Table of Contents
Myths about sex survive for a very specific reason: they get repeated far more often than they get checked. Psychologists have studied this pattern in general, under the name the illusory truth effect, first documented experimentally in the late 1970s: the more often a person hears a claim, regardless of whether it's true, the more true it starts to feel. Sexual myths are an almost perfect breeding ground for this effect, because the topic is one most people feel awkward fact checking out loud, even when something sounds obviously off.
This lesson picks five myths that are common enough you've almost certainly heard at least one of them stated as plain fact, and traces each one back to the actual research. In a few cases, that research doesn't just fail to support the myth, it was designed specifically to test and disprove it.
Myth: "Men Think About Sex Every Seven Seconds"
This is possibly the most repeated sex statistic in modern culture, and it has never had any real research behind it. If it were true, it would work out to more than 8,000 sexual thoughts in a single 16 hour waking day, an obviously implausible number the moment you actually do the arithmetic.
In 2011, psychologist Terri Fisher and colleagues at Ohio State University set out to test it properly. Their study gave college students a tally counter and asked them to click it every time they had a thought about sex, food, or sleep, over the course of a full week, rather than relying on the vague guesses most earlier research had used. The result: the study found a median of almost 19 sexual thoughts per day among young men, and nearly 10 per day among young women, figures that firmly discredit the seven second claim. Just as interesting, Fisher's team found that men also reported thinking more often about food and sleep than women did, suggesting the gap wasn't really about sex specifically, so much as a broader difference in how often people notice and report their own physical, need related thoughts. Fisher summarized it plainly, noting that a person's comfort with their own sexuality predicted their number of sexual thoughts far better than their gender did.
Myth: "Virginity Can Be Proven by a Physical Exam"
This myth has caused real, documented harm, which is exactly why three major global health and human rights bodies felt it necessary to issue a joint statement rejecting it outright. In 2018, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Office, and UN Women released a formal interagency statement addressing so called virginity testing, a practice still performed in at least 20 countries. Their conclusion was unambiguous: virginity testing has no scientific or clinical basis, and there is no examination that can prove whether a girl or woman has had sexual intercourse. The statement went further, noting plainly that the appearance of a hymen cannot reliably indicate whether someone has been sexually active, a point that directly contradicts the folk belief still driving this practice in many places.
The three organizations didn't stop at the science. Their statement also called the practice a violation of the human rights of girls and women, one that can be detrimental to their physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, and called on health professionals worldwide to refuse to perform it. This is a case where a scientific myth and a serious human rights issue turned out to be the exact same problem.
Myth: "Pulling Out Doesn't Work as Birth Control"
The withdrawal method gets dismissed constantly, often by people who are otherwise careful about evidence, as essentially equivalent to using nothing at all. The actual data tells a more complicated story. According to the Guttmacher Institute's most recent effectiveness figures, compiled from national survey data, withdrawal has a typical use failure rate in the range of 14% to 27%, depending on the study, with a perfect use failure rate as low as 4%. For comparison, the same data source reports a typical use failure rate of 13% for male condoms, meaning the two methods sit far closer together in real world effectiveness than most people assume.
| Method | Typical use failure rate | Perfect use failure rate |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawal | 14% to 27% | 4% |
| Male condom | 13% | 2% |
| Hormonal pill, patch, ring | ~7% | Under 1% |
| IUD or implant | Under 1% | Under 1% |
This is not an endorsement.
None of this means withdrawal is the recommended method for someone who wants strong protection against pregnancy, and it offers no protection at all against sexually transmitted infections. The point isn't that the myth has it backwards; it's that the real number is more nuanced than the flat dismissal most people repeat, and Guttmacher researchers have noted that the method has been largely ignored and devalued by reproductive health providers, likely because of negative assumptions about its effectiveness rather than a careful look at the actual comparative data.
Myth: "Real Rape Looks a Certain Way"
This one isn't a single myth so much as a whole cluster of them, and it has a formal name in the research literature: rape myths, defined by psychologist Martha Burt in a landmark 1980 study as prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists. Burt's examples included ideas like assuming a victim who didn't fight back "must have wanted it," or that assault by a stranger is somehow more legitimate than assault by someone known to the victim.
