there's been some chatter these past couple of weeks, but make no mistake...
Green Sex is going places.
More to come. Stay tuned...
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Greener Sex
Green Sex folks. That's what it's all about.
I presented the case for eco-friendly nookie last week at FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) New Staff Training, and I received a warm - albeit somewhat aghast - reception.
Green sex is, in a nutshell, the idea that contraceptive use is in fact seriously deleterious to the environment and may indeed be harmful to the human person - physically, psychologically and emotionally. (Notice I didn't use the other "G" word to prove my point - God.)
And that's the point, at least as I was explaining things to the 90 first year FOCUS missionaries who had unwittingly entered into a hotbed of controversy when they stepped into "missionary practicum 101" that morning.
Because "green sex," for all it's shock value and buzz-worthy appeal, isn't exactly catching on like wildfire. Cosmo hasn't run any features exposing the rampant estrogenic pollution of our streams and waterways, thanks to the disposal of human sewage laden with prolific amounts of artificial hormones. The White House hasn't introduced any sweeping initiatives to enact protective measures for transgendered trout whose sexuality has been swayed by human interference...
But the consequences of contraceptive use on the environment - both externally and internally, within the human body - are staggering.
From an excerpt from an Ortho Tricyclen drug information page: "Taking the Pill at a younger age may increase your risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Particularly if taken for five consecutive years prior to a woman's first pregnancy"
Let's break that down:
1. Taking the Pill "may increase your risk of being diagnosed" loosely translates to "might give you cancer" Sounds a little more ominous that way, no?
2. "...at a younger age." The average age of onset for hormonal contraceptive use in the U.S. is between 15 and 22 years of age. Let's say a 17 year-old, high school junior obtains a prescription from her general care practitioner and remains on the Pill for the remainder of high school and then continues through college and grad school. That puts her at around age 25. She's now been on the Pill for 7 years... Hmmmm....
3. "prior to a woman's first pregnancy" Let's presume the young lady in our above example marries around age 28 (average) and waits 12-14 months to conceive baby number one (pretty quick by today's standards.) She has now been taking the Pill for 9 years prior to conception of her first pregnancy...
So, transgendered trout aside, there are plenty of humane reasons to think before popping those little pink Pills - humane in the fullest sense of the word.
I presented the case for eco-friendly nookie last week at FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) New Staff Training, and I received a warm - albeit somewhat aghast - reception.
Green sex is, in a nutshell, the idea that contraceptive use is in fact seriously deleterious to the environment and may indeed be harmful to the human person - physically, psychologically and emotionally. (Notice I didn't use the other "G" word to prove my point - God.)
And that's the point, at least as I was explaining things to the 90 first year FOCUS missionaries who had unwittingly entered into a hotbed of controversy when they stepped into "missionary practicum 101" that morning.
Because "green sex," for all it's shock value and buzz-worthy appeal, isn't exactly catching on like wildfire. Cosmo hasn't run any features exposing the rampant estrogenic pollution of our streams and waterways, thanks to the disposal of human sewage laden with prolific amounts of artificial hormones. The White House hasn't introduced any sweeping initiatives to enact protective measures for transgendered trout whose sexuality has been swayed by human interference...
But the consequences of contraceptive use on the environment - both externally and internally, within the human body - are staggering.
From an excerpt from an Ortho Tricyclen drug information page: "Taking the Pill at a younger age may increase your risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Particularly if taken for five consecutive years prior to a woman's first pregnancy"
Let's break that down:
1. Taking the Pill "may increase your risk of being diagnosed" loosely translates to "might give you cancer" Sounds a little more ominous that way, no?
2. "...at a younger age." The average age of onset for hormonal contraceptive use in the U.S. is between 15 and 22 years of age. Let's say a 17 year-old, high school junior obtains a prescription from her general care practitioner and remains on the Pill for the remainder of high school and then continues through college and grad school. That puts her at around age 25. She's now been on the Pill for 7 years... Hmmmm....
3. "prior to a woman's first pregnancy" Let's presume the young lady in our above example marries around age 28 (average) and waits 12-14 months to conceive baby number one (pretty quick by today's standards.) She has now been taking the Pill for 9 years prior to conception of her first pregnancy...
So, transgendered trout aside, there are plenty of humane reasons to think before popping those little pink Pills - humane in the fullest sense of the word.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Why Green Sex is Better...
...And other counter-cultural realities.
But seriously, does the phrase "Green Sex" do a number on your psyche? Make your stomach feel a little... off?
