today went to expo with boon.
we went for..
THE JOHN LITTLE SALES… SITEX……….

i only ended up with 2 magazines -.-
And i came home with 2 bags like i bought a lot of things.
cuz of the goodie bags. LOL. i have like..facial wash..
tampon..perfume. more facial wash..another perfume.
a blower + duster for monitor screen. ok i needed that..
and ya. ANOTHER TAMPON. -.- and some other stuff.

I think i’ll go back and get the Buffalo HDD coming sat when ven goes down.

came back home.
went for a run.
met my friendlier neighbour and her little boy boy.
squat down and play with him a little while.
he blew me a flying kiss. so cute can. so young and so gay liao. LOL
boy boy. you should blow ur kisses to girls, not to kor kor.
kor kor also blow kisses to girls…so you… =X

and next..

RAN 3.2 conditioning run.

thats abt it. and more discussion abt M4 faggot.

LA LA LA ~ i know. whatever.

SEE ! girls will stand on the side of the guy if that guy is handsome.
girls will not stand on ur side if u are ugly. LOL
but its ok. as an ugly person point of view…
I’VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE .. WAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

thats why. don’t fight with ugly ppl. be it physical or verbal.
cuz we have got nothing to lose. MUAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA..~

Signing out,
Kelcium and tonnes of crap.

Both Peggy and I suffer from a malady that causes us to ask “what?” Repeatedly, we request each other to repeat what we said. Neither of us will admit it but we are losing our hearing. It occurs to me that congress must also be suffering from the same malady. What other reason would they have for ignoring  input from their constituents.

I suggest that our congressmen, and senators all use their Cadillac health care plan to have their hearing tested. The results to be posted on Congress.org. With hearing test results posted for our review, we can then decide whether they have a medical excuse for their stupid voting decisions.

Ever Wonder What Song Or Show Kid Cudi Sampled To Make The Great Song Simple As..? Well….Here It Is

Kid Cudi Sampled This Song/Show (Above) To Make This Great Song (Below)

to sch. for lunch with rid and ken.
and some others.

Didn’t know that today was spmp’s last day.
prize presentations and stuff.

sat in for debrief. unknowingly.

but i’ll say. for someone with no experience of such huge event.
you did not too bad. justifiable. so. pat urself on the shoulder.
and good job. just remember what u missed out and what you
did well. and improve on it next year.

Good job mei eng.

And thanks ken for the drive back home =)
AND SEE ! i was right. never go religious class. SEE ! YOU SEE LAH !

Signing out,
Kelcium talked a lot today. as usual.

How long do you intend to play this game? How long until we give up? How long do I need to keep up with your mind tricks? How long do I need to stick around until you say game over? How many times do I need to go over this in my head? How many blog posts until you’re mine?

Why should I stop? Why should I go on? Why you of all people? And why me? Why do we need to go through all this? Why am I looking for a reason to stay? Why am I looking for reasons to leave? Why am I looking for things to keep myself busy again? Why should I keep insisting on complicating things? Why am I doing this to you?

When should I begin to realize that there isn’t a possibility? When are you going to tell me to leave? When are you going to say that you never want me to leave? When will your heart open up to all these opportunities? When will I ever say that we’re okay? When am I ever going to be over you?

What will you say when I leave you behind? What do you want me to do as of now? What reasons should keep me here? What reasons am I really looking for? What do you feel when I say those words? What do you feel when you hear silence on the other end? What will you do when I decide to finally go away?

Who is that girl who will make your heart skip a beat?

Ouchhh Charlieeee!

That really hurts! …

I’ma let you finish but Beyonce had the best video of all times!

Copyrighted by the owner of this blog (anduuuu). If you got any problem with content that you think was stolen/copied email the owner. Everything in this post is 100% written by the owner of this blog (anduuuu) anything that proves to be stolen will be deleted or credits will be added. This is written so that you know that all the content on this blog is 100% original so if you doubt it, I just don’t care! Take care, drive safely and share the blog with your friends.

Well, I will let you make your own assumption.
This guy did a pole dance to I NEED YOU TO SURVIVE by Hezekiah Walker.
Hum….Uh….Sir????

[shoot dating. single men and single women go for shooting together.]
why can’t things like this happen in singapore ?

