Interesting posts, some time in October

10/12/2010 at 6:14 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Tags: blogging, Feminism, flibanserin, news, research

Dear internet, we sure have a lot of catching up to do. I’m still in the middle of a major life upheveal. Most people would probably be done with this sort of thing by now but I am literally receiving zero help from anyone else so it’s all on me go get through it alone. I still work full-time too so it’s not like I can just take some time off and get it over with.

It’s been awhile since our last roundup, so it goes without saying that a lot of shit went down in the news. Hope you’ve all been keeping up with the news and feminist blogosphere, because at this point there’s no way I can bring you up to speed with everything. So as with all roundups, if we’re missing anything after this, it’s not necessarily because a skipped topic is unimportant. I just got a lot of shit to do. Maybe you would like to help pick up the slack by dropping a link? Or perhaps I can interest you in putting together a guest post?

Friendly reminder: I am looking for Guest Posters. There were (technically) two guest posts this week – one that I wrote at Grasexuality, and one that brigid wrote for us here; did you see them yet?
I want to hear more perspectives on the themes dealt with here at Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction. Because I am dealing with such a sensitive topic, I don’t think I can actively recruit new posters, since if I went onto someone else’s blog and said something like, “Hey u wanna write a post about your sexual health and/or feminism on a public forum?!” that would probably be very invasive. For this reason, Guest Posters requesting to remain anonymous will also be taken seriously.
At this time, criteria for inclusion is, “If you think you would fit in here, you probably would.” This may be subject to change but for now we’ll try that & see how it goes.
In an attempt to preemptively fight spam and rude comments, this blog’s email is private. Please leave a comment on this post if you want to write something. I’ll screen comments so you can remain anonymous if you want. That way I’ll have your email and we can collaborate.
Have something you’ve been working on? Send it my way.
Comments made by new e-mail addresses here are auto-screened before going live, so if you want to stay anon use an e-mail address that you haven’t used here before.

Can’t get enough of feminism and sexual dysfunction on the internet? You may want to think about following the Twitter feed, which is more accurately described as my Twitter feed since no one else manages it. Some of my daily mundane and/or angry thoughts sneak in there but I try to include trendy topics as well as a healthy dose of sexual dysfunction related news when I find it.

Now then, on with the weekly blog link roundup. Posts I found interesting over the last week. Share links if’n you got’em.

I have some bad news for women dealing with low libido types of sexual dysfunction… Remember the great Flibanserin debacle of 2k10? Of course you do; how could we forget? Get ready to enter rage-rage-rage mode:
It’s over… The German company Boehringer Ingelheim has ceased its work on producing Flibanserin, an anti-depressant turned possible libido booster for women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD.) Social constructionists, congratulations; you got exactly what you wanted, and now women with low libido types of sexual dysfunctions still have no medical prescription option in the USA. So now women who have tried everything else and exhausted every other resource, tried all the common sense advice, sought help from professionals, tweaked their relationships (if they’re even involved in one!), and run up against or even attempted to adhere to every other piece of rubbish that did and didn’t make it onto our new Bingo Board, still hit a wall. Happy now?
Obviously, I am in fact not happy. I am so pissed off. Even BI cited “Complexities!” as a reason for stopping. Figure it out!
I shoulda done more… I shoulda started a counter-petition to disregard the petition to block passage of Flibanserin. (Note my use of language: I didn’t say “Start a petition to fasttrack Flibanserin,” I just think it’s really messed up for activists to go around telling women that they no one needs something like this. Because how would you know?) The reason I didn’t start such a counter-petition, is not because I knew it would gain very few signatures… I’m really not worried about the number of signatures; it’s the principle of the thing… It’s not because I knew it wouldn’t have done any good, which it probably wouldn’t have. It would have been to show that women with FSD themselves are listening and paying attention, and some of us might even have an interest in a medical option… I didn’t start a counter-petition because I knew doing so would be what would draw the New View’s attention and I would really prefer to remain under their radar as long as possible, because I am selfish and seriously don’t feel like dealing with all the stress and insults and lectures on the history of FSD that I know is inevitable once the organization finds out about what we’ve been doing here.
To my readers with low libido types of sexual dysfunctions (and to friends of folks with libido dysfunctions,) brace yourself: I have a feeling we’re probably going to see another spike in coverage about Flibanserin, (I’m thinking certain feminist websites are more likely to cover it than others, and maybe some op-ed pieces in mainstream newspapers, as well as others) and when we do see it, I can guarantee you it’s going to get real ugly, real fast. Everyone, get your bingo boards ready to go if you’ll be doing any reading on the matter. If you see any new and bizarre arguments about FSD and why no woman, anywhere, ever, needs medication for sexual desire problems ever, in comment sections to the inevitable anti-Flibanserin posts, let me know; we may have to produce a version 2.0 if we keep running into the same old shit again and again.

Looks like we’re stuck with the same ol’ old timey libido boosters of questionable value… here’s a consolation prize, if you can get yourself to Mars New York: A New Aphrodisiac Café Catering To Your Passions.

