|
Forbes is noting that a summary of at least 10 years of medical studies shows that sex really is good for you.
Among the findings, regular sexual activity: Improves the sense of smell
Reduces the risk of heart disease
Induces weight loss and overall fitness
Reduces depression
Fosters pain relief
Leads to less frequent colds and flu
Gives better bladder control and better teeth
Makes a healthier prostate.
Guys do have to watch out for overdoing it. Too much and too vigorous sex can lead to... damage... in men. Women on the other hand shouldn't worry about it. Their parts only... atrophy... if they aren't used.
How long until the Abstinence Only Cults denounce the findings?
Wait for it... wait for it...
Posted by Jody at 12:41 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
The ultimate message of those who seek to roll back contraceptive choices.
Posted by Jody at 04:14 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Given the current blogstorm going on about Justin Berry, I find the most interesting discussion about the facts and implications of his case is currently happening at Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia. Points of view both popular and unpopular are flying fast and furious there, from editors I find morally objectionable to those whom I heartily agree with. I think its worth a look.
Posted by Jody at 03:11 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
The Latest Virtual World: Naughty America: The Game
Personally, I'm convinced that one day people will play MMOs while they're in an MMO.
Posted by Jody at 09:49 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Alberto Gonzales wants you! "I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
Posted by Jody at 08:54 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
In the recent upgrade to MT 3.5, about 12 months of entries between 2004-2005 were corrupted. The back-up files still exist. It's just going to take me a while to enter them again. Until then, there are quite a few "gaps" on these archive pages.
Posted by Jody at 10:45 PM
| Comments (0)
Something I just don't see them doing here in the States: Scouts hand out condoms Twenty-thousand scouts from around the world are expected at the International Jamboree in Thailand and each of the scouts will be given a package of condoms.
The Jamborees, a highlight of scouting, is held once every four years. The condom giveaway was requested by organizers. The packages will be made up by the Public Health Ministry. Dr Pipat Yingseri said a pack will be given to every scout who enters the Jamboree site.
"Extra packages will be available if the scouts request them. We are preparing the condoms to prevent Aids, not to encourage sexual activity ... Nobody can control sex 100% when thousands of people live together, so my aim is to prevent Aids in case of sex" Yingseri said. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts of America aims to keep scouts safe from atheists.
Posted by Jody at 12:14 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Let's just make all of the Far Right even more disgusted with me by linking over to AlterNet's story on the silliness of the Bushies bribes regarding abstinence only education: Since arriving in office, Bush and his band of merry men have been brainstorming ways to get sex out of the classroom and back into marriage where it belongs.
No doubt they consider the media's recent focus on abstinence a victory: Two weeks ago, Newsweek's cover story examined "The New Virginity." If you believe that one, American teens � led by supercute Miss America � are falling head over heels for Bush's just-say-no message. (Or maybe it's American magazine editors who are falling head over heels for Bush.)
Unfortunately, spin and hype aren't much help to the eleventh grader in heat. It has never been easy to be a virgin in high school, and it's no easier now that it's supposedly cool to abstain. The only thing that's changed is what's being taught. In Grand Old Party tradition, the means is bribery. Bush has set aside $135 million for abstinence instruction next year � almost twice what was spent in 1998 � and here's the bitch: Most of these funds are reserved for programs that promote abstinence until marriage as the One True Way (as opposed to abstinence as a fairly sensible option in one's teens, which is an idea that many more sensible people can get behind).
The problem with this kind of instruction isn't that it makes you think about sex � teens don't need much help in that department � but that it gives you blinders. For as long as it sticks, abstinence is the only way to protect yourself from STDs and pregnancy. But let's just say it doesn't stick � let's say you lapse somewhere along the way, as I did. Then abstinence-only education leaves you completely unprepared for the emotional and physical realities of sex....
To further prove just how upright, honest and concerned the administration is in these matters, the Bushies just got slammed for deleting info from CDC condom fact sheet about their usefulness in combating STDs, about how to properly use them and in pointing out that the wide spread availability of condoms does not make young people more likely to...
have sex at an earlier age.
And not content to keep the ignorance here at home, the Bushies also tried to pressure the UN to change the International Population Control agreement away from mentioning "consistent condom use" as a way to prevent HIV infection and to, instead, stress abstinence and monogamy.
Mayberry Machiavellis indeed.
Posted by Jody at 12:52 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
About a decade ago, fresh out of college, I landed my first paid, professional job as an AIDS educator with a community service organization in Arlington, Virginia. AIDS was ripping the shit out of the gay community, African American and Latino populations were getting slammed by the virus too, and the only medication available was almost worse than the disease. As a fresh faced and idealistic young man, I was eager to stop the devastation that was occurring because of ignorance, neglect, and short-sightedness. As a fresh faced and idealistic young man, of course I thought I could do it all by my lonesome... (Ah, youth.)
Psychology classes and a political science degree only carry you so far for the down and dirty realities of HIV Disease. (Read: Not at all.) Classes didn't teach jack about dealing with people, about human frailties and idiosyncrasies that HIV used to it's advantage (Yes, I'm personifying.) I thought everyone was "Gay" or "Straight" or "God I was drunk." I had no idea there was such a thing as "men who have sex with men," that a "punk" wasn't just a blue haired acid edged musician and that clinical trials were more about sharing between participants than following the procedures of proper clinical method.
Being fresh out of college, I supposedly could relate to kids still in high school. (Five years difference is fifty when it comes to pop culture.) But I had one degree and was on my way to getting a second, so I put my talents to work in adapting an adult peer-to-peer education program successful in California into a model that high-school and college age people could use for similar effect. Bob, the uber-god of education that I worked for, and I spent a lot of time adapting, revising, testing and implementing our version. I'm still amazed at how well we did. Within two years, several other organizations in the Metro area were using the program we had adapted to great effect.
Through my job, I met a lot of people -- some with HIV, some with AIDS, most without either, all though were dedicated to stopping a pox that had already taken far too many lives. Danny who at 21 had been fighting his own HIV since 13 and Bea, who'd at 25 had been a survivor since college, still live on in memory. And memory only.
