November 02, 2007
Radicalizing Pornography
Dylan van Rijsbergen in signandsight.com, originally in Trouw (Netherlands):
A few weeks ago it was all over town. A billboard with a picture of a beautiful near-naked female body, wearing nothing but a bra. Eyes invisible. In front of her vagina a small designer bag. The poster bore the words: "lesson 84: lead him into temptation."
It was not so much the Photoshopped perfection of the female body that triggered me. Nor the absence of the woman's eyes, which made the body into an anonymous signifier of pure sexuality. I was not irritated because the picture forced on me the voyeuristic gaze of the heterosexual, macho-male observer, turning women into sex-objects. Most shocking for me was the fact that the little bag and the vagina were totally interchangeable. The billboard suggested that sexual temptation and the temptation to buy commodities were one and the same. The picture was not only about turning women into sexual objects. It was about transforming human sexual desire into a commodity. Interchangeable, standardized and ready to be sold to the highest bidder.
The debate about the pornofication of society was started by feminists and conservatives alike. Feminists like the American writer Ariel Levy and Dutch publicist Stine Jensen criticize the way women are portrayed in an inferior and humiliating fashion as no more than compliant slaves of male desire. Conservatives of either Islamic or Christian origin are also unhappy with this sexualization of the public space. In their view sexuality should not be displayed in the open. It should be restricted to the privacy of marriage. All these naked bodies on billboards, on television and on the Internet are only leading men and women into temptation. In their opinion, it is likely that these images will stimulate sinful behaviour.Conservatives usually blame the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies for sexual morals disappearing down the drain.
In a sense they are right.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:57 PM | Permalink
Comments
Hooray for images that "stimulate sinful behaviour." WE need far more sinners, or WE need to remove the idea of sin altogether. Is it possible to remove those who taught US about sin as well?
Yes, I agree with you that WE have transformed "human sexual desire into a commodity. Interchangeable, standardized and ready to be sold to the highest bidder." This transformation was not recent, or solely by billboards and underwear advertisers.
Sex has been a commodity since the Stone Age. I'm not sure whether sex being a commodity is a good thing, but I know that open sexuality beats out the ideas of fundamentalist and conservative, Puritanical proclaimers of sin, whether THEY are Islamic, Christian, or feminist.
PS: Is that post above miine some kind of comment on what you wrote that I should look at? I went to a couple of the links and just got slow-loading, pop-up sending ads for children's games.
Posted by: RicHARD Makepeace | Nov 3, 2007 5:58:15 AM
Some older African-American women
use the word "purse" as a synonym for "vagina".
Posted by: Thomas | Nov 3, 2007 10:22:46 AM
"but I know that open sexuality beats out the ideas of fundamentalist and conservative, Puritanical proclaimers of sin, whether THEY are Islamic, Christian, or feminist."
There is a direct causal link between single-motherhood and poverty. Perhaps you should consider first making abortion mandatory. Condoms are only 90% effective in preventing pregnancy and STDs under the best of circumstances. It's a wash if they are universally used and you only increase frequency 10 fold. Increasing it 100 fold like it is today and you guarantee the epidemics that we are now seeing.
Still think chastity is so horrible? Your way is killing millions.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 3, 2007 10:50:22 AM
it's just advertisement.
Posted by: eric | Nov 3, 2007 11:07:44 AM
I FOR ONE, CAN STATE FROM MY VAST PERSONAL EXPERIENCE THAT A PURSE IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SUBSTITUTE FOR A VIGINA.
NOT AT ALL AND NEVER WILL BE.
PURSES BY NATURE ARE COLD, DRY AND UNMOVING (NOT UNLIKE MY FIRST WIFE HOWEVER). THE CLASPS HURT.
VIGINAS ARE COMPLETELY THE OPPOSITE AND, VIVE LA DIFFERENCE, I SAY
Posted by: HUGHIE | Nov 3, 2007 6:52:32 PM
I rather like the image. My only complaint is that as advertisement by necessity it is not initmate enough for the subject matter, but then what it lacks in intimacy, it makes up for in what we hope will be brevity.
Posted by: d luc | Nov 6, 2007 1:36:27 PM
I object to the feminist language in the post. The allegation of the macho male gaze makes no sense whatsoever. Aren't they trying to sell to women? Why would a macho male perspective appeal to women? Maybe it's not a macho male gale. Maybe it's a female fantasy.
Posted by: instafaggot | Nov 6, 2007 5:21:18 PM
Carlos:
I generally agree that single motherhood is linked to poverty and welfare. However, I don't agree with your assertion of a "direct causal link". Isn't that a little conflated (and therefore not "direct)?
Further, I don't see how naughty pictures are connected to either single motherhood or std.
Posted by: instafaggot | Nov 6, 2007 5:24:54 PM
Good point about this "naughty" picture, but that was not what I meant. I was responding to an earlier comment.
I actually, since you mention it, thought the photo was rather beautiful and not particularly "naughty" at all, but I couldn't guarantee everyone would feel the same way.
As far as your first objection. I don't see the conflation. Here is a link to some statistics
There is, as I see it, a connection between the public display of sexuality and the practice of it. It's powerful, this urge we have. The former poorly realized (or practiced) system —of restraint— was the best idea human society seemed to have been able to come up with to re-channel this energy and, well, earn it.
Now, with the brake-cables ripped out and tossed out the window, all we seem to be able to agree on is that we should merely sit back and tally up the societal costs of having no brakes. The "very idea" that, oh I dunno...BRAKES! might be a good idea seems to be too rude to mention in polite society.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 6, 2007 8:18:54 PM
Carlos, your statistics are wrong. For example, the first link after googling "condom effectiveness" gives
* In one year, only two of every 100 couples who use condoms consistently and correctly will experience an unintended pregnancy—two pregnancies arising from an estimated 8,300 acts of sexual intercourse, for a 0.02 percent per-condom pregnancy rate.[3]
* In one year with perfect use (meaning couples use condoms consistently and correctly at every act of sex), 98 percent of women relying on male condoms will remain pregnancy free. With typical use, 85 percent relying on male condoms will remain pregnancy free.[3]
* In one year with perfect use, 95 percent of women relying on the female condom will remain pregnancy free. With typical use, 79 percent relying on female condoms will remain pregnancy free.[3]
* By comparison, only 15 percent of women using no method of contraception in a year will remain pregnancy free.[3]
Also:
* A recent study of declining HIV prevalence in Uganda found no evidence that abstinence or monogamy had contributed to the decline. Findings identified the increased use of condoms in casual relationships as important in Uganda's declining HIV infection rates.[7]
[3] # Hatcher RA et al. Contraceptive Technology, 18th rev. ed. New York: Ardent Media, 2004.
[7] Wawer MJ et al. Declines in HIV Prevalence in Uganda: Not as Simple as ABC. Presentation at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, February 22-25, 2005, Boston, Massachusetts; http://www.retroconference.org/2005/CD/Abstracts/25775.htm; accessed 3/2/2005.
So your 90% figure is just wrong. But even if the effectiveness was 99.99%, you'd still object to "public display of sexuality" because, bottom line, it's all about you (and the Church) wanting to control other people's behavior.
Posted by: anon | Nov 7, 2007 8:40:59 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_us/teen_sex
Posted by: anon | Nov 8, 2007 9:10:40 AM
I suppose it would be illegal to add one of these stickers
http://xkcd.com/store/actual_size_200.png
Posted by: Hank Roberts | Nov 8, 2007 12:03:48 PM
Thank you for raising these issues.
Point 1 Condom effectiveness in pregnancy reduction.
Point 2, however, regarding the Uganda studies. Here is a source from one of your references:
Declines in HIV Prevalence in Uganda: Not as Simple as ABC
I see very little joy in this report. As you will see, prevalence (the total number of people infected) IS clearly declining, but the report points out that mortality is largely the reason for the decline. And while condom use did increase, incidence (the number of newly HIV infected individuals) also increased.
Please note the increase was 40% overall and in young adults, with a 10% decline among adolescentsThe next point would be, fairly, "yes, but more people were having sex and HIV didn't increase proportionally" Perhaps, but we are not provided these numbers so we can't tell. Additionally, though, have we considered saturation? You can't infect someone twice, so a flattening of the infection curve to some degree (if that is even happening) could be only a measure of the increasing difficulty of finding an uninfected person.
We go on...
