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[Sexplanations intro]

I don't like everyone. I don't feel good all the time. I poop, I cry, I get lonely — I'm as human as the rest of you, which means that sometimes I need to just cool it and scroll through pretty things on the internet. Pretty things and click-bait fact lists. Did you know that strawberries aren't berries, they're actually a part of the rose family?

Anyway. I go through these lists, and when I come across a sexuality-related fact, I think: "I have to learn more, see if it's real, suss out the details and then tell people!" So here we are. Nine random sex facts—tripled checked and corrected if they're off—originally published by Fact Republic.

One: The split gill mushroom has over 23,328 distinct sexes, but they can't all successfully mate with one another. Each sex can only be fertile with 22,960 other sexes. Sure enough, John Raper published these findings in his text Genetics of Sexuality in Higher Fungi. The genome of the split gill mushroom was sequenced in 2010, and an article about the genetics was published in Nature Biotechnology the same year. Let me just say that if we were like this mushroom, and wanted to reproduce, it would mean we could mate with 98.4% of people! It wouldn't be complex sex, just frotteurism, or bumping each other, but 98.4%! Compared to some people who struggle to find a single partner, ahhhhh....mmmmm...!

Fact 2: The University of Oregon's "O" hand sign is equivalent in American Sign Language to screaming "vagina." Kind of. University of Oregon's hand signal was definitely conic like the ASL sign for "vagina," but close to the face and yelling expressions. They've since rounded out the hands to be more of an "O." This is an ASL vagina. Screaming vagina would be a C cupped in front of your mouth and then you draw it away from your face like you're yelling out, and then "vagina," down here, which is different than the University of Oregon Duck cheer, which is like, "Aaahhhhh!"

Fact 3: The human womb has oxygen levels equivalent to the top of Mount Everest, designed to keep the fetus asleep 95% of the time. It's true; in utero, the oxygen taken in through the umbilical cord is only 17% of what I'm breathing now. And that's still significantly less than the summit of Mt. Everest, where the blood's oxygen level can drop as low as 40%. Seventeen percent to forty percent.

Four: The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth charity, was started when HBO wanted to air a helpline number during a short film about a suicidal gay teen. Upon realizing that no such hotline existed, the filmmakers decided to create one themselves. That is my kind of awesome. And it's true! The film called Trevor won an Academy Award in 1995. In 1998 when they aired it on HBO, the Trevor Project was in place as a crisis and suicide prevention resource for LGBTQ youth. The hotline and website still run 24 hours a day and the Trevor Project conducted and published a national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health from over 34,000 respondents. Fact from that survey: 2 in 3 LGBTQ youth reported that someone tried to convince them to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. No! Mind your own business! Leave them alone!

OK, back to work. Number 5: a man's brain tumor caused him to orgasm whenever he looked at a safety pin. Sure enough, a case of temporal lobe epilepsy with an orgasmic component published by Dr. L. B. Warneke explains how sexual disorders have been reported in conjunction with temporal lobe dysfunction. One was the famous case reported Mitchell (13) of a patient with epilepsy accompanied by a fetish for safety pins. Seizures were specifically triggered in the patient whenever he looked at a bright, shiny pin. Seizure was accompanied by a pleasurable sensation described as "thought satisfaction," and was further described as being "better than intercourse." This patient had a left anterior temporal lobe epileptic focus, and the epilepsy and fetish both being cured by an anterior temporal lobectomy on the left side. Well then. OK. I wonder if the man was pleased with the results. 

Six: A Secret Service agent in the USA had trouble extraditing a hacker from Romania, so he pretended he was a woman flirted for seven months online, and nabbed the criminal when he flew to Boston with three boxes of grape-flavoured condoms. Okay, a clear explanation is that there were four Romanian hackers that broke into eighty-thousand plus American financial accounts. In order to make an arrest, a female Secret Service agent honey-potted one of them pretending to be a casino employee able to get him a complimentary weekend of fun at her US resort. FUN. Her colleagues in the Secret Service aided with making everything look legit so then the criminal hacker took the bait and flew to the States where he was then searched and arrested. In his possessions were clothes, jewellery, money, and quote, "three very large boxes of grape-flavoured Romanian condoms. Flavoured condoms, by the way, are intended for oral sex, not vaginal or anal sex, so hopefully, he was just planning on getting and/or giving lots of blowjobs that weekend, nothing more. 

Seven: Powdered wigs became popular to hide syphilis symptoms. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by bacteria which these days we can cure with antibiotics. If you don't cure it, you may experience canker sores, blisters on the hands and feet, a rash, watery nasal fluid, pig-shaped teeth, bone pain, vision and hearing loss, joint swelling, numbness, problems concentrating, headaches, seizures, fatigue, fever, flattening of the nose, genital scarring, and hair loss. My understanding is that the 1500's through the 1800's, long locks were in vogue, which meant that patchy scalps from syphilis were horrifying. Powdered wigs were worn to hide the bald spots and became widely popular in 1665 when the King of France started coping with his syphilis symptoms in the same fashion.

Fun fact number eight: In order to advertise their services, prostitutes in ancient Greece wore sandals that left the words "follow me" imprinted in the dirt as they walked. Yes. Here it is in Greek. Those clever Greeks. Advertising on the move reminds me of the clever Romans who carved erect penises into the stone streets and on buildings to point like signposts towards the brothels. Towards the brothels!

Last one. Less than a quarter of US workers report using math any more complicated than basic fractions and percentages during the course of their jobs. Do you get why this is an intriguing sex fact? Seventy-five percent of us use no more than fourth-grade math, but we're still required to take math classes and tests well into college. Whereas Ninety-nine percent of people will have sex at some point in their lives, and One hundred percent will have sexual experiences like puberty, attraction, and/or negotiation. Why are we prioritizing the quadratic formula over intimacy? And before you say, "math helps with problem-solving and critical thinking, it's not all about actual numbers," studying sexuality is great for problem-solving, critical thinking, analytics, human relations, independence, self-esteem, social literacy, and getting off so that you're less of an asshole. Sex fact: too little time and too few resources are invested in sex education. So thank you for staying curious, thank you for supporting us.

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It's like that scene from a League of Their Own, *giggles*
Haaaaa.
Your head is being chopped off, little doggy.
*Sighs*
Pretending to be a casino--
Bone pain, vision, *giggles*, I'm so excited!
Pshhhhbshhhh