Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Just Say "No" - to McCain

Where her dreams have room to grow and he can be a rugged adventurer?

Little girls dreams can come true with this product?



Here is one that both boys and girls can play with:

If you consider him riding the dino while she squeals next to it "both" playing.

Boys are tough, rugged, and adventurous!See:






These are teething rings marketed toward 3 month old boys:


When does the socialization begin? I think it actually begins during pregnancy when we start buying pink and blue nursery paint, blankets, toys, and more. Perhaps even when we first contemplate how we will treat our babies. When many Americans are expecting a child, they want to know what sex the baby will be before it is ever born. Why is this? I think we need to know how to expect to treat the child. Imagining the sex of a baby before it is born helps us decide. Kitchens and laundry or trucks and paleontology?

Angelina Promotes Breastfeeding on "W" Cover



I am not normally an Angelina fan. However, I do appreciate her activism and the way she sometimes uses her celebrity to help people in third world countries. I am also not one to follow celebrity gossip, nor do I read W magazine. However, breastfeeding is important to me. It has been socialized right out of many North American women and I am impressed by Angelina's latest publicity move. This W cover is GREAT! It is subtle and natural and doesn't seem to make her into a sex object the way that many images of her have in the past. Breastfeeding benefits mothers, babies, and society as a whole and not breastfeeding is risky, contrary to formula company ads.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, not only babies and moms benefit from breastfeeding, but society as a whole benefits. First, the benefits to babies are due to the fact that the fat, sugar, water, and protein are balanced perfectly for human babies. It is also more easily digested. Breastfeeding as an infant may help prevent obesity later in life and IQ test scores are higher in people who were breastfed. Moms benefit from breastfeeding because they lose the “baby weight” more quickly, the uterus shrinks more quickly, bleed less after delivery, and have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The time and money saved by breastfeeding can also be a great benefit, in addition to the bonding that occurs. The benefits to society as a whole include lower health care costs, less sick time taken by breastfeeding moms and less of a toll on the environment from bottles, formula production, and garbage.

There are also many risks associated with not breastfeeding, including health risks for new babies and long term health risks for mothers. The Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles explains that the phosphate load in formula is too high and that because of this, “formula fed infants face a 30 fold risk of neonatal hypocalcemic tetany (convulsions, seizures, twitching) during the first 10 days of life.” They also state that “formula fed infants are at a high risk of exposure to life-threatening bacterial contamination. Enterobacter sakazakii is a frequent contaminant in powdered formula and can cause sepsis and meningitis in newborns.” With the recent findings of melamine in milk products from China, the risks of formula feeding become even more apparent.
Infant formula is a $3 billion per year industry in the U.S. alone. We must also remember that infant formula is heavily marketed in third world countries where water supplies are not safe or reliable. While a mother’s body can process many bacteria in the water, a baby cannot. According to the World Health Organization, “1.5 million infants die around the world every year because they are not breastfed. Where water is unsafe a bottle-fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhea than a breastfed child.”

Some of the barriers to breastfeeding, according to the Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles, are “misinformation and lack of knowledge, personal attitudes, cultural norm, lack of support – by family, partner, hospital, and workplace, hospital practices and policies, formula companies’ advertising and hospital practices, and rare maternal or infant medical conditions.”

Angelina Jolie’s choice to appear on the cover of W magazine breastfeeding is a step in the right direction for the media to counteract the advertising of the formula industry. Perhaps some people will consider public breastfeeding more acceptable because of it, or maybe even a good option for their baby. Unfortunately, it will take a lot more public support of breastfeeding to make an impact on global health. Images like this one can create public awareness, acceptance, and promote activism.

Sources:
http://www.breastfeedingtaskforla.org/ABMRisks.htm

http://www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/index.cfm?page=home

http://www.babymilkaction.org/

Language used in sexuality education should meet teens where they are…

Successful sexuality education curriculums reflect the common language of the young students, according to this report by Associate Research Scientist, Chi-Chi Undie, Research Officer, Joanna Crichton, and Deputy Director/Director of Research, Eliya Zulu, all of the African Population and Health Research Center. The report focuses on a 2006 study of Malawi youth. The Malawi data was culled from an international project that held focus groups and interviewed 12 to 19 year olds and adults involved in the lives of youth. The research revealed that “youth-only language” was an important aspect of teenager’s interpersonal communication about sexuality and was used as a way to keep “their sexual knowledge hidden from parents, other adults, and younger children.” The youth had specific terminology for many aspects of sexuality, including sexual acts, genitalia, and partnership arrangements.

Specific findings about their language use revealed three main ideas that many youth share about sex: “sex is utilitarian,” “sex is pleasurable,” and “sex is passionate.” Emotional connection was not focused on by the youth in their conversations. The researchers found that youth open up about sexuality more as part of a focus group than as an interview subject and thus recommended small group discussion settings for sexuality education.

Undie, Crichton, and Zulu recommend including the use of metaphors related to sexuality as part of lesson plans to effectively teach good decision making, equality of the sexes, and improve the “sexual agency” of female youth. They also recommend that pleasure, passion and utility are included in the lessons in order to keep sexuality education relevant to the students. They point out that the subjects that youth leave out of their day to day discussions of sex must also be broached during the classes in order to challenge the students and broaden their knowledge of things like rape and condom use.

While this study brings to mind some embarrassing memories of my first sex-ed class in the late 80’s, more urgently, it causes me even more concern about the current state of sex-ed in the U.S. than I was already experiencing. My three little sons will soon begin learning about sexuality, in fact, my seven year old already has. We are teaching him about appropriate and inappropriate touch and boundaries. He has discovered on his own that a person can derive pleasure from genital stimulation. All three of them are also learning the social skills that will (hopefully) lead them to respect eventual sex partners.

The current rise of abstinence only education is frightening and unrealistic on so many levels that have been discussed in depth here, here, and many many other places. This study reveals yet another way that the trend is doomed to fail at preventing sex, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, rape, or abortion. I suspect that abstinence only education doesn’t draw the language used by youth to discuss sexuality into its curriculum. In fact, I bet the proponents of abstinence only are often oblivious to the coded sexual metaphors youth use and have the wool pulled way over their eyes.

"That's So Gay"

It has bothered me for a long time when I hear people call things "gay" that they think are bad in some way. I hear people on campus using this phrase all the time. I actually have even heard kids at my sons' elementary school saying it too. The Ad Council has released three videos that examine the use of the phrase "That's so gay" as a pejorative. Wanda Sykes and Hillary Duff have joined the effort to end it's use. The campaign can be found at http://www.thinkb4youspeak.com/.

The campaign also defines other words related to sexuality, including nuts, tranny, lesbos, dick, fruit, fag, queer, cherry, bad, dick, dyke, beard, cougar, prick, balls, gay, and geek.

All the videos can be seen on youtube's Ad Council site here

Wanda Sykes' version is my personal favorite:


According to the campaign, this type of damaging language is commonly used among students and more than 50% of students said they commonly hear homophobia. “9 out of 10 LGBT students report being harassed at school in the last year.” More than 1/3 have suffered physical harm due to their orientation or defying gender norms. These students commonly “feel unsafe, miss school, get low grades“ and often don’t continue on to attend university. Let's do what Wanda says and "Knock it off!"