Anyways. gosh. still thinking abt it. why can’t it be easier ?
gosh why am i not from a rich family ? why is my dad soo…..GRRR ! USELESS !

gosh. i ask myself why. so much so that i am so irritated by WHY shit happen.

i guess shit happens ALL the time.

Signing out,
Kelcium’s blog is getting drier and drier. no mood to blog at all.

pregnancy herbal

During abundance abounding women acquaintance a rash which is pregnancy herbal actual accepted during the abundance stages as the bark visibly changes. During the abundance stages there is a college claret hormone akin and this can accept an aftereffect on the skin. Pregnancy Remedy There isn’t annihilation adverse about best bark changes as far as the bloom of the babyish and the mother is concerned. On the whole Cure For Infertility these changes Pregnancy Herbal become normalized aural a few months Pregnancy Remedy afterwards the babyish is born. But there are some bark altitude that can announce added basal problems so it’s consistently best to get this looked at and treated. For some women the hormonal changes can aftereffect in acne. We additionally apperceive how accepted aliment cravings and repulsions can additionally be during pregnancy. Pregnancy Herbal Some women will additionally get a bark darkening sometimes referred to as the abundance Pregnancy Cures rash.

One abundance adventurous is alleged the pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of abundance PUPPP which can Cure For Infertility account an ceaseless crawling or some and be Pregnancy Herbal absolutely frustrating. Fortunately this ceases afterwards the bearing of the babyish but nonetheless it can be adamantine to tolerate. Some studies accept apparent that there is a college accident of the bearing of a boy back one has pupps rash. Best women won’t get this afore the sixth ages of pregnancy but there are exceptions. The adventurous starts with the amplitude marks in the belly according to some.

Pupp adventurous may bite as able-bodied as crawling and is usually begin on the abdomen Pregnancy Cures area thighs and buttocks.. It can additionally be abundant added extensive. Moisturizers anti-itch creams and sometimes cortisone is acclimated to abate symptom. Some doctors may abet activity aboriginal or appoint prednisone if necessary. Unfortunately some women may alike get the adventurous afore pregnancy herbal their third trimester. Keep your focus on your beautiul babyish central you and apperceive that this is a acting discomfort. See a physician to aphorism out added issues such as a accent adventurous or eczema.

I have to ponder now and then as I go about my daily musings how it is that people decided that mould-rind and blue cheeses were delicious.

Did some ancient housewife leave a jar of cow’s milk (or worse, goat’s milk) behind the pumpkin harvest?  Is it possible that years later she came across the stone crock and decide that this object was edible, even by the pigs in the mud across the way?

Well somebody must have had the courage to try a bit and then the fortitude to wait the six month’s or so to see if any adverse effects resulted (sort of like rabies).

Look, I admit there was not a hell of a lot of variety in those days.  You had your berries, your roots, milk from your cow and meat when the cow died of old age.  You were required to be adventurous in your gastronomic quests.  Just look at the poor bastard who thought mushrooms were delicious until he ate a deadly nightcap or whatever it was that whacked him pretty fast.

But ancient vrot hairy cheese.  Were they mad?

And today you are considered a filthy heathen if you don’t relish camembert, brie, roquefort, stilton and other repulsive things.  People say, have a taste … it is delicious.  Try it deep-fried with cranberry preserve, lip-smacking.

All I want to do with it is apply a thick coat of Mycota to its surface and see what happens.  Athletes’ feet cheese … um … deep fried.

God almighty

So my friend’s new boy toy got me thinkin…..

He’s a junior, he’s attractve, he was in the military, he’s drivin, and he SINGS!!!!!!!! HE SINGS!!! (and well!!!!)

Is it wrong that I’m attracted to him? I mean I’m only human right? It’s not like I want to be with him but is it wrong that I’m slightly jealous of the aCe just because she is available to talk to him?

Don’t get me wrong……I love my fiance with all of my being but a part of me still wonders what life would be like with someone else…….or even alone for that matter.

But then he reminds me why no one else in this world could make me smile the way that he does;

how no one in this lifetime will put me at peace the way that he does;

and how in no one else’s arms will I feel as secure and loved.

No one will ever love me the way he does

and I’m happy with that!!

