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National Center on Sexual Exploitation, March 17, 2020

COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2. Call it what you want, but the novel coronavirus is all anyone is talking about anymore. The COVID-19 health pandemic has closed schools, cancelled most activities, and isolated most everyone at home all at once. In the midst of the social distancing, self-isolation, quarantines, and lockdowns, we’re all feeling some cabin fever and parents, in particular, may be feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of eight weeks of time with their children home from school unexpectedly.

Now more than ever, kids and teens will be spending extra time online via phones, tablets, laptops, […]

Petition highlighting failure of Pornhub to protect rape and revenge porn victims has attracted over 350,000 signatures

Opinion: Pornhub needs to change – or shut down
Harriet Grant, The Guardian, March 9, 2020

An online petition accusing Pornhub, the UK’s biggest open access porn site, from profiting from videos of rape and sexual abuse has reached over 350,000 signatures.

Pornhub is the world’s biggest porn site and was visited 42bn times last year. It is free to access, with no age restrictions, and raises revenue through advertising and paid-for promotions by porn producers.

The serious allegations levied against Pornhub owner Mindgeek centre on the […]

Unfortunately, many well-established brands, companies, and organizations in America do just that. Since 2013, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has published an annual Dirty Dozen List to name and shame the mainstream players in America that perpetuate sexual exploitation—whether that be through pornography, prostitution, sexual objectification, sexual violence and/or sex trafficking.

The Dirty Dozen List is an activism tool that gives back power to individuals who want a voice in the culture. People can participate by taking easy online actions, from sending emails to sharing social media messages.

In today’s world, corporations drive our culture. They influence how people communicate, how […]

A global research review of school-based “comprehensive sex education” programs that emphasize condom use and use of contraceptives as primary strategies recommended to youth found very little effectiveness from these programs and instead found increased sexual activity.

The review, conducted by the Institute for Research & Evaluation and published in the Institute of Law and Medicine in January, examined 60 studies of 40 school-based comprehensive sex education programs in the U.S. as well as 43 studies of 39 programs in other countries.

The review found “little evidence that [comprehensive sex education] programs are effective at producing positive impact on their participants” and […]

Editor’s Note: According to the National Institutes of Health, 9 out of 10 adults who are alcoholic or alcohol dependent STARTED DRINKING AT AGE 20 OR YOUNGER, AS TEENAGERS.

By Shari Rudavsky (IndyStar)

INDIANAPOLIS – Although Rachel Martin would never deny she had a drinking problem, she figured years would pass before it would take a toll on her health. After all, she had not yet hit 40 and she had managed to eke out two years of complete sobriety about a decade ago.

Even when she was drinking, she would hit the bottle hard […]

I began part one of “Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?” with data showing the apparently unprecedentedly high rate of unhappiness among young people in America (and elsewhere, but I am focusing on America). The rates of suicide, self-injury, depression, mass shootings and loneliness (at all ages) are higher than ever recorded. It seems that Americans may have been happier, and certainly less lonely, during the Great Depression and World War II than today, even with today’s unprecedentedly high levels of health, longevity, education and material well-being.

There is, of course, no single explanation, and I listed a number of […]

Here are some unhappy statistics:

— In America between 1946 and 2006, the suicide rate quadrupled for males ages 15 to 24 and doubled for females the same age.

— In 1950, the suicide rate per 100,000 Americans was 11.4. In 2017, it was 14.

— According to Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, in the 1980s, there were 32 mass public shootings (which he defines as incidents in which four or more people are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours). In the 1990s, there were 42. In the first decade of this century, there […]

Is it possible?

Yes, you can contract oral herpes, aka cold sores, from kissing, but developing genital herpes this way is less likely.

Oral herpes (HSV-1) is usually transmitted by kissing, and genital herpes (HSV-2) is most often spread through vaginal, anal, or oral sex. Both HSV-1 and HSV-2 can cause genital herpes, but genital herpes is most commonly caused by HSV-2.

There’s no need to swear off kissing forever on account of herpes, though. Read on for everything you need to know about herpes from kissing and other contact.

How does kissing transmit HSV?

Oral herpes is mainly transmitted by skin-to-skin contact with someone who […]

Why would anyone want to watch a movie about Mr. Rogers?

We all like movies that make us feel like a bigger person when it’s
over. Maybe for that reason, I liked the movie, It’s a Beautiful Day in
the Neighborhood.  From the movie’s quote, “He’s a little more complex
than I thought,” it’s going to take some time for me to unpack the
lessons in this movie, or in the life of Fred Rogers. I’ll be watching
it again. Besides, it has some fairly nice drama.

The main character of the movie was a writer named Lloyd Vogel rather than
Fred Rogers and it was mostly based […]