Written by Marianne Møllman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Photo: Steven Depolo / Flickr

On October 15, the New York Times reported that adolescents who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) aren’t more promiscuous than those who don’t get vaccinated. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that raises the risk of some cancers. It’s not surprising that a vaccine has no effect on adolescent sexual behavior. What is surprising is that fear of “sluttiness” is the number-one reason parents decide not to vaccinate their kids against HPV.

Put another way: A large proportion of parents in the United States are more afraid of their kids having sex than they are of their kids getting cancer.

In fact, “slut-shaming” and negative messaging about female and non-straight sexuality could themselves be compared to a viral infection. A study published in November 2011 found that nearly half of students in grades seven through 12 experienced sexual harassment, and that most of the harassment is directed at girls for being either “slutty” or “prudes” or against kids who are suspected of being gay.

Seeking to shame someone because of her or his real or perceived sexual activity and desire is prevalent among teens and constitutes a type of bullying that is extremely damaging. The 2011 study noted that students reported being particularly negatively affected by slut shaming. Research consistently shows that LGBTI youth have a much higher rate of suicide or suicide attempts than the general population, with a strong correlation between depression or self-harm and gay bashing.

Slut shaming and gay bashing originate with adults. I don’t mean just adults who tell children that all sex outside marriage is bad or consign LGBTI kids to celibacy, or banish them to hell. I mean adults who refuse to have a real conversation with teenagers about sex and all that comes with it — good or bad. The sex-negative culture we have created by not having real conversations about sex and relationships affects everyone.

Here’s how:

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Written by Martha Kempner for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

So, I am that mom on the playground, the one who—while happy to play with my kids— craves adult interaction and looks for opportunities to strike up conversations with other parents.  It’s actually pretty easy (presumably because other mothers find pushing a toddler on a swing as mind-numbingly dull as I often do). I comment on similarities between our kids, something mine is doing, or something hers just said and nine times out of ten we are deep in discussion about our lives and experiences with motherhood within five minutes.  We trade stories and advice about sleep training, breast feeding, potty training, discipline techniques, daycare, and pediatricians.

Of course, I always try to be careful not to be too opinionated during these conversations.  In my liberal New Jersey town, I can be almost certain that the random playground mom agrees with my politics but parenting issues are so much trickier.  I never know who is going to agree with my stance on sleep training (just turn the monitor off, the kid will stop crying eventually) and who will think I’m barbaric; who will agree with me that jarred food is really just as good as pureeing it yourself and who will think I’m lazy; or who will view the sleep fairy (the one who gave my daughter a present every morning that she slept in her own bed the year she was three) as a cute invention by a desperate mother and who will think I was just too wimpy to get bedtime right.  And, yes, before you say anything, the reason I fear the judgment of other parents is clearly because behind the smiling and nodding I’m judging them as well.

Still, in nearly all of these conversations—even if our parenting styles are radically different—we can find a common ground on which to bond and commiserate. There is one topic, however, that I just try to avoid—vaccines. A friend once described it as the third rail of parenthood.  Just don’t touch it.

While vaccines were once widely regarded as the medical miracles they are, today there is a large contingent of parents who distrust them and choose not to get their children vaccinated at all or pick and choose which vaccines they’re going to get and when.  Opposition to vaccinations began when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet suggesting a link between vaccines and autism. Over the next decade or so, study after study failed to replicate this link but distrust of vaccines grew anyway and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy publicly blamed vaccines for their children’s autism.  Unfortunately, this trend does not seem to have stopped even after information was released last year which showed that Wakefield fabricated his data. Read the rest of this entry →

"Conversation" by Smile My Day on flickr

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

One thing guaranteed about presidential election season is that any issue that a major candidate chooses to raise, no matter how obscure beforehand, can suddenly rise to an issue of national importance.  Thus it has been with the HPV vaccine.  Ever since it’s come out, those of us in the trenches on reproductive health care have been trying to raise the alarm about right-wing opposition to the vaccine, which prevents transmission of harmful forms of Human Papilomavirus (HPV), thereby also preventing the possible development of genital warts and of cervical cancer, and all the various and unpleasant treatments women have to endure to make sure they don’t get cervical cancer, such as coloscopies  and LEEP procedures.  But because it prevents a disease you get through sexual contact, many on the Christian right oppose the vaccination.  They tend to mindlessly support anything—even deadly cancers—that can be perceived as divine justice for the very human act of having sex.

Before Michele Bachmann started yapping on national TV about the vaccine and claiming that it makes girls “retarded”, pervasive right wing opposition to the vaccine wasn’t deemed worthy of much mainstream media attention.  I suspect that it was seen as a fringe phenomenon, like the belief that fluoride in the drinking water is a mind control agent. In one sense, it is a fringe belief—there’s consensus amongst experts that this vaccine is a good thing.  But because the experts believe something doesn’t mean that nutty opinions in the public at large can’t have widespread negative effects.  Whisper campaigns against the HPV vaccines are a perfect example. Only a third of girls are getting all three shots, for instance.  Part of the problem is that it’s a hassle to get three shots, and part of the problem is that it’s expensive.  But the research has shown that as income levels rose past a certain point, vaccination rates declined slightly.  This probably reflects the fact that people on the somewhat wealthier end of the spectrum are more likely to be conservative, and therefore more likely to think it’s appropriate to use the fear of disease and death to control female sexuality. Read the rest of this entry →