But consider. If you double the number of sexual encounters -now more than just likely because the agreement to engage has been completed, and the assumed risk is low- the effectiveness is already 90%. If you increase frequency by an order of magnitude, the chances of a perfect user of condoms acquiring HIV is 50%.Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 1:27:23 PM
Not so. We want YOU to control your behavior. All we can do is point out the simple truth that needless suffering and epic tragedy is demonstrably the result of removing the bounds of propriety and restraint from the social contract. I don't suppose you are suggesting we should not have the right to proclaim our views, are you?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 1:38:47 PM
"98 percent of women relying on male condoms will remain pregnancy free"
This 2% failure rate for perfect use, coupled with the fact that women are only fertile 20% of the time, seems to demonstrate, as I said, that condoms are only 90% effective. The transmissibility of HIV is stated elsewhere as 10% for unprotected sex, which explains the 95% effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV. In practice, this means if you have perfectly protected sex 20 times in an HIV dense environment, the odds are you will get AIDS...and it is the advice of the non-Catholic world community that you go ahead with that plan.
All we nasty mean Catholics are saying is that that is just plain nuts.
Would you get on a plane that had this sort of record?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 2:11:23 PM
"If you increase frequency [of sexual encounters] by an order of magnitude"
What on earth are you talking about? I'm not proposing one huge orgy, and neither is anyone else who's for a more comprehensive plan than just abstinence. I hope you realize that they have the same goals* as you, to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and STDs. It's just that one approach is reasonable and based on evidence, and the other is, well, not.
* Except that they don't want to control other people's behavior.
Posted by: anon | Nov 8, 2007 2:28:51 PM
One order of magnitude is ten times. Not such a big deal, unless HIV is the result
"It's just that one approach is reasonable and based on evidence, and the other is, well, not."
What on earth are you talking about? You provided the link to the reference that stated that infections continued to increase with increased usage of condoms.
Perhaps what you meant to say was that one is based on reading comprehension, and one is not.
And if you don't want to control others behavior, why are you in my kids' 3rd grade class, teaching them about pre-marital sex and alternate lifestyles? Get real. You're in denial, and people are dying because of it.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 2:52:31 PM
I don't follow your math. Look again at the statistics I quoted:
* with perfect condom use, 2% of women get pregnant in one year
* with no contraception, 85% of women get pregnant in one year
I'm overwhelmed facing so many lies and strawmen, so I'm backing out of this thread now.
Posted by: anon | Nov 8, 2007 6:50:27 PM
As you please. I posted links to scholarly research your own links referenced for their conclusions. They were there for you to check, and still are, but if there was a lie or a strawman among them, it was not of my doing.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 7:05:37 PM
We can do a little more work with these numbers, if you wish.
As is commonly known, women are only fertile 20% of the time.
Therefore, for condoms to reduce 20 to 2 they only have to be 90 percent effective. Correct?
Now the second statistic one would ordinarily expect to be 100%. This is perfect sex, right? done consistently, correctly and equally during all phases of a woman's fertility cycle. That it turns out to be only 85% is something we need to account for in our first result as well.
Reducing the original 90% by 15% gives us a required effectiveness rate of 86.5% in order to achieve a 98% reduction in pregnancy.
You are free to reject my math. I am merely a graphic designer. I hereby open the floor to anyone who would care to prove me stoopid. It is absolutely not my intention to field strawmen, or to lie in any way. After all, lives are at stake here, not egos.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 7:53:12 PM
Therefore, for condoms to reduce 20 to 2 they only have to be 90 percent effective. Correct?
How are you defining "percent effective", exactly? The chance that they will work in any given sexual encounter, perhaps? If so, you need to understand that the "percent effectivity" in quoted figures doesn't mean that, it means the chance a contraceptive method will work for an average person using it regularly in any given year. To translate that into a percent effectivity per encounter, you'd have to know how many times per year the average person in these studies is having sex. For example, if the average woman in these studies has sex 30 times per year during their fertile period, that means that the 98% effectiveness rate would mean they have an effectivity of 99.93268% per encounter (because 0.9993268^30 = 0.98--see this online calculator). If the average woman in these studies only has sex 10 times in their fertile period per year, then they'd have an effectivity of 99.7981% per encounter. And of course, the failure rate in quoted figures includes failures due to incompetence, such as putting it on the wrong way or even forgetting to use it on occasion.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 8, 2007 10:10:22 PM
I am only basing my observations on the data provided. The given criteria was over the course of a full year. For any greater precision in rates of encounter, you will have to refer to the original study "anon" referenced.
Any suggestion that the encounters were exclusive to fertile periods seems counter to the scope of the study.
Failures due to incompetence are specifically excluded per the study's exclusion of non-"perfect" use.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 10:24:21 PM
I am only basing my observations on the data provided. The given criteria was over the course of a full year.
