Blogging While Female

July 1st marks the beginning of the fiscal year, which means a bunch of new laws are going into effect around the country. Here are some interesting ones:

HPV Vaccine: Indiana and North Carolina are both requiring schools to inform parents of middle schoolers about HPV and its connection to cervical cancer, as well as the existence of a vaccine. Nevada is requiring insurance carriers to cover the vaccine (yay!)

Sex ed: Colorado bans abstinence-only sex ed! Yay!

Sex offenders: Virginia is requiring sex offenders to list their e-mail addresses with the state...because it's so hard to get a different one. Nevada has placed new residence restrictions on sex offenders so they must live 1000 feet away from schools "and other places children gather" (so...malls? Movie theatres? Totally bad idea, Nevada. And you were doing so well!) Connecticut has created a new sentence for those who abuse children under the age of 13 (Finally a law that might actually do something)

Abortion: Women in Georgia must be given the opportunity to see an ultrasound and women in both Georgia and Mississippi must be given the opportunity to listen to the heartbeat. Now, if this is actually presented as an option, all will be well and good. If abortion providers start forcing these options on women, that would be bad, bad, bad.

Minimum wage: Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania are all increasing their minimum wages (Michigan is going up to $7.15. Yay my state!)

LGBT issues: Iowa's civil rights laws now cover gays and lesbians. Discrimination against transexuals (including those who are pre-op) is barred in Vermont.

So apparently, more good than harm is coming about this year, in terms of laws that affect feminism. Small steps in the right direction.

Why I Chose Abortion

Maybe this is because I've been feeling like a sappy wuss lately, but this story absolutely breaks my heart and has me tearing up.

Know what irritates the hell out of me, though? This is a personal story about an extremely personal and serious topic. And the friggin' "More from Marie Claire" links are for inane articles like "Do diets make you fat?" and "Score a celebrity body in four weeks!"

I know that those little link boxes are generated by some impersonal series of code somewhere in the Interweb's tubes, but it still seems extremely inappropriate for this particular story.

Word, Trojan.

Apparently Trojan's latest commercial is too hot for TV - at least if it's CBS or Fox TV.

Yes, because Fox is totally the moral network. I avoid Fox TV shows whenever I possibly can because 99% of them are exploitative pieces of crap. The other 1% are either unappealing to me for other reasons or are House. Yay House. (Which is actually produced by NBC, I believe, considering that it's replayed on USA. What's up with that? But that's for another time...and probably another blog).

So CBS and Fox's big objection to this ad seems to be that it's focusing on preventing pregnancy rather than STI's. Personally, I think they were looking for excuses. The ad doesn't focus on any one reason to use a condom; it's simply saying that using one is the smart thing to do.

Here's my theory on why CBS and Fox really rejected the ad:

The focus is on a woman finding someone appealing for a sexual fling.

Let's face it: most of us don't go to bars to look for our soul mates. You might pick up someone who could become a soul mate, but generally we're looking for a good time in the here and now. And if you're smart and you end up going home with your new friend (or your new friend comes home with you) you'll use a condom. For reasons including BOTH STI and pregnancy prevention.

The main focus in the ad (the commercial, anyway; the print ad is slightly different) is the beautiful women. The guys who aren't sexually responsible are unattractive (literally pigs). The one guy who has bothered to pick up a condom is suddenly beautiful and attractive to the woman.

Clearly she isn't looking for a night of stimulating conversation. She's a woman who knows what she wants: sex. And she knows how she wants it: safe.

That's what's shocking and apparently so dangerous about this ad: it's presenting a woman who knows what she wants when it comes to sex, and she isn't afraid to go out of her way to get it.

So while Trojan is willing to go out there and promote women having a healthy sex life (they also produce the Elexa condoms which I enjoy, though I wish they were easier to find!) network television is telling us once again that we shouldn't be feeling so liberated, using blatantly false reasoning for why they won't accept this commercial (as Feministing points out, neither Fox nor CBS has had a problem featuring Viagra/Cealis/Levitra ads during big sporting events. It's apparently not harmful to the kiddies to hear about four hour erections, but even suggest that women might want to enjoy risk-free sex and alarm bells go off).

Also worth noting: the title for this entry comes from a phrase that's all over the new Trojan site. And it is SO TRUE.

Mycoplasma genitalium "can cause inflammation of the urethra (the urinary passage from the bladder), in men, and inflammation of the cervix and the lining of the uterus in women, possibly leading to infertility. However, it seems many cases of the infection are symptom-free."

Also, "the prevalence of Mycoplasma genitalium infection was 11 times higher among individuals living with a sexual partner, seven times higher among blacks and four times higher among those who use condoms during sex."

So would that mean that I'm 15 times more likely to have this (living with sexual partner + using condoms)?

Most people think that condoms will protect you from STDs, yet this article could be read to imply that condom users at four times more likely to get this particular STD than their non-condom-using peers. Despite this fact, the article doesn't explain how one might end up with this particular STD that, while many people may not display symptoms, could affect something as important as fertility. Wikipedia says that it's spread through unprotected sexual contact.

I am so confused. And a little irritated at MSNBC for leaving so many holes in their article.