Versions Compared

Old Version 17

changes.mady.by.user Nathan Wailes

Saved on

compared with

New Version Current

changes.mady.by.user Nathan Wailes

Saved on

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Table of contents

Table of Contents

Child pages

Child pages (Children Display)


  • The general things I would conclude about all these topics are these:
    • Society should strive to have everyone happy.
    • Society is filled with social norms.
    • These social norms seem to exist because either:
      • the benefit of the individual: at the time the social norm came about, they were the best-available method for solving problems that affect the happiness of an individual.
        • Examples
          • Social norms against incest prevent the pain that would be felt by the child.
          • Social norms against underage sex prevent the problems felt by the underage person.
      • the benefit of the group: they're a product of social evolution: groups that adopted the social norm tended to do better
        • Examples
          • Catholic social norms prohibiting contraception lead to the creation of lots more Catholics.
          • norms against homosexuality might lead to more births, since homosexual men / women would be led into heterosexual relationships that would be more likely to produce offspring.
    • As time goes on, some / all of these social norms may no longer be the best way to make everyone as happy as possible
      • Examples:
        • Nowadays, social norms against homosexual relationships seem to cause more pain than they prevent.
    • People have certain "buttons" that get pushed that make them feel good.
      • Examples:
        • physical affection
          • getting a massage
          • hugging someone
        • mental affection
          • being familiar with someone.
          • having someone smile at you
          • having someone think you're great / special / important
    • Those "buttons" aren't always sophisticated enough to tell who / what is pushing them.
    • So you can end up with a situation where you're having a bunch of your "buttons" pushed by someone that society would not approve you having a relationship with.
      • Examples: incest, bestiality, homosexuality



Consent

Obtaining consent

2015.10.15 - NYT - Sex Ed Lesson: ‘Yes Means Yes,’ but It’s Tricky


Consent from the person you are kissing — or more — is not merely silence or a lack of protest, Shafia Zaloom, a health educator at the Urban School of San Francisco, told the students. They listened raptly, but several did not disguise how puzzled they felt.

“What does that mean — you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?” asked Aidan Ryan, 16, who sat near the front of the room.

“Pretty much,” Ms. Zaloom answered. “It’s not a timing thing, but whoever initiates things to another level has to ask.”


The “no means no” mantra of a generation ago is being eclipsed by “yes means yes” as more young people all over the country are told that they must have explicit permission from the object of their desire before they engage in any touching, kissing or other sexual activity. With Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature on a bill this month, California became the first state to require that all high school health education classes give lessons on affirmative consent, which includes explaining that someone who is drunk or asleep cannot grant consent.
  • I think the process of obtaining consent could be done in a much better way.

Age of consent

This is a popular news topic (relationships that violate the age of consent), I'm guessing because a lot of people read these stories.

  • On the one hand, the argument for having a high age of consent is pretty clear:
    • If you read the history of the age-of-consent laws quoted below (taken from the book "Lawtalk"), young women were often getting coerced into really abusive situations when the age of consent was lower.
    • There was also a higher teen pregnancy rate, which seems to exacerbate poverty, I'm guessing because the parents have less time early in their lives to learn a specialized set of skills which command higher wages (eg being a doctor / lawyer / programmer).
    • Men will often be willing to pay women a lot of money for their time when they are young, which could lead women to underinvest in their job skills and become used to an easy lifestyle, which can lead to unhappiness once they get older.
    • Lower ages-of-consent seem to have been present in societies where women were married at those lower ages, marriage was necessary for any kind of relationship, marriage was guided by the woman's parents, and divorce was prevented via social stigma / prohibition (?). Thus the women had some kind of idea of the life they could expect from the decision to marry (based on the earnings / status of the prospective husband). Whereas nowadays those things (protections?) are no longer present.
  • On the other hand, the current system seems to have problems:
    • It seems to be natural for men and women to start to find each other more sexually attractive once the opposite sex becomes sexually developed (ie capable of having children). When that happens seems to vary from person to person, but it seems to generally start around age 13. My understanding is that that was a common age for marriage in the past.
    • The current system seems to be getting a lot of people in trouble, just as the marijuana and homosexuality laws were getting a lot of people in trouble.
      • Men and women (but mainly men) are being prosecuted as pedophiles for having relationships with 16-year-olds, and images of people of that age is considered 'child pornography'.
  • I suspect there is a way to get the benefits we want from a high age-of-consent without incurring the costs of the current system.
  • Moving to a new system might be slow / awkward for society in the same way that shifting to the social acceptance of homosexuality / marijuana was slow / awkward.
  • Lawtalk: The Unknown Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions
    • This book discusses the history of age of consent laws:


