Aids a day late and contraception stories

So yesterday was AIDS day.

I belong to a generation who grew up with AIDS. Safe sex has been rammed into my head since I was about ten. (Anti smoking stuff started earlier but I can't say I followed that :D)

Well, it worked. I've never had unsafe sex. No condom is a no-go, even during the periods I'm on the Pill (I stopped it four months ago because I was tired of it-yes I was still with the Ex at that time and no he did not get a say in it.), except when we've both gone and been tested.
I don't make compromises with my health, or with someone else's for that matter. After all, I'm a slut! (irony inserted).
Truth be told, sex without a condom has only been suggested once, i think. Maybe twice. So the guys aren't too bad about it :D

I hear a lot these days about the younger generation being the most careless about that, and it drives me crazy. I don't understand how we can be less careful. After all, it's not as if anyone had found a vaccine or a cure(I shall celebrate that day).
My mother once told me she'd been lucky to grow up without this fear, although she didn't really. She had a few years, but she was still pretty young when it was made "official".(I wasn't around in any case).

We're lucky here, I really do think.

We're taught about reproduction early. This tends to include how one can fall pregnant, and no, not by giving blowjobs.

You can get contraception and a visit to the gynaecologist for free at the Planning Familial (I guess that might be something like Planned Parenthood?) as well as help to secure an abortion or simply a visit with a counselor. Especially if you don't want your parents knowing about your sex life.
Otherwise you can simply go and get it reimbursed by social security. Most contraception methods are reimbursed, except for the patch if I remember rightly, and how much you're reimbursed depends on the pill you use. In high school I used one that was 10 euros a month (that's REALLY expensive, but I was in high school, what did I care) and last year I was taking one that cost 1,30 euros for three months.
My roommate has one of those blue implant thingies but her dad's a european civil servant so she's under european social protection, it's not quite the same.
You can get the morning after pill free if you have a doctor's presciption, and it costs 7/8 euros over the counter.

Condoms of course are a lot more expensive, and not paid for, unfortunately^^But there are condom machines all over the place, and they give them out a lot. They gave them out in my high school every AIDS day, during the concerts and shows that were organised, they give them ou at concerts, as samples...Best Friend used to have a collection of them^^We'd get really funky ones with the name of the band we'd just been to see on them, that's always funny.

We had sex ed in middle school (~~12,13 years old if I remember right), and some doctor came to talk to us about AIDS, and I still have the poster I stole(actually, they were all stolen becaus ethey were so damn funky that year) from high school for AIDS prevention. It's bright pink and has "oui, oui, oui, ouiiiiiii" a zillion times on it and the "o"s of the "oui"s (that's yes, but I assume you know that) are made with condoms still in their packages, you know when you can see the circle? It's hanging in my kitchen, I should go take a photo.

They've a lot of special ads on at the moment, but they're on pretty often really. Nearly part of the background.

Although apparently there are less people in France contaminated this year. Which is some good news.
And our First Lady's brother died of Aids, so she has an interest in the problem.

I really do ramble.

Am I a slut?

On-going question ever since I started being sexually active (yeah, I can say that without cringing-clue number one, although I don't know of what)
What is a slut, anyway?
Slut,n.:

1.a. A woman considered sexually promiscuous.

b. A woman prostitute.

