Good info to share

I've been volunteering at a women's shelter in town, and in their informational materials they had some great resources regarding abuse/assault in queer relationships. They also had a list of warning signs and myths about abuse in BDSM relationships, which I thought I'd share here. This comes from the Survivor-Centered Advocacy for Trans Survivors of Violence at the FORGE Forward 2007 Conference.

Abuse is not S/M and S/M is not abuse
Whether you are topping, bottoming, or both, these are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is your partner turned on by violating your limits or terms?
• Does your partner not use a safeword, and then later say you violated their limits?
• Does your partner claim to know more about your s/m "energy" than you do?
• Does your partner try to extend a dynamic outside of a scene without your consent?
• Does your partner expect you to read their mind about what they want?
• Does your partner refuse to talk about what felt wrong or confusing to you about a scene?
• Does your partner negotiate while in role when you haven't agreed to do that?
• Do you feel like you're playing because you have to?
• Does your partner involve others in your scenes without asking?
• Does your partner say you pushed them too far even though you stayed within the limits you negotiated?
• Does your partner humiliate you by talking about your play in public without your consent?
• Does your partner use arousal or orgasm as evidence of consent?
• Do you feel fear or dread about ending a scene or setting a limit?
• Does your partner say you're not "real" for wanting to switch, or do they pressure you into switching?
• Are you confused about when a scene begins and ends?
• Do you feel that if you could just play better, be hotter or give/take more, everything would be okay?
• Does your partner use scenes to suppress or cover up anger and frustration?

S/M play is consensual; abuse is not consensual.
S/M play is negotiated and agreed upon ahead of time; abuse is not negotiated.
S/M has responsible limits and safety rules; abuse has no rules or limits and there are no safewords.
S/M is fun, erotic and loving; abuse is manipulative, selfish, and hurtful.
S/M play is enjoyable by both; victims do not enjoy abuse.
S/M play can be stopped by either partner at any time; abuse cannot be stopped by the victim.
Players exchange power in agreed-upon roles with negotiated boundaries; abusers force control using non-consensual manipulation and violence.
S/M creates a bond of trust; abuse destroys trust.

Adapted from the Northwest Network, 2001

So yeah. Spread this around, if you like. Awareness is the first (and arguably most important) tool in fighting and stopping abuse, no matter what community it occurs in.

Uh-huh, right

The BBC posted an article about (yet another) male hormonal contraceptive being tested. This one's an injection of testosterone that suppresses the production of sperm. I'm skeptical about this one panning out; word of another male HBC in the pipes pops up every couple of months and somehow the funding always dries up, despite sustained interest by men.

But what really got me was this: "Previous attempts to develop an effective and convenient male contraceptive have encountered problems over reliability and side effects, such as mood swings and a lowered sex drive." (Emphasis mine.)

Mood swings? Lowered sex drive? What, you mean the exact same side effects women deal with EVERY DAY when they're on HBC?

Oh wait, I forgot - women are moody, hormonal, and hate sex anyway, so who cares if they get those side effects?

Give me a break.

NP removes woman's IUD without her consent

What the FUCKING FUCK.

Oh my god, I would beat the everlasting shit out of anyone who tried that on me.

Watch out - here comes a political post!

I was going to post this on my personal journal, decided I didn't want to risk antagonizing my friends, some of whom might take exception to my views on abortion, and posted it here. It was inspired by this disturbing news article (pointed out by Trin) about women who choose to abort because the fetus had minor defects that are easily fixable with surgery.

To be honest, before I started reading the journals of Trin, Bint, Miss Nomered, and others who focus on disability activism, I had never seriously thought about ableism before - and especially not about how it affects the whole pro-life vs. pro-choice debate. Fortunately for me, I'm starting to learn more about disability activism, and it's really changed the way I view society, including how I view abortion. So, after a bit of mulling, here's my long-winded stance on abortion as it stands at the moment:

I hope I will never need to get an abortion. I know for some women abortions are no big deal - not much different than taking emergency contraception, if a bit more medically involved - but I have a hard time seeing abortion as a "morally neutral medical procedure," as I've seen it put, because I think you're still killing something that, if it doesn't miscarry on its own, could become a whole person. It may be a product of my socialization, but doesn't make my apprehension less real.

