MOOCs, menstrual cups, and more weekend links

If buying condoms was like getting birth control pills . . .

• The 20th World Congress on Controversies in Obstetrics, Gynecology & Infertility (COGI) meets in Paris, December 4-7, 2014. This year’s meeting will feature a workshop on the first successful live birth from a uterus transplant.
• According to a UK study by The Eve Appeal, an charity organization dedicated to raising money for research and treatment of gynecological cancers, only half of the women surveyed between the ages of 26-35 were able to correctly locate and label the female reproductive system on a diagram.
• The University of California at San Francisco is about to start a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) about abortion. The course, which involves more than 20 faculty members, is intended to  help health providers in the United States and around the world with patient care and the public health aspects of abortion. You can take the course for free or for a certificate, but it starts Monday, October 13, so jump on it.
• Are any of my M.A.R.C. ladies reading re:Cycling? Here’s a great way to demonstrate that menstrual cups don’t leak.

Birth control do’s and don’ts and more weekend links

• Shakira Andrea Sison recently published this piece at The Rappler about the still-powerful influence of menstrual shame and stigma.
• Gary Schwitzer at Health News Review takes down the media coverage of the BMJ study titled, “Association of skirt size and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in older women“. Hint: “linked to” does not mean “causes”.
• Adolescents with disabilities are often overlooked in discussions of birth control access, but data show that adolescents with disabilities and chronic illnesses have similar levels of sexual behaviors and sexual health outcomes.
• Between 2011 and 2013, 205 new restrictions on abortion access were enacted at the state level in the U.S. A new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights has found the more abortion restrictions present, the worse a state performed overall on indicators of women’s and children’s well-being — contrary to the stated goals of legislators imposing such restrictions. Download the report here.
• Faux tampon earring provokes faux outrage at xoJane. 
• A new study related to the longitudinal Contraceptive CHOICE Project was published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, show that teens with access to birth control at no cost, especially long-acting reversible methods such as implants and injections, will have fewer abortions. The study has received a great deal of media attention.
• Young women are desperate for contraception: a 22-year-old woman in Colombia recently had to have a potato surgically removed from her vagina after it had grown roots, causing her serious abdominal pain. She placed it there two weeks earlier, on the advice of her mother, as a contraceptive. According to Colombia Reports: The fact that a 22-year-old women was so naïve as to believe that a potato was an appropriate and safe method of contraception shows a concerning lack of education for young people as to the options available for them when they become sexually active.

Advantages of a menstrual cup and more weekend links

This video delineating seven reasons to use menstrual cups is entertaining, but we’d like to point out that a reusable cup (such as Diva Cup, Moon Cup, Keeper, etc.) will last much longer than ONE year.

• What goes in eventually comes out somehow. The excreted drugs pass right through most sewage treatment processes and end up in rivers and lakes, and then in our drinking water.
• Emergency Contraception can now be legally purchased over-the-counter, without a prescription, by anyone of any age in the U.S., but it’s not always available to young men who try to purchase it for their partners. A study involving three “mystery shoppers” in New York found the men told to bring a woman or her I.D. with him at 22 pharmacies.
• Why it’s important to teach children accurate names for their private parts.
• A new study from Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health has demonstrated some success implementing the Standard Days Method® of fertility awareness contraception “on a national level in a low resource environment”, i.e. in Rwanda, one of the poorest nations in the world.
• Kotex welcomes consumer reviews of their products online, but there are some words the site will not publish. One of those words is vagina.

HPV news, the truth about the G-spot, and more weekend links

• The Sunday New York Times published interactive graphs showing the likelihood of failure of the most popular methods of birth control in the U.S., comparing typical use to perfect use.
• Sanitary panties: Not just for ladies anymore (via Chris Bobel).
• Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviews Dr. Penny Castellano, Chief Medical Officer at Emory Clinic, about menopause and the need to continue using birth control. The concern is sound, but the inconsistency of whether menopause describes a moment or transisional years is confusing. (Video plus transcript)
• Another ladymag publishes another story of pulmonary embolism from birth control pills. These just never get old, do they?
• The newest advocacy tool in HPV prevention and vaccine promotion: Grandmother power.
• Speaking of HPV, it may be possible to diagnose with a urine in the not-too-distant future.
• Does the G-spot exist? It’s complicated.
• The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has advocated since December 2012 that birth control pills be available without a prescription. The Republican Party has only recently jumped on the bandwagon, seemingly because unlike with prescription pills, most insurance companies would not cover over-the-counter birth control. OTC pills could cost women $600 a year, compared to $0 under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
• Period sex. Let’s talk about it. ‘Cause we’re doing it.
• This striking photo essay of the chaupadi tradition in Nepal was published last spring, but we missed it. Check it out now. Chaupadi is the practice of menstrual seclusion; women and girls sleep in sheds or outbuildings while menstruating, and have little contact with others. They are also exposed to the elements, and easily suffer exposure and illness.

