Busting myths (not balls)
Let's clear a few things up...
Hi Everyone,
Happy hump day and thanks so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter! If you’re enjoying it, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed!
This is a weekly newsletter from me, Dani Faith Leonard , a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. It’s an extension of the live comedy show ADULT SEX ED that I’ve hosted since 2018. The show is about plugging the holes in our education as adults, so I’ll be doing just that (if you want to know more about this newsletter, here’s a description on substack). Ready to get a little smarter? Okay, let’s go!
It’s officially holiday season and the rest of the posts this year will be holiday-themed (I can’t wait to tell you about Santa porn). Something recently happened in my life that inspired this fact-filled and myth-busting newsletter. Since I’m discussing medical information and medication below, I should give the disclaimer that I’m a comedian and filmmaker, definitely not a doctor.
A few months ago, I was seeing my own doctor and discussing a condition called PMDD, which stands for Premenstrual dysphoric disorder. PMDD is a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). It causes a range of emotional and physical symptoms every month during the week or two before your period. A few of my friends suffer too, and my doctor suggested that I try taking the drug Lexapro for a few days before my period each month.
I brought the script to the pharmacist, who was a young dude that looked like he graduated college at 14. He looked at the instructions and panicked. I saw him doing math on a mirror in his mind, like all the genius protagonists do in movies. So, if a woman gets a period and requires 5 pills every time, multiply the square root, carry the two…
Readers—the young man gave me ninety pills. The next month I got an alert that my prescription automatically refilled. It’s now months later and I have hundreds of pills.
It reminded me of the now famous story about the preparation for astronaut Sally Ride’s trip into space. Tampons were packed with their strings connecting them, like a strip of sausages, so they wouldn’t float away. Engineers asked Ride, "Is 100 the right number?" She would be in space for a week. "That would not be the right number," she told them. They claimed they just wanted to be safe. SAFE FROM WHAT?
Since I started hosting the Adult Sex Ed live show in 2018, there have been a bunch of misconceptions that have come up. It’s not just the misconceptions that we all had as kids, but the ones that so many adults still believe to be true. Here are some of the ones that came up:
Myth: Period cycles are all the same.
What’s supposedly around thirty? Me on a dating app. But also the ideal period cycle. Some people mistakenly believe that all cycles need to be exactly 28 days in order to be considered normal. Some other people, like the sweetly confused pharmacist don’t seem to know anything about periods at all. The average length of a menstrual cycle is 28 days. However, a cycle can range in length from 21 days to about 35 days and still be normal.
Myth: You can get an STD from a toilet seat.
If you grew up during the AIDS crisis, you might have learned scary shit like this in sex ed, especially if you had the abstinence-only kind. A 2019 study found that 1/3 of American adults believed that you can get an STD from a toilet seat. Organisms that cause STDs could live for a very short time on the surface of a toilet seat so you’d have to do some serious genital rubbing on the seat immediately after the last person. Who in their right mind is doing that in a public restroom? Even if you tried (and why would you), the chance is extremely, extremely low.
Myth: You should double-bag for extra protection.
In the same study, 26% percent of those surveyed also incorrectly thought wearing two condoms would double their protection from STDs. Who are these people double-bagging like they work at Trader Joes? Just stick with one good condom! Double-bagging is more likely to cause condom breakage, in case you’re wondering.
Want to explore more myths? Here are some past newsletters you might like:
Next week, I’ll be in full holiday mode. For now, I’m just drowning in pills.