• Doctors from Kansas State University advise that pet owners count calories for their overweight pets. According to Dr. Susan Nelson, treats should only make up 10% of a pet's diet, and owners should follow the serving guidelines provided on pet food packaging. • This summer, 12-year-old Jennifer Valdivia caught the Ryan Howard's 200th home run at a Phillies game. Immediately after the game, Howard asked her to trade the ball for an autographed, brand new baseball. She agreed, but her lawyer, Norm Kent, is suing the Phillies for taking away such a valuable piece of property from an unknowing kid. •  Under a new curriculum, Scottish children as young as four will be learning elements of sex education in school. The program is designed to build upon knowledge year by year, says Maureen McKenna. "What we have is a broad curriculum which deals with emotions, friendships, self-esteem and respect as well as physical development and sexual health." •  Rite Aid has changed their formally paternalistic policy on pregnant women and flu shots and will now allow them access to the vaccine without a prescription. • Australian Labor MP Belinda Neal said that her recent decision to stay with her husband, who, it has been revealed, had an affair with at 26-year-old, is a "feminist" choice. "I made a decision to work within my marriage but certainly I don't see myself as some downtrodden person who is being submissive," she said. "I see it as a powerful decision to take control of my marriage and a joint decision to work to improve it." •  Bill O'Reilly says the reason Michele Bachmann gets criticized so much is because she's so "good-looking." • And not, presumably, because she says things like this: "the American people are looking to voices like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck." • A female religious leader in Egypt has proposed modifying the country's marriage certificate to allow women to list their status as "never been married" in addition to the current categories of "Virgin, "divorced," or "widowed." She says this would protect the honor of rape victims. • Women are much more likely than men to be kicked out of the military under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and the discrepancy is especially pronounced in the Air Force. • A new female condom now available in the US is thinner, cheaper, and less likely to squeak during sex. • According to a recent report released by the World Economic Forum, "No country in the world has yet to eliminate the gender gap." They cite "gender fatigue" as one possible reason that the gender gap persists. Workers are accustomed to thinking that their organization is different, that they do not recognize examples of sexism in the workplace. • 

The actual number of abortions in China is probably higher than 13 million, because the official count doesn't include abortions induced by the pill RU-486, or performed in unregistered clinics. 62% of those who sought abortions were women in their 20s, and most were single. Reuters reports that single mothers can't get household registration cards for their children in China, making it difficult for the kids to get education and health care. And, as is well-known, China's one-child policy also contributes to the high incidence of abortion.

But why the increase since 2003? One gynecologist, Yu Dongyan, blames an increased acceptance of sex without a corresponding increase in sex education. Yu says, "Sex is no longer considered taboo among young people today, and they believe they can learn everything they need from the Internet. But it doesn't mean they've developed a proper understanding or attitude toward it." China Daily reports that more than 70% of callers to a pregnancy hotline knew little or nothing about contraception, and less than 30% knew that HIV could be transmitted sexually.

Unfortunately, young people in China are likely to get less information, not more. Teaching sex ed in schools is difficult because some teachers and parents believe it will encourage students to have sex (sound familiar?). And starting this month, Web users will be banned from accessing sites about sexual health, as part of a crackdown on pornography. Though its widespread acceptance of abortion makes it different from America (the procedure has been legal in China since 1953), China's tight-lipped attitude toward sex is reminiscent of Bush-era abstinence-only policies. And we know how well those turned out.

Abortions Surge In China; Officials Cite Poor Sex Education [NYT]
13 Million Abortions In China Each Year: Report [Reuters]
China Concerned About Abortions [BBC]
13 Million Abortions Carried Out Every Year In China, Newspaper Reveals [Guardian]

That rate of Latinas who get pregnant in their teens, by the way, is 53%, which is more than twice the national average. But lest one think — as, undoubtedly, some right-wing commentator will comment — that this is what they all want, it's important to note that their ambitions (and those of their parents) look much like the rest of America's.

The survey also found that 84 percent of Latino teens and 91 percent of Latino parents believe that graduating from college or university or having a promising career is the most important goal for a teen's future.

So where is the disconnect coming from? The survey hints that it stems, in part, from conflicting messages about sex and contraception.

Although nearly half of the Latino teens surveyed said their parents influenced their decisions about sex, and three-quarters had gotten The Talk, only half of those that got the talk heard anything about contraception. The survey had two other interesting results.

The survey also found that:

• 74 percent of Latino teens believe that parents send one message about sex to their sons and a different message altogether to their daughters, possibly related to the Latino value of machismo.
• Latino teens believe that the most common reason teens do not use contraception is that they are afraid their parents might find out.

