Weekly reading for the last Saturday of May:
- Vanessa at Feministing discusses the FDA deliberations over Flibanserin, the purported “Viagra for women”, and dreads the marketing we’ll be subjected to if the product is approved.
- Reporting for The Nation, Lynn Harris discusses new research on “reproductive coercion”: the alarming frequency with which young men try to get their partners pregnant, often by sabotaging birth control methods.
- The always-awesome Doc Gurley discusses the question of condom size relative to penis size, and associated condom failure rates. It’s a fascinating article, despite her report that “the body of literature (so to speak) on penis size and condom size is surprisingly (ahem) small”.
- Amanda Hess at The Sexist does the smackdown on Jesse Bering’s inane conclusion that my whole career has been a monumental waste of time. As Mr. Bering might say, those are great ideas, Elizabeth, but let’s wait until we hear a man say them.
- Madeleine Shaw at Lunapads observes that Kotex is still selling U by Kotex outside the U.S. with ad campaigns in the vein of those mocked in the popular “Why Are Tampon Ads So Ridiculous?” television commercials for U.S. audiences.
Researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who’d sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they’d experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.
