Condoms

[Guest guest]

Trayimaya Prabhu wrote:

 

>This is funny reading:)

 

Is this excerpt from the HOT (Healthy Oakland Teens Project) web page funny

reading? This is but an overview- for details, you'd have to go to the web

site. If a student, after going through this course, asked Madhusudani for

condoms, what would she say or do?

 

Ys, Sita dd

 

> 1995-1996 Curriculum

>

> Peer-Led AIDS Prevention Curriculum

> Teen-led Sessions

>

> 7. Condoms

>

> Review of Session 6

>

>Here's a quick review of what we did last week. In Session 6, we worked on

>improving communication. We

>talked about using "I" messages to state how you feel about something and

>what you would like to change. We

>also worked on different ways of saying "no" to someone who is putting

>pressure on you.

>

> Objectives

>

> 1.Get comfortable talking about condoms.

>

> [Activity A: Issues - 10 min.]

>

> 2.Learn the steps for using condoms correctly.

>

> [Activity B: Condom Line-Up - 10 min.]

>

> 3.Explain and demonstrate the steps for using condoms.

>

> 4.Find out where you can go for counseling, health care, and condoms.

>

> [Activity C: Condom Demo & Resources - 20 min.]

>

> Materials:

> Activity A: Issues

> "Discussing Condoms" sheets

> Activity B: Condom Line-up

> "Condom Line-up" cards

> Activity C: Condom Demo

> Condom Display Board

> Condoms

> Plastic models

> Small tubes of Vaseline

> Tissues

> Small garbage bags

> "Resources" sheets

[Guest guest]

Sita wrote:

 

>Is this excerpt from the HOT (Healthy Oakland Teens Project) web page funny

>reading? This is but an overview- for details, you'd have to go to the web

>site. If a student, after going through this course, asked Madhusudani for

>condoms, what would she say or do?

 

First of all, Madhusudani would not be in the classroom, so there is no way

a student would ask her for condoms.

 

What you don't seem to understand is that I'm an *evaluator* and

*scientist*, not a teacher. I was sitting in my office in the university

while this was going on. Approximately 6 months later, I received data

print outs with the results, which I then analyzed, interpreted and wrote

up. It sounds like you think my job is as an outreach worker or teacher.

It's not. I'll try to explain it to you one more time: I design surveys so

that we can learn what different populations do that puts them at risk for

HIV infection . I also design evaluations for new and existing program so

we can see what works. I have *nothing* to do with telling anyone how to

use a condom and nothing to do with giving any out.

 

The section you pulled out of context (now why does that seem familiar?)

was from a curriculum that I was in charge of *evaluating* (not teaching):

 

It consisted of 15 sessions, including

anatomy,

physiology,

immune system functioning

information about drugs and alcohol and how they make us make wrong decisions,

exploration of values

stereotypes and other external influences that sometimes make us act in

ways contrary to our values

decision making skills

refusal skills (a whole session on how to say no)

condom skills (for those students who did decide to be sexually active)

skills how to teach this information to others

 

It was compared to a curriculum in which the students received a more

traditional program, taught only by adult teachers.

 

I've already explained the results, so I won't repeat them except to say

that it led to a *decrease* in the number of kids who chose to have sex.

 

Secondly, after the particular session you're concerned about, *all*

condoms used for *demonstration* purposes (e.g. to show how oil-based

substances make latext break and yes, how to use condoms properly), were

collected and thrown away. Not one single condom was distributed.

 

What you don't seem to understand, Sita, is that there are rules and laws

that professional people *have to* obey. Condom distribution in schools

is a *big deal*. In most it is not allowed, including in the schools where

this project was run. Even if teh students had begged the classroom

teachers or the peer educators (they didn't) to get condoms, *no one* would

have given it to them.

 

Perhaps more importantly, I simply don't understand your fascination with

this topic. Sometimes it seems that you spend more time thinking of

condoms than I do. Are you so desperate to find issues and so keen to find

fault and ways to discredit me that you have to stoop to this level of

discourse? Your actions are very telling. It's a very sad statement that

these are the tactics that proponents of *vedic* culture use to make their

points. We're clearly beginning to see a pattern of behaviors that seems to

be correlated with extreme misogynist stands on women's issues.

