You should be required to take sex ed at the UCs before you graduate

There are plenty of scary statistics — I think they are terrifying — depicting how more states than not in our fine country do not require sexual education, which they may or may not even require in their public schools, to be medically accurate. Sperm? What are sperm? The only “S” words that states like Alabama and Mississippi are interested in when in comes to sex are words like SHAME and…STORK. Thankfully, California, God bless us all, leads the way with some of the most comprehensive sex ed in the country, under The California Healthy Youth Act, passed in 2016. California even cares enough to codify that it wants its kids to be able to talk to each other about sex — at least enough to avoid legal trouble (more about that later).

Similar scary statistics tell us that sex ed of the non-abstinence based variety, unlike what is so popular in conservative states (well, most states), does wonderful things like prevent teen pregnancy and reduce rates of STIs (and how curious, that those who are so pushy with their views on abortion can’t grasp the notion that empowering women with the choice to not get pregnant in the first place would take the decision whether or not to have an abortion right off the table).

California’s present leadership concerning sex ed is a step in the right direction, albeit an inadequate one. Sex ed should not be about simply mitigating the life-altering consequences of infection or an unplanned child. Sex ed should be about opening up unforeseen, amazing potential facets of life. No, I’m not talking about anything specific like discovering tantra, though of course, whatever floats your boat. What I’m talking about are communication skills.

Sex education cannot simply be comprehensive and science-based at the K-12 level; it needs to be truly sex positive and at the college level too. The California Healthy Youth Act promotes, “Healthy relationships for youth,” and California students grades 7 through 12 are taught, “Knowledge and skills related to recognizing, building, and maintaining healthy relationships that are based on mutual affection and free from violence, coercion and intimidation.” Except the happiness of an adult is predicated on so much more than being free from violence, coercion and intimidation.

Sex ed needs to be more than birth control and STIs; it needs to be elevated into the college classroom where messy, explicit, uncomfortable and delicate conversations can happen about how to communicate sexually in intimate situations, empowering young adults for a lifetime of optimized intimate relationships — conversations we don’t know how to have in this country. Ever been to Europe? Their attitudes toward sex are kilometers different than our own.

What is almost all the art we consume about? The entire music industry? The books we read? Love and it’s close synonym/culmination, sex, drive our economy. The we’re-so-desperate-for-mediocre-erotica-it-grossed-over-one-billion-dollars franchise is also the best-selling novel of all time (I hate “Fifty Shades”). The history of hundreds of years of poetry irrefutably demonstrates the importance of love and sex. Sex is the crux of our existence — and not simply because it’s our rote biological imperative. The pleasure we can gift one another is humankind’s most powerful common denominator and Americans need to do it better.

We are severely truncating the potential joy of the human experience if we limit the desired result of sex ed to the avoidance of trauma at the expense of prioritizing the responsible appreciation of pleasure. Better communication around sex leads to more fulfilled humans. People are not born knowing how to communicate in this way. High school probably isn’t the proper or most efficient venue, which is why I propose comprehensive, science-based, sex positive sex ed be a required class at the UCs. Let California lead the way once again.

It’s tragic that there are people who die having gone their whole lives wanting to be touched a certain way by their partners but not being able to articulate it to them. I also thought it was tragic when, a few years ago, my roommate told me she had never had an orgasm with a partner because she didn’t know how to talk to her partners. She is nowhere near the only instance of this I’ve encountered. I know too many people tied up in shame and silence when it comes to their bodies and unachievable pleasure, and it’s all avoidable with a little knowledge.

Hell, call required college sex ed a tool for capitalism if you have to. Happier people make for better workers…more robust GDP for our fine state…a larger budget surplus better insulates us from Trump. Or, you might go so far as to say that if the Trumps of the world received decent sex ed and were living their most fulfilled, blissed-out, shame-free sexual lives (ew) (I’m a hypocrite), then there would be no Trumps. He’d be too busy being happy and wouldn’t need the rapt attention of an entire nation to fill the hole in his soul. All from sex ed. You’re welcome.

Written by: Lauren Frausto — lrfrausto@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

How the Department of Energy’s decision to approve the sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia puts the whole world at risk

Last week, the Department of Energy approved seven different companies’ requests to engage in an exchange of nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia.

Critics have warned that the maneuver may ultimately assist in putting the Saudis on track to developing nuclear weapons, while also noting that the Trump administration’s decision to approve the transaction without congressional support demonstrates a lack of transparency and may constitute a potential conflict of interest. Calls for further investigation into these nuclear dealings have worked to finally bring attention to one of America’s strongest, and most problematic, relationships.