We all educated with the same message to gay and straight, young and old: "If you have insertive intercourse, use a condom." Simple. We also taught about waiting, about abstaining, about things to do intimately other than intercourse, about responsibility and health. Simply distilled though, the message was cover it if you are going to use it or demand that your partner do so if they were going to use it on you.
Ideals do get tempered by time, so while stopping AIDS was out of reach, slowing it's spread by preventing many new infections was not. Through the 90's, AIDS infections slowed and medical advances lengthened lives. Big ideals, small victories, time still well spent.
Why bring this up? Well, the Human capacity to act stupidly in the face of overwhelming information continues to amaze. This new, latest, "craze" for bareback sex -- screwing without a condom -- is the latest in a long line of boneheaded ideas justified by not through thought or intellect, but through stupidity.
I wish I could say that I didn't get it, that I didn't understand why people would betray the memory and effort of those who fought hard against an awful disease so that others, sometime, wouldn't have to live through a soul sapping existence of pain, suffering and despair.
But, you see, now I do....
About three months ago, I signed on to a group at Yahoo "dedicated" to "bare-back activism". I wanted to read first hand the thoughts of others -- I guess like Andrew Sullivan -- who actually thought there was something to fight for and someone to fight against. I sat through a bajillion adds for sex parties, penile enlargements, and for some girl named Wendy' whose sorority sisters are all really kinky nymphos interested in getting it on with real men. (That they also have great difficulty in understanding that some men really do only like meat goes without saying.)
Realizing I wasn't getting anywhere -- and tired of Wendy's pleas -- I asked this rather innocuous question: I've been following this and other message boards for a few months now, but there hasn't been a lot of traffic on which to get an answer. So in that event, I'll be a bit proactive here and ask [quoting from an earlier message]:This is a group for gay men to come together to defend and promote real ("bareback") sex and oppose the self-serving AIDS establishment and its initiative to brainwash us all into a condom fetish ("safe 'sex'"). What "self serving establishment out...to brainwash people into a condom fetish" do you mean? How does safer sex ed, which is trying to get people to modify their behavior enough to use a condom during whatever sex they have with whomever they have it, become something to become an activist against? I understand the "my choice" argument -- I don't fully agree with it, but hey, that's life -- but I don't get being active over safer sex education and educators.
This was the reply, posted back to the list: It's very simple. Condoms, as a strategy, are causing people to get infected. Do you think it's right for the religious right to go around trying to "convert" gay people into being straight? Of course not, that's just trying to get someone to mask what is natural / instinctual to them.
Generations of unwanted pregnancies tell us men will not use condoms
consistently. Do we blame the men? Not really. They are just following a natural human sexuality path in not using them - they ruin sex. And if you want to debate that then you just clearly don't know what you're talking about, or are in major denial.
The AIDS establishment has promoted condoms like a religion, and indeed has quashed all opposition as heretical. There are other options. There's a mountain of evidence to show that antimicrobial lube is more effective at STD / HIV prevention, both as a tactic and as a strategy. There's even been a bill in the last 6 sessions of Congress to this effect that won't be endorsed by any major AIDS organization. By the AIDS establishment's own logic, virtually every
dead friend is so because he didn't use a condom - would he still be here today if he been told he could use antimicrobial lube?
There are opportunity costs in promoting condoms - they allow too many infections to continue because of non-compliance (and all the bitching, guilting, and brow beating won't change that - but it will cause untold psychological side effects), and they divert energy, time and resources that could be spent promoting antimicrobial lube. But the AIDS orgs. KNOW all of this, and want it that way.
With the partial use of condoms in small part, and the lower viral loads of the infected in large part, the explosion of infections from the 80s has been brought to a smolder. The AIDS establishment claims this is due to incremental improvements of the situation that they have made ("and, oh, a cure / hope / Jerry Lewis is just around the corner - if you could please just send us one more donation and give us just one more year!"), while not completely eliminating the problem, which would also mean the elimination of their lucrative careers and hob-knobbing with the politicians and socialites. If they
have their way, AIDS will be an institution of the gay community to stay. Their actions speak louder then their indignation on this point.
For the AIDS establishment, money makes the world go 'round, even when it means that you eat your fellow gay brothers for lunch to get ahead or stay on top. For gay society, popularity makes the world go 'round, even if it means you regurgitate, without question, dogma that is killing your or your friends.
So whether you only care about stopping AIDS at all costs, or you only care about being able to have a natural sex life without condoms, AND ESPECIALLY if you care about both - an end to the current AIDS establishment as we know it, and the condom dogma, must be achieved. None of this is rocket science. It just takes the ignorant or the brainwashed about 5 seconds to stop listening to
their self-righteousness, or to only one source of information, to see that something is terribly wrong with this situation.
- Moderator
I didn't realize I'd been brainwashed by a vast, international cabal of AIDS activists who want only to further their stranglehold on the gay community by promoting the use of an item that has been definitely shown to prevent infection from HIV when used consistently and properly, but, in fact, really just leads to more infections, statistics and studies be damned.
What can you say in response to that? I could ask why he thinks people would be any more prone to using an antimicrobial lube if they won't use condoms (and no, most people who have intercourse that way don't have to use lube). Or I could ask why there is such a high correlation between increased condom usage and decreased HIV infection. I could even have asked why so many AIDS organizations are laying off staff and closing up shop given the dearth of clients in need of their services. I could even have made the ethical argument about not creating new super strains of the virus that are resistant to all our current drugs. I could have raised any of those questions and tried for a response.
Could have...if I hadn't been banned from the group right after the moderator sent his response.
Posted by Jody at 11:46 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
There�s a saying that goes: �Never attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by ignorance.� I�ve always thought that was a rather good rule of thumb to go by when encountering the rather vile actions that people do to one another. In my mind, I�ve always added ��or stupidity� to the end of the phrase, given how often the combination of ignorance and stupidity create a savage, relentless and utterly soul destroying rape on the fragility of Human Life.
I want to believe that with a little education, a lot of time, and the constant exposure to information and reason, the idiotic and reprehensible actions of well meaning but criminally stupid people could finally and ultimately be overcome.
Then again, some people believe want to believe that solid brick walls are easily passed through by �mind-over-matter� beliefs, and promptly demonstrate said beliefs by charging hard and fast at said wall while exclaiming said faith. On their way to the hospital, they usually say little else.
I bring this to light because my favorite site for both ignorance and malice, Mark Shea�s Catholic and Enjoying It, has posted this tripe about abstinence education being the real secret to the drop in new HIV infections in Africa. Mark got this link through Emily Stimpson�s site, and it�s been picked up by Amy Welbourne�s page. National Review On-Line has even has a piece about the failure of young gay men to use condoms as a prima face case to prove that abstinence education is the only thing that really works. Everything else, most of the authors in the above posts argue, is just something along the lines of a licentious and Liberal Left leading people down a path to destruction.
It would be funny if it effects weren�t so vile.
I posted extensively before about how Uganda�s approach to HIV & AIDS education � a combination of abstinence, monogamy, and condom education � had a remarkable effect on reducing reporting incidences of HIV in the populace. I also posted information that pointed out that claims to massive reductions in new HIV infections in Uganda were premature at best and politically motivated at worst. There is a hell of a lot more work that needs to be done, both epidemiologically and educationally, before any claim to victory over new infections in Africa can be claimed. However, there is ample evidence that a multi-faceted approach involving a multitude of community and governmental agencies, can have a profound impact on preventing and treating the disease.
I�ve also pointed out that there is no evidence � above anecdotal � that abstinence-only education works as a full, preventative measure to control HIV/STD exposure. What evidence there is for it�s effectiveness shows that it works with only a very narrow cohort of young people, under a very narrow set of circumstances and only for a relatively short (18 month) period of time. Further, it has the disastrous consequence that when people actually do have sex, they are more likely to engage in unprotected and unsafe activities well above those rates of those who received safer sex education.
The article that most of the mentioned sites are passing off as defitive is anything but. It�s actually chalked through with so much faulty information that ignorance just doesn�t seem to be a possible excuse. The author tires to say that the Uganda AIDS Commission formal policy makes no mention of condoms as a sanctioned tool in that countries fight against HIV (��Condom use was not listed among the commission's recommendations��) and then links to a page that doesn�t mention condoms. The author eaves out the fact that the page linked to isn�t the �Official Recommendations� page but rather a FAQ page, where a graph on condom usage fails to load. Clicking over to the priorities page shows that safer sex education is under the first priority for it�s national policy. Clicking on other pages of the site turns up similar examples in the stated goal of encouraging condom use among options.
The �Dr. Edward Green� that is mentioned in the report as the �expert� who spoke on how condoms don�t work, while a credentialed HIV resource at Harvard, wasn�t speaking as a result of any studies he conducted, but rather at a �CHRISTIAN CONNECTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL HEALTH MESSAGE� conference about his own views on the subject. The �paper� that he presented wasn�t from a peer-reviewed study, but rather his own thoughts � which is rather meaningless as definitive research goes.
Two other points about Dr. Green�s paper. He writes: Of course, it is very difficult to attribute behavioral change in Uganda, Jamaica or anywhere to any one, or combination of, interventions. It is very hard to control for confounding variables. And few studies have looked specifically at the impact of FBOs..
That�s a far cry from the whole �abstinence is the secret� message so many have quoted him. Perhaps most telling of all, he says: It is reasonably well-established that consistent condom use protects against HIV transmission, therefore condom use should be promoted. as well as saying that he just doesn�t believe that religious organizations working in AIDS prevention should be required to discuss this issue. (Fair enough.)
The big doctor that everyone has been citing as their source on the �no condoms� campaign is asking for further research into the effectiveness of religious groups in preventing HIV/AIDS and has not been saying �condoms don�t work.�
Funny if the effects of such misstatements weren�t so vile.
As for NRO�s own bit about how safe sex information is to blame for new HIV infections among young gay men, the most charitable thing I can say is that the author displays a great capacity for arraying words on a page and none for actually having them make any sense.
Ralph J. DiClemente, PhD, at Emory University published an article in the Southern Medical Journal
Volume 95, Number 6 2002 (�Protease Inhibitor Combination Therapy and Decreased Condom Use�) that did point out that gay men who were being treated for HIV infection with HAART therapy were more likely to not use condoms than any other group he surveyed. It was the success of treatment that actually caused this decline: The influences that encourage and reinforce high-risk sexual behavior are not well understood among persons treated with protease inhibitors. For instance, in an ongoing study of HIV-infected women, the best predictor of STDs, an objective marker of high-risk sexual intercourse, was the perception that unprotected sexual intercourse did not confer any additional risk for adverse consequences.[22] Thus, inaccurate knowledge, and perceptions of low susceptibility to and severity of adverse outcomes, may militate against the adoption and maintenance of protective behavior such as condom use during sexual intercourse. More in-depth studies examining individuals' motivations for engaging in high-risk sex will provide valuable information critical for the design of patient education and sexual risk-reduction interventions.
It�s the fact that people aren�t dying in the same graphic and visible ways that, it seems, have caused many people to go back to unsafe sex � not safe sex education in general. �.extensive print and electronic media coverage may have inadvertently raised treatment expectations beyond the empirical evidence. Consequently, HIV-infected persons' perceptions of the severity of HIV infection and their susceptibility to other adverse sequelae associated with high-risk sexual intercourse may be diminished and their willingness to engage in high-risk sexual behavior may increase.
We humans are notorious for disregarding the advice of the angels of our better natures to stumble back into old, and bad, patterns of behavior once the most visible examples of the negative behavior either aren�t visible or unknown.
Quick thought example, one I�ve used before: How many times, exactly do you brush and floss your teeth, every day? Once? Twice? Three times? Do you brush and floss, or do you just brush? When you are tired after a long day, do you go and stumble into bed and worry about your teeth in the morning? On lazy weekends, after sleeping late, do you still scrub those teeth three times a day, or let one or more sessions slide? If you are like most people, you don�t brush your teeth three times a day, every day, rain or shine � let alone floss. As often as you do do it, it�s mostly likely you do it because you�ve been hit by continual messages about brushing�s value, about how it prevents tooth decay and gum disease.