Burt didn't just document these beliefs, she measured what predicted them. Her research found that acceptance of rape myths was strongly related to gender role stereotyping, adversarial beliefs about the sexes, and general acceptance of interpersonal violence, based on interviews with nearly 600 adults. Researchers Kim Lonsway and Louise Fitzgerald later refined the definition further, describing rape myths as attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but widely and persistently held, which serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression. This body of research matters enormously for this course, because these exact beliefs are what Module 9 identifies as some of the biggest barriers to victims being believed and supported.
A myth about sex rarely stays a harmless misunderstanding for long. It usually ends up doing someone real harm before anyone bothers to check it.
A line I say to every new cohort
Myth: "Sexual Orientation Can Be Changed Through Therapy"
Few sexual myths have been studied as rigorously, and rejected as formally, as this one. In 2009, the American Psychological Association convened a task force to review every peer reviewed study on so called sexual orientation change efforts published in English between 1960 and 2007, a total of 83 studies. Their conclusion, adopted as official APA policy, was direct: the task force concluded that efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.
The task force chair was blunt about the quality of the evidence practitioners had been citing, stating that contrary to the claims of sexual orientation change advocates, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation, and noting that few of the underlying studies were methodologically sound enough to draw firm conclusions from at all. A later 2015 study surveying over 1,600 people who had personally undergone these efforts found that only 3.2% reported even a slight change in their orientation, while documented harms, including depression and relationship difficulties, were common. Multiple U.S. states have since cited this research directly in laws banning the practice for minors.
Why These Myths Keep Circulating Anyway
None of these five myths lack for evidence against them. What they lack is repetition of the correction at anywhere near the volume of the original claim. This is precisely why this course keeps returning to the same habit: treating "I've heard that" and "that's been verified" as two completely different categories, and getting comfortable saying "let me check that" out loud, even about something sexual, even in a conversation where it might feel awkward to pause and ask.
A Few Meta Level Misunderstandings
"If a myth has been around forever, doesn't that suggest there's something to it?"
No. Longevity is a sign of how well an idea spreads, not a sign of whether it's accurate. Several of the myths in this lesson, including the virginity testing myth, have persisted for generations specifically because they were rarely challenged out loud.
"Doesn't 'busting' a myth like withdrawal's effectiveness just encourage riskier choices?"
Presenting the real comparative numbers isn't the same as recommending a method. Accurate information, including the fact that withdrawal offers no STI protection, allows for a genuinely informed choice, which is a better outcome than either exaggerated fear or false confidence.
"Is it fair to call something people sincerely believe a 'myth'?"
Sincerity and accuracy are unrelated. Many people who hold rape myths, for instance, sincerely believe them and would be uncomfortable being told otherwise. The term simply describes a belief that doesn't hold up against the evidence, regardless of how genuinely or widely it's held.
A Habit Worth Building
- Next time you hear a confident sexual "fact" repeated in conversation, notice whether you've ever actually seen it sourced anywhere.
- Pick one belief about sex you've held for a long time without ever checking it, and spend ten minutes looking into where it actually comes from.
- Notice which of the five myths in this lesson surprised you most. That's usually a useful signal of where your own information gaps are.
- Practice saying "I'm not sure that's actually true, let me look into it" out loud. It gets easier with repetition, just like the myths themselves did.
Sources cited in this lesson:
Fisher, T.D., Moore, Z.T. & Pittenger, M.J. (2012). Sex on the Brain? An Examination of Frequency of Sexual Cognitions as a Function of Gender, Erotophilia, and Social Desirability. Journal of Sex Research, 49(1), 69 to 77
World Health Organization, UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) & UN Women (2018). Eliminating Virginity Testing: An Interagency Statement
Guttmacher Institute. Contraceptive Effectiveness in the United States, fact sheet, and Better Than Nothing or Savvy Risk-Reduction Practice? The Importance of Withdrawal
Burt, M.R. (1980). Cultural Myths and Supports for Rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(2), 217 to 230
Lonsway, K.A. & Fitzgerald, L.F. (1994). Rape Myths: In Review. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(2), 133 to 164
American Psychological Association (2009). Report of the Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation