Awkward News Stories to Not Bring up at the Dinner Table

In the wake of nationwide anxiety over reproductive rights, gender equality, resurfacing white supremacist rhetoric, and the banning of large groups of people based solely on their racial background, it’s rather hard to pry our eyes away from this display of political instability and consider that society itself cannot come to a grinding halt. I implore any and all readers to take a moment and oblige me in my decision to highlight something that even our P***y-grabbing president can’t ban with an executive order.

This is about the new birds and the bees conversation, courtesy of Pornhub.com. According to their yearly review, Pornhub reigns as the world’s most visited site for pornographic material. In 2016 alone the website accounted for 23 billion page visits with over 4,599,000,000 hours of various kinds of illicit content viewed by global audiences (1). Why am I talking to you about this? Are you feeling awkward yet? Don’t worry, my intent is not as weird as you imagine. In the last few weeks, Pornhub has announced and released a subsite: http://www.pornhub.com/sex/ , called The Sexual Wellness Center which seeks to establish itself as a place “to find information on a wide range of topics pertaining to love, sexuality and health” which is an initiative I fully support.

Enlisting the professional help of author, therapist, and speaker Dr. Laurie, Pornhub is attempting to productively contribute to the education and understanding of conceptions of sexuality and well-being that still are treated with contempt in the public eye, despite how progressive our society has become towards viewing sexuality. Living in a world where realistic depictions of violence are treated as normal, it is somewhat surprising to me that nudity, sexuality, and the human body can still be treated as something to be ashamed about.

Another popular example I’ve recently learned about is Instagram, a supposed sanctuary for individual expression, strictly enforces depictions of the female body on the basis of its illicit nature. Their guidelines read the following:

“We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.” (2)

This emphasis on photos of the banning of photos of only female nipples and not a man’s naked torso reveals just how society perceives sexuality and femininity as perpendicular to one another (unless it is a picture of a women breastfeeding, which gets a pass. Ironically Pornhub’s yearly review also listed stepmom and MILF as the second and third most searched terms in 2016. Freud would be having a field day). Instagram’s clearly one-sided view of the female bodily form is inherently rooted in our contemporary views of sexuality, sexual intercourse, and the eroticism that plagues it and resistance persists in the form of digital feminist movements like #freethenipple as well as the tongue-in-cheek presentation of nudity by covering any part of the body that Instagram deems too sexual with cleverly placed emojis.

I’m supportive of Pornhub’s attempts at education, offering valuable information for those who seek it in the hopes that this sets a trend in the redefinition of how society perceives sexuality and bodily form. They feature various posts on topics from Relationship Issues to STDs and STIs, transforming the once illegitimate bastion of scandalous smut that many a lonesome soul would wipe from their browser history with lightning speed… into a platform that can fill in the informational gaps that our society is sorely incapable of filling in. With questions of the reproductive rights, the usage of bathroom stalls, and the ability to define yourself, a more steadfast understanding of the instinctual nature of procreation that we’ve bastardized into a voyeuristic consumption of leisure may help our society become a bit more open and responsive to these issues.

I can’t recall a single moment in my own childhood where a proper Sexual Education course was taught and in a increasingly jumbled mess of an educational system, I can only imagine how future generations are being taught about their own bodies and their sexuality when Math can’t even be taught without sending parents into a raucous uproar (I’m looking at you Common Core).  If Pornhub wants to take up the fight, I can’t help but give them my full support because anything is better then my 7th Grade gym teacher Mr. Martinez who I distinctly remember telling us a story about his girlfriend moments after referencing how annoyed he was with his  wife.

~ Christopher LaSasso

(1) 2016 year in review

(2) Instagram terms and conditions

 

                                   The New Great American Myths: The Trump Alternative Facts

With the dawn of a new era in American history comes a new set of Great American myths. Within days of taking his taking office, Trump’s senior advisors and press secretary have been this new administration’s purveyors of what they call “alternative facts,” and what I call “the great new American myths.” We usually leave the myth making to the quills, pens, and keyboards of our fiction authors. Unfortunately for the American people, these great American myths have found their outlets on news networks, such as Fox News, which tout themselves as being “fair and balanced.” Even more unfortunate is this administration’s witch-hunt with the media and near blacklisting of entire news organizations – Trump in his first press conference proclaimed CNN as being “fake news” and refused to take a question from that organization’s reporter. Because of the noise from the static produced by this administration’s representatives, we must become vigilant listeners and hold them accountable for every inanity that emerges from Pennsylvania Avenue. Here are a few of the latest “alternative facts” espoused by this administration:

