Called "prolonged exposure" therapy, it requires patients to imagine reliving their most terrifying moments — the rapes, muggings, combat scenarios, or accidents that sent them to therapy in the first place. Long used for OCD, phobias, and anxiety, exposure therapy hasn't been popular for post-traumatic stress disorder because, according to Kamps, "PTSD sufferers may be in extremis, crippled by their fear and sometimes violent." But therapist and anxiety expert Edna Foa says "that people need to viscerally learn that they can withstand what they think they can't." When they repeat their traumatic memories over and over, they can "become, if not bored by them, then at least less distressed."

Kamps quotes Kim McGillivray, who received the therapy to help her deal with dramatic memories of her abusive ex-husband. She tells the story of seeing her ex-husband after a breakthrough in therapy. He was "wearing tiny jogging shorts and tube socks pulled up snug to his knees." McGillivray says,

I had that instant flash of recognition, but in the second flash, I just thought, Dork! I was sitting there in the car, laughing, going, ‘Oh my God. Whatever is happening is working, it's taking root.' I could finally see him as other people did-as just this nerd who didn't have the right athletic equipment-instead of as the monster he was to me. After years of being told I was utterly useless, it's like I've been given another shot. And that I'm able to say all this without weeping-to view things in my past without having to be totally rolled-is testament to the process. I'm back in the human race.

The science seems to back up her experience. A small survey of 127 women who underwent prolonged exposure therapy showed that, at an average of six years post-treatment, 80% had none of the symptoms of PTSD. Other studies have found that the therapy reduces PTSD symptoms by 70%. These findings are particularly encouraging in a field where confirmation of a technique's effectiveness is uncommon — Kamps reports that there is no hard data on how well traditional psychodynamic therapy works.

These concepts — "evidence," the very idea of something "working" — are fraught in the field of psychotherapy. I've had a therapist tell me my goal shouldn't be getting rid of my anxiety, but rather gaining better insight into myself, and I'm sure I'm not alone. And while insight is indeed valuable, patients do have the right to therapy that improve their ability to live their lives. And insofar as this improvement can be measured — obviously, it's not as simple as curing strep throat — it should be.

Kamps talks to psychologist Patricia Resick, who suggests that our relatively safe modern-day lives have given us an "illusion of control" that contributes to PTSD and other mental illnesses. "When something bad happens," Resick says, "people think they must have done something wrong to deserve it." But in reality, there are plenty of things in modern life that we don't control — from our own health to, say, healthcare reform — and people are smart enough to know that. By giving them an evidence-based tool they can use, exposure therapy may give PTSD sufferers a way to control, if not their lives, at least their thoughts. Being able to do this is a big step along the way to being mentally well — and to feeling empowered again after something or someone has taken that power away.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy [Elle]

"The tiresome myth that women are not as visually aroused as men is used to justify everything from sexual assault to double standards about public toplessness, and it's time to kill it dead," Maguire writes, "Sometimes women even have sex with men for no other reason than - shock horror - physical attraction. The should-be-obvious truth is that straight women love men's bodies. That it sometimes seems otherwise is only because pervy men are more acceptable in our culture than pervy women."

Maguire goes on to argue that women are just as turned on by the sight of topless sunbathing men as men are of topless sunbathing women, yet society does not allow women to express these feelings, and encourages them to hide them: "Girls get the message early on that it is not acceptable for them to want to boff a bloke just because he's buff. They learn that yearning for male bodies can be expressed only if those bodies belong to smart, funny boys who are kind to puppies and old people." Maguire brings up the notion that girls are encouraged to hide their bodies through larger clothing in order to keep the boys away or to ensure that the boys won't get the wrong idea about them; something that young boys never have to deal with.

Due to this social conditioning, Maguire writes, women are able to handle their lust, or stifle it: "That far fewer men than women are harassed or attacked by people claiming sexual provocation is not because women aren't visually aroused, but because women have learnt that their biological responses to beauty are not an excuse to commit acts of violence or discrimination."

Her point: boys need to be taught that exposed breasts aren't a dirty thing, nor are they an invitation for sexual advances. Being turned on by the female body is quite different than feeling like one has the right to act upon those feelings, based solely on the backwards notion that a woman sunbathing without her top is a woman who is "asking for" sex. Yet society still deems female breasts scandalous when exposed to the public; a topless picture of Daniel Craig can be posted without issue, yet if I added a topless photo of say, Lindsay Lohan, I'd have to add a NSFW tag and deal with a bit of controversy, I'd think. Maguire's argument makes sense, yet we most likely have a long way to go before topless women can walk around as freely as topless men.