Outside of a root canal, getting a cavity removed isn�t that painful � the novocaine deadens the mouth and blocks the pain. Most of the discomfort comes from that whirring drill and having to spit every minute or so. That though, may even be a thing of the past, what with laser cavity removal . Given how difficult it is to get an educated first world populace to consistently and continually brush their teeth -- let a lone -- people express surprise and bewilderment at condom use and HIV prevention.
There is no movement to abolish bike helmet, seat belt, flu shot, yearly physical, bran eating, saving for retirement, or any other possible positive outcome education because people don�t do it all the time. We actually count ourselves lucky that we reached the people we did, desire to do more to reach those we haven�t and accept the fact that people, no matter how smart or dumb, even with the best information, continue to do the most boneheaded things imaginable. Why don�t we throw the whole education process out for any of these, in light of an impact that isn�t 100%? Because we know education works, even if people don�t use that education.
There is a wall here folks. AIDS kills. The ways to prevent AIDS from doing that is not to be exposed to it. Not getting exposed to it means:
1. Not having sex, [Abstinence]
2. Not having sex in any way or with through any activity that exchanges body fluids [Safer Sex]
3. Having sex that exchanges bodily fluids only with one other person who also only has sex with you [Monogamy]
4. Using a condom anytime you have sex with anyone where there is any activity occurs involving body fluids. [Condom use and Safer Sex]
People only know about this through education, education, and education. Research has shown that education can and does save lives. Attempts and efforts to limit or deny that education in favor of an incomplete and faulty message (abstinence only education) is exactly the same thing as trying to run through a brick wall by using the power of mind over matter: it�s doomed to failure.
To continue to spread this gospel of ignorance, because of the dictates of pride, arrogance and a profound lack of compassion for the needs and suffering of others, is not just criminal, not just reprehensible but fundamentally and inexcusably immoral. Ultimately, those who further this lie are not motivated by the noblest of sentiments, but rather acting from the darkest and blackest realms of malice known to the Human soul.
There is simply no excuse.
Posted by Jody at 03:58 PM
| Comments (2)
| TrackBack
The Washington Times is reporting that the reported number of teen virgins rises and that this is directly do to all of the money, time and energy that the Feds have spent ($50 Million) since 1996 advocating abstinence. The article, to me, implies that all of those "pro-safe sex" people are just full of themselves and really havent done anything good. It's this amazing program that contributed to the change.
Fair enough. I was all ready to beleive the information until they presented the numbers on this.
In 1990, the YRBSS found that 54.3 percent of teens in grades 9-12 had had sexual intercourse.
By 2001, however, 54.4 percent of high schoolers said they had not had sex.
So Jennie Smith in Hoboken changed her mind and reported that she was now a virgin??
$50 Mil in 5 years doesn't get you a .1% change in a majority of young people that were already reporting they were virgins. It gets you BUPKISS.
.1% is a sampling variation. Unless this is one of the most exceedingly well designed surveys in the history of humanity, one that has no sampling error, no margin of error and a degree of confidence somewhere in the .005 range, then .1% means jack.
So in another 30 years we will get a nice, even 55% of kids reporting they are virgins. Sounds like a government program to me.
Posted by Jody at 02:06 PM
| Comments (3)
| TrackBack
Lynn points to me, then to a link at the Onion and shows the penile enlargement industry might be getting the short end of the stick soon.
No applause please. I'll be here all week. More bad puns to come...
Posted by Jody at 08:37 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Seems as though the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has been busy, getting it's digs in against the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
Daniel J. Czitrom, a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, says ''right-wing political correctness'' is behind a decision not to consider using his textbook in Texas high schools because of references to prostitution in early Western towns.
With thanks to DazeReader.
Posted by Jody at 08:06 AM
| Comments (5)
| TrackBack
The Los Angeles Times has a fairly good article aboutKids and Sex. It covers many of the issues that have been debated around here. The one aspect the author didn't touch on was -- and I'm a broken record here -- how the rest of the Western world goes about teaching the same subject that we do, better than we do, and with better results.
Posted by Jody at 08:37 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Well this is interesting.
Just goes to show it takes all kinds...
Posted by Jody at 02:10 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
While everyone else is bouncing back and forth the question of �What did George Bush forget and when did he forget it,� I�m off writing a book report about sex. Story of my life."Those who can't, teach...." Ah well, the things that I do for accuracies sake.
Harmful to Minors
It has taken on gospel between the coasts of Blog-Land (and all the adjoining realms) that Judith Levine�s book Harmful to Minors is an advocacy tract, a manifesto for everyone who wants to diddle with a six-year old to come out of hiding, grab a banner, and in the best fashion of persecuted minorities throughout history, protest the horrible injustice done to them by the dominant, repressive heterosexual, white male Christian paradigm. Since Levine is a single, childless woman writer with a history of publishing articles on sex, who admits to once having a relationship with an older man when she was a teenager, it�s pointed out again and again that she is speeding the downfall of a Western Culture already caught up in a fast spin flow towards the bottom of the crapper. People like Progressive Catholic or Mark Shea and even the esteemed Tom Delay�s are the few voices of sanity, vowing to circle the wagons and defend America from a radical text that both endangers and imperils youth.
Were that that were so.
The more controversial the book the more necessary it is to actually read it. That is easily the best way to understand what the controversy is really about � reading the author�s words, understanding their argument and then trying to figure out how much of it makes or doesn�t make sense. It�s a way of not only exercising the brain but of also being intellectually honest about one�s own conclusions and points of view in reference to the subject. Of course, it�s also time consuming to do this and is far easier to just join the existing bandwagon and parrot the conventional wisdom making the rounds. Easier, but fair? Correct? Honest?