    • Expand

      The age of consent is the age at which a young man or woman can give legally effective consent to be married or to engage in sexual intercourse. Although the term had been around in legal writing at least since the early seventeenth century, it exploded into general usage late in the nineteenth.

      Generally speaking, a marriage entered into by a person who has not reached the age of consent for marriage can be annulled, and sex with a person who has not reached the age of consent for sexual intercourse is a crime (usually referred to as statutory rape). The legal details, however, can be very convoluted, as a Georgia high school student named Genarlow Wilson learned in 2004 when, at age seventeen, he was charged with "aggravated child molestation" for having received fellatio from an accommodating schoolmate two years his junior. Under Georgia law at the time, the minimum sentence for this act was ten years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole, followed by lifetime registration as a sex offender and lifetime restrictions on where he could live. Under the same law, if the pair had engaged in sexual intercourse instead of oral sex he would have been guilty only of a misdemeanor; and if in addition the boy had been the same age as the girl (fifteen) they both would have been guilty of misdemeanors--each one for having "raped" the other. As it was, Wilson served almost three years in prison before the Georgia Supreme Court narrowly decided that his sentence was so disproportionate to the crime as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered him released.

      The separation of sexual maturity from legal capacity to consent to sex is the result of a cultural revolution that occurred not so very long ago. In earlier times, puberty signified marriageability. In England, a valid marriage could be contracted if the boy and girl had reached anni nubiles (Latin, "marriageable years": twelve for a girl, fourteen for a boy). Any girl who had reached this age was capable of legally consenting to sexual intercourse, a basic component of marriage. (Canon law, which governed marriage, allowed parents to marry off their children beginning at age seven, but then the children had the option of disaffirming the marriage upon reaching the age of twelve or fourteen. In practice, marriages at even younger ages were not unknown.)

      This principle was reflected in one of England's earliest statutes, the wide-ranging First Statute of Westminster (1275). Among other things, this promulgation by Edward I codified the law on "ravishment of women" by proscribing forcible rape or abduction of females of any age, and intercourse with any maiden under the age of twelve. In the words of an official nineteenth-century translation from the Anglo-French original, "The King prohibiteth that none do ravish, nor take away by force, any Maiden within Age, neither by her own consent, nor without; nor any Wife or Maiden of full Age, nor any other Woman, against her Will."

      In the sixteenth century, Parliament increased the penalty in rape cases to death (the penalty for felonies); and "for playne declaracion of Lawe" added, "That yf any person shall unlawfully and carnally knowe and abuse any Woman Childe under the Age of Tenne yeeres, everie suche unlawfull and carnall knowledge shalbe Fellonye." But while that made it plain that sex with a girl under the age of ten would be treated as a rape, the statute left it unclear whether previous lesser punishments were still available for cases where a child had reached the age of ten but not the age of twelve. The law was in this confused state when it was brought to America by the colonists; as a result, after independence some states pegged the age at which a girl could consent to intercourse at ten, others at twelve. In England the matter was clarified in 1828 by a statute continuing the death penalty for forcible rape and for carnal knowledge of a child under the age of ten and explicitly designating carnal knowledge of a child of age ten or eleven as a lesser crime punishable by imprisonment "for such Term as the Court shall award."

      In a general revision of England's criminal laws in 1861 the death penalty was abolished for such crimes, reducing the maximum sentence to penal servitude for life, or in the case of carnal knowledge of a girl aged ten or eleven, to penal servitude for three years--though in all cases the court had discretion to order a much lighter sentence. As with all previous statutes on the subject, this involved no fundamental change in thinking about the crime: for at least six centuries, nothing had seemed more natural to lawmakers than that a child upon reaching sexual maturity thereby acquired the status of an adult so far as sexual matters were concerned.

