As a first year peer educator I can't help but wonder why our meetings are lacking males? Is there something about talking to students about their sexual health, nutrition or exercise habits that is a "turn off" to them? Why is discussing health issues, especially sexual health, a "woman thing"? Are men just uncomfortable? Do they think it is a woman's role? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts!

Listen up! This Saturday, an awesome, awesome, AWWWESOME (did I mention awesome?) hour long documentary film called "Let's Talk About Sex" will premire on TLC at 9pm.  The film covers a variety of sexual health topics through the eyes of America's youth and their parents.  I know I may be a tad bias about the film because of my strong interest in sexual health, BUT I promise you won't be disappointed! If you aren't able to watch it at 9, there should be another showing at 1am.  SO TUNE  IN!!! 

Check out this article from Ohio University's Journalism student Jenna Blakley about sex, abstinence and media influence on sex...and leave some comments!
 

 

Sex, love, and all of the above

Posted by Jenna Blakely in Journalism pieces on February 5, 2011

It may be an awkward conversation with your parents, a shiny new promise ring if you’re a girl, or a lesson from your health teacher drilling “sex is bad!” into your not-quite-fully-developed teenage brain; depending on which high school you attend. Yes I am talking about abstinence, and yes it’s 2011.

 TV shows have evolved from prohibiting couples to sleep in the same bed, as in I Love Lucy, to heavily emphasizing getting drunk and engaging in meaningless sex, as in The Jersey Shore.  Simultaneously, abstinence has lost popularity. Even though our society seems to pick on virgins and send out raunchy messages through the media, abstinence has managed to retain high social value in the opinions of many sexually active college students today. Even if it may be a dying trend, it’s certainly not dead.

Unlike some couples today who choose more casual paths of dating, Brandon Sackett, 20, and Ashley Brandenburg, 22, share  a deep connection, a radiating love; the kind that most of us are in search for. Brandon knows without hesitation that her favorite color is yellow and her favorite food is ice cream, and Ashley knows that his favorite color is green and that he absolutely loves General Tso’s Chicken from Yang’s Gourmet House. Ironically enough, after separate interviews with each of them, when asked the question, “What attracts you to one another?” They both had the exact same answer and said it was the other’s ability to be so “loving and compassionate.”

“I knew I wanted to marry her around the second year of dating. I knew this girl was the perfect package and can remember thinking there is no one else that could even compare to Ashley. I called it my ‘Ashley Filter’,” said Sackett.

Brandon proposing to Ashley at family Christmas gathering

Now, after five years of dating, Brandon felt ready to take it to the next level. Around Thanksgiving, without Ashley knowing, he asked her parents out to breakfast and asked them for permission to marry her.

It all started nearly five years ago, when they met through Perrysburg High School’s 2006 spring musical, Beauty and the Beast. He walked her to her car after rehearsal where he had placed flowers in the passenger seat without her knowing. He proceeded to ask her to be his girlfriend, and now, on December 18^th, 2010, at his family Christmas party, he was ready to ask for her love again. Except this time, he got down on one knee with a beautiful ring and said, “Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?” With instant tears of joy, Ashley said yes!

What makes this couple stand out from the rest is not only their apparent, glowing love for each other, or their impressive four year commitment at such a young age, or even the long-distance they have endured due to their individual schooling, but rather, the fact that they are abstinent. They have promised to wait to have sex until their wedding night, which is set for April 20, 2013; their seven year anniversary. Brandenburg said, “I feel like it will just make the marriage that much stronger and more special.  The first time that you experience sex with your husband or wife will be so sacred, and you will both know that they are the only other person that you have shared that feeling with.”

Madeline Schmidt, an Ohio Advocate member of Bowling Green State University studying Communication Health, said that 90 percent of people are sexually active today without necessarily being married, a fact she learned while in training for the advocate group. Ohio Advocate specifically promotes “comprehensive sex education” in high schools, especially those that teach only abstinence. While she believes abstinence is the safest option and should still be stressed in schools, Ohio Advocate works to ensure that sex education in high schools doesn’t stop with abstinence, but fully educates students in all there is to know about sexual health and birth control. Schmidt says, “I think it’s great if people decide to wait until marriage to have sex, after all it is the safest option. It takes a lot of willpower to do that in today’s society and I give them props.”

For Brandon and Ashley, while it has been a hard decision, they do not regret it. Brandenburg believes sex plays an important role in any relationship, and when people have sex purely for pleasure it can blur the line between love and infatuation.