As this applies to Levine�s book, the conventional wisdom is actually quite wrong. While radical, Harmful is only so if you believe that providing honest information to kids and teens about sex and sexuality is a bad thing. If you believe that teens are incapable of making real decisions about how and when to be intimate, or that any decision other than �just saying no� until marriage is wrong, then the book will be radical. If however you feel that our current approach to the entire subject of young people and sex is misguided, incomplete and in many cases dangerous, then Levine�s book serves as a good starting point for further discussion. She points out many of the misconceptions and outright falsehoods that have developed in our culture about �kids� and sex, then advocates for a better way of approaching the entire subject -- one that is much more honest and straightforward.
Let�s Talk About Sex
Right up front, Levine states clearly that she does not believe sex is a bad thing:
Harmful to Minors says sex is not in itself harmful to minors. Rather, the real potential for harm lies in the circumstances under which some children and teens have sex, circumstances that pre-dispose them to what the public health people call �unwanted outcomes� such as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
She is deeply concerned that, ��[c]urrent youth policy and parenting advice teeters between high anxiety child protection and higher-anger child punishment. It would appear that children are fragilely innocent until the moment they step over some line, at which point they become instantly, irredeemably wicked.�(xxvii) It is this disconnect that troubles her the most. In our American ��ambivalence about children and [in] our role�to protect the idealized child while squashing the sinner�� we wind up creating a contradictory system wherein as �� the age of consent for sex [is raised], we lower the age at which a wrongdoing child may be tried and sentenced as an adult criminal.�
She further writes that:
�I don�t mean to imply that if adults would just quit trying to suppress youthful sex, everything would be hunky-dory in American teens� bedrooms and automobile backseats�.Sex among America�s youths, like sex among its adults, is too often neither�egalitarian, nor pleasurable, nor safe. This book will argue that current psychological, legal and educational practices exacerbate rather than mitigate this depressing state of affairs�� �
Defining Kids
One of the first things she points out is that our American habit of grouping everyone under the age of 18 into a category called �kids� is at best misleading and at worst harmful
Legally designating a class of people categorically unable to consent to sexual relations is not the best way to protect children, particularly when 'children' include everyone from birth to eighteen. Criminal law, which must draw unambiguous lines, is not the proper place to adjudicate family conflicts over youngsters' sexuality. If such laws are to exist, however, they must do what Phillips [a researcher] suggests about sexual and romantic education: balance the subjective experience and the rights of young people against the responsibility and prerogative of adults to look after their best interests. �
Six year olds are not the same as sixteen year olds and eight year olds aren�t the same as eighteen year olds. Anyone who has worked with kids and teens is well aware of this. Children are developmentally different than young adults; designating them all together under one category isn't appropriate. Indeed, it has only been relatively recently that we�ve regarded �teenagers� as children. (In fact the term �teenager� and the concept of a separate class of youth didn�t really arise until after World War II.)For much of the history of our country, if you could do a man�s (or woman�s) work, you were considered such. The American frontier was actually settled by people who today wouldn�t be allowed to drink, drive or, in some states, receive information about contraceptives.
Somewhere after the turn of the last century, under the influence of psychology, �white slavery� scares, immigration pressures and some very real and very deplorable working conditions for young people, the idea of teens as �large children� who are slaves to invading hormones, psychologically incapable of making valid decisions due to their lack of development, intellect and experience, as well as constantly under assault of a degenerative culture and clueless peers, took hold and evolved into our prevailing view today. Levine shows how research doesn�t bare out this popular view.
Dr. Daniel Offer, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University Medical School who has studied adolescent development extensively, points out that, intellectually, American 16-year-olds are as advanced as the adult population. ("In Defense of Adolescents." Journal of the American Medical Association. Volume 257, number 24 p.3408.) Their reasoning and decision making techniques are the same as those of adults. Psychologically, adolescents suffer the same rates of mental illness as the adult population. (Ibid, p. 3407) He further found that adolescents thrive with new responsibilities, share similar values with adults and actually have good relationships with those adults and others in authority. It is the situations in their lives to which they find themselves, brand new and never before encounters, that are the source of any anxieties or emotional responses they may display. Dr. Offer states, "the normal American teenager sees him or herself as a competent individual who is able to resolve the problems that come his way during the adolescent years, without too much pain, suffering, doubt, or indecision." (Offer, 1981, p.78.) He points out that our �adult fears and urges may interfere with their ability to correctly perceive what teenagers are really like.�
It�s this fear that Levine says is at the heart of our current beliefs about teens and about the policies we enact. By believing them to be children, we wall off much needed information from their preview.
Let�s Talk About Sex...
One of the chief criticisms leveled at Levine is that she is a (supposed) proponent of intergenerational sex, that she sees nothing wrong with adults and teens having sex, doesn�t believe that it is damaging and that , the rules preventing adults from having sex with teens should be abolished. That is actually not what she does in the book. She points out that teens have been having sex with those over 18 for a long time, and that both history and research points our that they do so willingly, that it isn�t always harmful, and that often they even are the ones initiating the encounters. She neither condemns or condones this sexual expression, but points out that:
�teens often seek out sex with older people and they do so for a variety of reasons: an older person makes them feel sexy and grown up, protected and special: often the sex is better than it would be with a peer who has as little skill as they do �As a point of reference, there is a large body of research that backs up this statement. In the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth , a 22 (year1973-1995) survey �based on personal interviews conducted in the homes of a national sample of women 15-44 years of age in the civilian, non-institutionalized population of the United States�[t]he main purpose of [which] was to provide reliable national data on marriage, divorce, contraception, infertility, and the health of women and infants�� about 50 % of those surveyed between the ages of 15-19 reported that they�d had sex. One third of those surveyed between the ages of 15 and 17 had had intercourse. over two thirds of those between 18 and 19 years old had. Of those women who first had sex before the age of 16, 66% had first partners who were under 18 years of age. 21% had partners 18-19 years of age, 7 percent had partners 20-22 years of age, 2%, 23-24 years of age and 4 percent had first partners 25 years of age or older.
Kilpatrick�s Long Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences (1992) returned similar results. 83 % of her 500 subjects had their first sexual experience between 15-17 years of age. 38% of the respondents reported the sexual experiences to be "pleasant" while only 25% reported them to be "unpleasant." 39% of these adolescents 15-17 years reported being the initiator. Only 4% of the respondents reported that they would have liked to have had counseling afterwards.
