Thursday, 30th September 2004
Questions about sex and disease and HPV
I’m not finished with this subject yet. (Will I ever be?) So today children, today is Questions Day. Feel free to answer any that you think you can; give me links explaining away these questions, please. (New here? Please read this section.)
- The dormancy and clearance issues of HPV.
Okay, so HPV is a virus, right? It says it right there in its name - Human Papillomavirus. I thought a virus, by definition, was an incurable thing? How then, does one “clear” it? I have debated it in this entry before, but my questions have never been answered, (granted I haven’t looked very hard). What does “clearance” mean? Clearance from symptoms or clearance from the virus? If it is the latter, is it still a virus or does the definition of virus need to be updated? Or do I just need my definition of virus updated? If it is clearance from the symptoms, then that means you always have the virus and then the possible risk of transmitting it.
How do they prove that the virus remains dormant in a persons system for up to 10 years? Why do they say this? If you cannot test for HPV, just test for the type of HPV once abnormalities / symptoms have been discovered, why are they saying that it just hangs out in our bodies, suppressed by our immune systems, for up to 10 years? If the dormancy issue is true, then how can one prove that the “clearance” is actually clearance of the virus and not just a permanent suppression? A permanent dormancy.
- The epidemic status of HPV.
I have read differing statistics, but, because it is at hand, I am going to quote from the Joel Palefsky book, “an estimated 75% of sexually active adults have or will have transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) at some point in their lifetimes.” Here are my problems with that statement - why do they say transmitted, not contracted? (Because he is not alone in that phrasing and incidentally, I think that is a fantastic book, buy it.) Can you transmit without contracting? If so, how? If the virus is primarily asymptomatic, how are they proving that 75% of us are transmitting it?
- The conservatives claiming HPV as reason for abstinence.
I think the promotion of abstinence, as the only way of being, is a waste of breath. The simple fact of the matter is that people shag, have always shagged and are going to continue shagging. Why? Because it feels good and if there is anything we know about our species, we know that we do things that feel good, regardless of the consequences. It feels good to have that much power, doesn’t it Bush, that’s why you bomb the shit out of nations. Anyway, I digress. I think that abstinence should simply be promoted as one way of being. I do think that too much pressure is put on kids to loose their virginity. To become shaggers. It is okay to not want to have sex. It is okay to wait until you are married to have sex. It is okay to never once, not ever, have sex. It’s not a big deal. (Why is sex so meaningful outside of the procreation argument anyway?) I think it is irresponsible to preach abstinence as the “right” or only way of being, because it is simply not true. Abstinence is only one way of approaching the notion of sex.
So the conservatives say, “don’t have premarital sex because you’ll get HPV. There is an epidemic and condoms don’t protect you from it.” Okay, that’s true because look at me everybody, I’ve never been married, but I sure have had sex and I have HPV! So, if there really is an epidemic, then why does it matter if we abstain or not, because, more than likely, we already have it? And okay, so let’s now then contain the epidemic and not have the little kiddies on their up to contract it. So, then, are all we disgusting infecteds supposed to find another infected to get married to and hence live out our happily married and infected lives, shagging in a morally correct certitude? What do we do about all those people that don’t think they have it because they have no symptoms? If it really is a primarily asymptomatic disease, how are we determining who has it and who doesn’t? Or should we just make everyone in the whole world get married right now so as the children of the future won’t contract it? But if it is true that HPV is also transmitted by towels or soap, what if little Jane or Billy accidentally uses Mummy or Daddy’s soap or towel and then they get it? Or should those with a genital HPV infection not be allowed to have children? Does it count when Bobby or Sue gets a wart on their hand or a veruca? Are they still an infected person once it is “gone”? Will they have to marry someone else who once had a wart on their knee? Or does an HPV infection only really count if it is a genital one?
Or perhaps, more logically, if there really is an epidemic of HPV, then we should just educate the masses. Empower them to make their own choices. Teach the kids that yes, this is something that can happen if you have sex. It’s both nothing and potentially deadly. Allow the person to make their own informed decision about whether or not they feel sex is worth the risk of contracting HPV or any other STD for that matter. This supposed “protection” of people or teens from the facts is nothing other than a death sentence in an emotional, intellectual and spiritual way. Why do we deem people stupid, in need of protection from reality? It seems to me that the only time reality bites, is when you have been protected from it. If I had known about the reality of HPV, I wouldn’t have been so emotionally devastated when I received my diagnosis. I would have known this was a risk I was taking and would have responded accordingly.