 

Ys,

Madhusudani dasi

[Guest guest]

Intelligent, well reasoned response to a flaming idiot. Keep on keeping on. It

is

helpful to hear this from you, as many are following this discussion who

really

don't know the facts.

 

 

>

>

> Perhaps more importantly, I simply don't understand your fascination with

> this topic. Sometimes it seems that you spend more time thinking of

> condoms than I do.

 

LOL

[Guest guest]

On 11 Dec 1998, Madhava Gosh wrote:

 

> Intelligent, well reasoned response to a flaming idiot. Keep on keeping on.

It

> is

> helpful to hear this from you, as many are following this discussion who

> really

> don't know the facts.

 

 

Talk about flaming idiots: is it the pot calling the kettle black, or perhaps

its "it takes one to know one".

 

ROTFLMAO!

[Guest guest]

>

>

> Talk about flaming idiots: is it the pot calling the kettle black, or

perhaps its "it takes one to know one".

>

> ROTFLMAO!

>

 

 

I am getting a little lost in the debate--could someone please explain to me

what a condom is?

 

kidding.

[Guest guest]

Sdd >>Is this excerpt from the HOT (Healthy Oakland Teens Project) web page

funny

>>reading? This is but an overview- for details, you'd have to go to the web

>>site. If a student, after going through this course, asked Madhusudani for

>>condoms, what would she say or do?

 

MRdd>First of all, Madhusudani would not be in the classroom, so there is

no way

>a student would ask her for condoms.

>

>What you don't seem to understand is that I'm an *evaluator* and

>*scientist*, not a teacher. I was sitting in my office in the university

>while this was going on. Approximately 6 months later, I received data

>print outs with the results, which I then analyzed, interpreted and wrote

>up. It sounds like you think my job is as an outreach worker or teacher.

>It's not.

 

You are listed as "Project Director" for the project. As such, it is easy

for a lay person like me to conclude that you are in charge of the course

content and interaction with students. Devotees might even say that as

Project Director, for you to take no responsibility for the content of this

course seems to be like a person who works for a meat packing company

saying, "I don't kill the animals, I just direct the butchers."

 

>I'll try to explain it to you one more time:

 

You have never before explained your role. How am I supposed to guess?

Thanks for finally doing so.

 

>Perhaps more importantly, I simply don't understand your fascination with

>this topic. Sometimes it seems that you spend more time thinking of

>condoms than I do.

 

I have simply been wanting clarification and never got it from you- you

previously told me you didn't have to. Where's the question of my obsession

or fascination? You're the one who posted this stuff on the Education

conference, inviting others to look into it.

 

>Are you so desperate to find issues and so keen to find

>fault and ways to discredit me that you have to stoop to this level of

>discourse?

 

No.

 

>Your actions are very telling. It's a very sad statement that

>these are the tactics that proponents of *vedic* culture use to make their

>points. We're clearly beginning to see a pattern of behaviors that seems to

>be correlated with extreme misogynist stands on women's issues.

 

Pray tell, are you calling me a misogynist now? I hope you are not using

your psychological training to evaluate me and others over the Internet- I

believe that goes against your professional code of ethics.

 

Ys, Sita dd PS- Have I made any other spelling or grammatical

errors/Freudian slips here?

[Guest guest]

>You are listed as "Project Director" for the project. As such, it is easy

>for a lay person like me to conclude that you are in charge of the course

>content and interaction with students.

 

Well, when I first came to ISKCON, there were many terms I didn't know what

they meant - so I asked. If you ask sincerely, I will always be happy to

answer. Please just don't assume that you know what the meaning is of a

specific term that you are not familiar with.

 

I'm going to assume that you are sincerely asking for more clarification

now, so let me describe some basics.

 

First of all, I work at a university as a research psychologist. In the

world of health-related grants there is a major distinction drawn between

"service" and "research". Service people get grants to do programs in the

hope that they will help people get and stay healthier, but they typcailly

never know for sure. Behavioral science research people get grants to

design and implement studies to answer questions like: How big of a health

problem is this, who is being affected, what are the behaviors that

influence the health outcome, who is practicing those behaviors, what are

the correlates of those behaviors (basically why are people engaged in

those behaviors), what theories best explain the different health promoting

and health destroying behaviors, what kinds of programs can help people

behave in ways that will keep them healthier? etc.

