red states, more porn

(via boingboing)

Red states consume more porn?
POSTED BY DAVID PESCOVITZ, FEBRUARY 27, 2009 10:48 AM | PERMALINK

According to a new Harvard Business School study, eight of the top ten states in terms of online porn consumption were ones where McCain won in the presidential election. Professor Benjamin Edelman analyzed anonymised credit cards receipts from a large online porn company. Based on their limited data, the largest consumer is Utah. Other interesting possible correlations emerged too that Edelman outlines in his paper, “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. From New Scientist:

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code’s religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behaviour.”

“One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.

“Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers” (New Scientist),

Play by sex workers sets image right

17 Feb 2009, 2304 hrs IST, Risha Chitlangia, TNN

NEW DELHI: Unhappy with the way they are portrayed in movies, a group of sex workers from Maharashtra has taken upon themselves to present the real world they live in. Touching upon various aspects of their lives, these women highlighted their problems through a play, My mother: the gharwali, her maalik, his wife.

The play which was staged at India Habitat Centre on Monday focused on health risks, like contracting HIV/AIDS etc, faced by these women. It also attacked various government policies and decisions.

The play was a part of a two-day festival called Project-19 which was organised by two NGOs, The YP Foundation and Centre for Human Progress. It was presented by a Maharashtra-based NGO, Sangram, and Vaishya Atyachar Mukti Parishad, a group formed by the sex workers living in Sangli, Maharashtra.

“The way sex workers are projected in films is totally different from the world we live in. We want people to know the real story and that’s why we decided to participate in this play,” said Chanda, a sex worker, who is also the protagonist of the play.

The play also talks about the discrimination faced by the children of sex workers. “To get your child admitted to a school, it is mandatory to give father’s name. Though things are changing now, it is still a big problem. These kids don’t talk about their parents in school. There is a scene in the play where the daughter of a sex worker is asked to write an essay on her mother. The girl projects a false image of her mother, as she can’t speak the truth,” said Shafi Naikwadi, director of the play and member of Sangram.

The issue of health problems was handled boldly in the play. It reflects the growing awareness about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and the mandatory use of condoms. “We don’t allow customers to have sex without condoms. Most sex workers use condoms while having sex with customers, but when it comes to their maalik or lover they don’t use. Now we are creating awareness about it and hold group meeting to encourage the practice,” said Kavita (name changed), a sex worker who is HIV+.

The play also criticized various government policies which have been formulated without consulting them. “Some people talk about rehabilitating us. I want to know what do they want to rehabilitate the women in this profession? We are happy in our own world. And before a decision is taken, we should be consulted,” said Meenakshi, another sex worker.

Let’s Talk About Sex

from bostonglobe…really interesting article.

By Alison Lobron
High school kids are being taught about the birds and the bees with the same fear-mongering tactics many of us remember. But some health educators today are offering teens a more grown-up lesson: Sex isn’t necessarily a bad thing

In eighth grade, Luke Detwiler, of Natick, and his friends saw graphic pictures of people having sex. The photos contained “close-ups of various body parts and sex acts,” remembers Detwiler, now 16. But the kids weren’t furtively flipping through a nudie magazine swiped from somebody’s dad. They weren’t sneaking onto pornographic websites after school. They were in church on a Sunday morning, and their parents had signed them up for the experience.

The photos were a small piece of a yearlong sexuality education program called Our Whole Lives, or OWL. A joint effort by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, OWL aims to help teens understand sexuality. As Detwiler recalls the sessions of three years ago, the pictures demonstrating what sexual intercourse looks like were “shocking to kids, but also helpful. It helped them to grasp another dimension of sexuality.” So did the frank discussions about dating norms, the chance to pass around condoms, and informal conversation about the way sex is portrayed in magazines, movies, and music. OWL is among a handful of sex-ed programs that take a position more radical than it may, at first, sound: namely, that sexuality education should actually talk about sex. While events like the spike in teen pregnancies in Gloucester last year or the bulging bellies of youthful pop stars (or Alaskan first daughters) can prompt outcries for better sex ed, most of what we call “sex education” is really about preventing the bad stuff. As one Newton teacher puts it, “It’s all been reduced to two issues: teen pregnancy and STDs. That’s all really important, but I feel we’re losing other important things.”

With US sex education heading into its second century, some educators are suggesting that sex ed can, and should, be about more than just all the things that can go wrong, that adults need to do more than robotically recite statistics about condom failure or the merits of abstinence. This new approach, almost too small to be called a movement, exists largely outside the public schools, but it’s a new twist in a debate that often gets bogged down in finger-pointing and name-calling. The “sex is good” mentality involves talking frankly to teens about sexual pleasure and about when and how to achieve it safely. It means focusing less on whether kids have had vaginal intercourse, and acknowledging that teens (like adults) will engage in a variety of sexual experiences. It’s an approach that might make some grown-ups uncomfortable, but it’s exactly what sex ed needs if it’s ever going to grow up.

It’s still possible for a student in Massachusetts not to learn anything about his or her body beyond what is covered in a standard biology class. While 20 states and the District of Columbia mandate the teaching of human sexuality, and 35 (plus D.C.) require instruction in HIV prevention, Massachusetts does neither. All state law now has to say on the subject is that if a school teaches a class related to sex, parents must be informed in writing and they have the right to exempt their children from the class.

Ugandan Officials Express Concern About Commercial Sex Workers Who Re-Use Female Condoms

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Also Included In: Women’s Health / Gynecology; Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 04 Feb 2009 – 4:00 PST

Officials and HIV/AIDS advocates in Uganda during a recent meeting expressed concern about commercial sex workers in the country’s capital of Kampala who re-use female condoms to protect themselves from contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted infections, Uganda’s New Vision reports. The meeting, organized by Uganda’s Ministry of Health and Population Services International, aimed to determine the best strategies for marketing female condoms.

According to Molly Basimaki, program assistant for the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS in Uganda, many commercial sex workers use female condoms because their clients often prefer to have unprotected sex. She added that commercial sex workers sometimes keep female condoms inserted for several hours because they have limited time between clients to discard used condoms. Vasta Kibirige, coordinator of the condom unit at the health ministry, said that it is “not advisable” to keep a female condom inserted for more than eight hours because “a person might develop side effects.”

In addition, some women choose to re-use female condoms because they are relatively expensive, Basimaki said. Kibirige said the country’s health ministry is “trying to find solutions on making the female condom available at a small cost.” Anthony Mbonye, assistant health commissioner in charge of reproductive health, added that the ministry is procuring condoms and would purchase female condoms based on the demand. According to Kibirige, there are about 100,000 female condoms available in Uganda, compared with 27 million male condoms (Ariko, New Vision, 1/30).

sex ed….

sigh…in my head I’m thinking: why is this even something you need to CONSIDER? Sex education MUST go beyond teaching abstinence. It just isn’t realistic, and it isn’t fair to deprive young adults with the facts. They have a right to know how to protect themselves. Anyway..the article…

Pittsburgh Public Schools Consider ‘Abstinence-Plus’ Sex Ed

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Public Schools administrators are considering an “abstinence-plus” sex education program because statistics show city teens give birth more often than the regional average.

The district has an “abstinence-only” curriculum that tells students not having sex is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The “abstinence-plus” approach would also give students information about pregnancy prevention.

Officials said students wouldn’t be given contraceptives nor would they be demonstrated in class even if the curriculum changes.

School officials said 14 percent of births in Pittsburgh are to women under 20, compared to 8.3 percent of births across Allegheny County.