Ah yes, according to my Rice Purity Score of a 57 I have been living my life on the edge. I didn’t even know it! Especially since I consider myself a fairly bland person.

I guess as soon as I start to think about how this test measures “purity” it makes me feel a bit uneasy. No one wants to be impure, that sounds bad and the associations that come with it are embarrassing. I don’t think this test is actually meant to measure purity or really defines purity the way other people or cultures would though. The only good thing is I took this test like a grain of salt and tried to view it as more of a fun/silly activity. I can totally see high schoolers gathered around and comparing scores. My favorite part of course was question 69, which stated:

69.) ?

Maybe that’s just my immature humor, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Obviously peoples scores will increase as they age and gain more life experience, but I wonder what this test would look like if people of different generations took it at the same age. I think most people would be surprised, but I bet if people were totally honest the scores would look fairly similar even as time goes on and groups of people have changes of view.

Hey guys, so my final video project is on Bestiality, but since it falls under this weeks topic I decided to give you a little preview.

Sexual intercourse with an animal is illegal in 45 US states. The other five have delegalized bestiality only due to repeals of sodomy laws they were incorporated into. Don’t worry Florida isn’t a weird state like it normally is in this case. Bestiality in Florida has been a crime since 2011. However something interesting that I found in reading up on our laws specifically is people may have found a loophole.

The law specifically states: “Sexual contact” means any contact, however slight, between the mouth, sex organ, or anus of a person and the sex organ or anus of an animal, or any penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the person into the sex organ or anus of an animal, or any penetration of the sex organ or anus of the person into the mouth of the animal, for the purpose of sexual gratification or sexual arousal of the person.

With this wording the law forbids penetration of a human sex organ into an animal mouth, but in an article I read an attorney pointed out this means technically sexual contact with an animals mouth that is not penetrating is “technically” allowed. The attorney went on to say a hypothetical example would be a dog licking a man’s genitals.

Were all the pictures this week in class a flashback to middle school and high school sex ed classes for anyone else? It sure was for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen pictures of all the STIs we looked at when I was younger as a scare tactic to get teens to practice abstinince. You know because if you have sex you’ll definitelty get pregnant/an STD AND DIE. Luckily, class was much more professional and informative than those week long sex ed courses we were forced to take.

I found it extremely interesting that STIs weren’t a hot topic at OB/GYN offices. You’d think that as a doctor of women’s reproductive health that would be an area you’d want to inform your patients on. I mean seeing an OB/GYN in the first place is awkward enough, might as well cover everything and get it over with! While awkward, education never hurt anyone; it could create safe sex habits that prevent sexually transmitted infections though. However, I have read that the misconceptions and false beliefs about many STIs that are held by patients are also believed by physicians so a poor understanding overall, between everyone, may be the cause of a lot of the fear and awkwardness surrounding these diseases.

I think this just goes to show that we should speak more openly about human sexuality and its many topics. This will make discussing these topics and becoming educated on them more acceptable and much easier for everyone.

• Babies eat, sleep, poop/pee, and cry.  Those are all things I do and I have no desire to take care of all those things twice.
• I’m afraid of/don’t want to deal with the physical changes that occur with pregnancy. 
• Hospital bills are expensive
• Raising children is expensive. 
• Even from early on I have had no desire to care for children.
• I do not do well with limited sleep.
• I do not have a long period of patience for crying/screaming
• I have a lot of things I still want to do with my life, mostly travel and have the freedom to be spontaneous.  Children need stable environments and they’d complicate doing as I wish.  I also don’t foresee wanting children after this stage of my life because if I decide I want to go off and doing something even after I’ve settled down I want to be able to do it.
• I’d like to be able to commit all of my love into a partner.
• I worry if I had a child I wouldn’t be able to get attached to it. 
• I worry I wouldn’t raise the child well/the child wouldn’t be as loved as they deserve to be. 
• I don’t think I should bring a child into the world if I’m not confident I could provide the emotional care they deserve.
• There’s no need to continue to contribute to overpopulation if I don’t have the desire to be a parent.
• Small children are disgusting.
• Small children terrify me.
• Like seriously I call babies crotch goblins and toddlers hob goblins.
• The most open to children I have ever felt was adoption of a teenager.  I feel that since they are more self-sufficient at that age they may be less taxing to me and I may be able to provide them with emotional care they deserve since there would beless stress involved.  Plus this could provide a child that could potentially age out and have nowhere to go a safe home.

