Obama Makes "It Gets Better" Video

I have been compulsively watching "It Gets Better" videos, and am super excited that President Obama made one.



Thoughts on what Obama says or doesn't say here? Do you have a favorite "It Gets Better" video?

My personal favorite is Tim Gunn's (and not just because I watch too much Project Runway).

To learn more about the It Gets Better Project and watch some videos click here.

The Latest in Transphobia

I am really upset whenever I hear someone was a victim of transphobia, but it especially saddens me when they are so young and are being marginalized by supposed grown-ups who are supposed to care about them.

A Michigan teen was voted homecoming king by his classmates, but his school then stripped him of the title. Their rationale: he's still registered as a girl.

According to Wood TV, Mona Shores High School in Muskegon, Michigan had in some ways accepted seventeen-year-old Oakleigh "Oak" Reed as a boy. Says Reed, "They let me wear a male tux for band uniform, and they're going to let me wear the male robe and cap for graduation." Teachers, he adds, "call me Oak, and they say, he, him, his." And when he campaigned for homecoming king (by simply posting the message "Vote for me for homecoming king" on Facebook), he won. But then he was summoned to the principal's office. Says Reed, "They told me that they took me off because they had to invalidate all of my votes because I'm enrolled at Mona Shores as a female."

17-year-old women can now purchase Plan B without prescription

Remember when U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman of New York told the FDA to reconsider a 2006 decision that only allowed women 18 and over access to Plan B without a prescription?

Well, that's exactly what happened.

Sex + Texting = Sexting

Newsweek had an interesting column this week about "sexting" the semi-clever name for sending naked pictures via text message. A study claims that 1 in 5 teenagers have "sexted." (The study specifies that 22% of girls and 18% of boys have admitted to "sexting.") The column talks about how many of these teenagers are being legally prosecuted for their actions. Both the senders and recipients are being charged: the senders with "production and distribution of child pornography" and the recipients with "possession."

The column focuses on the absurdity of punishing children:

"The argument for hammering every such case seems to be that sending naked pictures might have serious consequences, so let's charge these kids with felonies, which will surely have serious consequences."

I agree completely.

When I was a senior in high school, a freshman girl texted another student a naked picture of herself. The boy forwarded it to his best friend, who then sent it to most of the school. The principal became aware of the situation and ended up kicking the girl off of her sports team. The girl later transferred. The boys who had forwarded the photo weren't punished.

Parents are outraged at this trend, of course. They should be. The Internet's memory is infinite, and text messages are easy to forward. So why are thirteen year olds taking naked pictures of themselves? Teens are not stupid. They know that these phone photos will be forwarded and likely end up on the Internet. I am willing to bet many of these young people do it hoping most of the school will see it. Teens know that nudity is a type of capital. They see failing musicians pose for Playboy and then hear their music on the radio. Or they watch Tila Tequila, a woman with little talent and few clothes, get a television show. Popularity and being a known as "sexy" in high school is the equivalent of an MTV show, and one photo can be all it takes to become "someone" in high school. Everyone at my school knew about the girl whose photo was forwarded. Some boys even put the picture up in their locker, next to Pam Anderson or Adriana Lima.

This trend is going to continue because the reason kids "sext" is not going anywhere. When students value popularity and a label above anything else, they will do anything to get it. The consequences, like the permanence of the Internet, don't matter. We need to give these girls something more to strive for.

Sometimes, Words Fail

The following is a short column I wrote to be included in my college's newspaper about the historic election last night. It was written quickly, after class today, but it came from the heart:

I know many people are thinking and feeling the same things I am, and words cannot adequately express many of those things. Last night was a night to be an American. Hope and a million possibilities seemed to hang in the air, there for the taking if only we were willing to grasp them. We did grasp them when we elected Barack Obama to become the 44th President of the United States of America. Not only was the election itself an amazing event with the first African American to be elected President in this country, but the events that took place after the winner was declared were illustrative of the kind of leader Barack Obama already is and the brilliant future that is a real possibility for this country.

Many of us on this campus heard the cheering last night when the results were announced. Many of us were part of the jubilation that spilled into the streets of Galesburg before returning to Knox where people came together for music and dance in order to express the joy that seemed all-encompassing not only on our campus, but around the world.

Barack Obama has done something amazing: He has invigorated people and motivated them to become involved in the political process, to be excited, and to really care. That is how real change is going to come about in this country, and Obama has already started the process, even before moving into the White House. All I can say is that I am so grateful to have been a part of this historic moment, and I look forward to the next four years.

