PZ reports that researchers have discovered a link between HPV and oral cancers in men, justifying another look at vaccinating young men for HPV (which also improves herd immunity). So now, as PZ notes, the religious right is facing a major dilemma. It’s one thing to tolerate thousands of deaths from cervical cancer, which only affects women, in order to show that the wages of sin are death. But the sin of fornication is a much different thing for men and women—which is why the nuts say that a woman who has sex is impure and contaminated, but a man who does has just let his integrity slip a little, which is something you can get back by giving your bus seat up to a few old ladies. Certainly, we don’t need straight men getting physically contaminated for real to show that sex is contaminating, when the only spiritually contaminated party is the woman. That’s why, after all, it’s not a sign of integrity for a man to have sex with a woman before marriage, because you’re fouling up someone else’s virgin.
Anyway, PZ has a question.
Now the religious right is going to face a dilemma. Shall they encourage this vaccination to protect their precious boy-children, or will it be sufficient to scream against the sin of heterosexual oral sex from the pulpit? And can they even bear to talk about such ‘bizarre’ sexual practices in church?
Being a long-time wingnut watcher, I propose that their response to the dilemma will largely be to pretend it doesn’t exist. Inconvenient facts aren’t grappled with in the anti-choice world. If it doesn’t fit their arguments, they push it aside 99.9% of the time. No matter how many times it’s pointed out to anti-choicers that late term abortions are performed for health and safety reasons, and not just as a fad diet plan or whatever they think it is that women are doing, they simply don’t acknowledge it. We’re talking people who bald-faced tell girls that having a baby at 15 is no big deal, something you can walk off with a sensible diet and exercise plan. (See this week’s podcast for a jaw-dropping example.) Apparently, as long as you pretend it’s not real, it’s not. Sadly, the constructed reality model is working out pretty well for them, as evidenced by the government support for their fantasies over the evidence-based, reality-honoring arguments.
Anyway, cunnilingus is so gay. Why on earth would a warm-blooded heterosexual Christian man want to put his mouth on the penis sleeve, if not because he secretly likes to taste cock salt? Oral cancer is a sign that someone was homosexing up the sacred heterosexual bedroom, and so preventing it would be thwarting god’s homophobic will.
41 Responses to “Reality: Ignore it and it will go away”
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…or they will just attribute it to gay men, and ignore the whole female oral sex thing completely.
Because gay men are the source of all the evil diseases in the world!
“Being a long-time wingnut watcher, I propose that their response to the dilemma will largely be to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
It’s still a popular refrain in much of wingnut land that heterosexuals either can’t contract HIV or that it’s extremely unlikely for them to do so. So yeah, never underestimate the power of denialism.
micheyd beat me too it. It’s clearly god punishing the gays, obviously–just like he did with AIDS.
Deleted because Pandagon’s commenting policy disallows scientific misinformation to be hosted at our site.
PZ exaggerates the dilemma. The fundies will settle on implying to their sons (no need to tell the daughters, natch) that performing oral sex on a woman is dangerous because it gives you cancer.
True, they don’t like to talk about the act in question, but you can do a lot of discouraging with a vague girl-cooties, vagina-bad threat. And no prob if they don’t deter every last episode of cunnilingus, as long as they strike a blow against Teh Sex: as Tyler says, it’s not as if they care about keeping people healthy. The bonus for them is they get to equate female desire and oral-sex reciprocity with pathology. It’s Science!
I read the piece on the Evil Slutopia. It was pretty much all public and obvious info: eg, it prevents HPV not cancer, it may have some chemical risks that are untested (but also utterly undemonstrated), and it’s no good for the gentlemen, HPV is already on the decline. To all of which I say: well, duh. But none of them are reasons NOT to do the vaccine, and reducing HPV faster and further, and elsewhere where it’s prevalent seems a worthy goal.
HaHa,
I researched the Gardasil vaccine before getting it. And so did all my 20-something girlfriends. We got the vaccine, we’re all fine, no one reported side effects which are, by the way, entirely common for all kinds of vaccines.
The opposition to the vaccine is, unfortunately, almost entirely due to sex AND religion. I respect those who wonder about the safety of a vaccine that has only been tested for a few years, but they’re not the bulk of the opposition, here.
