Jezebel had an interesting article today on the opposite effect of the public believing that they’re fertile way into their fifties. (What do you mean that fertility has an age-limit?  More celebrities have twins at 48 than McDonalds serves hamburgers.  We’re talking billions and billions.)  It’s younger people believing they’re infertile when they’re not.

According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, 13% of men and 19% of women ages 18-29 think they’re probably infertile. Actually, only 6% of women in this age group are likely to be infertile, so women are overestimating their risk quite a bit. People who identified as Hispanic were more likely than those of other races to think they couldn’t conceive; guys were less likely to think they were infertile if they were college-educated, had taken sex ed, or, interestingly, were single. And at least among men, presumed infertility was linked to a cavalier attitude towards birth control — guys who figured their sperm didn’t work were more likely to say they’d probably have unprotected sex in the next three months.

I haven’t read the original study yet, but the context reads:

Perceived infertility is an individual’s belief that she or he is unable to conceive or impregnate, regardless of whether this belief is medically accurate. This perception may lead to contraceptive nonuse, which may, in turn, lead to unintended pregnancy. Little research has examined perceived infertility among young adults, including potential associations with contraceptive behaviors.

I’d be fascinated to hear why the women think they’re infertile.  Is it based on wonky periods?  Are they currently trying to conceive and not having any luck?  Is it just a gut feeling.

Okay — and at this point, raise your hand if you had a gut feeling that trying to conceive might be difficult even without any evidence.  I did.  By which I mean that I both worried that I might have trouble AND I believed that I would conceive on the first try and was therefore shocked when it didn’t happen.

Jezebel is correct in that sex education generally covers don’t-have-sex more than and-this-is-what-you-do-if-you-want-to-have-a-baby.  Part of it is knowing your audience and sending them the correct message for that time in their life.  But the reality is that most people don’t go on to take sexual education courses at the college level or swing by Planned Parenthood to pick up materials on understanding their cycle.  And therefore, we have a dearth of information about fertility during time period for when people really should be thinking about fertility.

What are your thoughts on the study/article?  I can understand a woman believing that she is fertile by seeing story after story of celebrities in their late 40s having babies, but I don’t really understand the source of this belief — that you are infertile even without the evidence of a diagnosis.  Where do you think it comes from?

Bump out the word songwriting and replace it with blogging, and I think Mr. Grohl has ultimately explained why we post, why we comment, why we jump off of each other’s ideas to form our own blog posts as a response, why we read.  That blogging, at its root, like all art forms, is about assuaging loneliness, about reaching out, about getting to hear a “me too.”  And that goes for reading blogs just as much for writing blogs.

There is a reason why I post online rather than leaving all these thoughts in a paper journal in a desk drawer.  And it goes beyond the fact that the technology exists, that it is possible for every person who has access to a computer to post their writing.

I’ve never told anyone this in an interview before, but when I was a teenager I had this little boom box, and I’d listen to music before going to bed. It was also a recorder. I would talk to the recorder about my problems as I was going to sleep. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I’d rewind the tape, play it and fall asleep listening to myself talking about my problems. Isn’t that weird? I think I take a similar approach with song writing. There are some things that you don’t want to say out loud, but for some reason when there are 10,000 people saying it with you, it makes it all right.

Every time I put those words out there, make myself read my own thoughts much in the same way Dave Grohl replayed his recordings, read the comments telling me that they feel the same way, I feel more connected to the world.  Every time I read a blog, recognize the emotions being described, understand myself better, finally have words to explain something I’ve struggled to comprehend, I feel more connected to the world.

There is no chorus more beautiful than a harmony of me toos.

I am a girl scout.

The first time I was a girl scout, it was chosen for me by my parents.  Or maybe I chose to join a troop because my friends were in it.  All I know is that I was first a brownie for a year and then a junior, after which I left the troop and didn’t really think about it again.

I recently became a girl scout again, and this time, it was my choice.  I saw the good in the organization and decided I wanted to be part of it.  Forget whatever good the ChickieNob could get from trust activities and camping and making invisible ink; girl scouts is as much about finding my own courage, confidence, and character as it is about her.

