Don’t Have Sex—You Will Get Pregnant and Die. Share In Cincinnati, Ohio, a high school sex education teacher carefully places a Jolly Rancher candy on each student’s desk.
The 14- and 15-year-old students feel the crinkly plastic wrapping in their hands, wondering when they will get to eat their tantalizing treats. “Don’t eat the candy!” Warned the teacher, although she had just finished placing one on each desk. “You must wait until after class. And so begins the young Ohioans' lesson on abstinence—the only method of pregnancy or disease prevention that they will learn during their high school sexuality education class. One in every four adolescents receives this type of abstinence-only sexuality education. There is no significant difference in the rates of teenage sexuality in the United States compared to other similar, developed Western countries.
Sexuality education in the United States has evolved to teach everything besides sex itself. Making matters worse is the lack of any standardized program monitoring system. Lauren Collins: Beyond Plan B. Over at Daily Comment, my colleague Michael Specter criticizes the Obama Administration for its decision not to make Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill, available over the counter to girls under the age of seventeen.
Specter makes a dispassionate argument: the Food and Drug Administration has found that Plan B is safe and effective for adolescent girls, so adolescent girls should be able to use Plan B without obstruction. Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, overruled the F.D.A. on the flimsy premise that the Plan B’s manufacturers had neglected to investigate the drug’s effects on eleven-year-olds.
Specter writes, “Sadly, it is not the first time that Obama, or Sebelius, has made choices based on emotion and the ballot box rather than on the results of scientific investigation.” Can 11-year-olds use Plan B safely? Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images The women’s health world has been in an uproar since Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected a recommendation by the FDA on Wednesday to make emergency contraceptives like Plan B available without prescription to teens under the age of 17.
According to the New York Times, her reasoning had to do with the extent of the data: J. Bryan Lowder is a Slate assistant editor. Abortion saved my life. There’s this lawmaker out of Kansas, Rep.
Peter DeGraaf, who has a lot to say about abortion. He’s currently best known for saying that women should plan ahead in case of rape and not expect their regular insurance to cover an abortion after an assault. Democratic Women Boycott House Contraception Hearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying. This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women and minorities from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women. “Geek girls” and the problem of self-objectification. UPDATE: I have written a better and more developed version of this article as a presentation for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in 2012.
You can read the updated version of this article here. Nerds and Male Privilege. Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits - Mad Art Lab. Nerds and Male Privilege Part 2: Deconstructing the Arguments. First of all, I want to go ahead and call attention to the irony that I am making this post under the moniker "Gaston," possibly one of the most misogynistic characters of any family feature.
I'm just taking that zinger away from you right away, commenters. Now there's a lot of issues in this editorial, as with the first editorial, but I only have time to talk about one that especially peeved me with its sheer hypocrisy. Sexual harassment and fightin' drama, together at last! [Update: Miranda felt she was misrepresented as having spoken to Destructoid, due to her quotes not being clearly attributed to her Twitter account.
It wasn't my intention to make it look like anything other than public Tweets, so this has been amended. To be clear, Miranda provided Destructoid with no quotes and everything she is quoted as saying was said on her Twitter profile.] The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their 'Liberated Sexuality' Yesterday, two new comic books from the “New 52″ relaunch of DC Comics provoked some online controversy: Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws.
They were controversial in particular because of the way they depicted women, notably with the aggressively fanfictiony on-panel sex between Batman and Catwoman, and Starfire’s transformation into a promiscuous tabula rasa who can’t even remember the names of the men she sleeps with, and seeks out emotionless sex with both of the two male main characters while they essentially high five about it. Since pointing out my issues with Starfire yesterday, I have received numerous e-mails — from men — accusing me of slut-shaming. And that is why books like Catwoman and Red Hood make me so goddamn angry. Let’s start with Catwoman.
A Marxist defence of Page 3 girls « LeftCentral. January 25, 2012 by LeftCentral Brendan O’Neill Image © Kip Voytek.
Consuming Women. Norma Clarke on The Origins of Sex by Faramerz Dabhoiwala. Norma Clarke Some Years Before 1963 The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution By Faramerz Dabhoiwala (Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 484pp £25) A woman born in 1600 grew up being told she was the most lustful of God's creatures. The Fascinating Story of the Original Sexual Revolution. June 13, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Feminist blog about womens rights for teenage girls. When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? How Are Teenage Girls Supposed To Identify As Feminists With These Role Models?
The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century. Why women have sex. Do you want to know why women have sex with men with tiny little feet? I am stroking a book called Why Women Have Sex. Birth Control Isn’t Really About “Women’s Health.” It’s About… This is a polemic: Access to birth control isn’t really about my “health.” The Trojan Paradox - By Charles Kenny. Why Rick Santorum would have killed my daughter - Sarah Fister Gale.
Why Does Rush Limbaugh Get Away With Calling a Young Woman a 'Slut'? - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics. Rick Santorum and prenatal testing: I would have saved my son from his suffering. Photo courtesy of Emily Rapp. Female Witness Hits Back at Issa: "I'm a Woman Who Uses Contraception, That Makes Me Qualified" to Testify. Democrats on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee held a special hearing Thursday morning in response to the GOP’s decision to prevent women from testifying in support of an Obama administration rule requiring employers to provide birth control without additional cost sharing.
Birth control: The right’s still winning. Corseted Minds: Does Fear of Irrelevance Send Conservative Men Fleeing to the Victorian Age? February 27, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. In the last 50 years, American women have finally been able to reliably earn a living, thus rendering men economically unnecessary. Women are outstripping men in education. Sex and the Single Girl: Why American culture is still so scared by single people. The social conservative subterranean fantasy world is exposed, and it's frightening. Could women really be discriminated against for taking birth control? If a crazy Arizona bill passes, yes.
Why women still can't enjoy sex. Is an over-the-counter birth control pill dangerous? Soraya Chemaly: 10 Reasons The Rest Of The World Thinks The U.S. Is Nuts. The abortion survivor myth. Recent research shows women getting abortions know what they're doing and don't need lectures. Abortions made public - Reproductive Rights.