      But within the next half century a host of social, economic, philosophical, and political forces would combine to revolutionize the law. Industrialization and urbanization increasingly removed young women from the watchful eyes of their parents, at once freeing them to mingle unchaperoned with young men and subjecting them to unwelcome sexual pressures in the workplace. The romantic concept of children as the embodiment of innocence and purity mingled with Victorian notions of sexuality as a dangerous impulse in need of suppression (see COMSTOCKERY). The feminist movement and the woman suffrage movement, begun at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, called attention to the legal victimization of women. The temperance movement, and particularly the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874, called attention to the brutalization of women by men.

      Many of these threads came together in what came to be called the "social purity movement," which was concerned, among other things, with what was perceived as an epidemic of prostitution and "white slavery." This concern represented a mixture of compassion for poor girls and women forced into prostitution by economic necessity, fear that "pure" women were being abducted or inveigled into lives of debauchery, and concern that "bad" women were luring virtuous young men into sexual vice. In England in 1885, the influential journalist and social purity advocate William Thomas Stead, with the support of Salvation Army Chief of Staff Bramwell Booth (who had helped his father found the Army a decade earlier) and the redoubtable social activist Mrs. Josephine Butler (wife of the canon of Winchester), investigated the London sex trade. Among other things, Stead contrived with several confederates to "purchase" a thirteen-year-old virgin and at least contract for the purchase of several more teenage virgins, all ostensibly for sexual purposes.

      The resulting expose, published as a week-long series in Stead's "Pall Mall Gazette"--and brilliantly promoted the preceding Saturday by means of a printed advisory that prudish readers should avoid reading the Gazette for the next few days--caused a sensation. An introductory essay argued for "raising the age of consent"--a theme to which the series repeatedly returned--and at once the topic was on everyone's lips. The government was forced to respond, and within three months an act for "Protection of Women and Girls" had been whisked through Parliament. Among other measures, the act raised the age of consent from thirteen (to which it had been grudgingly increased from twelve a decade earlier) to sixteen. As his reward for exposing the complicity and involvement of powerful people and the legal system itself in the sex trade, Stead was convicted at the Old Bailey of child abduction and indecent assault and served three months in jail.

      Stead's series was reprinted in the United States, where it proved as effective in selling newspapers, and almost as effective in arousing public sentiment, as it had in England. Suddenly people began to notice--and to be concerned--that the age of consent for girls in most American states was ten; in a few, twelve; and in Delaware, presumably because of confusion over the old canon law, seven. (In Arkansas the relevant criminal statute explicitly referred to the transition point as "the age of puberty"; but the state's supreme court held that an indictment for carnal knowledge of a twelve-year-old girl who allegedly had not yet reached puberty could not stand, for the common law had set twelve as the age of "legal puberty" so as to avoid the "indecently inquisitive" process of requiring a girl's underage status to be "proved by actual inspection.") In 1885 the WCTU established an official Social Purity Department to campaign for, among other things, a higher age of consent. Within five years, legislators in twenty-four states had responded to pressure from a wide range of sources by raising the age of consent for girls--most to fourteen, but a few to thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, and in one case eighteen. Opponents railed that such laws would put innocent boys at the mercy of conniving girls, and efforts were made to repeal the laws. But the activists pressed on, gaining higher and higher ages. By 1920 the lowest age of consent in the land was fourteen in a single state; in no fewer than twenty-one states it had reached the age of eighteen.

      By that time, World War I had rung down the final curtain on the Victorian era. The 1920s brought unprecedented freedom for young people, especially in the cities. It was the flapper era, the Jazz Age, the decade of speakeasies and bathtub gin and the Charleston. It was only in this post-Victorian atmosphere that a blunt expression acknowledging the sexuality of teenage girls--and wryly commenting on the legal dangers they now posed--could have taken root. The stage was set for the invention of a new word: jailbait.



    • Expand

      Jailbait (or jail bait) is a slang term for an adolescent girl who has not yet reached the legal age for sexual intercourse. It is a vivid warning that no matter how attractive or provocative the girl might seem to a man, if he attempts any sexual intercourse with her he could find himself behind bars.

