Photo reblogged from Hi! We're Planned Parenthood with 327 notes
So… have you ever heard the saying: “A happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells everybody”?
We’re noticing that that has an interesting effect on the information people find about, for instance, hormonal birth control methods — especially online. People who have a bad experience with a hormonal method are way more likely to talk about it than people who, say, go on the pill, take it for years, aren’t bothered by side effects, don’t get pregnant until they’re good and ready, and go about their lives. They’re not going to be like, “hmm, I wonder where I can go tell everyone how well birth control pills have worked out for me!”
Don’t get me wrong: this is not to say that some people don’t have fully legit bad experiences with hormonal birth control, even after sticking it out for three months (which is the amount of time it usually takes for any side effects you might have to go away). I’m actually one of them. But for instance, my sister has never had a hint of a problem being on the pill, and we’re biological sisters! Clearly, hormonal birth control affects different people in different ways.
The reason any of this actually matters is that: after sterilization or the IUD, hormonal birth control methods work the best at keeping you not-pregnant. And people who would really, really prefer to stay not-pregnant are best served by the most effective methods available to them.
Anyway. There’s nothing to really do about this – it’s not like people should shut up about their negative experiences or something. It’s more like… it’s just something to keep in mind when you read about individuals’ birth control experiences online, that the people who are happy are probably just not even thinking to mention it. And that it might be worth keeping a “don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it” attitude toward the more effective birth control methods, if the whole “not-pregnant” thing is important to you.
You could also feel free to like or re-blog this if you’re one of the people who’s been quietly happy with a hormonal birth control method – we know there are millions of you out there!
Mary @PPFA
Source: plannedparenthood
Photo reblogged from Hi! We're Planned Parenthood with 1,362 notes
Sometimes being above average isn’t such a good thing. Wondering if you should get tested? The Check will help you figure out if your nether bits should be screened for chlamydia, gonorrhea, or HIV. Check it out.
via menshealthmag
Source: tumblr.menshealth.com
Link reblogged from Keep your Bullshit out of my Uterus! with 403 notes
Keep your Boehner out of my Uterus!: Our bodies are battle grounds for people who will never have to live in them →
As long as you live in a body that is not cis, abled, white, & male? Someone’s going to spend a lot of time, energy, & money digging into why you’re wrong for existing. They’ll fight each other over what’s wrong with you & fight you over any efforts you make to love yourself….
Source: karnythia
Link reblogged from Hi! We're Planned Parenthood with 497 notes
Hi! We're Planned Parenthood: Masturbation and You (and other people) →
We’re always really surprised by the massive amount of misinformation floating around about masturbation. Crazy-false urban legends about all the bad stuff that will happen to you if you touch yourself kind of transcend every generation and culture. You’ll go blind, you’ll get acne, you’ll grow…
Source: plannedparenthood
Photo reblogged from Hi! We're Planned Parenthood with 1,208 notes
Demystifying the menstrual cycle one infographic at a time.
via I Heart Guts
Source: iheartguts.com
Photo reblogged from Delayed Wanderlust with 11 notes
I just watched HBO’s “Gloria: In Her Own Words” and I cried. I knew nothing about her childhood and her relationship with her mother.
I think that being a feminist means that you see the world whole instead of half. It shouldn’t need a name, and one day it won’t. - Gloria Steinem
Source: delayedwanderlust
Quote reblogged from Nobody Understands Us with 9 notes
Feminism starts out being very simple. It starts out being the instinct of a child who says, ‘It’s not fair’ and ‘You are not the boss of me!’ It’s something in us who knows that, and it ends up being a world view…that ends up questioning the hierarchy”
“Being a feminist means you see the world whole instead of half
Source: nobodyunderstandsus
Quote reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 10,146 notes
To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.
Huff Po (via rachelfershleiser)
This is the most beautiful thing. Can we send her flowers?
(via jaimealyse)
Source: The Huffington Post
Quote reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 7,990 notes
If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.
And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.
Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.
Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.”
Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”
Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.
Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.
Women who are taught that certain established boundaries are frowned upon as too rigid and unnecessary are going to find themselves in situations that move further faster before they realize that their first impression was right, and they are in a dangerous room with a dangerous person.
Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts.
People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid.
And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn’t truly raped. Because she didn’t fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while.
Photo reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 18,962 notes
Source: halfemptymouse
Photo reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 795 notes
![loveyourchaos:
rosa—sparks:
Until 2009, the human clitoris was an absolute mystery
The scientific name for the external “little button” or “bulb” [of the clitoris] is glans. Not to be confused with glands, glans simply refers to a small circular mass. This little structure contains approximately 8,000 sensory nerve fibers; more than anywhere else in the human body and nearly twice the amount found on the head of a penis… The fact is, though, that most of the clitoris is subterranean, consisting of two corpora cavernosa (corpus cavernosum when referring to the structure as a whole), two crura (crus when referring to the structure as a whole), and the clitoral vestibules or bulbs.
