Apathy.

“but honestly.. fuck those people.  i dont even acknowledge their existence.  so they dont affect me”
 One of my friends on douchbaggy religions. 

There is a huge problem with this attitude. You should give a damn that repressive religions have a shitty moral code.  You should give a damn when any given religion wants to block or change how women access health care. You should give a damn when they think that GLBTQ people aren’t worth the time of day and most of all you should give a damn because they vote in massive numbers and voting in what massive numbers is what gets their agenda passed into law and your agenda put on the back burner, assuming it makes it to the burner at all.  

And this is my get out and vote plug for the primaries.  If you’ve already had the primaries in your area, I hope you voted.  If you haven’t done the primaries yet, learn your candidates and your polling location and get the fuck out and vote.  Let’s outvote the douchebags kids.

A fine example of why the catholic church sucks.

Click me for an example of a time when the catholic church should be shutting the fuck up.

The feminist in me says that the catholic church doesn’t allow IVF, or any form of contraception because the advent of hormonal contraception and non-hormonal long term contraception is, in my opinion,  the single biggest contributor to giving women some autonomy or agency over their sexualities.

If you want to strip women of the ability to truly plan their child bearing, something the World Health Organization says is a basic human right, then what else do you want to strip women of the right to do?

Let’s just keep all the women at home with the kids and let the men do the heavy lifting and bring home the bread.

On a practical note, I don’t understand the Catholic Churches opposition to IVF.  It’s really good for a church to have a congregation that has lots of babies

Men’s Health Final

These questions are my men’s health final.  I’m going to write some comments about the reasons these are shitty final questions for any class. Check a box if you agree.

What is the implication between men and women regarding the mortality difference among men and women?

What are the top five reasons men don’t see the doctor?  You really want me to generalize all men in one question…really?

How does masculinity influence mens health and health behaviors?  Way to be heteronormative woman.  really. You must have missed the memo that masculinity differs from place to place and culture to culture.

Why are we studying the health belief model? Because you are a god damned idiot.

How are we going to use the precede proceed model to plan a health program?

What are the risk factors for prostate cancer?

What would happen if you don’t eat healthy?  Really.  Is this final exam worthy? 

What are the characteristics of a healthy relationship?

What are the barriers for men to be physically active?  You really want me to generalize all men in one question…really?
Define 90/10 principles and how you’d use it?

How to use the four A’s to cope with life stress?  Uh. what?  You said yourself in class that you couldn’t remember the answer to this and you expect us to remember this.

What are the reasons to use contraception?  There are about 2938482 reasons to use hormonal reasons, but only a few reasons to use non-hormonal contraception.  And again is this really final exam worthy?

What are the health benefits of circumcision?  Whatever the health benefits they aren’t worth the cost of routine circumcision.

What are the five major reasons for people to have sex? mhmm orgasms.  yes orgasms.

What are five ways to prevent STIs?

Not-rape

Not-rape= 1. when a person is sexually assaulted but it is not called rape.

This happens one of two ways typically. A) The victim of sexual assault opts not to label it as rape because they think it was somehow their fault, because they wore a low cut dress or because they didn’t say no loudly enough.
B) The second way is when it looks like rape, it smells like rape, but it isn’t legally rape.

I’m going to mostly talk about the second definition of not-rape in this blog post.  I was reading my student paper this week and it has a graph of crimes students were charged with and had categories for “sexual assault(non-rape)” and  “sexual assault(rape)”  I understand why these crimes were labeled as such, that it relates to the legal definitions.  However, I think that labeling sexual assault non-rape in the mass media without careful explanation is damaging.

I think that all sexual assault is traumatic and I think that when you see the details of a non-rape sexual assault, that lots of people think “oh well at least she wasn’t actually raped.” and the victim thinks “well thank god I wasn’t actually raped.”  In reality sexual assault is traumatic no matter how it occurs and those thought processes only serve to belittle the trauma of sexual assault.

At best, the victim will be surrounded by caring, loving people who support the victim as they get back on their feet.  They will hopefully be surrounded by people who stop these thoughts as they come and reassure the victim that they deserve and are allowed to feel however they feel post-assault.  At worst, the person will be around people who say “Oh, well it isn’t like he actually raped you.”