      The earliest appearances of the term found by lexicographers occur in the grittily naturalistic stories and novels of James T. Farrell published in the first half of the 1930s. Farrell's writing, which began in earnest around the time that he entered the University of Chicago in 1925, was based on his experience and observation of life in the city's Irish working-class neighborhoods and was noted for its documentary quality; it is therefore probable that the term existed as street slang, at least in Chicago, in the 1920s. Probably by confusion with the primary meaning of the term, jailbait also acquired a secondary meaning referring to a person, especially a young man, who seems destined to land himself in jail. The original meaning, however, remains by far the most common today.

      The unknown person who coined this expression had a keen instinct for language, creating a graphic and disturbing metaphor by a novel juxtaposition of the plainest of words. The expression quickly became a staple of hard-boiled American fiction, in lines like "Look, even if I wasn't on the level, yuh think I'd be stupid enough to mess with jail bait?" and "You're wasting your time, Gran'pa, I'm jailbait."

      In real life, however, the term is best used sparingly and with considerable caution: if intended or perceived as a slur upon the character of a girl or of girls in general it is offensive. For example, one of the allegations against a teacher accused of sexual molestation and harassment of a thirteen-year-old student was that he had "referred to Barbara as 'jail bait,' or 'San Quentin jail bait' in front of students, his friends, band parents and student teachers."

      The fundamental principle underlying this expression is the separation of sexual maturity in the biological sense from sexual maturity in the sociological sense. This concept is now so firmly established that it is somewhat surprising to realize that it is barely a century and a quarter old.


  • Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desirehttp://www.amazon.com/Sex-Punishment-Th ... dp_product
    • this book also apparently discusses the history of age of consent laws
  • Examples of other cultures' social norms


    • Expand

      David’s father, Kenneth, was an anthropology student at the University of Pennsylvania who, under the tutelage of the prominent scholar Napoleon Chagnon, made his first trek to the Amazon in 1975. “I was older than the rest of the team, and a little more arrogant,” he says. Exasperated, Chagnon rid himself of Kenneth, sending him to the most remote part of the jungle.

      There, he stumbled upon Yarima’s tribe. He was enthralled and fascinated, and made so many return trips that the Yanomami came to regard Kenneth as one of their own. “The head man of the village said, ‘You know, have a wife — you’ve been here for so long.’ ”

      In 1978, he was offered Yarima, who was then about 9 to 12. Good was 36. He saw no real problem.

      “Living down there, of course I didn’t care, and the Yanomami didn’t care,” Kenneth says. “Our culture is obsessed with numbers.”

      He says that the Yanomami don’t have what we consider marriage; instead, they betroth their girls — even while in the womb — to tribesmen for later consummation.

      Kenneth says that a girl can refuse her betrothal, but he knew Yarima had feelings for him, because she watched for him always, brought him food, ran down the riverbank when he was approaching.

      Kenneth has always taken umbrage at the obvious question: How old was Yarima when their union was consummated? “PBS asked me that once, and I said, ‘You can be damn sure that she was the age of consent in most states and many countries around the world,’ ” he says. “Which I think is 13. The cultural age is what’s important down there. Don’t I have the right to do this or that in another culture?”


...

  • NYC Dept. of Health - The IUD
    • The IUD is a small, T-shaped birth control device that a health care provider inserts into a woman’s uterus. There are two types – one contains hormones, the other does not.
    • What are the benefits of the IUD?
      • You can “get it and forget it.” Once you have the IUD, there is no daily pill or action that you need to take to prevent pregnancy.
      • It is more than 99% effective at preventing pregnancy.
      • It can work for a long time, so if you know you don’t want a pregnancy within the next several years, it may be a great option for you.
      • It is safe for most women and teens, whether you’ve had a baby or not.
      • No one will know you have an IUD, unless you tell them.
    • What are possible side effects of the IUD?
      • Some women may have spotting in between periods. This usually goes away within the first 3-6 months.
      • Some women with the non-hormonal IUD experience heavier periods.
      • Some women with the hormonal IUD may stop having periods while using it. This is a common side effect and is totally safe. For many women, this is an advantage!
      • Some women may experience cramps and backaches.
    • How does the IUD prevent pregnancy?
      • The IUD works primarily by preventing sperm from fertilizing an egg.