Tampon Video Game! Menstruation Illustrated! and more weekend links

• The National Academies of Science recently confirmed that styrene is a carcinogenic chemical. Why do we care? Styrene is among the chemicals listed as a fragrance in Procter & Gamble products – but P&G doesn’t identify which products. So is styrene in Tampax tampons or Always pads? We don’t know, because femcare companies are not required to list ingredients on the packages.
• What if celebrities are wrong? That’s not as trivial a question as it may sound: Consider the Angelina Jolie Effect, in which the media presented an overwhelmingly positive slant toward Jolie’s mastectomy, while overlooking the relative rarity of her situation.
• Here’s a really cool survey of female cartoonists talking about drawing their bodies.
• The venerable Black Women’s Health Imperative is hosting a webinar next week about gynecologic cancers: Myths, Misunderstandings and the Truth about Gynecologic Cancers, Screenings and the Affordable Care Act will be held September 17, at 12:00 pm  EDT/9:00 am PDT. Advance registration is required.
• Have you ever searched a database of stock photos for menstruation-related images? Rachel has. She found a lot more than tampon pictures.
• Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-California) dropped a line to Larry Merlo, CEO of CVS Health (a chain of drugstores in the U.S.), to inquire about the little matter of their implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Women’s Health Amendment. It seems some stores were illegally charging co-pays for generic birth control pills, which are supposed to be covered at no cost. Representative Speier has a few questions for Mr. Merlo [pdf].
• The popular lesbian site Autostraddle published an article this week about alternatives to disposable menstrual products and the menstrual cup. There’s some interesting discussion happening in the comments about whether or not the sponge is an animal and therefore philosophically acceptable for vegan use.
• Is there a link between depression and menopause? A new study in Maturitas identifies biological as well as psychosocial factors that are likely to be contributing in an individual.
• Is it really going to happen this time? Bustle says we can put birth control for men on our calendars.
• September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. The rate of the disease has dropped, but it is still the fifth-leading malignant cause of death among U.S. women.
• Do you crave sandwiches when you’re menstruating? Maybe you need a Bloodfeast like the Ragwood.
• This week at Lady Clever, Holly Grigg-Spall interviewed Alisa Vitti, author of best-selling book Woman Code.
• Findings of a study published this month in the Journal of Women’s Health suggest that early life emotional and physical abuse increase the risk of PMS in the middle-to-late reproductive years.
• So has everybody checked out Tampon Run, the new video game created by teenagers? The premise is simple: Collect tampons, shoot them at your enemies, and don’t run out of them before your moon cycle is over. Read more about the game and the two young women who created it. (By the way, that article has been ‘liked’ on Facebook more than 21,000 times.)

Challenges for women’s health and more weekend links

You’ve already done the ALS ice bucket challenge, now take the lemon challenge and help end endometriosis.

• There’s also the taco and/or beer challenge for reproductive rights: You just eat a taco, and/or drink a beer, and donate to an abortion fund.
• According to a study reported in The Independent, half of young British women are unable to properly label a vagina on a medical diagram, while 65 per cent have admitted they have a problem simply using the words vagina or vulva.
• Some Republican politicians have announced support of birth control pills over-the-counter. Advocates are skeptical.
• Menopause may lead to depression, says Margery Gass in the North American Menopause Society Blog.
• GoodWorksWellness offers natural solutions for treating PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome).
• Five things about tampons learned in 20 years of menstruating.

 

Mythological periods, controversial underwear ads, and more weekend links

• Your period, day-by-day, with the women of M-TV’s Girl Code.
• Hospitals are less likely to encourage Black mothers to breastfeed.
• A lingerie company that specializes in ‘leak-proof’ underwear for menstruation and for new moms has been catching some flak for its new ad campaign featuring women CEOs of technology companies posing in their underwear.
• Rachel Walden at the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog explains why healthy young women (under 65) do not need DEXA bone density scans.
• BPA and the risks to ovaries – across generations.
• Admit it – you’ve wondered, too. Do werewolves and vampires have periods? What about mermaids?
• On the problems of the ‘cancer warrior’ metaphor: Not everyone who fights breast cancer is Muhammed Ali; some are Joe Frazier.
• This Buzzfeed listicle about how 11 foods affect vaginal health includes links and references.
• IUDs can’t prevent ectopic pregnancies. (They are very rare, though.)
• Breaking news: Men have feelings, and hormones. Holly Grigg-Spall writes about testosterone treatement, Low-T, and the pharmaceuticalization of us all.
• Here’s some tips from Kelli Dunham for getting through your biannual gynecological exam, even if previous trauma makes it seem impossible.

Period acceptance, openness about being HPV+, and more weekend links

1970s advertising flashback: Watch these ladies share a shameful secret, and pity them.

• Rebecca, regular contributor at xoJane, says she’s terrible at menstruating. She’s got a lot of company, as there are currently more than 400 comments.
• Here’s a detailed chart comparing birth control methods, rating effectiveness in typical use and perfect use and explaining how each works. It also separates hormonal methods from non-hormonal methods.
• New York City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito went public with her HPV+ diagnosis to encourage others to get tested.
• Holly Grigg-Spall penned a thoughtful piece about period acceptance for Lady Clever this week, featuring quotes from several members of SMCR.
• On the relationship between police brutality and reproductive justice.
• What happens when, for medical reasons, women elect to freeze their eggs for future use? Turns out there is very little follow-up research on this population.  A study at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam found that none of the women in their small sample had used her cryopreserved oocytes, although 16 women had tried to conceive. Most considered the frozen eggs to be a last-resort option.
• Do you have a passion for both cycling and (bi)cycling? Join the Sustainable Cycles Spring 2015 tour! Want to know more about previous tours?  Sarah Konner and Toni Craigie rode the west coast (U.S.) in 2011, and Rachel Horn and her friend Owen rode 4624 miles across the country in 2013, distributing menstrual cups and educating about menstruation all the way.