When Katy Janousek spoke about contraception I didn't expect to learn as much as I did. Maybe it is because I am a male, and I really don't have to worry about contraception too much, or if it was just I wasn't taught all of the interesting things Ms. Janousek spoke about before this class. I know about the pill, the Nuva Ring, and Plan B before she came in, and I felt post people had known about those contraceptive devices but there was a lot that we still discussed about. She discussed the Depo Provera Shot, the OrthoEvra Patch and Impanon which I thought were really interesting forms of contraception. Then she discussed the IUDs, the Intrauterine Device. This was were modern technology was. It was considered the best contraceptive method, stops periods and works for 5 years. I was totally amazed that we actually had medical advances such as that. Then I wondered again, "was I expected to know about these before Ms. Janousek spoke about them or was this supposed to be new material?" Unless I poll the class, I think I'll never know but it really sparked my interest about sexual education currently in the United States. Did I really have to take HPBR 1710 to actually get this information? It sure feels like it. So do the other students on campus know about these contraceptive methods?
The presentation really shows the major hurdle with sexual education in the United States currently. How do we get the other students on campus to know about these contraceptive methods? To be realistic we know everyone in our friend group who is sexually active or just about. We know so and so is having sex, we might even talk about past sexual encounters with a friend. But publicly even just making the slightest hint to sex is taboo. If Ms. Janousek had fliers of just the worksheet we filled out in class and passed them out in the Tate Plaza I think the information wouldn't grasp people. "Ugh! A contraception flier? Gross!" We would probably hear that a lot even from the people currently using contraceptives. This is the problem with sexual education. The most efficient way of informing people of these new, and actually incredibly cheap, contraceptives is by fliers and PSAs but I think they wont be effective. People would get too scared either from feeling "awkward" or "grossed out" even when this is really important information. So how do we inform the youth about sexual health and contraceptives? Am I really the only odd person that didn't know about these things or does there need to a social change about how we view sex? We can surely keep sex private, but owning up to the fact we have sex would help students realize these different contraceptive methods are okay thus improving public health.
11/30/12
Derrick Weeks
Ashley Derrington Paul Yeduguri Derrick Weeks
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