TMI
- God is: a dubious proposition insufficiently supported by empirical evidence.
- What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?: Prescriptivist grammar used as a tool of insitutional racism.
- Tushy or Tuchus
- If you could bring one dead person back to life, who would it be?: Dumbledore.
- Vampire or Zombie
Feb 16, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
I'm late to the party, but I feel the need to toss in my two cents on the circumcision/anti-circumcision debate. As far as I'm concerned, it is unacceptable to surgically alter an infant's genitals unless there is a compelling medical reason to do so. And no, minute reductions in the rates of penile cancer and STD transmission do not constitute a compelling medical reason. Male circumcision does appear to significantly reduce the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission, which is the only convincing pro-circumcision argument I have encountered to date. However, in a first world country, an uncircumcised man can easily offset his increased risk of contracting HIV from a female partner by using a condom. We don't cut off babies' penises to shield them from the consequences of whatever unwise sexual choices they may make down the road; why is okay to cut off their foreskins for the same reason?
Jan 30, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on SL Letter of the Day: We Found Our Unicorn—But She's Engaged!.
echizen_kurage commented on SL Letter of the Day: We Found Our Unicorn—But She's Engaged!.
@15:
His nipples are uneven, probably because he's flexing his left pec but not his right.
Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but it seems a wee bit ill-advised of them to put their real names out there in such a public forum. "Penny and Marco" is a pretty distinctive combination; together with the photo, it's more than enough to out them to anyone who knows them in real life.
. . . unless, of course, those aren't their names at all, and the "Penny and Marco" aliases are just a clever bit of misdirection. In which case, well played, sir and madam!
My sexual orientation is not so much "bi" as "raging pussysexual dyke," but I think I could make an exception for Penny and Marco. Too bad I'm on the other side of the world (and probably too boi-ish to guest-star as their unicorn).
His nipples are uneven, probably because he's flexing his left pec but not his right.
Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but it seems a wee bit ill-advised of them to put their real names out there in such a public forum. "Penny and Marco" is a pretty distinctive combination; together with the photo, it's more than enough to out them to anyone who knows them in real life.
. . . unless, of course, those aren't their names at all, and the "Penny and Marco" aliases are just a clever bit of misdirection. In which case, well played, sir and madam!
My sexual orientation is not so much "bi" as "raging pussysexual dyke," but I think I could make an exception for Penny and Marco. Too bad I'm on the other side of the world (and probably too boi-ish to guest-star as their unicorn).
Jan 12, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Lunchtime Quickie: Today in Awful and Ignorant Girl Scouts....
echizen_kurage commented on Lunchtime Quickie: Today in Awful and Ignorant Girl Scouts....
I used to be a Girl Scout. The troop started out with a billion or so Brownies, but by eighth grade, there were only seven of us left. On one camping trip, we were sitting up late in our tent gossiping about (what else?) boys we liked. Problem was, there weren't any boys I liked. I was at that awkward stage in my life where I was starting to realize that I liked other girls. Although I was well aware of the potential for disaster, I was so sick of pretending to enjoy talking about boys that I confessed to having a crush on a female classmate (not a member of the troop).
The conversation pretty much fizzled and died after that. Nobody took me outside and beat the shit out of me, or called me any nasty names, but it was pretty clear that my standing among my fellow Girl Scouts had plummeted precipitously. The next year, the mother who had been serving as the troop leader for the past six or seven years declined to volunteer for the position again, leaving the troop to dissolve. I never put two and two together until a few years ago, when a fellow former Girl Scout (the only one I'm still in touch with) told me that the troop leader heard from her daughter that I was queer, didn't want me in the troop but couldn't think of any way to get me kicked out, and so decided to pull the plug on the troop altogether. Apparently this was an open secret among everybody else who used to be in the troop; I never found out about it because none of them wanted anything to do with me.
I'm inclined to believe that the rumor is fundamentally true. Sometimes when I'm visiting my mother, I run into my former troop leader, and she looks at me like I'm something her dog regurgitated on the carpet, and makes barbed remarks thinly disguised as pleasantries. (Fortunately, she confines herself to subtly disparaging my intelligence and my career, rather than my sexuality, although I suspect that's largely because my mother is usually also present). At least now I know why, I guess.
I know that my former troop leader's conduct was completely out of line with Girl Scout principles, but I still can't bring myself to buy Girl Scout cookies. (It doesn't help that they're all pretty gross, except for the Trefoils, and even those are only so-so.)
