Female Anatomy 101: The Clit

On Bullshit (by Dan Savage)

In case you don't know, Dan Savage is an amazing sex and relationship advice columnist. I particularly appreciated this response, so I'm reposting it here. Question is in italics, his response is the rest.

I feel ridiculous e-mailing you, but I figure that if anyone has heard of all manner of ass-hole behavior during sex, it would be you.

I'm a 17-year-old girl, and I've only had one boyfriend—who was, at the time, 21 and, I thought, perfect. The only thing that's still bothering me is the reason we broke up. After promising that he would never hurt me, and reassuring me that he was SO passionate about contraception, I agreed to have sex with him and lose my virginity. And in the middle of fucking me, he removed the condom without a word! He was hoping I wouldn't notice! I did notice—and I kicked his ass to the curb. He cried, he sent stupid gifts, and still calls. At least he didn't get me pregnant.

How upset should I be about this? Or is this something that horny males do? I'm not traumatized. I could nominate him for "Crappy Boyfriend of the Year," but surely someone else's boyfriend has done worse. I really just don't know how to feel about this.

[signed,] Just Confused

How upset should you be? Very. Did you do the right thing? Absofuckinlutely.

Hell, JC, you did precisely what I would have urged you to do had I been in the room. Of course, the second-to-last thing a straight girl needs in the room with her when she's losing her virginity to some asshole straight boy is a gay man twice her age desperately trying to get out. But if I had been there, JC, and I realized what was going on, I would've stopped trying to break down your locked bedroom door long enough to give your boyfriend—aka the last thing you needed in the room that night—something to cry about for real.

You consented to intercourse with protection, and that asshole deceitfully initiated unprotected intercourse. When a fucker removes a condom during intercourse—gay or straight, vaginal or anal—it invalidates the fuckee's consent to the fucking. (And what is sex without consent, class?) So your "more experienced" boyfriend sexually assaulted you, JC, and placed you at risk of an unplanned pregnancy—and for what? An ever-so-slightly enhanced orgasm for him?

What.

An.

Asshole.

This isn't something that decent guys do at all, JC, much less "all the time." He's an abusive douchebag, and you're well rid of him. Here's hoping his next girlfriend takes proactive steps to make sure the condom stays securely on—I'd suggest staple-gunning the thing in place.

"[We] must make fun things (sex, drugs) safe, instead of trying to make safe things (abstinence, monogamy) fun."

Epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani has worked on the front lines of HIV/AIDS research for more than a decade, talking to sex workers, drug users, health officials and bureaucrats alike in an effort to determine why 40 million people are living with HIV — and what can be done to curb the epidemic.

Pisani's new book, The Wisdom of Whores, looks at the bureaucracy surrounding AIDS research and treatment, and offers an alternative for the future.

"It would mean spending lots more of the available money on prostitutes, addicts and gay guys, and lots less on school kids, pregnant women and church groups," Pisani writes. "It would mean making fun things (sex, drugs) safe, instead of trying to make safe things (abstinence, monogamy) fun.

Interesting NPR interview from June- thanks, Christine, for sending it to me. Listen to it here.

The interview talks a lot about harm reduction without ever saying the phrase. While harm reduction is often spoken about in relation to drug use, it can apply to all of real life- it's about meeting people where they are, making their "bad" habits as safe as possible and offering alternatives for them if they so choose. Now this philosphy is not very popluar in our puritanical, repression and denial obsessed society, but it is the only humane way to treat others, in my opinion.

Fighting the stigma around HIV/AIDS

"Keren [Gonzalez] has lived with HIV her entire life. Her family broke the news to her when she was five.

“My parents used drawings to explain it to me,” she said."

Read more on the UNICEF page and Yahoo News



Two new things I learned today about HIV/AIDS:

-Swaziland and Botswana are pretty much tied for the country with the most HIV/AIDS cases. Approximately 1/3rd of the country is living with the disease.

-The CDC understated number of new HIV infections in USA by 40%.