sexEdvice

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/13/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

I have to say, spermicide seems like a really good idea. Just squirt some goop into your vagina and expect to be protected from pregnancy and infections.

Unfortunately like many good ideas, this one still needs some tweaking.

It’s not that spermicide is pointless. Using it is far better than not using anything. But it is actually one of the least effective methods of modern birth control around.  Plus, spermicide does nothing to prevent STDs. (Only microbicides can do that, and well, that technology is lagging even further behind).

According to Family Health International, with typical use, a woman has a 26% chance of becoming pregnant if she only uses spermicide as birth control over the course of a year.

That’s way worse than the pill, which with average use, only gives a woman a 5% chance of pregnancy. It’s also worse than condoms which offer between 85% and 99% protection from pregnancy.

But what exactly is spermicide? Basically, a spermicide is a gel, cream, foam or film that can be inserted into the vagina or applied to a condom. It is made of a detergent that is supposed to kill sperm. The problem is, millions of sperm are released every time a man ejaculates, and spermicide won’t kill them all.

Some people get allergic reactions from spermicide. In that case, you probably don’t want to use it at all.  Otherwise, it is generally okay to use with another form of birth control. But use spermicicde alone, and pregnancy is a very real possibility.

Have you ever used spermicide? How did that work out?

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/18/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

Q: I noticed a bump inside
of my vagina while I was masturbating. It’s sort of in the middle
portion of my vaginal canal. What do you think it is?

A: There are a few possibilities. You might be feeling your cervix.  The cervix is the top of the vagina and the bottom of the uterus. 

This might also be a cyst or other medical condition that you should get checked out.

Of course, you might have come across your g-spot.

There is a little bit of debate over what the g-spot is, or if it even exists. However, it seems likely that this term refers to a system of ducts and glands that surround the urethra. For some women this area is very sensitive and can contribute to orgasm and even female ejaculation.

Female ejaculation is a lot like male ejaculation, minus the sperm. About 10% of women ejaculate when their g-spot is stimulated.  We think that the fluid come from something called the Skene’s glands and emerges through tiny ducts near the opening of the urethra.

Of course, since there is no way for me to really know what is going on over the internet, it might just be a good idea to see a gyno and see what she thinks!

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/18/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

When I was in college, I became friends with a girl named Jeanie. After we’d been hanging out for a while Jeanie confided in me that she had a bad problem with facial hair and acne. She tried to deal with both, but was always worried that people noticed.

Despite being really uncomfortable with the situation, it didn’t occur to Jeanie that there could actually be a reason for it.

In fact, it turned out there was.  At the end of the year, Jeanie went to the gyno for a pap smear and mentioned she had irregular periods.  The gyno ordered some tests and pretty soon it became apparent that a lot of Jeanie’s issues were actually due to something called polycystic ovarian syndrome (aka PCOS).

PCOS is a condition where a woman’s ovaries develops numerous cysts.  According to the Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Support Network, symptoms of the condition include:

• Irregular or absent periods
• Numerous cysts on the ovaries in many, but not all, cases
• High blood pressure
• Acne
• Elevated insulin levels, Insulin Resistance, or Diabetes
• Infertility
• Excess hair on the face and body
• Thinning of the scalp hair
• Weight Problems or obesity that is centered around your mid section

Sounds pretty rough right? Luckily there are treatments for PCOS. These might be as simple as putting a woman on the pill, or they might be more complicated and involved a combination of approaches.

After meeting Jeanie, I learned that two other friends of mine had been dealing with PCOS for a few years.  But because they were embarrassed by the symptoms they hadn’t said anything. These days all three have the condition under control. Yet as they and many other women learned the first step towards treatment is diagnosis.

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/18/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

The CDC just reported that 25% of girls have been inoculated against the human papiloma virus since a vaccine became available two years ago.

The same study found that approximately 75 to 90 percent of children got vaccinations like chickenpox, hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella.

The difference is that unlike the HPV vaccine, those vaccines are not only required by schools, but they have also been around a lot longer.

Plus, they aren’t associated with sex.

So in some ways, after only two years on the market, a 25% vaccination rate for HPV isn’t terrible.

So what are the fears about the HPV vaccine and sex? Mainly that once a girl gets it, she will feel like she has permission to become sexually active.

