Top 5 Reasons We Need To Ban Sex by Madeline Perez

Top 5 Reasons We Need To Ban Sex

By Madeline Perez

Let me set the scene: you’re enjoying a nice movie in a crowded theater, shoveling popcorn into your mouth with such intensity you frighten even yourself. The perky, lovable protagonist has finally cornered the target of their romantic interest into some sort of bedroom. They’re kissing. Yeah, sounds about right. They’re taking off their clothes. Hmm, ok. Don’t see what that has to do with anything. Suddenly, faster than a speeding bullet, they’re in a bed, thrusting. You drop your bucket of popcorn in paralyzed shock. A man near you vomits up his lunch. A baby lets out a piercing cry. Who let this baby buy a ticket to an R-rated movie? The point is, no one wants to see that. Whether it’s the trend of female dissatisfaction, underage characters, or, worst of all, bare male ass, I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 reasons we need to ban sex immediately from all movies and television.

5. Takes time away from a plot

Sex is never necessary to explicitly show in a movie. Every message the scene gets across can be done just as well (if not better), by a simple shot of people kissing hungrily on a bed and a slow pan upwards; the universal cinematic sign of insinuated lovemaking. Maybe even a hand grasping a bedsheet or slapping a car window like it just made a joke about your bald wife. (I.e. the James Cameron method to tell the audience “sex is happening now” through female hands). My point is that in scenes that feel the need to go further than an insinuation, each second spent watching an uncomfortable screwing scene means another second wasted not giving the audience a quality plot. I guess it makes sense. Why bother writing something good when you can just show two people having sex?

4. Looks stupid

ted by TV sex is that it looks incredibly stupid. Seeing characters being vulnerable like that, making their weird sex faces, looks so dumb because it reminds the audience that the characters are just as flawed and depraved as the rest of us. Gross! Also, I don’t think a filmmaker could make an O-face look cool even if they tried. Tasteful boob placement can stay, but seeing anyone’s naked butt in a movie kind of feels silly. Don’t even get me started on thrusting, which is directly painful to watch. There is no chemical strong enough to cleanse my eyes after seeing that Watchmen (2009) sex scene. Who watches the watchmen? A deeply unnerved and traumatized audience who’s going to need at least 3 years of therapy after that monstrosity, that’s who. Thanks, Zack!

3. Super uncomfortable

You’re watching a movie because you feel like watching a movie. If you wanted porn, you’d probably be watching porn instead. Having a movie switch like that on you is never polite and makes me want to have a firm talking to with the CEO of Hollywood. These are characters I just got to know intimately over the past hour! Why would I want to see this? What could anyone possibly be getting out of this? I don’t want to be horny right now, and even if I did (which I, for the record, would never do), this simply wouldn’t work. It also seems they forgot to factor in that movies and TV shows are things you sometimes watch with other people. I, and many others, frankly do not want to watch softcore movie porn around our families. This goes double for rape scenes and underage sex, both of which I believe should never be explicitly shown on a TV show. It’s clear that these are only included for controversy and attention, like some fully sequined bodysuit you might wear to CALC 226.

Simply put, banging, time and time again, has marred my perception of characters. The same goes for real-life; knowing the people in your life are having insinuated sex is one thing, but seeing it up close and personal is an entirely different story. It can ruin the whole show for me. Though I think Euphoria (2019) is entertaining, I cannot get past the terrible, unsatisfactory, underage sex scenes. Within the entire first season, it felt like nearly every episode had a scene where a male character, driven by a need for power and control, takes the reigns of a pushover girlfriend who clearly isn’t having a good time, crosses a line into possible sexual assault (which, mind you, is never addressed), until he finishes and jets quicker than he came, leaving her to cry or some shit. Time and time again, neither party would participate for pleasure, and the women seem to always get the short end of the “not having an orgasm” stick. It’s disturbing, serves no purpose, and leaves the audience all thinking the same thing. Wow, they sure are fucking a lot for characters who are supposed to be in high school! All in all, I find it hard watching these characters go about the plot when I just saw them have a traumatic formative sexual experience five minutes ago.

