Being Amber Rhea

This morning I went and got my second shot of the HPV vaccine (there are 3 total). It cost freakin’ $150. That’s what it costs for each shot. When I had my first shot, I was on my old insurance, which I guess covered it, because I didn’t pay $150 for that. But now I’m on new insurance, which isn’t as good as the old one and it’s still not all sorted out (read: clusterfuck), so… yeah. I’ll file it myself, etc., whatever. But this vaccine needs to be much more affordable, for everyone. Rusty’s theory is that it’s supply/demand - right now there’s a lot of demand but not much supply yet, and the price will go down later. I’d like to believe that idea, but I really don’t trust anything having to do with healthcare in this country.

Anyway. That’s my rant for now. I’ll have a post of substance up later today.

Here’s a snippet of a comment I left elsewhere on Teh Internets™. The post in question was inspired by the Salon.com article about virginity that I mentioned yesterday; it spiraled into a discussion about sex in general, and the conflicting pressures our society puts on people WRT sex.

I don’t understand the mentality that talking about sex and sexuality will make people want to go out and fuck. That makes no sense. Talking about bungee-jumping doesn’t make me want to bungee jump - and if I had already wanted to bungee jump anyway, talking about it probably wouldn’t make a difference.

The reason it’s important to talk about sex is the same reason it’s important to talk about (for example) mental illness, and a host of other “stigmatized” things in our society… to get it out there and remove the taboo, get over all the hush-hush weirdness that makes people feel isolated and alone, and realize that we all deal with these issues, so why not talk about them and begin to learn from our shared experiences, our similarities, and our differences!

For example, when I had to go to my OB/GYN to have a colposcopy… even though I was already thoroughly educated about All Things HPV - I was still nervous. But as I talked to people about it, it seemed like practically every women I mentioned it to said, “Yeah, I had that done a few years/months/weeks ago.” And inside I’m screaming, “SO WHY DON’T WE TALK ABOUT THIS STUFF!!!” So many people deal with it, why should each and every person who has to deal with it for the first time feel like she’s the first person to ever deal with it, and feel so alone??

But I guess that was a tangent. ANYWAY. About sex. There is definitely a weird set of contradictory pressures coming from our society. On the one hand - wait til marriage! Save your viriginity at all costs!! If you don’t, you WILL BE RUINED!!! -But, then, if you’re not married by a certain age (the secret there, of course, is that the religious right wants people to “marry off” as young as possible)… you reach that tipping point where suddenly being a virgin isn’t virtuous anymore. It’s weird. Then the pressure is the opposite: fuck, just fuck already!!! What’s wrong with you?? Surely there is something wrong with YOU that you can’t get laid!!!

Blah, blah, blah… it is all so stupid and exhausting.

I don’t think there are any easy answers here, as much as people would like there to be. No generalizations can be drawn. You can’t put someone into a nice neat box labeled “virgin” or “not virgin,” because it’s just not that simple… that’s not how real life works. And I won’t even go into the whole heteronormativity thing, and the special, elevated status PIV sex is granted over all other sexual experiences.

There is a lot more I want to write about all of This. Yes, This. This Big Scary Sex Issue. Hell, if I ever get time to actually sit down and write what I want, I’m going to have to break it into like a 50-part series. Ah, will someone just give me a goddamn book deal already?

Well, I survived the colposcopy and biopsy. Like Laura Fries(.com!) said, the biopsy didn’t hurt, but I did hear the snip, snip, snipping as the doctor cut off part of my cervix. And after that, she brought out some curettes and made with the scraping, and that wasn’t fun. But it didn’t last long, and I had popped some Ibuprofen ahead of time, which probably helped.

I have to go back on August 24th to “go over the results.” My doctor (who’s great; rest assured, Jenny!) said she has everyone come back to get results in person, even if it turns out to be nothing. She said that in my case she suspects it’s something that will clear up on its own; but of course I don’t know for sure yet. After the appointment, Rusty said that all things considered, I seemed in good spirits; which I suppose I am.

I’m working from home today, so I can keep myself well-dosed with Ibuprofen and lie down when necessary. So far the cramps haven’t been too terrible. I’m also supposed to start my period today, and since I can’t put anything in my vag for a week, I have to use pads. When I went to buy some last night (planning ahead!), I was amazed at how small and inconspicuous the packages were - not to mention the pads themselves. They’re so thin and compact, yet still tout “super absorbency.” I guess there have been great improvements in maxi pad technology in the 9-10 years since I last bought them. Maybe self-conscious 13-year-old girls have a slightly easier time buying them these days. (Probably not, though. When you’re 13, you think the whole world is staring at you, no matter what.)

Anyway. Back to work now. I’m moving a little more slowly than usual, but it’s definitely good to be able to work from home.