Recently, U.S.-Saudi relations have been the target of intense congressional scrutiny following the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi government last October. Long heralded as a particularly close and special relationship, the alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United States has grown uniquely prominent in recent years, especially as the U.S. continues selling weapons to the Saudi kingdom despite its role in the ongoing slaughter in Yemen.

Recently proposed nuclear sales have been portrayed as assisting Saudi efforts to pursue energy modernization. The reality is, however, that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s push toward nuclear technology has far more to do with developing nuclear weapons as a means of countering Iranian influence than with providing a source of renewable energy. In fact, the Crown Prince stated last year that “without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

Despite the repeated insistence of the Trump administration that Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism (and thus must be subject to regime change), the State Department remains silent on Saudi Arabia’s role in becoming arguably the most prolific financial supporter of global Islamist terrorism. Saudi Arabia has exported violent Wahhabist ideology at an international level, funding thousands of radical madrassas across multiple continents, with the intention of fomenting a radical form of Islam at the expense of more moderate voices. Saudi Arabia has funded terrorist organizations including al-Qaeda, the Taliban and al-Nusra.

Of course, the cognitive dissonance caused by America’s contradictory policies over Iran and Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of nuclear technology is not without reason. The United States remains closely tied financially to the Saudi government, especially over weapon sales and crude oil transactions. More broadly, the Trump administration’s support for exporting nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia is also part of a larger effort to establish a coalition of Arab states to assist the United States and Israel in countering Iranian influence in the Middle East.

White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner has developed an unusually close relationship with the Saudi royal family, frequently engaging in private, informal conversations with the Crown Prince. This has drawn the ire of some who see the politically-inexperienced Kushner as susceptible to Saudi manipulation. Kushner’s top level security clearance was initially denied by intelligence officials last month, likely due in part to his close ties to the Saudi government, and was only approved after the president overruled the decision. Given his proximity to both Trump and the Crown Prince, it’s hard to imagine that Kushner did not have a role in pushing these dangerous nuclear sales forward.

Even as Trump rightfully attempts to denuclearize countries like North Korea, his administration contradicts itself by supporting the nuclearization of one of the most despotic regimes on the planet. Driven by its own greed and manipulated by its close alliance with the Saudi royal family, the U.S. government seems intent on assisting Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear weapons. The sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia does not benefit the U.S. domestically or on an international level. Instead, it threatens to violently backfire by signifying American hypocrisy on a global scale and rapidly accelerating tensions in one of the most volatile regions in the world.

Written by: Brandon Jetter — brjetter@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Climate committee is just what many progressives expected — a waste of time

In the backwards problem that is climate change, where the perpetrators won’t live to see the consequences, it is us, the youth, who have the most to lose. The gap in the sense of urgency between the young and the old has never been wider.

In November 2018, during the first day of orientation for the freshmen House of Representatives, 200 progressive climate protesters from the Sunrise Movement — a youth-led climate activist group —  along with freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, protested outside Nancy Pelosi’s office for a climate solution plan as she transitioned to Speaker of the House. Talk about setting the tone!

Pelosi stands out among the Democrats as the “climate champion,” successfully blocking off-shore drilling and supporting new technologies to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. So the last thing she probably needed was children criticizing her climate agenda before she even took her new job.

AOC, along with the Sunrise Movement, forged the Green New Deal, the most ambitious plan to date that addresses the climate scientists’ urgent calls for immediate action. They pressured Pelosi to make a new climate committee that would focus on implementing the Green New Deal’s plan, along with three simple requests: create a plan on the timeline mandated by top scientists, include language on economic and racial environmental justice and prohibit committee members from accepting fossil fuel money.

In what almost seemed like an act of defiance, Pelosi assigned Florida Representative Kathy Castor to head the new climate committee, officially called the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Castor publicly opposed the ban on members who have accepted fossil fuel money by citing the First Amendment. Unsurprisingly, Pelosi’s new committee excluded the timeline pushed by top scientists and failed to include language on economic and racial environmental justice.

To make matters worse, the committee’s rules are strikingly similar to the climate committee formed in 2007, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which has since been disbanded. That committee, like its current iteration, ruled that it “shall not have legislative jurisdiction and shall have no authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution,” meaning it couldn’t pass bills to the floor for a House vote. The new climate committee is no different.

The new climate committee also lacks subpoena power. Without this power, committee members can’t force government agencies to testify on environmental issues, which is essential for creating the necessary legislation that climate scientists are urging.