It’s all well and good to say that there are good reasons to not blindly vaccinate, and yet it is disingenuous to suggest that the majority of the hoopla over this vaccine has a scientific basis and is not rooted in misogyny. Because it is.
The wingers will just keep telling their kids not to stick anything in the vagina until after marrige. Because after marrige the evil she-vag is tamed and the sharp teeth fall out.
I also read the piece on Evil Slutopia. Most of those “reasons” to be wary of Gardisil were either already mentioned in the TV commercials for Gardisil or would be information given freely by a physician when they discussed the vaccine with you. The few that didn’t fall into either of those groups were either strawman arguments, bad statistics, or just plain old irrelevant.
Dan,
indeed. They presented most of those points as if they were great scoops born of investigative reporting. It only protects against, gasp, four strands of HPV! How awful!
Many parents, non-fundie, feminist, scientastic, reality-based, liberal dislike gardasil for very good reality-based reasons.
Riggghhht. My PhD in public health makes me, as a scientist and parent, unable to evaluate these things properly.
That’s why I’m looking into having my SONS vaccinated against HPV, even though I refused to have them vaxxed against HepB on the day they were born and let them just get chicken pox naturally.
Ha Ha Ha is a concern troll who was pretending at being a liberal while also discouraging abortion rights. Ignore, please. He or she is openly trying to deceive people into hurting their health.
God, nothing makes me despair more than the anti-sex nuts who think that it’s okay to lie to people to get them sick. You know, for Jesus. Who apparently liked people to be unhappy for no good reason.
I wonder where that sadistic asshole’s “concern” was when I noted that I got a tetanus shot. I guess I should be protected against that disease, because you don’t get it from sinning.
I don’t get freaking out over potential side effects. OTC analgesics have potentially awful side effects, and hardly anyone gets them. Most people who get the HPV vaccine are just going to feel like they were kicked in the arm for a few days (it IS the most painful shot I’ve ever had). That’s it. And I think people who react badly to vaccines, on the whole, already know it.
I got my first flu vaccine last fall and it laid me out for a weekend. But I didn’t get flu (and my immune system is typically no very good), which would have laid me out for a week or two. It’s all about your personal cost-benefit ratio, and I like to think we’re smart enough to decide that for ourselves.
ms kate, re: HepB, why? Someone in my family is a carrier and I had it, while not as an infant, as a toddler and way before they were recommending it to everyone.
What unree said. The fundies will try to find a way to fit credible scientific evidence into a meme meant to misinform and (once again) keep people afraid of teh sex.
A little biology help please! I’m confused by all the references to oral sex. Don’t most women contract HPV through PIV intercourse. If so, wouldn’t most men contract it the same way?
Thanks in advance for the info.
I don’t know about ms. kate, but I declined the Hep B vaccine in the hospital, despite being generally pro-vaccine. They want to give the Hep B in the hospital, when the little ones are less than 24 hours old. They want to do this to prevent mother-child transmission, but I had already been vaccinated and knew I didn’t have it. So why welcome a little one to the world with a vaccine for something I know he doesn’t need protection from yet? I did get him the Hep B later, along with the other childhood vaccines.
A little biology help please! I’m confused by all the references to oral sex. Don’t most women contract HPV through PIV intercourse. If so, wouldn’t most men contract it the same way?
The penis is not a mucous membrane — it’s covered with outside skin, which is tougher and more resistant to damage than “inside” skin like the inside of the cheeks or the vaginal walls.
Men are less likely to get blood-borne STDs such as HPV from PIV intercourse because it is harder to generate a micro-tear in a penis from PIV intercourse than to generate the same tear in a vagina. Also, I’m not sure, but I believe the mucuous membrane cells, because of the speed with which they replicate and replenish, are much more vulnerable to developing cancer if they’re infected with a virus. Skin cancer is rarely caused virally, and penises are covered with skin, mostly. (Penises that still have a foreskin have a mucuous membrane under the foreskin, I think… at least my 4-year-old sure looks like he’s got mucous membrane or some other type of red, wet, shiny skin under there, whereas his cut dad just has normal skin on his penis’ head.)