“I feel like sex is meant to be shared with one person only.  It is the coming together of two people who have promised to love and take care of each other till the end of their days.  I believe that sex is supposed to be pleasurable, but that’s not its only purpose.  Sex can give people the feeling that they are in love when maybe that is not really the case,” said Brandenburg.

Schmidt agrees with the idea that casual sex can sometimes create confusion, however she also believes sexual freedom can be a positive thing as long as the people engaging in it are being safe. “When it comes to relationships though,” she said, “people can take sex for granted and abuse it. If you have sex too soon, how do you build a relationship from that?” She has seen a lot of “friends-with-benefits” situations fail, because one person always seems to develop an emotional attachment. That’s because sex, no matter how cold and robotic the media portrays it, inevitably creates emotions for most individuals.

 Bret Isner, 22, an Ohio State University Food Science major believes that the media has been a driving force in portraying sex too casually. “Social media has ruined sex by taking out the emotional aspect of it and then people view that and internalize it as normal,” he said. Liz King, Ohio University Communications major seconds that and said, “I think it’s respectable to wait until marriage, but a lot of people  don’t do it because of how heavily casual sex is stressed in today’s culture.”

Besides the raunchier TV shows like MTV’s  Jersey Shore, the riskier music like Akon’s “Sexy Bitch,” or the less-traditional romance flicks like No Strings Attached starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, Madeline points out that the media is clearly a factor, but it’s not the only one. Religion is a factor as well.

 “Religion typically stresses abstinence, and today it seems a lot less people go to church,” Schmidt said, and indeed, that seems to be the case. Two sociologists, Kirk Hadaway and P.L. Marler conducted two studies, one in 1993 and the other in 1996, that looked at the relationship between people who say they attend church regularly versus the amount that actually do attend regularly. After taking attendance and then interviewing the church-goers, what they found was that in both studies about half of the people who reported attending church actually attended. Out of 40 percent of self-reported Protestant church-goers for example, the study found that only 20 percent actually attended.

Brandenburg agrees that religion has been a huge influence in her relationship with Brandon, and she refers to their relationship as one centered around God. They both grew up Catholic, but as she said, “we didn’t really feel like we made a connection with God from the teachings that we learned,” so they began to attend a non-denominational church, Cedar Creek, and fell in love with it. With that said, religion is not the main reason behind why they are taking a vow of abstinence, rather it was a personal decision based on their view of sex and love as two powerful entities that tie together, unlike the media which often separates love from sex.

This separation of love from sex has arguably contributed to America’s infamous divorce rate. “I think that people in our society don’t take marriage seriously anymore. People get married all the time for reasons other than love, such as kids or infatuation,” Brandenburg said, “Marriage is no longer seen as the covenant that it is meant to be.”

Sackett agrees that today’s casual sex culture correlates with divorce, but he believes it contributes to other factors as well, such as an increase in teen parenting and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS.

“I feel that sex has been downplayed in today’s society causing people to lose their virginity at such a young age,” Sackett said, “…the increase in single parenting as seen in shows like “Teen Mom,” just shows me that sex is seen as no big deal anymore. What 16 year old is mature enough to raise a child?”

Brandon Sackett and Ashley Brandenburg

Although Brandon and Ashley are one of the rare couples today engaging in this tradition, it appears that the general consensus of sexually active college students and young adults today admire and respect the tradition.  Not only that, but many recognize the dangerous influence the media has on society by portraying sex as purely for pleasure. As Schmidt said, “Future generations may experience problems at the rate the media is abusing and over-amplifying sex.”

Whether it be STD’s, unplanned pregnancies, or the distorting of true love, sex before marriage definitely has its consequences. For Brandon and Ashley, they don’t have to worry about any of those consequences. As Sackett said:  

“In the end it will be truly worth it. It’s a decision I know I will never regret making.”

Recently I was in Cleveland for Ohio Advocates, and we took a little trip to Case Western's Contracetpion Museum.  I was pretty geeked out about going, and let me tell you I was not disappointed!  There was so much interesting information I never knew, and so much of it that I wasnted to absorb. The museum covered just about every aspect of contraception- condoms, sponges, spermicides, cervical caps, diaphragms, pills, IUDs.  You name it, they had it.

The most interesting part about the museum was the amount of history it covered.  The museum covered a lot of history as far back as the 17th and 18th century, and their unusual folklore, oddities and early methods of birth control.  Stories of different rituals such as inserting crocodile dung into the vagina, wearing weasle testicles around the neck, or walking around the urination from a pregnant wolf three times, were just a few examples of how women used to avoid pregnancy that the museum covered.   