Me too.
But I haven't thought of a better name for it yet, and who am I to rewrite Janet Smith's pith? (She dropped the phrase on a friendly Boulder, CO crowd this past spring during an on-campus rendition of her famed "Contraception: Why Not?")
So "green sex" it is.
Some food for thought:
Billions of dollars are spent on the research, development, production, advertisement, packaging and distribution of contraceptives - from pill packs to condoms, and everything in between.
Our waterways are becoming saturated with astronomical levels of estrogen, decimating animal populations in the surrounding ecosystems. (Case in point: Boulder Creek - yeah, this town gets a lot of weird press - is now home to a bizarre, feminized and mutated kind of transgendered trout)
And all the while, we're being told in firm, sensible tones: do your part. We only have one earth. Switch to high efficiency lightbulbs...
But would anyone consider making the switch from synthetic hormonal contraceptives to something a little, well, greener? Something with zero impact on the environment and a significantly positive effect on the sociological state of affairs*?
More on this later. But it sure gets you thinking...
*For a detailed explanation of NFP see CCLI.org.
But seriously, does the phrase "Green Sex" do a number on your psyche? Make your stomach feel a little... off?
Me too.
But I haven't thought of a better name for it yet, and who am I to rewrite Janet Smith's pith? (She dropped the phrase on a friendly Boulder, CO crowd this past spring during an on-campus rendition of her famed "Contraception: Why Not?")
So "green sex" it is.
Some food for thought:
Billions of dollars are spent on the research, development, production, advertisement, packaging and distribution of contraceptives - from pill packs to condoms, and everything in between.
Our waterways are becoming saturated with astronomical levels of estrogen, decimating animal populations in the surrounding ecosystems. (Case in point: Boulder Creek - yeah, this town gets a lot of weird press - is now home to a bizarre, feminized and mutated kind of transgendered trout)
And all the while, we're being told in firm, sensible tones: do your part. We only have one earth. Switch to high efficiency lightbulbs...
But would anyone consider making the switch from synthetic hormonal contraceptives to something a little, well, greener? Something with zero impact on the environment and a significantly positive effect on the sociological state of affairs*?
More on this later. But it sure gets you thinking...
*For a detailed explanation of NFP see CCLI.org.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
I Spy...
...A crying need for greater (read: any) parental involvement in the monitoring and regulation of Internet usage.
During yesterday's hellish commute home, (golf-ball sized hail, multiple traffic accidents, 70 minutes to go 21 miles) I found myself with an unexpected chunk of time in the car, and tuned in to a local and wildly popular "drive at 5" radio program. The topic of the hour was basically whether or not parents have the "right" to spy on their children via the monitoring of Internet usage.
I had never heard tell of such thing as a keystroke monitor, but I was intrigued. The Djs, feigning outrage, were incensed by the letter from a listener claiming that "her husband had gone off the deep end" by wanting to install a GPS device in their 16 year-old daughter's car; the couple had already installed a "keystroke monitor" on the daughter's laptop, as a precautionary measure to ensure safety online.
The Djs were furious over this implied "violation" of the teen's privacy, and do they turned the question over to their audience: should you or shouldn't you "spy" on your kids online?
Yes.
Yes, yes, YES. For the love of all that is good and holy, SPY ON YOUR KIDS - become involved in their lives and watch their Internet usage like a you're monitoring for the freaking CIA!
I called in, reacting instinctively with the above answer, and was put on the air almost immediately. It went something like this:
Dj Slacker: (real name, I swear) Jenny in Denver?
Me: Yyiiii! (the desired response, a mixture of 'yes' and 'hi')
Dj: So, to spy or not to spy? Do you watch your kid's every move online?
Me: hell YES. It's your fundamental role as a parent to guard, nurture and steward your child to responsible adulthood. The Internet is a SUPER sketchy place, and parents have an obligation to protect their children from nefarious content. Plus, let's be honest, who's footing the bill for the Internet usage? Who bought the computer? It's unlikely that your teen did so on his or her own initiative, but even if they had.... it's your freaking job. You are a parent.
Dj: Wtf! But kids are just starting to have adult thoughts, just starting to have those really twisted sexual responses and experiences... you'd want mom and dad to know every thought you had in a chat room? Every post you "Twittered" to the world? Are you seriously telling us that if you were having a convo with Suzie in homeroom about how hot so-and-so is and what you'd want to do with his body and whether you'd give him oral sex... you'd want your mom and dad to hear about it?!
