Having a female reproductive system is spectacular. Cycles surround us — the moon, the sun, the seasons — and there is a raw pleasure in feeling a cycle occurring within the body. It can be difficult to appreciate female anatomy and cycles amidst taboo culture, but not impossible. Perhaps the best way to celebrate the female body is by keeping it healthy.

This column includes practical advice on using herbal medicine to treat common complaints of our reproductive systems. Female anatomy is often more susceptible to infection than is male, thus I will pay it slightly more attention, but every herb that is beneficial for females is also beneficial for males. Here are some simple, inexpensive ways to effectively treat the body and prevent complaints in the future.

Spring seems to be upon us in Davis only because winter never appeared. Those who have lived in Davis long enough will recognize the seasonal blossoming of sexual relationships that accompany Spring Quarter. Those who have not will be pleasantly surprised. Many sexual encounters carry the risk of uterine tract infections (UTIs), but there are many ways we can help ourselves to avoid them.

Thankfully, we can rid ourselves of UTIs without troublesome antibiotics and expensive doctor visits. If you are certain you have a UTI — characterized by a burning sensation while peeing and needing to pee often — try treating it with cranberry juice or extract.

Pure cranberry juice (not the sugary cocktail blend) is incredibly effective at clearing out infections of the urinary tract. Drink four cups a day for two days. If you find cranberry juice too bitter, try watering it down or taking cranberry extract capsules.

Uva ursi, also called bearberry, is another herb that has been used to treat urinary tract and bladder infections for centuries. Uva ursi can be drunk as a tea or taken as a tincture (an herb dissolved in alcohol). I’ve used all three methods with wild success after struggling with recurrent UTIs.

The best way to prevent UTIs is to pee after sex and drink plenty of water to keep the urinary tract flushed. Cranberry pills can be taken more regularly if you are looking for even more preventative measures. Now, please enjoy spring without painful urinary tract infections.

Next, we can discuss the menstrual cycle. It need not be a troublesome time if we take the time to care for ourselves beforehand and during bleeding. Menstrual cramps are often linked to a lack of calcium and magnesium in the body.

The best way to avoid cramps is to eat a bounty of foods that contain these two nutrients before menstruation. For calcium, drink milk and eat leafy greens such as kale and spinach. For magnesium, eat dark chocolate and drink spearmint tea. These are just some common sources of calcium and magnesium, but there are many more.

When cramps can’t be prevented, the best remedy I’ve found is an herb duly named cramp bark. In Davis, the only way to find cramp bark is at the Food Co-op as a tincture. Tinctures are convenient to carry and easy to take. Cramp bark will effectively relieve cramps in about 20 minutes.

Another common complaint is that of delayed menstruation. Emmenagogues are herbs that can be used to induce menstruation. They can range in their severity, but mild emmenagogues are safe to use in virtually any dosage. A common mild emmenagogue is parsley, which induces menstruation by stimulating uterine contractions. Drinking several cups of parsley tea at the end of the one’s cycle can induce late menstruation.

All herbal treatments work best when paired with an informed biological understanding of the body. After all, you must understand what you are actually treating in order to treat it effectively. For many of us, education on our reproductive parts was severely lacking (if not purposefully withheld). Thus, I encourage anyone interested in herbal medicine to also delve into learning about the basic anatomy of their own bodies. You may be surprised how empowered you feel.

Editor’s note: ELLI PEARSON is not a doctor or medical practitioner.

To talk herbs and reproductive justice email ELLI PEARSON at erpearson@ucdavis.edu.

Anyone advocating a laissez-faire capitalist society (i.e., a government whose sole purpose is the protection of individual rights, which I outlined in my first column) might seem to face a problem.

Obviously, we live in a mixed society, and many facets of our society reflect this. Besides the wealth-redistribution schemes and economic regulations that I have thus far criticized, there are government roads, schools, universities and public transportation. It could hardly be considered practical to attempt to live apart from these, even if one finds them to be improper or immoral.

And yet a common criticism of capitalists is that we benefit from and use the very system that we criticize. I attended a public high school. I would not even be writing this column were I not attending a public university. I have used a variety of government services; and if the need arose, I would probably collect benefits from social programs.

The question is: Does this make me a hypocrite?

The short answer is no. But to answer the question fully, we must explore the nature of all of these situations. Though it is not always obvious, in each case what the government is essentially doing is initiating force — imposing its will upon us in a way that disregards our consent or values.

It is clear that the government initiates force in programs such as Social Security or Medicare — in these cases, the government merely robs money from some and gives it to others. (Specifically, transferring money from the rich to the poor via progressive taxation).

The government initiates force in aspects of our society such as mail and roads because it prevents competition in providing those services and funds them with forced taxation. In other words, we have no choice about whether we want to support these.

The same applies to public schools or universities (though in this case private universities exist for the small portion of the population that can afford them). In the case of schools, the initiation of force is even more obvious since schooling is mandatory, and the curriculum is regulated by government officials.

So even if we could somehow avoid using roads or mail or going to public schools, we would be forced to fund those services because of taxation.

Ideally, in a free society, there would be freedom in these services: No one would be forced to support a school system they did not like, and no one would be forced to pay for roads they did not want to use. Moreover, competition in these sectors would likely increase efficiency and quality; businesspeople would be doing their best to provide the kind of education people want most, and for the lowest costs — because this is how profit is maximized.

Now, returning to the original point: Am I a hypocrite for using these services despite opposing them in principle?

