WMST/CMST 419

In response to male politicians’ “concern” over women’s reproductive health, female lawmakers are pushing for more attention in promoting men’s reproductive health.

A number of bills across the country are looking into the side affects of Viagra to make sure that men are not being ignored while the safety of female contraceptive and abortion procedures are being scrutinized.

To give men a taste of how invasive and prodding government oversight into women’s sex lives has become, a number of state politicians sporting two X chromosomes have championed bills that mandate a pesky list of prerequisites for men who want Viagra pills. These include celibacy lectures, rectal exams, affidavits from former lovers swearing impotence problems, and forced viewing of a video pimping the medicine’s side effects. Acquiring the goods to get hard could be incredibly difficult. It’s tough enough reading that list of regulations with a straight face.

While these proposals are not medically necessary, and unlikely to actually become law, they are showing how ridiculous it is to try to impose limits on female sexuality and reproductive health.

When people cannot see reason, I think bills like this help to bring the issue into more clarity. Would you support these bills if restrictions on women’s health are enacted?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pQuNcuk5FE

The link above is a move trailer to the movie Taken made in 2008. I immediately thought of this movie today as all the presentations were on prostitution and sex trafficking. If you haven’t seen this movie I would highly recommend it, it explains exactly what is going on in the world today will of the sex trafficking happening.

The jist of the story is 2 young women, Amanda and Kim, around the age of 19 head off to Paris to stay in Amanda’s cousin’s house. Kim’s dad is a retired CIA field agent so he opposes to her traveling and two young women going to Paris alone because it’s dangerous, but of course Kim gets upset and he caves in. Come to find out he was right, they met a young man at the airport and he charms his way into asking them to go to a party with him later and where they live so he could get them, but really he was capturing them into a nightmare. After arriving to Amanda’s cousins, several men break in and take her and also come after Kim but Kim was on the phone with her dad at the time Amanda was getting kidnapped so he explained to her what to do and what was going to happen and she too got taken. Her dad immediately fly’s to Paris and runs through several obstacles to find her and by then she was being sold off and drugged up. But she was one of the lucky ones, she was still alive.

The point of me posting this is, how often this happens where travelers or even women from other countries get lured into a setup such as this and most of the time never get saved or end up dying, because of drug overdoses, abuse, and neglect. It is just so sad to me that this world is so wrapped up in sex and money that families would sell their own children to make a $1, because that’s really more important than their life right? This happens too many times and in so many places, how in the hell are we supposed to protect ourselves. We should be able to live in peace and happiness and instead we have to watch our backs and our kids every second because we can’t trust anyone and their motives today. It’s just really sickening to me that other countries or even reinforcements would turn their backs to this just because of a little cash, have we really fallen that far under that we just don’t care anymore about our children/people around us? Can this ever be turned around? I can only hope.

In class we discussed comprehensive sexual education in schools. After these discussions i had a conversation with a girlfriend about it…she has two children in the public school system. All of a sudden she brought abortion and it made me wonder if the views would change if it were to be included in the education.

Would people be less likely to be accepting of educating young people about abortions? In our conversation we stated things like it possibly giving young people an outlet for having casual sex or any type of sex at that. We also wondered if young people would use it as a form of birth control instead of emergency uses. Or that it may be plausible that less young girls would go through with their pregnancies if they had in depth information about abortions. There was a lot of back and fourth between us i assume because she has children and i don’t.

So i decided to ask the class…what do you guys think? Would you want your children or siblings to be taught about abortions? And i mean taught…like what they are, how they work, the actual procedures, costs, the whole 9 yards.

And if so what type of changes do you think we would see in our views about abortions overall? Abortions tend to be such a touchy subject so i’m just curious if these views will ever change and if so in what ways?

What I have found very interesting reading the article “John Next Door” was the fact that Farley’s team had difficult time locating men who don’t buy sex.  Buying sex includes things such as pornography, phone sex and lap dances. So this means that most of the men out there do buy sex. However, the article also states that the attitudes and habits of these sex buyers reveal them as men who dehumanize women, view them with anger, lack empathy for their suffering and relish their own ability to inflict pain.  Does this mean that most men view women this way?  It doesn’t make much sense to me.  I don’t think that buying sex is degrading to women. For example, majority of women who are prostitutes, exotic dancers, or involved in porn choose this lifestyle and many of them enjoy it very much.  So why would buying sex be considered system of degradation?

Here are the statistical data I was trying to recall in class today.

The original source is a 1990 content analysis by Yang and Linz of Univ. of California (not sure why I thought it was Neil Malamuth, except that he has also done a lot of research on pornography!).

I read online that beyond was breast feeding her child, blue ivy in public. Their was so much controversy because she was doing not only in public but also in a restaurant in manhattan. Some argue that it empowered African American women, while others argued that breast feeding should be done privately in ones home. 

Sown thing  that

Something that I found interesting from Fridays class discussion was that movies were so much more open in the early 1920s. The video we watched displayed many acts of gay/lesbian acts. These acts weren’t labeled as gay/lesbian but society seemed they were acceptable . Now a days anything of that sort would have had critics going crazy and just blasting away with comments against movies like this. Why were acts more acceptable back in the day rather then today. Interestingly I feel as if we have taken one step forward and ten steps back. At this rate I feel like we will never accomplish anything, i feel as if society was more accepting in the 1920s rather then almost 100 years ( I know it’s only 2012). Their should more accepting now them their was back in the day and things seem to be backwards. Things were more accepting back then. 

