At last! A judge ordered the FDA to allow the morning after pill, Plan B, to be available over the counter!
Hurrah!
Plan B is not my favorite pill to take, because it can be crampy and make you cranky, but seriously, the drug is as safe as anything and it’s important to have access to it.
Yay for sensibility taking over. No need to have be legislating sexual morality.
Bang with Friends: it’s useability is clunky at best, but I love the concept.
Ya’ll had to have known I’d review Bang With Friends so you can decide if you want to use it or not.
Of course, it’s kind of useless if you don’t all use it, so you better just sign up now & we’ll all see how it goes together.
So here is the situation. It’s an incredibly low tech/low input site that connects via Facebook to allow you to choose friends you might be interesting in, well, banging. I guess that’s why it’s so simple. Because it’s just that simple.
You basically agree to let it access your facebook, and then a page indiscriminately comes up with all of your friends profile photos. It’s like a sloppy collage. Below the name you can click “Down to Bang” or keep scrolling.
Once clicked, their photo is just there with “Awaiting Bang” glaring you in the face – like all of your failed flirtations just flaunting themselves for the world to see.
It’s nerve wracking!
Next! Someone that you have clicked on clicks on you. Then you get an email (to your real email address, not to your facebook address, which kind of annoyed me because email is more real to me and only for real and important things, not like messing around on this website). The email is entitled “It’s flirtin’ time!” and comes from “pimpin.” (Really? Cute or gross?! Not sure). It happily tells you “This fuck brought to you by Bang With Friends,” which I appreciate. Score for foul language.
You can click the link and see who said they would bang you.
(Never fear, privacy protectors! You only get an email saying someone is into you if you’ve also clicked them. There is no way they will ever know unless you both indicated interest).
Now, if said bang buddy has the gall to email you (might as well, since now you know anyway!), you get another email from pimpin telling you “It’s bangin’ time!” Addressed to “Hey, sexy,” they want you to know “Your friend wants to knock boots with you!” (Again, for the most part I appreciate their ridiculous lingo). Hilariously, if you email someone first, it suggests some starter text “Hey baby, let’s get a little more comfortable.” Which would make me decidedly uncomfortable, but whatever gets people to get some, I guess.
So here are my technical qualms:
-I got all trigger happy and just started clicking people! Oh yes, I’d bang them! Without thinking about it. And it appears there is no way to unclick them. What if I accidentally clicked them? What if I would have hooked up with them last week, but this week I’m over them? What if since I clicked that I was “down to bang” said person, they started dating my best friend?! The tragedies.
–There needs to be a search function!!! What if I signed up with a specific desire to bang in mind? I know who my friends are. I know which of them I would do. Why can’t I just get to it and find them, rather than scroll through everyone (somewhat embarrassingly), fretfully looking for that person, who may never pop up?! Arghh!!
-There is literally no discrimination regarding who you can click and not click on. Not that I’m facebook friends with anyone’s grandma, but I certainly don’t want to be clicking my cousins, siblings, or best friend’s aunt. There should be a filter that makes it so your family isn’t an option. For uncles with different last names/you haven’t listed them as family, there should be a “dude, that’s my uncle, don’t ever show me their picture again” button. I know they’ve said they are working on this, but it can’t be that hard.
-There should also be a way you can create your own filters. Like a “no way I’d never bang them please don’t show me their picture” button for your best friend’s little sister. Or a “I just broke up with this person, please hide their face from me for the next 6 months or appropriate waiting time for me to try to bang them again.” Honestly, I feel a little bit like I violated some of my friends just by looking at their profile picture via this forum. Some people have pictures of their infant babies as their profile picture. I couldn’t help but be like “OH NO! BABY! & I’m not a homewrecker!” I want to filter out these people too. I love you, but don’t want to violate you with my inappropriate glances. Basically, I just want to categorize all my friends.
