Aspirin as a Contraceptive!

[Dalton]

No shit! According to this idiot assclown...

This contraceptive thing, my gosh, it's so inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly.

Effective! After a day where an all-male panel testified on female contraception, it's refreshing to see someone who can make those guys look like geniuses.

But seriously, folks...what the fuck is going on?!

[Baffalo]

No wonder the Allies wanted the Bayer brand after WWI

[Bright]

I confess I don't really understand the figurative implication here.

[Block]

I guess if you could hold an aspirin between your knees a guy can't get between your legs?

[Pelranius]

Is this going to hurt Santorum at all in the primaries? (That dude is funding the Human Smear's Super PAC).

My gut says no.

[LadyTevar]

I guess if you could hold an aspirin between your knees a guy can't get between your legs?

Yes, that was the "joke". In short, if you don't want pregnant, don't have sex. True 1950s mentality

[Stark]

It doesn't even stop missionary unless you're too lazy to lift her legs.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Reminds me asprin is a blood thinner, so you could theoretically overdose enough to produce a misscairage, though it would give you ulcers and other problems first

[Kuja]

This contraceptive thing, my gosh, it's so inexpensive. Back in my days,

Back in your days we produced the fucking Baby Boom generation. Good gravy.

[Silver Jedi]

I guess if you could hold an aspirin between your knees a guy can't get between your legs?

My first thought was that it's a play on the common excuse (among 50's housewife stereotypes) of a headache to get out of sex.

[Zaune]

I have a simpler theory. He's going round the twist in his old age.

[Darth Wong]

He's downplaying it as a joke, but the "abstinence only" method of birth control has been quite seriously promoted by social conservatives in the US for decades, and it's no joke. He's an idiot, but to be honest, his brand of idiocy is not unusual or even remarkable. I'm sure you could wander through any group of conservatives and find legions of people who believe that abstinence is the only acceptable form of government-promoted birth control.

The only reason people are remarking on this is the fact that he actually tried to be clever about it. The traditional way to say it is: "if she doesn't want to get pregnant, she should keep her legs shut". And that particular nugget of "common sense" is so widely accepted that if he'd actually said that, it wouldn't have been remarked on at all.

[Dalton]

Santorum is busily distancing himself from the guy. You know, the same guy funding his SuperPAC.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

I think abstinence should always be included as part of a broader contraceptive method education. In highschool our health ed teacher said as much. Condoms, birth control pills, etc, etc are all well and good up to a point. The only 100% effective way of not making babies is not having vaginal sex. I think that the fact that conservatives A) seem constantly place the responsibility on the woman for sexual encounters B) seem to advocate abstinence only education make the whole idea of abstinence as a bad thing, even if it's part of a broader sexual education program.

[Simon_Jester]

You can tell people, as a common sense thing "if you don't have sex, there will be no pregnancies, no STDs, blah blah blah."

You just can't get people to do it. It's been tried. Even with no access to birth control whatsoever, all you get is a pile of shotgun weddings and single women who are "disgraced" because- horrors!- they have a baby and the father won't marry them. We know this, because it was the status quo more or less from prehistoric times up through the early 1960s.

The people who will have sex, will; the ones who won't, won't. It doesn't matter very much how many times you tell them not to do it.

So having a few minutes in a sex ed program where you point out the blindingly obvious stuff about abstinence is fine, but no one with any brains actually thinks that's what's meant by "put abstinence in sex ed." That's not what gets people agitating for changes in curriculum.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Ah my bad then. Cleared it up for me.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, again, I'm not against someone spending three minutes talking about abstinence in a sex ed program.

But if you think it'll actually help very much, you're either crazy, ignorant, or your motives aren't in line with the goals of the sex ed program.

If the program is for teaching kids basic information about sex, so that they won't make stupid mistakes out of ignorance, then abstinence is only slightly helpful. Most kids will be able to figure out on their own that "no sex" means "no pregnancy/STDs/whatever," where they might not be able to figure out on their own that "you can't get pregnant the first time" is bullshit.

If my goal is to control women's sexuality by making sure that women have no hope of avoiding pregnancy except through the difficult road of abstinence, so that they all get safely married off and anchored down with a bun in the oven as soon as possible... well, suddenly teaching abstinence makes a lot more sense. but in that case, I'm being a shitty excuse for a human being.

[Dalton]

Teaching kids that it's OK to say no or that it's not weird to practice abstinence isn't a waste of time, nor is it totally unhelpful. It should be part of an overall program on sex education that includes contraception, STDs and the like.

[Darth Wong]

It's stupid to teach abstinence in sex ed, because if you have taught the mechanics of reproduction already, then it should be fucking obvious that you can't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

What's next? Should they teach "don't drive, and you won't crash" as part of a safe driving course? It's a complete waste of time, and when you put it in the curriculum, it's just an excuse for idiot fundie teachers to focus on abstinence at the expense of other methods.

[Dalton]

It's stupid to teach abstinence in sex ed, because if you have taught the mechanics of reproduction already, then it should be fucking obvious that you can't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

What's next? Should they teach "don't drive, and you won't crash" as part of a safe driving course? It's a complete waste of time, and when you put it in the curriculum, it's just an excuse for idiot fundie teachers to focus on abstinence at the expense of other methods.

What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to the modern teenager with the attention span of Snooki.

[The Yosemite Bear]

not to mention telling them about health issues related to sex and reproduction. after all we don't want folks thinking that ab only doesn't stop crazy horomones from turning into cancer, or why you should have your eggs and arse checked if your a guy, and other things checked regularly for women...

[Darth Wong]

It's stupid to teach abstinence in sex ed, because if you have taught the mechanics of reproduction already, then it should be fucking obvious that you can't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

What's next? Should they teach "don't drive, and you won't crash" as part of a safe driving course? It's a complete waste of time, and when you put it in the curriculum, it's just an excuse for idiot fundie teachers to focus on abstinence at the expense of other methods.

What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to the modern teenager with the attention span of Snooki.

Fair enough, but I think you would be hard-pressed to find a teenager who doesn't understand that you won't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I would hate to be the first person to get pregnant from thier own hand. hell there's more to sex than just missionary, but fundy american won't allow that...

[PainRack]

Fair enough, but I think you would be hard-pressed to find a teenager who doesn't understand that you won't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

Given anecedotal letters from teenage magazines and some personal experience in health education, maybe not......

I'm obviously speaking from a local perspective here but there are quite a significant number of people here who assume that one might get pregnant if one wears panties stained with semen, or oral sex, or assume that one won't get pregnant if one does it standing up or douching and etc.......

[Darth Wong]

Fair enough, but I think you would be hard-pressed to find a teenager who doesn't understand that you won't get pregnant if you don't have sex.

Given anecedotal letters from teenage magazines and some personal experience in health education, maybe not......

I'm obviously speaking from a local perspective here but there are quite a significant number of people here who assume that one might get pregnant if one wears panties stained with semen, or oral sex, or assume that one won't get pregnant if one does it standing up or douching and etc.......

Dude, you're in Singapore, where the local Lord High Master is a raving puritan who tried to ban Internet pornography. I'm talking about the idea that we need to have abstinence as part of a "comprehensive sex education program", of the sort that Lord High Master probably wouldn't allow anyway.