HPV Vaccine - A parent blogs about their choice

The following is a blog posting by Disappearing John on the choice he and his wife made about getting their daughter vaccinated with the new-ish HPV vaccine. I thought this was an insightful post, and that it might inspire some interesting commentary, and appreciate his honesty in the way he thought through some of the issues he discusses below. (Reprinted with permission of the author)

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Why is this a difficult choice?

I seem to be on an ethics role lately, but my wife and I ran into a question at our pediatrician's office last month, and I was surprised by all of the discussions I have gotten started just by bringing it up with others...We have a 13 year-old daughter. (okay, when she's hormonally challenged, I say my WIFE has a 13 year old daughter but, none the less). We took her to our doctor to look at a mole that has begun to change on her back to get referred to a dermatologist.

While there, we found out she was due for some immunization boosters, so, over our daughter's staunch objections, we said, "let's get them today, too!"It was then the pediatrician sat down and said, "We have a new vaccine available that is not mandatory, but we recommend it... The HPV vaccine. It is a series of three shots, given two months apart..." My wife and I were both familiar with it, and said, "certainly, let's give that as well!"The pediatrician breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "You would not believe how many parents have been offended that I have suggested it, or yelled at me for suggesting their daughter might be sexually active or advocating that kids this age be sexually active. I am saying nothing of the sort, but this vaccine works best if given before sexual activity begins."

My wife and I have had many frank and open conversations with all of my kids, and they all know our moral positions and beliefs, and know they can talk to us about anything. We explained to our daughter what the shot was for, and reinforced why we were getting her immunized, and that it was not "our blessing" for her to be sexually active. I talked about this at work the other night, and was surprised that a couple of the nurses I work with were opposed to giving their daughters this vaccine. These are emergency room nurses who see pregnant 14-15 year old girls all the time!

To my wife and I, it was a no-brainer. We faced a similar dilemma 6 years ago when our oldest daughter had a severe bout of ovarian cysts, and the best course of treatment was low-dose birth control pills. Deciding to put your 15 year old daughter on birth control pills is a hard choice for a man (any parent, I guess) to make, but it did help open many important conversations.I guess it underscores the current confusion with sex education in America, which is not where I wanted this post to go, but in my humble opinion, closing our eyes and pretending that if we don't tell our kids about sex, birth control and STD control, that they won't become interested in sex and experiment sexually is pretty stupid.It amazes me that people think that getting their kids an immunization is equivalent to saying, "Okay, go have sex now!"

Caution: Creepy and dangerous cultural messages ahead

A friend from highschool (circa 1981 or so, say about grade 9) recently tracked me down on Facebook for the sole purpose of reminding me of a song that I despised when I was 14. "Hey!", he said, "Remember that song, 'Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk' by Dr. Hook? Wow, did you ever hate that song! It made you crazy back in highschool!" And then, just to reinforce my memory of how much I loathed it, he sent me the above You Tube link, an unfortunate reminder of the low cultural and production values videos could have when they first came on the scene.

This video is creepy beyond belief, and although it's meant (I think) to be an amusing and light-hearted take on sexuality, it sends some pretty disturbing cultural message about desire, sexuality and what it means to be masculine or feminine. Okay, so that was more than 25 years ago, what relevance does it have now?

I'm posting some of the comments left in the past few weeks regarding this video as well. Yes, a couple of people expressed disgust at the stalker mentality, but some pretty angry and misogynistic things get said as well. I left the posters online ids in because when people post publically, I believe they are accountable for things they say. Such as...

yahman03 (2 months ago) Yeah, this is back when they knew how to make a pair of jeans that flattered a woman's figure, and women dressed like women, not this "guy fit", "boyfriend" jeans crap, or this low-waisted hip-hugger sh** that makes a woman's waist "muffin top" over the top of a pair of low jeans that are about 2 sizes too small. Women need to get away from dressing like men or wearing clothes that make them look like pigs.

raredvdworldwide (9 months ago) This chick's butt is so hot, she makes women, dogs, midgets, child tourists, senile old men and even blind guys drool! Definitely a fun bit of early 80's silliness.

mzwere1 (4 days ago)
Yeah, I've heard rumors to that affect but have'nt seen any evidence locally. Just the same old ugly crappy jeans, flat hair and a generally slovenly attitude. I have'nt seen a decently dressed girl in years. Back in this video's time at school if girls weren't wearing tight jeans they usually wore nice dresses or skirts with high heels. They just seemed to take more care in their appearance back then.

Now, I recognize that comments on YouTube are not necessarily a good cultural or intellectual mirror, and that the feeling of anonymous authorship may make some who lurk in the shadows feel like they can make comments that they would never actually say out loud...but it's worth thinking about this: When women (and men) fit into dominant discourses of what it means to be feminine or masculine, they get kudos and admiration. When we challenge or repel those ideas of how to be a woman or a man, or redefine ideas of beauty, desire and sexuality...we are quick to fall out of favour and sometimes risk the threat of violence and hatred directed toward us.