Me, pointing at my "I Voted" sticker, right after voting

for Barack Obama in my first presidential election yesterday.

11/4/08

Last night was, of course, historic.
It was also inspiring, beautiful, personal, affecting, communal, and changing.

Last night, CNN called the election at 10pm.
McCain made his concession at 10:30pm.
Obama addressed the nation at 11pm.
At 11:45pm, we took to the streets.

Amelia and I live on a small college campus of about 1300 students in the middle of a working class town.We were in our room with some friends eating, cheering, studying, and watching CNN. We had our windows open and kept hearing people screaming, so we decided to explore. We walked towards the center of campus to see a line of several hundred students walking. Joining in, we found ourselves walking towards Old Main, the most prestigious building on campus, the last remaining site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate and the place where Abe Lincoln first publicly denounced slavery on moral grounds.
We stood on the steps of that historic building celebrating another historic moment, the election of our first black president. Surrounded by most of the campus, chanting, screaming, crying, laughing, I felt proud. Something deep inside me, something I've never known before, something I've never expected to feel, came to the surface.

I loved my country in that moment.

I loved that I could stand there, on those steps where Abe Lincoln stood before me and be surrounded by chaotic young people of all colors. That we could yell together. That we could cry together. That we could march together, later, through the streets, running and skipping, hugging and smiling, holding hands and cheering. We were, we are unified. We are American, and under the leadership of Barack Obama, I am proud of that fact.

Sometimes, I really hate music

Probably the worst thing about being a very musically-inclined person is that most music sucks. Not only that, the people who are into music, maybe even the same music as you, are probably assholes.

There is some law of the universe that the intellectualism or popularity of an activity increases the assholes attracted to doing that activity. Music is both something that is very popular and something that requires a bit of technical knowledge and practice to perform (or interpret, if you're a dancer). Thus, the amount of assholes interested in music, performing music, and dancing to music is truly astronomical. I reference radio DJs and the Body Police dancers for all the evidence I need.

Regardless, I just used to skip from station to station when the commercials were over and the DJs started talking to avoid hearing the stupid racist, classist, homophobic, sexist shit they'd inevitably spew.

Now I have to switch stations because of the actual music lyrics, and I don't even listen to rap or hip-hop. These are the song that I encountered just in my commute this week:

Girls are gold-diggers:

The girls with the bodies like boys with Ferrari's
Girls don't like boys,
Girls like cars and money
-Good Charlotte, "Boys & Girls"

Women with their deviant sexuality are dangerous:

'High-maintenance' means
You're a gluttonous queen: narcissistic and mean.
Kill me romantically, fill my soul with vomit
Then ask me for a piece of gum.
Bitter and dumb, you're my sugarplum.
You're awful, I love you!
-Ludo's "Love Me Dead"

Women are exchangeable blobs of flesh with a mouth to stick your penis in, which you like, which is their fault, because you like it enough to be "addicted":

I'm so addicted to all the things you do
when you're going down on me, in between the sheets.
All the sounds you make, with every breath you take.
It's unlike anything, when you're loving me.
Oooh, girl, let's take it slow.
So as for you - well, you know where to go.
I want to take my love and hate you 'til the end.
-Saving Abel's "Addicted"

In the pursuit of happiness, women are commodities too:

Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.

-MGMT's "Time to Pretend"

Shut up while I sexually assault you in the club:

I'm so bored, oh please, don't talk anymore,
Shut your mouth and get down on the floor,
So cynical, poor baby,
I can dish it, cos I know how to take it.
-Cobra Starship's "Guilty Pleasure"

I'm a good woman, and you're a whore:

Second chances they don't ever matter, people never change.
Once a whore you're nothing more, I'm sorry, that'll never change.
And about forgiveness, we're both supposed to have exchanged.
I'm sorry honey, but I'm passing up, now look this way.
Well there's a million other girls who do it just like you.
Looking as innocent as possible to get to who
-Paramore's "Misery Business"

Thanks for making my dick feel good. P.S - I don't give a shit about you as a person:

I wake up with blood-shot eyes
Struggled to memorize, the way it felt between your thighs
Pleasure that made you cry: feels so good to be bad
Not worth the aftermath, after that
Try to get you back
I still don't have the reason and you don't have the time
And it really makes me wonder, if I ever gave a fuck about you
-Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder"

Oh, and vintage hip 80s sexualizing violence:

You let me violate you
You let me desecrate you
You let me penetrate you...
It's your sex I can smell
Help me, you make me perfect
Help me think of somebody else
I want to fuck you like an animal
I want to feel you from the inside
-NIN's "Closer"

And don't forget, we also get a boner from dominating and killing you:

I want to hold you close, skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes girl. So lovely, it feels so right
I want to hold you close; soft breath, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear, I want to fucking tear you apart
-She Wants Revenge's "Tear You Apart"

These are our idols. These are the people that are paid millions of dollars so that us common people can have the priviledge of watching them perform.