Yes, and if "percent effectiveness" is defined over the course of a full year, then it is meaningless to say something along the lines of "since women are only fertile 20% of the time, condoms are only 90% effective", as you did. If "% effective" means "% of people who will avoid pregnancy over the course of a full year", then it's completely irrelevant what percentage of the year the woman is fertile. That's why I speculated that perhaps you were talking about the percent effectivity per encounter during the woman's fertile period...but if that's not what you meant, then please clarify what you did mean, if in fact you had any clearly-defined meaning in mind.
Any suggestion that the encounters were exclusive to fertile periods seems counter to the scope of the study.
I wasn't suggesting that--as I said, I was trying to interpret your 90% figure. If you meant the likelihood of avoiding pregnancy per single encounter during the fertile period, then if the average woman in the study has sex 150 times per year (about once every other day), and is fertile 20% of the time, then there'd be about 30 such encounters; if the average woman in the study has sex 50 times a year (about once a week), there'd be about 10 such encounters. And as I said, these would mean an effectiveness of 99.93268% or 99.7981% per encounter in the fertile period, respectively.
Failures due to incompetence are specifically excluded per the study's exclusion of non-"perfect" use.
Ah, my mistake, I didn't look at that particular study--not all quoted effectiveness rates assume perfect use.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 8, 2007 10:41:09 PM
"Therefore, for condoms to reduce 20 to 2 they only have to be 90 percent effective. Correct?"
This is embarrassingly wrong. What if instead of 2% it was 22%? Would you think that condoms are -10 percent effective?
Look, you're comparing apples to oranges: The 20% means that a particular woman will be fertile 20 days out of every 100. The 2% means that over the course of a year, 2 women out of every 100 who use condoms perfectly will become pregnant.
Without condoms, the chance that a woman gets pregnant over the course of a year is 85%. With condoms, that chance becomes 2%. Instead of 85 women getting pregnant, only two women do. Using condoms reduces a person's chance of getting pregnant by a factor of 40. If you want to define the "effectiveness" to be the reduction in chance of getting pregnant over a year, it's 83/85 = 98%.
QED.
Posted by: anon | Nov 8, 2007 10:44:55 PM
Any clarity sought is completely available in the preceding posts.
They weren't all that complicated. Your objections seem both overly complex and confused. Why don't you re-read my posts tomorrow, and I will do the same. There were no hoops leapt through, nor rules broken, as far as I can see. Unless you have plumbed the depths of the studies criteria and found something I missed, effectiveness-exclusively-while-fertile numbers are not a part of the study, which was overall over the course of the entire (80% infertile) year.
If you (tomorrow perhaps) care to provide a reason for your claim that "it is meaningless to say something along the lines of "since women are only fertile 20% of the time, condoms are only 90% effective" in relation to another's claim that they are 98% effective overall. To my eye, it is simple math.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 10:58:06 PM
"This is embarrassingly wrong. What if instead of 2% it was 22%? Would you think that condoms are -10 percent effective?"
Well, yes, exactly. If condom use turned a 20% fertility rate into a 22% fertility rate, that would be a 10% decrease in infertility.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 8, 2007 11:20:32 PM
If you (tomorrow perhaps) care to provide a reason for your claim that "it is meaningless to say something along the lines of "since women are only fertile 20% of the time, condoms are only 90% effective" in relation to another's claim that they are 98% effective overall. To my eye, it is simple math.
It's meaningless math, unless you specify what event it is that you're saying has a 90% probability--a 90% chance of what? Not the probability of getting pregnant at any point during the entire year--that would be 98%. Not the probability of getting pregnant during any single encounter while fertile, as I explained. And it's also not the probability of getting pregnant at any point during the ~73 days (20% of 365) when the woman is fertile in a year--that would still be 98%, since presumably the 2% failure rate per year can only be due to pregnancies that happened when the woman was fertile!
Your math seems especially nonsensical because, as far as I can tell, you were comparing the percentage of days per year when a woman is fertile (20%) with the percent of women who will get pregnant in a year of regular condom use (2%), and saying that since 2% is 1/10 of 20% that somehow means condoms are 90% effective since 1 - 1/10 = 9/10. As anon said, this is a bizarre apples and oranges comparison...if a less effective method of birth control caused 30% of women who used it for a year to get pregnant, then since 30% is 3/2 of 20% would that somehow mean condoms are -50% effective since 1 - 3/2 = -1/2?
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 8, 2007 11:29:11 PM
Well, yes, exactly. If condom use turned a 20% fertility rate into a 22% fertility rate, that would be a 10% decrease in infertility.