- The liberals saying that HPV is nothing to be concerned about.
Now, granted I have only read one instance of someone saying this, but I do want to address this side of the debate too. There is the thought that because the majority of HPV infections are benign and at their worst simply a bout or two of genital warts, that it is “just the common cold of STDs”. No. If thousands of women are still dying from cervical cancer every year, then this is not the “common cold” of the STI world. (According to the CDC, 10,500 women will develop invasive cervical cancer and 3,900 will die from it in the US this year.) If I can die from the contraction of this virus, then it is important that I understand how and why I contract it. I think that liberals or left thinkers are afraid of the rights viewpoint on HPV because there is an element of truth to it. However, in their reactionary dismissal of the right, they, in turn, are denying the populace information on the matter. They want to sweep it under the carpet because it is a problem in its contradictory and unknown or improvable behaviour and the right want it out in full view for the same reasons - because right now, not enough is known about it to prove anything either way.
- Sex gives you diseases.
So does living. We get ill all the time from countless different things, for countless reasons. Why is it that this one type of illness’, the sexually transmitted ones, cause so much pain and agony? Children, you might get measles - stay away from school! Stay away from your friends! Stupid right? But, the truth is, sending your kid to school is to expose them to a plethora of diseases they are not going to encounter at home. So why is it that illness’ pertaining to our genital regions cause us so much strife? Why is it that they are the cause for barring actions? Why should this one grouping of illness’ stop us behaving in a certain manner or dictate something about us? But measles or mumps, or chickenpox or MS or the flu or colds or Parkinsons or whatever mean nothing intrinsic about us? A lot of us are born ill with things like asthma or jacked up eyes, to use myself as an example, and what do these things say about me as a human being? Should I only mix with others with divergent squints or asthma? Should people be protected from me? As I said the other day, it’s about the ideas we have attached to our genital regions. It’s about shame and stigma and taboo.
If, as some might purport, it is because our nether regions are sacred and should be honoured and respected because they produce life, why then, is it that this planet is running on empty off a death rhythm? Our actions in society, personally, culturally, nationally and globally are killing the earth and its inhabitants. Why would we sanctify life when the message of the world is one of a destruction, both subliminally and overtly? Why is it that we are expected to sanctify life in the sense of procreation, but not in the sense of allowing the individual to foster their own choices and actions based off of complete, accurate and impartial education? What if I think thought is more important than my ability to create life? Why am I expected to place your belief in what my sex means over my belief in education? Why am I to adhere to the word of the pious who don’t necessarily have the same viewpoints as me? Why should I adhere to the doctrines and principles of a person who thinks that it is okay to bomb a nation but not have premarital sex? That person is insane to me, why am I to do as they say?
Gah! I could go on forever asking these questions, but I’ll stop. For now. 
Tuesday, 28th September 2004
On Promiscuity, Shame, Stigma and STDs.
Today children, what I want to talk about is stigma. I want to talk about why it is that some words or groupings of words mean more than what they mean or more than what they are. For instance, when someone asks me what it was I was studying at university before I dropped out, and my response is Women’s Studies, you see this penny drop behind their eyes and a whole bunch of other words come gathering around my sentence and suddenly this person “knows” things about me that I never said. So you know, wooOoOooOoOoooOooo, I have an STD everybody!!! Weee! Now what is it that you think you know about me..?
One of the major, perhaps the most propelling factor, behind the idea of what an STD / STI means, is “promiscuity”. Having an STD makes me a promiscuous person. To illustrate my point, a couple of months ago, my aunt said, “it’s always the poor girl who has just lost her virginity that gets HIV, never the promiscuous girl.” So to those filled with a moral piety, HIV is a punishment for promiscuity, as, no doubt, HPV is for me. I am then, a slag, a whore, a dirty bitch. I am being punished for my sins.
Promiscuity - having frequent and diverse sexual relations. Are there any promiscuous men, I wonder? I’ve never heard the word applied to men, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. Oh wait, yes I have, I have heard it applied to gay men and that is why they were visited by the “gay plague” which they deserved because all gay men fuck each other randomly as often as they can without protection. Because gay men are sexual deviants, right? So then, are straight men promiscuous? Or is promiscuity only applied to people who can be classified as sexual deviants? Are women then, by default, sexual deviants? Is it, perhaps, that we can only strive to not be sexual deviants, but any slight slip up, any encounter in the dark, propels us back into the realm of sexual deviancy and punishment for us lasciviously enjoying our bodies..?