Girl Scouts of the USA was recently in the news due to the call to boycott over its admittance of transgender members.  I have to admit that the inclusivity of the organization is the reason why I allow my daughter to be a part of it.  That story hit CNN and Mashable, it was dissected on blogs and bulletin boards.  We showed the video responses to the ChickieNob, though not the original video — which had been made private by that point but lives on in YouTubeLand — and she was proud to be part of this larger whole who cares so deeply about respecting all people.

And then the hoopla died down, and I thought that was the last I’d hear of girl scouts in the news until… let’s say, March 12th, the 100 year anniversary date.  But what started with the original boycott in January has grown larger, like a monster gathering strength.  The Washington Post reported last week that,

Conservative activists have used social media to encourage parents to boycott cookie sales, pull their daughters out of scouts and push churches not to provide meeting spaces for troops.

This month, for the first time in our area, a church bowed to the pressure. St. Timothy Roman Catholic parish in Chantilly in Fairfax County ousted 12 troops with 115 girls. In Alexandria, Saint Rita Catholic Church is reportedly considering doing the same.

Girls — and also women — are being yanked in multiple directions at the same time.  The end result is that instead of moving forward, we move nowhere.  We tell our girls to take pride in their bodies while we simultaneously present them with air-brushed, unattainable photographs as examples of beauty and then grow angry with them when they aren’t respectful to their bodies.  We tell women that they shouldn’t have access to birth control but they also can’t have access to abortions and yet they shouldn’t have children if they can’t support them without public assistance.  We tell women that they need to stay at home and raise children while we berate them for not dedicating themselves to their careers — and we round that out by underpaying them for the same work performed by men, driving home a strong message about what we think about women in the workplace.  There are too many conflicting messages.  I use the collective “we” because we’re all human, we’re all guilty, we all have our hands in the mess we’re making of girls — one way or the other.  Either actively by reinforcing one of these messages, or passively by not speaking out against them.

When I signed up to be a girl scout, I took an oath and that was to uphold the girl scout law.  You are probably familiar with it; it’s that laundry list of good traits that you’d have to be a dick to disagree with:

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

And the best way I can be honest, fair, friendly, helpful, considerate, caring, courageous, strong, responsible, and respectful is to speak out against those who say the children are our future and we need to nurture and cherish our girls because they’re so troubled while simultaneously attempting to take away any positive messages we’re trying to give them about that future.  Again, it is the push-pull of girls: be considerate and caring; but not to those who are transgender.  Be honest and fair, but expel organizations that are open-minded.  Our girls absorb every single message thrown their way — the good ones and the bad ones.

If we want them to be honest, fair, friendly, helpful, considerate, caring, courageous, strong, responsible, and respectful, we need to not yank them away from those traits by simultaneously filling them with messages that are dishonest, unfair, unhelpful, inconsiderate, uncaring, scared, weak, irresponsible, and disrespectful.

I didn’t love girl scouts as a child, but I think it’s one of the most important things I’m doing as an adult.  And I’m just massively grateful even for the support that comes from people who — like me — didn’t actually like the activity at all as a child, but who can see the good in it as an adult, so they support the girls, buy their cookies, salute them in their endeavours, and send the message that striving to be a better person is actually a really cool thing to be.

Because it is a really cool thing to be.

Josh and I were watching Oxygen’s House marathon even though we just purchased Season One of the series and realized that seeing everything out of order was probably going to mess us up, when we came to the episode where the woman needs a liver transplant and her girlfriend offers her part of her organ.  The catch is that the ill woman plans to leave her girlfriend, and the doctors believe that the girlfriend doesn’t know this.  It becomes an ethical dilemma, and that was all well and good, but I just used the whole situation to play my favourite game: what if.

Me: What if I needed a liver transplant, but I had just left you.

Josh: I would give you my liver.

Me: What if I had been a raging bitch while leaving you, but you had sort of turned me into a raging bitch by cheating on me.

Josh: Even if you were a raging bitch, I’d give you the liver.

Me: What if I had told you that you would never see your kids again.  You cheated on me, I left you, I told you that you’d never see your kids.