=]

Sooo… I got a blog. I got this blog. and I thought it looked empty so I decided to post a photo that I took last night while driving through the city. I made a cover to make the lights looks like stars and Ill show how to do that later wow. happy faces look crazy on here. haha. anyway, so yay to the first post!

I just realized the photo looked a little distorted maybe.. oh well

that face just keeps on making me laugh. hahhaha

Before you storm the mall (or Internet) this holiday season, Wharton University professor Joel Waldfogel would like you to know something: knocking yourself out trying to find The Perfect Gift is often a waste of time.

Worse, from an economic perspective, you?re practically committing a sin. That?s because it is not only highly unlikely the recipient will actually like what you?ve picked out, you?re destroying value – about $13 billion worth. That?s the difference between the $65 billion Americans will spend on holiday gifts this year compared to what those who receive those gifts would be willing to pay for them if they bought them for themselves.

?When I?m shopping for myself,? says Waldfogel, ?I will only spend $50 on something if it is worth $50 to me. But with gift giving, if I want to spend $50 on you, I could end up buying something that is not worth $50 to you .? In fact, according to surveys, on average the recipient of that $50 gift would only pay $40 for it- if he would even consider purchasing it for himself at all. According to Waldfogel, that 20% difference is ?the missing satisfaction? caused by the fact that ?items were chosen by someone other than the ultimate consumer.?

Waldfogel, whose book Scroogenomics has just been released, is quick to point out that he is not at all opposed to gift-giving. In fact, he describes himself as ?an avid giver- and a generous one- especially with close family.?

It?s those obligatory gifts we feel we have to buy for far-flung relatives and others we barely know that cause the disconnect between price (paid by the giver) and value (assigned by the recipient). In economic-speak, it?s a problem with the way we allocate resources.

Since you know those you?re closest to the best, you?re more likely to hit the mark in terms of the presents you buy for them. For instance, you might have caught your spouse eyeing cashmere sweaters in a store or catalog. Knowing that blue is her favorite color, you spend $150 on a royal blue cashmere cardigan for her. If asked, she probably would say that it is 1) something she would purchase for herself and, 2) she would be willing to spend around $150 for it. Thus, there is no ?value destruction.?

On the other hand, buying the same cashmere sweater for your niece whom you haven?t seen in 3 years is, in Waldfogel?s terms, ?a recipe for disaster,? even if it?s done with the best of intentions. Aside from the obvious issues- What size? What color?- there are a host of others.What if your cute 12-year old niece has turned into a 15-year old Goth who wouldn?t be caught dead in anything but black and oh-by-the-way also happens to be allergic to cashmere?!

Even the ever-popular food gifts can cause a major faux pas. If no one in the family tells you that Uncle Ernie finally joined AA is it your fault you brought him a bottle of wine? How were you supposed to know that the mail carrier is a vegan when you gave her that ham?

If you can?t simply delete everyone except immediate family and your closest friends from your gift list, what?s the solution?

?Just give cash,? says Waldfogel. The drawback is that in addition to feeling impersonal, cash is ?socially awkward? in many situations. Your cousin, for instance. However, there are exceptions. In Waldfogel?s view, it?s perfectly acceptable for aunts, uncles, and grandparents to give cash to nieces, nephews, and grandkids.

The next best thing?Gift cards.?These allow the recipient to choose what item they want.? In economic terms, they?re very ?efficient? because theoretically recipients will not pay more than an item is worth to them. Waldfogel himself gives them to people who are outside his immediate family. Though cash-like, he points out that somehow gift cards ?have avoided the stigma of cash.? Which probably accounts for their soaring popularity.

An alternative is something Waldfogel calls ?transcendent giving.? As he describes it, ?How can I [the gift giver] transcend what you could do with cash?? One suggestion? Give someone permission to buy something they ordinarily wouldn?t buy for themselves because they would feel guilty about spending the money. This works especially well with a close family member such as your spouse. If he hasn?t bought the new digital camera he?d really love to have because it feels too self-indulgent, give him the OK to do so- no strings attached.

Another ?transcendent gift? is to make a donation to a charity in the recipient?s name. It helps if you know a cause that the individual is passionate about- global warming, ending famine, animal welfare, education, the ballet company in their city, etc.