Yuck.

I didn't even bother to include the two thousand or so songs that portrayed women as sex objects. When it just comes down to singing about love or the opposite sex, it seems that rock stars fail astronomically. These are the people we are trusting to form our cultural identity.

Well, that explains a lot.

I wonder why I even bother to hope, anymore, that anything good comes out of popular culture. Hell, I wonder why I even listen to music at all, considering that I can't even tune into a female singer without a "whore" quip (see Paramore).

Sounds like the above all took music lessons from this guy:

Cross-posted from XXBlaze

On Staying Single

Notice that I am not just single currently, but that I am  staying single. This was not a conscious decision. I did not sit down one day, feminist ideology in hand, and decide to stay single for political reasons. It just happened. I haven't been in a relationship for two years. For a woman in her twenties, this is so odd as to be alien.

When I was in middle school, nothing could have been more important than being in or wanting to be in a relationship. Boys were just beginning to notice me, probably because I was one of the first girls to have her breasts grow beyond the mosquito bite phase. Luckily for me, I did not grow up in the Paris Hilton era. Britney Spears was still keeping most of her clothes on the late 90s when the pre-teen girl uniform of choice was polo shirts, short shorts, and high ponytails.

Regardless, my desire for a boyfriend and to look good had nothing to do with my sexual desire. Although I had curves and breasts to rival any grown woman, my sexual drive had not matured. I heard about masturbation, mostly from the eighth grade boys, but such things held no interest for me. Even the extremely progressive books on puberty that my parents bought me detailed male masturbation explicitly, although some of them spend a bit of time on female masturbation as well. Curious, I attempted this masturbation a couple of times. Nothing really much happened, presumably because my sexual drive had yet to develop (it would in high school), so I gave that up.

Why then, was the pinnacle of pre-teen social life the drive to attract boys? I obviously did not know what to do with them when I got them, and I had no sexual desire for them. I was putting on a performance, plain and simple. The dominant social message of the time, and I assume it has gotten worse lately, was that a girl should aim to look sexy and have sex, but her own enjoyment of the sexual act had nothing to do with it. This held true for my twelve year-old self: I was not attracted to boys in a sexual manner, and I had no personal desire for sex. I was simply responding to social norms. If I said a boy was cute, it was not the case that I was attracted to him. I simply recognized that he fit within the acceptable range of male appearances, and I wanted him to want me. My desires did not play into the equation at all.

As I moved on from middle school and entered high school, my sexual drive finally blossomed. I had a healthy desire for sex and masturbation by the time I was fifteen. Still, however, I cannot think of a time that I wanted a boy more than I wanted him to want me and the social power I would gain by being sexy and attached to a suitable male. I was also doing battle with my monstrous crush on my female friend at the time by denying to myself that I probably was not as straight as I would like to be. Nevertheless, the idea of a boy competing for me or spending time on his appearance for me was laughable. By the time elaborate hair and makeup routines were the norm for girls my age, boys had yet to grasp the concept of showering daily.

Simply put, being sexy was more important than being sexual. The conflicting messages of abstinence and MTV had done battle, and the result was "be sexy, be hot, be available and wanted. Your sexuality is shameful." It was not important that boys were attractive, and they largely were not, it was important that I was attractive to them. Due to my extremely extroverted personality and unwillingness, even then, to play weak or dumb, I never succeeded.

In college, the drive to be wanted and not to want became funny in its intensity. The antics of my peers inspired mental images out of a porno: buckets of male ejaculation everywhere, but no elusive female orgasm. Men were still boys, and still had not grasped the basics of hygiene that were common sense to the average eleven year-old girl. And why would they? All around them women were wearing next to nothing and viciously fighting for their attention with deeper tans, deeper v-necks, and higher shoes. All they had to do was sit back and enjoy.

After a disastrous series of boyfriends where the male orgasm was far more present in our relationships than the female orgasm, I had the luck to fall into Feminism by way of a Women's Studies course. Among the considerable changes in my life, I stopped wanting men to want me if I did not want them back.