However, that does not mean I think a woman's right to get an abortion should be infringed in any way, shape, or form. The rights of a woman trump the rights of a bundle of cells in her uterus, full-stop. End of story. Having a child can drastically change one's life forever, and only the woman herself can decide if she's ready for that. If she isn't, then she deserves unfettered access to the resources she needs to avoid having children, which means not only abortions but also safe, effective, and affordable contraception. Conversely, if she is ready, then she deserves quality health care to make sure she and her child are safe, regardless of her age, income level, or marital status. (Of course, implicit in this is that a woman also deserves a comprehensive, accurate education on sexual health so that she is able to make an informed choice.)

But what about a woman who was going to have a child, then found out the fetus had a developmental defect and decided to abort it? On the one hand, raising a child with a disability can require a tremendous dedication of time and resources that the parent(s) simply cannot afford. That's perfectly understandable, especially considering how fucked up the US's health care system is at the moment. On the other hand, when a woman decides to abort just because she doesn't want her kid to be a "freak" with six fingers or (heaven forbid!) "retarded," that's ableism. To call that morally questionable would be the understatement of the year.

What it is not, however, is a reason to restrict abortion access. There is no possible way for the government or any private organization to divine whether a woman's intentions for getting an abortion are "pure." It would end up going one of two ways: either officials would look the other way while women aborted "defective" fetuses anyway, or officials would "err on the side of caution" and wind up denying access to hundreds of women who genuinely needed abortions. It's entirely possible that both scenarios could happen simultaneously, with the first one applying to upper-class women and the second scenario affecting lower-class women. Regardless, it'd be shitty all around.

So what can be done? Far as I can tell, the best thing to do is try to change how society views people with disabilities and what it actually means to be disabled. Once women realize that having a child with a disability isn't the end of the world, they will probably be less likely to abort because of a developmental defect. It's basically the same thought process behind reducing abortions through comprehensive sex education and affordable sexual health care - if you give people the resources so that they don't need (or feel they need) abortions, then naturally they won't get them.

Of course, changing the deeply-ingrained opinions of all of society is really fucking hard. So it's going to take a lot of work, and it's not going to happen any time soon.

Actually, I'm thinking maybe I will post this on my other journal. A friend of mine who's been making uncomfortably ableist remarks reads it; maybe reading this will give her the gentle poke she needs.

Rhythms

I just got back from my second trip to see Master! And my goodness, we had sex a lot. Much more so than my previous visit, if I remember things correctly. Not that I'm complaining - far from it; I was the one who initiated a good portion of sexings.

On several occasions I was struck by how damn horny I was. Usually, I'm good with one go-round, but this time I wasn't satisfied until we had sex two, maybe even three times in a row. Which is really bizarre, because even though I'm multi-orgasmic, usually by the end of sex I'm a quivering, incoherent mess. But during the trip I'd have a half-dozen brain-shattering orgasms in one session and I'd just want more! It was great fun, but it made me wonder.

At first I thought it had to do with the fact that I hadn't seen Master in a while. But the time between my first trip and this last one was much shorter than the end of the school year and my first trip, even though I was hornier this time 'round. So that wasn't it. It's possible that it was hormones, since I think my period started while I was there. (But I'm not sure, since my Mirena makes my periods - when I do have them - super light, and it's possible the teensy bit of blood was the side effect of lots of rough sex in a short period of time, lol.)

I think one of the biggest differences was the time of day we had sex this time around. My first trip, we usually had it at night - often past midnight, when I'm already tired from a long day of wandering around the city. This time, however, we almost always had sex after we woke up between ten AM and noon. Not only was I refreshed and rarin' to go by that point, but I've also noticed that I tend to be hornier around noon. Which kinda sucks when I'm at work all day, but is awesome when I have nothing to do but lounge about with Master. >:3

I'm not sure what it is that makes me hornier during the day. Is it the "taboo" aspect - sex is supposed to be a nighttime activity, after all - something to do with my sleep cycle, or some independent factor? My guess is the third, since we have more-or-less independent cycles for our other urges, like sleep and hunger and such. Why can't sex have its own cycle?

Other changes between my first trip and my second? Well, I went on a free-range diet, which means I'm essentially vegetarian now, and I started doing yoga almost daily. (Gawd, I'm such a hippy.) Maybe they had something to do with it, but I don't think so.

