Aphrodisiacs kind of work; men don’t think about sex every seven seconds. And most people have sex less often than you think.
“Men think about sex every seven seconds.”
There are several variations on this myth, but all claim men think about sex every few seconds or minutes. The trouble is it's really hard to pin down where these myths started.
According to the Kinsey Institute, "54% of men think about sex everyday or several times a day." That stat is from a 1994 survey called "Sex in America", which also says that 43% of men only think about sex a few times per month or a few times per week, and 4% less than once a month.
The "every seven seconds" myth is easily perpetuated because there's a widely held belief that men are physically wired to want sex all the time. But even Snopes doesn't seem to know exactly where the myth, and variations on it, originated.
Kelly Oakes / BuzzFeed
"The average penis length is 8 inches."
The average erect penis size is between 5 and 7 inches, according to both the Kinsey Institute and the National Health Service. When flaccid, typical penis length varies more — averaging from 1 to 4 inches.
And, in case you were wondering, the NHS says: "A penis would only be considered unusually small if it was less than 3 inches (7.6 centimetres) long when erect." So there you go.
Leks_Laputin
"Certain foods work as aphrodisiacs to boost your sex drive."
Foods that make you feel healthier and more energetic overall might help you out in the bedroom, but only indirectly. But just because there's no evidence behind many foods that are touted as aphrodisiacs, it doesn't mean all that effort in the kitchen is wasted.
It's down to the placebo effect. Dr. Petra Boynton, senior lecturer in International Health Care Research at University College London, told BuzzFeed: "If you've made a meal — you've thought about it, you've read a recipe, you've got the ingredients, you've cooked it, and eaten it together — you've invested so much already that you're already in a frame of mind of wanting sex."
Essentially, Boynton said, if you believe they'll work, they'll work. "It's very difficult to pinpoint — is that just because you ate an oyster, or is it everything that's gone on around that?"
sarymsakov
"Watching porn rewires your brain."
It does — but that's because everything we do "rewires" our brains in some way. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just how our brain incorporates experiences. As Sense About Science's Bad Sex Media Bingo site puts it, "Learning 'rewires' the brain too, but we don't go around trying to get schools banned."
People who say that porn rewires the brain tend to use this as a way to silence any nuanced discussion around the issue.
Sex and relationship therapist Sarah Berry told BuzzFeed: "Regarding porn addiction, where a person feels their work lives, relationships, and/or social lives are being disrupted, if porn does 'rewire' the brain, it does not do so permanently."
"Rather than blaming porn, we need to accept it is a part of our culture and to work with it rather than against it."