Simply, if my sexual pleasure had no part in the equation, I wanted nothing to do with men. If they were not attractive, their attention was gross and creepy. It was surprisingly easy to find my dry spells becoming longer and longer, only broken up by my mostly pleasurable forays into lesbian relationships.

How was this so? Once I gave up performing the sexy routine, guys largely did not want me. Which was fine with me, because most guys my age hadn't touched a razor or bar of soap in half a week. My university was like a scene out of a pornography: most of the women were conventionally attractive, but the men were as lazy with their appearances as they were with their health.

Today, I find it pathetically funny how my pursuit of my own pleasure--wanting attractive men, wanting sexual fulfillment--removed me from the dating scene. By raising my standards to men that I wanted, instead of men that wanted me, I had to find men that spend a comparable amount of time on their appearance and would be invested in my pleasure as much as their own. Unsurprisingly, the men who spent as much time in front of a mirror as I did (which wasn't much, considering that I stopped tanning and wearing large amounts of makeup) were the ones that dated the most feminine women, who had the personality of swine, or who were more interesting in acting out their favorite pornography than pleasing their significant other.

What I realize today is that the dating scene revolves around male pleasure. Male orgasms, male lust, male appreciation of beauty. If I wanted female orgasms, my lust, and my appreciation of male beauty I was holding out for something that did not exist. Or, if it did, it was not available to me once I stopped tanning, obsessing about how flat my abs were, and wearing hundreds of dollars of makeup.

In conclusion, I stay single because it's pathetically easy, but not by my design. Perhaps one day I might stumble upon a man who is as invested in looking good for me as I would be invested in looking good for him. Instead of me wanting him to want me and him wanting me, I would want him and he would want me. Then we could meet in the middle, form a relationship based on mutual attraction, admiration, and lust.

How sad that society has made such things the exception, and not the norm.

(Cross-posted)

Haters

So, I haven't posted this past week, or since my last post received so many hateful comments that we had to close commenting for the first time. The comments were directed towards overweight people, women, feminists, and me. The comments hurt, and I've been upset all week.

But then I read this:

While trying to deal with all the challenges of being a teenager, gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender (GBLT) teens additionally have to deal with harassment, threats, and violence directed at them on a daily basis. They hear anti-gay slurs such as “homo”, “faggot” and “sissy” about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes.

Blogging is an odd endeavor, you post personal anecdotes, opinions, and beliefs for the world to read. You may get criticized, attacked, or ignored, but, at the end of the day, you can close your laptop and go to sleep. That's not the case for these teenagers. They may be able to go to sleep, but they must wake up the next morning and go to school, try to learn with people who hate them surrounding them, and face their harassers everywhere. It isn't surprising that suicide is the leading cause of death for gay teenagers.

Hate is everywhere, and sometimes, it is so ingrained within us that we don't even realize its effects. But it does affect others. In small and huge ways. So, I guess, this is just a reminder to think, to care, and to support each other. Even if we don't agree. I know its corny, but its important.

Female Athletes and Injuries

I finally got around to reading the NYT story on high injury rates in young women's sports (its long, but I highly recommend reading it).

The article outlines the much higher rate of injury for female athletes than male athletes. And attempts to explain why, biologically:

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger.

This divergence between the sexes occurs just at the moment when we increasingly ask more of young athletes, especially if they show talent: play longer, play harder, play faster, play for higher stakes.

And why, politically:

Advocates for women’s sports have had to keep a
laser focus on one thing: making sure they have equal access to high-school and
college sports. It’s hard to fight for equal rights while also broadcasting
alarm about injuries that might suggest women are too delicate to play certain
games or to play them at a high level of intensity.

I found this article very interesting because I actually have a sports injury from high school cross-country. I ran my freshman and sophomore years of school in a fairly intensive program. The beginning of my sophomore year, after running all summer, I began to have a constant dull aching in my knee. I told my coach, but he didn't take me seriously, so I continued to run, trying to ignore the worsening pain. I told him again, and he told me, in fewer words, that I was to stop complaining like a girl, suck it up, and keep running, like a man. And I did, finishing out the season, only to have a specialist explain to me later that year that I had pulled the muscle in my knee, which is supposed to lie over the knee, far sideways. He explained that I could have surgery, or go to physical therapy. I went for to therapy for about six months, but the pain never subsided. It still hasn't. I have continuous pain and throbbing in my knee, the level of which varies day to day. I can't squat without being in intense pain, and my knee cracks about five times every time I bend it.