The media is a powerful thing but becoming correctly informed is even better.  So often we become misinformed or believe everything on television or what others say.  As a college student, I believe much confidence and self-rightousness comes from being in the know. The more proven evidence and scientifically accurate material that is introduced to the public the better.  What’s better than the truth, right?

As Dr. Kissling has mentioned before, there are still many people who don’t know what a vulva is or how birth control works properly.  This is frightening in my opinion.  Not that I feel like I know everything either but at least the more you can do to learn the better off you are.  I feel so fortunate to have taken this course.

As we complete this course and become more aware of the  of sex, sexuality, and communication, I encourage others to pass on links and sources that you have found valuable and learned something new.  Most of the course curricula was very new to me and I have become like a sponge soaking all the new material up.  I have learned so much and I can’t wait to keep on even after we end Winter Quarter.  My world has opened up a lot since taking this course.

I’ve found myself watching a few episodes of reality shows lately (never watch these hence this came as a surprise) and I realize how much reality tv is showing very unreal sex. We have discussed in class how kids nowadays are learning about sex through media outlets like porn and TV. With the influx of reality shows like Bad Girls Club, Jersey Shore, hell even Flavor of love, I feel these types of shows are showing very unreal ideas about sex. Yes full blown sex is not shown on TV, but the attitudes about sex are just as easily taught. When did our society become so obsessed with reality tv, when really nothing about it is real?

We talked in class about Jersey Shore, and how sex is so casual to those people. The guys in the show will literally call a cab for the girls so that they don’t stay the night. The guys in the show would have it be their goal for the night to have sex with who ever they could get to go home with them. In our society it seems like no one cares. It also seems much like some college guys, their goal is often just to hook up with chicks. Is there anything as just casual sex? Can people literally just have casual sex and one of them not get attached, or feel some sort of remorse or guilt afterwards? Because I feel like if you feel bad after having a “one night stand” it wasn’t so casual for you. Is casual sex becoming something that is accepted in our society, or is there no such thing as casual sex?

So apparently Santorum doesn’t support equal protection under the law for gays at all. At least in every debate or interview I have seen him in, he gives those views. Here is a video clip of an interview about his stance on gays in the Military. Again he gives a completely homophobic regurgitated arguments to supports his stance. I hope nobody actually vote for this guy. He doesn’t appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed. One of his main points his that gays being in closed quarters with straight men would cause problems, which he refers to multiple times. I guess when I enlist in the Navy after graduation, I’m gonna be making my fellow soldiers uncomfortable and unable to perform their duties if they know i’m gay or simply because i am gay. Also as he suggest, I guess i’m likely to come on to them as well. Is this really a person worth even considering a vote for, to represent the United States?

Gays in the Military- Santorum

I’ve noticed how our topics from this week and last have a lot in common. Education and media somewhat go hand in hand, just that it’s a major way of learning about sex for teenagers. But—it’s a matter of what the kids are learning. They learn too much about sex as a common act that is not very important. They learn what Jersey Shore is teaching them, they’re learning sex moves from cosmo, but they’re not learning the real important stuff about the consequences of sex. Well, I guess if you count teen mom, 16 and pregnant, and MTV’s approach at sex ed through their advertisements, there is an effort made. If only they could teach sex ed through popular television…. Maybe that would help grab their attention. OR have the same controversy as sex ed in itself. Oh well, I don’t really know where I’m going with this, it was just a thought.

OMG! I wish i could watch the whole debate.. There are several really good points made for pro-gay marriage legislation. Again it seems that the only (non) points the opposing activist could make in this debate are all regurgitated nonsensical comments. I don’t want to start a debate here, but has anyone actually heard a logical reason or argument supporting any anti-gay legislation or debate? Just one? Out of all the debates or discussions I have heard or been involved with, I have never heard of even one logical reason for supporting the opposing side for pro-gay rights legislation. I really am interested in hear what people have to say. Please don’t bring religion into this. I am asking for logical reasoning not individual or group religious views or interpretations.

Gay Activist Vs. Anti-Gay Activist

This is off topic for the week, but thinking about gender roles and the way society engraves the idea of female and male in our heads from, well, birth. I was at work today, and this is not the first time I have seen this, we recieved our freight delievery. As the truck pulled away, I read the side of it. (This is about the 4th or 5th time that this has been on the side of the truck.)

“Forget diamonds. Salads are a girl’s bestfriend”

Everytime I see this, yes, I find it a little humorous. But I am disturbed in the fact of what this is actually saying. Does it mean that all girls need to eat salads? That if they are not looking for diamonds they are worrying about the way they look? Or is it that salads are for “girls” and not men?

What does this mean to you?

Bottom line is to sell the salads, but do these hidden meanings really need to be used to do that?

Why is the term, “You’re gay” an insult? It gives the word a negative meaning that I just don’t understand and wonder how it even came about. I see this trend most commonly among guys. When they don’t like someone they call them a ‘faggot’ or they harass each other by saying that they like penis. This puts such a negative and unforgiving thought to being gay, that it might be safer to stay in the closet.

I’ve overheard guys saying this to each other recently, and I called them out on it and asked them why being gay is an insult and I never got a straight answer. They use it as a joke but when it comes down to someone actually being gay/lesbian/bisexual they aren’t as rude or ignorant about it, they are supportive and don’t have a problem with it.

I thought of this particularly this week because this trend is within our culture and society, and I wonder if media has anything to do with it? Did they start it? Influence it? Or is it just something that has been developed over time?