You're confusing totally different things here, you said earlier the 20% figure was the amount of time that a woman is fertile (i.e. around 73 days out of 365), while the 2% fertility rate for condom use is not a fraction of time at all, it is a probability of getting pregnant at least once during a year of regular sexual encounters involving condoms. The fact that a woman is fertile 20% of the time does not mean if she has sex without contraceptives for a year she has a 20% probability of getting pregnant at at least once during that year! As mentioned earlier, the probability in this case would be 85%.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 8, 2007 11:36:11 PM
This reminds of something I read earlier today:
"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it."
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1022757_cool_cash_card_confusion
Posted by: anon | Nov 8, 2007 11:42:55 PM
The 90% refers to the chance that the condom will not fail.
Remember, this is a dual use device. It prevents pregnancy, and it blocks the transmission of HIV. The 92% effective in preventing pregnancy study was put forth as a rebuttal to my claim that condoms were 90% effective.
Here is a thought experiment. In this study, monogamous couples who perfectly-100% of the time-used condoms became pregnant 2% of the time even though the woman was only fertile 20% of the time.
What would the result have been if the same couples were fertile 100% of the time; if the opportunity for fertilization were increased by 400%? Would the results have been proportionate to that increase?
Theoretically, a condom could fail 80% of the time and still be 100% effective in preventing pregnancy in a monagamous relationship where the infertility rate was constant. HIV, however, is always potentially transmissible.
If you look back at the links I posted, the transmission rates in spite of "perfect" and the far more common "normal" condom usage are clearly expounded upon by epidemiologists. Their results seem much more related to mine, and far more sobering than mine (and based on real data, as opposed to this "perfect" study). If you really want to get to the bottom of this, you would probably get a lot more out of it if you checked your math against theirs, rather than mine, and this "perfect" hence entirely theoretical study. People dying in Africa while being convinced that condoms are protecting them is anything but theoretical.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 9, 2007 12:03:19 AM
So simple fractions are beyond your intellectual capacity.
But there is more... The reason why I included that statistic on Uganda is that the last link you provided in the earlier thread was the following:
http://www.crosswalk.com/1180592/
( from http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/10/why-believers-s.html )
It's titled "Sexual Abstinence Behind Uganda's AIDS Success Story". I can only assume that you support its conclusion, that (1) the Uganda program has been somewhat successful and that (2) abstinence has been the reason. The article (amazingly) isn't dated, but going to the original source it's from January 2003. The reference I gave is from February 2005 and claims that (1) the Uganda program has been somewhat successful and that (2') condoms, not abstinence or monogamy, has been the reason. Now, your "analysis" of this is that (1') the Uganda program has not been successful and that (2') condoms, not abstinence or monogamy, has been the reason. Thus, it seems that you simultaneously support positions (1) and (2) AND positions (1') and (2'). Think hard about whether this should be possible.
So simple logic is also beyond your intellectual capacity.
I considered making some snarky comment about how it all doesn't really matter because you have God on your side, but I thought better of it.
Posted by: anon | Nov 9, 2007 9:41:29 AM
The 90% refers to the chance that the condom will not fail.
It's meaningless to talk about the chance the condom will not fail without specifying a number of encounters (either giving an explicit number or doing it implicitly by giving the time frame in which the encounters occur). So what are you talking about here (if you have any well-defined idea yourself)--a single encounter? All the encounters in an average year of sexual activity? All the encounters in an average year that took place while the woman was fertile? In none of these cases would the answer be 90%.
Here is a thought experiment. In this study, monogamous couples who perfectly-100% of the time-used condoms became pregnant 2% of the time even though the woman was only fertile 20% of the time.
What would the result have been if the same couples were fertile 100% of the time; if the opportunity for fertilization were increased by 400%? Would the results have been proportionate to that increase?
If the couples were fertile 100% of the time, that would be a increase by a factor of 5 (500%), not 4. In this case the probability of becoming pregnant in one year would be 0.98^5, which as it happens would be about 90.4% (although this has nothing to do with how you derived your own 90% figure).