I was reminded of this in some pretty toxic ways when I happened on a photographic study on different body forms of nude women. Someone made an admiring comment about the set of pictures of a very heavy woman, prompting this response (I'm not including the woman's picture, because I don't want to associate her with this kind of hatred and toxicity).

mAgNUS Buttfoorson on April 16th, 2007 2:02 pm
Jesus Leroy Christ dude what is wrong with you? You wanna know why people must be so mean? Because the human body was never supposed to get like that. Ever. She is a testament to the extreme level of sloth and stupidity achieved by homo sapien sapiens. Scratch that you’re the testament; she’s just some stupid fat bitch who should be shot and used to feed half of Africa for the next decade. That fucking sow and her cellulite cankles represent everything that is wrong in the universe and beyond. She’s the reason the cosmos sat down with God and hashed out the very notion of disease fueled slow deaths. See what she’s on up there? The wood? That was some guys house before she rolled in there.
If there is any justice in this world or the next this very woman will slip on her own oozing lard and fall out of a window straight onto you and anyone who shares your obviously tainted bloodline.

I would say this is just an isolated case of a hateful, ignorant freak. Except it's not. Most of the comments that followed (by a variety of different posters) were along the same line, some even making death threats directed to the woman and the fellow who said he admired her. Times haven't changed so very much since the Dr. Hook video came out. Foucault had it right...step outside the dominant ideas of acceptability when it comes to body and sexuality, you'll get some sharp discipline to get back in line and play nice with the hegemony.

Performing Purity - Father/Daughter Purity Balls

• For a long time, Western religion has advocated a split between body and mind; the body has traditionally been viewed as something that pollutes the purity of the mind or soul. In this time of HIV/AIDS however, it is possibly very important to be able to convey that the purity of one's mind is lined up with a body purity. A fascinating new movement has started emerging in the U.S. to demonstrate that both body and mind are in agreement - at least when it comes to the sexuality and virginity of young girls in certain evangelical Christian circles. A new twist on abstinence rallies, father/daughter purity balls have been staged for the past seven years or so. Girls as young as six and young women into their mid-twenties go to a "purity ball" with their fathers (or uncles, or grandfathers), in an elaborate and formal affair that has many appearances of a wedding celebration.The father (or stand in) pledges a 'covenant with God' that he will protect the purity of his daughter and that of generations to come. The girls and young women will often silently affirm their pledge to purity through the ritual of laying a white rose at the foot of the cross. Pictured above is a "purity dance" with the symbolic bride and the girls demonstrating through dance their devotion to remaining chaste until marriage. In true capitalist fashion, there is a whole market industry around purity ball kits (don't ask), prom-like pictures of dad and daughter on their date, and the cost of the event which can run a cool hundred bucks per father/daughter.

I'm trying to make sense of this phenomenon, and attempting to look at it with a kind of detached cultural interest (without much luck). I recognize this is a hyper-response to a commitment to abstinence (albeit in highly gendered terms) I just can't get beyond the fact that the father/daughter thing regarding her sexuality is more than a little creepy, and am disturbed by the lack of voice of the young women who are participating. I understand this is a traditionalist backlash, and that women's sexuality is always one of the first things to be contained, owned, subdued and controlled when it feels like culture is shifting and challenging the status quo. Still though...not seeing any "mother/son" purity dances coming up. And doesn't an "Oedipal Ball" sound like a grand idea? Slouching teenaged boys shuffling around and dancing in formal wear with their mothers or grandmothers while their moms pledge to keep an eye on their sons' sexual purity (and that of grandsons to come, uh, I mean...in the future.) Yeah. I thought so. Not bloody likely.

• (For some smart commentary on the purity ball "survivor" kit, see this brilliant post on Feministing. Or, if it all still seems too strange to be true, you can see what Wikipedia has to say.

The Little Black Book for Girlz

In 2002, a group of young women who were involved with the drop-in centre at St. Stephen's Community House decided to put together an honest, no-holds barred book for girls and young women about healthy sexualities. The result is a fascinating, frank and authentic look at sexualities as experienced and interpreted by young women, in their own voice. The most recent version of The Little Black Book for Girlz : A Book on Healthy Sexuality was published in September, 2006.

This is a really excellent resource for groups working with youth around sexualities issues, and is an empowering realization of a project that will have an enduring shelf-life of informative sexualities activism. Not surprisingly, whenever young women are public with affirming their power in relation to sexuality, they have attracted conservative rage like this nasty report from the Institute of Canadian Values posted in a scathing press release last year. Of particular outrage for these groups was that St. Stephens, a phenomenal community resource that provides social care for a wide range of people in the Kensington Market district of Toronto, had received government grants for this work. Issues of youth sexuality always generate fear and loathing from traditionalists, and this book was no exception.

Unsurprisingly, the story that was picked up by mainstream media was the controversy it generated, not the publication of the book itself. Furthermore, much of the outrage of the book was an outcome of people confusing it with a publication with a similar name that was being used in classrooms in Manitoba. The Manitoba document, also entitled 'the little black book' covered some issues of sexualities, but also bullying and financial responsibility for young people. The Manitoba publication was being used in classrooms, but the book from St. Stephen's is not (yet) officially on any school curricula in Canada. Despite the controversy, sexualities educators and medical practitioners praise the book, which includes useful, accurate and youth-accessible advice on things like how to use a dental dam, or stories of how individual young women have navigated bisexual and/or lesbian identities. The Little Black Book for Girlz is published through Annick Press, and is available through Amazon.ca for $9.95 CDN.

If you'd like to take a peek at the contents, you can check it out here