7 Ways The Media Is Trying To Sabotage Your Sex Life

7 ... The One That Discourages Condom Use

According to "a study," women who prefer sex without condoms tend to be psychologically healthier than women who prefer their dicks all wrapped-up like a slimy, pulsing Christmas present. Why? Because semen, it turns out, has antidepressant qualities when absorbed by the vagina. Or the mouth, since this study involved oral sex too.

This study is less about women's mental health than mine. I've always suspected that my dick-snot has magical properties, like unicorn's blood. That's why I whisper, "Your balls are good and important" to myself every night before I go to sleep. It's great to have a scientist pop his head up out of my laptop and confirm my suspicions.

Why It's Bullshit

It's an anonymous goddamn survey of how 300 women think their sex-lives are going, and it completely ignored other factors, like how a woman who's having unprotected sex might be doing so with one or more close, trusted partners. I would guess that healthy and regular sexual relations have a bigger impact on a woman's happiness and satisfaction than the male gender's apparently Xanax-filled cum.

The study also found that oral contraceptives made "no significant difference" on the women's mood, so yeah, their measurements probably weren't too precise. But look on the bright side: Someone is finally encouraging people to have unprotected sex. My motto is that it's important that every voice be heard, even the stupid ones that are bad for the world. Wait. That seems like kind of a shitty motto now that I've said it out loud

6 ... The One That Tries To Convince Us To Have Sex With Our Socks On

The crotch-train to Fuckville may be a far smoother ride if you wear your socks, according to this study right over here behind these blue words. A bunch of scientists with better jobs than me sat in a room watching volunteers get freaky with each other and discovered that while women only orgasmed 50 percent of the time without socks, they managed to climb Scream Mountain a whopping 80 percent of the time with socks. They concluded that wrapping your feet up made women feel safer and more emotionally secure.

Why It's Bullshit

Every article that covered this study mentioned that socks make women into orgasm wind-tunnels, but almost none of them mentioned that that wasn't what the study was about at all. It was actually an analysis of the electrical signals inside male and female brains during climaxes. So it's probably worth mentioning that all the fucking was happening while the participants stayed almost entirely immobile with their heads jammed in a brain scanner in the middle of a freezing cold room. Nobody has sex like that recreationally, not even your freaky college roommate with the pet spider. And the only reason any of them were wearing socks while they railed each other was because they asked if they could, because, again, the fuckroom had a draft.

Either these journalists have a major sock fetish, or they're jealous of all our mythologically hot sex lives and are trying to trick us into wearing socks as a form of sabotage. And even if you think their advice is on the level, you might still be wary of taking their advice since in this instance "mythologically hot sex lives" means "manages to orgasm more than 80 percent of the time."

5 ... The One That Said You Should Cum 700 Times Per Year

Being a man means walking around all day with a shaken-up bottle of Coca-Cola and Mentos in your pants. There's not simply an urge to have an orgasm; there's an explosive physical pressure that, if not released, will detonate your prostate like an overfilled water balloon. According to Dr. Michael Roizen, this means that the more a man shoots his load, the longer he will live. "The typical man who has 350 orgasms a year, versus the national average of around a quarter of that, lives about four years longer." Then he adds, "with a straight face," according to the reporter, that 700 cocksquirts per year could add eight years to your life.

Hear that, fellow penis-havers? You can live almost an entire decade longer, and all you have to do is have an orgasm twice a day every day for the rest of your goddamn life.

Why It's Bullshit

"Bullshit" may be too strong a word here, but holy hell is this ambitious. Seven hundred times a year? Even if you start squeezing at the bottom and work your way up, there's only so much toothpaste in the tube, ya know? Now I know that because this is a sex thing some real Casper Van Diens are going to pop up in the comment section to brag about how they cum seven times a day with no troubles at all, and that's fine for them. But I am just a squishy mortal over here, and my naughty bits are capable of becoming bruised, deflated, and limp. Though maybe I'm just not strong enough to survive those extra eight years, and this is evolution at work.

Or maybe scientists are trying to trick us into jerking off all day so they can steal our jobs and women.

4 ... The One That Said You Should Bone While Sick

When flu season hits, sex may be the best way to seek relief. Turns out that orgasms release a flood not only of crotch-juice but of antibodies called immunoglobulin A, which are the foot soldiers in the defensive army of your immune system. So, the harder you fuck, the stronger your resistance to those nasty germs. On top of that, the exertion of sex clears your sinuses, which allows easy breathing, better rest, and a quicker return to health.