2. A slovenly woman; a slattern.

So how does one define sexually promiscuous? Do you count an overall number, or the number of one-night stands? How many VD's one has had? (none, thank god)Whether one takes the pill or not?
People have, in the past, expressed disapproval of how I've behaved. They're likely to go on now, which is why i mostly STFU, and do my own thing.
As long as I want to do it, how does it concern anyone else?
I've never had unprotected sex, I've had one-night stands and fucking friends and now a semiserious relationship, and other relationships, some I considered serious but the other did not, and some I gave up after a couple months.
I've never felt pressured and wouldn't for my life give in to pressure-I'm too fucking stubborn.
The thing is, I actually like sex. So why should I deprive myself for fear of being called a whore? And this has happened, mainly thourh high school, cause of a dumb rumour some guy made up-that I'd had a threesome at a party which was SO UNTRUE! I was sixteen. I was mad. And I didn't even know him.
So why did one guy I didn't know decide he could take the fact that I'd drunkenly kissed a girl at a party and then crawled up peacefully in my sleeping bag, and make it into a threesome and label me a slut?
Insecurity, perhaps. I mean, I don't threaten anyone with my sexuality-in fact, I enjoy it and the guys I've been with certainly haven't complained. I mean, for all my faults, it must be nice to end up with a girl like me instead of the girls I knew at high school, who had a broom stuck up their arses and found the slightest mention of sex distasteful. Which is why I surrounded myself with like-minded friends. More fun, dudes.
So what is the problem nowadays?
I don't often encounter it with guys I meet or, ahem, have been intimate with-none of them have complained.
Others have seen me as fair game, and have been put back pretty firmly in their place- I might like sex, but I don't like it with just anyone-there has to be some connection-like when i went to stay with a friend a year ago, and her boyfriend was all over me like a rash, all this because I'd actually told him what I thought. As if I'd ever touch a mate's boyfriend. No fucking way.
So does all this make me a whore?A slut?A bitch?or whatever?

I don't understand where people get off judging everyone else for everything they do. Like the fact that I act like this actually hurt them. I'm not forcing anyone else! This is me, this is my body, and I shall do whatever the fuck I like with it, be that holding off sex for a year or sleeping with ten guys within a fortnight (no, this has never happened).
I personally don't give a fuck about what other people are doing, as long as they like it, it makes them happy, it's consensual and doesn't involve animals (that REALLY makes me want to puke. And it's illegal.)
But no. And girls are the worst, aren't they? Not too fond of girls at times. Or boys. I just don't like people :D
But back to the topic. I really wonder at what girls do to each other. Criticizing all the others do, all the time. Does it make you feel better? Cause in that case you should be having a look at your self-esteem.
My enjoying sex takes nothing away from you, does it?

Go and get laid now.

On another note, there was afterwards a documentary on Arte, the cultural TV channel (very good one too) about women's pornography, made by women, women's perception of it, etcetera, which was quite to the point.
Pornography doesn't cater to women; in general, our image in it is humiliating and completely opposite to reality. Problem is, pornography is shaping people's sexual lives more and more. There was a study a few years ago that showed that something like half of a class of twelve years olds had already seen pronographc images, which isn't very reassuring.
Now, France is, I think, quite open about sex. A president would never be questioned about his extramarital relationships, as was the case for Clinton, because people just don't see how it would impair his capacities to govern. Even to the contrary, a politician without charm often doesn't last long. Everyone knows about Chirac's and Miterrand's affairs. As to Sarkozy, you jus don't know where to start.
I think that the pleasures of life are more valued here than in some other countries. And we can get on without the guilt that is more inherent to anglosaxon countries (my mother's opinion, who tells me that I was lucky to have been raised in France).
She has a point. I'd take the example of the States because religion is very important there. You'd never see sexual education programs here talking ONLY about abstinence, as there are there. Or people pushing their children to stay abstinent until marriage.
Now, those beliefs are all very good, but here religion and all that is part of the private sphere. Believe in what you want, as long as you don't bother the rest of us with it.
One of my teachers once told us about how when he fell ill in the US, he had to go to hospital, and had to give his religion to determine to which hospital he'd be sent to, a protestant or a catholic one. He was finally sent to a Catholic hospital because he was french.
Now, if you set that question to me or the greater majority of my friends, we'd be stumped, because the majority of people I know are atheist. I think I know about two people who believe in God, and they consider it to be their own business.
And even so, they don't believe in waiting until marriage.
I'd probably live up to a French woman's reputation of sluttiness in anglosaxon countries, as would most of my friends, because basically sex isn't that important. It's just fun. If you want a one-night-stand, then why not? As long as it's expressed clearly. If you want to hold out for a serious relationship, then do so. It's up to you. And none of us would accept anyone trying to make us guilty about it.
Note to Anglosaxon guys : please learn another sentence in french than "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir". It doesn't work like that^^ Although it's priceless when you don't know what it means, and we get to explain.