They don't want their parents to know they've sexually active... so they eschew contraception and, instead, risk pregnancy. Somehow, I'm guessing those "birds and the bees" talks are less than comprehensive in areas other than strictly comprehension.

Survey Delves Into High Birth Rate For Young Latinas [CNN]

"The Joy of Sex Education," the new series available from the British Film Institute, takes the viewer from the earliest sex-ed film (1917's silent Whatever A Man Soweth, about the dangers of VD for soldiers) to the "liberated" 1970s, in which the blame for Don't Be Like Brenda!'s unplanned pregnancy is laid firmly at the door of irresponsible girls. In 1932's The Mystery Of Marriage (below) we get a vague birds-and-bees explication that would have left any kid totally baffled about reproduction, but still obscurely embarrassed.






How we learned about the birds and the bees: The sex education films dating back to 1917 [Daily Mail]
Here's the first lesson on joyless side of sex [Independent]
The Mystery of Marriage (1932) - extract [YouTube]

As the Washington Post reports, a new study conducted by Janet E. Rosenbaum of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that teens who take "virginity pledges" are not less likely to engage in premarital sex than their non-pledging peers.

The study compared teens who take "virginity pledges" — who tend to come from families that are more religious and conservative and less sex positive — with teens who did not take a pledge but who come from similar backgrounds. In the past, studies of abstinence programs compared religious and conservative teens with more liberal and sex positive teens, which Rosenbaum says is like comparing "apples to oranges." By comparing pledgers with peers who come from a similar backgrounds, Rosenbaum was able to test how effective the "virginity pledge" was in reaching its desired audience... and discovered that the pledge was ineffective: by 2001 she found that 82 percent of those who took the pledge had retracted their promises and there was no significant difference in sexual activity from their peers. In fact more than half of both of the groups studied engaged in fairly typical sexual behavior: they had engaged in different types of sexual activity, had an average of three partners and had sex before they were 21, even if they were unmarried.

The most disturbing part of the study was that it found that teens who took the pledge were less likely to use protection when they eventually did have sex. (This morning on the Today show, Meredith Vieira discussed the study with psychotherapist Laura Berman.)

Ultimately, the study suggests that abstinence programs are ineffective since, as Rosenbaum notes, abstinence is more of an "individual conviction rather than participating in a program." Unfortunately, abstinence programs like "virginity pledges" can create poor sexual practices by not educating teens about different forms of contraception, yet our government spends more than $176 million annually on funding similar, abstinence-focused programs. As Dr. Berman said to Vieria, this is exciting news for the sex education-positive incoming Obama administration.

Study: Teenage 'Virginity Pledges' Are Ineffective [Washington Post, via MSNBC]

• Here are seven facts about HPV and Gardasil that every woman should know (like, did you know that HPV infection risk can increase with birth control pill use?). • Did you know that the inventor of the Slinky joined a Bolivian religious cult during a mid-life crisis in the 1960s? • The newest Wallace and Gromit film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, will not be eligible for an Oscar until 2010. • A female tiger cub was given a rare blood transfusion on Sunday after being beaten and then rescued by fearful villagers in India. • Australian Health Department officials are investigating dozens of massage parlors/brothels that write off their services as "therapeutic massages" and illegally billing health insurers. • The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden announced today that it is removing transvestism, gender identity disorder, fetishism and four other sexual behaviors from its list of diseases. • A recent study claims that young women who smoke are twice as likely to develop moderate to severe PMS. • Athene Donald, a British scientist whose research may help with treatment of Alzheimer's, was made a laureate for the prestigious For Women In Science awards coming up next March. • The Girls' Schools Association in the UK plans to launch a website in January aimed at parents of teenage daughters. • Tennis player Martina Navratilova says that her snoring is so loud that she has woken herself up on occasion. • People with low levels of the tau protein (which helps people maintain good memory skills) have fewer protein tangles that are associated with Alzheimer's. • In female life expectancy, Britain comes up 16th out of 25 European countries. The top Euro country for women? France. • A French court of appeals has overruled a previous verdict that annulled a marriage of two Muslims because the wife lied about her virginity. • Mothers in Seattle join up in groups for intensive pre-dawn workouts to fit in some exercise and stress relief in their hectic schedules. • The Australian Sex Party will be launched on Thursday and runs on a platform of sex education, reducing censorship and supporting gay marriage. Sounds good to us! •