-There was an early user complaint that you could only pick people of the opposite gender. Which is obviously fucked up and unacceptable and totally archaic. They seem to have solved the problem, but in a really sloppy way. I guess not everyone indicates their gender on their facebook page, so that may be the root of this problem, but when you first open the page it shows you literally everyone. Then you can click on the gender symbol for male or female, but really, that doesn’t work either, because if I never said my gender on facebook, I’ll go in either category. I know it’s a little much to ask this service to let me say “I am generally more attracted to female identified folks” or whathaveyou, but I get the feeling this will be a problem for some people. Some dudes just want to do dudes and not find their lady friends on Bang With Friends. (My personal feelings about gender identity aside…)
-I wouldn’t mind if there was an option to email me even if I didn’t click you. I mean, of course they could just regular email me, but this forum might just give them the kick in the pants they need to say “hey, you would definitely do.” Maybe I just hadn’t thought of you in that way, but I will once you email me.
My emotional qualms:
Well, really I don’t actually have any emotional qualms because I wholeheartedly support the idea of having it be fine to occasionally sleep with your friends if everyone is being mature & smart & safe & communicative about it. (Though one could argue if you needed this app to make it happen, you may not have those things, but….)
But the experience did make me stop in my tracks a bit. How responsible do I have to be for who I click on? How seriously should I take it? What if I would sleep with one of my married friends? I mean, I have a friend with a kid who I have the craziest sexual chemistry with. If the opportunity to cheat fell in my lap, I wouldn’t say no. I guess he knows this already though, so maybe it’s a moot point. It still gave me some moments of existential crisis. Should I cast a wider net, or a more conservative net?!
It’s a lot easier to click on someone in an abstract way than it is to actually fuck them. I guess when it got down to it, you could back out.
All these things made me really pull back on my trigger happy clicking. I guess I felt I really should be able to put my money where my mouth is (my pussy where my click is?) and only click the people I truly would in fact fuck right then and there. Some messy questions can come up about whether or not you’d be willing to risk that friendship for a fuck, but the hope is if they are clicking you, they’ve thought it through, too.
Frankly, friendships get ruined by this sorta mess anyway, so why not get laid more often by the people you love already?
Overall, dead serious, I love this idea. It’s 8 bazillion times better than getting drunk and accidentally fucking your friend. At least you both consciously and soberly said it seemed like a good idea, and then had to exchange at least one awkward laugh/email/text/conversation about it to make it happen.
So, go forth and sign up. Then tell me you are down to bang, and it’s kind of likely I’ll do it.
xox
Today in at least it wasn’t all as bad as the media coverage of Steubenville, Hillary Clinton supports gay marriage!
Some days you just gotta take what you can get.
Happy V-Day once again! Time flies. Per the usual, I’d recommend a viewing of the Vagina Monologues – find one in your area and go if you’ve never been!
For the 15th anniversary of V-Day, check out the One Billion Rising campaign to end violence against women.
Since women kind of cleaned house last night in the elections and Akin and Murdock so didn’t win, I’m feeling a wave of relief I had been waiting for.
Jaded as I am, it’s time to take a minute to celebrate these victories and the small steps forward we are taking as a nation. We voted, and we said no thanks to all the men saying ridiculous horribleness about women’s bodies, rape, abortion. And I actually think young generations have some progress to look forward to. We aren’t going to outlaw gay marriage forever and ever off into the sunset. It just won’t happen. We are moving on.
We elected the first openly gay Senator! Oh Tammy Baldwin! In a lot of ways, I was more excited about that than any other aspect of the election. We are over it enough to elect a lesbian. That is a step. Seriously.
Plus, the voters all did right given the choice on gay rights:
Maine legalized gay marriage!
Washington upheld gay marriage!
Maryland upheld gay marriage!
Minnesota voted to not change the constitution to ban gay marriage.
And for a breakdown, here is my new favorite graphic for gay rights state by state. Slowly but surely!
YAY!
In case you thought for a second that your vote wouldn’t really matter this election, check out Republican John Koster from Washington, who thinks abortion is just bringing “more violence” to a woman’s body after that “rape thing.” Oh, also, incest is so rare, so whatever, that can’t count.
Sometimes I think elections are futile and all politicians are politicians and it’s all more or less the same, but then some asshole opens his mouth and I remember that maybe voting is a good idea.