Josh: For the love, Melissa.  I’d give you my liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiver.

He really loves me.

*******

At dinner, Josh mentioned that he read that Susan G Komen also defunded $12 million in stem cell research (I know, for the love, I’m still going on about Komen, but I’ve never liked this organization and now I can finally vent my spleen since they’ve showed their true colours.  And to think, I just thought they were wasteful in using fundraising dollars to collect more fundraising dollars vs. actually passing them along to research.)  According to a press release that is making the rounds on news sites, it is against Komen’s policy to ever fund research that utilizes human embryos.  While the researchers who were defunded weren’t using human embryonic stem cells, others in their organizations did use human stem cells.  Mother Jones has reported that Komen has not released a formal statement today on where they stand with stem cell research despite being asked by media outlets.  To me, the silence speaks volumes.

If there really is a race for the cure, if we’re attempting to sprint towards it rather than walk briskly or (based on Komen’s behaviour, crawl at a snail’s pace), I’m not sure why Komen would ever ask scientists not to utilize what doctors consider to be the most successful road to finding ways to treat cancer.  Within reason, within accepted parameters set by the medical community, isn’t Komen’s job to fund research that has potential, not to pass judgment on the ethics of that research?  Isn’t that for the advisory boards at these institutions to decide?  We’re not talking about outlying organizations; we’re talking about well-known universities, such as Johns Hopkins and Yale.  If we can’t trust Johns Hopkins and Yale to be ethical in their medical research, who can we trust?

When we really love someone, we are willing to do anything for them, such as give them part of our liver even when they’re being a raging bitch.  If Josh could do that for me on such a small scale, when it’s not even part of his mission statement, then I can’t understand how a cancer fundraising organization that the public trusts to fund projects that have the most potential to successfully bring about a cure can pull funding for stem cell research.

I am frustrated.  I have given money to Komen when friends have been racing for the cure.  Because I wanted to support my friends’ efforts, and because you’d really have to be a dick to not want a cure for every type of cancer.  Cancer is a horrific set of diseases which have struck our community too many times to count.  I don’t want a cure years from now when everyone stops fighting about this.  I want everyone to shut up now, to realize that political beliefs should never trump actual lives (and no, embryos are not actual lives.  They are potential lives, and while precious on the personal level, without implantation — which is outside of medical control — they will never become toddlers, preschoolers, teenagers).  And in this quiet, allow the medical community to put their collective heads together and actually sprint towards the finish line in this race for the cure.

CNN and other news sites are reporting that Susan G Komen has changed the policy under which Planned Parenthood lost its funding, stopping short of actually stating that funding will be forthcoming in the future.  Their statement begins with an apology and talks about how the wording of the policy will be changed to reflect only investigations that are criminal in nature.  When WashPo asked for further clarification whether Planned Parenthood would actually be funded in the future, they received no further information, only that “I think our statement speaks for itself.”

I do think it speaks volumes, just not the clear message I would expect to follow an apology to the public — an apology that addresses the section of the public who are upset over Planned Parenthood’s defunding.  If you look carefully, it doesn’t say that Planned Parenthood will be receiving funding in the future, just that they’ll be eligible to apply.  And in that case, they can be rejected for some other reason.

There are obviously positive ways to look at this week: People were suddenly reminded to do their monthly breast exams or make an appointment at Planned Parenthood.  People donated a lot of money to both organizations.  This apology may truly be the end of this debacle, and maybe Komen will be careful in the future about mixing themselves with politics and instead remain an organization aiming to fund cancer research and support women instead of an organization attempting to push a political agenda.  Or maybe it will just be dormant for a period of time like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets and then be released again at a future date.

I’m not a fan of apologies which are not heartfelt, deeply meaningful apologies.  I have high standards, and this doesn’t meet my high standards.  So I thank the organization for giving this thought, but for me, the damage has been done and I need something much bigger than this to trust again.  I’m aware that others respectfully disagree with me on this, and I’m totally supportive of that too.  It’s a great big world full of organizations that have the potential to do good.  I’m going to directly support those that provide services, and others can support philanthropies who decide the fate of those service organizations with their grants.  To each their own.