Politicians around the world are gingerly using YouTube to make policy statements, or maybe just to get their soundbites out there while avoiding having to have a press conference.
Now some Catholic seminarians have parodied the Mac vs PC ads (which I already loathed anyway) to convey the Vatican’s doctrine on Natural Family Planning vs Contraception.
They’ve got three videos up now, with more planned.
Now I disagree with the practicality of Natural Family Planning, although I applaud much of the sentiment: avoiding excessive chemical intervention with bodily functions, increased communication and intimacy between partners about avoiding unplanned pregnancies etc. Increased communication about sex before it actually happens can only be a good thing.
Unfortunately, NFP requires abstention during ovulation, which is the woman’s peak time of sexual desire, thus NFP involves a lifetime of women acquiescing to sex outside their peak period of desire and being forbidden from other forms of attaining orgasm during the peak period of sexual desire. Sounds like a recipe for frustration and resentment for me.
I notice that these videos simply don’t mention at all that NFP works (as far as it does work) only for people who are in monogamous committed relationships, which of course to the Church means marriage. So they’re simply not addressing the rather large population of adults who are not yet married but who are interested in sexual intercourse anyway. The unsaid only option for unmarried adults is abstinence. I’m not surprised that they’re not addressing that.
Anyway, it’s a very interesting exercise in propogating a set of policy soundbites. I await the replies that will surely multiply in the next few weeks with great interest. I also wonder when various lobbying groups on various social issues are going to fully embrace the viral aspect of YouTube etc for getting their soundbites more effectively out into the social consciousness. Let’s face it – I’m blogging about the videos above because they were put together with a modicum of wit about a controversial issue. Other people will do the same. If other groups do similiar things, those videos will be viraled and generate discussion. Get your issues out there, folks.
The unsaid only option for unmarried adults is abstinence.
I’d be impressed if there’s anyone who didn’t know that about Catholic dogma. They certainly mention it in everything else they do.
Fair enough point, Barry.
I’m just curious that there’s so little emphasis in the videos on the idea that both the NFP and Contraception characters are meant to be married.
Those Mac vs PC ads are loathsome aren’t they!
A property which these NFP seem to share, in that they’re based on spreading ignorance…
Well, indeed; the control of women’s sexuality is the whole idea. It’s basically a Clayton’s clitorodectomy.
And anyone who thinks it makes for a happy sex life and/or marriage should read David Lodge’s The British Museum is Falling Down and its much less comic sequel How Far Can You Go?, in which the realities of being a young and penniless Catholic couple in Britain in the 1960s are unrelentingly explored.
Those Catholic seminarians don’t get out much, do they?
Interesting the change in terminology “Natural Family Planning” instead of the “Rhythm Method”
I guess that was because some (Irish and Kiwis?) erroneously thought “following” the rhythm of the metronome did the trick.
They are incredibly creepy.
Disingenuous twaddle.
The soft drink and the orange are being compared on the basis of healthfulness. The orange is “healthy” because it doesn’t contain “chemicals”.
What should be compared is the significant unhealthfulness of suffering an unwanted pregnancy compared with the unhealthfulness associated with one or another form of contraception.
Here is the same trick reversed:
Wearing a seatbelt in a plane is “unnatural and unhealthy” in that a seatbelt impedes circulation. It’s much more healthy to avoid wearing a seatbelt because very few people suffer life-endangering episodes when flying.
This is a sad indictment of the intellectual quality of would-be persons in holy orders.
What I found interesting was the ads equated contraception with The Pill (OCP), conveniently forgetting condoms while listing off off the chemical based issues with ‘contraception’. This gives a very misleading picture but then again when has any religious organisation told the whole story? Don’t you love it how they quote ‘facts’ about lower divorce rates in those who use NFP. Perhaps we could quote some stats back about Catholic priests and paedophilia?
All that, and the no sex when you want it most issue, aside – NFP only suits women with very predictable cycles. Temperature tracking (and to some extent, mucus and cervical position) tells you only when you are ovulating, discounting the window of 3 days before when those tricky sperm can live long enough to impregnate you. Without ovulating like clockwork, NFP is next to useless.
No surprise they didn’t use any facts about error rates!
Pav’s Cat – I can’t believe that someone else has actually read Lodge’s “British Museum…”.
Didn’t you just want to slam the character’s head against a wall? Repeatedly?
Even his priest said ‘don’t take it too seriously..’.
I threw it away about half way through – did he come to his senses in the end?
I thought that I’d gird up my loins & have a look at the ACNFP site – can’t be having with the YuToob stuff – and I couldn’t exit fast enough to avoid psychonausea.
To whit – These Methods are based on couples using their natural states of infertility to avoid pregnancy. ACNFP affiliated centres also help couples achieve pregnancy.
I heard Billings & Wife (sic!) in Ireland many decades ago promoting their scheme and, when even the Catholic feamle broadcaster (in those days married women still had to give up Civil Service jobs) pinned them on pregnancy rates their joint aplomb was mind boggling – “many couples use iot to become pregnant…”
Mrs Billings then went on to say one of the reasons they’d researched the temperature method was “…because of the distaste women have for handling (their) mucus…”!!!
Also, given that apparently even Dolly, Cosmo et al these days have documented 43 (and counting) ways of mutually enjoying sexual intimacy that doesn’t involve ejaculating penises within cooee of a vagina – dead horse or dead heads?