Me: Well, that conversation would not have happened. And if it had... and mom or dad had overheard, hopefully this would have been a wake up call to intervention, and indication that maybe - just maybe - they had missed out on a few other CRUCIAL conversations with me around age 10 or 11...
The exchange continued for about a minute longer, during which I was confronted with the comparison between sneaking a peek at your daughter's diary and breaking into her Facebook account to see what she and her friends had been up to online. Or perhaps even - gasp - reading over her shoulder when she's in a chat room, violating her privacy....
When I was in high school, all those ancient years gone by, it wasn't' common practice to publish one's delinquent sexual exploits via IM, Twitter, Facebook... or even good 'ol email. Call me crazy, but I guess my friends and I realized a couple of things:
1. We were not reality tv stars. In fact, reality tv was still in its infancy... and the viewing of such was still comparable to the experience of not being able to turn one's head away from an accident scene.
2. Every thought/feeling/impulse of the adolescent mind does not demand immediate action and/or publication. In fact, it's often quite the contrary...and the practice of vomiting emotional and sexual impulses onto the world wide web is poisoning our entire culture...and condemning a sizable portion of my generation into a reactionary "feelings-based" existence of permanent adolescence.
And that sucks.
3. We were the children, they were the parents. Sure, it rubbed me the wrong way... frequently. But I was not in possession of sovereign rights which took precedence over their divinely issued charge to PARENT me. Even in my most rebellious and angst-ridden adolescent days, I still recognized that if I wanted to live under their roof... it was their way or the highway. (And yes, of course I still snuck out, disobeyed... and got caught (and thank God for that.)
So parents, if you're reading, if you're wondering how involved is "too involved" where your children's forays into cyberspace are concerned... the answer is most vehemently: NO SUCH THING.
You cannot overdo it in this area. Your child does NOT need/deserve/have a fundamental right to a personal computer in their bedroom, or Internet access on their phone. This is stupid, and it is dangerous... and you are the only ones who can tell them so and enforce it with any real authority.
This point was driven home with profundity by the last caller on the show, a mom of three girls who had "never spied on any of her kids" until her oldest was 14 years old... and the vice principal called home to summon her to the office for a conversation about the girl's cell phone, which had fallen out of her backpack in the lunchroom. The mother replied in confusion: "my daughter doesn't have her own cell phone."
It turns out, the phone in question - indeed having fallen from her daughter's bag - was full of saved text messages of a particularly graphic nature, and that the young freshman had been making plans to meet up with "Jake" over the summer which she was to spend at her father's house in Florida. "Jake" was 18, and he was going to drive from Texas to Florida to meet her in person.
"Jake" turned out to be "William" - a 39 year old pedophile who had "met" her daughter in a chat room on Yahoo, and had subsequently purchased and sent her a special phone to facilitate their communication.
The stunned daughter agreed to participate in an FBI sting op, and "Jake" is now serving a substantial prison sentence.
End of call.
Djs Slacker and Steve: (in unison) SPY ON YOUR KIDS. SPY ON THEM EVERY FREAKING CHANCE YOU GET.
End of segment
During yesterday's hellish commute home, (golf-ball sized hail, multiple traffic accidents, 70 minutes to go 21 miles) I found myself with an unexpected chunk of time in the car, and tuned in to a local and wildly popular "drive at 5" radio program. The topic of the hour was basically whether or not parents have the "right" to spy on their children via the monitoring of Internet usage.
I had never heard tell of such thing as a keystroke monitor, but I was intrigued. The Djs, feigning outrage, were incensed by the letter from a listener claiming that "her husband had gone off the deep end" by wanting to install a GPS device in their 16 year-old daughter's car; the couple had already installed a "keystroke monitor" on the daughter's laptop, as a precautionary measure to ensure safety online.
The Djs were furious over this implied "violation" of the teen's privacy, and do they turned the question over to their audience: should you or shouldn't you "spy" on your kids online?
Yes.
Yes, yes, YES. For the love of all that is good and holy, SPY ON YOUR KIDS - become involved in their lives and watch their Internet usage like a you're monitoring for the freaking CIA!
I called in, reacting instinctively with the above answer, and was put on the air almost immediately. It went something like this:
Dj Slacker: (real name, I swear) Jenny in Denver?
Me: Yyiiii! (the desired response, a mixture of 'yes' and 'hi')
Dj: So, to spy or not to spy? Do you watch your kid's every move online?