In a previous blog I discussed that I have never wanted children.  As a child I never played with dolls or wanted to be the ‘mom’ of the games we played.  While many of my friends have baby names saved in their phone notes for the future, I have never even thought of a names because I’ve never pictured myself with children.  I do, however, have dog names picked out. 

With this in mind I think it is ridiculous that many young women who do not want children will be refused when they ask to have their tubes tied.  It is something I have considered and think I will be able to confidently determine if I want done or not soon.  Since I was interested I have also come across some disappointing (and in my opinion some of it is disgusting) horror stories.  I’ve read that many young, single women, with and without children have had doctors refuse their requests.  I understand the worry that someone may change their mind and later regret their decision, but I have seen some reports of the doctors saying one day the women will meet a man and she will want to be able to give him children.  I’ve also seen doctors requiring a husbands permission for this procedure.  A women’s body is her own- her choices are her own and this idea that a husband, or potential future husband, should have any say on this matter is unacceptable.

Since we’re talking about birth control this week I decided to cover something I’ve seen on both fictional T.V. shows and in the news. We know condoms are a highly effective form of birth control, but not when people have poked holes in them… Yes, that’s right. Apparently this purposeful sabotage of a birth control method has occurred so many times that it has been termed “stealthing”. The first time I saw something about this it was on a cops/detective type television show. A man had purposefully gone around sleeping with women using condoms that he had poked holes in so the women would get pregnant and have his children. I thought this was a far fetched idea for the show, but this does actually occur and both men and women have deceived their partners with sabotaged condoms.

With just a quick search of this topic you will find several news articles about people being caught doing this. Many of the articles talk about the perpetrators doing this in an attempt to trap their partners in a relationship with a baby. This is a sick act that a person should never do to someone else. Luckily several of the articles detail that these people are being punished for what they’ve done (as they should be). Many of the justifications include that in tampering with condoms the people have deceived their partners and therefore the partner did not consent to what’s occurred.

Week 11

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Before class today I thought asexuality meant absolutely no sexual interest towards anyone. I thought that a total lack of sexual intrest was the only defining quality of this sexual orientation. I found it very interesting to learn that I was wrong about this and that a person who is asexual can kind of exist on this scale of no sexual attraction, to infrequent attraction or only in specific situations. Additionally, I was also misinformed and didn’t know asexuals could experience romantic attraction.

I think this really goes to show how limited research on this sexual orientation impacts peoples education on it. I incorrectly interpreted it from its most basic definition- not sexual and would have likely never known any better without this class. For some reason I almost did expect that asexual people masturbated though. I think that’s because I knew asexual people weren’t sexually attracted to other people, but didn’t think that meant they had no sexual drive at all.

Anyway, I also found so Freud memes about him being a jerk so please enjoy:

Week 10

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Before Netflix and chill just meant a quiet night in watching your favorite movies or TV shows. We all know this term has a new, and more popular, meaning now. People use it as an invitation for sexual activities which may or may not involve watching something at some point while over at their place. While this is a funny concept for me to think and write which is pretty commonly used I have also seen some interesting implications for couples or those in relationships.

I remember seeing that the most common time streaming services are used is 10pm-11pm. There are also accusations that Netflix is killing sex lives because partners would rather use the streaming service than get intimate with their partners. If you do any research on the internet on this you’ll see arguments both ways, but I wanted to share what I thought and see what you thought in this blog. Personally, I don’t think Netflix is necessarily the thing preventing sex between partners. If someone wanted to have sex with their partner I think they would be able to chose that over watching a movie or show (or they’d do both). However, I think it may be something people use to avoid having sex if there are underlying issues or other problems in the relationship. It is much easier to say, “I want to watch this movie so no” rather than, “I’m mad at you and don’t want to/I don’t want to because of this thing going on in our relationship” I’m not saying this is a good or healthy way to approach the problem, but I do think it may be less confrontational and therefore an easier way out.