Some parents have prevented their daughters from getting it for this reason, as have some schools. That’s right! Catholic schools, both in Canada and in England have banned their students from getting the vaccine, claiming that it was "encouraging sexual promiscuity".

But it is not only overblown fears about sex that stand in the way of higher vaccination rates. Another concern has been the cost. If your insurance doesn’t cover it, the vaccine is pretty expensive (over $300).

Some people are also worried about side effects. There have been anecdotal reports of really serious things like extreme pain and even paralysis. There has been no concrete proof that there is a direct link between these situations and the vaccine, and the CDC claims that the vaccine, "was studied in thousands of females (ages 9 through 26 years)   around the world and its safety continues to be monitored by CDC and the   FDA. Studies have found no serious side effects. The most common side effect is soreness in the arm (where the shot is given). There have recently been some reports of fainting in teens after they got the vaccine." But many people are still worried.

My real concern with the vaccine is not that girls who get it will start wantonly having unprotected sex with every guy they come across, or that they will suffer a rare side effect. Rather, I am concerned that after getting the shot, a lot of girls won’t realize they still need to get pap smears.

This is important because the HPV vaccine doesn’t offer 100% protection from HPV. It offers 70% protection. 70% is a pretty good number. But it’s not a guarantee. Because of this, it is still a good idea to get pap smears as often as your health care recommends.

Getting the HPV vaccine is a personal choice, and it’s not one everyone will be comfortable with. But I’d be interested to learn how the numbers really break down. How many girls aren’t getting it because their parents won’t let them? How many find cost a barrier? How many fear side effects? And how many just don’t see the need? 

If you have any insight, I’d love to hear it!

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/18/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

Q: My boyfriend and I tried to have sex a few times but it just doesn’t work! It never seems to go in and i don’t understand what the problem is.

A: Hmmm, could be a few things.

1) You might not be lubricated enough.
2) You boyfriend might not be fully erect, or he might partially lose his erection before penetration.
3) You might need to guide the penis with your hand.
4) You might have a smallish vagina and he might have a biggish penis.

So what can you do?  Well, you can try lube for one.  You can also try penetration with a finger first, and then work up to two before inserting the penis.   

People also usually need to place the penis into the vagina with a hand, (either yours or his).  That’s because typically the penis doesn’t just effortlessly glide into the vagina, so helping out a bit can make all the difference. 

Also, while most penises fit into most vaginas, if he is on the bigger side, and you are on the smaller side, then you might just need to go more slowly and work your way in. Some people don’t try for full penetration all at once, but rather just try to work the penis in a little at a time over the course of a few sessions.

Of course, if you are nervous, you might be inadvertently clenching your vaginal muscles and making penetration difficult. If you think this might be the issue, you can either try to relax, or you can hold off on intercourse for a little while until you feel more comfortable.

Has this happened to any of the gURLs out there?  How did you deal with it?

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/28/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

Q: My boyfriend won’t use condoms. I can’t get the pill because my mom would find out. Is there any way to have sex and not get pregnant?

A: Your boyfriend is by no means the only guy in the world refuse to use condoms, but I’d like to think his type is a dying breed.

You don’t mention why he is opposed. Does he claim that condoms are too small? In that case, you could always go for an extra large condom.

Does he have a latex allergy?  If so, use a polyurethane or female condom.

Does he promise to pull out in time? You might want to remind him that even if he succeeds, there is no way to control when he releases pre-cum, which in rare cases can lead to pregnancy.

Is he trying to get you pregnant?  If that’s not something you want, you really might want to rethink the relationship.

Actually, if this guy is putting you at risk for any reasons, you might want to ask yourself why you are with a person who doesn’t seem to care about your health or safety.

Look, no one is going to pretend that having sex with a condom is exactly the same as having sex without one. But I’d challenge this guy to find teen parents whose sex lives are exactly like they were before the baby. Or someone with an STD, who hasn’t felt their infection impact sex at all.

The only way to reliably prevent a pregnancy is to use birth control. If condoms and the pill aren’t options, you can try spermicide. However, this is one of the least effective forms of birth control around.  If you have really regular periods, you can also consider natural family planning. But again this method doesn’t offer you 100% pregnancy protection.