The only thing we have to fear

I keep up with a women's health community online, and by far the most common question asked by people on the board is something along the lines of, "I'm on hormonal birth control and my period isn't due for another week yet and I haven't ever actually had sex but my boobs are kind of sore and yesterday I was nauseous which may be because I had the stomach flu but I hear it's a symptom of pregnancy. AM I PREGNANT?!?!?!"

The fear and paranoia that so many young women have regarding pregnancy is baffling. If the number of questions of this sort are any indication, it seems a good portion of sexually active women - and some who aren't even sexually active - live in almost constant anxiety that the condom broke or they missed a pill or their IUD expelled and now they're preggo. Where does this irrational fear come from? Surely they've read up on the birth control that they're using and know the success/failure rates. After all, why the hell wouldn't you do research on something that can have such a large impact on your life? Just a few minutes of web searching would reveal that most birth control methods, particularly hormonal ones, have a success rate in the 90% range, even for "typical" use. Even the withdrawal method, which is so often ridiculed as an ineffective birth control method, can have a 96% success rate during "perfect use." (Granted, "typical use" has a 73% success rate, but that's still a hell of a lot better than nothing.)

Then again, maybe they don't know these things. Fear is born from ignorance, and it seems the conservative movement is premised entirely on keeping people ignorant. I read in my local paper not too long ago that a Minnesota study showed an increase in abortions among teens (though a decrease in all other demographic groups) in the past year or two, coupled with a decrease in the number of women using contraceptives. When one recalls the spate of investigations that revealed the inaccuracies and outright lies that abstinence-only education feeds to kids, and the current (but waning, fortunately) administration's stance on sex education, it only makes sense, sadly enough.

When I went to public school as a kid, parents were given a choice of which sex ed course to put their kids in either "abstinence-based," which said abstinence is preferred but didn't shy away from teaching about other forms of contraception and safer sex techniques, or "abstinence until marriage," which taught exactly what the name says - and nothing more. Fortunately for me, my parents are of the more progressive bent (most of the time), so they put me in abstinence-based.

Though I'm grateful for my parents' choice, the course still was woefully inadequate. Like most sex-ed courses, it was mostly about scaring kids away from sex. I got to see my share of explicit photographs showing advanced cases of syphillis, gonorrhea, and genital warts - but was never told that most STIs are treatable, even cureable. To their credit, the teachers were very good about dispelling myths on HIV/AIDS; never did I think that HIV could be spread via public toilet seats. In terms of contraception, however, basically all we learned about were condoms - male condoms, at that - probably because condoms also protect against STIs. Birth control pills were mentioned in passing, but that's about it. I didn't even know IUDs existed until I entered college, and I'd be willing to bet that the majority of college-aged women still haven't ever heard of them, despite IUDs being one of the most effective contraceptives available.

I partially blame my good-but-not-good-enough sex education on the one pregnancy panic I've had in my life, which occured a little over a year ago. This was before I'd started on any sort of birth control; the condom fell off at some point, probably after we'd finished and Master was pulling out, and though I didn't feel any semen get on/in my vulva I decided to get some Plan B from the school nurse just to be safe. Looking back on it later, I realized the chances of my getting pregnant were slim to nil - not only was it unlikely any sperm managed to get their way inside me, but my period had ended that day so it was basically impossible for there to be a viable egg for them to find. On top of that, I took the Plan B just as directed, reducing the possibiliy of pregnancy even further.

Even so, for the entire two weeks between taking the Plan B and seeing the nurse for follow-up, I was constantly wondering what if? what if? Keeping the baby was out of the question, but the nearest abortion clinic was all the way in the Twin Cities, to my knowledge. How would I get down there? There was no way I could tell my parents about it, but keeping a secret like that from them would tear me up inside. And then, of course, there was the small part of me that said I wouldn't have to get an abortion, that maybe having a baby would be okay. That part scared me the most.

Though the pregnancy test I took at my follow-up was negative, I couldn't truly relax until my period arrived, right on schedule, a week later. (Contrast that to now: I haven't had my period in... oh... two months? Three? (Cessation of menstruation is a side effect of the Mirena.) But I'm not worried in the least.)

And while I partially blame my own ignorance on my anxiety - I didn't know at the time how incredibly unlikely it was that I was pregnant - I know all too well that reason goes flying out the window when one is worried about something. Take for example all the parents who stay up late imagining all the horrible scenarios that could happen to their kids when they're just playing video games at a friend's house and lost track of the time. So while education does a lot to reduce fear of pregnancy, it can only do so much.