Naturally, the museum displayed many examples of condoms. Condoms made of animal intestines, condoms made of alligator skin, condoms made of candy wrappers, condoms made of what seemed like pretty much anything. (Same goes for cervical caps, it seemed like women thought that they could stick ANYTHING up there and it would prevent them from getting pregnant...yikes!)

If you haven't seen this museum you should.  Really. I mean it!  I know I'm crazy about all topics related to sex and sex education and I may see a bit biased, but I promise you would find this museum very interesting and worth your time...plus IT'S FREE!!! So get your butt there and learn about some ancient birth control!

Check out Ohio Advocates pictures from the trip on facebook!
 

The political online organization Moveon.org has recently named Planned Parenthood as one of 2010's most extraordinary organizations.  As you know, times are tough and healthcare is on the rocks, but thankfully Planned Parenthood offers us affordable options for their services (STD/HIV testing, pap smears, birth control, mammograms, education...just to name a few).  There are 825 Planned Parenthoods nationwide and have currently served 5 million youth, men and women.  So, let's give a round of applause for Planned Parenthood, one of the most truely extraordinary and beneficial non-profit organizations this nation has. And lets also keep this in mind when politicians *cough* Mike Pence *cough* have plans to defund such organizations...

Well it finally happened...after three seasons of stories about young teens getting pregnant and the stuggles they face juggling parenting (or coping with adoption), school and their youth, MTV has introduced a a one-time program TONIGHT at 11:30pm called "16 and Pregnant-No Easy Decision".  The show will be focused on the story of a young pregnant teen who considers having an abortion.  This will be MTV's very first coverage on abortions, so show your support for the young people sharing their stories, pro-choice and MTV's decision to include all options available for unintended pregnancies.  

As of now MTV will only be airing it TONIGHT AT 11:30PM so make sure you tune in and share what you think!

Yesterday the Toledo Blade posted an article about the Bowling Green ordinances passing...which is great,  BUT! in the article they mentioned that "fearmongers now warn that the city is on a slippery slope to embracing same-sex marriage." Oh God forbid!  Sorry "fearmongers", but I'm pretty sure that most of us that those of us that voted yes on the ordinances, also support same-sex marriages, considering it would be discrimination not to.  Why would we say "ok you can have a job and a place to live, but the ability to develop your relationship into a committed marriage? Forget it!" ...Oh, that's right we wouldn't say that.   I'll keep my fingers crossed that we slide down this "slippery slope".

Here's the article if you wanna read it!
http://toledoblade.com/article/20101127/OPINION02/11260342

All the hard work of ONE Bowling Green has paid off!  BOTH Ordinance 7905 and 7906 have passed ...HALLELUJAH!

One Bowling Green has been working extra hard these past few weeks, to ensure these ordianances pass and that all LBGT citizens of Bowling Green, Ohio no longer face dicrimination looking for an apartment or a job.  Finally, a step in the right direction! 

Two weeks ago I worked with One Bowling Green to contact all the provisional voters on Bowling Green State University's campus, to bring them down to the courthouse to make sure teir votes were counted.  Visiting classrooms, reaching students at their dorms, and posting up at the Student Union were just a few ways we tried to get to the voters...and it all paid off! 

  
Me and fellow Ohio Advocate, Ashley working with One Bowling Green at the Student Union!

 On May 31st, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was shot in the head at his church in Kansas.  Dr. Tiller was well known for routinely performing abortions and was one of very few doctors to also perform abortions in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.  Needless to say, Dr. Tiller was assassinated by an anti-abortion actovist named Scott Roeder.  

Last Monday MSNBC aired a doctumentary about Dr. Tiller's assassination.  Being that this information was new to me, I was intregued to watch it.  Upon watching the documentary, I learned just how much hate and violence anti-abortionist carry, and in some cases, act on.  There currently have been OVER 200 violent crimes toward abortion providers and their clinics.  I find this COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS.  What kind of message are these actovists trying to make?  "We don't agree with you 'killing', but it's ok for us to harm/kill you"? What type of logic is that?  I hurt for the women that are bombarded with signs and hurtful words as they enter their clinics, as if they didn't already feel sorrow and pain for the choice they had to make for whatever reason.  Do these actovists think this is a pleasent experience for these women?  Do they think they are going to go grab lunch at Panera and go on a shopping spree with their girlfriends after this?  I doubt it. Kepp YOUR religion and YOUR values away from MY choice.


WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY HERE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39826191/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
(to better understand my outrage) 

In honor of the brilliant lives lost of doctors, nurses, and abortion supports, lets please end this ongoing violence.  Peace.