Historically, young adults were often married shortly after puberty, either to people their own age or those substantially older. 100 years ago few girls got out of their teens without being married. As little as 50 years ago, the median age for a female�s marriage was a few months past 18, which meant that almost half of newlyweds were in their mid-teens. In short, despite what our popular media points out in an alarming manner, teens continue to have sex as they always have -- and they are doing so again as they always have, with both their immediate peers and those older than they. What has changed in America is our view that they are victims of either �precocious sexuality� or of sexual abuse, whether they feel they are or not.
�Rather than presuming that adult-teen relationships are really a form of victimization or that they really represent unproblematic, consensual partnerships�rather than maintaining either that willingness means consent or that an age difference means an inherent inability to consent � we need to step back and probe the nuances of adult �teen relationships from the perspectives of young women who participate in them��. If we are going to educate young women to avoid potentially exploitative relationships �those strategies must speak to their lived realities and the cultural and personal values that they, their families and their communities hold regarding this issue� �She takes a very broad, inclusive and open view of teens as sex. She does state that she finds the Dutch age of consent laws, where 16 is the age of full consent but those persons as young as 12 are also considered capable of giving consent provided there is no valid objection raised by a family member, to be a good guideline. She also finds that the general European attitude and philosophy, which Advocates For Youth characterizes as ��[a]societal openness and comfort in dealing with sexuality, including teen sexuality, and pragmatic governmental policies that create greater, easier access to sexual health information and services for all people, including teens�.leads to better sexual health outcomes...� is a much better paradigm to work from.
Sex education in those countries beings with the assumption that young people will carry on a number of sexual relationships during their teen years and initiate sex play short of intercourse long before that (which they do) and that sexual expression is a healthy and happy part of growing up. The goal of sex ed, which grows out of a generally more reld attitude toward sexuality, is to make sure that this sexual expression is healthy and happy, by teaching children and teens the values of responsibility and the techniques of safety and even pleasure.
This attitude, across the board, has resulted in lower rates of teen pregnancy, STD transmission, HIV infection, and number of partners among European youth. (The U.S. rate of teen pregnancy alone is more than nine times higher than that in the Netherlands, nearly four times higher than the rate in France, and nearly five times higher than that in Germany.) She takes great issue with the �abstinence-only� educational policy, which she says isn�t helpful and may actually be harmful to the sexual health of young people. (Research, such as that from National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, bares this out.)
Parents are willing to accept the pundits worst conjectures about their children�s sexual motives. It�s as if they cannot imagine that their kids seek sex for the same reasons they do: they like or love the person the are having it with. It gives them a sense of beauty, worthiness, happiness or power. And if feels good.
What about the Children?
Levine does raise the point that sexuality, like all our feelings, is a life long in duration. Even the youngest of children express these feelings, mostly by touching themselves (or other children) in their respective erogenous zones. In light of our �out of sight, out of mind� attitude towards young children, Levine�s argument that ignoring or squashing children�s attempts at expressing their sexuality, it is much better, and far more productive, to encourage it within the milieu of all the other values that they are already instilling in children honesty, kindness, and respect to self and other. She believes quite strongly that walling off sexuality from everything else children are experiencing doesn�t help them to both better deal with those feelings and to integrate them fully into their lives. It�s this sexuality positive attitude, I think, that causes a lot of the misplaced hue and cry from social arch-conservatives.
Our fears of pedophiles on the internet and child predators lurking around every corner are overblown and have little to do with reality. There is little evidence that child porn is made or distributed in numbers any higher than in the 1960, at the height of the last public outcry. She quotes from Paul Okami, a professor at admission�s psychology department and an expert on the subject of pedophilia that there are in fact few real pedophiles in the population. The problem with the wildly varying numbers that numerous experts give for the pedophile population, numbers that range any where from 1% to 50% depending on who you ask and what their personal philosophy is, that a �..�pedophile�, depending on the legal statute, the perception of the psychologist, or the biases of the journalist, can be anything from a college freshman who has once masturbated with a fantasy of a twelve year old in mind to an adult who has had sexual contact with an infant.� Okami believes that the number of people whose primary erotic focus is on pre-pubescent children, the �classic pedophile,� is only about 1% of the population. Worst case scenarios of children being abducted, raped and killed in the US works out to between 1:364,000 and 1:1 million. Tragic enough, but a child�s risk of dying in a car accident are twenty five to seventy five times greater.
It�s focusing on the �enemy out there� that distracts from the real threat to children � their own families. The threat of sexual abuse from a member within the family or a parental substitute is much greater than anything recorded as coming �in� from �outside,� with 217,000 incidents recorded in 1993 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, 1993) While this does not say that families are harmful to children, most of the harm that does come to children, occurs from within their families.
...Or Not
Levine closes out her book by saying:
Peril is inevitable in childhood, and adult�s greatest pain may be the powerlessness to prevent it� But as children move out into the world, protecting them from sex will not protect them from those dangers that have little to do with sex but may ultimately make sex dangerous�.Sex is not harmful to children. It is a vehicle to self-knowledge, love healing, creativity, adventure and intense feelings of aliveness. There are ways many of the smallest children can partake of it. Our moral obligation to the next generation is to make a world in which every child can partake safely, a world in which the needs and desires of every child�for accomplishment, connection, meaning and pleasure�can be marvelously fulfilled.
Sex is a good thing. The positive, safe and healthy expression of it should be the goal for any parents interactions with their children and teens. Rather than treating sex as an unwanted aspect of life, it should be integrated into all aspects of life. The disservice done to young people is by misleading them as to the dangers of sex, denying any conversations about it or in forcing its sole acceptable expression into the narrow view of heterosexual, monogamous, life long marriage � something which, even its firmest supporters are only able to achieve 50% of the time (ignoring the data on infidelity.)
If we are really interested in the sexual health of our young people -- and not in just scoring political points by being alarmist and grandstanding-- then it�s worthwhile to read and consider the issues Levine raises. Our approach to our young people is misguided and flawed. Teaching our children and guiding our young adults requires honesty, compassion and understanding. Fostering ignorance through misinformation and shame only leads to scandal and tragedy.
Posted by Jody at 05:45 PM
| Comments (0)
I just finished Harmful to Minors last night. I've got tomorrow off -- Jedi Flu -- so I will post a review then.
Posted by Jody at 04:24 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
A bit more in the way of good news that sexuality education is having an effect on teens putting relationships ahead of sex.
From the article:
Is the decline in sex-related problems due to teenagers having less sex or are they behaving in more responsible ways? Abstinence sex education programs, not funded by the federal government until 1998, didn't exist when the data analyzed by the sociologists was collected. Although teen abstinence may be causing some decline in sexual intercourse, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reproductive health research, calculated that 25% of the reduction in teen pregnancy could be attributed to abstinence. The remaining drop, its study found, is attributable to more efficient use of birth control. In a widely publicized study on abstinence, the pledges succeed in delaying intercourse for 18 months only "when neither too many nor too few peers pledge," the authors write. But once pledgers become sexually active, they usually fail to use contraception.
"The reasons that we have seen a decrease in problems with teen sexuality have to do with more safe sexual behavior by teens," Risman said, adding that it is unclear whether this is due to comprehensive sex education, fear of disease or media reports of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. "What we do know is that girls are safer sexual players than boys ... and they are asserting more power to influence condom use in sexual encounters with boyfriends." In a focus group of young men identified as condom users, participants reported that a powerful reason for using a condom was a partner's request.
Sex education, far from the bug-bear some make it out to be, helps teens to make better choices about sex, intimacy and dating. Education is a powerful tool, provided we use it.
Posted by Jody at 12:20 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Well, we botched things up again at the U.N. Conference on Children Instead of really advocating for the needs of young people world wide, we played stick in the mud and succeeded "...in deleting strong endorsements of sex education programs that had been supported by a large majority of the 181 nations participating in the meeting." In terms of the sexual health of teenagers, we are about the last people to lead in this area. For all the money, time and "Just Say No" attitudes that we advocate, our young people have more sex, and more risky sex with more people than their contemporaries do in other Western countries. In those countries, people are open about sex, sexuality and family planning, while making available contraceptives and appropriate health care from the get go.
Dumb, dumb, dumb on our part.
Posted by Jody at 09:35 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Hey! There is actually a third person reading my site. And he sent me a link to a story off of the New York Times about another college professor tweaking the moral panic over abundant pedophilia. . Seems as though the University of Missouri's budget is being cut by $100,000 because Professor Mirkin published an article in which he argued that "the argued that the notion of the innocent child was a social construct, that all intergenerational sex should not be lumped into one ugly pile..." (quoted from the article.) Because Dr. Mirkin raised the issue, in some circles he's being promoted as a pro adult-child sex advocate who sees nothing wrong with sleeping with kids.
One of the things that his critics miss, and this is a common theme in all of the articles that warn of a growing "pedophile chic," is that Dr. Mirkin -- and others -- argue that there is a difference between a 7 year old and a 17 year old. Labeling both of them as "children" is more about instilling moral panic and cutting off any discussion our culture's unwillingness to recognize real health and legal issues, than in protecting anything else than the right to be ignorant.
I'll continue to reiterate here that, in all of the articles I've read, no one is advocating adult-child sex. People have argued -- and this is what is disturbing to many -- that sexuality doesn't magically begin at 18 and ages of consent, of late, bear any resemblance to reality.
We continue to lead the industrialized world in teen abortion, teen sex, teen STD's, teen HIV and teen pregnancy -- all this from a culture whose official policy is one of abstinence above all else with no discussion of anything else. Pointing out that the origins of these problems might have something to do with our "mis-idealization" of youth isn't evil but a pretty good, fair and honest thing to do
Posted by Jody at 10:32 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Prediction time here. Judith Levine's new book Harmful to Minors hits on all the hot button issues about teens and sex: abstinence or education, safe sex or no sex, age of consent vs. pedophilia, and conservative vs. liberal. It's already gotten some
press, as well as drawn a lot of controversy from the religiously wrong.
My guess is that as more of the main stream press picks up on the book and its subject we're going to see a lot more about the subject. As usual in the United States, a lot of it will just be screaming and shouting, mis-characterizing and name calling (No, no. Not Here!) While I haven't read the book yet (it's on order from Amazon), I'm hopeful though that after much of the chest beating is done some good and reasoned conversation can come from it.
Posted by Jody at 03:46 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
I've been having a conversation with Jason Steffens regarding abstinence only education. You can read his post and my reply at the above link. Responding to him, I wrote that:
The point is that unless you teach young people everything, that we�d really wish you hold off as long as possible, that you can get STD�s or pregnant as a result of unprotected sex, that if you are going to have sex there are lots of ways that you can be intimate with others without inserting slot �a� in hole �b�, and that if you elect to do that here are the ways to protect yourself, we don�t do young people any favors.
We have, in this country, tried teaching nothing about sex and sexuality. It�s only been in the last twenty years or so, with sex education in schools, that we�ve seen a down trend in pregnancy, age of intercourse, STD�s and the like. But even with our education, education that has a great deal of strictures and no-no�s attached to it, we still lead the rest of the industrialized world in all of the unwanted after effects of intercourse. And it can�t be because we are teaching sex ed... Canadians, Europeans and Australians teach sexuality and safe sex much more explicitly, and honestly, than we ever have here in the US.
It is a terribly relevant question as to whether or not teaching abstinence only education works. There are young people that have a right to be as healthy as possible in any circumstance. If they can wait, great. If they can�t but can be shown other ways not to put themselves in great danger for STD�s and the like, then by all means we need to teach that as well. Parents do play a role in this. They do have to say I don�t think you are ready at X age to be that intimate with someone. If you are going to do it, then you need to be responsible and protect yourself. Studies show time and time again that this message actually gets young people to wait longer, have fewer partners and protect themselves better than not talking about the subject or just saying �no.� It�s one of the points that comes up again and again in any cross cultural study of effectiveness.