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 9, 2007 9:58:59 AM
Carlos, perhaps this is beyond you, but you ought to seriously engage with the possibility that you don't understand that math behind the statistics that have been quoted to you. Having an opinion is one thing. Wanting to control the behaviour of adults is a more serious thing, but backing that desire up with an incomplete understanding of how the world actually operates is surely something to avoid if at all possible.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Nov 9, 2007 5:03:53 PM
I considered this possibility Nick, alongside the possibility that the reverse is true, and you all can't get past some fatal flaw. After all, what I am saying is hardly complicated. 2% failures in a system that in itself is only actually necessary 20% of the time seems clearly (98% of 20% = 18%, which is 90% of 20%). Electing to err on the side of caution however, I put the question to a friend of mine with a PhD in Physics, restated somewhat (although he was fully aware of the actual context). For further perspective, he is employed at a FDA compliant (IE rigorous) scientific research lab for a multi-national corporation. Unfortunately, he was having none of it. His reply:
Well clearly, that helps none of us, although it is quite close to my 80% possible failure figure. So I asked a few other folks, propeller-headed Java programmers to weigh in. They too disagreed, one claiming 18% the other 90%. These are smart people, and if I were to entertain the possibility that you all were too, I'd have to admit this problem is more complex than I think. Since Jesse, myself, and JavaGuy2 are all on board with 90-90.4%, I think we have consensus, but I won't rest until we get this right.
Talk amongst yourselves. State the problem as clearly as you can and JavaGuy1 said he would present the problem to his NYU Statistics Professor on Monday.
The bottom line though is that it is not my math, your math, the perfect study's math (they also found the rhythm method to be as effective as condoms, FYI), or even a PhD holding professional scientist's math. The issue is wether or not people in Uganda are being helped by using condoms.
They are not. The difference between having gotten HIV in 1 month or 5 years does not affect the boolean condition of whether or not you have HIV. Clearly, in both cases, you do have HIV. Therefore condoms fail in preventing HIV. QED.
So while
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 9, 2007 6:20:16 PM
These are smart people, and if I were to entertain the possibility that you all were too, I'd have to admit this problem is more complex than I think. Since Jesse, myself, and JavaGuy2 are all on board with 90-90.4%, I think we have consensus, but I won't rest until we get this right.
90-90.4% chance of what? I keep asking you to specify a timeframe or a number of encounters and you keep acting like it's meaningful to talk about "effectiveness" independent of a timeframe/number of encounters...I'm sorry, but it isn't, this is pure nonsense, and suggests a certain level of innumeracy on your part.
The 90.4% figure I gave was for the percentage of women who would avoid pregnancy in a given year of regular sex with condoms, in a hypothetical world where women were fertile 100% of the time instead of 20% (assuming your figure is correct). Alternately, it could be seen as the percentage who would avoid pregnancy in 5 years using condoms (which would mean 365 days of fertility). But it just doesn't make sense to talk about "effectiveness" independent of a specific timeframe and scenario like this, and it doesn't seem like you had either of these well-defined situations in mind all along.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 9, 2007 6:55:55 PM
Jesse, the study is not mine. It was posted above by anon in order to refute my original assumption of 90%. All of the information about the study is available at the link provided by anon.
A quote from his post:
Which he later restated as:
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 9, 2007 8:37:57 PM
Oops. Let me correct a previous statement, please.
2% failures in a system (2 of 100) that in itself is only actually necessary 20% of the time (so 2 of 20) seems clearly to be 2 from 20 = 18. 18 is 90% of 20.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 9, 2007 10:13:36 PM
Jesse, the study is not mine. It was posted above by anon in order to refute my original assumption of 90%. All of the information about the study is available at the link provided by anon.
But I'm not taking issue with the study, I'm taking issue with your claims about "90% effectiveness", which seems meaningless to me.
2% failures in a system (2 of 100) that in itself is only actually necessary 20% of the time (so 2 of 20) seems clearly to be 2 from 20 = 18. 18 is 90% of 20.
Again, you refuse to think about what the numbers are supposed to represent, and instead content yourself to playing games with numbers. In the "2 of 100", it's clear what that means--for every 100 women who uses condoms regularly for a year, about 2 will get pregnant. In contrast, I have no idea what the 20 in your "2 of 20" is supposed to mean. It would help if you would fill in the blank in the sentence "for every 20 women who ____, about 2 will get pregnant." For example, the blank might be filled with the phrase "uses condoms regularly for a year in an imaginary world where women are fertile 100% of the time", or it might be filled with "uses condoms regularly for 5 years", or something else. But in the absence of any clear idea of what "2 of 20" actually means, basically your argument amounts to "I multiplied the 100 by the 20% because it had the right intuitive feel to me, even though I have no idea what it means in concrete terms."