The decline of sex

2015.10.18 - NYT Story - On Tinder, Off Sex

I found the profile of a man whose name is probably Matt and told him I’m new to this Tinder thing and asked him how it works.

“You match with a bunch of people, no one ever messages each other, and no one ever has sex,” he responded.

(...)

In my imagination, the sex I have with each of them when I’m riding my bike home from work or when I’m stuck in traffic on the freeway or when I’m otherwise far away from myself is epic. It is all dark rooms and brick walls. Aggressive and gentle. It is the kind of sex that makes a person fall in love instantaneously.

Except we never have sex. And we never fall in love. We fall into almost love and then life takes us away from each other. And without that memory of skin against skin to connect us across distance and time, we become, once again, strangers.

Homosexuality

I am by no means an expert on this stuff, but since people talk about it so much I have spent some time thinking about it. As with everything else I say, please excuse anything I say that's uninformed; if you let me know how I'm mistaken and I find you convincing, I'll revise what I've written. I am no stranger to changing my mind on things.

Q: Is homosexuality natural?

My short & simple answer: Yes, although it depends on what you mean by "homosexuality" and "natural".

My long & complicated answer: It depends on what you mean by "homosexuality" and "natural". 

It seems to me that some people use "homosexuality" to refer to homosexual behavior, while others use "homosexuality" to refer to the feeling of attraction to the same sex (which may or may not lead to homosexual behavior). And some people use "natural" to mean "the longstanding status quo", while others use "natural" to mean "something you're born with". If you're asking whether homosexual behavior is the longstanding status quo in the United States, then the answer seems to be "No, it isn't". If you're asking whether some people's attraction to the same sex is something they're born with, then the answer seems to be "Yes".

I've gotten the impression that conservative groups are correct when they say that homosexual behavior can be developed in people who otherwise wouldn't be drawn to behave that way (eg prisons, ancient Greece). I suspect many LGBT people realize this. For example, I've overheard pro-LGBT people talk about the idea of heterosexual people "going gay", and if you Google "should go gay" you get more than a million results. I also suspect they purposely avoid mentioning this idea in the media because it complicates the argument that LGBT people are "born that way". I've heard it said again and again that social movements need to have a very simple message to be effective.
Related article: A lesbian mother feels nervous about her daughter picking up her habits

At the moment I suspect the LGBT groups are correct that it wouldn't make a big difference to the functioning of society if all formerly-heterosexual people became open to bisexual behavior. For example: ancient Greece, modern US prisons, and the modern pornography industry are all known for having heterosexual people engage in homosexual behavior, and it doesn't seem to have caused any serious social problems like those caused by the drugs opium/PCP/crack cocaine/meth (as far as I know). I suspect that expressing this view in public would make a lot of heterosexual people in the US very uncomfortable, which is probably why you don't hear it from LGBT groups. It honestly makes me feel pretty uncomfortable, probably because I grew up in a very different system.
Related article: A gay guy arguing that not all gay people are born that way, and that's OK

I suspect the conservative groups are correct that allowing the erosion of their conservative social norms within their own group could be bad for the prospects of their religion/race (eg orthodox Jews are in the same situation), and I suspect that they're correct that if the law of the land forces them to interact with people of a different social world, they'll have a harder time enforcing their conservative social norms among members of their own group.

So, with all that in mind, it seems like the gay-rights issue is just a tug-of-war between 1) gay groups that are working from an inborn motivation to be free to live in a way that will better satisfy their desires, and 2) anti-gay groups that are working from an inborn motivation to keep the status quo (for the preservation of their race/society). I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" here, just like I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" about whether a lion is able to catch the zebra he's chasing; I think whichever group is more powerful is going to win out, and that's the way things will be from then on. If I had to guess, I'd say the gay groups will get their legal rights, and the anti-gay groups will continue to do their thing like the orthodox Jews do: they won't be able to enforce their status quo via the law, but they'll still have peer pressure, which is very powerful.

re: being born with a genetic variation
I had a classmate in elementary school who was male but acted in a very feminine way (more feminine than many of the girls). It seems unlikely to me that this behavior was a result of his environment after birth (although idk what his family environment was). I haven't encountered him in any way since elementary school and so I can't say for sure that he ended up identifying as homosexual, but if I had to guess I'd say he probably did. I remember finding females attractive as early as preschool (which is actually as far back as I can remember anything), and so it seems plausible to me that someone born with a genetic variation could identify as being homosexual as early as then.


