Basic Trope: Characters show that they are lacking some crucial knowledge about "the facts of life."
- Straight:
- Alice thinks she can get pregnant just by kissing Bob.
- Alice thinks that she doesn't have to worry about pregnancy or birth control when she has sex with Bob because it's Their First Time.
- Alice doesn't know about pregnancy. She thinks that children come some other way.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice thinks she can get pregnant just by looking at Bob.
- Alice sincerely believes that anal sex doesn't count.
- Accurate information is denounced as false, rumor, myth, misinformation, etc.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is getting her knowledge about sex from porn.
- Alice doesn't understand that even the best birth control has a failure rate, even when used 100% correctly.
- Alice thinks that her vagina is also the hole she pees from.
- Alice thinks that if Bob comes in her mouth and she swallows it, she will get pregnant. It might sound silly, but this is a misconception that more people have than you'd think.
- Justified:
- Alice wasn't taught about sex either at home or at school.
- Alice's sex-ed basically consisted of "Don't do it until you're married, or else!" instead of giving her the facts she needed to make an informed decision about when and whether to engage in sex.
- Alice's sex-ed basically consisted of Internet porn, which relies far more on special effects and Common Hollywood Sex Traits, because real sex isn't always sexy.
- Inverted:
- Alice knows that she can only become pregnant if she has contact with Bob's semen. She knows that she can't get pregnant from kissing, hugging, shaking hands, sharing a straw, touching doorknobs, eye contact, etc.
- Alice's mom tries to give her The Talk. She interrupts with corrections.
- Subverted:
- Alice knows she can't get pregnant from kissing Bob.
- Alice uses birth control.
- Double Subverted:
- She thinks that babies come out of a woman's navel, rather than a different orifice a bit lower.
- She isn't using it correctly or consistently. (i.e. she takes her Pill at random times of the day, or uses a male and female condom together, or fails to understand what's really a "safe day" if she's using the rhythm method or NFP)
- Parodied: Alice somehow thinks that if she pegs Bob with a strap-on, he will get pregnant.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice does not have, or even really think about, sex.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "You can't get pregnant if..."
- Invoked:
- Alice asks her mom about sex and babies. Her mom doesn't answer, or simply tells her that she was brought by a Delivery Stork, rather than telling her the truth.
- Alice wasn't taught about sex in school, either. (Or else the only mention of sex was, "Don't do it until you're married!"), leaving Alice with far more questions than answers.
- Exploited:
- A pedophile preys on young girls or boys, banking that they haven't been taught the facts of life, and will be less likely to tell an adult, because they don't know that what he (or she) is doing to them is wrong.
- An abstinence-only sex-ed program gives the students false or incomplete information, hoping to scare them out of having sex before marriage.
- A politician makes emotionally-charged (and medically-inaccurate) statements about birth control and/or abortion and/or doctors and clinics that provide them, to get voters on their side (so they can pass laws making it difficult or impossible to access those services, punish providers, and/or punish patients who seek them.)
- First-time brides are expected to undergo a virginity test, and parents are encouraged to get their daughters tested. The fact that those tests prove nothing, are invasive, and can be seen as violating both privacy and bodily autonomy, are rarely, if ever, brought up.
- Traditional healers (or sometimes actual doctors) make a good living performing FGM/C
(from a symbolic nicking all the way up to and including removing all of the external genitalia and sewing what's left shut, and everything in between), because of cultural beliefs that the parts removed are "impure" and "unnecessary", that they're "gross," "don't matter," and "aren't supposed to be there," and that the procedure keeps girls "pure and chaste" by "cleansing" her of "male" parts and desires. - Bob convinces Alice that it's OK that he doesn't have a condom, because you can't get pregnant or get an STD from your first time. Since Alice doesn't know any better, she agrees to have sex with him.
- Some people deliberately seek out partners with limited knowledge of sex, so they can be "bad" at it and their partner won't know any better, or so that they can treat their partner as a passive object to masturbate with rather than a living human being with whom they are sharing an experience both participate actively in.
- Men who are infected with sexually-transmitted diseases go out and seduce (or outright rape) virgins, because they believe that sex (consensual or otherwise) with a virgin will cure their disease.
- Defied: Alice's parents see to it that she has medically and scientifically accurate information about sex: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Miss Conception
