News…

Whenever you hear that phrase — “HIV and other STDs” — in what sounds like a preposterous statement, note that the “other STD” they’re referring to is almost always human papilloma virus (HPV). The RR is making tremendous political hay out of this one — largely because the people who write their talking points understand it better than the average American (especially the average middle-aged married liberal) does. They’re playing a wicked propaganda game here, and we need to understand it if we’re going to win it.

HPV is a relatively new and poorly-understood STD. About 70% of sexually active American adults carry one of the 100 or so HPV variants. The majority of these variants are benign. You’ll go to your grave, and never know you have them. But a few cause genital warts. And a few others cause a form of cervical cancer that kills about 4000 women each year.

Worse, HPV is passed through skin-to-skin contact, and defies all known means of sexual shrink-wrapping. Current estimates are that a virgin having sex today has a 50% chance of picking up an HPV variant in that very first encounter.

The right wing never mentions HPV by name. Instead, they always conflate it with AIDS (the quote above is a typical example), or refer to it indirectly in statements like, “The majority of Americans carry an STD that can kill, and don’t even know it,” or “Condoms don’t stop some fatal STDs,” or “Non-monogamous sex causes cancer.” These statements sound ridiculous — but, sadly, when it comes to HPV, they are not factually wrong.

Note that the letters “HPV” will never cross their lips. (Of course not: we know how they feel about *anyone* having accurate information about anything related to sex.) This is the STD That Dares Not Speak Its Name. Mass ignorance is much more useful. They can use it to scare people with twisted facts; and if sex-positive liberal types dare try to refute them, they risk being discredited as reality-challenged libertines who don’t know or won’t face the facts.

Ellen Goodman got caught in this about a month ago, with an article that attempted to debunk RR anti-sex fear talk, and ended up revealing her own ignorance of HPV. She had to print a correction. And she was hardly the first. (I should say that Christy’s post did not contain such an error; I’m just writing this comment to deepen the context for this issue.)

The moral of the story is: in dealing with over-the-top assertions about STDs, make damned sure the assertion doesn’t apply to HPV (it very well might) before opening fire on the sex-negative winger who said it. The face — and credibility — you save may be your own.