Posted by: Jesse M. | Nov 9, 2007 10:39:48 PM
Jesse: "But I'm not taking issue with the study, I'm taking issue with your claims about "90% effectiveness", which seems meaningless to me."
Jesse:"The 90.4% figure I gave was for the percentage of women who would avoid pregnancy in a given year of regular sex with condoms, in a hypothetical world where women were fertile 100% of the time instead of 20% (assuming your figure is correct). Alternately, it could be seen as the percentage who would avoid pregnancy in 5 years using condoms (which would mean 365 days of fertility)."
You are so close to getting it. Now substitute pregnancy (available 20% of the time), with HIV (available 100% of the time), and ask yourself: Are people in Uganda dying of Pregnancy? Or AIDS?
And then tell me: How effective are condoms at preventing HIV transmission?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 9, 2007 10:50:06 PM
You guys -- this thread is Monty Python-inspired performance art, isn't it? I have never seen such a kerfuffle over Intro to Stat. Mark Liberman at Language Log wrote not too long ago that Americans were as challenged by stat as the Piraha tribe was by counting higher than 3, so that we ought not to look down on them for their innumeracy when -- adjusting for our much more complex world, and our inability to deal with the math that would make the risks it posed more calculable -- our own innumeracy was a serious and deep as theirs. I hope Liberman reads 3QD. If so, maybe he'll come to the rescue before you start pelting each other with nose-flutes, penis-sheaths and other stone-age guy stuff.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 9, 2007 11:43:16 PM
This is elementary school fractions, and it's amazing (but perhaps not surprising) that Carlos is so dense. We know that
* with no contraception, 85% of women get pregnant in one year
If condoms were 0% effective, then it shouldn't make a difference at all, so we'd expect
* with perfect condom use, 85% of women get pregnant in one year
If condoms instead were 50% effective, it would cut down the chance by half, so we'd expect
* with perfect condom use, 42.5% of women get pregnant in one year
If condoms were 90% effective, it would cut down the chance by nine-tenths, so we'd expect
* with perfect condom use, 8.5% of women get pregnant in one year
If condoms were 100% effective, of course we'd expect
* with perfect condom use, 0% of women get pregnant in one year
And finally, if condoms were 83/85 = 98% effective, we'd expect
* with perfect condom use, 2% of women get pregnant in one year
And this last one is the truth, so condoms are 98% effective.
But please, Carlos, do go on denying reality. You're so good at it.
Posted by: anon | Nov 10, 2007 12:45:34 AM
anon--
Reality is a atheist plot to deny my divine right to ignorance, a badge of honor among the religious and those lacking critical thinking, and believing simplistic narratives running through my meme addled brain.
Praise Jesus!
(Maybe the Lord will help me on my sentence structure)--
But I'm never horny, and I hate porno
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 10, 2007 1:36:10 AM
Well that was all very entertaining, but Jesse (the one apparent voice of reason), do tell me your answer to my last question.
To all the others, let's move on and consider that the normal-use effectiveness of condoms in anon's study was only 85%.
And given anon's other statistics in Uganda which show condom use increasing by 200% coupled with a 40% increase in new HIV transmission, who is more math challenged: Me? or anyone who would declare that this demonstrates condoms are effective against HIV?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 10, 2007 9:23:54 AM
Carlos--
Seriously, read "The Cure" by Helen Epstein--
It will give you information that will add credibility to your argument, and possibly even educate you bit on this very complex issue.
If you are open enough, the realities of social, political, religious, and cultural feedbacks, along with fighting one of Earth's fastest evolving viruses, are made a bit clearer.
It certainly burst a few of my held beliefs.
Best
Dave
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 10, 2007 11:36:39 AM
Carlos, you seem to be focussing on STDs now. Do you accept that condoms are 98% effective in preventing pregnancy? Of course this was your original point, about single-motherhood and abortions. So the use of condoms would cut down the chance of either single-motherhood or an abortion by 98%. Even if this was instead 90% it would be great. And yet you (on the supposed moral high ground) want to deny this to people. I'd would love for you to make a loud, definitive statement here, so that God can hear you.
On the statistics involving condoms and STDs, the effectiveness is lower, around 80-90%. The numbers aren't as precise as the ones for pregnancy, for the obvious reason that:
"Because consistent condom use has been shown to reduce the risk of some STDs, research participants cannot be ethically randomized to use and non-use groups to assess the effectiveness of condoms. Withholding condoms would be similar to withholding available treatment."
