This excellent essay from Tiger Beatdown discusses the human rights violations specifically suffered by Roma (Gypsy) women all over Europe. It’s a thought-provoking read about the intersections of gender and ethnic stereotypes, which sadly persist even today. Follow us on Twitter @mysexprofessor. Follow Jeana, the author of this post, @foxyfolklorist. Continue Reading →
europe
Recent posts
Birth Control In Estonia
As regular MSP readers know, I’ve been living in Estonia since this summer, working on my dissertation. It’s a small-ish country located on the Baltic Sea, wedged between the Scandinavian countries, Finland, and Russia (see map). Recently, I had the opportunity to see a doctor, and while I was at it, I decided to look into birth control options here. While there are a few differences I’ve noticed between Estonia and the US, it seems that obtaining birth control was as easy as anywhere else in the West, and in some ways, even a little easier. While informally discussing birth control options with a female doctor, I learned that the pill is one of the more common forms of birth control available to young women. Continue Reading →
More On Sex Education In Europe
Greetings from Tartu, Estonia! I’ll be living here for most of a year and continuing to blog for MySexProfessor.com while working on my dissertation. While traveling through the Netherlands for a few days prior to coming to Estonia, I picked up some interesting facts about sex education there. Longtime MSP readers will recall that I’ve written about attitudes toward teenagers having sex in the Netherlands (more laid back attitudes and lower teen pregnancy rates seem to correspond), contrasting European and American attitudes toward sex, and studies showing that abstinence-only sex education seems to correspond with higher teen pregnancy rates. Naturally, while I was in the Netherlands, I took the opportunity to talk to people I met about their experiences of sex education, just to informally gather some information and see if it connected with studies I’ve been seeing online. Continue Reading →
Contrasting European And American Attitudes Toward Sex
I’ve written before about how attitudes toward teen sex in the Netherlands differ from those in the U.S. Here’s a link to a visual analysis of the differences between Western European and American beliefs about sex. American media tends to construct sex as threatening and dangerous, whereas European ads reveal an acceptance of sex as natural and normal. Go check out the site and decide for yourself–the ads might arouse your, er, curiosity if nothing else. Follow us on Twitter @mysexprofessor. Follow Jeana, the author of this post, @foxyfolklorist. Continue Reading →