Vintage STD/STI posters

http://www.medicalbillingschool.org/blog/50-vintage-std-propaganda-posters

After today's class period, I decided to search for examples of more controversial STD/STI prevention posters from the WWI-WWII period. I was most interested in those which, like the last South African poster we viewed, portrayed masculinity in this almost comic "action hero" kind of way. What I found was pretty shocking in itself. Not only were the soldiers the posters were targeted to called to assume this ridiculous caricature of manhood ("you kept fit and defeated the Hun"), but they consistently objectified women and dichotimized between the "good girl" and the "bad girl." The "98% of Procurable Women have VD" poster was especially disgusting. Women were consistently shown as the only group which spreads venereal diseases, and very rarely in the gallery is any kind of blame put upon the men in the situation. Examples such as the "Don't be her pin-up boy" poster, and the "easy girl-friend" ad, are especially bad.

Perhaps for us the most relevant poster is the one reading "8 out of 10 dead or syphilitic" and "9 out of 10 healthy and normal," referring to untreated and treated mothers respectively. Its statistics, while they may have been true for the period on some level, seem outrageously skewed and manipulatively marketed. Notice how "untreated mothers" and "treated mothers" is in a much smaller print than the other words. As you go through the gallery, try to look critically at each poster. How do you think teenagers, specifically those with an STI, would have reacted to seeing themselves depicted as being so wild and dangerous? Can you think of other criticisms or examples of posters where women are especially portrayed as being out unable to control their own sexuality?

--Greg W.

Sex Education!

http://www.thepregnancyshow.com/sexed_clips.html

I found this clip about sex education. As we discussed in class today, and watching Shelby's sex education video, there are many different ways individuals look at sex. This clip shows that when thinking about sex most people don't look at it from the perspective of "sleeping with all of your partners past partners." Have you ever looked at it from this point of view? Most individuals don't like to bring up past experiences with their partner or if they do not in the depth of how many people have they slept with besides you and were they being safe. Also, if we made this a more popular perspective, do you think it would make individuals want to take better precautions?

- Shelby Monroe