The glans is connected to the body or shaft of the internal clitoris, which is made up of two corpora cavernosa. When erect, the corpora cavernosa encompass the vagina on either side, as if they were wrapping around it giving it a big hug!
The corpus cavernosum also extends further, bifurcating again to form the two crura. These two legs extend up to 9cm, pointing toward the thighs when at rest, and stretching back toward the spine when erect.
If science weren’t so often a hostile field for women, I’m sure this stuff would have been discovered ages ago.
I love this drawing.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxx44d3X6K1qzwghoo1_500.jpg)
Until 2009, the human clitoris was an absolute mystery
The scientific name for the external “little button” or “bulb” [of the clitoris] is glans. Not to be confused with glands, glans simply refers to a small circular mass. This little structure contains approximately 8,000 sensory nerve fibers; more than anywhere else in the human body and nearly twice the amount found on the head of a penis… The fact is, though, that most of the clitoris is subterranean, consisting of two corpora cavernosa (corpus cavernosum when referring to the structure as a whole), two crura (crus when referring to the structure as a whole), and the clitoral vestibules or bulbs.
The glans is connected to the body or shaft of the internal clitoris, which is made up of two corpora cavernosa. When erect, the corpora cavernosa encompass the vagina on either side, as if they were wrapping around it giving it a big hug!
The corpus cavernosum also extends further, bifurcating again to form the two crura. These two legs extend up to 9cm, pointing toward the thighs when at rest, and stretching back toward the spine when erect.
If science weren’t so often a hostile field for women, I’m sure this stuff would have been discovered ages ago.
I love this drawing.
Source: io9.com
Photo reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 7,567 notes
H&M puts real model heads on fake bodies. via Jezebel:
The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and “completely virtual,” the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production. For now — in the future, even models’ faces won’t be considered perfect enough for online fast fashion, and we’ll buy all of our clothing from cyborgs. (This news sort of explains this.) But man, isn’t looking at the four identical bodies with different heads so uncanny? Duly noted that H&M made one of the fake bodies black. You can’t say that the fictional, Photoshopped, mismatched-head future of catalog modeling isn’t racially diverse.
What do you mean people have body issues? WHY WOULD THAT EVER HAPPEN?
I never reblog shit like this, but seriously, this is bizarre-o and should stop this instant.
This is pretty ridiculous.
Even the bodies of professional models are too imperfect to properly advertise clothing with. Even with photoshop. The only solution was to invent an entirely virtual body that no human being actually has.
Let that sink in for a minute.
fuck this. this is why we need feminism more than ever, i am self aware and aware of things like this and i still find it incredibly hard to accept my flaws, how is a young girl supposed to feel when this is all she’s ever been shown and told?
Source: sparkamovement
Quote reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 1,060 notes
I think being a feminist means you see the world whole instead of half. It shouldn’t need a name - and some day it won’t.
Source: amandic
Quote reblogged from It's simple like a mountain is simple. with 2,117 notes
What I am vexed with is the idea that, by having an abortion, a woman is somehow being unfemale and, indeed, unmortherly. That the absolute essence of womanhood and maternity is to sustain life, at all costs, whatever the situation.
My belief in the ultimate sociological, emotional and practical necessity for abortion became even stronger after I had my two children. It is only after you have had a nine-month pregnancy, laboured to get the child out, fed it, cared for it, sat with it till 3am, risen with it at 6am, swooned with love for it and been reduced to furious tears by it that you really understand just how important it is for a child to be wanted. How motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness and happiness as possible.
And the most important thing of all, of course, is to be wanted, desired and cared for by a reasonably sane, stable mother. I can honestly say that my abortion was one of the least difficult decisions of my life. I’m not being flippant when I say it took me longer to decide what worktops to have in the kitchen than whether I was prepared to spend the rest of my life being responsible for a further human being, because I knew that to do it again - to commit my life to another person - might very possibly stretch my abilities, and conception of who I am, and who I want to be, and what I want and need to do - to breaking point. The idea that I might not - in an earlier era, or a different country - have a choice in the matter, seems both emotionally and physically barbaric.
How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran
This is quite simply one of the single most honest, touching and convincing pro-choice arguments I have ever read.
(via petitefeministe)
Source: petitefeministe
Link with 2 notes
Teaching Good Sex // NYT →
As to whether his class encourages teenagers to have sex — a protest perennially lodged against even basic sex ed (though pretty firmly disproved by research) — Vernacchio said that he portrays sex in all its glory and complications. “As much as I say, ‘This is how orgasms work, and they’re really cool,’ I say there’s a lot of work to being in a relationship and having sex. I don’t think I have the power to make sex sound so enticing that kids are going to break through their self-esteem issues or body stuff or parental pressures or whatever to just go do it.” And anyway, Vernacchio went on, “I don’t necessarily see the decision to become sexually active when you’re 17 as an unhealthy one.” His goal is for young people to know their own minds, be clear about what they do and don’t want and use their self-knowledge to make choices.
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