When faced with MP Paul Gibson's question: "Do you want somebody with big knockers next to you when you're [at the beach] with the kids?" Maguire flips the script and answers: "Plenty of beach-loving mums can relate: there you are, rubbing sunscreen into your toddler's back when a delicious slab of man meat lays his towel down right beside you. What to do? How about this - remember that the person lying there is a human being whose hotness does not negate their right to bake unmolested. If the kids ask awkward questions like, oh, 'What are those?' You say, 'Nipples, we've all got them. Cool, huh?' Then you stop being a creepy perve and concentrate on the sandcastles and surf."

The Naked Truth About Lust [Sydney Morning Herald]

Image via INF.

For those who need a refresher course: Facebook banned some photos of mothers breastfeeding their children because they said it violated their Terms of Use. Naturally, this angered a lot of breastfeeding mothers who created a group with 80,000 people titled "Hey Facebook, breast feeding is not obscene!" and some of the mothers even staged a small protest outside of Facebook's main offices in California.

A spokesman for Facebook says that the site does not ban all breastfeeding photos, just ones where a nipple is fully exposed:

"Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed," he said in a statement.

"The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

The Facebook spokesman claims that the company's standards for "indecent" breastfeeding photos are not just found on Facebook: the social networking company called several U.S. newspapers and asked if they could run an ad with a woman breastfeeding with a fully exposed breast, which the newspapers declined (and we all know how great newspapers are doing right now).

Is an exposed nipple really the line that makes breastfeeding go from "wholesome" to "indecent"? The issue sparked a debate over at Babble when a Strollerderby blogger defended the moms protesting:

I've got to tell you, I've seen plenty of freaky photos on Facebook - from the teenager I babysat when he was 3 looking so blitzed he might well have had alcohol poisoning (not indecent, I suppose, but definitely making me feel old) to the old tea bagging trick (why do guys do this to one another?). I could see removing this kind of thing - you know, underage drinking is against the law guys.

But a mom breastfeeding? Give me a break. I'm one of those people who prefers to give a mom her privacy, and I look away - I probably would avoid commenting on a friend's photo if it was of her breastfeeding. But, in the end, it's a mother and her child. It's not a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. Women can walk down the street wearing nothing on her boobs but a pasty and be violating nothing more than the laws of taste (and fashion). Meanwhile, she's showing more of her breast than a breastfeeding mom, and with no real reason for it.

Some of the commenters, of course, disagreed. One feels that if a woman is breastfeeding she wouldn't necessarliy be showing an exposed nipple since the baby's mouth covers it:

OK, I don't understand. They will not show a mother breastfeeding, but will allow a photo that does not show an entire breast. By definition, a breastfeeding pic would not show the entire breast, as the baby's mouth would be covering the nipple. Am I missing something here? If a pasty is OK, why not a baby's mouth?

Meanwhile, some other commenters took issue with the indignation that some pro-breastfeeding mothers showed as well as the idea that everything must documented on Facebook (oh, and someone had to bash feminism too because, hell, why not?):

I'm with LAUREN on this: not everything you do needs to be documented on face book. Yes, this is natural to do. I fully intend to breast feed my future children. But this is an INTIMATE and MEANINGFUL time for Mom and Baby. It does not make you look cool or look like a model mother to show this. It is a beautiful thing, but it is special. You wouldn't show yourself having sex with your husband or bathing your children or cleaning up the babies vomit, because they are special times. If you do, you are simply needy for attention and seem to think that your life must be shared with the whole world. Stop exploiting this special time, it's not supposed to be for anyone else to see or congratulate you on.

And no: IT'S NOT OK FOR A DUDE TO FLASH HIS PENIS OR TEENS TO BE SHOWING THEIR BOOZE PARTIES OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, THESE SHOULD BE FIRST ON THE ADMINISTRATOR'S "DELETE" LIST, BUT THERE STILL NEEDS TO BE SOME DECENCY AND PRIVACY IN PEOPLE'S LIVES. And standing in the streets and offices of Palo Alto is not going to improve your case. You're just going to upset the overly-prudish and annoy the rest of us.

No, breastfeeding isn't obscene, not by a long shot, but you do not need to be the center of digital attention: either for showing the breastfeeding or staging this idiotic protest for being denied the right to show it.

And yeah, Navi, for some reason this is still an issue. Don't know why. We have nursing rooms in lots of stores and even corporate buildings (Colgate-Palmolive among them). Nobody gives a damn anymore except a few prudes and a few neo-feminists who look for any excuse to fight there self-supposed "oppressions".

Facebook Ban On Breast-Feeding Photos Sparks Protest [Reuters]
Breastfeeding Moms Fighting Facebook Ban [Strollerderby]

Earlier: Facebook: Boobs Are For Body-Shots, Not Baby-Feeding