Week 9

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Sex can have a positive impact on many aspects of our lives. Longevity, immunity, disease risk, sleep, fitness, self-esteem and general quality of life have all been beneficially linked to sexual activity and orgasm. A specific area I want to focus on in this blog though is sexual activity and orgasm and stress.

Several studies have found that sexual activity reduces stress levels. Researchers believe this is due to the surge of oxytocin during orgasm, which we learned about and how it makes us feel in previous classes. The chemical leads to feelings of warmth and relaxation. People with low levels of it have a higher chance of anxiety related issues, but increased levels reduce stress and change the bodies response to stress.

I’m not telling you to use sex as a stress management tool but hey, if it works… JK, but I do find it super interesting that sex can impact our lives in so many ways and has been linked to both physical and mental health.

More info can be found here: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/3413/9611/7801/Benefits_Sex_07_07.pdf

Week 8

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In class we shortly discussed conditioning a person to fall in love.  Outside of liking people we are with when we are in a good mood, I have also heard about some of the other conditioning related stories we talked about.  I absolutely love the one where the girl always brought a guy who she wanted to fall for her his favorite candy.  There are also other theories like proximity with the goal of associating yourself with positive things.

Something we hadn’t discussed though was using conditioning to fall out of love.  After a couple breaks up it can be a difficult time period for one or both parties.  Especially when the person visits places they had previously associated with the person they were with.  Using conditioning for this purpose means a person must break these previously formed associations so they don’t have to deal with the painful feeling of not having the person with them in this location or during this feeling anymore.  The person must focus on new positive aspects when re-experiencing things they had previously done with their significant other.  This will allow them to form new associations and happy new memories. 

Week 7

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Okay, so for this blog post I’m going to share stuff about myself and your job is to guess which love style I scored highest in by the end. I think it’ll be pretty easy, but I’ll go ahead and give you a hint now. Two tied for my top score. Also, I haven’t actually been in a relationship for almost four years sooo who knows, maybe this is just based off my ideals not reality.

Anyway, here we go…

I fall in love and get attached very quickly. However, relationships are very important to me so I prefer them to be very strong and meaningful ones. While it may not take me long to fall in love, I think the best kind of relationship is when you are very close so I have to believe that my partner and I have the potential to be really good friends. Commitment and communication is super important to me too. I am kind of oblivious so I have a fear that my partner may have issues with our relationship or cheat without me ever knowing and I like to be able to trust that they are committed enough to keep me updated so I don’t have to worry about these types of things. I put a lot of effort and care into my relationships because the person and our relationship mean a lot to me. I want the person I’m with to be happy because it makes me happy in turn (even if in the end that means we weren’t right for each other). I find that I get along best and am more attracted to people who have meaningful life goals and actively make an effort to achieve those goals.

Since friendship is so important to me I don’t think love happens at first sight, maybe attraction but not love. I don’t want to have my feelings played with either so I wouldn’t mess around with someone else’s, it just doesn’t seem fair or like fun. I do love attention from my partner and can get jealous, but I normally keep that kind of stuff to myself because I don’t want to make my partner worry about it to much. Plus, I hate fights and drama so if that helps me avoid anything like that I’m okay letting it go. Meaningful, stable relationships are really where I feel the most comfortable.

So? What do you think?

If you guessed Storge and Agape, you were right! Three others were slightly below those two, but all had similar scores and then Ludus was my lowset score by far.

If you guessed one or both of the other love styles wrong I think it just goes to show how we all have at least a few of the tendencies from each love style. It was honestly pretty easy for me to pick out characteristics I felt I aligned with and didn’t align with in every category, but I do feel I relate the most to the two I scored the highest in.