Promiscuity. Now, on the one hand, we have this heterosexual culture that is telling women to lighten up about sex. That we shouldn’t ask that our partners remain faithful, that we should be fine with them having multiple lovers. (How many arguments have I had over that one?) That real women are empowered by their sexuality, that we can fuck as good and as hard as the boys. That we can express ourselves through our sexuality. That we can define ourselves through our sexuality. This is what it means now to be a real, modern, heterosexual or bi-curious for the boys woman. Essentially, we have a culture that is encouraging the idea of “promiscuity” in its literal sense sans emotive connotations. Or perhaps, with a new kind of emotional connotation. A positive one. On the other hand, we have the traditional notions of sex being bad and anyone that engages in it premaritally deserves everything they get. That would be the negative side of promiscuity in case you were wondering.
The simple fact is that the more people you are intimate with, (because you don’t actually need to have sex to catch HSV or HPV), the higher the likelihood of you catching something from someone. The sad truth is that you are most likely going to be unaware of the fact that you have indeed caught something and so continue adding your part to this endemic. I saw this thread recently on a message board that was joking about herpes (HSV) and other STD’s. Everyone participating on the thread was “clean” and checked themselves recently. Which of course, oh you silly boys, doesn’t mean anything when the tests can only prove that you have it, not that you don’t. But what this does indicate, is that someone with an STD is unclean. Is dirty. Is impure. I am then dirty. I am then impure.
So why is having an STD / STI such a big deal? Why does the topic make people so uncomfortable? Why is it that I could tell someone I have viral meningitis and for that to not have any connotations about my person, but if I am to say that I have HPV, then all of a sudden I also make a huge statement about my personality, my morals, my ethics? Both can kill you - so really, what’s the difference? As far as I can see, the difference is in the shame factor. The difference is that people, regardless of what they think they think, still dichotomise sex and humans, more specifically sex and women. The difference is that regardless of how “liberated” people might like to think they are in regards to their attitudes about sex, they still buy into very definite (christian) religious ideas about sex, women, shame, taboo.
So what we have here, is a culture encouraging women to be promiscuous, to keep up with the men and their desires. To pander to mans reported “need” of having multiple partners. And some of us are doing it and some of us are not, but all of us are the potential victims of shame. Of ridicule. Of having a million and one things said about you behind your back, and none of which are true.
I don’t think it is wrong for a person to have multiple sexual partners. I think that a person should be free to be able to make up their own minds about things like that. I think that a person should be free to make a choice about their life and for that choice to not mean anything other than what it is. That is why I am a feminist. I think that if a woman wants to choose to have multiple sexual partners, then she should be able to and I don’t think that choice should say anything about her other than she likes having sex. I don’t think there is anything wrong with liking sex. I think that if a woman wants to be celibate, then she should. I don’t think there is anything wrong with abstaining from sex. Neither do I think that promiscuity or abstention are right. I don’t think they are anything other than their actions.
What I do think is wrong though, is all these unaddressed emotions that swim underneath the idea of STDs. These notions of “dirty”, “impure”, “whore”, “just deserved” that give a buoyancy to the extra meanings of STD, of promiscuity. That make an STD even mean promiscuity, because once or plenty, it can happen any time. That cause some kind of invisible nomenclature to be forced upon my sex, my sexuality, my life. That I am forced to live up to a standard of woman that I don’t subscribe to and that, in fact, a lot of the accusers claim not to either. I think that it is wrong that every day women and men make uninformed choices that potentially endanger their life. I think it is wrong that we are not given a proper, educated choice. I think it is wrong that this silly little virus can simultaneously speak volumes about me whilst it gags who I was before I contracted it.
What was it Einstein said, “mans technology outweighs his humanity”? I think it is also true to say that our actions outweigh our understanding. That we accuse without understanding what we are saying and accept judgement without believing in the sin. I think it is really fucking sad that I know lots of people with an STD, and I guarantee you do to, and that these people are walking around with a burden that does not belong to them and that they can let go of anytime. I think it is really fucking sad that there is only one of me speaking and a million of you to laugh at, to ridicule, to condemn and to judge that woman who is walking out of some doctors office right now, crying shame and all things ugly down her face…