If you aren?t sure, you can give a charity gift card that allows the recipient to direct the proceeds to one or several organizations. TisBest Philanthropy, for instance, lists 250 national nonprofits as well as locally-based groups that meet their criteria. Gifts cards can be purchased athttp://www.TisBest.org.The Network for Good offers gift cards at http://www1.networkforgood.org/for-donors.You can find others by typing ?charity gift card? in your web browser search box. Suggestion: check out the organization sponsoring the gift cards by going to http://www2.guidestar.org/.

So before you click, swipe, or write a check for yet another half-appreciated present this year, maybe it?s time to pause. Reduce your gift-giving list as much as you can and, like Santa, check it twice. Spend your money, time and energy finding the special items you know that those you are closest to really want. Buy everyone else a $9.95 copy of Scroogenomics and (maybe) stick a gift card in it. Who knows? You might get everyone in your circle re-thinking their holiday spending.

In Waldfogel?s words, ?Have a happy and efficient holiday!?

*Hanukah, Kwanza, Ramadan

Wal-Mart: Take This Deal, and Get $100 for FreeNashville People in Business

to hit people with hams! you may remember her from such films such as did you just eat that?

Mr. John Safran, how are you sir?
John Safran: Well, I just spoke to someone from The Age who saw the first two episodes and said she thought the show was outrageous. Apparently she was really disturbed by it. It’s really weird.

Really? So you didn’t learn from the exorcism episode of your last series?
Clearly not. And this is a bit different to the last three shows which were on SBS, where people had to actively seek me out. Race Relations is going to be on the ABC in the middle of the week, which is kind of like nailing a billboard up in the city square. It’s a much more public space. It’s going to be interesting.

But your stuff is smart and funny. Have you felt compelled to make each series more controversial than the one before?
Not really. They just end up there. Race Relations actually started out as a book, which evolved into a TV show. While researching the book, I went out and did a few interviews, during which I obviously humiliated myself, and each time I was like, “Why aren’t I filming this?” For some reason when you’re being filmed it’s way less humiliating because people just assume you’re doing it for television. Whereas if you just have your notepad and you stand up at a public talk, people really think you have a screw loose. Anyway, when you start editing something like this, you kind of just have to go with the strong stuff. You know what I mean?

Surely that’s what people want to see. So, for this show you turned black, female, and elephant man. How did that go for you?
Well the black episode was one of the first things we filmed and we pulled it off so we were really excited for the rest of the show. When I was growing up and had my hip-hop posse, my friends used to tell me to stop acting black. The idea was to really experience what it’s really like to walk in someone else’s shoes so I go undercover in Barack Obama’s hometown, Chicago.

Were you a convincing black man?
Yeah, well, we realized pretty quickly that it’s pretty easy to make someone look black for camera but that it’s much more difficult to look black to another black person who’s standing five centimeters away from you. We tried everything from really low rent stuff, which didn’t work at all, so finally ended up with the guys who won the academy award for prosthetics on Benjamin Button. One of them flew to Australia and took a face cast and did his thing. It started off as a five-minute story but because it ended up being so expensive, we made a bigger deal of it and it became an entire episode. Which made it cheap.

Sounds great.
Yeah, well I actually failed. I think that’s probably why comedy is so screwed up – people who can’t be funny are trying to be funny and people who are actually funny are out there trying to prove what artists they are by being bleak and dark. With this show, I just wanted it to be funy – that’s it. As it turns out though there’re some really awkward moments and towards the end it kind of becomes unwatchable.

In one episode you get crucified, which is pretty insane.
Yeah, I was thinking that this is why I’m fucked in the head and never get anywhere. As most people get more successful and more shows, they use their leverage to try to get more money or a better deal or whatever. I, however use my leverage to try to do things they wouldn’t let me do last time. For example, I didn’t have the leverage in the town during Vs God to be nailed to a cross but now that I’m older and have my own production company, I can sit there and threaten people with not going with their network or whatever if they don’t let me do stuff on the show. It makes no sense. I use my leverage to fuck myself over.

But do you come to any grand realizations?
I’m not going to give that away but I do think that whatever shit goes down when it’s on air it’ll all ultimately be OK because it all leads to something. It’s actually full of pathos and might throw people around a bit but it’s all for a reason. The good thing is that I’m going to have a copy in my hand so regardless of what happens, I plan to get it out there.

