors. One, if there's no penetration, it doesn't mean the hymen broke. Two, hymen's break in lots of different ways. It can break from physical activity. It can break from trauma and injury. It can break from lots of different ways. It can stretch out. It thins over time. So it's not in any way, shape, or form an indicator. You could be born with a hymen that's missing or just not a complete one. So you don't ever feel it breaking or you don't ever see

and you may never see blood even if there is breaking of the hymen the hymen does not the hymen sorry that's not how you pronounce that the hymen is not an indicator of whether or not a woman has engaged in sexual behavior it's just not and we need to stop that and we need to get away from that damn idea but now we need something funnier um i'm thinking all plumbing calls will lead to you having i don't know it's trying to come up is it like a porn one a porn scene yeah all pizza deliveries will end all sex is like porn sex yeah no god there you go no do you know how many takes some of those are oh my god uh on that note there are for those of you that can look for

porn porn bloopers porn outtakes are hilarious yeah yeah yeah oh um there's one that um only been watched porn that's a good one to end on and a good one to go into the next one yeah um people of all genders watch porn uh if you're underage you probably shouldn't be doing that because it's illegal it may be hard to do for you based on the state and your um and your ip address if you're looking at it online but yeah no every people of all genders there's feminist porn out there like designed and distributed for women so this idea that that porn is is just for men is ridiculous and i would i would also bring up the fact that we're seeing more and more porn in terms of books because like that's the big joke right now

spicy books spicy books i hate the word smut so thank you for saying spicy like there's so many spicy books. And we're talking about it so much more openly. And the prime group for that is women. So yeah, no, the idea that that porn is just for men. That's a that's a better one to end on than pissing me off with the hymen. So all right. Well, everyone, I want to thank you for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos unzipping myths, sex myths and sexual health myths. We hope today's episode did spark some, maybe some new thoughts, some new curiosities will open up the opportunity to have conversations that maybe you've been avoiding or, or anything like that. And that maybe we answered some questions or debunked some myths that you had

held. Yes, Dr. Sue, I don't want to hand up. I do. It's a teacher in me. Because I know you're going to do your whole outro. And I know one of the things you're going to mention is if you have an idea or something you want us to talk about like we'll have our link in our description but if we said something that doesn't make sense to you specifically with a myth or we said something and you're like but i learned something different or can you go more into that we will always tackle misinformation um or myths i don't want to say misinformation but if we said something and you're like wait wait wait i didn't get that how is that true or can you do more please reach out to us you're in why isn't it true yeah you're what you need is more important

that sometimes what we want to talk about so so if we touched on something and you need more let us know yes and if you know someone who might need to hear this episode nicely done thank you please feel free to send them the link to this episode subscribe leave a review leave a comment and um and yeah if you've got a question or a topic or a myth that you want us to unzip further um reach out to us via the link in our episode description i want to give a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting unzipping taboos and don't forget you can get 20 off your order by using code unzipping 20 and then as always we want to give a very huge shout out to Ali O'Brien for our incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Ali. And until next time,

keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care.