Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. – H.L. Mencken
Moralists are never afraid to pronounce that all manner of social ills and personal problems derive from sex (though many of them are magically rendered harmless through a spell cast by a priest after purchasing a sacred scroll from the Holy State). But there is another, much larger group we might call crypto-moralists; they avoid words like “sin” and eschew religious rhetoric, and may not recognize their own moralism even if confronted with it. Such people are always (perhaps unconsciously) looking for ways to prove that vices really are objectively “bad”; they delight in cirrhosis and emphysema, secretly love syphilis and AIDS and pore over each new “discovery” about the deleterious health effects of good-tasting foods with the same rapt attention as a normal person might read a letter from his accountant informing him that his taxes had decreased. And when they encounter some connection between an illness and a sexual activity they can’t resist slanting the story to blame the activity rather than the lack of prophylactic measures, which is rather like blaming a person’s choking on the type of food consumed rather than on his eating it too quickly.
These are the sorts of thoughts which passed unbidden through my mind when I recently read this article from USA Today which essentially claims that blow jobs cause cancer:
There’s a worrisome uptick in the incidence of certain head and neck cancers among middle-aged and even younger Americans, and some experts link the trend to a rise in the popularity of oral sex over the past few decades. That’s because the human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major trigger for these cancers, and HPV can be transmitted through this type of sexual activity. “It seems like a pretty good link that more sexual activity, particularly oral sex, is associated with increased HPV infection,” said Dr. Greg Hartig…[of] the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine…
According to Dr. William Lydiatt…of…the University of Nebraska Medical Center…the overall incidence of head and neck cancers is going down, largely because fewer people are smoking…but the incidence of cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been going up over the past decades…and those are the ones that are more likely to test positive for HPV. “It’s gotten to the point now where 60 to 70% of all tonsil cancers in the U.S. are HPV-related,” Lydiatt said.
Although the link between HPV and these types of cancers is indisputable, the association with oral sex is strong but a little more speculative…A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that younger people with head and neck cancers who tested positive for oral HPV infection were more likely to have had multiple vaginal and oral sex partners in their lifetime. In the study, having six or more oral sex partners over a lifetime was associated with a 3.4 times higher risk for [these]…cancers…having 26 or more vaginal-sex partners tripled the risk…cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been increasing every year since 1973, and…”widespread oral sex practices among adolescents may be a contributing factor in this increase.”
Because, you know, it couldn’t have anything at all to do with “virginity pledges” which increase the chance teens will engage in oral sex without looking for signs of STDs or using condoms because those topics aren’t covered in their “abstinence-only sex education”. And it certainly couldn’t be blamed on the fact that a vaccine for HPV has been out for years, but parents aren’t letting their daughters receive it because only “bad girls” need to prevent venereal diseases (which is also why the STD rate is five times as high among university students as among streetwalkers).
…So does the increase in incidence mean that recent generations are having more sex than their grandparents? “The general consensus on the street is that because people’s (sexual) practices have changed over time, we’re seeing an increase in these cancers,” said Hartig. “I don’t know why they’re having more oral sex (but) the concept of having oral sex is something that seems less obscure to you than it did to your parents or grandparents.”
“The thought would be that the baby boomers — the ’60s and early ’70s generation — probably had more freedom in sexual relationships in general, including oral sex,” added Dr. Bert W. O’Malley Jr…[of] the University of Pennsylvania. And at least in terms of oral sex, that appears true for those younger than boomers. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, in 2002, some 90% of males and 88% of females aged 25 to 44 reported ever having oral sex…comparable figures from 1992 showed that about three-quarters of men aged 20 to 39 and closer to 70% of women aged 18 to 59 having ever given or received oral sex.
Why does every generation want to believe it invented sex? Anybody who thinks that oral sex was “obscure” to his parents and grandparents is living in a fantasy world. If your grandmother was upper-class and educated at a private all-girl school it was almost certainly obscure to her, but you can bet your grandfather knew about it. And if your grandmother was working class or middle class and/or attended public school, especially a coed public school, so did she. Suffering Sappho, some of my generation’s grandparents were in high school or university during the “Roaring Twenties”; if you believe they were less aware of oral sex than you are, you need to read more about that era.
But if the rate at which teenagers engage in it has really increased since 1992, doesn’t that mean something? Sure it does; good ol’ “abstinence only sex education” started in 1992 and really took off in 1996. But obviously preaching abstinence and denying information on birth control can’t possibly be the cause, so let’s blame…the internet! Yeah, that must be it! The internet causes oral sex, which causes cancer, therefore the internet causes cancer. Q.E.D.
The silver lining is that the HPV-related head and neck cancers are eminently more treatable than those attributable to smoking or drinking, even though they tend to be diagnosed at a later stage…about 85% of non-smoking people with HPV-positive tumors survive…and tongue and tonsil cancers remain relatively rare in the United States. The other good news — at least for the younger set — is that there is a relatively new vaccine to prevent against HPV infection. It’s not going to help those who are already infected, but it…could help those who aren’t yet infected with the ubiquitous virus.
Of course, the part about how even with the “uptick” this type of cancer is both rare and highly treatable, and especially the part about it being preventable, has to wait for the very end of the article. After all, we wouldn’t want to do anything that might interfere with our attempt to blame teen sex for a cancer epidemic that doesn’t actually exist.