 

• Kellyanne Conway and the “Bowling Green Massacre”: On the February 2, 2017 episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway was defending the Muslim immigration ban on seven countries made by President Trump when she cited the Bowling Green Massacre by Iraqi refugees as one of the reasons such a ban was a great idea. Looking this one up will be a doozy, since the search results will point you back to Kellyanne Conway’s mugshot. Why? Such an event never occurred. New Yorkers who travel through the downtown section of Manhattan will tell you that such an incident never occurred and that you may safely ride the 4 and 5 trains through the Bowling Green station.
• Yemeni Raid Success: On February 1, 2017 President Trump takes an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to pay his respects to Chief Petty Office William Owens. On January 30, 2017, a military operation against al Qaeda was carried out in Yemen. If you look this story up, you will see the details of what went wrong in this mission: including the death of Chief Petty Officer Owens, the destruction of a $70 Million aircraft, and civilian casualties. Trump touted this mission as a great success. The Pentagon would go on to release a video in an attempt to show the mission was a success. The problem? The video was created in 2007.
• The Inauguration Crowd Size Controversy: President Trump, the day after his inauguration, proceeds to admonish the media over the coverage of his inauguration, saying his crowd size was the largest ever. Social media outlets immediately posted pictures to prove this claim as false, comparing Trump’s crowd size to Obama’s crowd size On January 21st, Press Secretary Spicer issues a statement claiming the images unfairly portray the size of the crowd. That Sunday on Meet the Press, Kellyanne Conway introduces us to the term alternative facts, claiming that Spicer did not provide lies or falsehoods, but “alternative facts.”

 

Everyday this administration proves that there will be more myths created alternative facts. As this post goes up, I am sure that at least two more incidents of these facts would have been created. After all, you cannot spell Kellyanne Conway without “con.” Stay tuned.

 

-Luis, Alternative Facts Enthusiast

EpiPens and Intellectual Properties

One of the biggest problems in the U.S. are intellectual property rights. Now, IP rights are basically things created from the human mind which an individual can lay claim to. These can be in the form of patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Ok, so you might be thinking to yourself “But Onur, what’s so bad about IP rights? People should have claim to their artistic creations!,” and normally I’d agree with you, if it weren’t for drug companies like Mylan who have patented life-saving medicines like the EpiPen, creating an anti-competitive market wherein they can hike the price of an EpiPen exorbitantly high (we’re talking almost $500 for a small pack).

So, what are EpiPens? It’s a self-administered injection of the hormone Epinephrine, used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions from allergies, bee stings, etc. The drug company Mylan have had rights to this drug since 2007.

Yeah, definitely not a good sign. These guys faced some TREMENDOUS heat in Congress the previous year for hiking their prices. Last Monday, Mylan released an official statement stating that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is investigating whether or not Mylan’s practices (which involved altering their EpiPen’s slightly) have broken antitrust laws.

So here’s what happens when a company like Mylan is able to patent something like the EpiPen. They’re given a certain amount of time to control that patent and can basically do whatever they want, effectively controlling the market. They’re responsible for slowly introducing generic brands which are less costly.

The problem, however, is they CHANGED their IP slightly, altering the patent so that they could get an extension all the way to 2025. (And if their alterations proceed uninhibited, they could effectively extend that deadline even further). For a lack of better words, this infuriates me. I can’t help but FEEL empathic to all the children out there who can barely afford this life-saving drug. My best friend’s significant other has MORE ALLERGIES THAN I’VE HAD ASTHMA ATTACKS (and I’ve definitely had over a dozen [how am I still alive??]).

Then there’s the fact that these IP laws prevent companies OUTSIDE the U.S from mass-producing a cheap, generic brand that could save thousands of lives. These companies are profiting from the death of people outside the U.S. who can’t afford these exorbitantly-priced drugs.

And IP rights don’t end there. We even have companies and individuals trying to patent genes. Long story short is that in early 2000, once the Human Genome Project was reportedly in its final stages, companies and individuals began to patent genes. They tried to lay claim to these genes for the exclusive right to control them, which would have hindered research and innovation into discovering cures for diseases.

It wasn’t until 2013 that the Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring genes and genetic sequences are not patentable; however, this ruling did not protect man-made artificial DNA sequences from falling under IP laws. The issues here are vast, and I only hope to have made you aware to some of them.

Sources: 1 and 2

Onur A Ayaz