Long story short: sadly, the bigoted little blister in this video is not an isolated phenomenon, even within the ranks of an ostensibly progressive organization.
More...
The conversation pretty much fizzled and died after that. Nobody took me outside and beat the shit out of me, or called me any nasty names, but it was pretty clear that my standing among my fellow Girl Scouts had plummeted precipitously. The next year, the mother who had been serving as the troop leader for the past six or seven years declined to volunteer for the position again, leaving the troop to dissolve. I never put two and two together until a few years ago, when a fellow former Girl Scout (the only one I'm still in touch with) told me that the troop leader heard from her daughter that I was queer, didn't want me in the troop but couldn't think of any way to get me kicked out, and so decided to pull the plug on the troop altogether. Apparently this was an open secret among everybody else who used to be in the troop; I never found out about it because none of them wanted anything to do with me.
I'm inclined to believe that the rumor is fundamentally true. Sometimes when I'm visiting my mother, I run into my former troop leader, and she looks at me like I'm something her dog regurgitated on the carpet, and makes barbed remarks thinly disguised as pleasantries. (Fortunately, she confines herself to subtly disparaging my intelligence and my career, rather than my sexuality, although I suspect that's largely because my mother is usually also present). At least now I know why, I guess.
I know that my former troop leader's conduct was completely out of line with Girl Scout principles, but I still can't bring myself to buy Girl Scout cookies. (It doesn't help that they're all pretty gross, except for the Trefoils, and even those are only so-so.)
Long story short: sadly, the bigoted little blister in this video is not an isolated phenomenon, even within the ranks of an ostensibly progressive organization.
Jan 10, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
@ Erica:
The immunogenicity of Gardasil in older patients may be better than I initially thought, at least according to this article from The Lancet, although the authors do note "an expected trend towards slightly reduced immune responses in the older cohort of women."
Basically, there are two things at play in the reduced efficacy of Gardasil in older patients: one is the increased likelihood that older people will already have contracted one or several of the HPV strains Gardasil protects against; the other is the unfortunate fact that the older you are, the more your immunocompetence declines.
Also, here's another article you may find interesting, about relapsed smokers.
. . . and now I will get back to reading the articles I'm actually supposed to be reading. Bleh.
The immunogenicity of Gardasil in older patients may be better than I initially thought, at least according to this article from The Lancet, although the authors do note "an expected trend towards slightly reduced immune responses in the older cohort of women."
Basically, there are two things at play in the reduced efficacy of Gardasil in older patients: one is the increased likelihood that older people will already have contracted one or several of the HPV strains Gardasil protects against; the other is the unfortunate fact that the older you are, the more your immunocompetence declines.
Also, here's another article you may find interesting, about relapsed smokers.
. . . and now I will get back to reading the articles I'm actually supposed to be reading. Bleh.
Jan 10, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Kim Novak Is an Asshole.
echizen_kurage commented on Kim Novak Is an Asshole.
This makes me want to write retaliatory fanfiction, but I'll content myself with a brief open letter. Dear Ms. Novak: I think the vast majority of actual intellectual property laws are a load of maggot-ridden putrescence. I don't give a tenth of a rat's buttock about your absurdly overblown sense of artistic entitlement.
Jan 10, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Genetically Modified Foods Freak-Out.
echizen_kurage commented on Genetically Modified Foods Freak-Out.
What @7 said. I'm not going to swear on a stack of Bibles that there are no legitimate health concerns about GM crops, but there really aren't nearly as many as the alarmists seem to think. The real disaster in the offing isn't the fact that our food contains (gasp! shock! horror!) DNA, which of course it did all along -- it's the fact that more and more cultivars are "protected" by intellectual property laws, and engineered so that they don't produce any viable seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds every year.
That being said, I'm convinced that GM is, in the balance, a very good thing. GM offers a partial solution to our current intensive reliance on irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. More importantly, the world population is seven billion and climbing rapidly. Organic farming couldn't feed much more than half of that, even if we farmed every last square inch of arable land on the planet.
That being said, I'm convinced that GM is, in the balance, a very good thing. GM offers a partial solution to our current intensive reliance on irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. More importantly, the world population is seven billion and climbing rapidly. Organic farming couldn't feed much more than half of that, even if we farmed every last square inch of arable land on the planet.
Jan 10, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
@ankylosaur:
And you're still with her anyway? Wow, that's true love.
