In light of California’s mandatory condom laws for adult performers, I’ve been thinking about why governments feel the need to step in and legislate sex work (I say legislate when often it is criminalized, but here I’ll be focusing on laws that regulate rather than prohibit). First, let’s think of people we categorically make laws about. Children: they have to go to school, they have to be under a legal guardian until they reach a certain age, and so on. Prisoners: they do not have full legal rights, but they retain many other rights, such as access to basic minimum living standards. The poor: there’s a whole body of laws, historically dating back to the Elizabethan era in England, governing employment and aid opportunities for the underprivileged. Continue Reading →
Sexual Health
Recent posts
Product Review: Renew Toy Revitalizing Cleanser
Our friends over at Good Vibrations recently sent me a new product to review. It’s like Christmas all over again! The Renew Toy Revitalization Cleanser is such a handy little thing! Forget about interrupting sexy times to run to the bathroom to clean a toy- a swift pump of this little spray bottle and you’re good to go! This comes in handy especially if you share a bathroom- I can’t tell you how awkward it is to try to clean a sex toy in a dormitory bathroom. You get all kinds of weird looks. Continue Reading →
Communication Fails: www.HeTexted.com
Last week, I stumbled upon HeTexted.com, a website devoted to “interpreting” cryptic text messages from men. Here’s how it works: a user sends in a text message, includes their own comments giving necessary background information, and leaves the decision up to the internet. Anyone in the blogosphere can vote in one of three ways regarding the sender’s intentions: either he’s into you, he’s not into you, or the verdict is still out. Sound familiar? My first instinct was to hate it, to repost the link with some snarky comment about the novel idea of actually asking your partner what they meant. My second instinct was to hate it more, wondering why these people couldn’t just ask their friends what they thought rather than airing all their dirty laundry on the internet. Continue Reading →
My Mentor, Sex Therapist and Author Sallie Foley
One of my mentors during my graduate studies was Sallie Foley. Sallie has been a social worker and sex therapist for 30+ years and currently runs the Sexual Health Certificate Program at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work. Check out that amazing program here. My first contact with Sallie was when I was the Peer Education Coordinator at the University of Michigan and I helped to put on ”Sexpertise”, the University’s annual conference on sexual health. Sallie was an integral part of this important conference and one of the premiere speakers, talking about her research and giving workshops on sexual pleasure. Continue Reading →
Advances In Women’s Health Politics (Plus Ninjas Against Rape)
If you have the time to read it, I highly highly highly recommend checking out Echo Zen’s Feministe post “How Women’s Health and Social Media Won 2012: Retrospective.” This link-rich essay describes the political events of 2012 in relation to women’s health, the amazing role of social media, and the rise of feminist advocacy by everyday women. Zen points out that what the social media strategies of 2012 exposed is “the violent rhetoric that once came from GOP quarters about how women’s healthcare isn’t real healthcare, since only sluts and prostitutes need contraception and family planning. If the extremists have learned anything from this cycle, it’s that openly campaigning against women’s lives is no longer a winning strategy, just as relying entirely on the white Christian vote is no longer a viable tactic.” This underlines how politicized an issue women’s health has become. Continue Reading →
The “Delayed Notification” Phenomenon
It’s bad juju to publicize your pregnancy before you’ve reached the second trimester. This delay in notification is practiced widely in Western culture, but nobody has really asked why we keep our early pregnancies a secret. As a component of a recent research paper I wrote about miscarriage and fetal personhood, I anonymously interviewed 17 women who have given birth in the past seven years about this practice. The results were striking. According to my survey results, 10 out of the 17 women chose to keep their pregnancies secret until after the three-month mark. Continue Reading →
Shocker! Kids Don’t Know Enough About Sexual Health
According to a recent city-wide standardized test, students in Washington D.C. are suffering from a serious lack of comprehensive sexual health/sexuality education. The test found that high school students, though fairly aware of the basics of anatomy and safe sex, were unable to pinpoint where and how they could access health care and who to talk to. Fifth graders and eighth graders, on the other hand, aren’t nearly “as educated about the human body as they should be.” So there are a few issues here. Continue Reading →
Interview With Folklorist Andrea Kitta: Vaccines, Public Health, Risk Perception
Being a folklorist means that whenever I chat with my colleagues, I find that they are researching really fascinating things. Take, for instance, Andrea Kitta, assistant professor of English at East Carolina University. She specializes in in medicine, belief, and the supernatural (and she’s a dancer, like me!). I knew that her book on vaccine rumors had just come out, so I asked if I could interview her for MySexProfessor, and fortunately, she agreed! Jeana: How would you summarize the main ideas in your book for the general public? Continue Reading →
5 Ways to Celebrate World AIDS Day
In honor of celebration week, I wanted to write about an important event that just happened this past weekend: World AIDS Day. In case you missed it, or want to keep up the spirit of World AIDS day for all of December, here are 5 things YOU can do to celebrate World AIDS day. Donate (your time and/or money) – Go here to find an AIDS Service Organization (ASO) near you. Give them a call and ask to speak to their volunteer coordinator. You could hand out condoms, make condom packets, work the table at events, or even answers the hotline phones with a little training. Continue Reading →
Why I Refuse To Use The Term “Pro-Life”
In light of Savita Halappanavar’s death due to being refused an abortion after miscarrying, using the term “pro-life” to mean “anti-abortion” is increasingly problematic. As therapist Lyla Cicero points out, “when a choice must be made between a mother’s life and a child’s, choosing abortion is still being pro-life, isn’t it?” Her piece on a pregnant teenager who identified as pro-life yet choose an abortion exemplifies this dilemma: the girl was choosing her life, choosing to delay having children, choosing to commit her time to working her way out of poverty. The irony, as Cicero notes, is that “The politicians who so vehemently call themselves pro-life are the same politicians who would resent [the teen mother's] living off the government.” That quote leads into the connections between pregnancy, poverty, and abuse. Continue Reading →