Grandparents

Grandparents are a special, special thing. in case you missed the memo.

Feministy Ramblings

I sat through a presentation over mens’ birth control today and the man presenting talked about a hypothetical mens birth control pill and he talked about all of these issues with it.  Is it safe? Will it affect my ability to have children?  If it doesn’t affect my ability to have children ten years from now how will these hormones effect me? Can I remember to take this pill every single day?

He talked like women don’t juggle that, or like we’re somehow super heros and faux hormones don’t effect us negatively or like all women are great at remembering to take the pill every single day and it was just super insulting on a very subtle level.

Untitled

On really fine spring days, I can’t help but think about my grandmothers’ garden.  It was her pride and joy and no one in the neighborhood could top it.  My universities perfect flowerbeds just remind me of her.

I bet her garden in heaven, or whatever, is unbeatable.

Some random things+ Homemade Ranch Dressing

I’ll do the random things first
-My asian professor kept pronouncing cholera, “chol-er-ia” in class today.
-Whenever I hear someone talk about ten years ago or fifteen years ago, I always think of the 1990’s and the 1980’s respectively.  I almost never think of 2000’s or 1990’s

Homemade Ranch Dressing.  I made this recently for the first time and I could never go back to bottled ranch.  I use light mayo and 0% greek yogurt for my base and season to taste.  Greek yogurt and mayo makes a really thick mixture, so thin it out with milk as needed as well.

It takes about 3 minutes to make with my electric mixer- which actually saves time because when I was buying ranch dressing I’d stand in the dressing aisle for no less than five minutes finding the best price/taste payoff.

Anywho that is it for today.  Happy Monday!

I have something in common with Miley Cyrus

Click me if you desire. Miley Cyrus Upskirt picture

I went to the store today in a a black knee length cotton skirt and no panties because I don’t tend to wear panties in the spring/summer/fall.  My foot got stuck while I was getting to my car and I probably flashed anyone in eyesight while I was unsticking my foot.  Getting in and out of the car modestly in a skirt is almost impossible.  I try my best, and I mostly succeed.

Bonus Point Task for my male readers: next time you get in or out of a car, do it without spreading your legs.

But here is the thing.  Women like me and women like Miley, when we accidentally flash people getting in and out of cars, we’re vilified no matter what.  We’re vilified if we wear panties, or go commando. We’re vilified if we wear lacy panties, or plain cotton ones.  We’re vilified if we shave, trim, or do nothing at all to our pubic hair.  We can’t win and it isn’t fair.

Your kid isn’t that special

I was reading a Facebook post today about a friends twelve year old son who wondered off to a friends house and didn’t tell her.  Naturally when 8pm rolled around, she got worried.  Her son eventually meandered home and forgot to call.  He is grounded for the next month though.  

I saw a comment on her post though: 

“Kids don’t realize how unsafe it is out there & what they put us Mom’s thru pulling stunts like that. And that’s cause lots of parents don’t even worry if their kids still ain’t home by midnight, much less care about someone else’s child.”  

And I wanna be really clear, I’m not about to bash a mother’s worry over her child not coming home. However, I’d like to point the vast majority (like 90%*) of children are abducted and/or assaulted by people they know.  Family, friends, friends parents’, teachers, older friends are the majority of sexual assaults/abductions.  

Telling your child that coming home after dark is dangerous because a man might jump out of the bushes and kidnap them or whatever does way more harm than good.  It sets them up to assume if they’re assaulted or kidnapped it will be by a stranger when in fact it is way more likely that if they are assaulted or kidnapped that it will be by someone they know.  It prepares them for 10% of the danger and puts them at elevated risk for the other 90%  

Instead teach your children to be smart and to use common sense. Tell them to keep an eye out for red flags in both strangers and friends/family.  Most of all, don’t let them live their lives in fear of the attack or kidnapping that will probably never happen.

*This number isn’t something I pulled off of some crime statistic website, but rather it’s a number I’ve heard over and over again through different medias and one I think is probably true.