Posts Written by Megan
By Megan Maas • 10 years ago

10 Things You Never Thought You Could Learn from Kim Hall’s Letter to Teenage Girls

Kimberley Hall is a mom who wrote a blog post in the form of a letter to her sons’ female friends who were posting sexual pictures of themselves on social media outlets. This letter went viral. I posted it on my Facebook account and I have never received such a huge response to a post before, so I decided to look at this deeper and came up with 10 things I think we all can and must learn from what was said and what wasn’t said in Kim’s letter to teenage girls:

1.The sexual double standard (the belief that men should be sexual in multiple ways and women should not) is often difficult to notice (1). Here’s an example: He’s still a virgin? She already lost her virginity? Kim’s letter asked girls to stop posting sexualized pictures of themselves, but her post was full of pictures of her boys flexing in swim trunks. I regularly research the sexual double standard, and even I didn’t immediately notice this hypocrisy. She later apologized and re-did the post with pictures of her boys in clothes.

2.The sexual double standard has changed (2,3). The new sexual double standard is not the same as the old one. Today, girls are expected to refrain from sexual activity, but now they also have to be extremely sexually attractive and go to extreme lengths to prove ...
By Megan Maas • 11 years ago

Brazilian women are taking charge of their births. Will we?

A SYTYCB Entry

We thought our cesarean rate was bad…but check out Brazil’s! Our measly 31% doesn’t compare at all to Brazil’s 51% and 82% for those with private insurance. What’s worse is that research (obviously) points to non-clinical factors for all these cesareans such as time of birth, being married and delivering in a private hospital.  As reported by NPR, the latest peak in the Brazilian birthing controversy came in July, when a medical regulating agency in Rio de Janeiro declared that home births and doulas in hospitals were forbidden. Women took to the streets and organized marches in 13 cities protesting this regulation….and it worked!

The regulation was reversed by court order on July 30th and ...

A SYTYCB Entry

We thought our cesarean rate was bad…but check out Brazil’s! Our measly 31% doesn’t compare at all to Brazil’s 51% and 82% for those with private insurance. What’s worse is that research (obviously) ...
By Megan Maas • 11 years ago

Embracing Our Sexuality: Is Porn the Answer?

A SYTYCB Entry

Trying to embrace your sexuality with porn? You’re not alone. A recent article in the Huffington Post, “Women and the New Pornography-Embracing our Sexuality”, explores the idea of women using pornography. As a doctoral student who researches positive sexuality, pornography, and romantic relationships, I can’t help but cringe when I see an article like this. So little is actually known about how and why women use pornography and more importantly how it contributes to their actual sexual satisfaction in their real lives with real people…all we have is opinion flying all over the place.

When men use pornography, the respective public opinion camps are typically “Boys will be boys” or “He is a misogynist”. Regardless of public ...

A SYTYCB Entry

Trying to embrace your sexuality with porn? You’re not alone. A recent article in the Huffington Post, “Women and the New Pornography-Embracing our Sexuality”, explores the idea of women using pornography. As a ...