Posts by Lucy Stewart
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Sacha,
How about that weather
It's so, uh, weather-y.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to James Bremner,
All Obama can do at the moment is talk about tax increase for people who already pay between 50 and 60c on the dollar in tax (35c Fed, 10c State, plus numerous local sales & property taxes etc). That is not very centrist.
James, I sincerely hope you're not involved in any job requiring an understanding of the tax system, because characterizing anyone in America as paying "between 50 and 60c on the dollar" - which reads as "50 to 60% of their income" - in tax is....disingenuous.
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You know what's sexy? References. References are sexy. Let's have some.
New Zealand has very high rates of chlamydia infection (PDF in link). Whether the apparent rise over the last couple of decades is due to better surveillance and more testing or not is debatable, but that rates are high - and much higher among young women and Maori/PI populations - is not. I'm gonna take it as read that things like chlamydia and gonorrhea are, you know, things people want to avoid getting.
Gonorrhea, by the way, is becoming antibiotic resistant.
The only thing that reliably protects against (not 100%, but pretty bloody well) the majority of serious STDs?
The people who recommend these things do not want you to have bad sex (or no sex.) They do not want you to be unhappy. They just don't want you to show up in their clinics with an STD. Because it is demonstrable that where people feel condoms are optional or refusable, and penetrative sex is considered the primary or only form of valid sexual activity, STD transmission will happen.
Condoms are not the only option for people, sex-wise. But for this specific sort of sexual activity, they are the only one we've got - if you want to be safe. Do we need to teach our kids about all those other options? Absolutely, and right now we're usually not. That needs to change.
Regarding condoms, though - let's bring it back to the original metaphor. People might not like seatbelts. They might find them uncomfortable, or get a rash. And they're not going to die or be injured every time they get in a car if they don't wear one. Or, necessarily, not die or be injured if they do.
Does that mean we have conversations with kids about relative risk and how seatbelts don't always stop you dying? No. We don't. Our public education message is that they need to wear a seatbelt. If they dislike seatbelts so much it makes them not want to go places, then we teach them to ride a bike or take the bus. But we don't condone non-seatbelt-wearing because it doesn't always lead to disaster or always prevent it.
And we shouldn't do the same with condoms.
Also,
(the chance of pregnancy is probably already zero since women are fertile less than half the time).
Speaking of unhelpful things to tell kids? Yeeeeeeeeeeah. That.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Moz,
and also deeply skeptical of the "condoms prevent STDs" meme that's been hinted at.
Can I have clarification - are you suggesting that condoms are not effective at preventing STDs or that it's not worth worrying about them when assessing condom use? Because in the context of the New Zealand STD environment, and STD-transmitting sex with new partners, neither of those are true.
When what I'm saying conflicts with the babble about "condoms are essential and anyone who says otherwise is a heretic who must be shunned"... it's easier just to go along with the herd and accept that orgasms come from masturbation.
I feel like that's not what's being said here? Or at least, what I've been trying to argue is that there are very specific situations - i.e. penetrative sex where STD/contraceptive status isn't mutually confirmable - where they are essential, but that those aren't all sexual situations or even most, and penetrative sex is hardly the only option people have when they are in that situation.
This might feed into the whole viagra thing too - if both men and women expect that the opportunity for sex is all that should be required, then as those men age and need more foreplay, they will be likely to conclude that they are defective and need drugs to fix the problem. The cynical part of me says yes, and that's why the drug industry is opposed to sex education.
"Female sexual dysfunction" is increasingly being marketed as a problem solvable by drugs, too. But then, focusing on communication and experimentation doesn't make anyone any money. It's probably not a deliberate strategy on the part of the drug companies, but they're not going to be behind alternative solutions, obviously.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Tim Hannah,
Although, pretty much by definition, the large majority of them are right, so that can’t really be the problem.
Yeah, the median American household wage is somewhere between $40 and $60K/year - "the rich", by even the lowest Bush-era-tax-cut-repeal definition, are those earning over $250K/year. Which is something like 1.5% of the population. 80% of households bring in less than $90K/year. If people are in support of taxes on the wealthy because they perceive them to be a very small minority earning very much more than the vast bulk of the population, they're perceiving correctly.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to B Jones,
(I keep thinking of IEDs)
Boy, now that's an image. The local dose thing sounds sensible, though. (Which has no bearing on its medical logic, but.)
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
The development of lower-dose and progesterone-only pills has helped (but you still couldn’t pay me to take that shit again).
I wonder how the hormonal dosage/side-effects compare with the hormone-dispensing IUDs they do now, and if they trial people somehow before inserting them? Do women who get side-effects from the regular Pill get the same ones from the IUDs or other hormonal delivery methods? I'll have to ask my mother sometime.
I do seem to recall something about the consensus now being that for the majority of women, the modern Pill is close to being over-the-counter safe. Though I imagine they're looking there at "will it give you blood clots and kill you" safe, not "will you hate the side-effects" safe.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Come to think of it, the red states, on balance, ironically receive more Federal tax dollars than they pay into it. While it’s largely the opposite with the blue states.
Red state/blue state is such an unhelpful conception, though. Most "blue" states have significant Republican minorities and most "red" states have significant Democrat minorities - most are actually a sort of purple. There's the odd state like Massachusetts or Texas where one party does have a very significant and long-term grip on the place - Scott Brown aside, something like 75% of the Massachusetts legislature is Democrat - but others have swung, or are much more borderline.
It is true, however, that Republican governors seem to feel that taking Federal largesse while railing against government spending is in no way reflective on their character.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to chris,
t wasn’t until I was much older that I became aware of the physical and mental stress this treatment puts on females and wondered how much dad and his generation simply took it for granted.
Well, it's different for everyone. It can be unproblematic as a long-term solution - it has been for me - but there's much more of a move now towards alternatives like IUDs (which are also not universally workable, but are a great alternative for a lot of people who don't like/can't take the Pill.) If anything, it's really important for kids to get the message that if one form of birth control doesn't work, there are always other options - and that they need to find the one that works for *them*.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Though I suspect the only reason that happened was because it provided a conveniently weightly cudgel to beat Michelle Bachmann over the head with.
With this GOP field, I remain grateful for even the smallest of mercies. That whole stoush got the mainstream news networks reporting that Gardasil was safe and recommended by doctors for, like, a whole week. Compared to the usual publicity vaccines get here, that's gold.
And the most delicious irony: While wildfires were raging through Texas earlier this year – and Gov. Perry had overseen massive cuts to funding for the Texas Forest Service and volunteer firefighters – he attacked the federal government for not doing enough.
In retrospect, I could have just said "Governor of Texas, massive hypocrite" and saved myself a paragraph of typing.