This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've always thought that you can get agreement on abortion by addressing the root cause. What causes abortion? It's unplanned pregnancy. What causes unplanned pregnancy? It's sex. What can you do to prevent sex? Don't have sex unless you know the risks and you are both emotionally mature enough to partake in it, or, use contraception to lower your risk of an unplanned pregnancy. How do we get people to do both those things? Sexual education and free or reduced-cost contraception. As a part of sex ed, you teach that while contraception can prevent a majority of pregnancies, only abstinence can prevent it 100%. Everybody gets what they want here: liberals get the fact-based learning about sex and contraception and conservatives get the abstinence-only perspective.
That is demonstrably untrue. Gay sex and lesbian sex carries no risk of pregnancy, and there are plenty of ways for cishet couples to have sex besides PIV which drastically reduces the risk of pregnancy, such as oral or anal sex.
Based on the past success of a sex education focused on abstinence, I think that a sex education which focuses on anal sex would likely be more effective.
There are cases where reasonably proficiently used birth control methods lead to pregnancy, but I would wager that most unwanted pregnancies result from sexual encounters where birth control was either not used at all or used in obviously deficient ways as a result of a lack of advance planning or intoxication.
If you teach students
However, if you teach students
then my prediction is that the median student will not have any planned sexual contacts. As the sex drive is quite strong in late-teenage humans (selection pressure) and most people don't marry and have kids early, it is very likely that at some point -- typically under the influence of alcohol -- the sex drive wins against Jesus. A drunk makeout session after some party is not a good time to learn how to use a condom even if any of the participants had the foresight to bring some. The mixture of shame and booze will likely not help with acknowledging what happened and seeking a morning-after pill, and might also lead to denial about a pregnancy which will eventually either lead to a late-term abortion or an unwanted kid being born, neither of which I consider good outcomes.
Abstinence education treats the sex drive as a lake whose flooding can be prevented by a huge enough dam made out of fear and shame. I would treat it as a river which can't be blocked, but certainly can be channeled in a way in which it is least likely to cause harmful flooding.
More options
Context Copy link
While I'm all for better sex ed and better access to contraception, the comment you replied to is talking about very-late-term abortions. These are almost certainly not unwanted pregnancies or they would have been aborted earlier. They are wanted but failed pregnancies which are some combination of non-viable and dangerous to the mother. The risks here are made significantly greater by "pro-life" policies which discourage administering medical care to pregnant people if there's at all some way to squint at it and pretend refusing that care could have resulted in another baby being born.
That is the common canard, but when the issue is studied this is not the majority of cases:
We can also find statistics embeded into other studies. This one was testing the effect of a drug duirng late term abortions. As part of the information gathered, Dr. Hern reports:
Both quotes align with all other studies I have found:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321603/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1363/4521013
Why does this matter if it's only 1% of abortions? 1% of abortions is still 15,000 of deaths a year at a developmental age where they could have possibly survived outside the mother.
Compare that number to the 16,651 of people who are murdered by guns a year and you can understand the moral outrage that some people have. If approx. 15,000 gun murders causes a well-spring of laws, activism, protests, movements, then surely ~15,000 abortions of fetuses that share the same gestational age as the kids in the nearest NICU are also cause for the same.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is there any randomize or blinded evidence for sex ed? Having been a teenager who went through the class, I feel it was entirely useless. In many ways anti-informative about the truth of the world.
How much overall empirical evidence is there in education in general? It seems to me that there isn't a whole lot of credible research on exactly what works and what doesn't, as well as to whom and how much, and I'm reminded of the line about marketing, that you know only 10% of it works, but you don't know which 10%. And with the replication crisis in social sciences that has shown no signs of getting any better recently, it seems unlikely that there's much credible research on this out there. This problem is compounded by the fact that researchers of this sort are overwhelmingly professional academics, which would bias them towards overweighting the value of the education system that they themselves have invested so much time and effort into, as well as the well known partisan bias, which, in the case of sex ed, would lead to the vast majority of researchers being biased in favor of discovering that the type of sex ed being implemented right now is really useful and valuable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't this the status quo? Does any school's sex ed actually teach that birth control is 100%? I'd bet it's a very small percentage of women who are getting abortions who are educatable but uneducated about birth control.
