Time Magazine

This was an artical that I read today that really interested me and I thought that it related to the course well

http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/14/mind-reading-what-we-can-learn-from-the-dutch-about-teen-sex/

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Sexual Relationship Patterns in Adulthood

1) Singlehood

        - Increasing participation in singlehood

        - Do not feel they need to be in a relationship

        - Many young people are staying at home longer. They are living a kind of extended youth

        - Serial Monogamy - this is when people go from one serious relationship to another

        - Celibacy (abstinence) - as a choice there are three reasons why people would choose for this

                   1) Religious

                   2) S.T.I.'s - avoid HIV/AIDS

                   3) Moral - Just do not think that it is right

2) Cohabitation

        - People that Cohabitate before they get married have a higher chance of divorce

        - 84% of Canadian now approve of cohabitation

3) Marriage

        - Most people do get married in their life

        - Same sex marriage is a huge topic on society. If the institution of marriage opens up to this, it can weaken it or strengthen it, depending on the person’s opinion and how the person looks at the idea of same sex marriage

        - When marriage was opened up to same sex marriage it had an impact on everyone that is getting married or is married because it changes the cultural meaning of marriage.


Talking about the fact that people are single longer then they used to be, I think that the legal drinking age might have something to do with it because the legal drinking age was estabilshed in 1984 so the generations before ours did not have a legal drinking age. I think that this gave them more freedom to grow up at the pace that they wanted to. Most people go through a phase in their life where they have to party and do stupid thing. Most people this happens during the end of high school and during college which is when they turn 18 and become legal. I think that if their was not a legal drinking age and they let adolescence let loose when they wanted to that this might help them not have this crazy party phase. 

Sources of information about sex

Overview

       - Access to this information is uneven throughout the country. There is a greater access in cities

       - Used to have sexual education in school to solve problems of teen pregnancy

       - Now we have it to help prevent the spread of AIDS/HIV

       - When there was resistance about sexual education it was usually from the religious groups

       - Bill C44 was created for the parents to sign to allowed to kids to participate in sexual education, it gave the parents the right to take their kids out of the class

Meeting the needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth

        - The needs are not being met. The curriculum is blind to anything but heterosexuality

Sexual Values

       - When talking about sexual interactions it is our values that come out, when we show our values we participate in broader debates

       - This is implicated in ideology, German Ideology was Karl Marx's idea that support the dominate people are the dominate ideologies

       - We are always connected to something bigger

Canadian Guidelines for sexual Health Education

      - There are programs and websites the give information about sex that are available to everyone

Sexual Education Curriculum and Resources

      - There is a wide range of resources and in Alberta it is talked about in health class as a special unit called Sex Ed.

The training of sexual health professionals

      - Health professionals can be nurses, teachers, social workers, and psychologist

      - They usually do not have any post secondary education, anyone can be a sexual health profession and anyone can claim they are sexual health professionals without any training

      -  Under training is a common critique

      - Human sexuality courses are unevenly available in post secondary education. There are many post secondary institutions that do not offer a human sexuality course

Going it Alone; Solitary Sexual Behaviour

Sexual Fantasy

       - Starts with how we think about it

       - Can be by oneself or with another

       - Widely practiced

       - Sensitive topic

       - Fantasy gives you opportunity to go places you have never gone before or will ever go

Masturbation

       - In the past was believed to be self abuse, there was a play written by Aristophanes call Lysistrata that was about men fighting and then the women say no sex until you stop fighting

      - Over 2000 years of talking about masturbation

      - Problematic because it did not lead to procreation

      - Gram crackers were invented in the 1830's to decreased sexual urge

      - Today masturbation is a positive thing

      - May is national masturbation month

Abortion

Overview

     - Described many different ways 

               - Medical Procedure

               - Sin

               - It is a private matter between a women and her doctor

               - Injustice to the unborn

               - The text says it is “purposeful termination of a pregnancy before embryo or fetus is capable of sustaining independent life"

               - Explosive social cultural and moral issues

               - Issue of when human life begins

               - Issue of rights - fetus right to life versus mothers right to control her own bodily decisions

History of abortion

   - Up until 1969 - Abortion was illegal

   - 1969 - Only under certain conditions, being if the health of the mother is in danger

   - 1988 - Overturned abortion law

              - Not available everywhere in Canada, no or limited access in northern Canada, PEI, and New Brunswick

              - Done because of the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn fetus

              - Some women have distress about getting it done but most are happy with their decision to do it.