Growing up, I went to a private Christian school. The leadership at the school seemed to want to make all of us so sexually repressed by their rules we were almost afraid to accidentally brush up against a member of the opposite sex. Of course that meant those of us who were dating were more discreet in what we did than might have been the case had we been in a public school. Nonetheless, the repression they preached to us and the unending drumbeat of “Be a virgin!” While providing nothing beyond a moral compass led to bad results as a number of people once they graduated ended up pregnant, in broken marriages, or in some instances contracting STDs because they never saw fit to educate but only to indoctrinate. Moralistic authoritarians never take responsibility for things like the above though. They merely use such as an excuse to expand their authority even though that very authority in the first place often is the catalyst for the things they decry.
Blaming neck and head cancer on oral sex — and the internet? While at the same time refusing vaccination?
It sounds so much like something from The Onion. I’m sure people in the future will have something to laugh at us for.
No oral sex in the past? 🙂 I’m reminded of Henry Miller saying, at the beginning of Warren Beatty’s movie Reds something like: “there was as much fucking of all kinds then as there is now, only people did it with more soul, more intensity, more energy!”
Morality has nothing to do with morality, it has everything to do with hypocrisy. Scare tactics are always employed by moralists because they have no reasonable arguments for prohibition. They don’t like people or teenagers engaging in oral sex so they say it causes cancer instead of instructing people on how to engage it safely.
What ends up happening then? More people and teenagers are put at risk for stds, but that doesn’t matter to the moralists. Harm and harm reduction means nothing to these people. They’ll gladly sell exaggerations, misinformation and lies because the only thing that matters to them is their own ideology.
Morality is not telling other people how to live their lives. Its the decision that you choose when confronted by a difficult, ethical question or situation. This is why police cannot be called moral. They surrender their individual capacity for morality and reason to the state to determine their actions. This also removes the responsibility of their actions from them and allows them to become immoral. It’s easy to break ethical codes more and more when you have no moral responsibility for your actions.
Then there is blaming the internet which is ridiculous in the extreme. People knew about oral sex in Pompeii before the volcano went blew. They found graffiti referring to oral sex on the walls.
It’s funny you said that about the police, Pendragon, because it’s part of what yesterday’s column was about! 🙂
Well, I had thoughts on yesterday’s column but this one gave me the opportunity to integrate them with my thoughts on this topic.
🙂
If you want to talk public health, these are the real deal:
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/contributors/
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/
Why not everyone just be safe and only have COVERED sex of any kind? Yes cover on ORAL sex too.
Also as a nurse, I would like to say that everyone should be vaccinated for HPV, Shingles, whopping cough and be sure to get the HEP series. The vaccinations you had as a child do not last a life time.
I think STDs are on the rise because of the dating sites, not because of the working girls. You have so many men on the dating sites looking for a much FREE as they can get and some women willing to do anything to get a man, they oblige them, thinking THEY are they only one. jmho
It’s also possible to use personal ads and NOT do everything every man you meet wants. When I was seeing others for sex only friendships, there wasn’t 1 time that anyone asked me to do something I didn’t want to do or at the least TRY. I also have never had a sexually transmitted disease. Not 1 man ever objected to using a condom either when the subject was brought up. Speaking of free, 1 reason I met people through the personals was to have things as free as possible. I wouldn’t be part of the “dating game” evil system with all its “rules”. From the time I was a teenager, I was totally disgusted with how people were pressured by society to see so many wonderful things in life (like sex) as some kind of commodity and also that men were used by women to get free dinners, etc. and had to do so many things to just have sex. I loved how with personals you can just lay it all out and not play any games that those in society who push the dating game “rules” say we have to. Thanks for listening.
Thank You Laura,
Yes the dating sites can be good and bad. There are MANY men on there because they do not want to PAY for sex. There are lots of STUPID women on there looking for validation and approval/attention junkies that they just hand it out.
The other side is you have the guys that THINK the women are getting a FREE dinner. Hell, it cost her money to get hair and nails done for them and what woman does not want to look her best for a date, it cost her gas to go meet him and then 5 hrs of her time altogether that she could have been at home on the treadmill. Nothing is FREE. The men on dating sites are no different then men looking on hooker sites for the most part. The all want SEX.
“Men seek but one thing in life-Their pleasure”
W. Somerset Maugham. (1874-1965)..Of Human Bondage 1915
The reason the moralists are against harm reduction is because they want people to suffer for committing sins. Using birth control and condoms means you can have non-reproductive sex (sinful) without getting pregnant or sick (punishment they deserve). To these people, the only thing worse than a bunch of gays getting AIDS and dying is a bunch of gays not getting AIDS and dying.
This is a combination of the idea that sins must be punished, and avoiding punishment is cheating, plus the idea that the only reason anybody ever acts in a moral way is fear of punishment.
There’s at least a few things in life that ARE free. 1 is the air we breathe. No one’s giving any of us a bill for air starting when we’re born. Personally, I was very glad to spend some on my appearance when meeting others for sex only friendships. 1 reason was I’d spent too many years afraid and frigid and wanted to make up for lost time. I wanted to experience and live fully in at least a few ways so the time/effort I spent was a lot more worth it than being on a treadmill, etc. I enjoyed spending some on my end. 1 reason for that is I’d seen for years men getting used left and right. There are men on dating sites who DO want relationships. They also want sex to be part of those relationships which is completely understandable. There’s also the 1’s who only want sex. At least they have the decency to be honest about it. I don’t want to give the impression that all my experiences were great. They weren’t. But, the effort it took me to meet men who had manners, didn’t lie and truly wanted an ongoing sex only friendship was worth it.
[…] quoted in newspaper articles are wont to make incredibly stupid, totally wrong statements like “the concept of having oral sex is something that seems less obscure to you than it did to your paren….” Well, my dears, I’m old enough to have given birth to about half of you reading this, and I […]