• Many facial plastic surgeons are turning away potential patients because their expectations are too high. • The ACLU is helping a woman from Pennsylvania fight for her right to get a permit to open a pole-dancing workout studio. • More on the Indian Vogue scandal: Turns out fashion people are tasteless when it comes to stirring up sales. • The Spanish government's Socialist Party is forming a panel to amend its restrictive abortion law, which only allows abortions to be performed in the first 12 weeks in cases of rape, 22 weeks in cases of fetal malformation, and at any time if a psychologist deems pregnancy harmful to the woman. • The level of acceptance of transgender workers is growing in top companies, with 125 of the Fortune 500 currently including "gender identity" in their nondiscrimination policies. • Infant abductions are increasingly rare in the U.S., with most of the abductions taking place at the mother's home or in public and the average kidnapper being an overweight woman who feigns pregnancy. • The house and museum of Edith Warton in Massachusetts (called 'The Mount') is facing foreclosure. • Author Ruth Butler chronicles the muse-wives of famous painters in her new book, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives Of Cezanne, Monet and Rodin. • 2channel and Komachi are two of Japan's largest anonymous online forums for women, where women talk about their personal lives, troll, and get into arguments.

True to form, I decided to beat the dead horse about the 20 percent of Clinton supporters who still say — unlike Ms. Steinem — that they're not ready to support Barack Obama. I asked what Ms. Steinem thought Obama should be doing to win them over.

She said, "I see the polls, too, but I don't personally know anyone who supported Hillary Clinton that isn't supporting Barack Obama." But that's not all! She pointed out that she never said she wouldn't support Obama, were he the nominee. She knows that in some states, like Minnesota, Hillary supporters are planning on writing her name in "but they wouldn't be doing it if they weren't sure the whole state were going to go for Baracj Obama, so they're aware of the Nader problem." (Minnesotan Hillary supporters, please take note that the latest Quinnipiac/Wall Street Journal/Washington Post poll has Obama only up by 2 points with a 2.8 point margin of error, thanks!). She said the most important thing was that we had to realize our "enlightened self-interest" was not in helping McCain get elected.

On a more substantive note, Steinem suggested that Obama had been very good about speaking out on reproductive rights issues and on work/life issues, but would like to see him speak out more on domestic violence and international women's issues. In addition, she thinks it would be helpful to add women into his regular policy rhetoric — the example she used was that when he talks about health care policy, he should talk about women's experience in the health care system and why his changes would be good for women specifically.

Then the host, Steve Scher, asked me to answer my own question. I tried very hard to not think that I was supposed to say something not stupid to Gloria Steinem, a cause not helped by the fact that I used her name in the first ten seconds after opening my mouth. I said that as much as I was grateful for his work on reproductive rights, I'd like to see him stand up a little more forcefully in favor of them rather than saying that he wouldn't want his daughters punished with a child and that I'd like to see him talk a lot more about comprehensive sex ed and a lot less about abstinence education.

And that was it. Other things she said included the fact that she doesn't blog because she's "a more hung up writer than that" and that she feels that she didn't write clearly enough in her aforementioned OpEd to deny people the opportunity that they were clearly looking for to tag her as one of those supposed feminists who doesn't understand racial issues. The MP3 of the full interview is here and if you want to hear exactly how young I sound, they pick up my call at minute 26 (just short of halfway through).

A Conversation with Gloria Steinem [KUOW]
Women Are Never Front-Runners [NY Times]
VP Pick Might Chafe Hillary Supporters [Politico]
Lunch with the FT: Gloria Steinem [Financial Times]
Minnesota: McCain vs. Obama [RealClearPolitics]
"Stop These Abortions."[Politico]

Sex Education Works, Study Shows [CBS News]
Syphilis infections on the rise in Europe [MSNBC]
Sex Education Requirements, State by State [Institute for Youth Development]
Earlier:
Teenage Sex Drive Trumps Abstinence Education

• Rumors are flying that Britney Spears might appear on Sunday's Emmy Awards to apologize for her performance at the VMAs. WTF? What does she have to apologize for? She gave a shitty performance, she didn't go on a racist tirade or run over a crowd of schoolchildren. Britney, babe, don't let those assholes convince you to humiliate yourself even more for their ratings pleasure. Go home, take a shower, and play with your kids. [US Weekly]
  
• A 16-year old buy trailed a group of girl runners from his high school and yelled, "Keep going, or I'll rape you." The girls showed the little fucker they weren't scared and took down his license plate number and called the cops. Take that, punk. [NBC5.com]
  
• Holy crap, Beth Ditto from The Gossip writes an advice column? Awesome! [Guardian UK]
  
• Teen girls who diet are more likely to become smokers. Well, duh. If there's anything Kate Moss ever taught us it's that smoking fights hunger pangs and looks super sexy. [Reuters]