I used to believe that abortion was wrong no matter what and no one could convince me that it would be right under any circumstance. Then one of my best friends in high school got kidnapped raped and pregnant. This was how she lost her virginity. The idea of her losing her virginity like this is already really hard for her to cope with. The fact that it got her pregnant just made things worse. The day I found out she was pregnant was the day that I changed my mind about abortions. I now think that if you are in a situation like my friend was that it is appropriate to have an abortion because even if you put it up for adoption you are still bringing a life into this world and you still know that your child is out there. Even though my friend will never forget how she lost her virginity I think that her having a child with the guy that raped her would be an even harder thing to live with.

Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

This section is mostly about teen pregnancy and single motherhood.

Postpartum Issues

      - Baby blues

             - Period of tearfulness and sadness

             - 70% of mothers experience this

      - Postpartum depression (PPD)

             - Within 4 weeks of childbirth

             - This can stay for weeks to months

             - Moment of transition from one thing to another, changes in life lead to stress which in the case of childbirth leads to PPD

             - Concerns of whether or not the mother will be a good mother

             - Can be worse if there are marital problems

             - Can be worse if the child was not wanted or unplanned

             - Women all across the country experience this, the chemicals in their body change and they end up getting drug therapy.

Narcotics, Alcohol, Cigarettes can all be passed onto the fetus

F.A.S.

      - Developmental lags

      - Underdeveloped upper jaw

      - Flat nose

      - Wider spaced eyes

      - A smaller person

      - Smaller brain size

Smoking

       - Effects of smoking can pass onto fetus

       - There is a full range of complications

                - Miscarriage

                - Pregnancy complications

                - S.I.D.S. - (sudden infant death syndrome)

                -More chance of illness - vulnerability

                - Learning troubles

    

Storms

Storms had a square diagram of his belief about sexual orientation.

I think that this diagram is pretty self explanatory. The bottom left corner is asexual which is when a person is not attracted to either sex, and the top right corner is bisexual which is when a person is attracted to both sexes and then there is heterosexual in the bottom right corner and homosexual in the top left. The more right you go the more hetero-erotic you get and the higher up you go the more homo-erotic you get. I like this model because it adds asexual to the diagram which is nice because some people stay alone all their life because they are not attracted to anyone

Kinsey

Kinsey has a theory about sexual orientation, it is called the Continum theory.

The line graph goes from zero to six and zero is very heterosexual, a six is homosexual and three is bisexual and every other number is somewhere in between. He believes that you can be a two or a five as well. Every person is different and every person feels different about others.

Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation seems to only be an issue if it is homosexual, because it is not the common orientation.

1) Terms

        - Sexual orientation - Direction of a person’s sexual interest either other sex or some sex

        - Heterosexual orientation - Sexual interest in other sex involves attraction more in depth emotional attraction

        - Homosexual orientation - Sexual interest in same sex involves attraction more in depth emotional attraction

        - Erotic dimension -   erotic interests can me hetero-erotic or homoerotic

2) Roles

        - Barry Adam

            - Complexity

            - Talking about more than just sex when talking about attraction

            - Emotional possibility of attraction

            - Desire of strong connection

      - Classification issues

            - No uncontroversial classification of sexual orientation

            - Many people have been attracted to both sexes at one point in their life

            - Peoples interests change over time

            - Not as straight forward as it seems

I think that people that are homosexual or bisexual should be accepted for who they are. I do not think that just because people are attracted to the same sex, which is different from the norm, that they should be punished for that. They cannot help it that they are attracted to the same sex that is just how they were born and to treat a person differently because it is mean and I do not think that it should to tolerated. I think people that are homophobic, can choose to keep it to themselves, and honestly I think that if people did not make such a big deal about someone being homosexual that they would be easier accepted and people would be more open to accepting their differences. 