This is just my experience, but, hell, the personal is political, and maybe I wouldn't be injured if I had been taken seriously and my legitimate pain hadn't be chalked up to girlish whining.

Oh, and to the second commentor, Noah from DC, on the NYT article who said:

Until they are propagandized and browbeaten by
ideologically-driven feminists, girls are naturally less interested in most
sports than boys are.Why not let girls be girls instead of trying to force them
to be bad imitations of boys?

Fuck you.

Quick Read

Young love in Saudi Arabia

Child Commodity

Miley Cyrus is a commodity, a brand name, a Barbie doll, and a fifteen year old girl.

She is a fifteen year old girl lastly because she will be worth 1 billion dollars by the time she is eighteen, because she has broken movie and music records, and because she has been idolized into something more than human by millions of little girls.

So, there was something very sad about the Vanity Fair pictures mostly because a fifteen year old girl should be beginning to discover her sexuality. She should understand how her body works and why. She should appreciate her body's feelings and responses, but she should not be doing it in front of the world. To sell magazine covers.

Shame on Vanity Fair, her father and mother, the buyers of the magazines, and us for allowing this perversion.

The Modesty Survey... Go ahead. Tell me I'm not modest.

It's the end of the semester and I've got a paper to finish before tomorrow, so this is an old post from my personal blog. Still fucking pisses me off.

The Modesty Survey

Does that piss anyone else off too? I'm glad to know they're taking the time to tell me what THEY'VE decided is immodest. Let me run out and change my wardrobe now.

47.5% of their all-male respondents chose agree or strongly agree to "A purse with the strap diagonally across the chest draws too much attention to the bust." How about 100% of me, myself and I say that a purse with the strap diagonally across the chest means I've never forgotten or lost my purse in the entirety of owning one, I don't have to worry about it being stolen, and it's more comfortable.

71% agree/strongly agree with "The lines of undergarments, visible under clothing, cause guys to stumble." You know what causes me to stumble? Teenage boys thinking it's their place to tell me what they have issues with in the way women dress.

63% agree/strongly agree that it's immodest for girls to reach into their shirts to adjust bra straps. Let's see you wear one and then complain about it being immodest to fix it.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is the fucking presumption and audacity to do a whole survey of what specifically males think is immodest. Where's the partner survey on what girls think is immodest? I think being a prick is immodest, but no one's asking me to rate it on a 5 point scale. Other gems of this survey - conceived by two teenage guys (big suprise). The logo alone is infuriating. It's a white woman covering her the lower half of her face, suggesting that guys can go ahead and tell us what's not modest and we'll comply, but they sexualize and whitewash the image nonetheless. Go on head, fill out the survey and we'll hop right to, fixing our immodest lifestyles so you won't "stumble" anymore. Let's just cover ourselves right up so YOU don't have to worry about being tempted into sin. We can't have you wear a burqua, though, 'cause that's what the terrorists make their females wear.

I'm adequately pissed off now, thanksverymuch. I don't let teenage boys dictate my wardrobe anymore than I let George W. Bush dictate my politics.

Pedophila is Sexy

With the recent uproar surrounding the bust of the polygamous compound down in Texas, I took the time to do a little theorizing why pedophilia seems to persist, contrary to opinions that state that only "backassward third world countries" do that. I started with examining the American perception of "sexy", although I am fairly certain that this social feminine norm holds constant for most modern cultures. Then, I looked at the tendency of college males to "date down". I finally try to make sense of this all in a larger scheme of what our society thinks is "sexy", and how that might fuel pedophilia.

I feel that it should go without saying that I am firmly anti-sexy. I really dislike the constant barrage of female sexuality to sell products. Considering that the mainstream definition of "sexy" is submissive or only sexual in the context of pleasing men, I have no desire to be sexy, nor do I have any desire to see "sexy" images day in and day out.

Probably the thing that bothers me the most about "sexy" is this infantilization of women. If you do not possess a Y chromosome then age, maturity, and ambition are not tolerated. You are to be stupider than your man, lest you intimidate him. If you are smarter, do not tell him so. The Cloud-Father hath gifted man with a penis, making his opinions more important than yours. This is especially apparent when a stronger female, denying the power of socialization, dares to be particularly outspoken or "shrewish". Inquires are made to her mental state. Her voice is "shrill" and her displays of any emotion are weepy. Perhaps her anger is "hot" or "sexy". She is urged to stop fighting and start fucking. "You quarrel like a married couple," they say. "You would have hot hate-sex together."