Me: hell YES. It's your fundamental role as a parent to guard, nurture and steward your child to responsible adulthood. The Internet is a SUPER sketchy place, and parents have an obligation to protect their children from nefarious content. Plus, let's be honest, who's footing the bill for the Internet usage? Who bought the computer? It's unlikely that your teen did so on his or her own initiative, but even if they had.... it's your freaking job. You are a parent.
Dj: Wtf! But kids are just starting to have adult thoughts, just starting to have those really twisted sexual responses and experiences... you'd want mom and dad to know every thought you had in a chat room? Every post you "Twittered" to the world? Are you seriously telling us that if you were having a convo with Suzie in homeroom about how hot so-and-so is and what you'd want to do with his body and whether you'd give him oral sex... you'd want your mom and dad to hear about it?!
Me: Well, that conversation would not have happened. And if it had... and mom or dad had overheard, hopefully this would have been a wake up call to intervention, and indication that maybe - just maybe - they had missed out on a few other CRUCIAL conversations with me around age 10 or 11...
The exchange continued for about a minute longer, during which I was confronted with the comparison between sneaking a peek at your daughter's diary and breaking into her Facebook account to see what she and her friends had been up to online. Or perhaps even - gasp - reading over her shoulder when she's in a chat room, violating her privacy....
When I was in high school, all those ancient years gone by, it wasn't' common practice to publish one's delinquent sexual exploits via IM, Twitter, Facebook... or even good 'ol email. Call me crazy, but I guess my friends and I realized a couple of things:
1. We were not reality tv stars. In fact, reality tv was still in its infancy... and the viewing of such was still comparable to the experience of not being able to turn one's head away from an accident scene.
2. Every thought/feeling/impulse of the adolescent mind does not demand immediate action and/or publication. In fact, it's often quite the contrary...and the practice of vomiting emotional and sexual impulses onto the world wide web is poisoning our entire culture...and condemning a sizable portion of my generation into a reactionary "feelings-based" existence of permanent adolescence.
And that sucks.
3. We were the children, they were the parents. Sure, it rubbed me the wrong way... frequently. But I was not in possession of sovereign rights which took precedence over their divinely issued charge to PARENT me. Even in my most rebellious and angst-ridden adolescent days, I still recognized that if I wanted to live under their roof... it was their way or the highway. (And yes, of course I still snuck out, disobeyed... and got caught (and thank God for that.)
So parents, if you're reading, if you're wondering how involved is "too involved" where your children's forays into cyberspace are concerned... the answer is most vehemently: NO SUCH THING.
You cannot overdo it in this area. Your child does NOT need/deserve/have a fundamental right to a personal computer in their bedroom, or Internet access on their phone. This is stupid, and it is dangerous... and you are the only ones who can tell them so and enforce it with any real authority.
This point was driven home with profundity by the last caller on the show, a mom of three girls who had "never spied on any of her kids" until her oldest was 14 years old... and the vice principal called home to summon her to the office for a conversation about the girl's cell phone, which had fallen out of her backpack in the lunchroom. The mother replied in confusion: "my daughter doesn't have her own cell phone."
It turns out, the phone in question - indeed having fallen from her daughter's bag - was full of saved text messages of a particularly graphic nature, and that the young freshman had been making plans to meet up with "Jake" over the summer which she was to spend at her father's house in Florida. "Jake" was 18, and he was going to drive from Texas to Florida to meet her in person.
"Jake" turned out to be "William" - a 39 year old pedophile who had "met" her daughter in a chat room on Yahoo, and had subsequently purchased and sent her a special phone to facilitate their communication.
The stunned daughter agreed to participate in an FBI sting op, and "Jake" is now serving a substantial prison sentence.
End of call.
Djs Slacker and Steve: (in unison) SPY ON YOUR KIDS. SPY ON THEM EVERY FREAKING CHANCE YOU GET.
End of segment
Thursday, June 11, 2009
And the Verdict Is...
Per Miss Amelia's wise suggestion (and Maggie's permission), I hereby solemnly swear to post at least once a week this summer - and I promise they'll be GOOD.
Thanks to my faithful readers, and to my newer readers too! I promise that the quality of content will exponentially increase as the frequency decreases... :)
Thanks to my faithful readers, and to my newer readers too! I promise that the quality of content will exponentially increase as the frequency decreases... :)
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Still Alive
Though the blog is limping along at the bottom of my accruing to do list... any thoughts on a brief, structured hiatus? Is anybody out there still reading?
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