It is clear that there is nothing remotely hypocritical or immoral about benefiting from these once we realize the role that force plays in these issues. If I am forced to support these improper government actions, how could it be that I am in any way responsible for them? And who could demand that I must sacrifice my values further, on top of being taxed, by not using these services or programs?

Consider some other examples: Could one reasonably ask a capitalist living in Soviet Russia to reject food from the state on pain of hypocrisy? Or could one demand that I must risk my life by being drafted just because the military has protected me in the past? Such a demand would be absurd.

When one is criticizing aspects of a society that are so pervasive that one can neither practically avoid them, nor choose not to support them, it is not legitimate to accuse one of hypocrisy or inconsistency for being involved in them.

This is the reality of living in a mixed or semi-free society. To fight for capitalism and freedom, we have to advocate the right ideas — but we cannot pretend that this can be done independently of the system we live in.

TRISTAN DE LIEGE is many things, but a hypocrite is not one of them. He can be reached at tflenaerts@ucdavis.edu.

Voting for the ASUCD Winter Quarter Elections starts today.

All undergraduate students are eligible to vote for the six new senators and a president and vice president.

Members of the ASUCD senate have a say in how the campus is run, specifically the areas that impact students most. This includes The Pantry, Tipsy Taxi, Picnic Day and Unitrans.

Candidates this year are advocating for causes such as Ethnic and Lavender Graduations, club funding, increased C Permit parking, creation of an internet cafe and longer study room hours. If any of these causes sound appealing to you — vote!

Members of the Association have an $11 million budget to manage and you have a say in how and where it is spent.

It’s your duty to elect senators and executive officials that will determine how this campus is operated.

Voting is quick and convenient and can be done online at elections.ucdavis.edu. It is done through a choice-voting system, allowing voters to rank candidates in their order of preference. Online polls will be open until 8 a.m. Friday.

Election results will be announced Feb. 27.

The Anarchist

As I have argued over the last few weeks, and as common sense would dictate, groups naturally do what is in their interests. Since a small elite class owns most of the mechanisms which distribute information, they have the most selective pressure over information. They shape the way we talk, and they do it in such a way as to uphold and increase their power.

Once again, this is no conspiracy. It is a natural institutional phenomenon.

The case of the two-party-ideology is the best evidence. I want to do two things here. One — I want to use the prevalence of the two-party ideology to illustrate how the elite class manipulates public opinion via discourse imposition. Two — I want to show that the two-party ideology should be abandoned, along with the two corporate/statist parties.

The “two-party ideology” refers to either the “Republican versus Democrat” or the “liberal versus conservative” framework of discussion. The framework includes, as a major assumption, that a person is either one or the other, necessarily. It also assumes that if you are not either, you are somewhere in between them. It is a linear spectrum. There is nothing outside of it.

This leaves no possibility for any other view. How very convenient for powerful groups. All they have to do is exclude a view from this framework, and it becomes impossible to address. What about the things that the two parties overlap on? They simply must be correct, according to the two-party ideology. It could not be that both are wrong.

On foreign policy, they overlap nearly perfectly. They may differ in rhetoric. That is, the Democratic Party may speak a slightly less hawkish line, but if we look at the history of the Democratic Party, we will see that they impose U.S. corporate interests just the same.

What about banks? Democrats, like Republicans, can’t even mention bank regulation. The main puppet-masters of the two parties would never tolerate such defiance. The banks would pull funding immediately from that candidate and give it to their opponent, and the opponent would win.

After the second bailout, Obama made a passing comment about banks acting irresponsibly. What happened? A few banks made statements about how this concerned them, and Obama made a public apology the very next day, including an explanation of what heroes these “job creators” were.

We could go on — issue after issue — the core political conceptions that keep the powerful, powerful being the most protected. Even when a large segment of the population holds one view, it can be successfully ignored.

For example, extensive polling was done after the U.S. War Against Vietnam (a more accurate name for that war). Most Americans felt that involvement was the wrong choice. More importantly, many of that group felt that it was not only a strategic mistake; they felt that it was morally wrong to ever send forces there.

The idea that American military intervention could be morally wrong and based on upholding economic interests of some powerful groups is far too dangerous. The Democrats had to keep their “opposition” in safe bounds, calling the war a “strategic blunder,” failing to follow their constituency.

These show something crucial. The parties do not get their speech or ideology from their voters. Their voters get their speech and ideology from their party.

The corporate candidates of the corporate parties are simply mouths made to speak the speech that we are supposed to adopt.

The two-party ideology is the trap that keeps us from challenging power. Many liberals make the major mistake of voting for the Democratic Party, thinking that it is the more pragmatic option. Many liberals realize that the Democrats represent elite interests, but think they are a better choice than the Republicans.

They’re not. Both parties represent, for the most part, the same corporate interests. They are really two factions of one party. Voting Democrat is just a slightly slower descent down the same hole, the abyss of a despotic state, controlled only by the elite class.

Of course, voting third party has drawbacks. A Republican might get elected. This is not as bad as many liberals think. Of course, Republicans say bizarre and frightening things about women and science, but if we look at the actions of both parties, they are nearly equal in frightening-ness.

We have to start voting third party now, just to increase public confidence. If third-party candidates were to get even 10 percent of the vote, this would force the mainstream discourse to address it. It would send a clear signal to everyone that they are not the only ones who have no confidence in the corporate parties. People don’t want these parties. They feel stuck.

We have to create parties that are not slaves to campaign contributors. We have to abandon the Democratic Party immediately.

Voting third party is not a wasted vote. Voting for the DemRep Party is a wasted vote.

Brian Moen has voted third party in every election since he was 18. He can be reached at bkmoen@ucdavis.edu.