This week host Amanda Marcotte talks STDs, doulas, lying panty-sniffers, and thinking Americans. She also wonders (and finds out) what topic drives most of the traffic for Conservapedia? You’ll also enjoy an interview with writer, doula and Senior Advocacy Associate for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Helath, Miriam Perez.

Links in this episode:
Speaking of Sex
Hey There Chlamydia
STDs on the rise
Radical Doula
KCTV-5 vs. Phill Kline
Why Johnson County?
Jack Cafferty and the fertilized eggs
Most hits on Conservapedia

 

Transcript:

On this week's show, an interview with doula Miriam Perez, how the ballot initiative in Colorado has a good side, and what topic obsesses the average reader of Conservapedia. Also, STDs are on the rise and Phill Kline of Kansas has been exposed as the nut he is again.

I'd like to take time to shout out to another podcast that I listen to religiously, called "Speaking of Sex", from Planned Parenthood of Western Washington. Nathan and Malika approach sexuality podcasting from a different angle than I do, with less politics and more education. I was especially impressed by a recent show on anal sex and the myths about anal sex.

*insert anal sex*

So check ‘em out at speakingofsexpodcast.org.

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And now for some news from the CDC.

*insert Hey There Chlamydia*

Come on, people, wrap it up! According to the CDC, there was a record number of cases of chlamydia reported in the U.S. last year, over a million. And syphilis is rising, too. Gonorrhea rates are climbing again, as well, but I'll spare you any songs involving heavy amounts of clapping.

There's another explanation other than just people getting sloppy with the condom use, though, according to this Boston Globe article. The fact that Chlamydia is rising faster than other STDs might have a lot to do with the way they test for it. Testing annually for the disease became recommended in 1993 by the CDC, and the tests themselves have become much more sensitive and being used much more frequently than before. The good side of that is that more people might be getting the disease discovered before it causes them serious problems, including infertility. But it has the side effect of making it appear that there's a rise in cases when there might not be.

The really scary news is that doctors are reporting superbug versions of gonorrhea. Superbugs are bacteria that are resistant to the usual antibiotics and have to be treated with more intensive therapy. The existence of superbugs is probably a factor in rising gonorrhea rates, too, since people take their rounds of antibiotics, think they're safe and proceed without condom use. Which sort of baffles me, since you'd think nothing would convince you to use condoms faster than catching the clap. But human nature being what it is, this is a pretty compelling explanation.

The moral of the story is the old adage about ounces of prevention and pounds of cure. Now it's double the pound of cure if you're unlucky enough to catch the super-clap.

********************************

I'd like to welcome Miriam Pérez to the show. Miriam is a writer, blogger and Senior Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. She's also been a doula since 2004, and considers herself a radical doula, because she's pro-choice, lesbian, Latina, a birth activist, progressive, and a gender non-conformist. She's here today to talk about her work.

*insert interview*

**********************************

Now for an update on the further adventures of notorious Kansas panty-sniffer Phill Kline. Kline was the former attorney general of Kansas, but got voted out of office when voters realized that he was far more interested in using his position to file nuisance claims against Planned Parenthood in an effort to harass them out of existence than actually doing anything to stop real crime in Kansas. But god forbid Kline take a hint. He just shopped around for a job in a Kansas county that would allow him to avoid working so he could spend all his time harassing people who dare provide low cost health care for women, and so he now works as the county attorney for Johnson County in Kansas. And he appears to have been making enemies left and right there, starting with the politically motivated firings of a bunch of county attorneys the second he stepped into office.

Thankfully, KCTV-5 decided to do a thorough investigation into the panty-sniffing misogynist creep and found that he only works about 29 hours a week at a job that usually takes 40-50 hours a week. I guess if you think your only job duty is harassing medical workers, and ignore all the parts about actual crime and actual laws broken, you don't need to work very hard.

They also found that Kline's claim to residence in Johnson County seems a little fishy.

*insert phill kline*

So why is Kline working for a county that he can't be bothered to live in? Well, I suspect that Johnson County is the only place he could find that would look the other way while he refused to do his actual job and instead wielded his power for his single-minded anti-sex and anti-woman mission. Hopefully this investigation spells the end of Phill Kline getting paid $143,000 a year to pester medical workers for having the nerve to offer perfectly legal services to women.

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It sounds crazy on the surface to say that there's a possible good side to the anti-choice attempts to get a ballot initiative passed in Colorado that would declare a fertilized egg a human being with full citizenship rights, but being an eternal optimist, I'm going to look on the bright side. A recent Jack Cafferty report really lifted my spirits on this issue.

*insert cafferty one*

One of the biggest frustrations for those of us trying to expose the anti-choice movement is the media's unwillingness to inform the public that the anti-choice movement wants to ban contraception along with abortion. But the purpose of these bills is to start the process of getting hormonal contraception banned, as well as banning abortion. A lot of anti-choicers erroneously believe that the birth control pill somehow flushes fertilized eggs, which is an odd thing to think, since it's usually a dose of progesterone, the hormone your body uses to make the uterus a welcoming place for a fertilized egg. But they believe it because they want to believe it, and they want to believe it because they want to ban birth control. And this bill is part of that process.

The good news is that this bill is inspiring mainstream media pundits like Cafferty to say the fatal words "ban on birth control" and help open up eyes to the true agenda of the anti-choice movement, which is banning sex education, birth control, and any ability of people to take control of their sex lives. And Cafferty's audience reacted wisely. He called out for email responses and even the people who feel sentimental about fetuses and embryos drew the line at classifying a fertilized egg as a baby.

*insert cafferty two*

Good to hear an overwhelming amount of common sense from the public on this issue. It's a lot easier to be anti-abortion than anti-contraception, because abortions are pretty rare events. Only one third of women will get one in her lifetime, and then it's usually no more than one or two. But contraception! That's woven into the fabric of our lives and people are going to treat an assault on their right to contraception with a lot of hostility.

I'd also point out that measures like this, if they are to pass, put us right on the road to menstruation checks like they had in communist Romania. I don't want to be alarmist, but what happens if this law is passed and then people learn that a good, hefty percentage of fertilized eggs don't implant just as a matter of course? You might have a sentimental belief that god is implanting souls as men ejaculate around the world, but nature is not so sentimental. If there really are millions of so-called babies perishing unseen and unknown on tampons every year, what are we going to do about it?

I suspect the answer is that anti-choicers will ignore inconvenient facts like that. They're really good about ignoring the fact that wanted pregnancies spontaneously abort all the time, and few people feel the need to fish for the embryo through the blood clot, put a little outfit on it, give it a name and a birthday and bury it. Which is what we would do if we honestly thought that it was a "baby" at that stage in development.

****************

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. I usually do a sound clip, but this post I read at the Agonist is worth reading aloud. Ian Welsh decided to go to the right wing version of Wikipedia called Conservapedia and look at what the most viewed pages were. And here's the list:

*drum roll*

1. Main Page‎ [1,897,388]
   2. Homosexuality‎ [1,488,013]
   3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,193]
   4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [416,767]
   5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,438]
   6. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [328,045]
   7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [325,547]
   8. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [314,076]
   9. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [262,015]
   10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [249,14]

*insert manly powers*