Class Teaches Women How to OMG WHAT?!

dinsdag 1 oktober 2013

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AppId is over the quota
by Michele Zipp 13 hours ago

Tonight something very special is happening at a school in New York. It's something that women and men all over the world should attend, but obviously due to lack of space isn't going to happen at one venue. It's that important. And it has to do with our rights as women, as people. It has to do with our right to have an orgasm.

The class, offered at Hamilton College (which is highly ranked and considered a hidden Ivy league school) in upstate New York, is called The Female Orgasm and it teaches all genders and all sexual orientations "everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot." Naturally, there's outrage, but for no good reason.

People complain that this isn't the sort of thing that should be taught at a college. But why not? It's a workshop, not curriculum. Besides, why are we so afraid to learn about sexuality -- it is truly one of life's greatest pleasures and what is life without pleasure, without happiness?

Most men are able to achieve orgasm easily. But not all women can. If there is a class that could help some women, then that should be welcomed by all. Well, except for those who want to continue to surpress women's sexuality.

If you think a workshop about orgasms shouldn't be taught at college, I can make the same argument about piano. Taking a piano class at college isn't going to change the world. I tickled some ivory in college, experimented if you will, and never pursued it afterwards. I learned a little something (mostly that I was an awful pianist) and moved on. But if I took a class about orgasms ... that would be a learning to apply with pleasure for the rest of my life.

Marshall Miller and Maggie Keenan-Bolger teach the workshop that will help educate students on how to have an orgasm (for those who never have) or a better orgasm (for those who have), and how to help guys know how to pleasure their girlfriend. There are many people in this world who really could benefit from a class like this. And it's not a hands-on class as some have intimated. The sex educators simply share some tips in a fun and spirited way, and hopefully those in attendance learn a little something to take home and try out. Far too many of us fake it and it's about time more of us have the real thing.

What do you think of this workshop? Would you attend?

Image via Brandon Baunach/Flickr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michele Zipp

loves vintage and will defend skinny jeans to the death though she is highly superstitious and "death" is probably a bad word choice. She has a touch of the hoarding disease and enjoys sleuthing, the worst reality shows, and wearing high heels, even at the playground. She's an AP mom of twins, slightly crunchy but with a pedicure.

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High School Bans ‘Revealing’ Cheerleading Uniforms From Class But Makes Girls Wear Them to Games

dinsdag 27 augustus 2013

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AppId is over the quota

Can we talk about high school sports uniforms for a second? Specifically the uniforms for teenage girls? A community in Florida is in a tizzy at the moment after the school banned cheerleaders from wearing their uniforms to class -- because they don't meet the dress code.

Turns out it's perfectly OK for the girls to shake their hind ends in the short skirts and sleeveless tops in front of fans at a Countryside High School football game, but the school has put the kibosh on actually letting them into class.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

If it ain't good enough for the classroom, why are you letting the kids wear it at a school function? More to the point, why is this the outfit you are providing?

For years I worked as a reporter on the sidelines of high school sporting events. The dichotomy between the uniforms for female athletes and male athletes was striking.

Girls' outfits were always form fitting, always revealing. Boys' outfits were sometimes form fitting (generally wrestling and cross country) but not always, and very rarely did they reveal much more than one would expect to see in a classroom.

Often as I set up my camera to take photos of teams, I would notice girls -- generally girls who weren't stick thin, although not necessarily obese by any means -- uncomfortably yanking down skimpy shorts to try to cover more thigh or trying to adjust impossibly short skirts.

It always bothered me, the photographer. Now it bothers me, the mom. My daughter is currently in youth soccer, where uniforms are unisex. Over-sized shorts and ballooning t-shirts are just the name of the game.

But my memory of my own awkwardness as a teenage girl, my discomfort with my body (and eventual plunge into the world of eating disorders), makes me fear the day she may decide to take on a high school sport and be forced to put her body on display because, well, she's a girl and that's how it works for female athletes in high school.

This is my own personal battle, I'll admit, but it dovetails with the case in Pinellas County, Florida quite well, doesn't it?

Here we have a school where the girls seem to be OK with their cheerleading uniforms, proud of them even. They want to wear them to class to show their school pride -- much as teen athletes do in many schools across the country. But the uniform isn't "appropriate," at least not according to this high school's dress code.

Hello, McFly!

Parents are calling for the school to give these girls a break on the dress code, but the answer seems to be the very opposite.

It isn't the dress code that's the problem. It's the uniform.

Do we really need cheerleading uniforms that can't pass muster with a basic school dress code? Do we really need to put girls who are already dealing with the myriad issues of puberty in outfits like this?