I know I haven’t mentioned this directly on the blog before now, but yes, it’s true: I’m leaving my job. And starting a new job. On Monday. Working with Ryan. In freakin’ Gwinnett County (but we’re going to carpool!).

I’m very happy about this.

I wasn’t expecting to leave Major News Organization this soon, but you know, sometimes things happen, and you re-evaluate what’s right for you. In this case, accepting the position at Small Company In The Burbs is the right thing for me.

I wish I could come off as more giddy and excited about this, because I really am giddy and excited; but unfortunately this good news has been momentarily overshadowed by some not-so-good news. A few weeks ago, I had an abnormal pap smear; then I went back for the HPV test (because for whatever reason there weren’t enough cells from the pap to do the test from that); today I got a call from my doctor’s office that the test came back positive; so on Aug. 8th I have to go for a colposcopy (basically a biopsy) and then wait another week or so for lab results on THAT.

Argh.

Now, I know it’s not necessarily a big deal. Most likely, it’s nothing at all to worry about; whatever “it” is, it was detected early, after all. And, I already knew I had one strain of HPV. But still. This was a surprise.

So, just trying to process all this, because it’s still very new (just heard from the doc’s office a few hours ago). Intellectually I know there’s no reason to worry; but that means jack shit for how I feel. Once I process everything and have time to cool down a bit, I’m sure everything won’t feel so overshadowed by this news. I mean, I was freaking out at first when I found out about my other HPV exposure, even though I knew it was totally Not A Big Deal. Once I got over my freaking-out stage, I was fine. It just takes time.

Abstinence wasn’t good enough for me, so two days ago, I got the first round of the new HPV vaccine. (Gotta go back in 2 and 6 months for the second and third shot.)

AJC article via Pandagon - go read Amanda’s post.

The short answer to the question, “Can a sex act be liberating?”

Breaking with an imposed standard that feels oppressive in order to move toward being true to oneself (instead of trying to live up to outside expectations) is extremely liberating, no matter what it is.

I wrote that in a comment at Bitch | Lab and was so pleased with my sudden, unexpected eloquence that I figured I’d re-post it here. More to come.

Other quick things to note…

I’m going to my second pole dancing class tonight; w00t! We’ll see if I suck any less this time. But you know, who the fuck cares; I’m there to have fun.

My OB/GYN wants me to get the new HPV vaccine. I think it’s awesome that I get to be one of the first people to get it. She says I would be a “good candidate” because I’m 26 and that’s the high end of the “recommended age range” (or whatever the exact term was). She said she thought that age range was odd, though, because (as she put it), “30-year-olds have sex too.” Heh.

Rusty and I are going on a road trip July 2nd-3rd to (among other places) the Georgia Rural Telephone Museum. We’re going to stay at a bed and breakfast in Americus (in the “jacuzzi room”). It’s going to rule. And oh yes, there will be podcasting.

Anyhow. That is all for now. The past few days have been a mile a minute, but I have good news (I can’t post it here yet, but stay tuned).

Good news today:

A federal advisory panel Thursday unanimously recommended that the Food and Drug Administration approve a vaccine that has been shown to prevent cervical cancer, the second most prevalent cancer among women worldwide.

(LA Times via Blog for Democracy)

Well, thank [your preferred deity] that sanity appears to be prevailing. We’ll know for sure in a few weeks, when the FDA makes its decision. The LA Times says, “The FDA almost always follows the recommendations of its advisory panels” - which means if they don’t in this case (as with the Plan B OTC recommendation) we’ll know the reasoning is wholly political. I’d like to think the FDA won’t capitulate to whacko fundies who think an HPV vaccine will cause spontaneous orgies in high schools around the country.

Frankly, if we could prevent one of the leading causes of death in women, I’d be alright with spontaneous orgies. But I digress.

This is excellent news, of course. But figleaf makes a very good point - and this is something that I think needs to be addressed much more than it currently is (which is to say, only on figleaf’s blog). Does labeling HPV as a “sexually transmitted disease” do more harm than good?

Contrary to those who put their political agenda over science by tying it closely to sex, HPV can and often is transmitted nonsexually. HPV…is very contagious. For instance it can be passed from individual to individual, from hand to hand, in a corner store and then passed by the individual, from hand to genitals, in the bathroom. In other words while it *CAN* be transmitted sexually, it’s by no means transmitted *EXCLUSIVELY* through sexual contact.

So what message, exactly, are radicals in and out of the FDA communicating with their censorious attitudes towards an HPV vaccine? I can think of one: if you wind up with HPV you are unclean. And if you’re an upstanding member of your community there are consequences if word gets out that you’re unclean.

This ties in with someone he wrote a few months ago (I can’t find the link now), about reappropriating the “S” in “STD” to mean socially rather than sexually. I can get behind that whole-heartedly.

