Sex ed

[elettaria]

One of the things which I sometimes end up lying awake thinking over at unholy o'clock is what I think sex education should be like. Mine was somewhat mixed. My parents didn't really bother, unless you count my mother muttering a few things just before I turned 22. My school was a case of "blink and you miss it", and I think I was off ill that

Comments

[voxwoman]

OB,O was very revolutionary. I didn't think that it was racist, but sometimes, being white, I'm less aware of it than a PoC would be. It seemed to me to be racially balanced. I'll have to go look at it (I have the second edition, I think, nowadays, with the old 1971 cover on it)

Getting Clear was more of a feminist spirituality/health book instead of a medical kind of book - mediations and exercizes that included things like looking at your vagina with a mirror and accepting your body, etc. I think it was the first book of this kind in publication.

This is the edition I have of Getting Clear: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Clear-Body-Work-Women/dp/0394709705/ref=pd_cp_b_0

My mom was cool in that she never censored any of my reading.

Back when IUDs were new, there were some serious, SERIOUS issues with them OBO touched on them as well. When the first edition was published the Dalkon Shield was still being prescribed by gynecologists. So, there is a reason why women of a certain age mistrust IUDs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkon_Shield

There was a lot of distrust of women's medicine at that time and prior - my generation was the one whose mothers were prescribed DES to prevent miscarriages, and girls of 17 were dying from uterine cancer as a result, and others had serious fertility problems. We were only a few years past the big thalidomide birth defect thing, too.

[elettaria]

It might not be racism, I'm just trying to think what the common problems in second-wave feminism were. Possibly it's a great book all round, and I'm thinking of a different book.

I've heard that the mirror thing was huge back then! Did groups of women really sit around looking at their vulva with a mirror together? It seems so improbable now.

The Dalkon Shield fiasco was forty years ago, and IUDs have been a completely different animal for a long time. As a result of various myths being spread about IUDs (they'll make you infertile, they'll make you die, you shouldn't have them unless you've had kids, you shouldn't have them unless you're married - all incorrect), American fears of lawsuits have contributed to exceptionally low IUD use in the US, and women trying to get an IUD are often knocked back for so-called reasons which turn out to have no medical basis. This is no way to approach contraception. I mean, twenty years ago I knew a young woman who died as a direct result of being on the Pill, but I know how the various factors involved have changed and I'm not running around saying that no one should ever take the Pill today. I don't mind that people were upset about the Dalkon Shield situation at the time. They absolutely should have been. I mind that it's still causing people to lose access to an excellent method of contraception, which for many people is the only method they can use.

[voxwoman]

The book I'm referencing is also 40 years old. I'm still prejudiced against IUDs (and I'm skeptical about the quarterly shot and the nuva ring, etc). I think the book is from 'first wave feminism' as am I.

All those myths you say are remaindered from the early IUDs in the 70s, because that's what happened to people who used them before rigorous testing was required before release into the market.

It's the same kind of thinking that keeps hydrogen from being used as a fuel source (the Hindenburg disaster).

I agree with you, by the way.

[elettaria]

The testing still isn't as rigorous as it should be, alas, though it's improved. When I was first in need of contraception, back in the 1999, the Family Planning Clinic was quite right to steer me in the direction of long-term reversible methods, but they somehow made it seem as if my only choice was Depo Provera. I asked about side effects, explaining that as I have ME, I'm particularly prone to them, and they said airily that they had plenty of women with ME on Depo and they were all fine. So when I started to experience serious side effects, they told me that I couldn't possibly be getting those, no one had ever reported them (nonsense - they had), and therefore they weren't going to report them either. It took me six months to talk them into a hormone test, at which point it was revealed that surprise, surprise, I was low in oestrogen. I'd been getting half the symptoms of the menopause and I was barely 22. The ME worsened so quickly that I went from being able to ceilidh (Scottish dancing, very energetic) to being in a wheelchair in six months. Nowadays, they're aware that Depo Provera has a relatively high rate of side effects, and are a lot less willing to bung women onto it. In particular, it tends to cause bone thinning, so they don't like you to be on it for more than two years if at all possible.

They're also much more careful about stroke and heart attacks risks with the Pill now, although a friend of mine (high risk for a couple of reasons) slipped through the net on that one for years (yes, recently). The woman I knew who died in 1994, by the way, was high-risk because she was a smoker, ate the traditional unhealthy Scottish diet, and had a family history. She had two strokes and two heart attacks, during which the doctors kept her on the Pill, and died at 29.

The thing that really bugs me is that women are expected to put up with a level of side effects that would never be tolerated in men. It's not just contraception, either. If you're female-bodied and you experience low sex drive as a result of antidepressants, good luck getting the GP to take it seriously, while a huge amount is spent on Viagra.

Out of curiosity, why are you still prejudiced against IUDs, when they're not really the same thing any more and have been well-tested?

[voxwoman]

It's not a logical thing, obviously. I would not talk anyone out of using an IUD if that's what they decided they want to use after doing their due diligence (even my daughter, who's currently on the pill for contraception and also to mitigate heavy, painful cycles). I've used the diaphragm, the pill, condoms, and finally, tubal ligation to prevent pregnancy. I'm menopausal now, so the whole thing is moot. I now have to decide if HRT would be beneficial to me at some point.

I had a distant relative die from the pill in the 1960's (stroke, I believe), and I had a friend who also experienced horrible side effects from Depo-provera.

It makes my blood boil about the differences between how men and women are treated in the medical community.

[elettaria]

I'd suggest that everyone do their due diligence before using any contraceptive method, although I wouldn't rate IUD as being high-risk as such things go. Low-risk and high efficacy, in fact. Whereas the Pill doesn't fare well at all with either, and is still (I think) the most popular method of contraception in this country. If I'm talking to a friend thinking their way through methods, I'd flag up the high side-effect rate of Depo and the low efficacy rate of condoms, and mention the various long-term methods available, if they didn't already know about these things, and that'd probably be it.

I was talking to someone the other day whose sister died due to the whole business with heart meds not being tested on women.