As a Jewish guy, if you don’t marry a Jewish girl, what would your mum’s preference of partner be in terms of race, religion, and sex? A gay, non-Jewish guy presumably being at the bottom of the list.
Ha, yeah I guess after that would come a gay Jewish man, then Arab and Persian. I guess a non-Arab Muslim is probably better than an Arab Muslim. Then you get up to Asian. But then maybe it’s better just to go with someone who no one’s going to ask questions about. You could argue that at least an Arab girl could pass as Jewish, whereas if you bring an Asian into the room, you’re really making an announcement. Just watch the show maybe.

Is this going to make it easier for you to get girlfriends do you think?
No, not only will I not be able to get a girlfriend, I’m not going to be able to make eye contact at anyone at parties. It’s just going to be too embarrassing.

Cheers mate…..

thanks to the vibe crew for putting this together!

nP-

White cake iced with vanilla butter cream icing. The ND and silhouette are frozen butter cream transfers.  The sides say “Who”, “What”, “Where” and “When”.

What to do….what to do? That’s such a famous question. People wonder what to do on a day to day basis. They wonder what to do with their bills, their children, their jobs, their cars, their mortgages and most importantly they wonder what to do with their life? I mean who hasn’t asked them self, “What do I want to do with MY LIFE?”  And how are we supposed to know exactly what we want to do with our life? The human mind is constantly changing so how are we to know what we would like to do with our life, when one day we may want to do a desk job and the next we may want to do an extreme job! So how does one decide what to do with their life? If you think you have the answer to this mind boggling situation please leave me a comment with your answer!

x_X Anonomous1

A few weeks ago, The Nation posted an article about female sexual dysfunction, written by Joann Wypijewski, titled Sexual Healing. Rachel of Our Bodies Our Blog covered it with a link and some commentary. I saw several problems with the article in question, and have written about some of these problems not once but twice. And when it comes to talking about FSD, I’m still not out of steam yet.

How can I run out of steam, when authors, interviewers, doctors, therapists, and yes even feminists, keep on cranking out & covering new material about FSD, yet continue to make some serious mistakes when doing so? Wypijewski’s article has been joined by another in its well-intentioned but short-sighted spirit - “Restless Vagina Syndrome”: Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease, by Terry Allen.

What a funny title for an article about female sexual dysfunction, or at least Kate Harding over at Jezebel and the eponymous Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose blog found the title giggle-inducing and “Brilliant.” I’m sure she is not alone in her amusement – After all, Restless Vagina Syndrome – it’s like Restless Leg Syndrome (Is RLS inherently funny?) except this time it takes place inside your vagina. At first glance, without any further information, the term sounds like it must be synonymous with a high sex drive and frequent easy orgasms. How could anyone possibly label that a medical condition?

Actually, Restless vagina syndrome isn’t talked about for the rest of Allen’s article at all; whoever came up with that title merely exploited a documented condition (which we’ll get to in a bit) because it made the article more eye-catching and amusing to some.
No wonder Kate Harding thought RVS is a joke – Terry Allen provides zero information about the grain of truth he is riffing off of, and by labeling it (and more broadly, FSD in general) “Fake,” he preemptively discredits anyone who says otherwise, even if that means effectively calling the women & researchers involved in studying FSD fools and liars. And, after having done a little homework on Allen’s claims, I think he was counting on readers not to double-check him.
(No one with FSD read the comments section at either the Jezebel or Alternet article, as some of the comments are even worse and may cause explody-head.)

Allen’s article spends more time talking about the kind of female sexual dysfunction we all know and love (except not really.) He and Harding raise concerns about Big Pharma trying to invent and then market “Female sexual dysfunction” (Harding leaves the term in skeptic/scare quotes,) which she at one point refers to as “Listless vagina syndrome.” (I think that’s supposed to be another joke except that it backfires against me since I identify as having FSD. Do you mean to say that my vagina is lazy too?)

Interestingly, Harding uses skeptic quotes when talking about FSD, even as she acknowledges that, okay, maybe some of us really do have sexual problems that merit treatment… after all, she herself benefited greatly from a proper diagnosis of ADHD. But overall, the sentiment in Allen’s & Harding’s posts is that FSD must be a fake disorder invented by Big Pharma, in order to generate more money from a previously untapped market. FSD couldn’t have possibly existed before modern medicine (except that it probably did.)