You know how every once in awhile, like, maybe once every decade or so, a huge study of human sexuality comes out? The Kinsey report, the Hite report, 1990s JAMA study (the one that said up to 43% of women in the US have sexual dysfunction but that was actually a wrong figure to use because the study fucked up the language and should have said “Sexual problem, which may not actually be a dysfunction because not all sex problems are dysfunctions”? Remember when we talked about that already?) Well there’s another new one out – The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB). It’s sponsored by Trojan this time, I wonder what the reaction to that will be considering that the JAMA report had connections to Big Pharma and so there was a conflict of interest there… hmm… do we need to raise skepticism about the involvement of Big Condom…? Conflict of interest with Big Prophylactic…? I don’t know. It is part of the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Anyway, there’s quite a bit of coverage about the report going around the feminist blogosphere!
Unfortunately for reasons cited in the introduction to this post, I haven’t gotten a chance to actually sit down and read the damn thing!
This could be a neat topic to write about some time in the future, if no one else here would like to volunteer. If you will look at the right side of the the Indiana.edu page, you will find a link to the journal article, so it is available to the public (accessibility is another issue.)
Anyway, here’s some links about this big new sex survey in the US. Mind any comment sections, which may be fraught with land mines. Sex Survey! Condom Use Is Highest for Young, Study Finds. Largest Survey of American Sexual Behaviors Offers Snapshot of 21st Century American Sex. Sex in the US: the shocking truth

Hey, speaking of research! Here’s a month-old post I missed from Happy Bodies which is totally relevant to this discussion! This Week in Evaluating Research – some guidelines to keep in mind when we’re doing our homework. This post looks at studies of obesity but I’m pretty sure the same principles apply to sexual health research as well. In fact here’s a link to a post that Jill links to which is more general: Becoming a Critical Reader: Questions to Ask About Qualitative Research; try that on.

Meanwhile, in reproductive health (which for some reason is still sometimes separated from sexual health): Birth control breakthroughs on the horizon

Meanwhile, in Nobel Peace Prizes! IVF, The Nobel Prize, & Sexuality – Something that I rarely (if ever!) see covered in discussions of In-Vitro Fertilization, but that, if you are dealing with infertility, (and I know some of my readers here are) you may want to think about either before or during IVF treatments. This might be one of those times where talking to a sex therapist is worth thinking about, so if for some reason I had to go through IVF I might break my own rule and try it…

At 2600: Blacklisted Words That Google Instant Doesn’t Like – [NSFW] – Violet Blue is looking at the sexual terms that Google instant is blocking out but again you should probably check out her original source to see the rest of the list.

When Is a Sex Toy Not an Instrument of Pleasure? – The short version is, when it’s not used as such… like, in this case, when it’s used as a source of non-consensual humiliation. That guy James O’Keefe who was behind the Acorn fake pimp video was going to use sex to humiliate and slut-shame Abbie Boudreau, a CNN correspondent. At the last minute, Izzy Santa blew the whistle.

Here’s some stuff about living with chronic illnesses: Self-Diagnosis: Pudendal Neuralgia, very interesting when read next to On Living Without a Diagnosis. And chances are, if you are living with a chronic illness, problem, or sexual dysfunction… you may not hear about it often, but you are probably not alone. Why You Should Blog About Your Vulva

Something about who is critical about medicine, why, and the effects… in this case, vaccines and autism, but can be applied to other treatments as well. Right wing propaganda machine adopts anti-vaccination stance

Meanwhile, in nuanced discussions about selling empowerment vs. Empowerfulment! Overselling agency: a reply to Barry Dank on teacher-student sex (huh maybe I can ask him about that Disgrace novel; my teacher made a big deal about the goat testicles and dead dog thing and it’s 10 years later and I am still like “Wat”)

Is it really “Strange” sex? – A critical look at the television program Strange Sex, which covers and sensationalizes sexual problems… Including vulvodynia. (I don’t watch that show. Are you surprised?)

Mark Hyman – 5 Steps To Kill Hidden Bugs In Your Gut That Make You Sick – I’m less interested in the advice here – I’m not sure how well it’s been proven, and it’s got this curebie thing going on… What really has me interested is Dr. Hyman’s claim that there’s an autism-bacteria link. This interests me because, if you will recall, I was quite skeptical of a similar claim made in the documentary, The Business of Being Born. Now then: the gut-medicine doctor tells me that autism is linked to gut bacteria, the natural birth advocate openly speculates that it has something to do with a lack of natural hormones secreted during birth… HMMMM… Who do I believe here? Am I the only one seeing a potential conflict of interest? Whom do I trust? And furthermore, what’s missing?

Official: vb.ly Link Shortener Seized by Libyan Government – [NSFW] – Another setback for Violet Blue; this comes on the heels of the Facebook page for Our Porn, Ourselves being removed. VB.ly was a sex-positive link shortener, so, you could have used it to shorten links to adult content. So there wasn’t any adult content hosted on the server, it’s one of those dealies where it just re-directed you to such content. And that was supposed to be allowed but now it’s not.

As always, I’m sure there’s more…