I recognize that athletic uniforms can only be so loose -- for safety's sake -- but if a skirt is so short that it isn't allowed in the classroom, then it is probably a little too revealing. And if it's a little too revealing, why are you forcing girls to wear it? What message are you sending those girls? And what about the girls you're keeping out of sports -- girls who could probably use a safe and positive means of weight control like exercise -- because of uniforms that are made only for the stick thin?

What do you make of this situation? Should teenage girls be wearing athletic uniforms that don't meet the dress code? Would you let YOUR daughter wear a uniform that she couldn't wear to class?

Image via Dunlap23/Flickr

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Teacher Gets Jail Time After Instructing Students to Hit the Class ‘Bully’

vrijdag 23 augustus 2013

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AppId is over the quota
by Nicole Fabian-Weber 16 hours ago

Cynthia Ambrose was an elementary school teacher from San Antonio, Texas. Why was she a teacher and not one anymore? Because Ambrose encouraged her students to line up and hit Aiden Neely, a 6-year-old who was "showing signs of being a bully," as hard as they could so he could see "what it feels like to be a bully." And, being children, they obliged. The assault on Neely stopped after the seventh kid hit him so hard in the back of the head that he began to cry. Yes, this was under the supervision of a teacher.

After being fired from her job, Ambrose was convicted of the misdemeanor charge "official oppression" by a jury, and now she's been sentenced to 30 days in jail. Just or totally out of line?

I'd say this, coupled with the fact that Ambrose will never work as a teacher again, is an appropriate punishment. To think of what all of those children must have felt like that day -- scared, humiliated, confused -- while under the supervision of Ambrose, a teacher, is nauseating. Bullying is obviously a real problem, and it needs to be dealt with, but how Ambrose went about the situation was wrong, and she deserves to be punished for that.

Hopefully, during the 30 days this woman is in prison, she'll sit and really think about what she did. Aiden Neely should have had repercussions if he were being a bully, but not like that. If anyone should know that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," it's a teacher.

Do you think this is an appropriate punishment for Cynthia Ambrose?

Image via Tim (Timothy) Pearce/Flickr

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Mom Harassed for Breastfeeding 16-Day-Old Outside Daughter's Dance Class (VIDEO)

maandag 5 augustus 2013

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AppId is over the quota
by Jeanne Sager 3 hours ago

Here we go again. Another breastfeeding mom has tangled with a real boob about her right to nurse her baby in public. Only Lucy Eades's breastfeeding discrimination case might just take the prize for craziest place a mom was given grief for feeding her kid.

The incident -- which Eades' husband caught on video -- happened at the Burleson Recreation Center in Burleson, Texas. You know what recreation centers are for, don't you?

That's right ... families. So a family-friendly place, a place for moms and kids, had a problem with a mom feeding her ... kid?

Sigh.

As if it isn't hard enough out there for nursing moms to get respect in shopping centers, courthouses, and restaurants, now kid-centric establishments are a problem too?

The City of Burleson defended itself by explaining that it was hosting a camp for 5- to 13-year-olds the day Eades was trying to breastfeed her 16-day-old daughter while her older child attended a dance class:

To be respectful of everyone's rights we asked the women to cover up. There is nothing in the law that prohibits the city from requiring a mother to cover up. We also offered a room in an attempt to be more accommodative. The city did not attempt to prohibit breastfeeding and we fully support the freedom of mothers to breastfeed as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom.

Giant. Eye. Roll.

Come on y'all! The "freedom" of a bunch of kids is not at risk because a mom breastfeeds in their presence, especially not if they're from homes where a mom breastfeeds or their parents have taught them that breastfeeding is normal. Heck, the more kids see breastfeeding, the more likely THEY are to breastfeed (or support a partner doing so) when they grow up. It's like that whole circle of life thing Elton John sang about.

What's really at issue here is why a facility would present opportunities for children, claiming to be a place where parents can take their kids, and then not support parents. Being able to breastfeed at a recreation center for kids is just as important as being able to find a diaper changing station at the same facility.

Either you're family-friendly or you're not, and as long as you're not OK with breastfeeding moms, you're NOT family-friendly.

Do you expect the places where you take your kids be breastfeeding-friendly? Have you ever experienced trouble in one?

Image via _shWard_/Flickr

Click the "Like" button below to get Natural Parenting stories on Facebook. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeanne Sager

writes articles for The Stir by day, slays closet monsters and bounds through bedtime stories with her elementary schooler by night. The Phineas and Ferb soundtrack reverberates through her brain.

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