So he knows ONE woman who was raped and had the child and put the kid up for adoption, and she is still super pro-life, well good for her, but that does not a nationwide policy make.
Vomit.
It’s really hard to argue with this beautious infographic on why we need sex education.
I often blame my poor introduction to sexuality on my poor sexual education. Our health teacher literally used to say “down there” to us. When oh when do we get to stand up and shout “this is unacceptable! We deserve better!”
There is nothing more obvious than the importance of teaching kids how to be healthy about sex. And occasionally, there is nothing more helpful than a visual guide for why something is a good idea.
Check it:
Exciting new development on the Plan B front! It seems that New York City is going to pioneer this badass new program in which girls as young as 14 will have access to over the counter emergency contraception from school nurses.
They have so far been sneaky about revealing plans and testing out the pilot program, but if it goes well I think it’s going to be an amazing start to a future where the kids who really need it get access to the birth control they really need! (Birth control in the non-emergency form will be/has also been made available).
All ye non-believers out there: I have argued again and again that kids are having sex anyway – the availability isn’t going to make them have more sex. It’s just going to make it easier to do it safely. Hurrah!
Okay this shit is getting really fucking ridiculous. I keep having these waves of anger about politics that make me forget we are talking about rape for a minute.
I really don’t usually listen to the “regular” news, like the ABC, NBC, Fox, CNN sorta news. Mostly I just read the paper. But I fascinated by the politicking in the Todd Akin rape conversation. I went so far as to listen to Hannity interview him.
So yeah, all those major republicans from Romney to Ashcroft to asked him to get out of the race. It’s fascinating that he is hella set on running, saying that the people voted for him and they want him, so he’s going to stick to it and run. If he loses, republicans may not have control of the senate. Which is exactly why they want to distance themselves. They don’t actually believe anything different, they just need to win that seat so they have control.
But the thing is, it’s kind of brilliant that he said it. It’s like one of those brief glimpses into the true psyche of someone who thinks we still live in the 1950’s. It doesn’t matter that he’s since apologized and said that he was in fact medically incorrect when he said a legitimate rape wouldn’t produce a baby. He slipped and said something that people actually think. I kind of love when that happens. Better we know now than when he already was in office. Terrifying, but fascinating. And now all those dudes who totally secretly agree with him, at least in some way are having to denounce what he said.
But just yesterday, the Republican party drafted a platform that includes anti-abortion legislation so strict that exceptions would not be made in the case of rape or incest.
So yeah, the republicans have to distance themselves from him because there has been such a backlash regarding what he said. You know it’s real bad when even Rush Limbaugh says it’s stupid. But it’s all about the politics of it. They just want that seat. They don’t care a hoot about actually protecting a mother who would have the trauma of carrying a baby born out of a rape. A baby is a baby is a baby, and they think that baby should just get born.
To make you feel a little less horrible about the hoopla this week, there is feminist obabma and a beautiful song on how to know it’s legit rape. Okay and here is a clip of true emotion from Biden earlier this year on rape.
Just like when Obama said “rape is rape” and I felt it was real and good to hear, I really like what Biden says here.
I don’t care that he’s a dude and he’s “in charge” or any of that shit. He actually gets that you can’t just go around saying there are levels of rape. One rape isn’t worse or more rape than another rape. It’s just all around fucked up. Hopefully this will help us understand that.
Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri seems wicked hella smart having talked to “doctors” who let him know the real truth – that if a rape is “legitimate” the female body will get all fancy and will “shut that whole thing down.” Now it would be lovely if your body would just reject the sperm of a rapist, but that’s sadly not based in anything medical whatsoever.
Then he goes on to say if “maybe that didn’t work, or something” the woman should still not be allowed to have an abortion, because the rapist should be punished, not the child.
Medical nonsense aside, is this man serious? Does he get to decide what a “legitimate” rape is?!
It’s actually kind of chilling.
I’m sure if he had the biological ability to have a child and got raped, he’d totally keep that baby, if his body magically decided that rape was legit, of course.
Fucking sick.