But because folks like she and I exist, people with “Real” medical problems (and here I’m using quotes because I’m not comfortable with claiming my problems are more real & valid than anyone else’s, just because I can back mine up with medical records, which have also been and will continue to have their value questioned anyway,) we are putting everyone else at risk of exploitation by Big Pharma. Because I want treatment for my sexual health problems, I bear the responsibility & burden of enabling Big Pharma sneaking its phallic tendrils into all of our bedrooms & regulating our sexuality. That regulation might come in pill form designed to increase our libidios – but never too much, for if we become too sexual, too promiscuous, we may just be diagnosed with the dreaded Restless Vagina Syndrome.

I was really curious; is Big Pharma really trying to develop and then exploit a new, fake disease, by piggybacking on something that sounds similar to restless leg syndrome? (Only, it’s the vagina that’s restless.) What is this?

So I started searching for more information on this so-called Restless Vagina Syndrome. Luckily we live in the age of the internet, so my first starting place was Google. That search didn’t yield me much hard information about whether Big Pharma ever put out any material about RVS though – mostly it just points me back to Terry Allen’s article.

I was able to find an RVS parody video – Tranquivag on YouTube. The video pre-dates Terry Allen’s article by about 2 years; it was originally uploaded to YouTube in 2007. Is this what he was referring to? Did he get duped by a group of comedians?
It’s a comedy clip, so it’s not meant to be taken seriously. Or at least, I sure hope it’s not meant to be taken seriously. The viewer is supposed to find it amusing that a woman could be disturbed by invasive genital sensations that interfere with everyday activity and periods of rest – after all, who would find such usually pleasant sensations so bothersome, that you would have to take a medication with major potential side effects? I think the audience is supposed to think something like, “What a foolish woman; if she is bothered by her restless vagina, she should just have sex or masturbate.”  That’s not the way I processed the video though; to me it looks like hipster irony that backfires by re-enforcing negative stereotypes about FSD & the women who have it.
The video directs viewers to www.ivegotmunchies.com, which features other videos.
But no, this probably isn’t what Allen is referring to.

Maybe Google isn’t the best place to look for medical texts & research. I jumped through some hoops and got onto some online database systems. After several failed attempts on other databases, MedLine finally pointed me probably the right direction:

Waldinger, M., Venema, P., van Gils, A., & Schweitzer, D. (2009). New insights into restless genital syndrome: static mechanical hyperesthesia and neuropathy of the nervus dorsalis clitoridis. The Journal Of Sexual Medicine, 6(10), 2778-2787. Retrieved from MEDLINE database. [I'm linking to PubMed here instead of MedLine, since MedLine isn't accessible to everyone.]

Alas, even I don’t have access to the full text, and so I’m restricted to the abstract. Luckily, the abstract is useful for this discussion.
Based on what I’m reading in the abstract,
This doesn’t sound very funny at all… Restless vagina syndrome: “You keep on using that word. I think you do not know what it means.”

According to one sex therapist, RVS, or more properly Restless genital syndrome or Persistent arousal syndrome, sounds like it could be a form of pudental nerve damage.

I already know from reading other vulvar pain bloggers, that damage to the pudental nerve is serious – for some patients, it can be extremely painful to live with on a daily basis, and there’s no single cure for it. In this case, if nerve damage is the culprit for RGS, it manifests as hypersensitive genitals, prone to frequent orgasms even in the absence of actual sexual desire. There maybe other causes of restless genital syndrome besides nerve damage as well.

Regardless of the cause, the women involved in the study describe several related symptoms that would certainly cause me great distress -

Of 23 women included in the study, 18(78%), 16(69%), and 12(52%) reported restless legs syndrome, overactive bladder syndrome, and urethra hypersensitivity. Intolerance of tight clothes and underwear (allodynia or hyperpathia) was reported by 19 (83%) women…

To anyone who laughed at Allen’s title, did you even know what you were giggling at?
Why is this funny?
How is this fake?
Would you actually be comfortable having an orgasm in front of a stranger or in a medical setting, as three of the women in that study are reported to have experienced? What if you were sitting on a bus and the woman next to you started going into an uninhibited orgasm, what would your reaction be? Envy, discomfort, leering, slut-shaming… acceptance?
Why, when nothing else provides long-term relief, would this not merit medical research and possible treatment?