So we should all sex our sniffles away, huh? Well ...

Why It's Bullshit

When your sinuses get cleared, I don't have to tell you where that snot goes, right? I know that kinks are both healthy and common but most people are put off by the thought of getting a blast of boogery buckshot mid-thrust.

On top of that, there's the fact that this illness is highly communicable. I know that it's hard to keep from spreading a cold to your partner, but for crying out loud, at least give it a shot. Let's not resign ourselves to half-hearted fever-humping all weekend, okay sweetheart? There's still a chance I'll be healthy enough to research a real article about a genuinely insightful and interesting topic instead of just riffing on obvious sex jokes again.

You know, the problem may be less that scientists are trying to sabotage our sex lives and more that they just don't know what a real sex life looks like. Particularly with the next entry ...

3 ... The One That Said Waiting For Marriage Makes Sex Better

Apparently staying a virgin until your wedding night results in a far more satisfying sex life. Which is a relief, because it means the two sides in the ancient war between Science and Religion have finally found a common ground, and they're going to have dirty sex right on that common ground as soon as they get married. Now let me just read a couple more sentences in this article about the study, and then have my thought process comically cut off mid-

Oh, never mind. This study came right out of Brigham Young University, a Mormon college in the most religious district of the most religious state in the entire country.

Why It's Bullshit

So, yeah, this study is a religious institution claiming that their for-real-science-stuff proves a central tenet of their religion. It smells like bullshit right away, but it still surveyed "2,035 married people, ranging in age from 19 to 71, married from less than six months to more than 20 years." Yes, they were overwhelmingly religious, and yes, the person doing the study doesn't mention myriad other problems with his sample size, but that sample size is still 100 times bigger than the one used in the study about sock-sex.

So while religious bias isn't great for science, it doesn't seem to pervert the results any more than trying to fit the findings into a headline. And if you want an example of that, there's this next one ...

2 ... The One That Said That Having More Sex Is Bad

Think more boner-ballets will make you a happier ballerina? It won't, according to this study that says increasing the frequency of sex within relationships actually makes you sadder. After picking out two groups of couples, they told one to double their sexual activity and the other to keep having the same amount of sex as before. "The findings were a surprise and a disappointment," said the researchers. "We were expecting that the people who had more sex would enjoy it a lot and would be happier, and it would be good for the relationship. Instead, what we found was that the group who had more sex enjoyed it less."

So sex is ... bad? Wait a minute ...

Why It's Bullshit

One of the first things you learn when you start living on your own is that fun things have diminishing returns. Doing something you enjoy twice as much as you want to turns that fun thing into a chore, no matter what it is. Eating bacon and fucking all day sounds really fun and hyper-masculine in theory, but if you try it out, you'll find that you quickly run out of energy and then die of a Hindenburgian coronary.

The title of that article is "More Sex Can Make You Less Happy," but the conclusion of this study isn't that sex is bad. It's that forcing yourself to have twice as much sex as you want to have is bad, which, like, yeah. We already knew that, because we've had sex before. Unlike you, Science, you fucking nerd.

1 ... The One That Said Sex Quality Is Based On Housework

Here's a study that says a fair division of chores will lead to a better sex life. It's controversial because it contradicts an earlier study that found that when men contribute to "feminine" housework it results in less sex. So what's the truth? How many dishes should a man wash if we wants to fuck?

Why It's Bullshit

Here's a fascinating sentence buried in that first link that, I think, blows this whole damn thing wide open:

"The same study also found there's no relationship between the amount of housework male partners completed and the sexual functioning of a couple."

So, wait: How can a man mopping more often lead to more sex if the amount of housework has "no relationship" with sex? The scientist (and former couples therapist) explains: "In any relationship, the amount of housework is going to mean something different based on the couple's context, based on their own expectations for what each partner should be doing, and their comparison levels of what happens with other couples they know."

See, the findings weren't that Equal Housework = More Sex; they were Fair Relationship = More Sex. Because there's nothing hotter than working as one to make dinner, coming together to scrape that crispy cheese off the cookie sheet, and moving with the flowing elegance of one blissfully united entity to empty the recyc-

Holy shit, I'm old now, aren't I?

JF Sargent has aged like a fine wine: He's pretentious, smells like wet basement, and is really only enjoyed by older women. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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