more funding for sketchy ab-only groups.

i had to put off blogging a little longer than i'd hoped, and as such, one of the things i wanted to write about - hymenoplasty among some muslim women in europe - has already been so thoroughly and skillfully blogged about on feministing, dkos, OBOS, and the like, that you don't have to take my word for it on how twisted our patriarchal obsession with virginity is. karen rayne actually has a pretty excellent piece on virginity over at her blog on adolescent sexuality. good stuff.

anyway, i did want to cover something that didn't get nearly enough play, as far as i'm concerned. i picked this up over at RHrealitycheck [link on the right]. in a nutshell:

"[Best Friends, a]n organization that promotes sexual abstinence for teens received a federal grant of over a million dollars, twice what it had requested, despite the skepticism Department of Justice staffers had about the group and the fact that it refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study."

best friends received this grant in spite of the additional fact that they ranked 53rd out of 104 grants in the category they were competing for. so what gives?

dollars.

i know; it's like they can't even keep things interesting. best friends president elayne bennett just happens to be friends with the chief administrator of the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention [OJJDP], j. robert flores. flores and his cronies attend best friends fundraisers on a regular basis, according to the article, and while they're eating, drinking, and ensuring that the teen STD rate will be 1 in 3 by the next time the CDC puts out a report, organizations like the rape abuse and incest national network [RAINN] get nothing.

but, i mean, RAINN is only the nation's largest anti-sexual assault organization. and one of its top-ranked charities. but that's it.

nothing to see here. move along.

a shitty article about some important findings.

i caught this article from the washington post on feministing this afternoon: apparently the CDC did a longitudinal study on teen sex and condom use and found that the former is heading up while the latter is at least leveling off, if not heading down.

while not wholly surprising, this is still pretty big news, which is why i thought my eyes were going to roll right out of my head when i read past the lede. in some kind of warped attempt to be "balanced," the wapo actually gives credence to the idea that this is all caused by that liberal media messing with our traditional family values.

"Others blamed the onslaught of movies, books, advertising and cultural messages that glamorize sex.

'It's highly ironic this comes out right after the launch of the biggest movie of the season, which is 'Sex in the City.' The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex in the City,' ' said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council. "Our culture continues to tell them the way to be cool is to dress provocatively and to consider non-marital sexual activity to be normative."

they also conveniently forgot to mention that the $126 million allocated for sex ed this year is ALL for programs that teach to the federal A-H definition of abstinence-only education [which is here if you want to read its scary backwardness in detail]. wapo makes it sound like we've been pouring a bunch of money into teaching kids about sex but, darn it, they just won't listen. i'm also fairly certain they have their numbers wrong, since in 2007, the government $176 million on these programs without this supposed $50 million increase congress is working on.

way to go, guys. can't wait for your fair and balanced coverage of this as it continues to crash and burn in the faces of the family research council and its diaspora.

congratulations, it's an increase in your premium!

follow this convoluted game of hot potato that this NYT article highlights in its health section today if you can:

it's no secret that cesarean sections are on the rise and have been for the past couple of decades. we're up to 31.1% now, according to the article. and while we aren't denying that it's an important piece of obstetric technology [my brother wouldn't be here without it], many feminists decry elective cesarean section as a symptom of the technologization of childbirth and the objectification of the female body. after all, a c-section is a major abdominal surgery.

and, as such, it happens to be very expensive, bringing us to the point: the subject of the article was denied health insurance because she'd had a c-section. they call it a "pre-existing condition" doctors, meanwhile, have been passing off the surgery as consequence-free, since it takes less time for them and makes the hospital more money.

but it looks like all's not lost. some companies will still cover you if you've had a c-section - for a price. "Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, which has about 300,000 members with individual coverage, used to exclude repeat Caesareans, but recently began to cover them — for a 25 percent increase in premiums for five years. Like Golden Rule, the company exempts women if they have been sterilized."

great.

so we have obstetricians blaming insurance companies for exploiting and/or discriminating against women who've had c-sections, and we have insurance companies blaming obstetricians for overusing the surgery, but neither group has much to say on the subject of the women they're fucking over.

this quote from Pamela Udy, president of the international caesarean awareness network, pretty much sums it up: "Although many women who have had a Caesarean can safely have a normal birth later, something that Ms. Udy’s group advocates, in recent years many doctors and hospitals have refused to allow such births, because they carry a small risk of a potentially fatal complication, uterine rupture. Now, Ms. Udy says, insurers are adding insult to injury. Not only are women feeling pressure to have Caesareans that they do not want and may not need, but they may also be denied coverage for the surgery."

so, once again, women are caught in the crossfire.