Communication Skills

Communication skills involve talking about sex, love, caring, passion, self absorption, feeling

1) General Thoughts

         - Verbal communication cause/solve problems

         - Communication skills is strongly related with level of intimacy

2) Obstacle

         - Vulgar to talk about sex

                      - Not polite to talk about sex

         - Irrational beliefs

                      - Ex - Expecting other person to read my mind

3) Getting Started

        - Have to select appropriate time and place

        - Ask permission

        - Give permission

4) Listening Effectively

        - Most powerful aspect

        - Do not interrupt

        - Paraphrasing

-Be sensitive when talking about sex

From experience I found that just being open about the subject is way easier than keeping at all inside. I think that the person you are having sec with would appreciate it if you do talk about how you feel about things and are open about the matter. Also I think that it helps a lot if you are specific and not afraid to talk about it because if you are not then you leave the other person guessing and that just sets both of you up for great confusion.

De-Romancifying Relationships and Intimacy

1) Social Exchange Theory
            - Looks at relationships as an exchange (commerce)
            - Subjective cost benefit analysis
            - Comes from Broader Theory rational choice theory
2) ABC(DE)
            - Comes from George Levinger
            - Can be used for any kind of relationship
     A- Attraction - initial attraction
     B- Building
     C- Continuation
     D- Deterioration - when someone stops trying
     E- Ending

Sternberg's Triangular Model of Love

This is Sternberg's Triangular Model of Love



I think that this model of love is pretty interesting. I think people that are in relationships do not just have one kind of love in this triangle. People go to phases in their relationships, at one point they may have only commitment, or only passion, and at others they may have consummate love. I know that from my exerience I did not always feel all three things in my relationship, there were times that I did but there were other times when only the commitment was there. Also I think that people need to realize that most relationships have ups and downs and that a persons relationship cannot always be consummate love.

Attraction

There are the three main things that make a person attractive
1) Beauty
      - This Changes in time and the place you are in beauty is defined by culture
      - Self-concept - how one feels about their body
             - Men usually think their body is good, women usually do not think that they have a nice body
      - People that are attractive do tend to know that they are
2) Non-physical Trait
      - These are things like: liking someone, knowing someone, respecting someone, feeling comfortable, and          sharing similar values and goals
      - Women like a more forceful personality and men like the opposite
      - Gender extremes tend to be attracted to each other
3) Long Term
      - Buss - Women are most attracted to a man that can be a provider. Men are most attracted to a women that is sexually attractive. Because of this theory, we usually find that women are younger then their spouce. Women are most attractive in their youth and mens peak of providing is usually when they are older.
                 - Partners tend to be similar in attrctiveness.
                 - Long term relationship tend to develop from a pool of eligables
                 - Women tend to value more personality traits
                 - Men tend to value physical traits
                 - Reciprocity - it is almost impossible to resist someone that likes you

Romeo & Juliet

1) Love as a Question
         - Something undefinable
         - Romeo & Juliet are both adolescence
2) Greek Influence
        - Starge - The love a mother feels for their child
        - Agape - The love of generosity. An example of this would be wanting to help the homeless
        - Philia - love of friendship
        - Eros - Remantic love. Examples of this are passion, fire, and desire
3) Infatuation/Romantic Love
      - Infatuation - Intense absorbtion
                         - Can involve passion
                         - Most movies are about infatuation (falling in love)
       - Romantic Love - Idealized in our society
                                  - Mature love
                                  - Not Nessisarly preceeded with infatuation
                                  - See infatuation as leading to romantic love
                                  - Having a deeper attachment and greater degree of caring
                                  - Long term

I agree with the different kinds of love, I think that you can love many people, but yes it is a different kind of love when you love a friend, then when you love a family member. Also I think that most relationships do start with infatuation and then move onto romantic love, I dated a guy for two and a half years, but I have known him since I was five, and we still went though the infatuation stage. The reason I think that every relationship goes through this is because you still have that moment that you realize that you love a person and want to be with them and that is when the infatuation part of the relationship begins.

Caster Semenya

Caster Semenya was a world class athlete, she was winning all her races. They then questioned her gender and it was all over the media.

I think that first of all if you do question someone’s gender please do it in a private manner, it is her own business and not the whole world needs to know. Also if she is or is not a female or hermaphrodite she cannot help it, she is a good runner and no one can take that away from her, she loves what she does and I think that she will keep running for as long as possible. I do understand that the people that she is running against may find that she has an unfair advantage because Caster has a higher level of testosterone running through her body but I think it still does not give them the right to publicly question her gender.

