Last we checked in with Dr. Ruth Jacobs, president of the Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, she was explaining why transgender women should not be allowed in her bathroom: “If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” Jacobs said. “We need to be able to retain the right to speak up about men in our bathrooms without being labeled bigots.”

Okay! Well, now Dr. Jacobs is back to apply her anatomical expertise to the issue of gay marriage. Let’s see what she has to say!

Read More “Dr. Ruth Jacobs Is Back With More Bizarre Genital Commentary” »

The Centers for Disease Control is currently weighing whether to recommend the circumcision of boys and men in the United States. If the CDC finds that a circumcision recommendation would reduce the risk of HIV among American men, I think that’s swell. Providing people with information to help protect themselves from disease is a wonderful thing. But a CDC recommendation would likely come with one major adverse side-effect. For women who already find uncircumcised penises disgusting, wrong, or unfuckable, the recommendation will also provide more fuel for their ignorance.

Read More “Could a CDC Circumcision Recommendation Inspire More Penis Ignorance?” »

In 2001, Wilson Holland of West Palm Beach, Fla., attempted to patent a design for the first Universal Artificial Intelligence. According to Holland: “The Turing test is considered the high water mark of such a program.  It consists of an interrogator communicating blindly with a human and an Artificial Intelligence. If the interrogator can not distinguish the two then the Artificial Intelligence is Universal,” he writes. “This design is Universal. It will pass this test.”

In order to prove that his Artificial Intelligence could  master the “outer parameters of all possible human thought,” Holland presented a variety of common human interactions and demonstrated how the AI’s reasoning would operate under each circumstance.  All is well until we get to the “Reproduction” section, where we discover that this reasoning is not “Universal” so much as it is “Wilson Holland’s ill-informed heteronormative rants about women, rape, and HIV.” Let’s take a look:

WILSON HOLLAND’S POSSIBLE HUMAN SEX SCENARIO NUMBER 1, IN WHICH CHECKING OUT LADIES PROVES YOU’RE NOT IMPOTENT AND/OR GAY:

A male human is flipping through channels on a television. He stops on a channel which has a bathing suit commercial. He views the beautiful women wearing skimpy bathing suits.

Read More “When Artificial Intelligence Is Programmed By A Sexist Floridian” »

It’s the classic double standard: If a woman is sexually promiscuous, she’s a slut; if a man is sexually promiscuous, he’s . . . a man. The origin of this fun gender construct can be attributed to the biological way-back-machine. Men, the theory goes, were created to spread their seed to as many wombs as possible; women were created to bear the children of one man only, so she knows which dude to sue for child support.

Whenever a man deviates from this reproductive gender role, he’s labeled as kind of a pussy. When a woman deviates from the role, she doesn’t get off so easy—she’s a bad, immoral, evil slut. It’s funny: even those who believe that men and women were “created” this way though the process of evolution—and not via some God who wove his moral authority into our very genitals—will still argue that deviating from gender norms results in great moral depravity.

Except for gay guys! When gay men are sexually promiscuous—you know, like men are evolutionarily wired to be—they are bad, immoral, evil sluts, too. Welcome to the club, guys (there are no free towels). It’s funny: even those who believe that there’s nothing wrong with being gay still argue that gay sex results in the great moral depravity usually reserved only for female sluts. Why? Because there are no women around to virtuously refuse to have sex with them.

Read More “Women and Gay Men Are Sluts. Jealous, Straight Guys?” »

Something I missed while I was on vacation—D.C. will offer STD tests to every high school student in the District this year:

the tests are administered by taking groups of 15 to 20 students at a time to the restroom area. The students are given paper bags containing urine collection cups and enter bathroom stalls. Once they get in the stalls, they can choose whether or not to provide urine samples. All the students return the paper bags, so other students do not necessarily know who did or did not provide a sample. Students provide a password and then call in a week later to get their result and treatment, if necessary.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that last year, a pilot program found that 13 percent of D.C. public school students tested positive for STDs (”mostly gonorrhea or chlamydia”).

Read More “Don’t Tell Mom Billy’s Peeing In the Cup” »

So … ejaculation. It turns out that where you do it can greatly affect a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant. Like: If you ejaculate straight up into her vagina, she’s more likely to become pregnant; if you ejaculate into a condom or anywhere else in the world, she’s less likely to conceive. Every 16-year-old boy knows this to be true, and now those 16-year-old boys have grown up to become the Guttmacher Institute’s Lead Pulling-Out Researcher, Rachel K. Jones. Jones published her findings in the June issue of Contraception magazine [via NYT]:

“If the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 percent of couples will become pregnant over the course of a year,” the authors write.

For condoms, used optimally, the rate is about 2 percent. But more significant, the authors say, are the rates for “typical use,” because people can’t be expected to use any contraception method perfectly every time. Typical use of withdrawal leads to pregnancy 18 percent of the time, they write; for typical use of condoms 17 percent of the time.

Hey, that’s information that helps us become better informed about our sex lives. Great, right? No. IT’S BAD, says the Daily Beast’s Tracy Quan, who calls the study’s results “folk wisdom” with a lack of “supporting evidence” and infers that the Guttmacher Institute is no longer “sane” for publishing this no good very bad information. Why? Because withdrawal is “caddish,” “insulting,” and it’s FOR BOYS, NOT GIRLS. And we all know we can’t trust boys to do anything. What else can’t we trust? Science, for one! And while we’re at it: We can’t trust grown women in mutually monogamous relationships to make this choice for themselves, either, even though it’s free, accessible, and feels better than a condom. THERE I SAID IT.

But enough about ejaculating outside of vaginas. Oh, wait, no: It’s time for Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I to discuss ejaculating outside of vaginas some more! Join us!

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Wherever to Ejaculate? Edition” »

Thanks to Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, a rider just added to D.C.’s District’s 2010 federal appropriation bill will effectively trash all clean needle exchange programs in this city. According to the Examiner:

Read More “Congress Threatens Free Needle Exchange in D.C.” »

Also not catching on as face of AIDS: Scorpions.

Some people believe that every human being has the right to a full and healthy life. Others believe that every human being has a right to a full and healthy life—as long as they aren’t gay, addicted to drugs, or a prostitute.

And then, there are those who believe that only pre-born babies are innocent enough to deserve a full and healthy life. These people are the reason that the campaign against AIDS has to focus on infected pregnant women—instead of infected pregnant women, infected drug users, infected prostitutes, and infected gay men.

Read More “Why the Face of AIDS Isn’t a Gay Prostitute on Drugs” »

The Flowers Heritage Foundation has pledged to give away one million condoms to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. The District of Columbia has received one-tenth of the non-profit’s pledge: The foundation has gifted 100,000 condoms to the D.C. Department of Health’s HIV/AIDS Administration. So far, Flowers Heritage Foundation has also given 100,000 rubbers to the Puerto Rico and San Francisco governments, as well as 200,000 condoms to the Florida Department of Health. It’s still got half a million condoms to go.

This morning, 26 national AIDS protesters were arrested under the Capitol building’s rotunda. At least four of the parties charged with “unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct” hail from the District’s own activist community.

At 10 a.m., the protesters convened in the building, chained themselves together with a white chain, and demanded that Congress recognize the need to fund the fight against AIDS. They then “marched in a circle before lying down on the floor.”

Read More “AIDS Activists: Arrest “Went Smoothly”” »