HPV Update

[joreth]

 It's been a while since I last made an STD update, because there's not much new going on.  Same ol' same ol' with one side arguing to get vaccinated, the other side arguing it's dangerous, treatments awaiting FDA approval, blah blah blah.

This also isn't exactly new, but it seems we need reinforcements as to why the vaccine is GOOD FOR YOU.  People

Comments

[ashbet]

I really wish they could tell me one way or the other whether it's safe for my 17-year-old daughter to get the HPV vaccination -- we're both immunocompromised due to a genetic condition, and they just don't know enough about it to be able to say whether or not it's worth the risk. Her doctor was saying to put it off until we could get her (formerly severe) iron-deficiency anemia treated, but now I think we've got her blood levels to an acceptable state (need to get her checked again), and I need to bring it up again.

She and I have talked about it and she wants to get the vaccine before she becomes sexually active, but we'd also like some reassurance that she's not going to have negative effects from it (we're sadly both the QUEENS of weird/unexpected side effects from medications/treatments, ugh.)

But, yeah. People holding off on it or not getting it (or not allowing their children to get it) out of fear of "promiscuity"? Fuck a bunch of that.

(Also, hi -- I've been meaning to add you for ages, we have a bunch of friends in common and you always have such SENSIBLE things to say, and the Jeph Jacques thing just cemented the decision!)

-- Andi :)

[joreth]

Hi there, and welcome!

Yes, you're EXACTLY the reason why everyone ELSE should get vaccinated (well, the other reason - the first being their own health). If we could remove a virus from the general population, then neither you nor your daughter would NEED the vaccine because all her partners would have had it & not carry it to her!

Thanks about the Jeph Jacques thing. It's getting a little frustrating that he just won't admit "ok, that was a little ambiguous, sorry, but I'll clear it up in the next strip". It's not always easy to condense a concept to a limited medium, like comics or Twitter, so sometimes something we've written gets misunderstood.

However, I stand by my position that "I thought you liked being polyamorous?" "It's fun, but I want to settle down someday" is more likely to be received as a statement about polyamory being only about casual sex & a phase, and less likely to be read as a single character deciding that she is not polyamorous anymore, even though polyamory itself is a valid relationship style that includes long-term, committed relationships :-)

[ashbet]

I really hope that they start encouraging boys to get the vaccine for just that reason . . . plus, if they prove the link between penile cancer/HPV (last I checked, it was a correlation but not 100% proven?), then perhaps they'll really push for male vaccination? Having boys vaccinated as well as girls would really help, particularly since boys tend to be asymptomatic unless they have the wart-causing strain.

Heh, my original Twitter comments to Jeph were:

I wouldn't define Tai as "polyamorous" if she's looking to "settle down" with one person eventually - I'd call her "single."

The point of polyamory isn't "dating a bunch of people 'til something better comes along" (and I know it's a comic, but srsly!)

I do understand his perspective (that Tai's relationship needs have changed, and that she hasn't necessarily realized that -- heh, the sick part is that it is mirroring something that happened relatively recently in my own extended poly network, where my partner's partner claimed to be poly but turned out to really want monogamy, and wound up making all of us fairly miserable for a while until she finally admitted that she wanted something other than what she'd signed up for) . . . but the way he phrased it in the comic seemed like he was DEFINING polyamory as a phase, and one that involved fairly shallow and transitive relationships, at that.

*grrrrr*

Let's see where he goes on Monday, and take it from there. But, yeah -- I'm bummed to be losing a character who represented 'one of us,' even if she was a lot more on the casual-sex side than on the polyfi or multiple-LTR side (so, she represented one facet of poly, but not my side of the umbrella.)

I didn't have any issue with her portrayal because I know that there are plenty of poly people who self-identify as poly and have casual sex and are perfectly happy that way, I'd just prefer that it not be a *prescriptive* description, which is how Friday's comic came off (whereas every other comic has seemed like "okay, this is just how *Tai* is as an individual poly person, practicing her own personal brand of single/relatively-unattached polyamory.)

Meh.

-- A :P

[joreth]

Exactly, I had no problems with Tai's portrayal for the same reason ... all the others just seemed to be her version of poly, not a statement about what poly was in total, whereas this statement felt much more like a statement about poly, not a personal version of poly. Even with the focus on casual sex, I haven't taken exception to Tai at all until this strip.

Jeph does seem to think that Monday's strip will clear everything up, so I'm hopeful that this was just an unfortunate choice of phrasing.

As for the boys, I noticed that the approval of the vaccine for boys met with almost no media coverage, compared to the veritable shit-storm that preceded & followed the girl's approval. It's joked that if guys had a particular suffering that girls typically do, the "fix" would be immediately forthcoming & expected (i.e. if men got pregnant, abortions would be covered by insurance & celebrated with stag parties afterwards). So I was hoping that the realization that HPV caused male cancers too would change opinions.

Instead, not only has it not seemed to change anyone's opinion, but it seems to be swept under the rug as if they want to pretend no one ever said that boys get cancer and medical science found a way to prevent it.

But, that's where I come in ... to shout at people until they hear :-D