• After our 72-year old grandpa had triple bypass surgery, the first thing he asked the doctor when he awoke was when he could "have relations" with his wife again. That's why the news that seniors are still into humping came as no surprise to us. [USA Today]
• African pop star Angelique Kidjo has launched a campaign in her native country of Benin to encourage girls to get an education. [Reuters]
• Is today Paris Hilton's birthday? Scientists are close to developing a vaccine for chlamydia. [ScienceDaily.com]
• Two badass female NASA commanders will make history next month as they become the first pair of women to lead their orbital missions at the same time. Punky Brewster would be so proud. [MSNBC]
• MSNBC calls out Myriad, a company which is marketing their breast and ovarian cancer tests in TV commercials, for using scare tactics to increase their stock price, alleging that these ads make more business sense for Myriad than for public health or for educating women. [MSNBC]
• The debate over how to teach sex education in India rages on. Bizarrely, the situation there is really no different than the sex education vs. abstinence debate in the US — except that we're a freaking first world country and should be beyond this shit. [Economist]
• Eighty-nine year old Sylvia Levin is awesome — for the last 34 years she's spent six days a week getting people to register to vote, for free. Government experts think the 46,700 voters that Levin has registered are a national record. Think how many scarves she could have knitted instead. [LA Times]

The condom was officially invented and reinvented more times than the wheel, especially by sausage manufacturers who kept noticing what else you might put in that casing.

Condoms may predate even the sausage, having evolved from various other types of penis coverings used as long ago as ancient Egypt. A cave painting at Grotte des Combarelles in France that was determined to be at least 12,000 years old shows what appears to be a couple coupling, Collier says, "and it looked for all the world as if the man had covered himself with some kind of animal skin.

[In the] 17th century [condoms] were sold openly to men and women by tailors and taverns or through special shops.

People of the powdered-wig era liked the protection their condoms offered... from syphilis and other infections.

Condoms: A Look At Their Place In History [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• Eating disorder charities are asking websites like MySpace and Facebook to have stronger rules about their content, after they found that some girls are using the sites to promote the pro-ana mentality. But where will Nicole Richie post her teeny tiny baby bump pictures? [Daily Mail]
  
• Feminist author Taslima Nasreen, who's been a critic of Islam's treatment of women, was attacked by Muslim lawmakers at a book signing in Hyderabad, India. Show your support the capitalist way, by buying her books on Amazon. [Reuters]
  

• Feministing took issue with Hillary Clinton referring to herself as a "girl" during the AFL-CIO's debate the other night. Which we agree with. I mean, what man, besides Flava Flav, refers to himself as a "Boyyyyyyy"? [Feministing]
• Speaking of Hil, the Post (who would seriously sell more papers if they could hate on the Presidential candidate during the entire 2008 election) cites a new poll that has Senator Clinton toppling our handsome boyfriend Barack Obama. Booo! [Ed: Okay, so this opinion doesn't represent all of the Jezebels— at least not yet.] [NY Post]
• Bloomberg's daughter Georgina is makin' it with an Irish equestrian. It seems kind dangerous to horseback ride after 15 pints of Guinness. [NY Post]
• The Department of Investigation reports that at least 10 kid deaths could have been prevented if the Administration for Children's Services wasn't so piss poor incompetent. Apparently, ACS would just clear parents of any abuse charges based solely on their denials. Next you're going to tell us that the "guilty" ones only had to write their kids an apology note. [NY Post]
• Trouble is a-brewin' behind the scenes of the Barney's sale. And we're not even referring to the chick we clocked in the face for trying to rip the 90%-off Marc Jacobs dress out of our hands at the Warehouse close-out. [NY Times]
• Well at least there's some justice in the world... Sort of. A homeless Queens man was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the rape of a woman last year. Enjoy that roof over your head and daily ham sandwich while it lasts — for the next 14,600 days, asshole. [NY Times]
• Peace activist and thorn-in-Bush's-side Cindy Sheehan is running as an Independent against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. No word yet on how she plans to pay for her campaign or woo the gays. [SF Gate]
• A lawsuit against San Francisco's O'Farrell Theatre says that the exotic nightclub acted illegally when it set impossible quotas for its dancers — causing some of them to have to pay out of pocket when they came up short. See the suffering that occurs when Ben Affleck gives up lapdances for marriage and kids? [SF Gate]
• SF Gate writer Violet Blue's guide to conservative sexual fetishes — Michelle Malkin, this one is for you! [SF Gate]
• If all husbands were judged by the ones who write in to Brian Alexander's "Sexploration" column, the chances of marriage would not look good for our boyfriend. [MSNBC]
• Maryland prudes are fighting Montgomery County's new sex ed program in court. They want topics like homosexuality, gender identity, and proper contraception use to only be discussed if a student asks about them. Maryland students, here's an example: "Teacher, if I were a gay and liked to wear my mom's high-heels while I had sex with my best friend Kyle, how would I roll on the rubber?" [Ms.]