So in general, men get blood-borne STDs less easily than women from the same sex act, because their external sex organs are better hardened against damage and disease than our internal ones; also, the different types of skin make them less likely to get penile cancer from an infection. But the mouth is similar to the vagina, so all humans would be susceptible to viral infection from oral sex; again, this would be *more* likely for people performing fellatio because a penis can cause more damage to a mouth than a vagina, but a mouth is full of teeth that cause damage to it all the time regardless of what sex acts may be occurring, so people who perform cunnilingus are just as likely to have sores in their mouth as people who don’t.
(I *think*. I’m not an expert, so if an expert wants to point out something I got wrong, feel free.)
Em, don’t worry. I got them vaxxed for hepB later on. In fact, I had been vaccinated before they were born because I worked with blood in a lab. I had been told when I was vaccinated that I would not have lifetime protection and would need revaccination in 5 years
That is why I questioned the need to get them vaccinated on the day they were born. Why bother? Why push this?
Why jab a newborn to vaccinate against something that required revaccinating in five years to prevent something they were not likely to encounter for twelve years?
Now that the vaccine is permanent, it makes more sense. All the same, this is most certainly one of the vaccines that can wait as there is valid concern about piling them all on in a short period of time.
Don’t get me started on the incredible waste of public health resources in requiring the Chickenpox vaccine, while not offering it free to post-pubescent adults with a negative titer (i.e. people who are really likely to get hurt).
Carovee, the type of cells most prone to infection and subsequent cancer development are mucosal cells.
Sure, the infection can live on penile skin, but it causes the most trouble in the type of cells that line the vagina, the mouth, the anus, etc. More to do with cell type than actual infection.
Thanks, ms. kate. Makes sense.
Chingona–if my family member had had the vaccination within that 24 hour window, he would not be a carrier. But I agree with you–if there is no chance of intra-birth (not sure if that is the term but you know what I mean) transmission, hitting that window should not be necessary.
I suspect the fundie reaction to this will be simple, irrational as all hell (heh), and heavily misogynistic.
They will simply argue that the boys will have sex no matter what, (cause that’s just the way boys are, don’cha know) and should therefore be vaccinated. Whereas if they vaccinated the girls, it would encourage them to have sex that CLEARLY they wouldn’t otherwise have. You know, what with girls being so completely leadable, and soft headed, and… well, stupid.
That load of crap will definitely be the response, i guarantee it.
Despite the alternative predictions proffered in this thread, I still Amanda is right: denialism will be the response. Simply poison the well by accusing those who performed the research of having evil liberal atheist homobortionist bias, tie it into currently popular conspiracy theories about the “medical establishment”, and viola: no more ideologically inconvenient data.
Apologies for going OT, but a question for ms. kate, as you seem knowledgable: I had my son vaccinated for chicken pox 1) because my son’s daycare required it and 2) I was worried that with so many kids getting the vaccine, he wouldn’t be exposed the way I was when I was a kid. I now know that the day care would let me off the hook if I wrote a letter saying I objected to the vaccine, so for any future children I might have, should I get them vaccinated because their chances of being exposed as children are greatly reduced now? Or should I not because there still is enough of it out there? (And my son still got chicken pox, even with the vaccine, though it was a weird localized infection on one leg, and I’m cool with that because my impression is he’ll have better lifelong immunity now than with just the vaccine.)
And em, I’m sorry about your relative. My decision was an individual decision based on my individual circumstances, not a public health policy suggestion. I suspect ms. kate brought Hep B up just to demonstrate that her support for Gardasil was not based on a knee-jerk pro-vaccine position.
Chickenpox isn’t usually a bad disease in young children.
It can be debilitating and horrible after puberty.
My older son had had chickenpox before the vaccine became available, so there were no issues there. With my younger son, we would have waited until he hit school age, but he got them when he was 4.
My recommendation would be that you wait until they get chicken pox or have to be vaccinated or they hit about 8 or 9 years of age. I wouldn’t wait beyond that.
And just to say something on-topic not be a total threadjacker, I don’t think this will change the right-wing talking points, maybe partly because they like to ignore reality, but also because they have to at least pay lip service (ha!) to the idea that men shouldn’t have pre-marital, non-monogamous sex either. So they can use this information to attempt to bolster their claim that’s it’s sex, not women’s freedom, they object to, plus further hype the dangers of gaydom. I think the numbers involved are small enough that they’d be willling to sacrifice a few of their sons.
ms kate, you’re a lab tech?