I've pointed out your inconsistent stance on the Uganda program. Do you now disown the original article you linked to, which stated that abstinence made the Uganda program successful? Anyway, this is a complicated situation which suffers from a lot of interference, especially from the abstinence-only pushers. Please read the following:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/30/uganda10380.htm
If you want a more controlled situation that's much easier to analyze, take the situation in Thailand, where
"[T]he government took the pragmatic step of working with brothel owners to enforce 100% condom use in all commercial sex establishments. ... The scheme has been highly successful. Reported condom use in brothels increased from only 14% of sex acts in 1989 to over 90% by 1994. Over the same period, the number of new STI cases among men treated at government clinics plummeted by over 90%."
http://www.who.int/inf-new/aids1.htm
And see the graph, since you're not so good with numbers:
http://www.who.int/inf-new/chartpages/aids1_2.html
Notice how I didn't magically inflate the 80-90% to get 98%? I base my conclusions on reality, instead of twisting the facts to support my prejudices. Your "one apparent voice of reason" quote is hilarious. I agree that he is a voice of reason, but I don't think you are qualified to make such judgments. Honestly, I wouldn't trust you to add 2 + 2.
Posted by: anon | Nov 10, 2007 11:42:11 AM
Why don't you synopsize it for us? She seems to say that abstinence and monogamy are resulting in lowering HIV infection rates.
Your seeming approval for such a Catholic position stands at odds with your mockery of faith as resistant to reality as stated above, but moving past that, the more current data anon has provided us with indicates her thesis is incorrect.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 10, 2007 12:05:22 PM
No, I mentioned STDs right off the bat. My comment per abortions was about the link between single-motherhood and poverty"So the use of condoms would cut down the chance of either single-motherhood or an abortion by 98%"Actually, anon, your study was about monogamous couples. If you want to determine effectiveness rates for random sexual encounters, you need to find a different study.
I don't recall denying anyone anything. I am only suggesting that the methods being used are not working as advertised.I posted the previous link because I found it. I have completely accepted your statistics that abstinence or not, a 200% increase in the use of comdoms is coupled with a 40% increase in the rate of HIV transmissions
No, that's OK, I can read these numbers:
Says right here that abstaining from sex-workers is a sure fire way to avoid getting HIV. I don't see how you could get much more linear than that.Posted by: Carlos | Nov 10, 2007 1:08:12 PM
Of course it also says that, even in a tightly controlled commercial environment with highly trained and health screened personnel, your chances of avoiding HIV while using condoms is only 94%.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 10, 2007 1:18:05 PM
"Actually, anon, your study was about monogamous couples. If you want to determine effectiveness rates for random sexual encounters, you need to find a different study."
Well, yes, but do you think the condoms know whether their users are in a monogamous relationship? The study compared perfect condom use to imperfect use and no contraception, so it applies equally well to everyone, regardless of relationship status.
I had actually wanted to link to the part of the report that discussed the failures of abstinence-only:
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uganda0305/8.htm#_Toc98378386
I agree that abstinence is the best way of avoiding HIV. However, abstinence-only is not a realistic approach. People will have sex, regardless of how much you discourage them. But you can inform them of the risks, and provide technology (condoms) that reduces those risks. And this approach has been successful, not only in preventing the spread of STDs, but also in reducing risky behavior (contrary to your intuition). For example,
"A 1998 study comparing a program that educated students about safer sex (including condom use) with an abstinence-only program found that both programs affected sexual behavior in the short term, but that the safer sex program was more effective at reducing unprotected sexual intercourse and frequency of intercourse in the long term."
Finally,
"Of course it also says that, even in a tightly controlled commercial environment with highly trained and health screened personnel, your chances of avoiding HIV while using condoms is only 94%."
What's "it"? Over what time period is that 94%? The following report says that your chance of contracting HIV if you always use condoms is less than 1% over one year--when your partner is known to be HIV-positive!
"Results: For always-users, 12 cohort samples yielded a consistent HIV incidence of 0.9 per 100 person-years ... Conclusions: Consistent use of condoms provides protection from HIV. The level of protection approximates 87%, with a range depending upon the incidence among condom nonusers. Thus, the condom's efficacy at reducing heterosexual transmission may be comparable to or slightly lower than its effectiveness at preventing pregnancy."
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3127299.html
My conclusion: your statistics are, once again, completely ficticious.
Posted by: anon | Nov 10, 2007 10:44:51 PM
OK. You'd rather stick with yours?I think this is where I came in:
Are we done yet?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 10, 2007 10:57:43 PM
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