@Erica:
It's possible that Mr. P's smoking has more to do with simple addiction than anything about the dynamics of your relationship. As I understand it, the dominant model of chemical addiction suggests that it never really goes away; it just lies dormant. As for why he didn't tell you, that might be because he's embarrassed about giving in to his cravings and/or doesn't want to admit himself that he's started smoking again. (I think even the best of us are susceptible to wishful thinking along the lines of "if nobody knows about it, it didn't actually happen.") This is only one possible explanation among many, of course, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway.
Maybe Mr. P should talk to his doctor about using Wellbutrin or Chantix to help him quit smoking? Both of these drugs have significant potential downsides, and neither of them is a "get out of jail free" card for nicotine addiction, but they might be worth considering.
While I'm talking medicine: Mr. P's doctor probably already told him this, but the efficacy of Gardisil decreases dramatically with age of inoculation. A late inoculation is probably better than none, but it's far from a "get out of jail free" card for HPV (never mind the many strains that it doesn't protect against in the first place).
More...
She strongly dislikes Dostoevsky, though.
And you're still with her anyway? Wow, that's true love.
@Erica:
It's possible that Mr. P's smoking has more to do with simple addiction than anything about the dynamics of your relationship. As I understand it, the dominant model of chemical addiction suggests that it never really goes away; it just lies dormant. As for why he didn't tell you, that might be because he's embarrassed about giving in to his cravings and/or doesn't want to admit himself that he's started smoking again. (I think even the best of us are susceptible to wishful thinking along the lines of "if nobody knows about it, it didn't actually happen.") This is only one possible explanation among many, of course, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway.
Maybe Mr. P should talk to his doctor about using Wellbutrin or Chantix to help him quit smoking? Both of these drugs have significant potential downsides, and neither of them is a "get out of jail free" card for nicotine addiction, but they might be worth considering.
While I'm talking medicine: Mr. P's doctor probably already told him this, but the efficacy of Gardisil decreases dramatically with age of inoculation. A late inoculation is probably better than none, but it's far from a "get out of jail free" card for HPV (never mind the many strains that it doesn't protect against in the first place).
Jan 5, 2012
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
echizen_kurage commented on Savage Love.
@Spikeygrrl:
I saw your posts on this thread, and they made me curious enough to look up some of your past posts, and now I'm even more curious. You're a veteran practitioner of BDSM, but you still can't wrap your head around homosexuality, bisexuality, non-monogamy, transexuality, or pretty much any other deviation from the conservative vision of "natural, traditional" heterosexual monogamy? How does that even work?
I saw your posts on this thread, and they made me curious enough to look up some of your past posts, and now I'm even more curious. You're a veteran practitioner of BDSM, but you still can't wrap your head around homosexuality, bisexuality, non-monogamy, transexuality, or pretty much any other deviation from the conservative vision of "natural, traditional" heterosexual monogamy? How does that even work?
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To repeat what Ankylosaur said @130: if the medical evidence in favor of circumcision is so cut and dry (please pardon the pun), then why is it not routinely practiced worldwide? It seems to me that the preventative benefits of infant circumcision are insufficient to justify its continued practice (especially in first world countries where condoms are easily accessible and female-to-male HIV transmission is extremely infrequent). If infant circumcision magically made men immune to AIDS, then I'd say sure, snip 'em all. But a circumcised man who practices unsafe sex is still at major risk for contracting any number of nasty diseases.
Your comparison to vaccination is spurious. Circumcision isn't a momentarily painful jab with a needle; it's the irrevocable amputation of erogenously sensitive tissue. Studies on the subject have come up with mixed results, but there is a non-trivial possibility that circumcision decreases genital sensation (Kim and Pang, 2006), (Yang, 2008) and increases the likelihood of sexual dysfunction (Frisch, 2011). (The first article is hosted on an anti-circumcision site, but it was originally published in the British Journal of Urology International.)
As for the argumentum ad antiquitatem defense of circumcision (and I'm convinced that this is primarily what keeps the practice alive in the US, despite all the dubious health benefits that are invoked to justify it) . . . Granted, because circumcised penises are widely seen as "normal" in the US (see @53), most women here report a preference for them. However, there is some evidence suggesting that uncircumcised penises may actually produce greater satisfaction for the female partner during vaginal intercourse (O'Hara and O'Hara, 1999, Frisch 2011). And with the rate of infant circumcision in the US trending downward, the perception of uncircumcised penises as somehow aberrant may be on its way out. Finally, an intact adult male decides that his foreskin is damaging his sex life, then he can make an informed decision to undergo surgery. A circumcised adult who is unsatisfied with the condition of his genitals has no such recourse.