Ms Kate, as she said above, has a PhD in public health.
Amazing, given that’s she’s a girl, I know, that she went beyond lab tech./snark off.
Alara - At least one thing you got wrong: HPV is not a blood-borne STD. According to my gyno, who was on a committee for the vaccine’s approval, and Brown’s health site, it’s actually transmitted by skin contact, and it prefers soft moist skin… which is why it doesn’t hang out on hands too much, but might transfer from male genital tissue (not just the penis, mind) to female or male genital or anal tissue, and might hang out in the mouth.
A link to a page I compiled when I was still running a sexblog: http://sexcalumny.net/2007/06/01/hpv-gardasil-infopage/#info
Information drawn from several different health resources, all cited.
P.S. for those Concerned, vaccine side effects are listed on that site also. It’s nearly a year old, but still.
Amazing, given that’s she’s a girl, I know, that she went beyond lab tech./snark off.
Given that louise is (IIRC) a lab tech, I think she was just excited to find out someone else was in her field. No need to be snotty about it.
Please tell me that the excuse “I got it from a toilet seat” is going to show up sometime…
“was” a lab tech, but thanks Mnemosyne! You’re right; I geeked out a bit. Ms Kate is a pal and I thought it was cool- I’ve performed the very blood tests she discussed long ago and can’t imagine how the technolgies have changed…
Jay, over the course of a dozen years, I worked in hospitals from 26 bed to 1000+, in small private practices and in a very large reference laboratory outside of Boston. My co-workers on the bench ranged from those with 2 year associate degrees to PhD. Some specialized in certain fields (Blood Bank, Hematology, Chemistry, Microbiology, Histology, etc) and some were like me- “jack of all trades” and able to work all 3 shifts.
Snark at me all you want, but wait until I really put my foot in my mouth, okay? It’ll happen…
Remember folks, one *can* get HPV from non-sexual contact, although likely not a toilet seat piator.
The fundies (and the drug companies) would do us all a favor by simply changing the way we talk about HPV and removing the cooties (STD) stigma. Why don’t they? Probably because the STD part of the CDC owns HPV.
Louise, sorry, didn’t know the back story. And given that I spend a fair amount of my time explaining that no, I’m not the nurse, I admit to having the sensitivity turned up too high. Sorry again.
No problem at all; I can see how what I said could be interpreted the way you did.
I worked at Mass General as a research tech in orthopedic research and oncology. I did insulin-like growth factor and receptor assays with sera from the Framingham Heart Study cohort, looking for biomarkers for impending osteoarthritis.
I also archived lab samples (mouthwash, swab, snot) for genetic analysis when my lab tech at Harvard was on vacation.
I have sense moved on, but it makes my current job easier knowing what certain lab-based researchers that we fund are talking about!
does anyone wanna give me an opinion here…
i am 31, and i do NOT have HPV… but they won’t give me the vaccine at the PPH because i am too old… anyone think it will be worth it to pay for it? really unsure here…
Denelian, my first question would be… how do you know you don’t have HPV? Many people do, and it comes and goes without their ever realizing it. That’s the interesting thing about HPV… your body can and will fight it off on its own. The question is whether, while your body is fighting it off (which may take a year or two), the virus causes lesions that will do more harm than the virus itself.
It’s kind of a personal call, this whether to get it or not, particularly if your insurance won’t cover it. (Hopefully this will change eventually; at the moment, most insurance only covers the group of people who were specifically tested for FDA approval i.e. women age 9-26.) I got vaccinated for the following reasons:
1. I had a strain of HPV, and fortunately it was detected pretty early, so I could have the external lesions treated and keep an eye out for irregular Pap tests. But I found the experience demoralizing and the treatment a little painful, so I would prefer not to experience that again with any other strain.
2. My cousin had a strain of HPV, and didn’t detect it until she had an internal lesion. She’s had reproductive organ issues for several years now and recently had a partial hysterectomy.
I think my parents would have done themselves a favor had they vaccinated me against chicken pox. They never got it as children, and nor had my sister, so when I brought it home from preschool the whole family got sick! And they were in their 30s! (My sister was 10). We must hope they never get shingles.