Now, before anyone goes off half-cocked, don’t think I’m advocating drawing no distinction between, say, the common cold and gonorrhea. (Both are highly contagious and spread through contact, so they’re both “socially transmitted diseases,” right?) Obviously everyone should be educated about the risks associated with sexual activity, and those risks include the possibility of contracting a number of STIs.* But why the need to lump STIs into a dirty little corner, a very specific, confining box of their own, separate and somehow “worse” than other diseases/infections/conditions?

Unfortunately, there is still a stigma against STIs in many people’s minds. This stigma can prevent people from seeking treatment, to the detriment of themselves and their partners; just like how a stigma against mental illness can prevent people from seeking treatment (although I like to think we’ve advanced past that as a society, on the whole). The term “STI” or “STD” is, to many people’s ears, infused with judgement. And it serves no purpose. Who benefits from making a person with an illness feel ashamed, guilty, or dirty because of that illness? On the other hand, who benefits if people feel free of judgement and therefore take preventative measures, and seek treatment when necessary?

* Ed. note: I prefer to use “STI” instead of “STD” because that’s what I’ve observed the medical and sex ed communities using. I don’t know why they changed it from “disease” to “infection,” but I suspect it has something to do w/ wanting to ease a little of the stigma. Does anyone know for sure?

I have a brief intermission from training; why use it for anything but blogging? Admittedly, this is merely a rehashing of a comment I posted on Tony’s site, but whatever, you know you need your Being Amber Rhea fix. </hubris>

You’ve heard of the proposed HPV vaccine, yes? If so, you’ve probably also heard that certain Christian wingnuts are opposed to it*. Their reasoning? Get ready for some truly bass-ackwards bullshit. They claim that if people get vaccinated for HPV, they will see it as a license to fuck, fuck, and fuck some more.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I got my tetanus vaccine, I didn’t see it as a license to go dance on a bed of rusty nails.

An HPV vaccine would be particularly useful because approximately 80% of the population is exposed to HPV at some point in their lives, and most people who have it go their entire lives never knowing they have it, because they don’t have symptoms. Without symptoms, HPV is almost impossible to test for. (Gah! I ended a sentence with a preposition!) So people spread it to others without even knowing they have anything to spread in the first place. Furthermore, it is possible to contract HPV without overtly sexual contact, since it’s spread by skin-to-skin contact. But the religious wackos wouldn’t be interested in hearing about the less juicy aspects of communicable infections.

Here’s one of my favorite explanations about the religious right’s position on the HPV vaccine, from the Family Research Council. This was written as part of a “defense” against allegations that their group espouses wholesale opposition to the vaccine.

While we welcome medical advances such as an HPV vaccine, it remains clear that practicing abstinence until marriage and fidelity within marriage is the single best way of preventing the full range of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and negative psychological and emotional consequences that can result from sexual activity outside marriage.

Okay, that’s great, sweetie. (Aside: someone named Amber wrote that press release. Nice.) But let’s step out of your insanely simplistic worldview for a second, okay? You can be as pure as the driven snow until your wedding night, and end up contracting HPV from your husband, who never knew he had it. Even if he was a Virgin Soldier until he married you, maybe he and a high school girlfriend let their hormones get the better of them ten years ago and engaged in some “heavy petting,” and bam, he got HPV. I won’t even go into all the other everyday scenarios, like people getting remarried after a divorce, or asinine debates such as whether those who cheat on their spouse don’t deserve the same standard of medical care, because it’s just boring to repeat all that stuff after a certain point.

(I should also mention that this vaccine would only prevent the strains of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer. There are hundreds of strains of HPV, most of which cause no symptoms. Some strains, known as “low-risk” HPV, can cause genital warts in a small percentage of infected people; this vaccine would prevent only “high-risk” strains. This concludes your excessively long parenthetical statement.)

Let’s face it: these religious right folks are anti-sex, and that’s all there is to it. There’s something deeply disturbing about their obsession with sex and their reactionary desire to rid the world of it altogether. It doesn’t matter that all the things they claim will lead to more unwanted pregnancies, more STIs, more (gasp!) pre-marital sex - e.g., comprehensive sex education; access to contraception; safe and legal abortions; etc. - have been shown, over and over again, to decrease all these things, whereas abstinence-only education and a lack of access to contraception increases them. But then, common sense and a basic understanding of causation and correlation is lost on such folks, so what can you do.

* This article, like many written by someone with a religious agenda, is at best grossly oversimplified and at worst downright misleading in its description of HPV. That should come as no surprise, since FUD is a favorite tactic of these groups; but it never fails to piss me off, because it only serves to perpetuate the cycle of ignorance in the general population.