Gender

1) Gender roles & stereotypes
   - Gender role defined - " a complex cluster of ways in which males and females are expected to behave" - from human sexuality (the textbook)
   - Stereotype defined- "fixed conventional idea about a group of people" - from the textbook
2) Sexism
   - Sexism defined - " a pre judgement that because of gender a person will posess certain negative traits" - from the textbook
   - Double standards – the same actions are good for one gender but not for the other one
               - an example of this is when a guy sleeps with many girls he is seen as the man and everyone wants to be his friend, but when a girl does the same thing she is seen as a slut and nobody likes her anymore.
3) Aggression
    - Regarding gender roles & aggression both gender roles can be aggressive just in different ways.
4) Gender Typing
    A) Biological
             1) Evolutionary perspective - men have to be strong to do the heavy work
                    - need to survive women is caring and nurturing. This concept just carried on through the years.
             2) Prenatal Brain Organization - neurological perspective, everything occurs in the brain
    B) Psychological
            1) Freud - Oedipus Complex
                                 -Oedipus was a story about a man that married his mother and killed his father, Freud links this to gender
                             - He says that for the child the father is competition for the mothers attention.
            2) Social Cognitive - Blending of social relations and cognition
                                          - Learning through observation
                                          - Identification
                                          - Socialization
                                          - Observation and modeling is the main thing of this concept
            3) Cognitive Development Approach - Kohlberg
                                          - Learns concepts and ideas about gender through observation
                                          - Nations of how boys and girls are supposed to behave they see that their mother is feminine and father is masculine     
            4) Gender Schema Theory
                                         - Information processing theory
                                         - Information comes in and we process it and act upon it, respond accordingly             
5) Psychological Androgyny
    - have traits from both genders
    - Sympozium is a book written by Plato but everything that Plato writes was said by Socrates
                    - The book pretty much says that everyone used to be a hermaphrodite and then people got split in two and that is why people are attracted to the opposite sex because they miss the body parts they lost.                    

Film

http://www.nfb.ca/film/sexy_inc/
This is a link to a video That was shown in class today. If was a very sad video because it is true. The reality is shown in this video and you can see it in teens walking on the street in town. The teens these days are sexually active very early and do not have the maturity and  responsibility to make these decitions and deal with the peer pressure. Even the young children that know that is it bad that the lady in the advertizment is bad because she is showing her privates. These children this age should not know this they should have no worries and be playing on the playground having fun and running around. When I was that age I went to school and then I was outside playing until supper time and then after supper I would go back outside and then shower and into bed and the next day i would do it all over again. I find that this is going to far and the people making these Bratz dolls should realize what they are doing to the children of the children today.

Sexual Reponse Theoriest and Variations

The first theorist I will be talking about is Kaplah she was the therapist that believed that the sexual response is a three phase cycle and she talks mostly about the disorders that can happen in these three phases because she is a therapist and that is what she deals with most. The first phase is Desire in this phase the main thing that can go wrong is that there is no desire which is an essential thing for sexual responses. The second phase is Excitement this is an erection for a male and lubrication for a female if these things do not happen then there is no excitement which could also be a very disappointing issue. The third phase is Orgasm which is pretty self explanatory; the main problem can be premature orgasm or no orgasm at all.

The second theorist is Rosemary Basson he was a Canadian and he takes a women's approach. He talks about that Intimacy is a key element for getting an orgasm he does mention that it is possible to have sexual activity without intimacy. He is mainly concerned with sexual activity within long term relationships because he feels that intimacy is the key to understanding, and we all know that most people in long term relationship have sexual encounters less and less.

The third theorist is Sigmund Freud he believe that we were born with libido and that is does not just appear one day. He believe that it moves around out body to the place where we have the most desire so for babies and children to would be the mouth because that is where they get fed, he goes on to say that there is something wrong with you if your desire does not move to your genitals. He also talks about women having two kinds of orgasms the clitoral orgasm and the vaginal orgasm. He says that the clitoral orgasm is not a good orgasm because there is not a male needed to achieve it and it is not part of a healthy development. Also he says that this orgasm is more masculine. The vaginal orgasm is the preferred more because it requires a man to accomplish it. He also talks about when a young girls sees their fathers penis they envy it and wonder why they do not have one, this desire is replaced when a women wants children and a family.

The fourth theorist is Masters & Johnson who I talked about in my previous blog.