Q: How does the social-acceptance of homosexuality affect heterosexual men?

For some reason in the US it seems many straight guys feel a need to bash gay people whenever they get a chance, and after noticing that some things about widespread homosexuality actually benefit straight guys, I started to ask myself whether it was rational for heterosexual men as a group to be so negative toward homosexuality.

My guess at the moment is that the widespread acceptance of homosexuality that we see nowadays is a fantastic situation for heterosexual men. From what I've seen, homosexual men seem (on average) to groom themselves better than heterosexual men, they tend to take better care of their bodies (eg not getting fat), they don't seem as intimidated by beautiful women, and as far as I can tell their facial/body structure seems to be the same as heterosexual men. The point I'm getting at: if they were forced to have girlfriends and fake their behavior b/c of social norms (like in the '50s), it seems like they'd be tough competition for heterosexual men. On more than one occasion I've seen a physically-fit, well-groomed, tall gay guy and thought, "Thank God I don't have to compete with that guy for women".
A few years after I came to this conclusion, this video came out with the same idea: CollegeHumor - Gay men will marry your girlfriends


Misc unusual sexual topics (incest, bestiality, etc.)

Bestiality

Incest

Prostitution

2014.09.04 - Economist - More bang for your buck: How new technology is shaking up the oldest business
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... -your-buck

Telegraph - Welcome to Paradise
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/proje ... -paradise/

2014.02.20 - BBC - Mega-brothels: Has Germany become 'bordello of Europe'?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26261221

Sexual Harassment / Assault

This is something that the media talks about a lot, so it's something that I've thought about.

Articles:
Slate - My Molesters: Why I never told my family or the police
People - Bill Cosby Under Fire
NY Times - Abuse Verdict Topples a Hasidic Wall of Secrecy
Why Rape Isn't Like Sunburn

...

...

    • She says that Mr. Matt had forced her to perform oral sex, and that "there was never any consensual" sexual contact...
    • ...but in the context of the rest of the stuff she said, I would bet she's just trying to do as much damage-control as possible.
      • ...which I can totally understand. I can see myself doing that if I was in her position. I think many (most?) people would do that.
    • I just think it's important to keep in mind that women are human, and they may be just as likely to lie as a man when they're put in a situation where they have an incentive to lie.
  • 2015.11.23 - People - Louisiana Woman Shot Her Son in the Head, Then Tried to Pretend He'd Kidnapped Her: Police
    • Dora Blake, 47, was purportedly celebrating her birthday when she fatally shot her son, 22-year-old Patrick Hollingsworth, in the head and injured the other woman.

      Some Good Samaritans pulled over to help after spotting the car. Blake allegedly told them that she had been kidnapped and had managed to shoot her captors. The witnesses then repeated that story to the sheriff's deputies who arrived to assist with the crash.

      But when detectives interviewed the surviving victim, she told them that the three of them had gone to a casino to celebrate Blake's birthday, which was on Sunday. "The lady in the front seat, she told us what had happened," says Davis. "Her son was treating her to a birthday celebration and she ended up shooting him.

  • 2016.01.08 - Washington Post - ‘Catfishing’ over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle
    • “All available evidence demonstrates that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a fake suitor created by Jackie in a strange bid to earn the affections of a student named Ryan Duffin that Jackie was romantically interested in,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court papers filed this week.