That doesn’t sound funny or something deserving stigmatization, nor does it sound to me like a condition that will be pushed onto the general, healthy population at large. I can only imagine how many doctors RGS patients are bounced around to in search of someone who is not dismissive of their concerns. And to be one of those women who lives with such a condition, and to read articles like this, must be humiliating.

PubMed offers just a few journal article abstracts about restless genital syndrome. The dates on the most relevant journal abstracts are all from 2009. That the dates are so recent, is probably why Terry Allen refers to it as “New.”
I get a few more research results when I search for an alternate term, persistent arousal syndrome. This is a relatively new field of study, according to Wikipedia. And, so far, I have been able to find one not-so-new article, from 2002, that details several other case studies of patients with persistent arousal syndrome, some of whom were desperate for long-term relief. One said of her experience, that it “Makes me so upset that I cry, as I cannot function normally; I make mistakes, get very hungry, and do not sleep… I would like the sensations to go away. I want to feel I can make plans and not have the strong sexual desire to make me miserable not knowing if I’ll get satisfied.” (She was also having difficulty reaching orgasm.)

Is Big Pharma really inventing this syndrome, or is could it be that only now is research being done, after years of neglect? I recall that in all my searches, I did not find much scientific research about Vulvodynia from years prior to the 1980s, and most of the books covering the topic in depth only started appearing within the last decade. Was vulvodynia such a controversial topic when the research was new, too? How long was its existence denied by so-called experts and laypeople? Perhaps that is what is going on here.

But really, RGS actually plays a very small role in Terry Allen’s piece. He just needed something that sounded interesting to grab the reader’s attention.

As is often the case, Allen’s article spends a lot of time talking about low libido and orgasm difficulties in women. Allen goes so far as to actually acknowledge that sexual pain exists, but he does not build on that topic. Allen even acknowledges the need to include the patient’s own feelings about their sex life in whether or not a diagnosis of FSD is appropriate. He gets this additional qualifier of personal distress needing to be present from a November 2008 article in Obstetrics & Gynecology, which pinpoints the statistic to about 12% of the population having FSD… but even this study excluded sexual pain in the researchers definition of FSD! I wonder how the figures would change if pain were included in the statistics.
(Also, as a side note, I’d like to point out here that when Jezebel covered that Obstetrics & Gynecology article, writer Tracie sounded shocked that more women aren’t distressed by their sex problems. I’m getting mixed messages here…)

Allen’s biggest concern, and one I’ve seen repeated elsewhere, is that Big Pharma has a vested interest in getting women to feel personal distress about their sex lives. The introductory line to his article goes so far as to claim that,

The pharmaceutical industry wants you to think that if you don’t have sex like a porn star, you’re in need of their drugs.

Even though I’ve been wandering the labyrinth of FSD for awhile now, I can’t say I’ve bumped into any doctors or reputable drug companies that say this to me. I’ve run into porn sites that tell me I should have sex like a porn star, and I’ve overheard conversations my peers have that tell me that. I’ve read that message in magazines and I’ve seen it on TV and in movies. And I’ve even gotten that impression while shopping for new sex toys. Sometimes, even the most sex-positive of sex toy stores, still manges to make me feel like I am somehow not measuring up, because I cannot or will not use one such toy or another, and because I cannot or will not have sex in certain positions.

Big Pharma doesn’t need to make me feel insecure about my sex life.
The culture in which I live does that already. Not only am I distressed by the experience of physical pain, but that pain is compunded by other messages I receive more broadly.
Why doesn’t Allen think about Big Porn, Big TV, Big Magazine and Big Body Image Distortion? For me, these are much bigger culprits I have to learn to navigate around in my sex life than Big Pharma.

