Posts by B Jones
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Danielle,
He's not quick-witted, his jokes are awful, and he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about half the time.
Not that I'm all that in touch with the popular sentiment on this one, but I suspect that at the moment, this is part of the charm. In a "he doesn't make out like he's any better than the rest of us, despite the tens of millions of dollars" kind of way. You can be a witty scrapper from the streets of Mangere like Lange, or awkward but very very smart like Clark, but I think if you had either of those qualities plus stacks of wealth, you'd start to get up people's noses.
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I think of the religious objection to contraception to be more or less like the police's objection to radar detectors - it's a practice that lets you escape the consequences of what they really have a problem with, ie either sex or speeding. If people don't have to worry about disease or pregnancy, what's to stop them shagging whoever they like and bypassing our nice handy set of rules about who gets to shag. And if you get to set the rules about who gets to do one of the more fun things humans can do, you have a lot of social power.
I think if an HIV vaccine is ever invented, it's bound to set off a new religious anti-vaccine movement. Gardasil's already getting a taste of that treatment.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
I'd like to hear from the guy who actually prefers them and would wear them even in a monogamous and trusting relationship.
It's probably not that uncommon among new parents. Hormonal contraception can be a problem when you're breastfeeding, and while breastfeeding usually has a contraceptive effect, having a second line of defence is a good thing if you want to recover from baby #1 before starting baby #2. Midwives will proactively ask if you're sorted, and if not, write you a script for a 144-pack of condoms. Cue hollow laughter from new parents.
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I'm guessing that Lucy posted the research while Ben was writing, and it's often hard to spot stuff at the bottom of a page if things are moving fast.
The thing that gets me is that while it makes sense at an intellectual level to talk about presenting accurate risk information, humans are notoriously bad at making appropriate decisions about risk, and that's when they're not teenagers at the mercy of hormonal impulses and alcohol (a huge factor in unprotected sex). I think a more utilitarian approach (providing information in such a way that risky behaviour is minimised) is probably justified here. The hard part is not going off the alarmist deep end so you lose credibility - there are plenty of resistance movements to safety campaigns pitched at adults.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
"condoms prevent STDs" is false, but easy to convey on a billboard.
Equally, "condoms don't prevent STDs" isn't that accurate either, and can lead to some pretty unhelpful outcomes.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
I suspect you're confusing HPV and HSV (cancer vs cold sores/herpes)
You're right, I was. I had thought herpes = warts = a variety of HPV (not the cancer causing sort, but both sorts are caught by Gardasil). Instead it's herpes = cold sores = HSV, a totally different virus, but like HPV, one that people get non-sexually on other body parts. Thanks for helping clear that up.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
I escaped HSV as much by good luck as good planning.
Luckily for the younger generation, Gardasil protects against that now, providing your parents sign you up for it in time for it to be useful.
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When it comes down to it, with the pill you're messing around with a hormonal system that in its natural state has some fairly unpleasant side effects for a lot of people, and that's when you're not even pregnant. The side effects of pregnancy itself are a lot worse. I remember reading that when the third generation pill blood clot risk first got publicised, there were a rash of unplanned pregnancies when women stopped taking it without replacing it with other contraceptives, which for those women at least would have perhaps doubled their risk of blood clots.
My impression is that for hormonal IUDs (I keep thinking of IEDs) is that the dose is way lower because it's delivered locally.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I thought we all wanted equality here?
Yes, but there are elements of inequality that frequently come into play between men and women negotiating contraceptive use, men being bigger and stronger being an obvious one. The way slut stigma works is another. Pretending it's always 50/50 doesn't eliminate that.
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Something that comes through interestingly in those articles is that it's parents and grandparents getting het up about what the kids are learning. I suspect given Garth George and Jim Hopkins jumping on the bandwagon it's more of the latter than you'd think.
I'm guessing most parents of young teenaged kids would be around their 40s, and would have been young themselves at the time of the sexual revolution and outbreak of HIV - two things that fuelled the introduction of decent sex ed in schools. It's the generation beforehand who would have been quietly stowed into homes for unwed mothers, had problems with mixed flatting or getting contraception without a wedding ring and so on. The culture shock for many of them would be greater.
My own grandmother, according to the family story, asked her older sister at age 21 where babies come from, and was told she was too young to know.