The message is clear: women are babies, mentally ill, PMSing, or need a good dose of masculine throbbing superiority. They are not entitled to an opinion, unless it is demonstrably flawed or analogous with your own. Like I said earlier, a woman's place is making babies and boners, not instigating meaningful conversation.

What is the consequence of this infantilization? I would not be incorrect to say that I am fairly certain that men are attracted to younger women for precisely this reason: the fetishization of youth, stupidity, and weakness. In circles of my friends, my male friends will openly discuss how they prey on high school girls. My female friends will then confess that they dated college boys in high school, and usually lost their virginity to them. This trend rarely goes the opposite way.

The popular sentiment is that men date younger women because women mature faster than men. I say that is bullshit. Regardless of the growth of breasts, hormones are not responsible for my twenty-two year old male friend dating a sixteen year old girl. What he likes about her is her innocence and her gullibility. She probably has never had a serious relationship; she wants desperately to please him. If he was to stop calling her, she would have no way to contact him. In short, she is malleable. A female university student would not sleep with him for his approval. She also would not be impressed with his age and his car. In short, he would put himself in a position where he is as vulnerable to rejection as his paramore by dating his equal.

This is simply not done. Why would a man want a wise college woman when he could have a younger high school teenager desperate to sleep with him to explore her sexuality or to please an older man? Why would a man place himself in a position where he is equal, god forbid, to a woman if he can maintain superiority with his age and her idealism?

The very things that draw men to younger women are the same things that draw pedophiles to children: malleability, gullibility, innocence, virginity, and youth. On the long spectrum of sexual encounters beginning in rape and pedophilia and ending in genuine consensual sex, men dating women much younger than themselves for those reasons is closer to the morally wrong end of the spectrum then the consensual one.

In all honesty, I am not all at shocked when it is revealed that so-and-so is a pedophile. In a world where sexiness is submissiveness, youth, and stupidity, children are not that separate from the collective vision of the ideal woman. I do not think that there is something concretely wrong with pedophiles. Equating the "disease" of pedophilia with sociopathy or real psychological issues conceals the point and fails to hold men responsible for their actions. Pedophilia is the darker cousin to the very real and very prevalent image of "sexiness" that our society holds as the feminine ideal. The only disease pedophiles have is the egocentric view that they are entitled to rape (and sex with children is nothing but rape) children because they have internalized their masculine socialization to a greater extent than other men. Perhaps their self-esteem is especially low, so they feel that they cannot have consensual sex with someone of age because no one would be attracted to them. Perhaps they are married men that molest young girls because they feel that they are entitled to some sex that does not come accompanied with a human being expecting them to be decent to them.

Many men like to fuck dolls. They watch porn in which the actress takes abuse and exists solely for the pleasure of her audience and any man on camera without a care to herself. A sick man will internalize this image, and seek women out that adhere to this porn star image. A particularly immoral man will not only internalize this image, he will purposely groom someone malleable and immature to service his needs like the porn he watches every day, or in the movies he sees in the theaters. These men are pedophiles, and they are criminals responsible for their own actions. They are not insane, nor are they tugged about by a nonexistent brain in their penis that overrules their sense of morality. They are men that think that they are entitled to sex with someone that asks nothing in return.

My point is that the mental states of a man who preys on children or a college-aged man who preys on sixteen year-old girls are not dissimilar. They are both products of our culture and masculine socialization.

Study finds that "one in four teen girls has an STD"

A new study by Center for Disease Control researcher Dr. Sara Forhan analyzed “nationally representative data on 838 girls who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey.” These girls were tested for four infections: human papillomavirus (HPV), Chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and herpes simplex virus.

The study’s finding? At least one in four teenage American girls has contracted a sexually transmitted disease. This means STDs affect more than 3 million teenage girls.

"High STD rates among young women, particularly African-American young women, are clear signs that we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk," [Dr. John Douglas, director of the Center for Disease Control's division of STD prevention] said.

I think this says something about American society, where young women are taught, simultaneously, to be ashamed/uneducated when it comes to their bodies AND be sexually accessible. It really doesn’t surprise me, then, that so many girls are affected by these kinds of diseases. If we’re taught that the word vagina is a dirty, shameful word, how could we possibly know how to keep ourselves safe?

Young people in general know little about safe sex, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the statistics for teenage boys are just as high. Starting by teaching young people about their bodies, and the responsibilities that come with them, might be a good place to start.