What Is The Most Common Misconception You Encounter About Women's Health And Sexuality?

This could be a really long answer! There’s so much  that people of all sexes don’t understand about women’s bodies, including basic anatomy and physiology.

Like the fact that women have sex and urinate through two different openings.

And that the presence or absence of a hymen is not always indicative of her sexual history.

That a woman’s body can’t prevent itself from getting pregnant on its own. There are definitely things she can do ahead of time to reduce the chances of getting pregnant. She can opt to use hormonal contraception or barrier methods like condoms. And there are things she can do after sex to reduce her chances of getting pregnant, like use emergency contraception. She unlike what most people think, her body can’t “shut down” a pregnancy on its own.

The fact that unless she’s using hormones, a woman can’t control when she gets her period.

And let’s not forget what some people don’t know about nerve endings and pleasure. While most people think of women having pleasure and orgasm from penetration, that’s usually not the case. Women are more likely to experience orgasm and pleasure through masturbation. The reason is that the majority of a woman’s nerve endings in the genital area are in the clitoris, which is outside the vagina. If you want to know more about this just ask

This list could go on and on, and thanks to social media, my students are constantly updating me with more things that people talk about publicly that just show how little they know about women’s bodies.

But if we go beyond just how a woman’s body works, I think one of the biggest misconceptions I run into is that a woman’s “job” is just to make babies.

I want to acknowledge that there are religions and cultures that believe that a woman’s “job” is to have children. And I don’t want to get into a religious  or cultural debate. If that’s what you believe, then fine. That’s your  belief. But we have to acknowledge that not everyone agrees that a woman’s “job” is to have kids.

One of the problems that occurs when we look at women’s bodies as merely potential wombs is that sometimes medical decisions are made with only that in mind. If you don’t think this is real, ask a woman in her 20’s how hard it would be to find a doctor willing to perform a tubal ligation. Especially if she’s childless.

I’ve had many women over the years tell me that even though they know they don’t want kids, they can’t get a doctor to sterilize them. The doctor’s reasoning being that the women’s husbands might want to have kids one day. And if they’re unmarried, then the argument is that their potential husbands might want to have children.

Let that sink in for a minute.

We’re limiting what a woman can do to her body because of her potential future husband? First that’s incredibly heteronormative. Second, getting pregnant and giving birth in this country can be dangerous.

The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world. And we’re not allowing women to take measures to stop them from getting pregnant? Because we think that women getting pregnant is their main “job”?

What does all this mean for the increasing number of women who are choosing to be childless?

And what does all of this mean for women who can’t have children?

There’s so much more I could talk about with this one, but I think we need to talk about how to start fixing it. I think we need to do a better job of educating people about women’s bodies and how they work. And not just during the childbearing years, but across the lifespan.

Until next time, be safe and have fun!

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