Despite the controversy, youth from the Sunrise Movement showed up to the committee’s first hearing earlier this month. The young environmental leaders educated the panel on the climate misfortunes of their hometowns, showing the same sense of urgency that climate experts are demanding.

As expected, the panel responded with classic climate change denial and skepticism — one read a whole letter from an energy worker who would lose his job if we take progressive climate action.

It’s almost as if the Democrats don’t want to take any drastic action against the fossil fuel industries that are driving us to extinction. They deliberately made the Anti-Climate Avengers team to delay as much action on climate as possible. It’s not just the Republicans in the committee who have taken money from the fossil fuel industries. Pelosi and her “climate” team have taken a total of $198,000 from the very corporations they’re supposed to be fighting.

The new climate committee is not the ambitious leadership we need to tackle our most pressing issue — it’s just show put on for progressives by more corrupt, old politicians who will not be around for the flood.

Written by: Daniel Oropeza — daoropeza@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Despite being committed to their buyers’ values, major outdoor brands like Patagonia are capitalizing on environmental issues — and it’s not sustainable

Patagonia puffy jackets are a given on college campuses at this point, ubiquitous to the point that I’ve seen more than one starter-pack meme declaring them a staple of the “basic” college girl. It’s a ubiquity that warrants suspicion.

They belong in the same functional-fitness-meets-status-marker category as Lululemon leggings or Hydro Flasks, a niche characterized by brands so carefully associated with the people they’re selling to that they become a carrying card to a certain club, a certain status quo and, in the process, a cultural phenomenon. Patagonia, like other brands I have and have not mentioned, is a company strongly committed (and vocal about its commitment) to sustainability and ethics.

In the last article I wrote for this column, I briefly mentioned Patagonia’s role in mobilizing outdoor retailers to protest reduced protections of the Bears Ears National Monument, a beautiful swath of land in southern Utah. A dive into the company’s supply chain practices reveals a commitment to humane labor and sustainable material sourcing that outstrips the vast majority of major brands around today.

In the age of “fast fashion,” planned obsolescence and the undeniable presence of corporations in politics and policy, it’s hard to be too critical of a company actively vocal about and combative toward corporate, labor and environmental exploitation. But it is exactly because of its cultural relevance and corporate ethics that Patagonia is a company that calls into question the role of branding and label-awareness so heavily built into mainstream and subculture culture. There’s something of a “Cult of Patagonia” in the outdoor community, surpassing even the brand-awareness Patagonia has in broader American culture.

Branding is, at its heart, a pointed association of a product with a set of values. In the words of Naomi Klein’s eloquent 1999 book “No Logo,” the purpose of branding “is not to sponsor culture but to be culture,” wriggling into our lives to become one of our most basic expressions of our values. (Don’t believe me? Honestly think about how you would feel about wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt in public.) We use brands to express ourselves to a truly shocking degree, and while a company like Patagonia is both aware of its power to shape culture and ethical enough to intelligently choose and determinedly live up to its values, it’s still capitalizing on value association, maybe more than most.   

Patagonia is one of a growing number of big companies that reflect and perpetuate a cultural shift toward consumer awareness about worker exploitation and environmental impact, and a desire to personally identify with outdoor culture that can be seductive. It has marketed itself into being a cultural phenomenon among outdoor enthusiasts and managed to sell that association to people who are not buying Patagonia products for anything more than cultural cachet. And on some level, that is antithetical to exactly the values it is associating itself with, reinforcing the systems supplying massive over-consumption that is such a big part of climate change.  

This article is not a call to boycott Patagonia — in fact, it’s almost the opposite. Patagonia is my model for what an ethical globally-successful company looks like, if such a thing is not an oxymoron. I don’t resent Patagonia for what it is, I feel like I’ve spent enough time in this article extolling its virtues to be nearly counter-productive, and hopefully enough to show how much respect I do have for it.

What I resent is the uncritical belief in the 3×5 cm label as an identifier of membership to clubs of cultural status and environmental awareness. Buying into the Patagonia brand of cool without recognizing you are paying $100 to $300 for a name is misunderstanding what it takes to love the outdoors. Excessive focus on the virtues of Patagonia’s business practices is a misunderstanding of what it takes to protect our planet. I have no beef with Patagonia or its creators, but the force of their social, branded success reveals something powerful about how we twist nature, outdoor culture and political will for environmental protection into something dangerously consumerist.

Written by: Anna Kristina — akmoseid@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.