Dating Confessions by You "I'm wearing sexy underwear while talking to you online so that I feel confident enough to tell you that I'm into you."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Nerve's culture blog: We bring you more Dita Von Teese from the German Playboy.
Screengrab by Various Today in Nerve's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Fact:
I've been with the same guy for a pretty long time now. We're both adults,
by all legal and social standards. We both live in New York, although we don't
(yet)
live
together.
We
don't
fuck other people. He makes me want to get married and have babies eventually, and
all that other queer stuff. It is the least offensive sexual relationship possible.
Your grandmother wishes you could have that kind of sex.
promotion
Until recently, I was on the birth-control patch.
Then my migraines started getting worse. So I went off it. My boyfriend and I had been using
condoms for a while when, motherfucker, one broke. At exactly the wrong
time of the month. On a fucking Friday evening. Friday
evening is when all the gynecologists meet up, go to Six Flags and
don’t answer their pagers. I wasn't able to get in touch with my gynecologist’s office until Saturday afternoon, when they phoned
in a prescription for the aptly named “Plan B” to my pharmacy.
But no one bothered to tell me that my pharmacy didn't have it in stock.
“Come back Monday!” they told me.
I did come back Monday — sixty-two hours into the seventy-two-hour window you have to take
emergency contraception.
“Wild weekend?” my consistently
inappropriate pharmacist asked.
If the MAP were available over the counter, I'd have been less likely to get pregnant.
“It's for my dog,” I said, as I paid him sixty
dollars, which is what my dickwad insurance made me pay, even though it's
double the projected over-the-counter price. After all of that, I
went home,
took a pill, got some cramps, took some Tylenol, took another pill twelve hours
later, and didn't get pregnant. How about that.
Here's the thing. If the morning-after pill (MAP) were available over the counter — as
it is in California, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii and New Mexico — I could have
taken it Friday night, which means I would have been less likely to get pregnant. (The overall
effectiveness rate is about 90%.) The pill would have been more likely
to prevent fertilization than to stop a fertilized egg from implanting, which means something if you're of the life-begins-at-conception
camp. (I'm not, but for what it's worth, I do think abortion poses moral, though
not legal, ambiguities.) It would have been about thirty dollars cheaper. And
my interaction with my pigbitch pharmacist would have been a lot briefer.
This
stochastic bullshit mires public debate.
But last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would hold off on approving
MAP for over-the-counter use. Dr. Steven Galston, head of the FDA, said it was unclear
whether patients under sixteen would
use the pill effectively or that it was safe for them. It's against my
instinct, but I'm going to take Galston at his word. I'd like to hope
that all over-the-counter drugs are researched extensively and determined
to be safe. Although it would be fairly straightforward to sell the
pill only to girls over sixteen, I'll buy into the excuse that we're just waiting for more research to come in. I'll reserve my contempt for
those
who are co-opting this ostensibly objective public health decision as a
moral victory. This includes the more dogmatic opponents of abortion, including
(surprise!) church groups and conservative legislators.
The FDA
hasn't issued any sort of ultimate decision. But at the same time, the organization has begun claiming that it's trying to prevent abortion, limit teen promiscuity and do a host
of other things which are not the FDA's job, by its own director's admission. This stochastic bullshit mires public debate, making it difficult for consumers
and citizens (that's you!) to follow health research and policy developments. Obtaining information becomes secondary to forming an opinion
on the morality of a situation which doesn't even exist yet. Finally (and then I'm done, promise), sensationalizing the drug
by constantly linking it to Nasty Wet Slutty
Teenagers is an insidious way to push an agenda which limits reproductive
rights. Likely as not, the majority of MAP's
users will be in sexual relationships, which are much less likely to scare
people than visions of eighth graders humping every third person they
pass on the street because they can. I mean, they've got that
pill. — Carrie Hill Wilnern°
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, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