 

I'm in the latter (research) category. When AIDS first appeared in the US,

I conducted many surveys (meaning I helped design the assessment

instruments, develop the research design, analyze the results and write

reports) to help figure out basically what subgroups of the population were

doing what. I also tried to figure out where the epidemic and thus

prevention money needed to go. If you look further on our university web

site (which you already may have) you will see that many of my early

publications and presentations dealt with a concept called "relapse", which

I and one other person introduced into the field in the late 80s to bring

to people's attention to the fact that the main challenge for AIDS

prevention efforts was not getting people to *acquire* a new health

promoting behavior, but rather to *maintain* these new behaviors over the

long haul. That's an example of what I and many other people did and stil

do.

 

However, as the epidemic progressed, it became clear that several new

populations, including teens were placing themselves at risk for HIV

infection. Lots of people were out there in the community doing "peer

interventions", but there was no evidence that it was working. Also, no

one had standardized exactly what was a "peer" (is it someone who is your

age, who comes from the same community, shares your values, can they be 2

years older, 5 years...?), how you recruit them, train them or even how you

make sure they're doing what you think they should be doing.

 

So we designed a research project (with me as "project director" and

"co-principal investigator") to examine the how peer education worked and

whether peers could be used to teach these sensitive and difficult topics

to middle school students. We identified 3 schools where they already had

AIDS/sex ed programs and which were demographically comparable and assigned

one school to receive a peer-educator led program and two to receive the

normal adult led program. Earlier surveys conducted by other people, showed

that by the end of 7th grade (that's 12-13 years), about a quarter of the

kids had had sex. Yes, this is horrible, but that's just the way things

were. At that point, even though most kids had not had sex, everyone had

friends who were "doing it" and they were all talking about it and learning

from each other (much of this of course involved incorrect information and

this community had very high STD and pregnancy rates among teens). Earlier

research had shown that it's much harder to get kids to stop having sex

once they've started, than it is to get them to postpone their first

episodes. So we decided that the study would be best run in 7th grade and

we would follow these kids for 2 years and see how many started having sex

both in the intervention school and in the two control schools.

 

Kids in all 3 schools responded to the survey in the beginning of 7th

grade, again at the end of that year, and then once each in 8th and 9th

grade. My role in that process was primarily to help design tracing

techniques (i.e. how do you find the kids for follow up, especially if

they've moved?), training and supervising the survey administrators,

working with the statistician, and in general making sure that the

scientific project protocol was adhered to and the study was conducted

according to its timeline. I also designed and analyzed what is known as

"process measures", i.e. indicators of whether the program is being

conducted according to its manual, and how the students and teachers liked

the program (e.g. if you find out that your program worked in only some

classrooms and not in others, you can go back and look at the process data

and learn whether something different was going on in those rooms).

 

You already know what the components of the curriculum was, so I won't

cover that again. Basically the first 6 sessions were pretty technical

(anatomy, immunology...) and were taught by adult health educators, and the

last 8 sessions were focused more on norm building exercises and skills.

Those were administered by 9th grade peer educators, who had enrolled in a

for-credit elective class in peer helping that was offered by the school

and taught by a credentialed teacher there one period a day. I was not

particularly involved in that piece, but needed to know what was going on

to make sure I was measuring it correctly.

 

At the end of the study, we again evaluated all the students, both those

who received the peer education and those who did not. We did this for two

cohorts of 7th graders (i.e. we did the evaluation two years in a row with

different students each year). What we found was that among the students

who were virgins going into the program:

Year 1: 5% of the virgins in the intervention school had lost their

virginity within a year.

18% of the virgins in the control schools had lost their virginity

within a year.

Year 2: 8% of the virgins in the intervention school had lost their

virginity within a year.

23% of the virgins in the intervention school had lost their

virginity within a year.

 

So two years in a row (and by the way, the differences between the year 1

and 2 were not statistically significant), the peer-led program, (which

emphasized delay of sex, but also taught about safe sex for students who

decided to have sex) caused fewer kids to start having sex. When we

talked to students to find out why they made these decisions, they

consistently said that they now knew that they were not the only kids who

didn't want to have sex, felt less susceptible to peer pressure, knew they

could be virgins and still be cool, knew how to not get into difficult

situations and knew how to get out of them etc.

 

I've described this project in some detail because it seemed like the one

you were most interested in, but we have also evaluated other interventions

as the epidemic has moved through different populations. Our most current

grant deals with a completely different aspect of HIV preventive work, i.e.

the difficulty to follow one's medical regimen once infected with HIV and

again we are studying how common a problem this is, who is having

difficulties, what those difficulties are and how to best help people

behave in a way that will allow them to remain healthy.

 

It is true that I can't go out and teach people about Lord Caitanya

directly as a part of these programs. However, I am very open about being a

devotee, always wear beads, have lots of Deity pictures on my office walls

and many (at least 20-30) of my colleagues have visited the Berkeley

temple, chanted, taken prasadam, been to ratha yatra etc. They also have a

very favorable view of devotees and ISKCON now. I freely acknowledge that

I'm not involved in either full time or front-line preaching, such as book

distribution, but I think we can all help in our own ways. And as a single

mother I have a family to maintain.

 

Hope that helps answer your questions. Please, if you have other questions

I would be glad to answer them (probably privately not to detour this

discussion again) and would much prefer that to future false assumptions

and misunderstandings. OK?

 

Ys,

Madhusudani dasi

[Guest guest]

Madhusudhani wrote to Sita:

 

> Perhaps more importantly, I simply don't understand your fascination with

> this topic. Sometimes it seems that you spend more time thinking of

> condoms than I do. Are you so desperate to find issues and so keen to find

> fault and ways to discredit me that you have to stoop to this level of

> discourse?

 

That is what it looks like from where I sit, and that is what has triggered

my anger towards Jivan Mukta and Sita to a great extent. It is obvious that

a lot of research has been done to find faults with Madhusudhani's personal

life, which they can use against her later to "redicule" her in public. I

have rarely seen such a low-class style among devotees, and I hope that this

will be an exception, even in the case of Jivan Mukta and Sita.

 

I remember that Bhuta-bhavana prabhu said that it is impossible to refute

Jivan Mukta's points with Guru, sadhu and sastra. I am not so sure about

that, but as you may have seen, I have not even attempted to do that. If I

am to enter into a discussion about the philosophy, I have to first see that

the person on the other side really cares about others, and that the reason

for engaging in philosophical argument is to help the other person in

philosophical understandings, not just to score points.

 

I have also engaged in slandering on this conferance, but it has never been

in the name of Srila Prabhupada, and I have never used any words from sastra

to back up my behavior. I will have to stand for what I say myself. That may

be seen as a weakness, but it has been deliberate from my side, since I

don't want to misuse the philosophy and the previous acaryas for my own

sense enjoyment.

 

What I have some times become upset about in these discussions, which has

caused me to answer quite heavy, is that some of the persons on this forum

resembles smarta brahmanas, who are "experts" in the philosophy, but who

show no heart-felt understanding or genuine feelings. That was also a thing

which upset me so much about the GHQ texts, and which made me loose

basically all my confidence in most of the members there.

 

It seems like some people want to "compare" themselves with Lord Rama,

Caitanya Mahaprabhu or Srila Prabhupada, and take all examples from them.

The problem is that we have never heard that any of those persons, nor

anyone else in our parampara, have engaged in discussions even slightly

resembling those on the GHQ conferance.

 

Srila Prabhupada may have said some things regaring women in a heavy but

detatched way, but he never had such an envious and enimical mood behind it,

so it is not so hard for us to accept. But when others try to imitate him

and misuse his words for their own purpose, without being able to show any

of his qualities, then the alarm bells go on, at least for me.

 

Your servant,

Jatukarnya das

[Guest guest]

>

>

> I am getting a little lost in the debate--could someone please explain to me

> what a condom is?

>

> kidding.

 

If you have a dis -ease, you condom someone to make your own position seem

better.

[Guest guest]

Madhusudani devi dasi wrote:

 

>Your actions are very telling. It's a very sad statement that

>these are the tactics that proponents of *vedic* culture use to make their

>points. We're clearly beginning to see a pattern of behaviors that seems to

>be correlated with extreme misogynist stands on women's issues.

 

Dear Mata,

 

Are you calling my dear patni a misogynist?

 

Ys. JMd