Don't Put That in There!
Read Don't Put That in There! Online
Authors: Aaron E. Dr. Carroll,Rachel C. Dr. Vreeman
Tags: #Itzy, #kickass.to
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FOR
Aimee,
whose contributions to this book shall remain nameless, but appreciated
AND
Elizabeth and Becky,
because we can talk about anything, including sex
Contents
Batters Up! The Battle of the 7-Inch Penis.
You Shouldn’t Have Sex Before the Big Game
Foreskin and Seven Years Ago …
There’s Always Semen When You’re Screamin’
You’re Going to Break That Boner
You Are Going to Pump That Geyser Dry
Wearing a Bra Will Keep Your Boobs from Sagging
Bald Is Best (The Bush Versus the Brazilian)
G-men, G-spots—They Don’t Exist!
Nobody Has Pubic Hair These Days
Little Lost Tampon, Where Did It Go?
A Woman Needs Her Clitoris Stimulated to Have an Orgasm
Buy Our Product for That Clean, Fresh Feeling!
Bigger Breasts Are Less Sensitive
Oysters, Chocolate, Bananas … Viagra?
It Will Really Turn a Woman On If You Do the Laundry
Methuselah Had Sex Ten Times a Day
Squeezing Breasts Is All Fun and Games
Television Makes You Oversexed
It’s Only a Matter of Time Until a Man Cheats
There’s a Ten-Year Difference in Sexual Peaks
Men Want It More. Way, Way More.
I Can’t Do That … It Will Give Me Hemorrhoids
You’ll Never Go Gray … Down There
Let’s Play Back Door, Front Door, Back Door …
Married People Don’t Play—with Themselves!
Women Are Turned Off by Sweaty, Stinky Men
Did She or Didn’t She? Faking It for Beginners.
Masturbation Will Make You Go Blind
Sex Can Give You a Heart Attack
You Can’t Get Pregnant During Your Period
If a Woman Has an Orgasm, It Is More Likely She Will Get Pregnant
You Can’t Get Pregnant If It Was a Rape
Birth Control Pills Don’t Work as Well If You’re on Antibiotics
If You Put on the Pounds, Birth Control Pills Won’t Work
Want a Baby Girl? Turn This Way, Bend That Way.
Part V: Sexually Transmitted Infections
You Didn’t Get That STD from Sex
But What About Crabs? I Know You Can Get Those from the Toilet Seat!
Condoms Will Protect You from Anything
You Don’t Need the HPV Vaccine If You’re Not Having Sex
The HPV Vaccine Encourages Girls to Have Sex
You Better Not Kiss Anyone with HIV
Also by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman
Introduction
Who do you ask when you have a question about sex? Are there things about sex you’ve always wondered about, but never dared to bring up with anyone?
Most of us have learned all sorts of things about sex. But, think about where you got your information. You talked about sex with your friends, you learned some basics from your sex ed class, you saw some interesting things on TV or on the Internet, and you figured some things out from experience.
You may have plenty of information about sex, but we would bet that some of it is wrong. People believe all kinds of things about sex that are just not true! And even if you like talking about sex, you might not be as eager to ask questions about whether your ideas about sex are correct.
People believe many myths, half-truths, and outright lies when it comes to sex. When we wrote our first myth-busting book,
Don’t Swallow Your Gum!
we included a whole section on myths about sex and getting pregnant. They were hugely popular. When we wrote
Don’t Cross Your Eyes…,
we added some more myths in this vein. Once again, the sex myths seemed to be the ones people wanted to talk about most.
After all, who doesn’t love talking about sex?
Well … believe it or not, it was not our dream to become sex experts! Sex is not all we want to talk about.
Aaron’s favorite story about writing our first myth-busting book is how much he teased Rachel over her inability to defend whether “cum” should or should not be spelled with a “u.” Ask her. Watch her blush.
Aaron has three kids who are still pretty young, and he has had a hard time deflecting conversations about this book from them. His daughter, age seven at the time of writing this, seems to be on to him, and is constantly pressuring him for more information about the book.
Nonetheless, as pediatricians, part of our job is to teach adolescents about sex. As researchers, our job is to help figure out the science about what works and what doesn’t work to keep people healthy. And as professional myth-debunkers, we can’t let you believe things about sex and your body that just are not true.
So, we overcame our inhibitions to shine some light (and evidence) on the most popular and prevalent sex myths around. For those of you who are new to these books, here’s how it all works:
One of the skills necessary to our job as health services researchers is to understand health research and translate what it means for the general public. So for each of these myths, we scoured the world’s medical literature, looking for scientific studies to prove the idea true or false. You’d be shocked at how often real research has been done on these topics. We bring the science to you, explain what it means, and—more often than not—detail why these myths are or aren’t true.
When you read this book, it’s important that you remember we do not just want to give you our opinions. We’re showing you, through data, why we think an idea is a myth. We won’t just tell you that myths aren’t real; we’ll show you why.
This is the book that will answer all those crazy questions you have had about sex. Plus, if you read it, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be the life of the party. Our friends love just hearing the chapter titles in this book. Imagine how popular you’ll be when you become the sexpert who can discuss them at length.
Some of the myths in this book are lighthearted fun. Others are deadly serious. We apply the same research and scrutiny to all of them. If we can’t find evidence, we’ll say so. But more often than not, science exists to tell us whether that sex idea is true or myth. When there is science, we should use it. Get ready for all of the sex science.
Happy myth-busting!
Part One
MEN
Penis Size Matters
One of our friends debunks the myth this way: “It’s not the size of the wave, but the motion of the ocean.” There are a lot of different ways to phrase this, but it comes down to one important question: Does it matter how big the guy’s penis is? We will start by looking at whether penis size matters to men who have sex with women, then whether it matters to the women themselves, and then whether it matters to men who have sex with men.
If you ask your friends, you might hear all kinds of answers to this question. Some claim that size does not matter at all as long as the man knows how to use their penis well. Others swear that the best sex of their lives was with a particularly well-endowed partner. And some will say that sex with an exceptionally large penis was not enjoyable, and even painful. Both popular opinion and surveys suggest that men are very concerned about the question of how big they are and how the size of their penis compares to other men’s penises.
Scientists have looked at the influence of penis size on all sorts of things—from height and body fat to sexual satisfaction and the risk of having various infections. The studies tell us that penis size does matter, but not necessarily in the ways that you might think.
A huge Internet survey of more than 50,000 heterosexual men and women investigated penis size and satisfaction. In this survey, most men reported that they had an average-sized penis (66 percent), while 22 percent said their penis was large and 12 percent rated it as small. No actual penis sizes were measured, so this study relied only on what these men said about themselves. (Remember, they might not have the right idea about what an average penis size really is!) About half of the men (55 percent) were satisfied with their penis size, but 45 percent wanted to have a larger penis and 0.2 percent wanted to be smaller. In contrast, 85 percent of women reported being satisfied with their partner’s penis size. This suggests that size is less important to women, or that they are more likely to be satisfied with their partner’s penis size, than he is with his own size.
In this study, reporting that you had a big penis was linked to other body traits that are generally thought to be good. The self-reported penis size correlated positively with being taller and with having less body fat. The men reporting having larger penises also reported being more attractive. While some people might call that good luck or good genes—whatever it is that makes you both well-endowed and handsome—this finding could also reflect very confident individuals who think that everything about themselves is great, from how handsome they are to how big their penis is. This is one of those unexpected ways in which penis size might matter. How you see your penis might be correlated with how you see the rest of you.
Other studies have looked at how penis size, body shape, and height might be related to each other. Scientists have wondered whether evolution pushed these traits together because women might have considered all of them when they were considering their mating options. An evolutionary force might be at play if women were making their decisions about who to mate with based on whom they found the most attractive. If women found penis size very attractive, then women might be more likely to pick men with bigger penises, and then humans might be pushed toward having bigger and bigger penises.
Along these lines, scientists wanted to assess how much penis size plays into women’s ideas about who is attractive. To do this, they set up studies where women evaluate life-sized digital pictures of men of various proportions. It turns out that penis size, body shape, and height are all significant factors in who women think are hot. Increasing penis size in these digital men did increase how often women thought they were attractive, but the effect got smaller and smaller past a certain point. Penis size actually had a stronger effect on attractiveness in taller men than in shorter men, and the same was true for men with a more masculine body shape (which is defined as having wider shoulders and narrower hips). This means that increasing the size of the penis on a taller man got them a higher rating of attractiveness than increasing the size of the penis by the same amount for a shorter man. It turns out that height and penis size matter about the same in these judgments of attractiveness. Larger penis size and taller height had almost the exact same influence on a woman’s rating of the man as attractive.
Of course, just because penis size may factor into a woman’s judgment of how attractive someone looks does not mean that this will influence their decisions about their partners. After all, 85 percent of the women in that big survey did say they were satisfied with their partner’s penis size. Plus, an important question remains: Does penis size actually influence sexual pleasure?