The basic problem is that sex is fun, and not only are all forms of birth control less than 100% effective, all forms have significant downsides. Also couples in a sexual relationship want different things, or feel very different in the moment than a few weeks later when a pregnancy test has returned positive and their life has changed forever.
Their life has only changed forever if they are against abortion.
Having an abortion changes a person forever.
No it doesn't, unless your super religious. Most people don't give it a second thought.
I've heard accounts from women who have an abortion, and then years later see mothers with their children, realize that could have been them, and experience significant and lasting regret.
Did someone really say that to your face?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I, uh, don’t think that’s true.
I personally know people who changed their sexual habits because of a pregnancy scare. I’d expect actually having to go to the doctor, talk about it, etc. to be more impactful, even for someone who isn’t spiritual at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sex ed is surely good but this is also like saying that D.A.R.E. programs will be a magical solution to all drug use because once you sat through a school program, now you automatically make good choices.
More options
Context Copy link
Let me try to make the case that this isn't really getting to the heart of the matter and why these issues are difficult.
One, imagine that schools had a strictly materialist class about the proper ways to season and cook your dead pets and dead relatives to eat them, in times of war or famine or plane crashes in the Andes or even just economic depression. Or imagine you had a class, from a strictly materialist perspective, about the proper ways to use sex workers or to even perform as one yourself in a healthy way, if you happen to come from a moral culture that sees that as being reasonable. Or imagine you had a class, from a strictly materialist perspective, about the proper care and upkeep of your slaves to ensure they had good diet and exercise to perform their slaving duties effectively. Or imagine you had a class, from a strictly materialist perspective, about the most efficient way to operate a factory farm. Or imagine you had a class, from a strictly materialist perspective, about the healthiest ways to engage in sexual gratification with minors. Or imagine you had a class, from a strictly materialist perspective, about the current state of human biodiversity in different populations, and the appropriate ways to take advantage of those biological facts in constructing a functional society.
In each case, these classes would be controversial, regardless of whether the material was actually accurate and useful, because the move to a strictly materialist frame is already putting the activity in question into a category that some people would intensely disagree about in a metaphysical way. And just so with sex ed. Traditionalists disagreeing with progressives about abortion is downstream from traditionalists disagreeing with progressives about what sex IS, in some profound existential / spiritual sense, and, for that matter, what humans and families and mortality all are... just as in my hypothetical, the other classes would be offensive because they make assumptions about what a dead relative is, what so called "sex work" is (which is the entire point of the rebranding), what slavery is, and so on.
And two, the actual history of the 20th century and progressives championing of Sex Ed and abortion and planned parenthood and contraception and all the rest has had a significant undercurrent of them trying (from what they see as a civically responsible perspective) to get a bunch of other demographics to get their fertility rates under control... which has, of course, totally worked. It absolutely hasn't been just been some disinterested attempt to share some really interesting facts that they learned. You really don't have to read around much in history to see that this is true. I'm not even going to argue the morality or wisdom of this here; I'm just saying there is a history here. I'm also not saying that many people haven't also become convinced of the moral neutrality of a great deal of sexual stuff, or a bunch of the individual rights aspects of sexual liberation or whatever, either. But wealthy, civically-minded people from specific backgrounds and specific worldviews have absolutely used giant amounts of money to push this stuff to try to shape demographics. And because of that history, there's no way to talk about "Hey, so, what about Sex Ed?" without it raising a bunch of controversy, especially with groups that have been on the receiving end of this all. It already absolutely hasn't been used in a neutral way.
Jesus dude. Tldr became real for me today.
Less of this, please.