I find all these theories very interesting, they all have different perspectives and think about things differently. I find what Freud has said very interesting I think that there is no right and wrong orgasm. I do not think that you can distinguish if there are right and wrong thing is sexuality because everyone is different and different people like different things therefore who are we to judge what is right and wrong. We all consider what we do our self normal but really is there a normal?

The orgasm

There are four phases to an orgasm according to Masters and Johnson they are:

Excitement
Men experience testies increase in size and elevate, erection
Women experience lubrication, erection of clitoris, breast increase in size and elevate
Both experience myotonia, increased heart rate and blood pressure

Plateau - this phase precedes the orgasmic phase
Men experience testies elevate into position for ejaculation and the coupers gland secretes a few drops of fluid prior to ejaculation, this fluid can be fertile.
Women experience uterus increases and elevates, vaginal barrel contracts, clitoris withdraws

Orgasmic
Men have you stages in this phase -
Stage 1. contractions gather together semantic fluid to urethral bulb at the base of the penis
Stage 2. Relax sphincter and the man has now reached a period of inevitability
Women experience 3 to 15 contractions leading to the release of deep muscular tension
Both experience body spasms, increase of heart rate and breathing

Resolution
Men experience two stages in this phase as well
Stage 1. After one minute of orgasm there is a return of blood.
Stage 2. Return of the rest of the blood this stage takes several minutes
Women experience a return of all their blood
Both experience myotonia releasing

For men there is still a refractory period that the length of depends on the age and health of the man

Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey 1894-1956

Kinsey was a researcher that first started talking about sexual activity. He was the one that started to make it okay to talk about sex with your friends and family. He comes from the Victorian Era when they had a very modest view on sex. He was also the first one to perform a study about peoples history's of their sexual activity and try and make relations and connections regarding his finding. His studies revoloved mostly around white, middle class, people in jail, and prostitues because they where the people he was actually able to access. He believed that sex was a biological process and that everyone is different therefore everything that people experienced in their sex lives was normal. Most of the peoples view of sexual activity were from religion and government, this is way kinsey was very influental. He opened peoples eyes to talk about it person to person and that many people do experience the same things and that everyone does it so why should it not be talked about. 

Principles of Critical Thinking

There are eight Principles of Critical Thinking.
The first one is Be Skeptical, meaning you should not accept unsupported opinion and a fact and you should weigh the evidence.
The second one is Examine Definition of Terms, meaning there are many words that have many different meaning and the person needs to ask themselves how does this person define this term in this context.
The third one is Examine the Assumption of Arguments, meaning ask what is being assumed in an argument.
The fourth one is Be Cautious in Drawing Conclusions for Evidence, meaning just because it is the case for some people does not mean it is the case for all. An example would be music with sexual lyrics makes people be sexually active sooner, this could be the case for some people but not for all.
The fifth one is Consider Alternative Interpretations of Research Evidence, meaning if you see two or more things together it does not mean they are related there could be other reasons. going back to the previous example there could be reasons other then music with sexual lyrics that bring on early sexual activity.
The sixth one is Consider kinds of Evidence, meaning ask if it is actually research or not.
The seventh one is Do not Oversimplify, meaning there can be many reasons someone is gay so do not just narrow it down to one or two.
The eighth one is Do not Overgeneralize, meaning if it is proven that one person of the group does something does not mean they all do it. an example of this is if one person in a group of friends or an age group is sexually active does not mean that everyone in that group of friends or age group is.

I find that all of these principles are very important in critical thinking and all need to be considered.

habermas' Paradigms

Habermas' Paradigm has three main perspectives, these perspectives are
1) Emperical Analytic
2) Critical Theoretic
3) Situational Interpretive
The first perspective is the scientific way of looking at things in life. in this perspective people observe, predict, and control.
The second perspective is a conspiracy perspective. It reveals the hidden reality, it shows what other people may have never thought of.
The third perspective is a where people live on their lived experiences.

I think that I connect most with this perspective. I always say stuff like " you will never know until you try it" and relating it to class I think that you cannot know what love is or you can describe how love feels because there are no words for it and you will know when you love someone because you will recognize the feeling when it happens. Also I think that you need to be open to try new things because you do not know how it is going to be until you try it. When I was a child growing up I did not want to try anything new and only wanted to stay what I was familiar with, I only wanted to do things that I had a good experience with. therefore I think that I mostly live in a situational Interpretive way.