      Jackie had told Duffin that a date with Haven Monahan on Sept. 28, 2012, had gone terribly wrong, claiming that the upperclassman had forced her to perform oral sex on five other men. That fall night, Duffin was among a group of friends who rushed to be by Jackie’s side as she cried; Duffin described her as being hysterical and appearing traumatized.
  • 2018.08.23 - NY Daily News - Long Island woman who made up rape allegations rolls her eyes as she is sentenced to one year in jail
    • "I went from being a college student to sitting at home being expelled with no way to clear my name," Malik St. Hilaire said in a Bridgeport courtroom on Thursday as he stood near Yovino, according to The Hour newspaper. “I just hope she knows what she has done to me, my life will never be the same. I did nothing wrong, but everything has been altered because of this.”
    • Yovino, of South Setauket, N.Y., would later admit that she made up the rape claim to try to get the attention of another man she was interested in.

STDs

General

Gonorrhea

Herpes

  • This is one of the most common STDs, and thus worth spending extra time learning about.
  • There are two types: HSV-1 and HSV-2.
  • HSV-1 is the 'cold sore' variety. It generally isn't so bad.
    • Although althletes can get it on their faces, where it's known as 'scrumpox' or 'herpes gladiatorium', and that's pretty nasty.
  • HSV-2 is the nastier one, but even that one can be managed with certain drugs.
  • Acyclovir is the main drug you want.
  • http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-herpes-expert.html?pagewanted=all
  • http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/293350-please-help-herpes-nightmare/

    • I have wrtten a book about herpes simplex virus, so maybe I can help. Admittedly the book is 25 years old, but the information below isn't out of date.
      The first episode of herpes presents an opportunity to kill it off, or at least to reduce its potency, which will never come again. This also applies to the period between the day one is infected and the day the virus manifests itself in one's first attack (average ~10 days).
      As said by others above, the drug you need is acyclovir, which is marketed as Zovirax, but now has run out of patent & is a 'generic' drug marketed under many names (often with a 'zov' or 'vir' in the name). Don't worry - it's easy to buy everywhere, including Thailand. Talk to a proper pharmacist to be sure - not the 17-year-old girl on night duty.
      After you're infected the first time, the herpes virus manifests on the skin as lesions (blisters). It then retreats up the nerve pathways & goes to live (in the case of genital herpes) in the nearby sacral ganglia, where it disassembles itself, rendering itself immune to chemical attack.
      However if acyclovir is taken before it migrates up to the ganglia, there is a reasonable chance it can be destroyed, or certainly reduced. I.e. subsequent outbreaks will be milder than they would have been.
      When acyclovir was first formulated, but before it was released (early 80s), I studied hundreds of clinical trials done with it. The above effect was clearly apparent. However the manufacturer (Burroughs Wellcome) did not publicise this recurrence-preventing effect, focussing its marketing instead on simply treating recurrent episodes.
      I pointed this out in the press, & was criticised by Burroughs Wellcome for being too 'conspiratorial' (though we got on well on other scores). Two decades or so on, the above is not only accepted by BW but is part of their marketing. (Their apology must have gone astray in the mail.)
      Whether you have HSV1 or the stronger HSV2 isn't so important right now as getting your gf onto the acyclovir. She might be reluctant to take an antiviral drug for 10 days, but you could point out that having herpes for the rest of her life could be somewhat worse. Also, acyclovir has no perceptible side-efects for anyone - & the imperceptibe ones are few, minor & transient. I am fairly anti-medication, but I (& the clinical literature) regard it as a very safe drug.
      In getting tested for STDs before getting intimate with your gf, you have been unusually responsible. If only more did the same.
      3 more minor points:
      * Most herpes sufferers notice a reduced rate of recurrence as time goes by & the immune system learns to deal with it better.
      * Don't kiss anyone when you have an outbreak on your lip.
      * When I wrote my book, herpes was seen as the end of the world. Then AIDS came along. Today, most people I know have herpes: few regard it as anything more than an occasional annoyance.
      I don't pop in here often, so email me if more info is required: johnmac11 AT fastmail.us

HPV

  • This is what gives people genital warts.
  • You can get a vaccine for this. It is administered in three doses over the course of six months.
  • I got the vaccine. I think it was totally worth it.
  • The serious thing about this one is that it can give you cancer. I think I remember reading that Michael Douglas got cancer from HPV (and probably also smoking).

Syphilis

Virginity

At the moment my impression is that the focus of Americans on virginity is a holdover from a different age where virginity meant more.

Misc articles:
http://vagendamag.blogspot.com/2012/10/ ... irgin.html

...