Unsolicited writing advice is tempting but not usually productive.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As you said, contraception only lowers the risk of unplanned pregnancy while increasing sexual promiscuity. Additionally presence of both options also decreases willingness of men to marry their pregnant girlfriends, no more shotgun weddings. The logic is simple - men did not want the child and it was woman's decision to not take pills properly and to keep the child when abortion is such an easy and accessible "healthcare" option. Which on average increases abortions while also increasing single parenthood.
More options
Context Copy link
This, in effect, would entail telling young women to voluntarily withdraw from the sexual rat race in exchange for a long-term benefit that, in their minds, only exists in the hateful rhetoric of icky garbage human incel dudebros. It'll never work.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, except that isn't the "abstinence-only" perspective that the conservatives want. They don't want sex ed or contraception taught, they want only abstinence taught, it says it right in the name of the policy.
I'd be ok with everyone receiving the program I got in High School. It was a lot like the described:
First it went into the social aspect of sex. I remember they had a gotcha icebreaker task where they asked everyone what the first step to having consensual sex was out of a list. The answer was "eye contact." They talked about how intercourse took place after a sequence of events, (eye contact, conversation, seclusion, etc) which a person could get out of at any time by being vocal and making a choice to get out of the sequence.
A lot of "if you are pressured into having sex, here are some trusted adults you can go to."
Then went into the most common contraception methods available to teenagers, but actually read the warning labels on every box. Explained that none of them were fully effective at preventing STDs, not even condoms. None of them were 100% effective at preventing pregnancy.
Described economic and social status outcomes of pregnant teenage mothers. That pregnancy and childbirth changes you hormonally and "you don't really want to be like your mom yet, do you?"
We had to make posters describing STDs, symptoms and treatments. Presented them to the class.
I would call it abstinence-first education. It explained contraception thoroughly. The problem is, once you explain contraception thoroughly, it doesn't deliver on all the goods that abstinence can. Over a population, it is effective. As individuals, a 5/100 risk of pregnancy each year is still a lot of sexually active pregnant teens.
Property used contraception does work. The 5/100 is from people fucking it up. Also abstinence only education doesn't work you can look anywhere on earth and find that stats to back that up. Teens and young adults are going to fuck before getting married.
To your experience. It is surprisingly hard to find any info on abstinence-first education and perhaps the term is just not well defined enough to show up in the sea of competing abstinence only and full blown sex ed debates. I don't have a problem with that approach, except again, young attractive people are going to have sex with one another, unless you live in Korea, so you may as well teach them how to do it safely.
"Perfect use" condom is 2%, "Perfect use" Pill is .3%. Even "properly used" contraception means that there are thousands of women winding up pregnant from "perfect use." But how many people in a high school class are going to use it perfectly? "Typical use" is 14% and 7% respectively.
Things that are 100% like sterilization are unlikely options for teenagers. I suppose now IUDs might be more available.
I guess the idea is that, with education, "typical use' rates will go down? If so, my sex ed class covered explicitly how to put on a condom, the importance of taking a pill every day and that a single missed day means that the woman is more likely to get pregnant for the next month. Etc. They went very deep into the failure modes of each.
The biggest problem is that "Sex Ed" was one week. How many of your classmates on the internet are claiming that they never learned about the Vietnam war in school, or segregation, or whatever, when you remember very clearly that these topics were covered? I would prefer for Sex Ed to be a weekly thing all throughout Middle and High school.
I didn't. My parent's didn't. My grandparents didn't.
That being said, in hindsight I think my Sex Ed was trying to encourage oral. They went deep into dental dams and things.
Sure, sure they didn't... I bet if you sat down your grandad he would tell you about about being a poon hound and it would scar you for life.
More options
Context Copy link
I can't imagine something less encouraging for oral sex (barring explicit discouragement) than telling kids you need dental dams for it. I have never even heard of such a device before I was 20.
Smh, kids these days are so vulgar. When I was a kid we called them “dental darns”!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There’s got to be a historical reason for emphasizing dental dams. Either a specific STD panic or some sort of lobby. Maybe they just really wanted to beat the allegations of sex-ed pandering to men?
There’s a growing body of evidence that oral HPV is one of the main causes of throat and mouth cancer.