He responded back today with:
You wrote: that we�d really wish you hold off as long as possible, that you can get STD�s or pregnant as a result of unprotected sex
I agree with teaching this.
that if you are going to have sex there are lots of ways that you can be intimate with others without inserting slot �a� in hole �b�, and that if you elect to do that here are the ways to protect yourself, we don�t do young people any favors.
I don't agree with teaching this.
I think that you are ultimately misunderstanding the foundation of my argument. The Bible teaches us that sex outside of marriage is sinful. Hence, teaching kids how to have sex, even if protected, and teaching kids that oral sex and heavy petting and the like is fine if you're seeking an alternative, inheritly doesn't "work".
Your goal is to protect against unwanted pregnancies, STDs, etc. That's great. My goal is protecting against sex outside of marriage. Therein lies our difference. While I believe abstinence-only, if properly taught (especially by parents) will ultimately be much more successful than abstinence-plus programs, whether or not they actually are is irrelevant to my argument. Schools shouldn't be in the business of explaining how to have sex.
My latest response to him is:
I actually do understand your argument: namely that schools shouldn�t be teaching young people about sex because it either condones the activity, it gives them knowledge in �how to do it� or its just �wrong� to do so. As a philosophical argument, it�s all well and good up until the point that it becomes policy. When it directly impacts the lives of those being philosophized over, for the worse, that�s the point that I raise my hand and point out that the policy produces much more pain and problems than it professes to solve.
Given that menarche for girls is now in the neighborhood of 9-11 years old, puberty in boys is often done by the age of 15, and marriage averages out at about 25, odds are that most young people aren�t going to make it a decade without expressing the most powerful need of the human body after hunger. Unlike drug abuse, sex is a natural function, useful for both pleasure and procreation. Be the young person gay or straight, sex has a whole pile of risks and rewards and shouldn�t be entered into lightly. At some point though, young people are going to decide to have sex. You can jump up and down all you want and say they shouldn�t be doing it but the fact of the matter is they will. If you are invested in their health and welfare, then the task is to educate them on the safest ways, places and times in which to be intimate.
Education recognizes that people make choices, good, bad and everywhere in between. By providing people with as much information as possible about the choices available to them we can greatly mitigate the effect of bad choices and maximize the benefits of good ones. We can improve health and safety by teaching the facts, all of them, without question and reservation. Facts that include religious views on the matter at hand.
Teaching nothing and remaining silent on the subject is a recipe for disaster. We tried that with no positive effect. Now, we have some bastardized form of education on human sexuality that, while preventing some unwanted effects doesn�t prevent enough. We know from countless research (referenced before), both here and abroad, that telling it like it is actually slows young people down. It brings them closer to their parents, makes it easier to follow their advice for a much longer period of time than if no or limited conversation occurred.
Kinda fun, ain't it?
Posted by Jody at 10:02 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/15/2002, Sex trafficking is flourishing in Balkans
You know, if you want to sell sex for money, that's your business. If you've got it, flaunt it, because you won't have it forever. But grabbing hold of desperate, impoverished women...or hey, men for that matter...selling them naked like chattel and renting them out by the hour is just sick. It's the guys who run programs like this who really need to wind up naked and alone in the shower on Cell Block C, having just dropped the soap as a large man name "Brutus" enters the room.
Posted by Jody at 08:28 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Yahoo! News - Renegade View on Child Sex Causes a Storm
When the University of Minnesota Press agreed more than a year ago to publish a book called "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex," it was clear that it would be controversial.....
Posted by Jody at 12:29 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
"Science Fiction" by Chris Mooney After spending half a billion taxpayer dollars, alternative medicine gurus still can't prove their methods work--how convenient....
Well, I guess if I really wanted to make money, I'd change my name to some vaguely new age sounding, Native American bastardization, grow a beard, and swear up and down that if you buy my special 25-cent pieces at $500 a pop, you're energy would be "balanced."
It's either that or porn.
I'll stick with writing.
Posted by Jody at 10:01 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Kids, Sex and those guys in the long black cassocks� I
I get a call to visit one of my kids in jail.
He�s not actually a biological kid (well, he is a living breathing person so I guess he�s alive� unless of course you believe teens are merely satanically animated corpses, which, all things considered, could be true), rather one of the many kids that I carried on my caseload for a good number of years. I was off The Line now, meaning I no longer provided direct service to children and teens, being burnt-out from the insane job of dealing with the endless crises inherent in abused children and a broken system. But I still would stop in from time to time and see the young men and women I fretted over. Damndest thing about kids is that they slip past all barriers of �professional, compassionate detachment� and stick around some place in your soul.
Chuck had gotten into a fight/argument in his foster home, broken a bedroom window and sneaked out, then stolen a car, wrapped it around a tree and tried to run from the police when they showed up to help him. Pretty good night for a 15-year-old.
Note: A good thing to remember here is that most of these kids I talk about aren�t really real. �Chuck� doesn�t exist. In the interests of the kids� privacy and to better serve expediency and brevity, these stories have been condensed and amalgamated. (Except when they haven�t.) Also in the interests of privacy, the details won�t be exact. (But they won�t be inexact either.) Think of this as the caveat at the beginning of Dragnet or Law and Order. The true thing here will be the stories themselves and what I took from it. It is my way of honoring the Truth of a thing without having to tell the literal truth. (Such is the way of writing.)
Chuck is a regular kid, very tall though, with curly hair and can easily be mistaken for a someone several years older. Birthparents are total shits. Dad is in jail, mother is a basket case and the relatives are proof of the adage that siblings shouldn�t marry.
Despite that, Chuck was, is, a really smart kid. He knows right from wrong. He can program a computer when he sets his mind to it. Doesn�t give a damn about school and would love to get a job because he just knows success is right around the corner along with fast cars, nice homes and more girlfriends than he could possibly schedule. I know, makes little sense in reality but, hey he doesn�t have too many points of reference. Thankfully he doesn�t have a drug problem. He was a little high strung and prone to over react, but teens often can be and, in his case, the in the womb exposure to crack didn�t help matters.
But to tell you the truth, I think he was also just terribly bored.
-cont-
Posted by Jody at 10:24 AM
| Comments (1)
| TrackBack
|