I know it’s easy to tell someone to break up with a guy who won’t use condoms, and a lot harder to actually do so. But often guys who don’t care about their partner’s health, also don’t care about other aspects of their happiness or safety.

Have other gURLs been in this situation? How have you handled it?

_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/27/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

Q: I currently have a staph infection and it has spread to my genital area. Can I give this to my partner during sex?

A: Staph infections are really common. They often live on the skin near the mouth, genitals and anus. 

If one person has genital staph infection, it can be passed to a partner during sex, especially if the other person has a cut or sore on their skin. Using a condom can help reduce your risk, but because condoms don’t cover all the skin that might be infected, they can’t eliminate it.

A lot of staph infections can be treated with antibiotics, so it is really important to see your doctor and find out what kind you have.  If you are prescribed antibiotics, make sure you take them exactly as directed and finish the entire bottle, even if you feel better. Your doctor may or may not recommend that you hold off on sex until you are better.

If you think think that your boyfriend might have been exposed to your staph,  it would be really wise for him to see a doctor, as well.

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_{Unpublished post, originally written 10/28/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

When I was in high school my boyfriend, Cam cheated on me.

The first time it happened, I heard about it from my friend, Angie, who pulled me aside at a party to give me the bad news. I burst into tears, and confronted Cam. But he masterfully denied that anything had happened and convinced me that Angie was just trying to break us up.

“I didn’t want to tell you, Ellen,” he said, “But she’s come on to me when you weren’t around.”

Needless to say, Angie and I were never close again.

Soon after that, my friend Tammy, told me that Cam had hit on her one night.  Again, I confronted Cam, yelling at him on the bus home and telling him we were through. 

“Tammy’s such a slut,” Cam fumed.  "I can’t believe you’d take her word over mine.  You know she’s just jealous of our relationship.”

He made the same excuses when my friend Monica told me he had hit on her. And when Jen told me they made out.

As with each previous time, I would start out angry at Cam, and end up angry at my girlfriend.

Finally, in the middle of 12th grade, two and a half years into our relationship, Cam’s roommate, Mandy took me out for coffee.

"Ellen," she said. "You know Cam cheats on you?"  She gave me a list of names and told me that he’d had girls over to the apartment they shared.

At that point, I couldn’t deny the situation any longer.

Mandy had a serious boyfriend, was in college, and seemed totally together. I knew she would have had no reason to be interested in my deadbeat boyfriend, who at 19, had yet to finish high school, and was often late with his rent.

Far from being jealous of my relationship, (which Cam often claimed motivated my friends to "make up" his cheating ways), I was pretty sure Mandy just felt sorry for me.

But until that point, it had been so much easier for me to simply blame the girls who told me about Cam, rather than to blame him. Though some of them were close friends, Cam managed to convince me that it was them and not him who were betraying me.

Sadly, I think my experience is pretty typical. Often, girls can’t bear the thought that their boyfriends might actually be cheating, and end up living in a world of denial. Acknowledging the cheating would force them to question every aspect of their relationship and their own self-worth. It would also be likely lead to a break-up, and break-ups can seem even scarier than the nagging suspicion that your beloved hasn’t been faithful.

Blaming the girl who your guy cheats with, or the one who tells you about the situation, means that you can vent your anger at someone while excusing your guy’s behavior. It allows you to maintain the illusion that it’s the two of you against a world that simply doesn’t understand.

After talking to Mandy, I finally broke up with Cam. Much to my surprise, once it was over, I never regretted ending the relationship.

Sure, I was left with a bad case of low self-esteem, an appointment for an HIV test, and friendships that were broken beyond repair. But I was also left with a pretty good radar for manipulation, a low tolerance for lame excuses, and the knowledge that I would never again let myself be put in that situation. 

Though the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I wish I had realized at the time that that strength could have still been gained even if I had ended the relationship the first time I heard Cam was a cheater, and not the one hundred and first.

_{Unpublished post, originally written 8/24/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

The summer after grade 11 I left my boyfriend Jim at home and hopped on a plane with 40 other kids. We were bound for Three Rivers, Michigan to spend 6 weeks doing a leadership training program at a summer camp.  The program turned out to be a bit of a joke (we learned a lot more about smoking cigarettes than we did about being leaders of tomorrow).  There was, however, one event that stood out for me.