More options
Context Copy link
My impression's that they wanted to have something relevant for the (cis) lesbians, and that's pretty much all that comes up -- it's still hella low risk rates for the really dangerous STDs, but at least relevant for things like cold sores.
((Ironically, dams are still more useful for guys, even separate from STD risks, but I'll admit I have a lot of sympathy for sex ed teachers not wanting to get into rimming.))
More options
Context Copy link
Puritanism. If you gave honest fact based stats, it's practically an advertisement for Sapphism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How could a perfect use condom be 2%? It is a physical barrier. A perfect use condom can't be anything but 100% effective. Pill wise. I know zero people that have gotten pregnant on it unless "oops" I missed a few. Don't try to fuck with an already low fail percentage to justify abstinence stuff dude.
Also; no one in the history of sex has ever used a dental dam. This is detached from reality.
I can personally vouch that "99.9% effective when taken as directed" is not, in fact, 100%. If you take the word of an anonymous Internet stranger.
Was this you, or your wife?
My wife, but I believe her when she says she was taking them as directed, even at the same time daily. She wasn't very excited by the unexpected news (although we are both, in hindsight, glad to have the little one), and I was there when she was taking them pretty often.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
About 5% of women make an enzyme that breaks down the hormones in birth control faster. This might explain a perfect use failure. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/genetics-may-explain-why-birth-control-doesnt-always-work-for-some-women
Condom failure rate was described by gattsuru better than I can.
These effectiveness numbers are so well known in my circle I hadn't even thought to cite them, but I assure you the Guttmacher Institute is not Christian propaganda. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-effectiveness-united-states
Women dissolve condoms with their enzymes? That is truly amazing! ( I joke, obviously) but like what are you on about? If you don't want a baby you're not going to have one.
It's like I've attacked a religious belief of yours by citing very well-accepted stats.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Breakage, probably. Maybe they count spills?
As far as I know, the rates aren’t for individual acts. They counted how many couples had gotten pregnant after a year, conditional on using the method correctly. So I agree there’s room for reporting issues. But I don’t think OP is being disingenuous.
Also, dental dams are used exclusively as slingshots by college students. No idea how they got inserted into every sex ed curriculum.
The post you're responding to is showing as "Filtered" to me.
If the question is about how failure rates pop up, these studies are based on reporting. This goes into a lot of the statistics and processes, including some counterintuitive results (effectiveness of imperfect use is often underestimated, because many studies only ask about imperfect use where pregnancy occurred).
Mechanically, breakages are the most understood 'correct' use failure, with incorrectly applied (unrolled separately and then placed onto penis, air inside) or stored or outdated condoms, vigorous sex, age, and insufficient lubrication being some of the most common risk factors. Incompatible materials (eg oil and a latex condom) are usually lumped here, though there is a fair argument they should be considered imperfect use. About a fifth to a third of people a year using condoms report at least one condom break, although this is not evenly distributed.
Slippage is... about what it sounds like. You'd think it would be more obvious and easier to withdraw and reapply a different condom or move onto other sex acts, compared to a split down the side of a condom, but you still see 10-20% reporting it happen, usually pretty often if it happens at all.
Leaks are the least understood and I think play a bigger role than most people expect. "Correct" condom use is to withdraw immediately after ejaculation while firmly holding the base of the condom tight. Waiting too long (or just deflating fast enough) gives a lot of opportunity for semen to get around, and while it's something only a small percentage of people report having problems with, as a behavior it's one with the clearest immediate mechanisms for semen transfer, and with the least clear distinction between 'right' and 'wrong'.
Semen just getting around, separate from sex itself is another risk. People overestimate the risks of preejaculatory fluid for pregnancy, but the guy finishing and moving to help his partner finish without washing his hands first is both plausible and easy to overlook.
This is all really specific. If you don't want to have a kid all you have to do is not cum inside someone, that is super easy to not do.
More options
Context Copy link
I swear I try to fish his comments out of the filter as fast as I can. @AhhhTheFrench you may find this response useful.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link