1. Sex isn’t even real

My last and main point is that we need to ban sex from television because it’s simply unrealistic. Sex isn’t real, and feeding audiences lies about its existence is frankly irresponsible. Many people see sex in media and then feel insecure when they don’t seem to be doing the do like their favorite character. My message to them is: Don’t worry! These things only exist in movies and you shouldn’t feel bad about something that was made up to fill screen time. My message to filmmakers on the other hand; Watch out. If you don’t ban sex now I am literally going to get you. I am in your walls.

CON Job: The Government and HealthcareBy Shayne O’Loughlin

In March 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the United States, hospitals attempted to prepare the necessary medical equipment to relieve the stress generated by the swelling number of in-patients. They had a massive problem, however. Standing in the way of large shipments of hospital beds and ventilators were nearly three dozen state governments and a federal district, all with laws made to destroy fair competition in healthcare.

To understand the environment in which American healthcare finds itself, we need look no further than Certificate of Need laws. This legislation started in our home state of New York in 1964 as a way to control “unnecessary” expansion of healthcare facilities, specifically in an area where their use would be “conflicting” and cause an increase in prices. Say a hospital in Binghamton wants to build a new facility on their premises to focus on neurosurgery, but a competitor hospital 20 minutes away already has a facility focused on neurosurgery. The CON agency within New York State then reserves the right to essentially veto the construction of the facility by refusing to accept the certificate of need, given that the two hospitals overlap and fulfill the needs of the same community.

In theory, by preventing duplicate services within a community, the space for medical expansion would be focused on medically-underserved communities such as rural America. In practice, the bureaucratic nature of this system naturally lends itself to corruption and inefficiency. To create a government agency or board, medical professionals within the state make these decisions, people who can be all-too-easily bought-out by corporate hospitals with a vested interest in maintaining market-share. This problem is exacerbated by the definition of “need” being unspecified , and requires no clarification or a method of appeals.

Within the first decade of New York’s adoption of the Certificate of Need legislation, 26 states had followed suit. In 1974, Congress passed the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act, providing federal funding to any state that embraced these laws. By 1982, every state had hopped on the bandwagon. The twist is that upon investigation, both the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice came to the conclusion that CON laws negatively impacted the quality, prices, and availability of medical services. In 1986, Congress reneged on the NHPRDA and pulled federal funding, leading to a slew of states dismantling their agencies.

The sheer number of studies that report similar findings to the FTC and DOJ are staggering. A study from Duke University found that in states with CON laws, there are 13% fewer hospital beds, 30% fewer hospitals per capita, and 42% fewer substance abuse treatment centers, as well as increasing the overall expenses of an average patient from 3 to 10%. The study also found that the distance from healthcare centers increased in CON states, as did racial disparity in equal quality of service. Washington State did an analysis on the effectiveness of their CON laws and admitted that “CON has not controlled overall healthcare spending or hospital costs.” Even healthcare providers have expressed uncertainty that the system in place works, according to two studies from the National Institute for Healthcare Reform and the independent Lewin Group in Illinois.

What empirical evidence can’t account for is the true cost of creating and maintaining these laws. How many independent competitor offices and centers could have been opened were it not for these laws that create a legal loophole for established corporate hospitals to create a barrier for entry? How many people were unable to afford life-changing surgeries because they were uninsured and had no alternatives to hospitals with egregiously bloated administrations and prices?

To see an example of what these laws inhibit, look no further than the success story of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where they continue to provide flat-rate operations with no hidden fees to anyone, whether they’re insured or not. In retaliation, local hospitals attempted to destroy the business through lobbying the state for new laws. Were it not for local politicians’ sympathy for the center from seeing what it provided to the community, there is no doubt the center would have been closed down by outside pressure. The prices for their operations are still available to peruse freely on their website.

Following the pandemic, many states reacted by putting moratoriums on CON agencies, so that hospitals could provide enough beds and ventilators. In light of this newfound (albeit limited) freedom, there is hope for a call to amend or abolish CON laws in some states, with North Carolina, one of the strictest states, already passing a revision in 2021 that slashed the power of CON agencies by raising the minimum cost for a Certificate of Need. The big problem facing reform is the relative obscurity of CON laws in the media and the role they play in making American healthcare the mess it is today. The only solution is staying informed and, in turn, informing others of the damage this system ultimately does.