Then don’t read about hyena births. Puppies ripping their way through clitorises does not make a pretty picture.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Then don’t read about hyena births. Puppies ripping their way through clitorises does not make a pretty picture.
I ♥ Bluey, the Body Rights Thingamabob.
Sciencebase has a short article on a potential new aphrodisiac. It’s called PT-141, or bremelanotide, or Ac-Nle-cyclo[Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys]-OH (“PT-141” is the useful search term if you want to hit up PubMed), and it’s a melanocortin agonist that works directly on the brain. It can be delivered as a nasal spray. It works on men, promoting erections, and it also seems to be effective on women, increasing sexual appetite.
In the discussion about the Minnesota GOP platform, this comment from Molly made me think about what it would be like if Republicans were consistent in their attitudes towards sex and guns.
If Republicans taught gun safety like they do sex education, they would:
It seems like a useful analogy to me. If it’s common sense gun ownership to know how to clean and maintain the thing, to practice sensible gun safety rules, and to treat it as a responsibility that demands knowledge and care and good understanding of its operation, why not expect the same of people who own a penis or vagina? There’s nothing about knowing how something works that is antithetical to the idea that one should refrain from using it for its intended purpose, whether that is killing something or getting it pregnant, and in fact, we know that understanding in detail how something works is the best way to prevent it from going off inadvertently.
As it is, they’re in a situation where they are tacitly favoring accidental, unplanned accidents over the possibility that kids will intentionally practice safe operation of their equipment.
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t possibly keep up with the competition, who are willing to sink to sick, perverse depths to which the real porn kings and queens willingly immerse themselves. And they’re so close to me—just a few miles to the west, across that state line.
I’m talking about South Dakota.
Once again, I bravely plunge into the fascinating world of kinky sex research in humans. This time, we learn something incredibly useful. Gentleman, would you like to know how to improve the potency of your semen? Do you need a good excuse to give your significant other when she catches you browsing porn sites? Do you want another excuse to sneer at those pompous business types who flaunt their fancy cell phones? Here’s the study for you.
Forgive me, for I am guilty of the sin of false pride. I’m wont to judge Christians by the worst of them, and in contrast, to regard atheism as the refuge of the more worthy. I am chastised by the existence of The Raving Atheist, however, who shows me that godlessness is not necessarily correlated with rationality. He’s a useful reminder that a reasonable philosophy is not a guarantor that one is on the path to a truth.
If you haven’t been following along, The Raving Atheist is definitely an atheist, but he’s also an odd duck who has gone a bit unhinged on a few subjects. He’s strongly anti-choice, believing that the individual is specified at the instant of conception, in an argument that parallels the idea of ensoulment…but isn’t. He’s an atheist, after all. He’s chummy with a very bizarre character, Dawn Eden, who thinks sex is icky and is even more loony about abortion. Lately, his arguments have taken an anti-feminist twist, and the quote of the day he’s got up right now from Jill of Feministe is deplorable in its use of the dishonest ellipsis.
Science asks awkward questions, doesn’t it? I got a link to a recent paper in the BMJ (thanks, SEF!) that asks one of those questions—can fetuses feel pain?—and then takes it apart clinically, coming up with an answer that will make some adults feel pain: that answer is no.
This morning I got a question in e-mail, asking if I’d heard of a particular paper. Of course I had, it’s a very fun bit of research…and then I realized I’d never mentioned it on the weblog before. I guess it’s because it’s focused entirely on the phylum Chordata, specifically one rather peculiar species—Homo sapiens. I probably just assumed nobody would be interested, because there aren’t any arthropods or molluscs in it.
The paper is all about visualizing the arrangement of organs during coitus. People have tried to figure out how the pieces all fit together internally using cadavers and their imagination, by using a speculum and poking around with their fingers, and by clever tools, like hollow glass tubes shaped like a penis. This paper tries something different: the investigators had people have sex in an MRI tube, and snapped a few pictures while they were at it.
After I summarized how Plan B contraception works, I’m still getting letters confusing it with RU486. RU486 induces abortions. Plan B does not. RU486 is the opposite of Plan B.
Remember that what Plan B is is an artificially high dose of progesterone (it actually uses a progesterone analog, but it’s effectively the same.) Progesterone is a hormone that maintains the uterine lining in a nice, rich, spongy, receptive state, and it also suppresses another hormone, LH, that is what triggers ovulation. Plan B keeps the uterus primed for implantation, but tells the ovary to hold its fire and not release an egg.
RU486 can’t get much different. It’s a compound, mifepristone, that antagonizes progesterone—it binds to progesterone receptors and blocks their function, so that it looks to the cells as if progesterone levels have all all dropped to zero. The cells of the uterus, whether implantation has occurred or not, are tricked into menstruating right away, shedding the uterine lining and anything growing in it.
Now I personally think RU486 is a fine idea and a perfectly reasonable and relatively safe way to induce an abortion, and I think it ought to be legal and available. However, it is nothing like Plan B. Plan B is a completely separate issue from any argument over the ethics or utility of abortion.
