Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
So sex ed in school, Family Planning Association fully funded for free access to school age. Hell go the whole hog and give it for all ages.
Family Planning visits are already free up to age 22 - great resource. I think the problem is clinics are often inaccessible to schoolkids (the Wellington one is right next to the main library, the Christchurch one is way across town for anyone in the northern or western suburbs, etc.) The school visit thing they do for some communities, setting up for a morning so people can come chat, is awesome, but I don't think it's very well-funded or well-received by a lot of parents.
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Back to the sexy referencing: it turns out that, you’d never have guessed, but people do research on this stuff, and ask people questions about why they don’t use condoms.
It seems that teenage girls are often coerced into unwanted unprotected sex, men report more condom use than women, and personal reluctance is a factor, but not the most important one, in condom non-usage. Actual physical inability to use one is not mentioned in any study I could find.
Pretty much every study I could find – and I just did a search on PubMed, it’s publicly available, do it yourself – focused on lack of information and power in negotiation as the key factors behind non-use of condoms. Now it’s possible that sex researchers for the last twenty years have got it totally wrong, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest they might be onto something. (Some of them are even…men.)
But I also think that doesn’t provide license to dismiss the fact that for some men more than others, condoms significantly impair sexual function.
The research above doesn’t tend to back that up, but assuming that’s true: of course it’s worth discussing. But it’s worth discussing in a context of “you should use condoms, but if you really can’t, here are other options”, not “there’s a good chance you’re not going to like condoms, so…”
Condom usage is already problematic enough in a lot of populations without priming the well, so to speak. And I’m sceptical that if this really were a significant problem for a lot of men, there’d be no research showing up – sexual dysfunction of any sort is hardly an ignored field, and men’s sexual health even more so. I’d love to see any references anyone could dig up, but I couldn’t find anything.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
OK, apparently I’m unusual in preferring reality-based sex education. You know, “now with actual facts”.
The actual fact that teenagers are pretty fucking fertile, that the rhythm method is not suitable for them, that condoms are the only form of contraception that provides protection against STDs? Those facts, you mean?
No-one is arguing for teenagers to not be told things. They are arguing for them to be told that for them to achieve maximum safety from STDS, while having penetrative sex, they must use condoms. You have failed to come up with any argument against that. They are the only thing that works.
It's like you think sex educators don't worry about how to increase uptake of condoms and contraceptives generally, don't want kids to be informed, don't want people to not get STDs or have unwanted pregnancies. Does it actually occur to you that just maybe the people who spend their lives working with teenagers and educating them about sex, the people who measure success and failure by how many people they see who catch STDs or are pregnant and don't want to be - that those people might have more of an idea of you what's medically advisable and what works?
This is not a hypothetical danger, it is in fact exactly what happens.
Happened to you, or happens to a lot of people? Those are different things, and you're not showing any evidence of the latter. Just a lot of repetition of the former.
It also doesn't solve the problem that condoms are the only barrier against serious STDs. I have advocated multiple times in this thread for education about other sexual options, that don't require condom use, and for condom use being essential to specific situations. How would you slow the increase in STDs in New Zealand?
<q>Interesting indeed. I had no idea the rates of chlamydia were so low, and the chances of actual damage given the infection also so low.<q/>
You have a very odd definition of "low", when it comes to disease risk. Remember: a lot of people are never diagnosed, because they're asymptomatic. They find out when they find out they have pelvic scarring. The fun way.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
But Jock’s also a name…!
Yeah, that's what I mean - the name came before the item of clothing. At some point, penises started being called jocks, hence jockstrap. (Current American usage carries on blissfully unaware of this point.)
I’ve asked God to incorporate this feature into the next firmware update.
Can he also get onto that whole pesky appendix thing? That'd be ace.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
Do you think the slang terms are in some way derived from the names? Or just etymological coincidence?
Derived from the names, I reckon - "jock" as in "jockstrap" definitely is. And it's been going on for a while; ninety years ago, my grandmother decided she preferred her middle name to her first (Frances) because "Fanny" as a nickname was still in fashion, but so was the alternate meaning.
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This whole thing reminds me tangentially of a rark-up over Berkeley way, where the Campus Republicans thought they'd make a point about the university's new admissions policy by running a cake stall where they charged people based on their ethnicity and gender, with white men being charged the most and non-whites and women progressively less.
I thought this was an ingenious way to illustrate relative purchasing power and income disparity, having misheard that the Campus Democrats were running it, until I found out a) it was the Republicans and b) they were actually trying to say that the world was mean to white men. Oh well.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Danielle,
Particularly as during your teens your periods are often quite unpredictable, and you could be ovulating at some seriously wackaloon time. And sperm, they can lurk for a day or two. Or five.
It's helpful in this sort of discussion to remember that, where heterosexual sex is involved, your body and your partner's body ARE in a conspiracy to make a baby. You are the only thing that can stop them.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
While still transmittable it is a problem
we have licked in New Zealand…Now I think about it, public service announcement: guys, you can get yeast infections, and if you're unlucky, it can end up with you having a medical circumcision. If your partner is being treated for one, you should be too. Girls, if you have one, tell your partners. They have a need-to-know.
What an incredibly difficult area to work in – in the 70’s or so I’m guessing?
Nah, late '80s - by "before I was born" I meant "just before or around the same time as". So after the real struggles, but still not the easiest of fields to work in.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to James Bremner,
I have a fairly sound understanding of the tax system. But based on your post, I have my doubts about your understanding.
I understand the concept of progressive taxation, whereby the top tax rate you pay is not the rate every dollar is taxed at, and it is therefore very difficult for every dollar of someone's income to be taxed at 50-60%, especially when the wealthier people are the more likelier large portions of their income are to be derived from capital gains. This is also a "well-known and easily researchable fact".
The wealthiest Americans pay a large portion of the tax because they earn a large portion of total income - and have increased their income over the last decade, when the median income has shrunk. They also avoid a great deal of tax, through loopholes and deductions. When you earn $15,000 - minimum wage income - you cannot afford to pay very much if any of it in tax because you cannot afford to live if you do. (You can't afford to live on $15,000 anyway, but that's why so many Americans are on food-stamps - effective government subsidies to corporate profits.) When you earn $150,000, you can.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Jackie Clark,
I could have used someone like you when I was in my early 20’s, Lucy, and gaily gadding about, mostly sans prophylactic devices. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and I didn’t have much, as far as body and soul safety went, in those days.
What you actually could have used is my mother, who has been working in the field since before I was born and has forgotten more about this sort of thing than I have ever known. It does make me glad to know that a lot of my peers did get the benefit of her advice. (Although it took me ever so long to work out why I suddenly wasn't allowed to wait for her at her clinic once I hit fourteen or so - it never occurred that I'd got to the age where people I knew would be visiting the place.)
You’re right. That was incredibly sexy. Bringing the knowledge.
I can also....bibliograph.