Allen’s position is that if Big Pharma can get women convinced that there is something wrong with them for not having the sex life that Big Pharma (or, really mainstream media,) says they should be having, then Big Pharma can step in with cures, and thus make money. As examples, he cites the Orgasmatron, an accidental discovery stemming out of chronic pain treatment which has nonetheless been sensationalized by the media, (I wonder if the media raised the alarms when the Hitatchi Magic Wand first became readily available?) and LexaFem, an oral pill that has no entry on WebMD. (Must be an herbal stimulant or something. Not sure how likely it is that any doctor would prescribe LexaFem to me.) Allen is also sure to note Viagra’s use off-label for some women with FSD, and the dangers of using hormones to stimulate desire. (I’m not sure where that leaves me, as someone who had her hormone levels measured and found to be out of range for a healthy woman in her early 20s following birth control pill use. I’ve already used hormones, including estrogen & testosterone, to treat vulvodynia, although mine was a topical medication. That wasn’t in patch or pill form, but it’s still hormones. Am I supposed to be scared into not using them ever again? I still keep a little expired bottle of prescription hormone gel under my bed as a safety blanket.)

Allen then talks about conflicts of interest in medical research. Some of the studies on FSD have been sponsored by drug companies, including some of the bigger, more widely reocognized studies. It’s definitely worth taking a second look at these company-funded studies and thinking about how much influence that company may have had in the study’s outcome.

There’s two issues I can think of right off the bat that complicate matters regarding research independence. The first is, if these research studies, and others, about FSD including RGS are in fact independent of drug company funding, would Allen still be so quick to call FSD “Fake?” Does independence automatically redeem research? What about if independent studies draw the same conclusions that drug funded ones do?
One problem I myself am faced with is that, with the Restless Genital Syndrome articles I linked to above – I can’t tell from looking at the abstracts, whether these are independent research studies or whether they were sponsored by drug companies. I think I may need the full text to examine the full financial disclosure, if there is any provided.

The other issue I have with funding for research is, according to a recent NVA e-newsletter, some studies on Vulvodynia are also funded at least in part by drug companies. In this newsletter, I see Pfizer gave a financial award to Dr. Pukall of Ontario, Canada, for her research into vulvodynia & neuropathy.
Vulvodynia & pelvic pain conditions are still very much mysterious, misunderstood areas of women’s health. Can we afford to outright reject new research on vulvodynia and FSD broadly, on the basis that it is funded in part by drug companies? Or is it sufficient that patients, doctors and advocates be ready to closely examine these studies for possible bias?

Allen concludes his article with a quote by Liz Canner, mastermind behind the new film Orgasm Inc, which takes a critical look at the Big Pharma’s involvement in FSD. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that even though I don’t particularly want to watch this film and it will probably give me a brain aneurysm, eventually I’m not going to have any choice but to force myself to watch it sooner or later. Canner says,

“Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education”

Allen then tacks on, “Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone.”

What sort of sex education does Canner have in mind? How comprehensive are we talking here? In Canner’s sex education class, will we be focusing on the Masters & Johnson model of sexuality, or will we provided a wider variety of sex education materials? Will we be taking a Western point of view or a more global one that looks at many cultures and sexuality?
I ask because the sex education I went through a few years ago, was sorely lacking.
I would hope that Canner’s definition of sex education includes not just a critical examination of Big Pharma, but of the culture in which we live – a culture which both markets and condemns sexual activity. A culture that is uneasy talking openly about masturbation, consent and mutual pleasure. A culture which, in media depictions, often upholds sex and gender roles in sexuality, and leaves many subjects, such as BDSM, porn, open relationships, and certainly painful sex, taboo.

When Canner talks about sex ed, is she willing to spend any time educating the general public on the subject of dyspareunia, which can be (and for me is,) a form of FSD, and whether or not it’s worth treating? Or is dyspareunia to be overlooked in sex education the way it was during my high school sex ed, precisely because it can be a form of FSD?
I wish someone had taught me about vulvodynia earlier on. Would Canner consider that a form of “Disease mongering” too?

As for Allen’s last statement, he himself has to look a little harder to find my funny bone. Or perhaps I’m just one of those legendary dead-on-the-inside humorless harpy feminists, one who takes sexual dysfunction much too seriously.
Regardless, based on what I’ve seen Allen and others write about FSD & Big Pharma so far, I’m not so sure that I myself would find Canner’s film particularly funny. This is yet another example of an article about FSD which, rather than amuse and educate me, distresses & drains me.

you know, in addition to being the most persecuted man ever in the history of the world.

ps this is not photoshopped: