Green Birth Control

I only skimmed it, but Huffington Post has a round-up of eco-friendly birth control.

The reason I didn't bother reading the whole thing is that it endorsed lamb skin condom, which I decided at my OWL class (church sex ed) are the grosses thing ever, and don't actually protect against STDs.

However, I learned form the HuffPo article that fair trade condoms exist, and this made me smile. Fair trade is awesome, condoms are awesome (even if you don't want to use them, it's fun to blow them up like balloons and throw them at people), and combining the two just makes all kinds of fair trade sexy condoms.

Not that I really plan on needing condoms any time soon. I might go on The Pill, which is the other reason I didn't read the whole article - I'm sure it will be horribly not-green and eco-bad in a million different ways, but if it makes my PMS going away I don't care how many fish die.

This has been your juvenile blog post of the day, brought to you by lack of sleep and loud music. Hope you enjoyed it!

Twenty-nine days until college! Aah!

Some Thoughts on Health Care

The Tri-Committee Health Care Plan of Massive Awesome Doom (yes, that's the official name) was just released, and I gotta say, it looks pretty good. This brochure, titled "What's In It For You?", sums up the goals of the health care reform legislation, and it says things like "No more rate increases for pre-existing conditions, gender, or occupation" that make me smile. In fact, I generally approve of most of what the nifty brochure says. This phrase confuses me, though:

"America's middle class deserves better."

Wait wait wait... do America's poor not deserve health care?

It confuses me how "America's middle class" seems to be code for "normal people you care about and support." It really is not-so-subtly leaving out people who aren't middle class... I guess because we're so freaked out by the whole "welfare queen" stereotype that the committees writing the brochure have to make sure everyone knows this isn't some government hand-out, it's good old capitalism with payments and competition and everything?

Because, I mean, we all know what happens when you suggest that health care is for everyone. I mean, look at the kind of crap the National Heath Service in the UK puts out:

A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health.

...

Alongside the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”, it says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”

We can't have that over here. I mean, it's not like our rate of teen pregnancy here is twice the rate in the UK or anything. Our health care system obviously does a fabulous job addressing teen sexual health without the government running around talking about embarrassing things like orgasms. I mean, goodness.

100 Days, with Dancing Condoms

Campus Progress.org has an awesome report card of how Obama's administration has done on reproductive health issues in the first hundred days. And instead of As and Bs and Fs, his policies were ranked in dancing condoms, with one condom being "fail fail fail fail" and five being "awesome beyond recognition."

This made me giggle.

The biggest surprise for me was the epic fail on the subject of sex education. Failed Abstinence only programs still got $94 million dollars in the federal budget, and the FY 2010 budget does not mention comprehensive education; instead, it says vague things about "community and faith-based efforts."

Ahem. Given how faith-based efforts worked in Texas, I would like to see them very firmly yanked from my public schools, if you please.

And now, for your amusement: A handout from an abstinence-only sex ed program of "Things to Look for in a Mate." Ask yourself: Is Jesus their first love?

The thing that most annoys me about that statement is the grammatically incorrect use of the word "their."

Best Blog Quote of the Day

"Do you want a vagina full of AIDS? No? Then don't use a condom. ...ok?"



Words of wisdom indeed. Except actually completely a lie.

Also: Don't use lambskin comdoms, even if you're allergic to latex. They don't protect against STIs (really, not in a ab-only-scare-tactic kind of way) and they're icky, and also don't stretch and are really expensive.. I learned this at OWL (UU sex ed) and have been telling everyone I know. It's very important. Lambskin condoms are disgusting. Polyurethane is far superior.

EDIT: We have a runner-up for best blog line: "Lesbians keep making themselves unattractive to men, wearing men's clothes and such... You're never going to become a heterosexual dressed like that!"

Late Night Round Up

Today, my brain has been all over the place.

To start with the feminism: My church was mentioned on Feministing! It made me laugh when my friend pointed it out to me; the article is about OWL, a comprehensive sex education program sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association and United Church of Christ. Being new to UU, I missed a lot of the Sex Ed 101 offered to younger students, but right now I'm participating in the high school program. A bunch of us (mostly freshmen, but a few other older kids) spent a day in the church talking about gender identity, sexual response cycles, and how to put condoms on cucumbers. It was surprisingly fun - I've never taken real school sex ed by some weird flukes of scheduling, but I can't imagine it's anything like that.

However, the strategies that are so effective in OWL seem geared towards small groups of people who are already comfortable with each other. How can we open this up for bigger classrooms in public schools? Especially since heath classes, at least at my school, generally feature about 40 kids who want nothing to do with each other.

So that's the feminist question of the day. But I've also had art on the brain lately. (I'm an art kid, in case you didn't know. Mostly sewing and design, but I do some real art too - check it out here.)

Have you ever heard of Amanda Palmer? She's my favorite, and she has an amazing post up today about "abortion, rape, art, and humor."

It is some intense stuff.

Someone mentioned at Fem 2.0 yesterday that feminism isn't always so great at presenting our ideas artistically - we like to keep our serious academic/political business on one side and our arts business on the other side, I guess. And while I get why that happens, Amanda Palmer's post raises some interesting questions. Art is an important way of exploring topics - including the heavy ones like abortion and rape, where all the talking points and research in the world won't get across the thousands and millions of different experiences women have. They're important stories to tell - isn't removing the silence and shame and stigma part of what we're supposed to be working towards?

In case you didn't read it, the blog post was about Amanda Palmer's song about rape and abortion being banned from several networks because it was humorous/ironic instead of depressing. Her point was that humor is as valid a way of exploring personal experiences as anything else. I see why people might be offended by it, of course... but isn't that not necessarily a bad thing, if it gets people talking, raises awareness, gives people a space to share their own experiences as they're comfortable?

I have no idea if this made any sense, as I'm about to go to bed, but this caught my attention.

Going to skip off to sleep and leave you with a quote.

in art, everything must be fair game, everything must be explorable, everything must be speakable, or we go BACKWARDS! we go DOWN!

Quick Hit: Defining Virginity

Wow, I suck at this whole being-on-hiatus thing.

Get Real at RH Reality Check has up a fantastic article about how we define "sex" and "virginity." It's super thought-provoking. I love Scarleteen, it really ought to be required reading for all teenagers.

Quick Hit: Iron Hymen

I understand that abstaining from sex protects me from: Forcing my wonderful parents to use "tough love" and kick me out of the house for embarrassing them by being such a little whore. Having adoption-hungry homosexuals circle my pregnant belly like vultures, hell-bent on corrupting my unwanted bastard child with their sicko "love."

Learn more about the dangers of icky boy parts and the benefits of keeping your legs closed!

(Yes, it's a parody.)