One of our roles as budding leaders was to run avtivities for the campers. So once a week we were assigned partners and told to come up with a thought-provoking session for kids.

Most of my activities had involved silly games or baking cookies. But this time I was assigned to work with a girl named Becky. Becky wore green Doc Martins, came to Three Rivers armed with a stack of books by authors I had never heard of, and had a great idea for an activity.  We would get the kids to analyze songs to see if they were sexist. 

To do so we collected a bunch of songs like Guns ‘N Roses, Used to Love Her, the Beastie Boys, Girls and the Beatles Run for Your Life. Then we made a mix tape (remember this was the nineties), got our assigned kids together and pressed play.  Afterwards we played them Fugazi’s, Suggestion, which was about sexual harassment, to counter the messages of the previous songs.

Now I don’t know if the eight-year-olds we were working with actually got a lot out of our session.  But I certainly did. 

Though had lead Becky to believe I was as aware of this issue as she was, the idea of listening to music for the message was actually pretty new to me. But it also was something that I had been thinking about more and more. Mainly, that was because of a really uncomfortable experience I’d had at a concert the previous spring.

It was the Public Enemy / Anthrax show (again, blame the decade!). I went with Jim and some of his guy friends. As the bands belted out some early version of a rock / rap hybrid, three women came out on stage. They were wearing thong bikinis and heels. They didn’t sing or dance or play an instrument. Instead, they strutted around the stage as the bands encouraged the crowd to scream, "Pussy! Pussy!"

I was 16 and aside from the women on stage, I felt like the only female there. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood miserably, smoking, as everyone around me chanted.

That concert ended any interest I had in rock / rap.

However, it wasn’t until Becky’s dissection of lyrics, and her introduction to bands that sang politically and socially charged songs, that I realized just how prevalent sexism was in music, and that it was possible to find bands I liked that didn’t make me uncomfortable.

It’s not that I poured over lyric sheets before buying new music after that. But thinking about the issue definitely made me more conscious of what I listened to, and which bands I supported.

And I’m happy to report that since then, I have never again found myself stranded in the middle of a crowd as a band whipped the audience into a screaming frenzy of misogyny. Of course, I’m also happy to report that I never again played Guns ‘N Roses for eight year olds…

Have you ever had an experince like mine? Do you care about lyrics in music?

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_{Unpublished post, originally written 8/24/08 for my now defunct state of sex education blog on gURL.}

Remember when Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears were the poster children for virginity?  Clearly things have changed with those two. Simpson is now divorced and dating a football player. And Spears, well, you all know what she’s been up to.

Following in their footsteps comes the next generation of celebrity virgins.  First up, American Idol, Jordin Sparks.

told Us Magazine that she has worn a True Love Waits purity ring since she was 13 and explained, “Temptation is always there. It’s hard everyday, but I made a promise to myself. "  Her take on virginity sounds pretty familiar.

However, the Jonas Brothers, who also wear their chastity publicly, are charting some new territory simply by being male.

In an interview with Details magazine last winter, the brothers proudly showed off their purity rings and explained they wear them as "promises to ourselves and to God that we’ll stay pure till marriage."

Because virginity isn’t expected from young male celebrities, the Brothers have had to endure their share of ribbing. The most recent incident occurred at the VMAs when the host wondered why the Brothers weren’t using their fame to score. 

Going on stage shortly after, Sparks came to their defense. "I just have one thing to say about promise rings. It’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody – guy or girl – wants to be a slut."

Now I have no problem with the personal choice not to have sex. Or the tactics people use to make that choice a reality. What I do have a problem with are comments like the one made by Sparks.

Why is sex simply an either or thing?  Why is it that you are either proclaiming your virginity to the world with your purity ring, or you’re a big old slut?

Sure "not everybody wants to be a slut." But here’s a newsflash for Jordin, not everyone who has sex is.

Almost half of all American teens are sexually active. But of those, only 14% had sex with 4 or more people, and over 65% use condoms. Doesn’t sound all that slutty to me. Of course, I never took a virginity pledge, and I have a feeling that my views on the matter are probably a little different than people who have. 

Celebrities love to embrace causes, and that’s fine. But I’d rather they didn’t use their platform to diminish teens whose choices differ. 

What do you think about celebrity virginity pledges? Are they admirable? Annoying? Neither?

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